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Originally Posted by
sktarq
*snip about murder*
I'm going to stop arguing the murder vs. killing point, since I think we might be drifting close to crossing the "real-world politics" line. Suffice to say that murder is just a subset of killing and I feel that labeling killing as evil in a game about killing evil thing is not the brightest idea.
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I see a total disconnect between the artifacts as you describe them and as they are written. In both 3.5e and 2e D&D. they are not JUST things that the current civilizations can not make. That is one of their traits to be sure by not the be all end end all of what makes an artifact. They have a significant number of special rules, unique destruction methods off the top of my head. And it does effect their rarity because if the old civ could build them as relatively easily as they could build any other magic item (on a similar sliding scale of expense) then why didn't they when they would be so useful? There are a ton of ways that level of magic would be all over. It seems inappropriate so use such special items as a baseline for what the previous civ could do on a regular basis. And that's my issue artifact (particularly greater ones) could never have been commonplace. The only time I've seen that addressed is in forgotten realms when the rules of magic changed with the Karsus. Artifacts exist in D&D largely to act as McGuffins and story - if applied to the game in any more common way the whole concept of "game balance" goes out the window.
Greater artifacts are certainly more MacGuffins than actually useful items, but lesser artifacts are more useful, as I said.
Talismans of good,
staffs of the magi,
hammers of thunderbolts, and similar really aren't that much different from existing items, they're just slightly more powerful and currently not craftable.
I'm not trying to suggest that ancient civilizations were based on churning out copies of the Hand of Vecna or anything. I'm just trying to show that your argument "There hasn't been any progress because the ancient items are all the same as modern items" doesn't hold water because there's an explicit category of items that cannot be made anymore.
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Yes. and if it has been happening for any length of time then there would be no more low level ruins to search after more than a few hundred years (being somewhat generous). Which means that low level adventurers need to find a different source of plot material. Its not that those things could not happen but it seems very inconsistent with the other material presented as normal in the majority of D&D.
That's true, assuming that all of the dungeons are known, on the surface, easily-accessible, etc. In the real world we're still stumbling across new ruins, new cave complexes, and similar all the time, and we have things like Google Earth and radar that can penetrate several dozen yards of rock.
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Magic as technology entirely now. hmmm... Clockwork creatures-we still have not made those with 21st Century science so I'm fine in calling that magic. And frankly the same goes the above. The technology is there. Magic can be a tool for it but it is no more necessary than a physics degree is for being a blacksmith. So there is a ton of reasons to study non magical science and technology. also see below
It's not just clockwork creatures; things like clockwork armor and Mechanus plate also require magic, even though in the real world they're things we could manufacture fairly easily with our current knowledge. As to a blacksmith not needing a physics degree, science is knowledge while technology is application of that knowledge. You can be a smith and personally create a sword based on rote training without knowing a thing about metallurgy--most smiths did learn about metallurgy, but it's
possible to go without. You can study chemistry, architecture, and other scientific fields without needing magic at all.
To actually create alchemical items or to create clockwork items without building the infrastructure needed to build the infrastructure needed to build clockwork items, however, requires magic. And as we've been discussing already, if civilizations are bootstrapping themselves based on found knowledge from prior civilizations, even if a prior civilization developed both the magical and the technological ways to accomplish those, it's much more likely that you'd have a clockwork golem wandering around that you could use to reverse-engineer the magical principles with than it is that there would be a clockwork factory still surviving in some ruin somewhere.
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And the math doesn't come close to covering what you are asking them to do. Creating enough magic items and/or advancing in level enough to cast many of the more socially useful spells (as in useful to society not charm) eats a huge amount of XP. Society has limited amount of XP available at a time-because people are born, grow and die. And only a small part of that will directed at either magic item creation or supporting the levels of casters. Casters are not common enough (at least in DM Guide, and the Cityscape splat-book on character levels found in population centres after you account for all the experts, rogues, aristocrats, fighters, and other non casters) to fill the role in society you are asking them to. If all your upper level characters in a city were casters with no experts, cleric, fighters etc and they pushed themselves and had little or no lives of their own I could just barely see it working. Also as you advance in level casters would be actually slightly lower in XP totals than their peers as some has gone to build items-so that seems even more skewed (A fighter has nothing else to do with XP than sit on it). Three low level experts socially acting as druids studying the harvest generation on generation will provide more help over the long term than a caster druid in terms of plant growth over the same time. Is it three to one yes, but those three are about the same cost to hire. No spell-casting fees and those three can help others who can then help others in turn through techniques and technology. That caters depending on level could cast plant growth how often in his "spare time"? He/She/It has a life to lead -other things to do XP to earn-so say three or four days a week-anything more and he is no longer a Druid he is the local plant growth machine that can also walk-basically would have to life for the community instead of in it. So how many spells you could expect the local wizard to cast for the town on a regular basis? Not that many really-besides if they did do that very often the the prices charged in the DM manual makes NO sense at all. If they are giving them out free often enough to be counted on to replace technological advancement.
INSOMNIAC EDIT: Also making magic items is a massive drain on time-particularly the permanent ones like say flying carpets. Its a large process and during the construction time one can't be off earning that additional XP (which unless the DM is going to be VERY generous with RP XP then is dangerous and the NPC may well die-I basically say what works for the PC works for the NPCs just offstage) It just doesn't turn around very well. That wizard must be pretty high level to be making that item -that implies he/she/it has more important things to do with his time at least on a regular basis. So they can't punch out even enough flying carpets to satisfy a couple dozen people which would leave the rest of the city including those rich nobles who didn't have the connects to get a carpet, or even a family member who is jealous of his brother who did looking for a way to fly that doesn't need the one wizard in the city powerful enough to do it that way.
In the future, could you please try to use paragraph breaks to make your posts more readable?
Regarding the number of casters needed: if not destroyed, magic items last indefinitely. If you have just one wizard in one city making one
flying carpet per year, after a hundred years that's a hundred flying carpets, plus however many are brought back by adventurers, plus however many the society had beforehand, and in the meantime he can spend the rest of his year making other beneficial items at a similar scale. If a society really wants a lot of flying carpets for whatever reason, that single wizard can make about 18 in one year. And all of that assumes no crafting time/gold/XP reduction, which a dedicated crafter would most likely have.
Regarding time and XP needed: You can only spend 8 hours a day crafting, so it's perfectly possible to adventure and craft stuff at the same time without either the adventuring or the crafting suffering. That's not to say all or even most casters would be adventurers, but it's not the case that you'd need to craft a bunch of XP away, go adventuring for more XP, craft more, adventure more, and so forth.
Regarding using the caster's time: The druid casting
plant growth once per year at each community would take a few weeks in the spring, at best: wild shape into something fast, prepare
plant growth in most of your slots, get to work. It's still efficient enough in the short term before you make enough
plant growth items to go around that coming up with technological alternatives wouldn't necessarily be a good investment of resources.
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No they don't and more importantly DIDN'T I wasn't making that up as a hypothetical. It is easier to control the crossbows and the few people who can make them than the larger number of people who could use a longbow. And if the crossbowmen become unhappy it is easier to take them away and hand them to somebody new than take away someone's longbow and give it to someone else (the power being in the user not the tool in a longbow). Also you can keep many extra crossbows for when you really need them and only have a few out "in circulation" at a time. Then when war breaks out hand them to the most loyal people who can be picked at that time. The only people who need to keep happy with crossbows are the few who can make them, the few who hold your supply and just enough people to use them at the time you want to. Its not JUST about being able to put down the revolt if it happens but to have a large dangerous army when you want it (something the longbows were better at) and being able to prevent that group from being able to overthrow, threaten, blackmail, or otherwise impinge on the freedom of the leaders during peacetime (which the cross bow was better at).
And as for your wand of scorching ray vs machine gun question. I'd want exactly two machine guns. One to give to a friend and one friend with another to point at the first if I ever want to take his machine gun away. Visa versa works too there. If anyone can use it I only need two friends who can be ANYONE I want-and I can change who-and they know that.
You don't have a choice of just two machine guns; you're using the wands or machine guns as your army's primary weapon. Do you want something that requires training to use, to ensure that only a subset of the population can use and that that subset would be trained to use safely (the bows or wands) or something that anyone could pick up without having the discipline and training to use it well and safely (the crossbows or machine guns)?
This is also edging close to gun control and thus real-world politics, so I'd prefer to drop this tangent as well, if you don't mind.
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Actually you seem to be making my point from earlier that the nifty stuff that ends up in adventures bag's of holding is less useful than the forges and tools they so often leave behind. Grab those and you get the tech to make the tech and so on-rather quickly works too if you have access to basic spells and a modicum of communication-oh and a supply of ready, willing, brave and slightly foolhardy types to set off the traps for you. And looking at what is found in the treasure tables and even your earlier post about protected magic items the ready to wipe off and run into battle with type stuff does seem well "cannon". And If you've got a magic sword that's protected why not a magic gun? And as for figuring out how to use that metal tube putting the fire in one end and all - adventurers are already casting identify, commune, and other divination spells left right and centre in order to get the command words and ID for the magical items they found-why would the gun be any different? It would also put the idea in their head and start experimentation - which since they have a working model as a guide then it shouldn't take too long.
Hey, I'm not the one who said swords would be too damaged to use, you did; I just said that since we're talking about reverse engineering, you could posit useless rusted out swords and still learn more from them than from guns.
And as for forges and tools...again, bootstrapping. If an adventuring party walked into a car manufacturing plant--not a working one they could observe, but one that's been shut down for many years--how exactly are they going to learn from it? Sure, you can cast a bunch of divinations, but those will probably be of limited use ("Er, what did Boccob mean by 'generator' and 'touchscreen', anyway?") and there's no way you could reverse engineer the computing, robotics, metallurgical, and chemical knowledge necessary to get it back up and running, much less build another one. If they walk into a Model T production plant, it'll definitely be a lot easier to figure out what's going on and they're have a lot more success divining and recreating it...but because they use magic and not technology, it's not at all likely that the the Model T plant would evolve into a modern plant instead of just some
+5 Factory of Model T Construction.
You're arguing on the one hand that ancient civilizations should have had much higher tech levels than we see in most settings, and on the other hand that it should be possible for them to figure out all this ancient tech and put it into use. You can't have it both ways; anything advanced enough to be more high-tech than enchanted Renaissance era stuff is going to be too advanced for easy reverse-engineering, and you're not going to go from enchanted Renaissance stuff to enchanted modern stuff because the existence and use of magic is going to necessarily cause their tech to go along different development paths.
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You won't have technological revolution if nobody is working on technology. True. But that works on the assumption that nobody is. Which doesn't fly with me. Nor does it seem to account for the experts and non spell-casters with access to Knowledge (Engineering) or (Nature) let alone the social sciences-or the fact that only in D&D do you need magical ability to copy the alchemical things people do in the RW and did centuries ago (making drugs, paint, dyes and various other real world applications that would get otherwise put under Alchemy)-and If you want to call it craft specialties I suppose that works but those would also have a Knowledge base that would just as appropriate to grow technology from.
We're probably approaching this from different perspectives. If D&D chemistry requires alchemy and therefore magic, that tells me that either chemistry doesn't work for some reason (e.g. the four elements theory is true) or alchemy has been discovered to be better than chemistry. In many of the settings that I make for my own groups, I remove that requirement and allow for mundane crafting to make alchemical items, clockwork devices, and so forth--and in such a setting, I
do include more advanced tech than the baseline.
Saying that D&D alchemy, clockwork, and similar
shouldn't require magic is one thing, and one I agree with. But to complain that settings that take that assumption for granted (when was the last time you saw a non-steampunk setting remove the spellcaster requirements for that setting and then make use of that) don't have advanced nonmagical tech doesn't seem exactly fair.
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And if a wizard want to make something fly yes he can get there in several ways. However, there are plenty of reasons not to use magic. The single largest is that magic is very expensive to buy and someone with technological skill will look to undercut the cost. I can buy wizardry acting as a brain drain to normal technological advancement but for every one that does you have a wizard who uses magic to learn how to make and sell airplanes or other technological gizmo much faster because of his magic and he can sell that tech cheaper than the wizard down the road can do with his spells-esp after you take getting the wizard to where you want the gizmo, rare components in magic item manufacture, repeatable treatment etc. The wizard who invented the technological version can even delegate the construction once he or she discovers it and use the proceeds to fund more research or an endless stream of hookers and "invigorate" potions. The spellcasting only wizard has to trudge off and actually cast the spell every time that king fellow wants it cast disrupting his day, he can only be in one place at a time (a few short term exceptions), his spell choice for the day is being set by someone else and if he wants to avoid that he has to give up some of his very self to pay the XP cost of the item - double bad if he isn't high enough to make a permanent item. Also the tech researching wizard can pass this new family business down to his children even if they are not casters. Thus it would make more sense for a wizard will his ability to analyze, support, fabricate, and conjure to use his skills to research new non arcane tech than almost anything else-at least from a financial point of view.-Like an Edison coming up with invention after invention as his employees toil away one his old designs that rake in gold from far away lands except where his competitors can be found like that damnable sorcerer Tesla!
Here's the thing, though: the existence and usage of magic introduces the problem of startup costs and conceptual biases.
Regarding startup costs: Sinking funding into developing nonmagical means of flight profits later. Enchanting more of the same known, reliable means of flight profits
now. The Wrights' first functional airplane used bicycle parts they had on hand from their shop, an engine from a car manufacturer, and other things that required a technological society's existing infrastructure and economy of scale to bring down the cost to the level that two hobbyists could build it. Not every wizard would try to figure out and build all of that from scratch when he could just enchant something to fly for a fraction of the effort and cost.
Regarding conceptual biases: Coming up with airplanes is hard and unintuitive. A lot of first efforts to build a flying machine tried to duplicate flying creatures' motion, which, as we know, doesn't work too well for human-scale machines. So they moved on to experiment with other things. In D&D, though, it does work, with golems and animated objects and such, not to mention all the creatures like dragons who shouldn't be able to fly but do anyway. So one of two things would likely happen: one, they get stuck on the flapping wings model, because they're not just feeling around for a working model, they're trying to duplicate something that they know will work...or two, the flapping-wings model
does work, because the same laws of physics that allow rocs and dragons to fly works for that too.