Help Me Understand The Workings of Magic

[Floorlock]

(Edited for Formatting and slight errors)

Hey everyone.

So here's the deal: I'm somewhat new to D&D as a whole.

When I say that, I mean....I never delved TOO deeply into the lore. When I was younger, I played a bit of 3rd edition and D20 modern....but, always as a player, and I never had to spend too much time looking into every single bit of minutia regarding the magic system of the worlds of Dungeons and Dragons, and I've never read a single novel related to any of the separate universes.

I started to play again in 5e....but, it was somewhat marketed to me as a more generic fantasy set-up...when in reality it has a very baked-in set of assumptions. But, there is one thing that has caused a much larger disconnect for me than the rest of the rules and lore systems: The way magic exists and presses itself upon the world and the races.


So. It seems that, in-lore, a sorcerer is the only class within the framework of the game that is innately magical. Their magic comes from within....which is the most familiar to most fantasy magical archetypes. Dragon Age, Lord of The Rings, Harry Potter, Avatar.....many fictional universes that feature magic seem to operate off of a principle of it being at least somewhat genetic, if not fully, even if that innate talent can be further enhanced with practice and intense focus.

Off the top of my head, I can only think of one prevalent and immediate example of a Wizard in modern media....and it's ironically Marvel's Sorcerer Supreme: Doctor Strange. I'm sure there are others that I could name, but, my point is that the concepts behind a D&D wizard seem more rare these days, yet the class itself remains the more iconic one between itself and the sorcerer.

This creates an interesting situation in D&D that I'm not sure how to approach with my limited lore knowledge.


1. Why are Elves set aside as a stand-out wizard race in some of their fluff and mechanics? I understand the idea that they'd have a lot of time to learn....but doesn't their leaning towards innate magic as a society sort of bend them towards being Sorcerers?

2. How prevalent are Wizards supposed to be in something like the Forgotten Realms (The apparent main setting of 5e)? Are there a lack of qualified teachers to train new generations of wizards.....or is the idea that any single person has a good chance to become a wizard if they committed themselves to the cause.

3. Are the mechanics of this game, however abstract, at least somewhat representative of the world that they are trying to reflect through gameplay? If so....does that mean that there is actually a very low bar for entry into the fields of Wizardry? After all, a character with an 8 intelligence....or even lower.... can still be a wizard from the start of the game. While one may argue that this would make them a rather poor wizard in comparison to their more intelligent colleagues, this character would still be more adequately set up than his fellow peasant friends given that he's the only one running around with access to Prestidigitation, Unseen Servant, and other quality of life spells. On that same note....what IS the actual real world equivalent to a character with a 13 intelligence? How much of a jump is there from 10 to 13?

4. Are there any limitations to entry in the fields of Wizardry? Is it financial status? Does Wizard college require funds that only Noble families can afford? Is it intellectual capacity? Once again....a character can be a wizard with an 8 in intelligence....so it doesn't seem like TOO big of a deal. If there are no limits placed on a person's chances of being a wizard aside from simple life-choices...can one reasonably assume that at least a large portion of the population would at least ATTEMPT to strive towards becoming a level 1 wizard just to obtain quality of life magic such as Prestidigitation and Unseen Servant? I nearly refuse to believe in a world where such luxuries would be readily available and yet largely ignored by the general populace.

5. What DO the different magical sources come from? Like...there is divine casting....which is supposedly the purview of Clerics, Druids, and Paladins. But....it all seems radically different. Clerics come from a deity...but, there is strangely nothing baked into the rules to suggest that they could lose their power in the same way as a Paladin....who seems to have a much lesser grip with the divine. On that same note, the Paladin apparently doesn't need a deity at all, as the power can apparently simply derive itself from their convictions....which kinda sounds like the same sorta process of pulling from within that the Sorcerer enacts. Then there are Druids, who can either pull from a nature deity maybe....or just the spirit of nature itself. Then Arcane casting seems to come from all different directions. And finally....where the mess does a Bard's power come from? They are full casters; is there an implied form of song as magic throughout the universe? Or are they more akin to a wizard....given that they seem to have to learn it....but, not use their intelligence for the casting stat?


Do the answers to any of these questions change when the setting is changed to something like Eberron, which, if I'm not mistaken, is a bit more high-magic?

What about if I use a homebrew setting, where there are at LEAST a few dedicated colleges of magical study? Does this change the implied layout of how 5e D&D is supposed to handle the mechanics and lore of its wizards?

By the way. None of this is meant to be disparaging in any way, and I apologize if it comes off that way. These are somewhat genuine questions I have about the set fluff of the official lore and mechanics and about how the community as a whole looks at the situation. I'm attempting to craft together a homebrew setting, but some of it is almost a pain to consider with the plethora of options placed forth by Wizards of the Coast. Lol. 5e seems to be set forth as a generally low magic affair....but, I'm uncertain as to whether or not The Forgotten Realms is the same way, and I need to gather information about how all this ties together when I have to explain why the entirety of the population aren't wizards in my world when there seems to be a very low bar to entry in the mechanics and there will be specific large colleges set up towards the set goal of understanding the processes of magical theory. I know that some of it can be explained away by NPCs not even being up to the same caliber as level 1 characters, but, I also sprinkle in QUITE a number of important NPCs....and those NPCs always have at least one or two character levels. I'm looking for reasons to justifiably have people not all be wizards. Ha.

[JoeJ]

Actually, there's no intelligence requirement at all to become a wizard. A PC could theoretically do it with an intelligence as low as 3, as long as they were single classed.

But that doesn't imply anything at all about how prevalent wizards are in the world. (Or members of any other class for that matter.) Player characters and (most) NPCs are generated differently, and that's deliberate. PCs are not a representative sample of the world's population; they are among the very special few who have what it takes to become legendary heroes or villains. It shouldn't be surprising, therefore, that any PC could potentially learn to use magic even if the vast majority of people in the world can't.

[Vessyra]

1. Elves aren't innately magical; rather, they have innate talent for learning magic. It's like how people in some countries on earth have, through natural selection, become more genetically suited to certain things. So for elves, while that don't have magic within them, they simply are naturally talented in learning how to wizard.
2. No idea I'm afraid, haven't read the books.
3. Not really, NPCs don't use the same rules as PCs. With the wizardry topic, while it's true that anyone with an intelligence of anything could learn wizardry, intelligence comes into how easily it comes to them. Anyone, given enough time, could learn complex maths, or wizardry; however, a smart person will learn maths or wizardry quickly, whereas an unintelligent person could take years or decades.
4. A wizard would probably teach you either by seeing an affinity for learning with you, or you just paying a ton of money. However, magic is difficult; even if Joe the commoner somehow gets a wizard to teach him, either by payment or by the teacher seeing something in him, Joe, with his 10 intelligence, would have to spend years practising his first cantrip, as magic is truly extraordinarily complex. I like to think of magic's complexity as the hardestt maths equation you've every faced=1st or 2nd level spell.
5. Cleric use magic through a divine connection to their deities, although strangely, this edition hasn't included rules for a fallen cleric. Spellcasters don't actually get magic in that they are filled up like a battery. Instead, they tap into the weave (the interface between the real world and the stuff or raw magic) to cast spell. Wizards do this by learning how to tap into the weave. Warlocks do this by their patron teaching them how. Sorcerers do this through innate knowledge of how. Rangers do this through their connection to nature. Paladins do this by learning how to through mediation and prayer (sort of like a cleric, but instead of forging a connection with a deity they cut out the middle man and form a connection with the divine itself). Druidd use the weave through a connection to nature, like the ranger. Clerics do this through a connection to their deity. And bards... in the D&D multiverse, words have power. Verbal components set the weave vibrating, and bards know how to use their words and songs to reshape the weave to create spells that they desire. So while they are like the wizard in that they learnt how to influence the weave, they didn't learn it through books (and thus int).

[Mortis_Elrod]

ok first welcome to the forum and to D&D. I like that you did a bit of homework for the game, good on ya for that. Second, BY GODS MAN, FORMATTING! This really hard to read through. Do me a solid and format this a little better for everyone. Really helps people answer your question if they aren't put off by the way your post looks.

Ok so on to your questions.

1. Elves are special in the most special of ways. Each setting does it a bit differently but i believe in 5e they attribute the wizarding to high elves (a subrace) specifically. Living longer really helps you gather all that magical knowledge and experience it would take to be a good wizard. But again mechanically you could still be a sorcerer. So don't look at the mechanics all that much because D&D is a platform to use the mechanics more than the lore.

2. In standard 5e you will notice hat magic items are not really a thing. From that, i would think that there aren't alot of High level wizards running around in the world making cool stuff. 5e assumes low magic but it can change again to whatever you want and in the DMG there are some rules and pointers to changing this. Out of the box though, no there isn't a huge magic school district in every region.

3. The mechanics only somewhat represent the lore. The average commoner has 10 int. But commoners are understood to be peasants, serfs, slaves, servants, pilgrims, merchants, artisans, and hermits. In our own world that would be different. Say you lived in a 1st world country like USA, on average you would have higher Con (due to advanced medicine and vaccines and such), higher Int (because of the educational system), and maybe higher other stats. So keep that in mind. 13 might be our base instead of 10. Also to note that learning magic via wizardry would be hard without knowing how to read and write (which some commoners may not be able to do), or having access to say a Magic for Dummies book.

4. Advancing in wizardry, from a player point of view, requires experience and if you want to put anything in your spellbook, Ink and maybe paper. Also standard 5e doesn't really have a magical college for wizards. You might have a Master/Apprentice thing going on sprinkled everywhere. But of course this a setting specific thing, and 5e can take on multiple settings. Experience is hard to get by the way, and usually dangerous. Very dangerous.

5. So the break down is generally like this. Arcane/Divine. The Divine casters (Clerics/Druids/Rangers/paladins) each have their own special connection to Divinity which in turn does the magic for them. Clerics are faithful to a Domain (usually under a god) and are vessels to be channeled through. Paladins are similar, they have a strong conviction/code/oath that in turn gives them power in a cleric like manner, and sometimes this includes faith to a god. Druids are in touch with the Natural world and commune with it on a daily basis. Rangers are a part of Nature itself in a more profound way than the rest of peoples.
Now for the Arcane side we have Wizards, Sorcerers, Bards, Warlocks, and Eldritch Knights and Arcane Tricksters. Wizards study magic and use a practiced proven way to make magic happen. It's all in their notes and stuff. Sorcerers don't need that book because something in their origin/bloodline is innately able to do the most of that wizard stuff and more. Magic is like a third arm they were born with. Bards are weird. As far as I can tell they use music to make the magic dance to their tune. It's weird and if I were a Wizard I might say they hit the exact frequency for a particular magic to occur, and the bard would say its the power of music and it can't be understood with formula and math. Warlocks made a deal for the cheat codes of magic power that alot of Near god-like entities posses. In turn they get power unlike anybody else but it's weird and doesn't follow the all the rules the sorcerer and wizard do.


In general though alot of this changes if the setting changes. D&D has long been a system where the mechanics aren't necessarily attached to the lore of the game, and understands that you'll want to create your own fantasy world to play in.

[Naanomi]

Lorewise, classically magic is the result of channeling mixtures of extraplanar energy (especially mixing energy from the positive and negative energy Planes) to produce specific results. In some worlds, like Toril of Forgotten Realms, these energies are ‘filtered’ through a medium like the Weave... but not always. Any being with a soul or animus (and some who do not have either) can make the connection to the Planes to call upon that energy, but actually shaping it into something useful is challenging.

Some beings inherently have tricks to shaping the planar energy... fey and outsiders, any being with innate spellcasting or spell-like abilities... sorcerers likewise ‘instinctually’ shape planar energy into magical effects without training or an intermediary.

Some beings rely on an intermediary to shape the magical energy that they themselves call... divine spellcasters rely on their Gods or Nature or some other powerful force to actually shape the magic for them. Some warlocks might as well, but Warlock fluff seems to be a little flexible on the matter (some might be more like sorcerers and just have the powers ‘awakened’ in them, where others might learn from their patron in a more wizardly sense)

Wizardry is the art of learning specific tricks to predictably shape the energy yourself rather than rely on instinct or outside assistance.

Bardic magic appears to be somewhat of a mixture of instinct and learning, perhaps with some divine-style guidance as well depending on the Bard. Practical applications, doing whatever works.

Psionics is a special case; in some editions it isn’t even really ‘magic’. The fluff varies between whether it just uses internal focus and life/mental/soul energy to call on planar energies to cast magic spells (often in a way that bypasses magical filters like the Weave); or is it instead relies on those energies completely to not need any outside planar energies at all

[Sigreid]

Learning wizardry is probably difficult at least partially because, well, if you knew how to build potentially devastatingly dangerous world altering technology, how ready would you be to teach Joe Shmoe who you don't even know?

[Floorlock]

First off: Sorry everyone for how this was formatted in the beginning. Ha. I don't even know how it got that out of hand. Somehow my spacing was just weirdly distributed throughout the post. Hopefully it's better now.


Thanks for all of the replies. This is all genuinely helpful for someone like myself...who is somewhat new to all of it. Once again, I have no large attachment to D&D as a whole....so some of the larger assumptions of the system elude me. Additionally, I have seen different sources that stress the way some of these things work in somewhat drastically different directions.


So one thing I'm getting out of all of this still is that 5e D&D has at least the implication of being somewhat relatively low-magic in a lot of ways.

Now....if this is the case....it seems that it would be easy to write off wizardry as the domain of only those with extreme levels of dedication, or the luck to have both the mental capacity and the access to tutelage or the time and luxury to study over magical texts.

But, I'm currently attempting to craft together a home-brew world.....and in this world, I've decided to be a bit on the higher end of the magical scale. I don't plan on pushing things forward to a point where the skies are littered with traffic of broomsticks and magic carpets to a point where it looks like the air traffic from Coruscant in Star Wars.....but, magic will at least be somewhat integrated into parts of how the society works. Once again....I've never really dealt with too much of Eberron, but, given its descriptions...I assume it will be more in the vein of that setting than the forgotten realms. Given that this society will be so deeply steeped into the workings of magical affairs, it would only make sense for their to be Hogwarts-esque universities that are dedicated to the study of magical energies.

In a setting such as this....what is truly the limit of wizards? When a setting is pushed forth towards being higher in magical output....what is there to discourage the general public from learning a spell or two?

I can't personally fathom a world where I was told that I could gain superpowers with a bit of study and then DIDN'T immediately jump forward on such an offer. It's not like how some people in real life don't go to college....this is talking about small things like cantrips like Prestidigitation or Mage Hand...or Spells like Unseen Servant that would IMMEDIATELY improve the lifestyles of anyone who acquired them.

Also....this isn't meant to disparage fighters in a world full of magic users. I actually personally like characters who have no magic and yet still find a way to compete with their more supernatural cousins. But, even those who take up the sword would SURELY find some use and delight in the simple quality of life spells that being a Wizard offers, right? Like...just having Prestidigitation means that you almost never have to have a bad meal....and it's a cantrip....something that's considered more basic and menial than even a 1st level spell.

So what stops the average person from at least ATTEMPTING...even if they don't succeed....attempting to become a 1st level wizard?

If there isn't anything that talks about it in any stated lore....how would/ do you run such things in your own games/ settings?

I see where some of you have stated that it just requires too much intense mental prowess and dedication for the average would-be practitioner. But, then....with that being the case....how does that line up with the fact that a PC can have a 4 intelligence and still be a wizard? I know that there are going to be a lot of cases where Mechanics and Story Telling aren't going to line up as a One to One comparison.....but, that seems like a rather large discrepancy. Is it just one of those game things that I'm just going to have to deal with? Should I implement house-rules to state that 13 is the minimum intelligence for becoming a wizard even at level 1?

Additionally....is 13 that high of an intelligence in the first place? I'm not certain as to how big of a leap the modifiers are supposed to represent. On one hand....it doesn't always seem like THAT big of a deal to people if their Intelligence is an 8...which is a negative modifier. They'll typically hand-wave it away with their character not being THAT stupid....just not a genius. But, on the other hand, having a +5 being the pinnacle of what one can usually achieve naturally seems to imply that every single step up is a giant boon in mental acuity. Is a +5 intelligence assumed to be the mark of comic-book level super-genius in the way of Reed Richards? If so....every step up seems like it must be potentially monumental.

Or....does it work with a case of Increasing Returns? Is every step up or down from the average of 10 increasingly potent?

[MilkmanDanimal]

Magic is hard, be it via study (Wizard), finding ways to connect with a deity (Cleric), or having the force of will to control your innate magic ability (Sorcerer). Most people simply aren't capable of doing it, but, fundamentally, 5e PCs are pretty much superheroes. They're just better at stuff, so they get character classes and progression and all that.

While everybody can theoretically do anything in the world of D&D, player characters are special in that they have the drive, resources, time, and whatever else to actually do things.

[JoeJ]

I can't personally fathom a world where I was told that I could gain superpowers with a bit of study and then DIDN'T immediately jump forward on such an offer. It's not like how some people in real life don't go to college....this is talking about small things like cantrips like Prestidigitation or Mage Hand...or Spells like Unseen Servant that would IMMEDIATELY improve the lifestyles of anyone who acquired them.

You do live in a world in which anyone can gain the superpower to kill at a distance just by spending a little money. Some people go ahead and acquire that power, others don't. In some places it's illegal to acquire that power, but even in those places some people do it anyway. In other places it's completely legal and yet many people nevertheless choose not to do it.

[Sigreid]

Magic is hard, be it via study (Wizard), finding ways to connect with a deity (Cleric), or having the force of will to control your innate magic ability (Sorcerer). Most people simply aren't capable of doing it, but, fundamentally, 5e PCs are pretty much superheroes. They're just better at stuff, so they get character classes and progression and all that.

While everybody can theoretically do anything in the world of D&D, player characters are special in that they have the drive, resources, time, and whatever else to actually do things.

Eh, there's no reason it has to be so hard in a homebrew world. It's perfectly reasonable to have a world where nearly everyone has the magic initiate feat, but not the violent options that represent "family knowledge". No harm in farmers plowing and watering their fields with mold earth and shape water. Or the blacksmith knowing control flames and mending, etc.

[Jama7301]

You do live in a world in which anyone can gain the superpower to kill at a distance just by spending a little money. Some people go ahead and acquire that power, others don't. In some places it's illegal to acquire that power, but even in those places some people do it anyway. In other places it's completely legal and yet many people nevertheless choose not to do it.

You could also equate it to a college degree. In theory, it can make your life better, but only if you're willing to put in the years of work for it, and there's no guarantee that you'll even get to the end of the program.

Could be in D&D that access to arcane education isn't available. If you're in a small town, with no way to learn or no guidance.

[MilkmanDanimal]

Eh, there's no reason it has to be so hard in a homebrew world. It's perfectly reasonable to have a world where nearly everyone has the magic initiate feat, but not the violent options that represent "family knowledge". No harm in farmers plowing and watering their fields with mold earth and shape water. Or the blacksmith knowing control flames and mending, etc.

No problem with that idea at all; in a world like that, everybody's got some magic ability, but the PCs are just that much better. I like magic being a relatively rare thing that only PCs and notable NPCs have, but don't think it breaks the world if everybody has Light and Prestidigitation.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Some things to think about:

1. There are two scales for "high magic" (and two similar ones for magic items, which are a separate issue)--

* How common are people who can use magic? Call this "breadth".
* How powerful is the average person who can use magic? Call this "depth".

My setting is high breadth (everyone can do some magic) but low depth (in the main play area, the number of people who can cast T4 spells (7-9) is less than 10, total, of all classes. With most people not able to cast even cantrips--instead they use ritual or harmonic magic).

Eberron is similar--lots of magic, but mostly only low-level stuff. FR is nominally low breadth, but very high depth with lots of potent casters out there. Dark Sun is low breadth (unless you count psionics as magic) and low depth, except for a very few.

2. There is no indication in 5e that the only prerequisite for learning wizardry is training. In the fiction, there's lots of people who couldn't make it as wizards despite studying hard. The presence of wizarding "families", each with their own specialties, is a sign that it's at least mildly heritable. There very well could be a talent to be able to gain spell slots. The same goes for most of the casters. Not all faithful people develop cleric abilities, and not all can rise very far magically. Not all people who make a pact with a devil become warlocks.

3. Not all magic is casting spells. I've started developing systems for the common folk--things like particular songs that when repeated, have minor effects. Making weeds easier to pull. Keeping the flies away from cattle. Stuff like that. Those effects fade as soon as the song stops, but grow exponentially with the number of blended voices. So communities work together and increase their productivity. This also explains why you can have bigger cities with fewer farmers. Blood sacrifice (willing or not, human or animal) is a common trope as well.

I prefer the "everyone is magic" explanation to things--how does a barbarian get more resistant when he's angry? He's tapping into a well of magic through his emotions and literally increasing the density/strength of his muscles (basically hulking out). It's the opposite of a monk, who taps into that same well through meditation and self-mastery and employs it quite differently. A fighter heals himself (or moves supernaturally fast, cf action surge) by tapping into the well of magic through discipline and physical practice. Each class accesses that same well, just in different ways and for different purposes.

[Lombra]

Yours are good questions, questions to which you can give answers depending on the setting that you want to convey to your players.

5th ed really doesn't have a setting, and everything can be adapted to different ones. Reflavoring is basically suggested in the guidelines for this edition, if you want to fluff the sorcerer class as being the wizards of your campaign, go ahead, names are just names, and flavor text is only flavor text.

[Unoriginal]

A lot of questions to answer right now, but I can say a few things.

The Xanathar's Guide to Everything has this to say about Wizards:


Only a select few people in the world are wielders of magic. Of all those, wizards stand at the pinnacle of the craft. Even the least of them can manipulate forces that lout the laws of nature, and the most accomplished among them can cast spells with world-shaking effects.

The price that wizards pay for their mastery is that most valuable of commodities: time. It takes years of study, instruction, and experimentation to learn how to harness magical energy and carry spells around in one’s own mind. For adventuring wizards and other spellcasters who aspire to the highest echelons of the profession, the studying never ends, nor does the quest for knowledge and power.

It also list those as potential starts for a career in wizardry:



-An old wizard chose me from among several candidates to serve an apprenticeship.

-When I became lost in a forest, a hedge wizard found me, took me in, and taught me the rudiments of magic.

-I grew up listening to tales of great wizards and knew I wanted to follow their path. I strove to be accepted at an academy of magic and succeeded.

-One of my relatives was an accomplished wizard who decided l was smart enough to learn the craft.

-While exploring an old tomb, library, or temple, I found a spellbook. I was immediately driven to learn all I could about becoming a wizard.

- I was a prodigy who demonstrated mastery of the arcane arts at an early age. When I became old enough to set out on my own, I did so to learn more magic and expand my power.

In any case, it's pretty clear not just anyone can go an be a wizard, just like not everyone can go and be a Barbarian or a Fighter or a Rogue.



5th ed really doesn't have a setting, and everything can be adapted to different ones. Reflavoring is basically suggested in the guidelines for this edition, if you want to fluff the sorcerer class as being the wizards of your campaign, go ahead, names are just names, and flavor text is only flavor text.

While everything can and should be adapted and reflavored to people's individual settings, saying that 5e doesn't really have a setting is pretty innacurate given books like the Mordenkainen's Tome of Foe exists.

[Sigreid]

The Xanathar's Guide to Everything has this to say about Wizards:



It also list those as potential starts for a career in wizardry:



In any case, it's pretty clear not just anyone can go an be a wizard, just like not everyone can go and be a Barbarian or a Fighter or a Rogue.

Flip side, not everyone can be a master mechanic but nearly everyone can learn to change their oil and spark plugs.

[Unoriginal]

So one thing I'm getting out of all of this still is that 5e D&D has at least the implication of being somewhat relatively low-magic in a lot of ways.

Now....if this is the case....it seems that it would be easy to write off wizardry as the domain of only those with extreme levels of dedication, or the luck to have both the mental capacity and the access to tutelage or the time and luxury to study over magical texts.

Yes, it would be indeed easy to do that.



But, I'm currently attempting to craft together a home-brew world.....and in this world, I've decided to be a bit on the higher end of the magical scale. I don't plan on pushing things forward to a point where the skies are littered with traffic of broomsticks and magic carpets to a point where it looks like the air traffic from Coruscant in Star Wars.....but, magic will at least be somewhat integrated into parts of how the society works. Once again....I've never really dealt with too much of Eberron, but, given its descriptions...I assume it will be more in the vein of that setting than the forgotten realms. Given that this society will be so deeply steeped into the workings of magical affairs, it would only make sense for their to be Hogwarts-esque universities that are dedicated to the study of magical energies.

In a setting such as this....what is truly the limit of wizards? When a setting is pushed forth towards being higher in magical output....what is there to discourage the general public from learning a spell or two?

I can't personally fathom a world where I was told that I could gain superpowers with a bit of study and then DIDN'T immediately jump forward on such an offer. It's not like how some people in real life don't go to college....this is talking about small things like cantrips like Prestidigitation or Mage Hand...or Spells like Unseen Servant that would IMMEDIATELY improve the lifestyles of anyone who acquired them.

Also....this isn't meant to disparage fighters in a world full of magic users. I actually personally like characters who have no magic and yet still find a way to compete with their more supernatural cousins. But, even those who take up the sword would SURELY find some use and delight in the simple quality of life spells that being a Wizard offers, right? Like...just having Prestidigitation means that you almost never have to have a bad meal....and it's a cantrip....something that's considered more basic and menial than even a 1st level spell.

So what stops the average person from at least ATTEMPTING...even if they don't succeed....attempting to become a 1st level wizard?


If it's a world were magic is both easy and omnipresent, then everyone who have any use for it would use it.



If there isn't anything that talks about it in any stated lore....how would/ do you run such things in your own games/ settings?

If I was forced to run a setting like that: just give everyone the Magic Initiate feat at lvl 1.



I see where some of you have stated that it just requires too much intense mental prowess and dedication for the average would-be practitioner. But, then....with that being the case....how does that line up with the fact that a PC can have a 4 intelligence and still be a wizard? I know that there are going to be a lot of cases where Mechanics and Story Telling aren't going to line up as a One to One comparison.....but, that seems like a rather large discrepancy. Is it just one of those game things that I'm just going to have to deal with?

The game has for default that you can't go lower than 8 in a stat. With rolled stat, if you put a 4 in INT yet still are a wizard, you're just someone who somehow managed to learn magic despite being dumber than an Ogre, at the cost of pretty much all other knowledge most likely.


Should I implement house-rules to state that 13 is the minimum intelligence for becoming a wizard even at level 1?

No reason to do that. Most wizards will have higher INT, and those who want to multiclass will need.

If you have a problem with that possibility existing, then sure, do what you want.



Additionally....is 13 that high of an intelligence in the first place? I'm not certain as to how big of a leap the modifiers are supposed to represent. On one hand....it doesn't always seem like THAT big of a deal to people if their Intelligence is an 8...which is a negative modifier. They'll typically hand-wave it away with their character not being THAT stupid....just not a genius.

13 is on the high end of the "average".



Is a +5 intelligence assumed to be the mark of comic-book level super-genius in the way of Reed Richards?

Yes.



Or....does it work with a case of Increasing Returns? Is every step up or down from the average of 10 increasingly potent?

It's a bell curve. 8-12 in a stat is "average", with 8 being the lower end and 12-13 being the higher end. Meanwhile, 16-17 is pretty incredible, (ex: apes have 16 in STR). Someone with 18-19 in INT is already a notable genius.


Flip side, not everyone can be a master mechanic but nearly everyone can learn to change their oil and spark plugs.

And anyone can take the Magic Initiate feat, and several classes can learn wizard magic as a side option to their main training.

[JoeJ]

The game has for default that you can't go lower than 8 in a stat.

That's the optional variant rule. The default lets you go down as low as 3 if you pick a race that doesn't get a bonus to intelligence.

[Lombra]

A lot of questions to answer right now, but I can say a few things.

The Xanathar's Guide to Everything has this to say about Wizards:



It also list those as potential starts for a career in wizardry:



In any case, it's pretty clear not just anyone can go an be a wizard, just like not everyone can go and be a Barbarian or a Fighter or a Rogue.



While everything can and should be adapted and reflavored to people's individual settings, saying that 5e doesn't really have a setting is pretty innacurate given books like the Mordenkainen's Tome of Foe exists.

Me and my group never delved in setting specifics, to us and to anyone who plays homebrew campaigns the books are just a set of tools to craft adventures, the name of the tools matter very little imho.

[Unoriginal]

Me and my group never delved in setting specifics, to us and to anyone who plays homebrew campaigns the books are just a set of tools to craft adventures, the name of the tools matter very little imho.

"I'm not using the lore" isn't the same as "the lore doesn't really exist".

[Lombra]

"I'm not using the lore" isn't the same as "the lore doesn't really exist".

What I meant is that the mechanics are completely untied from it, and that 5e doesn't focus on a specific setting, which is what it looks like to me, it offers broad descriptions of general arguments to augment world-building, but they still look like guidelines to me.

[Mellack]

I am not going to go into great detail on my opinions, but I think like in life people are assumed to have specific talents. Why isn't everyone a professional athlete or a movie actor or a famous artist? Those people all make great money. Because not everyone is equally talented at every skill. We all have some things we pick up quickly and others that are extremely difficult. That seems a good enough explanation as to why some characters become a certain class and others don't.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Others have given great answers to the questions already, but I think an infodump of older-edition lore could help expand upon and clarify some things. Wall of text incoming!


1. Why are Elves set aside as a stand-out wizard race in some of their fluff and mechanics? I understand the idea that they'd have a lot of time to learn....but doesn't their leaning towards innate magic as a society sort of bend them towards being Sorcerers?

The idea that elves are amazing wizards originates with 1e, due to the particular conceits of that editions:
Of the available races (dwarf, elf, gnome, half-elf, half-orc, and human), only humans, elves, and half-elves could be wizards (or technically "magic-users"), with gnomes being restricted to illusionist (the only wizard subclass) and dwarves and half-orcs not being able to use arcane magic.
In an edition where all non-humans had a limit on how far they could advance in each class, elves had a wizard level limit of 11th, and since most games ended in the 9-12 range when PCs hit "name level" and advancement slowed down, humans didn't have a huge advantage there.
Elves could multiclass (i.e. be a wizard and another class at the same time at only a small deficit in XP, like having the class features of a wizard 5 and a fighter 5 when most PCs in the party were level 5 or 6) while humans could only dual-class (like 5e multiclassing, where you have to take levels in different classes, but more limited).
Many powerful spells had drawbacks, and one of the more common was aging (e.g. being affected by haste would age you 1 year!), so a race with a very high lifespan could cast those powerful spells with reckless abandon compared to the shorter-lived humans.
Elves got their own race-specific options for many things (especially in Forgotten Realms), so an elf might have special perks above and beyond an otherwise-identical human wizard.
The "elves = wizards" idea has been carried forward through the editions even when elves aren't particularly amazing wizards, would be better as a different kind of arcane caster (like sorcerers, which didn't exist until 3e), or are actively bad at being arcane casters.


5. What DO the different magical sources come from? Like...there is divine casting....which is supposedly the purview of Clerics, Druids, and Paladins. But....it all seems radically different. Clerics come from a deity...but, there is strangely nothing baked into the rules to suggest that they could lose their power in the same way as a Paladin....who seems to have a much lesser grip with the divine. On that same note, the Paladin apparently doesn't need a deity at all, as the power can apparently simply derive itself from their convictions....which kinda sounds like the same sorta process of pulling from within that the Sorcerer enacts. Then there are Druids, who can either pull from a nature deity maybe....or just the spirit of nature itself. Then Arcane casting seems to come from all different directions. And finally....where the mess does a Bard's power come from? They are full casters; is there an implied form of song as magic throughout the universe? Or are they more akin to a wizard....given that they seem to have to learn it....but, not use their intelligence for the casting stat?

So, here's the Grand Unified Theory of D&D magical mechanics. Casting a spell involves 3 things:
1) A conceptual pattern for each spell.
2) Power from one or more other planes to channel through the pattern.
3) The thoughts, will, and belief needed to channel that power.

Magical Patterns: D&D magic is based on patterns, of words (spoken, written, sung, etc.) and symbols (gestured, etched, drawn, etc.), which describe the desired magical effect.

As evidence for the "words" part, the vast majority of spells have verbal components, spoken in a tongue belonging to ancient and powerful magical beings; there's an entire class for people who can talk and sing so well that magic happens (and the bard was was, incidentally, the first example of a prestige or advanced class back in 1e, basically being better magic-users than the Magic-User); creatures, objects, and locations have True Names, and speaking those names can manipulate the named target; you need to know creatures' names to call them specifically with planar binding and similar spells; most magic items have magic words that make them function; power word spells pack the most amount of power into the smallest space (in AD&D, they were very powerful spells given the lower overall monster HP and had ridiculously fast casting times, and even in 3e they're no-save spells with proportionally powerful effects) and are explicitly words with inherent magical power; and of course wizards (and archivists) write down magic spells in their spellbooks (and prayerbooks)--magic spells made of words which themselves are magical and can't be understood by the uninitiated--and scrolls, likewise, are literally written-down magic.

As evidence for the "symbols" part, most spells have somatic components, where the caster traces out certain patterns with his or her gestures; examples of special magical symbols abound (glyph of warding, ghoul glyph, sepia snake sigil, explosive runes, sign of sealing, symbol of death, etc.); magical geometry and numerology is important, from the circles in magic circles for binding called creatures (which can further be enhanced with runes and such to make a summoning diagram) to the 2e arcane schools of Geometry and Numbers to the 3e Geometer prestige class; 3e binders used complex diagrams composed of the symbols of vestiges (creatures outside of the normal multiverse) to summon and bind them; the Outer Planes are arranged in a circle (or a cone, if the Outlands is considered to be "below" the others instead of in the center) and the Inner Planes in an octahedron (or an octodecagon, if you include the Paraelemental and Quasielemental Planes); and the center of the multiverse is actually named "Sigil."

And finally, while preparing spells was originally described as "memorizing" spells and spells were "forgotten" when cast, descriptions made it clear that spells were pre-cast and stored as constructs in the caster's mind (i.e. mental patterns) that were then consumed/destroyed/used when the spell was cast.

Magic-users that don't prepare spells but just know certain magic essentially have the necessary patterns in their self, whether their body for sorcerers with certain bloodlines, their mind for psionicists, or their souls for meldshapers and spontaneous divine casters. (This bit is my own speculation, but no other explanation is given and it fits very nicely with everything else.)

Channeling Power: The power behind magic is drawn from the planes, as Naanomi noted (and the rest of his post is very good as well). Evocations pull elemental power from the Inner Planes to make fireballs and walls of stone, Necromancy draws on the Positive and Negative Energy Planes to manipulate life force, Conjurations summon (facsimiles of) creatures from the Inner and Outer Planes, shadow illusions use the material of the Plane of Shadow, teleportation uses the Astral Plane, and so on. The base power to do all of that channeling comes from the Positive and Negative Planes, which together are basically one big ol' plane-sized battery keeping the multiverse running smoothly.

Casters on the Material Plane even draw on their own plane's ambient power, as the "trigger" to activate the spell and start channeling power from the other planes. As we can see from Athas (the nearly-lifeless world of the Dark Sun setting, where most other planes are inaccessible for drawing power and there is no ambient magical energy so all spells need to draw power from plant life and the environment), spells can be cast using just that energy, but their possible effects are quite limited without other planes to draw upon and doing that will basically kill the planet, so...bad idea.

Where Athas is magic-poor, Toril is magic-rich, so you have the Weave in the Forgotten Realms--and only the Realms, and not even most of Toril or all of the planes in the Realms setting; I have no idea why 5e implies it works that way everywhere--as an intermediate layer (and yet another pattern!) between the raw magic and mortal magic-users. The patterns of the Weave determine the patterns that other magic that uses it can take, so Mystra can change the laws of magic at will (and her predecessor Mystryl did, preventing the use of 10th-level and higher spells after the Fall of Netheril). This partly explains why the Realms have so many powerful and varied forms of magic like circle magic, place magic, spellfire, mythals, Chosen investiture, and the like, because other Material worlds either don't have the power to support those magics or don't have the necessary "background pattern" of the Weave to make them easy for mortals to discover and use.

Putting those two parts together, here's the description of spellcasting from the 1e DMG, the original explanation on which later lore expounded, spoilered for length:


All magic and cleric spells are similar in that the word sounds, when combined into whatever patterns are applicable, are charged with energy from the Positive or Negative Material Plane. When uttered, these sounds cause the release of this energy, which in turn triggers a set reaction. The release of the energy contained in these words is what causes the spell to be forgotten or the writing to disappear from the surface upon which it is written.

The triggering action draws power from some plane of the multiverse. Whether the spell is an abjuration conjuration, alteration, enchantment, or whatever, there is a flow of energy - first from the spell caster, then from some plane to the area magicked or enspelled by the caster. The energy flow is not from the caster per se, it is from the utterance of the sounds, each of which is charged with energy which is loosed when the proper formula and/or ritual is completed with their utterance. This power then taps the desired plane (whether or not the spell user has any idea of what or where it is) to cause the spell to function. It is much like plugging in a heater; the electrical outlet does not hold all of the electrical energy to cause the heater to function, but the wires leading from it, ultimately to the power station, bring the electricity to the desired location.

Many spells also require somatic motions in conjunction with words. The spoken words trigger the release of the magical energy, and the hand movements are usually required in order to control and specify the direction, target, area, etc., of the spell effects. When spell energy is released, it usually flows to the Prime Material from the Positive or Negative Material Plane. To replace it, something must flow back in reverse. The dissolution and destruction of material components provides the energy that balances out this flow, through the principle of similarity. Sometimes this destruction is very slow, as is the case with druids‘ mistletoe. Those spells without apparent material components are actually utilizing the air exhaled by the magic-user in the utterance of the spell.

Release of word/sound-stored energy is not particularly debilitating to the spell caster, as he or she has gathered this energy over a course of time prior to the loosing of the power. It comes from outside the spell caster, not from his or her own vital essence. The power to activate even a first level spell would leave a spell caster weak and shaking if it were drawn from his or her personal energy, and a third level spell would most certainly totally drain the caster’s body of life!

Belief and Will: Divine magic is not fundamentally different from arcane magic as far as where the power comes from. In fact, in AD&D lower-level cleric spells were powered by the caster's faith alone and could be prepared by any cleric, mid-level spells were granted by intermediaries for one's god or just powerful outsiders, and only high-level spells had to be granted by a deity directly. So, in theory, a cleric of Pelor who disagreed with Pelor's teachings could give Pelor the finger, leave the church, and retain his lower-level spells with no problem, and even mid-level spells if he was still Good enough for some angels to answer his prayers on behalf of other sun gods or the like.

The difference is that, again in prior editions, wizards had to learn individual spells while clerics and druids could prepare any spells on their list, because deities took care of "learning" the spells for their priests and granted them that knowledge directly (though there were a few classes in various editions where priests either studied spells like wizards or had innate divine power like sorcerers, the most well-known being 3e's archivists and favored souls, respectively). Warlocks get the same benefit of having spells given to them instead of having to learn them, but warlock patrons tend to be less broadly powerful than gods so they don't grant the same breadth of power.

Paladins never needed to worship a god (except in the Forgotten Realms, where everyone needs a patron god on pain of a terrible afterlife). Instead, they drew their power from the abstract principles of Law and Good, the same way that druids could channel the power of abstract Nature instead of or in addition to nature gods and nature spirits and clerics could worship a concept or a deity-less faith and still receive spells. The Outer Planes run on concepts and the power of belief rather than physics, so if enough people believe in a thing they could gain divine magic from it, not just actual gods; the same holds for worshiping demon princes and other powerful non-divine entities, where the demon princes couldn't actually grant spells but their priests would gain power either from their faith alone or from other source channeled through the demon prince.


So different classes may use different means of accessing their spells (learning, bargains, inherited power, gifts from powerful outsiders) and different methods of casting them (belief, mental discipline, sheer force of will), but the underlying in-setting mechanics of all magic are the same.


I can't personally fathom a world where I was told that I could gain superpowers with a bit of study and then DIDN'T immediately jump forward on such an offer. It's not like how some people in real life don't go to college....this is talking about small things like cantrips like Prestidigitation or Mage Hand...or Spells like Unseen Servant that would IMMEDIATELY improve the lifestyles of anyone who acquired them.

In fact, the "Forgotten Realms" setting is called that due to all of the many fallen empires in the setting history, all of which were relatively high-magic and all of which are now Realms that have largely been Forgotten (though they laid the groundwork for all modern magic). Netheril and Jhaamdath in particular were two human empires where basically everyone was a magic-user, the former because everyone learned basic spells in school and mythallars (big Weave-channeling artifacts) enabled the creation of "quasi-magical items" (magic items that were incredibly cheap and easy to make but only functioned near a mythallar) to give the citizenry all sorts of conveniences like lights, long-distance communication, and flying ships--all in Netherese enclaves, which were flying cities made by chopping the tops off of mountains, flipping them over, and building a city on top--and the latter because the udoxias (psionic artifacts that radiated power like mythallars did) granted all the citizens psionic power even if they normally would lack the talent.

In the modern era, Halruaa is a Netherese successor where everyone is familiar with magic, the government is a decentralized magocracy that meets using what's basically a crystal-ball-based version of teleconferencing, a good 30 to 40 percent of the population wields noticeable magical power, and magic items like skyships and magical lights are common. Thay would be just as commonly magical if the ruling Red Wizards didn't spend all their time backstabbing their rivals and ruthlessly crushing non-Red-Wizard magic use.

The main check on high-magic empires tend to be that they fall spectacularly as their powers make others view them as a threat or lead them to cause their own destruction. Netheril literally fell, its flying cities crashing to the ground, when one archmage tried to become a god and ended up briefly destroying the Weave; the Jhaamdathi got a bit too expansionist for their neighbors' taste and were taken out by a massive flood (caused by Elven High Magic courtesy of another high-magic nation), and so on. Other settings have similar high-magic-use nations in their background lore: Greyhawk has the Oeridian empires of Suel and Backlun, which annihilated each other in a mutually-assured-destruction scenario, Dark Sun had the ancient rhulisti (halflings with magic that could reshape life itself) who were killed off by the Brown Tide which killed off all ocean life and is somewhat implied to have originated as as a side effect of their widespread magic use, and the like.

So there's nothing stopping lots of people from learning magic if they want to, just make sure you don't put your magical empire in the air or on beachfront property. :smallwink:


3. Are the mechanics of this game, however abstract, at least somewhat representative of the world that they are trying to reflect through gameplay? If so....does that mean that there is actually a very low bar for entry into the fields of Wizardry? After all, a character with an 8 intelligence....or even lower.... can still be a wizard from the start of the game. While one may argue that this would make them a rather poor wizard in comparison to their more intelligent colleagues, this character would still be more adequately set up than his fellow peasant friends given that he's the only one running around with access to Prestidigitation, Unseen Servant, and other quality of life spells.

I see where some of you have stated that it just requires too much intense mental prowess and dedication for the average would-be practitioner. But, then....with that being the case....how does that line up with the fact that a PC can have a 4 intelligence and still be a wizard? I know that there are going to be a lot of cases where Mechanics and Story Telling aren't going to line up as a One to One comparison.....but, that seems like a rather large discrepancy. Is it just one of those game things that I'm just going to have to deal with? Should I implement house-rules to state that 13 is the minimum intelligence for becoming a wizard even at level 1?

Once again, previous editions had more of a lore/mechanics correspondence that was lost in 4e and 5e. In AD&D and 3e, there were minimum ability scores required to cast spells at all, and then higher ability scores for higher-level spells. You couldn't become a wizard at all in AD&D with an Int below 8, and while you could become a wizard in 3e with a low Int you needed a 10 Int to be able to cast cantrips. In both cases, you needed higher Int as you leveled, culminating with an 18 or 19 Int to be able to cast 9th-level spells--and note that ability increases were rarer than in 5e, with no level-based ability increases in AD&D and only 1 point every 4 levels in 3e, so if you didn't start with at least a 14 in 3e or an 18 in AD&D (barring magic items to permanently increase your scores, which were incredibly rare and expensive) you'd never reach the pinnacle of magical power.

Houserules probably aren't strictly necessary because few players would likely want to play a casting class at such a handicap, but requiring a higher Int would certainly help make the flavor more internally consistent.


On that same note....what IS the actual real world equivalent to a character with a 13 intelligence? How much of a jump is there from 10 to 13?

Additionally....is 13 that high of an intelligence in the first place? I'm not certain as to how big of a leap the modifiers are supposed to represent. On one hand....it doesn't always seem like THAT big of a deal to people if their Intelligence is an 8...which is a negative modifier. They'll typically hand-wave it away with their character not being THAT stupid....just not a genius. But, on the other hand, having a +5 being the pinnacle of what one can usually achieve naturally seems to imply that every single step up is a giant boon in mental acuity. Is a +5 intelligence assumed to be the mark of comic-book level super-genius in the way of Reed Richards? If so....every step up seems like it must be potentially monumental.

Or....does it work with a case of Increasing Returns? Is every step up or down from the average of 10 increasingly potent?

Originally, ability scores were generated using a straight 3d6 for everyone, meaning that that bell curve could be roughly mapped to real-world potential (and in fact ability modifiers basically followed a "+1 per standard deviation above average" pattern instead of +1-per-2-points). The standard deviation for 3d6 is 3 points while the standard deviation for IQ is 15, so you could, in theory, say that a 10 represents 100 IQ and every point above that represents +5 IQ; this is a reasonable rule of thumb, though it would put the record-holding Marilyn vos Savant at Int 35, which breaks 5e's limited ability score scale.

Other rules of thumb people have used include IQ = 10 * Int and the 1e monster scale going from "Animal (1-2)" on the low end to "Supra-Genius (19-20)" on the high end. Basically, 10 is suppose to be average, 3 is the least intelligent baseline average human, 18 is the smartest baseline average human, and how you interpret that is up to your group.


I prefer the "everyone is magic" explanation to things--how does a barbarian get more resistant when he's angry? He's tapping into a well of magic through his emotions and literally increasing the density/strength of his muscles (basically hulking out). It's the opposite of a monk, who taps into that same well through meditation and self-mastery and employs it quite differently. A fighter heals himself (or moves supernaturally fast, cf action surge) by tapping into the well of magic through discipline and physical practice. Each class accesses that same well, just in different ways and for different purposes.

Indeed. Barbarians and fighters tapping into the conceptual well of totems and heroic archetypes, monks tapping into magical power through meditation and philosophy in the same way clerics do and thereby creating and reinforcing psion- and sorcerer-like mental and physical magical patterns, and so forth all fit in well with the Grand Unified Theory explained above.

[Naanomi]

Although if you say ‘everything is magic’ you have to figure out why fighters can still fight in anti-magic zones but wizards can’t... wizz

You also shut out the ‘Batman’ type ‘awesome mundane’ character who is just so awesome that he can compete with Magic people without magic... an archetype that appeals to many

[Unoriginal]

It should be noted that the way each edition is different in how it treats magic make that something being true in one edition doesn't mean it's true in all. 5e implies that there is an intermediary structure between reality and raw magic, that some people in Faerun conceptualize as "the Weave", because it's the canon for 5e, but wasn't the case before.

Furthermore, 5e makes clear that for most spells the verbal components of spells aren't words in an ancient language, but that what matter is the succession of sounds and pitches, which can be "dressed up" as parts of words.

However, the spell Divine Word is described as "utter[ing] a divine word, imbued with the power that shaped the world at the dawn of Creation", which is a direct example of "word=power"

On the subject of "wizard elves", it should be noted that it's also cultural. Corellon, from whom the elves spawned, is generally considered a wizard, and their elves have been known to follow that example.


Although if you say ‘everything is magic’ you have to figure out why fighters can still fight in anti-magic zones but wizards can’t... wizz

For the same reason dragons can breath fire in an anti-magic zone.

There's a difference with having incredible power thanks to the background magic of the universe, and using spells.

[Jama7301]

Although if you say ‘everything is magic’ you have to figure out why fighters can still fight in anti-magic zones but wizards can’t... wizz

Maybe finding a counter for arcane energies is easier than solving the mysteries of the Human(oid) Spirit?

[Floorlock]

Others have given great answers to the questions already, but I think an infodump of older-edition lore could help expand upon and clarify some things. Wall of text incoming

Wow, you weren't kidding. That was quite a wall of text, but, it was one I was super thankful to have. This really does clarify many of the aspects I had been pondering in the system. A lot of this makes a lot more sense when you look at it from the beginning with Original and AD&D. (Wow. Lol. Elves seem like they must have been genuine superheroes....even among their other adventuring brethren in AD&D compared to their status in 5e.)

Thanks for the education on all of that, for real.

And honestly, thank you to all of you for the replies. A lot of varied ideas and viewpoints with all of this. I'm considering all of this information thoroughly.

There are a lot of ways to go on this, and it helps to see how a lot of it is handled in some of their official lore, given that I'm attempting to make sure that I keep at least somewhat consistent with their official mechanics.

Also, Unoriginal's post makes me realize that I also need to delve into Xanathar's a bit more....as it also seems to harbor a good bit of useful information.

[Unoriginal]

Wow. Lol. Elves seem like they must have been genuine superheroes....even among their other adventuring brethren in AD&D compared to their status in 5e.

Funnily enough, in 5e, the primordial elves were semi-divine entities of immense powers.

Then they ****ed it up.

[Sigreid]

And anyone can take the Magic Initiate feat, and several classes can learn wizard magic as a side option to their main training.

Yes, that was my point. Just because most people can't master magic, it doesn't follow that most people can't learn a bit. Most probably don't even understand it. They just know I do x, y happens.

[Estrillian]

On the subject of "why can't everyone have a little power", everyone can ... through the Magic Initiate feat that gives them 2 cantrips and 1 spell. I see that as the level that people who didn't dedicate themselves to magic as a lifestyle can achieve.

A really simple homebrew for a 'High Breadth' world would just be to give that feat to all characters.

Interesting social implications. Everyone wants Prestidigitation / Druidcraft and Mage hand for the lifestyle improvements, but it might be seen as immoral not to take Spare the Dying instead ("Spare the Dying Saves Lives!"). Or maybe people would treat learning Spare the Dying like learning first aid — they know everyone should do it, but they leave it to other people.

What does it do to the notion of "starvation poverty" if everyone takes Goodberry as their one spell? What about a society of warriors where everyone takes Magic Missile (or Eldritch Blast) ... or Cure Wounds?

[Sigreid]

On the subject of "why can't everyone have a little power", everyone can ... through the Magic Initiate feat that gives them 2 cantrips and 1 spell. I see that as the level that people who didn't dedicate themselves to magic as a lifestyle can achieve.

A really simple homebrew for a 'High Breadth' world would just be to give that feat to all characters.

Interesting social implications. Everyone wants Prestidigitation / Druidcraft and Mage hand for the lifestyle improvements, but it might be seen as immoral not to take Spare the Dying instead ("Spare the Dying Saves Lives!"). Or maybe people would treat learning Spare the Dying like learning first aid — they know everyone should do it, but they leave it to other people.

What does it do to the notion of "starvation poverty" if everyone takes Goodberry as their one spell? What about a society of warriors where everyone takes Magic Missile (or Eldritch Blast) ... or Cure Wounds?

I don't think most people would have enough in their controlling ability to make a combat cantrip effective.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I don't think most people would have enough in their controlling ability to make a combat cantrip effective.

And why would most people take a combat cantrip? One thing to remember is that there's no cosmic menu of all the spells, from which a newly trained person can choose. Cantrips are the equivalent of tricks picked up by specific methods (depending on the source and type). I'd guess that most rural folks would be picking up either cleric or druid cantrips.

Another thing to consider is that the spells in the PHB are not all the spells in existence (or at least it strains my credulity to believe so). I'd guess most farmers would have a cantrip that helps them plow or dissuades pests or whatever. A blacksmith might have a cantrip that keeps metal malleable at lower temperatures. Same with the 1st level spells. The printed spells are the adventuring relevant spells.

If I were making a high-breadth world, I'd probably give many people a variant on ritual caster. Variant in that they don't necessarily have a book and can only grudgingly learn more rituals, but aren't limited to one class's rituals (or the ones in the PHB). I'd also add something like group casting, so multiple casters can produce a bigger effect if they work together. This makes most magic in the world slow and communal, but limited in effect. A few would have magic initiate or the equivalent, some would have racial casting, but most magic would be ritual in nature.

[Sigreid]

Phoenix, I was addressing the last paragraph in what I quoted. On the phone chopping down quotes is not easy.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Phoenix, I was addressing the last paragraph in what I quoted. On the phone chopping down quotes is not easy.

Yeah. I was more expanding than contradicting. It's just a pain point for me, when people treat NPCs as if they've got a giant menu of all the options and can pick the "most optimal" one. It's a symptom of the game layer intruding on the fiction layer in a way that's jarring to me.

The idea is that in fiction, you don't pick your cantrips (with a few exceptions). They're something you've figured out how to do, based on your experiences and training. Some areas would "know" one set, others might "know" other sets.

[Sigreid]

Yeah. I was more expanding than contradicting. It's just a pain point for me, when people treat NPCs as if they've got a giant menu of all the options and can pick the "most optimal" one. It's a symptom of the game layer intruding on the fiction layer in a way that's jarring to me.

The idea is that in fiction, you don't pick your cantrips (with a few exceptions). They're something you've figured out how to do, based on your experiences and training. Some areas would "know" one set, others might "know" other sets.

Yeah, I think we are on the same page. Other cantrips are much more useful on a daily basis than the ones focused on hurting people and breaking things.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Yeah, I think we are on the same page. Other cantrips are much more useful on a daily basis than the ones focused on hurting people and breaking things.

Yup.

As a side note, I made up a cantrip that's the dominant choice for the upper crust of high elven society (who, in my world, don't consider you an adult until you can cast at least a cantrip, hence the racial cantrip, and are fashion obsessed). I forget exactly what I called it, but it went something like:

Arcane Panopaly
Transmutation cantrip
cast time: 1 action
range: self
components: V,M
duration: 1 hour

You alter your clothing with a word and a wave. You can change the fit or the color (including patterns) and reshape minor amounts of material (such as reshaping the neckline or lengthening/shortening sleeves or adding or removing a fringe), but the total amount of material, as well as the type of material, must remain the same. If the altered garment is removed from your person for more than one minute, it reverts to its prior state. If the clothing takes any physical damage while altered, the spell immediately ends.

[Unoriginal]

The Volo's mentions the Booyahg Caster, a goblin who served under a hobgoblin wizard and who, thanks to looking at the wizard's spellbook and imitating the sounds and gestures they used, learned to cast one level 1 spell, once per day.

It's pretty much being halfway there regarding Magic Initiate, or could be considered what a wizard early in their study could do.

[Sigreid]

I've enjoyed the idea for a while of a goblin wizard whose spellbook is the traditional tribal songs and dances performed by the tribes women. The words, tones and gestures are there for those who know what to pay attention to.

[Naanomi]

Prestidigitation does a lot that a non-combatant (high or low class) would want

[PairO'Dice Lost]

On the subject of "why can't everyone have a little power", everyone can ... through the Magic Initiate feat that gives them 2 cantrips and 1 spell. I see that as the level that people who didn't dedicate themselves to magic as a lifestyle can achieve.

A really simple homebrew for a 'High Breadth' world would just be to give that feat to all characters.

That's a pretty good way to do it; the 3e equivalent of this is Magical Training (http://www.realmshelps.net/charbuild/feat/Magical_Training), which gives 3 cantrips. It also specifically lets you cast as a wizard or sorcerer and so lets you take sorcerer- or wizard-related feats that don't require specifically having levels in either class, which gives a nice "actually an arcanist, but only an apprentice-level one" feel.


My personal approach to highly-magical societies is a bit simpler: since my games generally assume that most adult characters are in the level 4+ range, with levels 1-3 being reserved for younger characters (and the only people who start adventuring at those levels are your stereotypical child prodigies and plucky teenage heroes a la Harry Potter/Luke Skywalker/Rand al'Thor/etc.) and most adults dip at least one other class than their main one for breadth, so that just means that in a higher-magic society more people look like wizard 1/X 2 or wizard 2/X 1 than any other multiclass combination--and in theocratic nations the multiclass of choice is cleric 1 or 2, in nomadic ones it's ranger or druid 1 or 2 (or possibly wilderness feat rogue, in 3e), and so on.

I almost always run 3e, but the setup fits 5e quite well too since you don't make all your build decisions until level 2 or 3 so the idea that anyone starting below then is still an apprentice/student/novitiate/etc. deciding what they want to do with their career works out nicely.

[JoeJ]

Yeah. I was more expanding than contradicting. It's just a pain point for me, when people treat NPCs as if they've got a giant menu of all the options and can pick the "most optimal" one. It's a symptom of the game layer intruding on the fiction layer in a way that's jarring to me.

The idea is that in fiction, you don't pick your cantrips (with a few exceptions). They're something you've figured out how to do, based on your experiences and training. Some areas would "know" one set, others might "know" other sets.

I'd say the same thing applies to all spells, except for those classes that can prepare anything on the entire list. Circumstances determine which spells you are able to learn, whether it's because you have access to a certain book, or you know somebody who can teach you. And for PCs it's the player who has free choice, not the character.

[PhoenixPhyre]

I'd say the same thing applies to all spells, except for those classes that can prepare anything on the entire list. Circumstances determine which spells you are able to learn, whether it's because you have access to a certain book, or you know somebody who can teach you. And for PCs it's the player who has free choice, not the character.

Very much agreed. And even then...I'd prefer if class spell lists were totally a game/player balance thing. Instead, NPCs get spells from narrower themes than reach across class boundaries.

I'd prefer if classes aren't seen as a real in universe thing, although the techniques (wizardry, druidism, etc) might be.

[Ganymede]

3. Are the mechanics of this game, however abstract, at least somewhat representative of the world that they are trying to reflect through gameplay?

Most of these questions are best directed toward your DM, but this one I can answer.

No.

The rules are not representative of the reality of the game world. The rules are a conceit through with players have adventures with their PCs. The rules are there to give some structure to an evening of a group of friends playing pretend; they are not there to simulate the sociopolitical structure of the world.

[Unoriginal]

Very much agreed. And even then...I'd prefer if class spell lists were totally a game/player balance thing. Instead, NPCs get spells from narrower themes than reach across class boundaries.

I'd prefer if classes aren't seen as a real in universe thing, although the techniques (wizardry, druidism, etc) might be.

Well, each class mostly represent a variety of training that ended up with similar results, or classifies a specific source of power.

I mean, what they call themselves in-universe could be different, but I wouldn't find it odd if a NPC said something like "I'm a Cleric, a chosen of the deity." Though a Barbarion could just as well call anyone who can fight, including themselves, a fighte and a Thieves' Guild leader calling their goons "rogues" just as likely as "thugs", "cutpurses" or "gentlemen of the shadowy steets" are just as legit.

I feel like classes are "a" concept in-universe, but not the same concept as out-of-universe, and it's not "the" concept. Calling someone who get angry and fights better a Berserker makes as much sense as calling them "Moontouched" or whatever.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

Most of these questions are best directed toward your DM, but this one I can answer.

No.

The rules are not representative of the reality of the game world. The rules are a conceit through with players have adventures with their PCs. The rules are there to give some structure to an evening of a group of friends playing pretend; they are not there to simulate the sociopolitical structure of the world.

I'd say rather that not all rules are representative of the in-game reality. Certain things about spellcasting are obviously observable in-game constructs and would be known to characters familiar with magic (the process of learning/scribing/preparing spells, the fact that spells come in distinct groupings by power and breadth, the fact that certain characters would have more aptitude for different ways of accessing magical power, and the like), while some are obviously not (the fact that you can advance in spellcasting faster by killing lots of monsters, the fact that there are three broad categories of mental attributes that govern spellcasting capability, etc.).

And some could go either way, depending on a group's taste, such as whether spell component pouches are out-of-game abstractions for an individual caster's spell preparations and resurrection-quality diamonds vary by person in-game while being an exact 1K gp out-of-game for simplicity, or whether you can buy "Official Cannith Spellcasting Component PouchesTM, for all your common spellcasting needs!" in large cities and temples have novices trained in gemcutting and gemology to ensure they get the maximum resurrection potential from their diamond supply.

The view that the rules are a totally Doylist out-of-game conceit is just as valid a viewpoint as the one that rules are Tippy-style in-world constructs--which is to say that both approaches are overly inflexible and it's really a mix of both.

[JoeJ]

I'd say rather that not all rules are representative of the in-game reality. Certain things about spellcasting are obviously observable in-game constructs and would be known to characters familiar with magic (the process of learning/scribing/preparing spells, the fact that spells come in distinct groupings by power and breadth, the fact that certain characters would have more aptitude for different ways of accessing magical power, and the like), while some are obviously not (the fact that you can advance in spellcasting faster by killing lots of monsters, the fact that there are three broad categories of mental attributes that govern spellcasting capability, etc.).

How would somebody observe that there are three broad categories of mental attributes that govern spellcasting capability? I would think that dividing mental activity into categories that are consistent between individuals and that can be agreed upon by different investigators would be as difficult in the game world as it is in real life.

And the "fact" that you can advance in spellcasting faster by killing lots of monsters might not even be true, and it if it is true it certainly can't be seen unless there are a lot more spellcasters than exist in many settings.

[PairO'Dice Lost]

How would somebody observe that there are three broad categories of mental attributes that govern spellcasting capability? I would think that dividing mental activity into categories that are consistent between individuals and that can be agreed upon by different investigators would be as difficult in the game world as it is in real life.

And the "fact" that you can advance in spellcasting faster by killing lots of monsters might not even be true, and it if it is true it certainly can't be seen unless there are a lot more spellcasters than exist in many settings.

I agree completely. If you reread the quoted text, you'll note that I filed those under things that are obviously not observable in-game constructs.

[JoeJ]

I agree completely. If you reread the quoted text, you'll note that I filed those under things that are obviously not observable in-game constructs.

Oops. I missed that.