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  1. - Top - End - #91
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    Default Re: How do you like your peasant magic?

    Quote Originally Posted by Anonymouswizard View Post
    That's not what I meant to say. Of a sing had magic, someone will apply the scientific method. At this point we have the study of magic as a field of science, and it'll output theories and laws. It's not guarranteed to output magitech or anything else, but my point was that people going 'no, magitech is wing, magic should be mysterious and mystical' age ignoring that fact that people she going to start analysing it when they so everything else, and of laws govern it a magician with a heap of those laws will be a stronger magician than one who yeasts it as mystical stuff that shouldn't be researched.
    Autocorrecting into nigh-incomprehensibility aside, I get what you're saying. I don't think that anyone's arguing that magic shouldn't be researched in-universe, but that looking at it from the outside in a Doylist perspective, it's preferable that magic defy understanding. That people attempt to do so in-setting is immaterial, the point is that to avoid magic just being alt-universe science their attempts should fail for one reason or another (such as the laws governing magic being inconsistent enough that it's a soft science at best).
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  2. - Top - End - #92
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    Default Re: How do you like your peasant magic?

    Quote Originally Posted by Anonymouswizard View Post
    Sorry, I should have specified 'where magic is used, in this specific situation magic is unlikely to be widespread because it's just too dawned difficult compared to building the pyramids with wooden tools.

    Goodbye stake universe, it was nice knowing you.

    Alternatively people start investigating the rules that govern how magic changes. Something something Discworld.

    How? No seriously, is magic Luke a being? Maybe we should try positive reinforcement.

    Pick your favourite:
    -They fade into obscurity compared to gods who do allow their domains to be studied and built upon.
    -People keep sciencing because there are people who legitimately enjoy that and the gods won't be able to stop everyone studying magic from passing on their notes.
    -All magical innovation grinds to a halt, while innovation in other areas continue. No science of magic? No new spells, because the gods stop any change.

    Researching of the trains why, lack of Abby actual magicians, and potentially a solution will be found.

    That's not what I meant to say. Of a sing had magic, someone will apply the scientific method. At this point we have the study of magic as a field of science, and it'll output theories and laws. It's not guarranteed to output magitech or anything else, but my point was that people going 'no, magitech is wing, magic should be mysterious and mystical' age ignoring that fact that people she going to start analysing it when they so everything else, and of laws govern it a magician with a heap of those laws will be a stronger magician than one who yeasts it as mystical stuff that shouldn't be researched.
    You're still stuck in the "science is everything/everything is science" mentality. That's not even true for the real world. Not all truths are scientifically testable. In fact, the idea that everything that exists is scientifically testable is not scientifically testable. You're also assuming that there are answers and that those answers are accessible to humans. There aren't always answers and we can't always understand what answers there are. This is true even in scientific fields. What is the exact electronic structure of a helium atom (let alone anything more complicated)? It can be proven that we can't ever find that answer. No exact solution exists, and we can prove this. All we can get (for the vast majority of interesting cases) are decent approximations that break if you look at them hard or use them in the wrong place.

    The scientific revolution was neither inevitable nor easy, and with something like magic it would be even harder since (in most systems) it requires special talent. The birth of science (as a concept) required a particular mindset--a focus on rationality and logic--that was unique to a certain part of the world at a certain time due to the specific backgrounds (including the Enlightenment, the Reformation, and many other but for events). Remove any one of those and the scientific/industrial revolution wouldn't have happened the way it did if at all.

    Scientific magic is one possibility. If magic (for example) is mediated through non-mortal beings with truly alien mindsets (as in mindsets incomprehensible to man, as most fey are reputed to be) then you can study all you want, but all you'll do is offend those that make magic happen. Or, what if the Lady of Pain is the source of magic? Go ahead. Study her. I dare you.

    In all the stories, magic is what happens beyond the world of mortal minds. Observing it, studying it makes it non-magic. That's one of the reported reasons that cold iron supposedly was toxic to the fey--it's a product of man's industry and thus anti-magic.

    Your vision of magic only works for a very few styles of magic in fiction (gaming or otherwise). Most of them explicitly reject the idea that all magic is subject to scientific analysis. It seems the pinnacle of hubris to claim that they're all wrong and that no other type of magic is possible.
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  3. - Top - End - #93
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    Default Re: How do you like your peasant magic?

    Now that I'm playing 5e, the characters I'm really interested in are the ones who are using their unusual skills to supplement their normal job skills. The army medic who's also a life cleric, the book collector who's also a rogue and a dabbler in the arcane, that sort of thing. I don't believe the PCs have to be special, but I also will have no complaints if they are. If anything, I'd prefer that everyone have a shot at greatness, and the PCs simply be the ones who take it. Equal opportunity, but not equal action.

    Also, once again, people whining over other people's ideas about magic. Neither are wrong, Anonymous has their style of magic and don't really need anything else to be happy, Pyre wants to be able to take their anywhere. The "pinnacle of hubris" is getting into this type of debate when neither of you are even close to playing at the same tables and run notably different styles of game.
    Last edited by JBPuffin; 2017-09-23 at 09:37 PM.

  4. - Top - End - #94
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    Default Re: How do you like your peasant magic?

    Quote Originally Posted by 90sMusic View Post
    But when you get into a state of affairs where everyone has magic... Or even technology... The system breaks down. If every individual becomes inherently powerful, it becomes more difficult to control them. You would no longer have monarchies and things of that nature, it would all shift to a more democratic way of existing because if any single person could potentially destroy an entire city, it causes a lot of political problems.
    Ubiquitous magic doesn't mean that everyone suddenly has an equalized capacity to destroy, and as far as technology goes there were a lot of technological advances that happened during feudal systems without disrupting them. Say there's a set of magical items that can double food production for the same amount of land and labor, and just about everyone working in the fields is using that - all that does is generally feed people better, and allow for a shift towards fewer people working in agriculture - with halving that being a lower limit, and not one that's going to be reached for any number of reasons. Instead, that limit is going to be eroded by farmers working less hard, by increased transportation difficulties that come with moving the food from the farms elsewhere, by a probable dietary shift towards better food (e.g. more meat), and a whole bunch of other things. That doesn't destroy any basic social structures.
    I would really like to see a game made by Obryn, Kurald Galain, and Knaight from these forums.

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  5. - Top - End - #95
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    Default Re: How do you like your peasant magic?

    Quote Originally Posted by Knaight View Post
    Ubiquitous magic doesn't mean that everyone suddenly has an equalized capacity to destroy, and as far as technology goes there were a lot of technological advances that happened during feudal systems without disrupting them. Say there's a set of magical items that can double food production for the same amount of land and labor, and just about everyone working in the fields is using that - all that does is generally feed people better, and allow for a shift towards fewer people working in agriculture - with halving that being a lower limit, and not one that's going to be reached for any number of reasons. Instead, that limit is going to be eroded by farmers working less hard, by increased transportation difficulties that come with moving the food from the farms elsewhere, by a probable dietary shift towards better food (e.g. more meat), and a whole bunch of other things. That doesn't destroy any basic social structures.
    Historically, increases in agricultural technology have indeed reduced the proportion of a society's labor needed for food production. The consequence has generally been either increasing opulence acquired by the lives of the ruling class - for instance in china every time a dynasty got settled in an efficient it became decadent as **** in short order, even when the dynasty was run by former steppe nomads - or a sudden surplus of warriors available to go out and conquer, plunder, and otherwise self-aggrandize - as in the case of the Vikings.

    So, if you take a historical period setting and then add magic to it that has a net positive or net negative effect on society, what you've done is similar to adding a technology to that setting and you've changed that setting accordingly. If you were to take Tang China and double food production - whether by magic or by somehow introducing the Haber Process into the 7th Century - the world would look very, very different as a result, because there would be also sorts of cascading effects. You don't even need magic to get weird fantastical worlds this way, you can just modify certain aspects of planetary conditions. For example, if you crank the global oxygen concentration up to Carboniferous levels weird stuff happens including giant arthropods.

    If you want to have a fantasy setting that is 'just like X but with magic,' which is what most people want to do because full scale world-building from principles that aren't analogous to earth's is incredibly challenging, then there are real limitations on how much magic you can apply before the influence of the magic becomes strong than the influence of source X.

    There are options here. If magic both giveth and taketh away then you can have more or if without it having as big of an impact as it otherwise would have. This is especially true if the good wizards (or whatever) spend most of their time dealing with the bad wizards (or whatever) and it also helps if much of the conflict happens in suitably unseen spirit realms, inside the tumult of the soul, or something similar. It also helps to couch magic within whatever mystical tropes were available within the society. To continue with the Tang China example, if you throw in a race of fox people that's far less disruptive than a tribe of orcs because people in that society already believed in the existence of fox people so you don't have to modify the mythos you just confirm it.
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  6. - Top - End - #96
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    Default Re: How do you like your peasant magic?

    I like magic to be a force of nature, and like other force of natures, it can be researched and (possibly) understood and manipulated.

    That doesn't make magic "science", science is just one of the tools used to try and understand it.

    The reason not every high-school graduate has a level in Wizard is the same reason not everyone has a Physics Ph.D, even if most people have a basic understanding of physics or why not everyone is a Olympic's level athlete despite having P.E classes: Because that basic understanding isn't enough to accomplish high level feats. Just because you know how something is done, doesn't mean you can actually do it.

    Knowing the physics behind every single movement made by a high-level gymnast doesn't make you capable of performing high-level gynastics. Reading every HEMA scroll around won't make you a good swordsman. Being able to perfectly solve a math problem where you have to calculate the speed and trajectory of a round object doesn't make you any better at sending at baseball.

    You need the physical strength and muscle memory to pull that stuff off. Same with magic... Only it requires mental/spiritual strength and "mind/soul memory" (which can be achieved with the right training and/or genetic makeup). People with good education might have an idea of how magic works... But they still can't use it.

    And of course, just because magic is consistent and/or somewhat understood by educated people, doesn't mean it's common. I could be incredibly difficult, costly and/or dangerous to use.

    Magic doesn't have to be an unsolvable mystery to be special, beautiful or awesome... Just like understanding thermodynamics and creating air conditioners doesn't make blizzards any less amazing or terrifying.

    EDIT: All of that and I didn't answer the thread's title question (although my answer is implied in the text above )

    I like peasants/commoners to have a few small-time practitioners among them: To use 3.X/PF terminology: That'd be a couple levels in an NPC class, maybe just a guy who has a trait or feat that lets him cast a couple cantrips or something... Or , some rare cases, even someone with a couple levels in an actual PC class... Like a hermit who's actually a 2nd level druid or something.

    That said... I'm not a fan of "Everything worthwhile is magic. Magic is cheap and easy and everyone carries a thousand magic tools everywhere" type of settings either. As for "magitech"... I don't know... I think the idea is cool, but it's almost always poorly implemented.
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  7. - Top - End - #97
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    Default Re: How do you like your peasant magic?

    For me, the most clear difference between science and magic is the extent to which it becomes a commodity.

    In the 1950s, extremely rich people had car phones, by basically paying for a radio station and their own frequency. In the late 1980s, a fairly rich friend of mine had a phone roughly 4" x 4" x 13 inches that he could use on campouts.

    My current phone is far and away more incredible than those were.

    GPS in the 1990s was a U.S. Army exclusive ability. Now we all have it.

    By contrast, nobody else in Middle Earth could do what Gandalf could do fifty years after he did it. There are no stories set in the fall of Camelot in which some entrepreneur sells Merlin's spells to a large number of people. Fifty years after the appearance of Baba Yaga, nobody is selling homes on giant chicken legs.

    So getting back to the original question, no, I don't want peasants to have magic. If I wanted that, I'd role-play the 21st century.

  8. - Top - End - #98
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    Default Re: How do you like your peasant magic?

    Quote Originally Posted by Jay R View Post
    So getting back to the original question, no, I don't want peasants to have magic. If I wanted that, I'd role-play the 21st century.
    *looks at games he has planned* funny you should mention that period.

    I wouldn't be surprised of those who like common and industrialised magic like to play in the modern era (as well as 20th century and science fiction games), out is a natural fit.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Zelphas View Post
    So here I am, trapped in my laboratory, trying to create a Mechabeast that's powerful enough to take down the howling horde outside my door, but also won't join them once it realizes what I've done...twentieth time's the charm, right?
    Quote Originally Posted by Lord Raziere View Post
    How about a Jovian Uplift stuck in a Case morph? it makes so little sense.

  9. - Top - End - #99
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    Default Re: How do you like your peasant magic?

    Quote Originally Posted by PhoenixPhyre View Post
    This is true even in scientific fields. What is the exact electronic structure of a helium atom (let alone anything more complicated)? It can be proven that we can't ever find that answer. No exact solution exists, and we can prove this. All we can get (for the vast majority of interesting cases) are decent approximations that break if you look at them hard or use them in the wrong place.
    That example is wrong.

    We do indeed know that an exact solution exist. We do even know how it looks. We just can't calculate it and at best can write it as some infinite sum of ever harder to evaluate implicite functions. Even if someone gave us the solution, we couldn't actually prove that this is in fact the solution. But the existance of one is provable.
    The scientific revolution was neither inevitable nor easy, and with something like magic it would be even harder since (in most systems) it requires special talent.
    Maybe, maybe not. While "special talent" is often used in fantasy stories, traditional ideas about magic revolve more about either secrets or vast knowledge or decades of training (and meditation). And i am not sure about the majority of systems.
    The birth of science (as a concept) required a particular mindset--a focus on rationality and logic--that was unique to a certain part of the world at a certain time due to the specific backgrounds (including the Enlightenment, the Reformation, and many other but for events). Remove any one of those and the scientific/industrial revolution wouldn't have happened the way it did if at all.
    And what is the problem here ? Isaac Newton dabbled in alchemy just fine. The only reason that nowadays magic seems opposed to science is that IRL magic does not work and every attempt to investigate magic with the scientific method showed exactly that. In any fictional universe where magic exists, this is inherently not true.

    In all the stories, magic is what happens beyond the world of mortal minds. Observing it, studying it makes it non-magic. That's one of the reported reasons that cold iron supposedly was toxic to the fey--it's a product of man's industry and thus anti-magic.
    No. The most iconic human magic user in middle/western european stories is probably Dr. Faustus very much an academic. The other 3 important human groups in that area associated with magic are witches, alchemists and cabbalist, the latter two pretty much doing science (trying to find ways to distinguish real nature of things from added attributes and how to transfer those attributes, using lots of sympathetic links/ trying to find powerful words, letters and numbers and their application). And the only reason Europe has so much "magic comes from the devil" stories is based on catholic theology denouncing christian theurgy early on.
    And when we look to china we find the immortals and all the great deeds that meditating and studying the laws of nature (and energies) for hundreads of years can allow (ofc. basic immortality is one of the earlier secrets here)

  10. - Top - End - #100
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    Default Re: How do you like your peasant magic?

    My starting assumption is that at level 1, you are not special. You are a nameless person who is, unlike their level 1 compatriots, driven to make a difference. At level 2, you start to shine a bit, in the ordinary way. But it is not until you have put a couple of levels under your belt that you should expect anyone to look at you like a hero. As such, level 1 mages of all kinds are a dime a dozen, no less common or unusual than blacksmiths or carpenters. I put a whole town in a setting that you needed a level 1 class ability to access.
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    Default Re: How do you like your peasant magic?

    Quote Originally Posted by JusticeZero View Post
    My starting assumption is that at level 1, you are not special. You are a nameless person who is, unlike their level 1 compatriots, driven to make a difference. At level 2, you start to shine a bit, in the ordinary way. But it is not until you have put a couple of levels under your belt that you should expect anyone to look at you like a hero. As such, level 1 mages of all kinds are a dime a dozen, no less common or unusual than blacksmiths or carpenters. I put a whole town in a setting that you needed a level 1 class ability to access.
    A 1st Level D&D spellcaster, especially in 3.X but also in other editions, is actually a fairly powerful spellcaster by the standards of general fantasy. They have the ability to consistently invoke substantial magical effects multiple times per day. And many 1st level spells are surprisingly potent - like Charm Person, Endure Elements, Floating Disk and Sleep. Additionally, many 0-level spells are surprisingly capable of dramatically changing basic living conditions if they are abundant in a society. These include the Cleric spells Create Water (transformative in the desert environment)and Purify Food and Drink (immeasurably valuable when it comes to large game hunting), the Druid spell Know Direction (massively useful for navigation prior to the invention of the compass), the Wizard spells Mending (which essentially means durable goods like furniture and tableware last forever) and Prestidigitation (which entirely replaces laundry as an industry).

    Even such seemingly low-powered magic, if abundant and widespread, would have transformational effects on society.
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  12. - Top - End - #102
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    Default Re: How do you like your peasant magic?

    Yes, and it is easier to just let those happen than it is to try to simultaneously make the party feel unique and fill the world with mountains of military enchanted armaments, munitions, armor, and items of all kinds.
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  13. - Top - End - #103
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    Default Re: How do you like your peasant magic?

    Quote Originally Posted by JusticeZero View Post
    My starting assumption is that at level 1, you are not special.
    What's a level?

    If we take this as meaning 'starting characters', this is a big thing dependent on both setting and system. In Fate starting characters are special by virtue of having a Refresh value above 0, but this is special in regards to the story, not the world. In Exalted a beginning character is special just by being Exalted, and 4e assumes that 1st level means you have a lot of experience under your belt.

    You are a nameless person who is, unlike their level 1 compatriots, driven to make a difference. At level 2, you start to shine a bit, in the ordinary way. But it is not until you have put a couple of levels under your belt that you should expect anyone to look at you like a hero. As such, level 1 mages of all kinds are a dime a dozen, no less common or unusual than blacksmiths or carpenters. I put a whole town in a setting that you needed a level 1 class ability to access.
    I've played in many games where we begin as one among many, and end up as one among many. There's nothing saying that the equivalent of experienced characters can't be common, in fact it's standard in games like the Laundry RPG.

    Now this will depend very much on the setting, but in a Fate game I might have people with Good skills or approaches be relatively common, compared to another game where your master martial artists has Average Fight (we're playing a game about gods, he just doesn't stack up).
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    Quote Originally Posted by Zelphas View Post
    So here I am, trapped in my laboratory, trying to create a Mechabeast that's powerful enough to take down the howling horde outside my door, but also won't join them once it realizes what I've done...twentieth time's the charm, right?
    Quote Originally Posted by Lord Raziere View Post
    How about a Jovian Uplift stuck in a Case morph? it makes so little sense.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Mechalich View Post
    A 1st Level D&D spellcaster, especially in 3.X but also in other editions, is actually a fairly powerful spellcaster by the standards of general fantasy. They have the ability to consistently invoke substantial magical effects multiple times per day. And many 1st level spells are surprisingly potent - like Charm Person, Endure Elements, Floating Disk and Sleep. Additionally, many 0-level spells are surprisingly capable of dramatically changing basic living conditions if they are abundant in a society. These include the Cleric spells Create Water (transformative in the desert environment)and Purify Food and Drink (immeasurably valuable when it comes to large game hunting), the Druid spell Know Direction (massively useful for navigation prior to the invention of the compass), the Wizard spells Mending (which essentially means durable goods like furniture and tableware last forever) and Prestidigitation (which entirely replaces laundry as an industry).

    Even such seemingly low-powered magic, if abundant and widespread, would have transformational effects on society.
    That's also up to the world you've built. A level 1 mage may be the sole hedge wizard for the entire southeastern region, or just one of thousands mage university freshmen who decided to call it quits after a year, and is going to be a Mending & Floating Disk two-trick for his father's mining village. I remember a Drunks & Dragons episode where the party is talking to a guard, a commoner, who remarks that he's studying for his "Level 1 exam". Yes, it's a little meta, but we have rankings and such in the real world WITHOUT access to any magic.

    You could still have a laundry industry... which could consist of level 0 mages casting Prestidigitation. That would still be a thing. If you're in a western outpost, maybe people feel forced to go to church to keep in the good graces of the local cleric precisely *because* of Create Water if a drought hits like it did a couple summers back. That Sherpa or guide that the party hires to lead them through the unmapped terrain may just be a ranger or druid. Your interpreter may just be a commoner with an Eastern Star Ioun Stone attuned to them.

    Any technology, any power, if abundant and widespread, has transformational effects on society. Basic plumbing. Literacy. The lathe. A sawmill. Look what Rome did with just roads and aqueducts. If you change things, things change. That doesn't mean it's bad, just that it's changed. The word "robot" comes from the Slavic robota, which means "forced laborer"... if there's an abundance of need, there will be jobs that are just forced laborers. That could be for food, water, physical labor, communication... you name it. There are carpenters, and also carpenters that can cast Wood Shape, and there's likely a market for both of their wares.

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    Default Re: How do you like your peasant magic?

    The idea that any technology or techniques that can be observed will be replicated and spread influence the setting at large is a hilariously neophillic view of the world that even our own didn't hold true for the most part of it's existence. A man who lived 200,000 years ago lived pretty much identically to his great-great-great-......-great grandson 20,000 years later. If the real world could have stasis for so long, why wouldn't we expect our fictional worlds to be just as static? Sure, maybe it's replicable. Doesn't mean it is replicated. So yes, maybe mass spread of magic could form as 'just another technology'. However, it doesn't, for the same reason technology itself doesn't spread: because of moral people without the perverse need to corrupt everything to serve their own purposes. The fact that players from a different time without this proper morality, and can't seem to switch gears to pretend to, indicate the fault lies with them for not buying into the setting, not the setting for having any kind of flaw.
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    Default Re: How do you like your peasant magic?

    While that's certainly true, the main reason tech didn't move in the past is due to the speed of information at that time.

    If one guy figures out the best way to skin a cat, than his family will know, and likely that tribe will know, and that's pretty much it, pre-literacy. Other tribes with other languages can't figure it out without directly observing it (and maybe not even then). However, once languages become spreading, whichever becomes the "common" language, then memetic information starts to move and breed. This tribes way of hunting is made better by that tribes style of knife. This tribes' ritual washing causes them to be less effected by disease that decimate the neighboring tribes. Ideas spread at the speed of friendliness.

    Once a lingua franca is agreed upon, the memes will start breeding and the good ones will stick. If the goddess of the sea clerics give them the ability to Create Water to drink, that's going to be largely ignored by their neighbors in the riverlands... but once a conversation starts with nomads, some enterprising merchant will think that maybe long treks across the desert would benefit with one of these water-generating clerics. Now ideas are spreading at the speed of trade. At the same time Seafarers may sneer at the mystical ways of the desert nomads, but people building ports could really use a sandbender, so maybe take these kids as wards and teach them your ways, please? Also they're hostage-collateral for out business deal, but mostly teach them please.

    Later, once literacy is invented, which most TTRPGs have as a given, ideas spread even faster. Sure, they'll go only between the elites first, but scribes have always been a thing, and eventually traders and merchants will learn to read & write for business purposes. Add on an active pantheon of deities revealing themselves to clerics and whatnot, and wizards finding other wizards to send "message" to, and suddenly memes are now faster than a horse or a raven can fly.

    While constructing a world you can gate the flow of magical power however you want:
    • Maybe all of the arcane magic can only be performed while speaking Draconic.
    • Maybe only a handful of deities are strong enough to give spells to their clerics.
    • Maybe Warlocks' patrons' pacts are only for a set period of time.
    • Perhaps sacrifices are involved.
    • Maybe the most powerful magic is held only by Mages for hire, whom anyone can access, but for a price (a la Lies of Locke Lamora)
    • Maybe the only mages are sorcerers, due to bloodline-based power, thus the only peasants who can do magic are the illegitimate children of those families.

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    Default Re: How do you like your peasant magic?

    Quote Originally Posted by Necroticplague View Post
    The idea that any technology or techniques that can be observed will be replicated and spread influence the setting at large is a hilariously neophillic view of the world that even our own didn't hold true for the most part of it's existence. A man who lived 200,000 years ago lived pretty much identically to his great-great-great-......-great grandson 20,000 years later. If the real world could have stasis for so long, why wouldn't we expect our fictional worlds to be just as static? Sure, maybe it's replicable. Doesn't mean it is replicated. So yes, maybe mass spread of magic could form as 'just another technology'. However, it doesn't, for the same reason technology itself doesn't spread: because of moral people without the perverse need to corrupt everything to serve their own purposes. The fact that players from a different time without this proper morality, and can't seem to switch gears to pretend to, indicate the fault lies with them for not buying into the setting, not the setting for having any kind of flaw.
    Okay, I've been doing the disservice of assuming at least a medieval level of technology here, where innovation and replication have been taking place at least somewhere in the world for thousands of years.

    If we assume a culture more like one from the prehistoric (for want of a better term here) era, then yes new inventions, technologies, and spells will spread slowly, die out, and be discovered many times.

    IIRC, since at least the time of Ancient Egypt, possibly longer, the technology of the world has been ever increasing, even if secrets were jealously guarded, although that rate of increase would vary over time (tending towards higher over time, but IIRC this wasn't a solid rule). The rate also varied in parts of the world, but for the cultures in the Europe-Africa-Asia landmass trade meant that something invented in China could reach Norway within a human lifespan (not that it always would, see jealously guarded).

    Ever since humans have had enough time that they don't need to dedicate every second to making food and more humans they have been trying to take apart the world and put it back together so they can spend less time on making food and more time on making new humans (not that we always use the right equipment for that). Remember, swords are technology, bows are technology, pointed sticks are technology, even fire is technology (and I'm not certain we can't count horses as technology).

    Technology is an exponential curve, each bit of technology means you have more time to dedicate towards making the next piece of technology, and so on until you reach the point where most humans don't have to produce food and can instead focus on producing more humans (it seems to come at about the point half the world realises the planet needs fixing).

    Plus we seem to have different philosophies about the reasons behind the spread of technology. To me man has been corrupting stuff since he began taming animals and cultivating crops, I see no reason to stop there if we can make peoples lives better (and throughout history new inventions have been introduced and spread both by people who want to control and people who want to help). To me people in a setting who research and try to spread magic are doing so for their own reason, which might be control, might be socialism, or it might be that they just want people to know this great new spell they've come up with.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Zelphas View Post
    So here I am, trapped in my laboratory, trying to create a Mechabeast that's powerful enough to take down the howling horde outside my door, but also won't join them once it realizes what I've done...twentieth time's the charm, right?
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    Default Re: How do you like your peasant magic?

    Quote Originally Posted by Anonymouswizard View Post
    Plus we seem to have different philosophies about the reasons behind the spread of technology. To me man has been corrupting stuff since he began taming animals and cultivating crops, I see no reason to stop there if we can make peoples lives better (and throughout history new inventions have been introduced and spread both by people who want to control and people who want to help). To me people in a setting who research and try to spread magic are doing so for their own reason, which might be control, might be socialism, or it might be that they just want people to know this great new spell they've come up with.
    Indeed, I agree as to the duration of humanities long history of immoral acts (which, I would argue, most likely started before humans were humans). Technological development, whatever surface reason, only comes from the vice of ambition. Never has a man who could look out at the world and be happy with what they already have felt the need to develop something to change some aspect of it. Even your own reasoning indicates that immorality, with 'making lives better' taken as an inherently positive thing without question, as opposed to 'learning to live with what is already existing', which has a greater ability to solve the problem of dissatisfaction, but humans are loathe to take for some unfathomable reason.
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    Default Re: How do you like your peasant magic?

    Quote Originally Posted by Necroticplague View Post
    Indeed, I agree as to the duration of humanities long history of immoral acts (which, I would argue, most likely started before humans were humans). Technological development, whatever surface reason, only comes from the vice of ambition. Never has a man who could look out at the world and be happy with what they already have felt the need to develop something to change some aspect of it. Even your own reasoning indicates that immorality, with 'making lives better' taken as an inherently positive thing without question, as opposed to 'learning to live with what is already existing', which has a greater ability to solve the problem of dissatisfaction, but humans are loathe to take for some unfathomable reason.
    While I agree that 'learning to live with what we have' might solve the problem of dissastisfaction, ambition is not truly bad. If not for the ambition their ancestors held no human would have discovered fire, if not for the ambition of our ancestors we would not be here to have this conversation.

    Whatever mistakes we have made, we have now created problems, and nothing is solved by saying 'oh, that was a mistake, better forget this entire technology thing'. I believe we have come far enough that we should own our mistakes, face up to them with no fear, and say that yes, we have made mistakes, yes we have meddled with nature, and yes we cannot fix it right now, but we will keep trying, and keep moving forwards until one day we are at a place to fix our mistakes or we make ourselves extinct trying. Technology might have caused these problems, but it's our only tool for fixing them.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Zelphas View Post
    So here I am, trapped in my laboratory, trying to create a Mechabeast that's powerful enough to take down the howling horde outside my door, but also won't join them once it realizes what I've done...twentieth time's the charm, right?
    Quote Originally Posted by Lord Raziere View Post
    How about a Jovian Uplift stuck in a Case morph? it makes so little sense.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Anonymouswizard View Post
    While I agree that 'learning to live with what we have' might solve the problem of dissastisfaction, ambition is not truly bad.
    Why not?
    Quote Originally Posted by Anonymouswizard View Post
    If not for the ambition their ancestors held no human would have discovered fire, if not for the ambition of our ancestors we would not be here to have this conversation.
    Again, you take as given that certain things are positive without any particular reason for that to be. Why is the invention of fire, or our ability to have this discussion, inherently a good thing?
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    Default Re: How do you like your peasant magic?

    Quote Originally Posted by Necroticplague View Post
    Why not?
    Again, you take as given that certain things are positive without any particular reason for that to be. Why is the invention of fire, or our ability to have this discussion, inherently a good thing?
    You're 100% welcome to give up fire and everything discovered/invented after, including the means of this discussion, for a month, or even a week, and then let us know what you think.
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    Default Re: How do you like your peasant magic?

    Quote Originally Posted by Necroticplague View Post
    Why not?
    Again, you take as given that certain things are positive without any particular reason for that to be. Why is the invention of fire, or our ability to have this discussion, inherently a good thing?
    Quote Originally Posted by Max_Killjoy View Post
    You're 100% welcome to give up fire and everything discovered/invented after, including the means of this discussion, for a month, or even a week, and then let us know what you think.
    If we ever see you on this forum we'll conclude you decided it wasn't worth it.
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    Quote Originally Posted by Zelphas View Post
    So here I am, trapped in my laboratory, trying to create a Mechabeast that's powerful enough to take down the howling horde outside my door, but also won't join them once it realizes what I've done...twentieth time's the charm, right?
    Quote Originally Posted by Lord Raziere View Post
    How about a Jovian Uplift stuck in a Case morph? it makes so little sense.

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    Quote Originally Posted by Anonymouswizard View Post
    If we ever see you on this forum we'll conclude you decided it wasn't worth it.
    That might be going a bit farther with it than I intended...
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    Default Re: How do you like your peasant magic?

    Poor, dirty peasants use poor, dirty magic as befitting their status. The magic they have gets them up with the sun, works them hard through the day and ensures the need for more and more children. Any benefits provided come with adequate, usually equal drawbacks to keep them poor and dirty. No free lighting and laundering here, nosiree!
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    Default Re: How do you like your peasant magic?

    There is also an assumption that if magi are common, that magic will be ubiquitous. Not necessarily.. In the base d&d/pf, spell slots are limited and items incredibly costly for common use. Adventurers are loaded with gear, yes, but that is no more affordable than a modern battle tank and every piece of equipment therein. A group of high level adventurers carry so much gear that it is like a loaded aircraft carrier sailing into port.
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    Default Re: How do you like your peasant magic?

    Quote Originally Posted by JusticeZero View Post
    There is also an assumption that if magi are common, that magic will be ubiquitous. Not necessarily.. In the base d&d/pf, spell slots are limited and items incredibly costly for common use. Adventurers are loaded with gear, yes, but that is no more affordable than a modern battle tank and every piece of equipment therein. A group of high level adventurers carry so much gear that it is like a loaded aircraft carrier sailing into port.
    True, although that varies with system. There's also a decent number of magic items in D&D that should be more common then they are (either owned by pretty much all of the upper class or relatively common among merchants and skilled labourers). Not to the point where every peasant family has a +2 axiomatic hoe, but to the point where if you're in a town someone probably has a minor wondrous item that helps with their job, and most nobles are carrying around rings of resistance or the like.

    The reason this doesn't happen is the price of magic items, but you could probably slash the prices of most magic items to 10% and have the world work just as well. Although this still would end up with most nobles only having a handful of magic items, due to the expenses of running their estates and ruling their lands.

    What would be rare is magic weapons and armour. They're useful enough to exist, but most people buying or commissioning magic items will want something subtler and more useful. To most people a hat of disguise is significantly more useful than a +5 vorpal keen dagger (and past daggers most people probably don't carry weapons).

    I generally like to run Fate, and either use the 'magic is fluff' version where magic isn't more common because for most people it's just as effective as mundane skills, or limit magic to interacting with 'astral' things. So magic is summoning spirits, making invisible barriers, and things like that (yes, I do really like the Storm Summoning and Voidcalling systems in the Fate System Toolkit, and use them as the basis for settings). I have one unused setting I plan to rework which is all different varieties of elf with different attitudes towards magic and thus different systems (including all five FST systems).
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    Quote Originally Posted by Zelphas View Post
    So here I am, trapped in my laboratory, trying to create a Mechabeast that's powerful enough to take down the howling horde outside my door, but also won't join them once it realizes what I've done...twentieth time's the charm, right?
    Quote Originally Posted by Lord Raziere View Post
    How about a Jovian Uplift stuck in a Case morph? it makes so little sense.

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    Default Re: How do you like your peasant magic?

    Quote Originally Posted by Drakevarg View Post
    In my opinion, magic has to be strange and unusual or else it's not magic. Just weird, different science where the experts wear snuggies instead of labcoats. In which case, pretty much every educated character in the setting should have at least one level in wizard because academic understanding is literally all it takes to do wizard stuff.

    So in regards to peasants, I think my usual interpretation is that most of them have seen something unusual in the woods once or twice, or something in the creepy old house, but someone right in front of them throwing around laser beams? Weird as heck. Magic items are bizarre SCP-like objects or family heirlooms with long histories behind them, not something used as a convenience tool.
    Quote Originally Posted by Nifft View Post
    I like when things are plausible.

    In a D&D world, for example, it's very difficult to reconcile the extreme threat levels posed by monsters in the wilderness with anything resembling historical farm practices.

    So, if you're talking about peasants in a game like D&D, I'd always be on the side of magic.


    Whose magic, though? Probably not the peasants themselves, because if they had their own magic, they would tend to stop being peasants.

    That means it's usually an outside force of some kind.


    If I'm feeling creative, then each village or region will have a different outside force.

    Maybe the three heartland valleys will be supported by the Royal Druidic Council of Agriculture and Roads. At the appropriate times of year, one of the royal Druids comes through and casts the appropriate crop-growing spells. They're the three most loyal districts, of course.

    Maybe the farms around Drywood Hill were founded right after the War of Three Giants, in the ashes of the old forest, in spite of the legends about the witches on the hill. The towns come together every year for an unusually raucous midsummer celebration -- they even pay for outside entertainment, and the towns certainly subsidize the festival's ale and hard cider supply. The townsfolk say it's to show off, and maybe get some new blood. Every few years, though, some beautiful boy visits the festival but doesn't come back. The witch-nymph of Drywood Hill has taken a meal back to her grove of dryads. In return, she annually blesses the fields, and protects the farmers from comparable threats, according to the contract she forged with the humans in the wake of the war. She's not really happy with the arrangement, but she tolerates it because the alternative was being burned out by the giants.

    Stuff like that.
    Some combination of these is what I work with generally. The peasants are truly peasants, but there are regional powers that keep the nastier baddies at bay or at least hire and outfit the adventurers who do.
    Quote Originally Posted by The Giant View Post
    But really, the important lesson here is this: Rather than making assumptions that don't fit with the text and then complaining about the text being wrong, why not just choose different assumptions that DO fit with the text?
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    Default Re: How do you like your peasant magic?

    One thing I've come to understand is that prevalence of magic is not a linear scale. There are (at least) two different scales--how common (and powerful) are spell-casters and how easy is it to create lasting items. The standard 3.5e D&D settings (Forgotten Realms and Greyhawk) lean toward the (high, high) corner, while Eberron occupies the high item, but medium caster side of things (since most NPCs don't level beyond 10 or so). Arthas is low on spell-casters and relatively low on items.

    This means that you can have a setting where many or most people have some magical talent (can cast the equivalent of 5e cantrips), but magic items are few and far between (especially permanent ones rather than consumables). You can also have ones where artificers rule the day--individual spellcasters aren't strong but can use gadgets to perform mighty works.

    My current setting is more like the first of those--about 1/4 of the population has the equivalent of 5e's Magic Initiate feat--they can cast a couple cantrips at will and a first level spell 1/x day. These are 5e cantrips, so generally weaker than 3.5e cantrips. Most peasants don't learn the combat ones (in fact, most peasant cantrips aren't in the PHB since minor loosen soil or discourage vermin aren't adventurer-type spells). In one area, most peasants learn divine cantrips--mending, guidance, etc--because it's a highly religious area. In another, more animist area, the cantrips learned are druidic. In a third, they are arcane.

    However, creating magical items is difficult (involving placing a portion of one's soul into the item while creating it, which weakens the creator significantly for a time). Creating potions is easier, since the ingredients provide a good portion of the needed anima. This means that basically no one except the leaders of nations have magical items and those that they do are hoarded carefully. Most items are found in long-lost treasure hordes of nations destroyed centuries ago and are valued beyond price--selling them is an adventure in and of itself (and might result in having your items nationalized without direct recompense if you're not careful).
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    Default Re: How do you like your peasant magic?

    You may want to take a look at Glorantha. Magic is part of daily life, and everyone has small little prayers, spells and other things that help them do their tasks and get through the day. This is called Common Magic in Glorantha (depending on which Glorantha game you play and the rules system it uses.)

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    Default Re: How do you like your peasant magic?

    I think that making the majority of the population in elven and dwarven and other long lived species communities be NPC spellcasting classes like adepts and magewrights would neatly solve the issue of why they aren;t all higher level when they have more time to learn and experience. Instead of being higher level thay all do something that requires more training and expertise to start on in the first place
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