Gunpowder Goes Poof!

[Regitnui]

Now I know we have these medieval stagnation debates fairly often, but i'm going to throw this video into the mix. It's old, I know, but bear with me.



Given that the average D&D world is full of swords, armour and crossbows, we can assume that they're alternate histories to ours, where gunpowder isn't known. Whether that means it hasn't been discovered yet or won't ever be discovered is up to you. I know Forgotten Realms has divine interference to prevent gunpowder and gunpowder weapons from becoming a thing. Other settings do not. It is safe to say that, given a roughly similar middle ages/Roman Empire level of technology, D&D universes would follow the path described in the video; stronger metals, better crossbows, and more frequent, less deadly conflicts.

What this video doesn't cover is the addition of magic to this scenario. Forgive me for this, but I'm going to use Eberron as my running example, as most other D&D settings are even less advanced technologically. Eberron in the current time is 998YK, after a century-long, continent-wide war. Needless to say, this has given technology in both its mundane and mystical senses a great push forward, putting Eberron into its Reneissance/Industrial Revolution. With the Last War being such a looming shadow over the setting, we also get a great look at what the military technology of the time is.

Unsurprisingly, Eberron relies on hand-to-hand combat. Largely, the War was two armies lined up on either end of a field and proceeding to beat the snot out of each other with blades, armour and crossbow volleys. Pretty standard. Until you add the magic. Let's add the basic warmage; capable of casting shield and magic missile. That's kinda like a normal soldier, except the metal is replaced with arcane energy. Shillelagh makes this base mage competent enough in melee as well.

So adding a warmage doesn't do that much, perhaps? Not until you start adding what else a warmage could do. 5e has pared down a lot of the utility spells from previous editions, so looking at the spell list of a wizard (assume our basic soldier-mage is a half- or third-caster) is practically a list of ways to hurt people. When you add spells like dancing lights (signals), shape water (move/freeze a river), and mold earth (instant cover), war stops being similar to anything we've experienced.

And all of that is anywhere in the D&D worlds, provided you can scrounge up/train a selection of casters. When you add industry and the creation of magic items, you can make wands that produce any number of personal effects, and staves that can launch projectiles across a battlefield. Other magic items, individually little more than a curiosity for adventurers, become downright gamechanging in a war. Which general wouldn't want Eyes of the Eagle, Cloaks of the Manta Ray, and Necklaces of Adaption on their best troops? Battlefield surgery becomes less deadly when Keoghtom's Ointment is available on a large scale. The effectiveness of cavalry is upped tremendously when the battalion is mounted on saddles of the cavalier.

All this is what Eberron has done, and what other D&D worlds could do. Imagine an army kitted out with Uncommon magic items, like all the ones I mention above. Formidable hardly begins to describe it. Guns would hardly help when the opposing army has a front line casting shield and a second line with magic missile and burning hands ready to go. I admit I have little experience with modern gunpowder weaponry, but everything we have today has been built after centuries of refinement. Give one army as many primitive guns and ammo as they want, and ask them to face down the magic army. The simple reason why nobody in D&D has considered gunpowder weaponry worth the effort to develop, illustrated in a military setting.

So personally, I feel I have good reason to declare guns a curiosity and obsolete technology at best when considering D&D. If you enjoy having guns or the gunslinger in your campaign, don't let this rain on your fun. That's you. This topic is just to give you something to think about, and argue that there's a good reason D&D doesn't depict someone shooting a giant with a rifle on the front of the PHB. Thanks to you if you've read this far before starting your inevitable reply. Thank you as well if your reply below is an engagement rather than a knee-jerk reaction.

tl;dr Don't be lazy. Read the whole thing.

[Laserlight]

All of this is presuming that casters are common, willing to join the army, not better employed elsewhere, and easily replaced.

Ranged AoEs such as Shatter and Fireball would force dispersion instead of mass formations.

It'd be interesting to generate a pair of battalions (800 men ea) and put them against each other for a few iterations and see what evolves, but since we don't have functional mass combat rules, it might take... a while.

[Squiddish]

Actually, the forgotten realms has divine intervention specifically to make gunpowder and gunpowder weapons a thing, which is exactly why neither became common.

[Ellisthion]

Ship combat is what's giving me problems. In real life, cannons were mainstream long before war galleys were retired in favour of sailing ships, but sailing ships are pretty common in many D&D worlds. But... even in a moderate-magic setting, replacing all the cannons with spellcasters is completely infeasible due to the number of casters you'd need. So how do you reconcile this?

[Tiadoppler]

This is a cool idea, and (if my personal campaigns didn't bump up the cost and rarity of magical items) is exactly what nations in my stories would try to do. Things to consider:

In D&D 5e, spellcasting ranges are ridiculously, absurdly short. Off the top of my head, the max range of a direct combat spell like Eldritch Blast, with the Spear invocation is 300' (100 yards) and the max range of Magic Missile is 120' (40 yards). Longbows have a somewhat reasonable 'long' range of 600' (200 yards) which I would say represents ability to hit a specific target accurately, not the ability to volley fire longer distances.

In the 1700s and 1800s, many cannons had a range of roughly 2000 yards (6000'), and 600' (200 yards) was point-blank range, the range at which the cannon did not need to elevate at all, it just pointed straight at the target. 600' was scarily close melee range for artillery.

Starting in the early 1900s, artillery had a range best described in miles (or kilometers). Machine guns were accurate at well over a mile, and an individual soldier's rifle could be accurately aimed at 2000' (700 yards). 300', or 100 yards was scarily close melee range for an individual soldier with a standard rifle.




The maximum range of Eldritch Blast, when optimized for distance, is the minimum preferred distance for a soldier... a hundred years ago.




So, when comparing effectiveness of a gunpowder weapon, to a D&D spell, consider that a Magic Missile would barely be considered a ranged weapon by the standards of gunpowder era combat. It's a last ditch, pistol-like self defense tool. A fireball has only a 20' radius of effect, compared to the tens or hundreds of yards grenades or artillery can affect.

[Anymage]

Lots of things that are real military tactics wouldn't work in D&D, due to the way hit points work. Real life injuries can cause disability and have long-term repercussions (there's a reason that infected wounds were so bad back then), while hit points are just lost until you can get them back. Plus the fact that hit points make combat more predictable and reduce the odds of a given wound being deadly, while one stray bullet in real life is often enough to be fatal.

(And all that ignores the specific healing rules in 5e, where you refill you rHP and a good chunk of your HD just for a good night's sleep. As a game mechanic it works much better than glacial rates of healing did in 3e and before, but it's a place where good game mechanics and strict adherence to real life diverge.)

Aside from firearms specifically, though, magic will indeed take over the role of "highly dangerous weapon". Guns can exist, be backup weapons for characters who don't normally expect to need a weapon, and can with the right class features/feat support/whatever be a character's special shtick. When magic takes over for technology, though, you can still expect advances in both tactics and thaumaturgy. People who innovate and advance will simply outcompete those who stagnate, unless there's some cosmic level power with its thumb on the scale. So a setting where guns aren't impactful enough to completely redefine military strategies is very possible. A setting with millenia of medieval stagnation is less so.

[War_lord]

Given that the average D&D world is full of swords, armour and crossbows, we can assume that they're alternate histories to ours, where gunpowder isn't known. Whether that means it hasn't been discovered yet or won't ever be discovered is up to you.

I hate the phrase "average D&D world". When people say that what they really mean is "the published settings" More specifically, they mean Grayhawk, FR, and Eberron. It's impossible to say anything about the "average" D&D world, because you haven't done a poll of every third party and homebrew world. Guns and cannons exist in my setting, and it really doesn't effect anything, because guns consistent with the D&D tech level aren't very useful in the small scale encounters of the D&D adventuring party.

I know Forgotten Realms has divine interference to prevent gunpowder and gunpowder weapons from becoming a thing. Other settings do not.

Grayhawk essentially has divine intervention, in that gunpowder and explosives simply don't function on Oerth, because Gygax A. Didn't want them to be a thing in his games (with one single exception) and B. Didn't believe (or at least claimed not to due to the feud) in the idea of world building in the Tolkien sense. Oerth was named Oerth to annoy people who did.

Forgotten Realms has the aforementioned Divine Intervention, Dark Sun takes place after a collapse and Eberron is a tumorous growth from 3.5's video game approach to magic items. Again, this was never motivated by "alternative" (counterfactual) history. It has its origins in Gygax's lack of interest in including firearms in his own game. Although he also wrote Expedition to the Barrier peaks, so that's somewhat inconsistent.

It is safe to say that, given a roughly similar middle ages/Roman Empire level of technology, D&D universes would follow the path described in the video; stronger metals, better crossbows, and more frequent, less deadly conflicts.

It's not "safe to say" anything, the problem with counterfactual history is that it's devoid of any factual basis. Any answer to a "what if" question is inherently incorrect, because it's uninformed speculation.

What this video doesn't cover is the addition of magic to this scenario.

Because that would be absurdist.

Forgive me for this, but I'm going to use Eberron as my running example,

Regitnui using Eberron in a discussion? No, I'm not about to forgive you for it.

as most other D&D settings are even less advanced technologically.

Eberron is not technologically advanced, Eberron is arguably suffering the worst case of stasis of all of the published settings. Eberron does not at any divine intervention keeping all of the advances hidden, Eberron doesn't have rare magic, any schmuck can use magic. Eberron should have society totally unlike anything in D&D or even in our history, because any idiot can use magic. But it doesn't, and the excuse used is literally "because magic".

Eberron in the current time is 998YK, after a century-long, continent-wide war. Needless to say, this has given technology in both its mundane and mystical senses a great push forward, putting Eberron into its Reneissance/Industrial Revolution.

Magic is not technology. It's magic. Magic is not indistinguishable from significantly advanced technology, because the technology can be explained. As for the great push forward, the train knockoff hasn't had a speed increase in over 100 years right?

With the Last War being such a looming shadow over the setting, we also get a great look at what the military technology of the time is. Unsurprisingly, Eberron relies on hand-to-hand combat. Largely, the War was two armies lined up on either end of a field and proceeding to beat the snot out of each other with blades, armour and crossbow volleys. Pretty standard.

Pretty stupid in a setting where wands are common and any idiot can use magic. In the real world infantry nowadays play second fiddle to artillery, tanks and airpower. Armies should not be a thing in setting where people who can cast fireball are easily found. Entire wars should hinge on duels between mages.

Until you add the magic. Let's add the basic warmage; capable of casting shield and magic missile. That's kinda like a normal soldier, except the metal is replaced with arcane energy. Shillelagh makes this base mage competent enough in melee as well.

So adding a warmage doesn't do that much, perhaps? Not until you start adding what else a warmage could do. 5e has pared down a lot of the utility spells from previous editions, so looking at the spell list of a wizard (assume our basic soldier-mage is a half- or third-caster) is practically a list of ways to hurt people. When you add spells like dancing lights (signals), shape water (move/freeze a river), and mold earth (instant cover), war stops being similar to anything we've experienced.

And all of that is anywhere in the D&D worlds, provided you can scrounge up/train a selection of casters.

Why would these people want to serve in an army? Furthermore, if magic is that easy to learn, why are there conventional wars at all?

When you add industry and the creation of magic items, you can make wands that produce any number of personal effects, and staves that can launch projectiles across a battlefield. Other magic items, individually little more than a curiosity for adventurers, become downright gamechanging in a war. Which general wouldn't want Eyes of the Eagle, Cloaks of the Manta Ray, and Necklaces of Adaption on their best troops? Battlefield surgery becomes less deadly when Keoghtom's Ointment is available on a large scale. The effectiveness of cavalry is upped tremendously when the battalion is mounted on saddles of the cavalier.

These items are interesting because they're rare boons for heroes, if they're mass produced in the millions (which you would have to do for them to effect anything on the army level) they stop being interesting and they're just things that exist. There's no reason to prize a magic item if you can buy crates of them from a wholesaler.

All this is what Eberron has done, and what other D&D worlds could do.

No, because they don't make the same assumptions Eberron does. I get that you love Eberron, not everyone does. Even most people who like Eberron probably don't want it to be the only setting in existence. Which seems to be the point of this thread.

Imagine an army kitted out with Uncommon magic items, like all the ones I mention above.

Then they WOULDN'T BE UNCOMMON.

Formidable hardly begins to describe it. Guns would hardly help when the opposing army has a front line casting shield and a second line with magic missile and burning hands ready to go.

Yes, guns would not be very useful in a world where magic is so simple to grasp and use that even pvt. Snuffy can throw down like Elminster. Most D&D settings aren't like that.

I admit I have little experience with modern gunpowder weaponry, but everything we have today has been built after centuries of refinement. Give one army as many primitive guns and ammo as they want, and ask them to face down the magic army. The simple reason why nobody in D&D has considered gunpowder weaponry worth the effort to develop, illustrated in a military setting.

The reason nobody has considered gunpowder in Grayhawk is because it literally doesn't work there. The reason no one has gunpowder in FR is because a god doesn't want it messing with status quo. Your description of armies of Gish soldiers doesn't fit anywhere but Eberron.

EDIT: Since you're not familiar with modern gunpowder weaponry, let me give you a fact. Artillery shells, Missiles and Bombs kill FAR MORE infantry then other infantry do.

So personally, I feel I have good reason to declare guns a curiosity and obsolete technology at best when considering D&D. If you enjoy having guns or the gunslinger in your campaign, don't let this rain on your fun. That's you. This topic is just to give you something to think about, and argue that there's a good reason D&D doesn't depict someone shooting a giant with a rifle on the front of the PHB. Thanks to you if you've read this far before starting your inevitable reply. Thank you as well if your reply below is an engagement rather than a knee-jerk reaction.

Do you realize you never talk about anything but Eberron? Do you realise there's a whole wealth of setting material out there that isn't Eberron? Because you just wrote an Essay that boils down to "all D&D should be Eberron". To which my response is, no, I hate Eberron and you've just explained one of the reasons why. Because magic means nothing to you people.

[Tiadoppler]

When I world-build the armed forces of nations in D&D, I have an overarching concept I like to use:

Magical items are rare, expensive, and are best used by a small number of elite, or at least highly trained forces. They're time consuming to make, and they're owned by the government that ordered their production. They're generally not available to the public, or sold to foreign nations. They take the place of things like rocket launchers, flamethrowers, tanks, and aircraft, in that they provide a force multiplier to a larger number of soldiers wielding cheap, non-magical gear. An experienced adventuring party isn't just a bunch of random people with common gear who somehow defeat dangerous foes; they're Iron Man or Batman with a collection of powerful equipment well beyond what most nations can produce and employ. A level 15+ party isn't a mercenary band; they're a squadron of freelance, plausibly deniable, fighter jets for hire.


Any nation that could afford to give three or four magical items to every soldier in their army would have far simpler and more efficient ways to conquer the world.

[Regitnui]

All of this is presuming that casters are common, willing to join the army, not better employed elsewhere, and easily replaced.

Ranged AoEs such as Shatter and Fireball would force dispersion instead of mass formations.

It'd be interesting to generate a pair of battalions (800 men ea) and put them against each other for a few iterations and see what evolves, but since we don't have functional mass combat rules, it might take... a while.

I can tell you that low-level casters are fairly common in Eberron, and you can train people to use basic spells (cantrip, level 1). I'm basically drawing that off the Magic Initiate feat, which any human can have as standard.

I'm no expert on mass combat either in reality or in tabletop, so it could be interesting to run guns vs magic sides.

Actually, the forgotten realms has divine intervention specifically to make gunpowder and gunpowder weapons a thing, which is exactly why neither became common.

That's Gond, right? The god of artifice/technology/whatever they call it?

Ship combat is what's giving me problems. In real life, cannons were mainstream long before war galleys were retired in favour of sailing ships, but sailing ships are pretty common in many D&D worlds. But... even in a moderate-magic setting, replacing all the cannons with spellcasters is completely infeasible due to the number of casters you'd need. So how do you reconcile this?

The video above, cutting out gunpowder altogether, says cannons don't exist. But if I recall the 3.5 book Stormwrack correctly, you could have ballistas, figureheads that alchemically "breathed" fire or acid, and even small trebuchets. Not sure about the accuracy or practicality of any of those. There is always the old-fashioned tactic of ramming, and personal-range magic might be especially devastating in that sort of battle.

So, when comparing effectiveness of a gunpowder weapon, to a D&D spell, consider that a Magic Missile would barely be considered a ranged weapon by the standards of gunpowder era combat. It's a last ditch, pistol-like self defense tool. A fireball has only a 20' radius of effect, compared to the tens or hundreds of yards grenades or artillery can affect.

You make excellent points, but we're talking about a world where spells like magic missile and tools like crossbows were more effective and safer than the most primitive gunpowder flamethrowers first used. Magic against even pre-WW1 weaponry would be either even or weaker, but I'm proposing that gunpowder never took off because magic outcompeted it from the beginning.

Aside from firearms specifically, though, magic will indeed take over the role of "highly dangerous weapon". Guns can exist, be backup weapons for characters who don't normally expect to need a weapon, and can with the right class features/feat support/whatever be a character's special shtick. When magic takes over for technology, though, you can still expect advances in both tactics and thaumaturgy. People who innovate and advance will simply outcompete those who stagnate, unless there's some cosmic level power with its thumb on the scale. So a setting where guns aren't impactful enough to completely redefine military strategies is very possible. A setting with millenia of medieval stagnation is less so.

I agree with you. Medieval stagnation really makes no sense. A setting held at a particular point in its history, like Eberron, makes more sense than a setting where time is explicitly passing, but nobody's innovating. At the very least, you'd expect to hear about new spells being invented in Forgotten Realms, for example. The whole trope of fantasy worlds having had their great expansion of magic in the ancient times is starting to sound extremely silly.

Any nation that could afford to give three or four magical items to every soldier in their army would have far simpler and more efficient ways to conquer the world.

This is true. I specifically chose Uncommon items with the idea that they'd be given to the specialist units. The troops with Eyes of the Eagle, Cloaks of the Manta Ray, and Necklaces of Adaption would be the equivalent of Navy SEALS, SAS or Recces. For lack of a better term, the "officially employed adventurers". But yes, any faction who could afford that many magic items probably already rules the world. Or at least thinks it does.

[Tiadoppler]

You make excellent points, but we're talking about a world where spells like magic missile and tools like crossbows were more effective and safer than the most primitive gunpowder flamethrowers first used. Magic against even pre-WW1 weaponry would be either even or weaker, but I'm proposing that gunpowder never took off because magic outcompeted it from the beginning.

Yikes, gunpowder flamethrowers sound terrifying. If gunpowder exists in a setting, it represents a chemical energy storage method similar to alchemist's fire, so it'd be able to find a niche in the 'making things go BOOM' department. People are very good at thinking of ways to use BOOM. You will get things like mining explosives and sappers pretty much instantly. Eventually, people will figure out how effective grenadiers and simple cannons are. Even a very simple cannon can attack a fortification from well beyond archery/spellcaster range, and even a cheap, early grenade will outperform a simple fireball spell.

The concept of gunpowder weaponry didn't start with small pistols and rifles. It started with siege weapons and explosives and evolved from there.

This is true. I specifically chose Uncommon items with the idea that they'd be given to the specialist units. The troops with Eyes of the Eagle, Cloaks of the Manta Ray, and Necklaces of Adaption would be the equivalent of Navy SEALS, SAS or Recces. For lack of a better term, the "officially employed adventurers". But yes, any faction who could afford that many magic items probably already rules the world. Or at least thinks it does.

That's a lot more reasonable, but then you're left with the result that once again the common infantry soldier has only non-magical gear, and things like alchemist's fire or simple gunpowder grenades become much more attractive for mass deployment and standard issue.


I do agree that this would take time. Going from the discovery of gunpowder to the revolver or repeating rifle in less than a few hundred years would require some specific source of knowledge or a series of genius-level breakthroughs.

[JackPhoenix]

Snip

Sure, but that's about five centuries (or more) of developement since the gunpowder weapons first appeared. When the black powder is discovered for the first time, it's alchemical substance that burns easily... well, we already have alchemist's fire for that, does the same thing, but cheaper. It would be a novelty, but nothing special. It would be put aside in favor of cheaper and more effective materials (we have plenty of such examples in our own history). But if the alchemists do that, they miss one advantage black powder has over alchemist's fire: you can't use the later for guns, at least not if you don't have an idea what are you trying to accomplish up front. It's liquid, it's more dangerous to use and store, and it's self-igniting on contact with air.

There's also the loss of one of the advantages early gunpowder weapons offered: the noise, fire and smoke was scary to those unfamiliar with it. In D&D, people already know Fireballs, dragons, undead and other, more terrifying things exist, even if they've never encounter one before. Compared to that, guns are nothing.

[Tiadoppler]

I agree, and I was editing my comment to include your first point when you posted that.

It takes a long time to refine the technology, and it'd start out crude. Still, it wouldn't become lost knowledge, and you'd still get people making Alchemical Thunderdust, and it'd be refined over time into something recognizable as a cannon or hand bomb.

[Richard369]

There are a ton of great points on here. Inevitably it all boils down to personal flavor. Something like Eberron is a high magic epic, whereas many other campaigns go off of a more traditional, low magic, Lord of the Rings feel.

Personally, I place gunpowder with culture. In my campaign world, Dwarves have a more imperial China-esque culture as opposed to the horns and wings of Asgardian society. They have cannons, arquebus and even some rifles. Still, it's a rare mechanic because of the guild and royal laden control of gunpowder itself.

[Regitnui]

I agree, and I was editing my comment to include your first point when you posted that.

It takes a long time to refine the technology, and it'd start out crude. Still, it wouldn't become lost knowledge, and you'd still get people making Alchemical Thunderdust, and it'd be refined over time into something recognizable as a cannon or hand bomb.

Who's to say that gunpowder (or black powder) isn't a component of Alchemist's Fire? It's simply made in such a way that it isn't going to go boom unexpectedly.

There are a ton of great points on here. Inevitably it all boils down to personal flavor. Something like Eberron is a high magic epic, whereas many other campaigns go off of a more traditional, low magic, Lord of the Rings feel.

Personally, I place gunpowder with culture. In my campaign world, Dwarves have a more imperial China-esque culture as opposed to the horns and wings of Asgardian society. They have cannons, arquebus and even some rifles. Still, it's a rare mechanic because of the guild and royal laden control of gunpowder itself.

Eberron is low-level wide-access magic, which is why I'm not using any spell above first-level in my arguments, but I agree. If you like using guns and gunpowder in your games, I'm not going to say you're wrong. I've heard of a lot of people assigning the development of gunpowder to dwarves or gnomes. I post this to say why guns aren't the inevitable result of technological development. When your magic is as quantifiable and predictable as D&D, you (as an NPC general) have better options.

[War_lord]

When your magic is as quantifiable and predictable as D&D, you (as an NPC general) have better options.

In most settings Wizards and other Mages make up only a tiny portion of the population, the whole point of a firearm, even a medieval one is that with a relatively small amount of training anyone can use it effectively. Magic in most D&D worlds requires either special ancestry, a pact with certain powers, or years and years of training. You'd understand that if you actually bothered doing research before your latest sermon on the mount.

[Regitnui]

In most settings Wizards and other Mages make up only a tiny portion of the population, the whole point of a firearm, even a medieval one is that with a relatively small amount of training anyone can use it effectively. Magic in most D&D worlds requires either special ancestry, a pact with certain powers, or years and years of training. You'd understand that if you actually bothered doing research before your latest sermon on the mount.

Magic Initiate feat - Bang, anyone knows three spells.
Eldritch Knight - Rote learning, presumably integrated with regular combat training
Arcane Trickster - Spells cast from practice.
Druid - Belief in the power of nature
Bard - Literally singing magic into being.
Monk - Magic-like "ki".
Ranger - Who knows where ranger spells come from?
(Not yet official in 5e)
Artificer - Infuse magic into items. Does involve study, I'll admit.
Mystic - Magical effects (not necessarily spells) from the power of the mind.

In 5e, it's positively easy to get a little bit of magic. Don't be so exclusionary. If you want magic to be a rare and difficult thing, that's great. But it's just not the case in 5e. You describe Sorcerer, Warlock/Cleric and Wizard. I give you 7 options that don't follow your list.

And assuming the regular adventurer is a step above the normal person, what's stopping anyone else from learning the same skills any of these classes have to a lesser degree? Like 3.5's NPC classes; not a wizard, a mage. Not a fighter, a warrior. Not a druid, a gleaner. Not an artificer, a magewright.

[8wGremlin]

thoughts:

Plate armour costs: 1500gp

or

3 x Broom of Flying (uncommon): 500gp

one simple magic item changes the course of the whole battle.

Imagine 10 valiant knights on chargers, vs 30 lightly armoured archers, all with a Broom of Flying.

----

Next thought:


How would a high elven army change that with every elf having a single wizard spell?
How would a Gnomish army change that with every gnome casting minor illusion, and speaking to small animal scouts?
How would a variant Human army change with every human getting a feat?
What if that feat was Magic Initiate?

How many bards, clerics, druids, sorcerers, wizards and warlocks do you have per capita?
How many would serve in an army, or be drafted in case of emergency?


----

Next thought:

Scenario:
Your little hamlet of 50 1st level villagers is about to be attacked by:
10 knights (approx. @1700gp of equipment), 20 archers (@300gp), and 20 men at arms (@500gp), they are all standard 1st level (normal) humans fighters.

You have 20 villagers trained to defend.
What would you pick, as race, and how would you equip them?

----

tl/dr
access to magic and your race change everything about a society.

[Tiadoppler]

Re: Availability of magic and class levels to commonfolk


An adventurer is described as having a 27 point buy for their stats, leading to stat arrays like
15,15,15,8,8,8 or 13,13,13,12,12,12 or 13,13,13,13,13,10
but an average, expected score for a stat in the general population is a 10.


A 10 is described as an average score, so most people in this society would have a 12 point buy array: 10,10,10,10,10,10 or 12,12,12,8,8,8 or 15,9,8,8,8,8

Many, if not most people would not qualify for any class at all (if you require 13 in the primary stat, similar to multiclassing) much less two or more. Not every NPC has class levels. A Variant Human Commoner can take magic initiate and learn a few spells, but with a +1 in their casting stat and no proficiency, they'll have a +1 to hit, saving throw of 9.

Full-fledged adventurers are rare! They have stats and abilities that go beyond what most people are capable of. It's okay, and desirable for PCs to be special. Don't water down your campaign by letting every priest take four or five combat-optimized cleric levels, every hermit be a mid-level monk, every bandit be a rogue, every scholar be a wizard.




TL;DR:
D&D is a game about extraordinary adventurers. Most NPCs are not extraordinary adventurers. Most NPCs do not meet the prerequisites for becoming an extraordinary adventurer. Don't use a 27 point array to stat up Jimmy the Street Urchin or Bernard the Village Priest unless these NPCs are actually retired, experienced heroes.

[War_lord]

Magic Initiate feat - Bang, anyone knows three spells.

Feats are an optional rule, even if we're assuming you're in a game that uses them, that's not how NPC's work in 5th edition.

Eldritch Knight - Rote learning, presumably integrated with regular combat training
Arcane Trickster - Spells cast from practice.
Druid - Belief in the power of nature
Bard - Literally singing magic into being.
Monk - Magic-like "ki".
Ranger - Who knows where ranger spells come from?
(Not yet official in 5e)
Artificer - Infuse magic into items. Does involve study, I'll admit.
Mystic - Magical effects (not necessarily spells) from the power of the mind.

NPCs in 5th edition don't normally have classes, they have monster style blocks. Even the NPCs based on character classes are only based on those classes. This isn't 3.5.

In 5e, it's positively easy to get a little bit of magic.

For players, not for NPCs.

Don't be so exclusionary. If you want magic to be a rare and difficult thing, that's great. But it's just not the case in 5e. You describe Sorcerer, Warlock/Cleric and Wizard. I give you 7 options that don't follow your list.

DMG pg 9, core assumptions, The World is Magical "Practitioners of magic are relatively few in number, but they leave evidence of their craft everywhere"

DMG pg 9, it's your world, Magic is everywhere "The Eberron setting makes the use of magic an everyday occurrence, as magical flying ships and trains carry travels from one great city to another"

So actually you're the one advocating things that aren't the case in default 5e.

And assuming the regular adventurer is a step above the normal person, what's stopping anyone else from learning the same skills any of these classes have to a lesser degree? Like 3.5's NPC classes; not a wizard, a mage. Not a fighter, a warrior. Not a druid, a gleaner. Not an artificer, a magewright.

There's nothing stopping an NPC being a Wizard, there's an entire list of NPC wizard stat blocks from different schools of magic. But most worlds don't have publicly funded magic schools for anyone to just "decide" to be a Wizard, in most worlds divine casting requires a lot of faith, in most worlds to be a Bard you have to be really talented. It's like asking why everyone in the real world doesn't have a PhD, or isn't a rockstar.

[Laserlight]

I can tell you that low-level casters are fairly common in Eberron, and you can train people to use basic spells (cantrip, level 1).

You started out talking about "The average D&D world", not "This applies only to Eberron". My point was that whether mass war casters are feasible depends on several factors, which are highly setting specific.

I'll point out that longbows are better weapons than early handguns: more accurate, longer range, better rate of fire, etc. But you can train a replacement arquebusier in a couple of months, as opposed to the many years that it takes for a good longbowman; therefore gunpowder replaced archers.

I'm basically drawing that off the Magic Initiate feat, which any human can have as standard.

Which any Player Character can have, which is not necessarily the same thing.

[War_lord]

You started out talking about "The average D&D world", not "This applies only to Eberron".

I fear you face an uphill battle if you hope to keep this on a non-Eberron topic.

[Regitnui]

*snip*
D&D is a game about extraordinary adventurers. Most NPCs are not extraordinary adventurers. Most NPCs do not meet the prerequisites for becoming an extraordinary adventurer. Don't use a 27 point array to stat up Jimmy the Street Urchin or Bernard the Village Priest unless these NPCs are actually retired, experienced heroes.

(also applies to Laserlight) Alright, I concede the point. It's unlikely that a significant number of people have class levels. Can we agree it is possible in most D&D worlds to learn both a few weak spells and how to use wands? Perhaps using time on par with longbowmen, like Laserlight said above?

You started out talking about "The average D&D world", not "This applies only to Eberron". My point was that whether mass war casters are feasible depends on several factors, which are highly setting specific.

I'll point out that longbows are better weapons than early handguns: more accurate, longer range, better rate of fire, etc. But you can train a replacement arquebusier in a couple of months, as opposed to the many years that it takes for a good longbowman; therefore gunpowder replaced archers.

What about crossbows, though? How long does it take to train up a new crossbowman vs an arquebusier?

[danpit2991]

Ship combat is what's giving me problems. In real life, cannons were mainstream long before war galleys were retired in favour of sailing ships, but sailing ships are pretty common in many D&D worlds. But... even in a moderate-magic setting, replacing all the cannons with spellcasters is completely infeasible due to the number of casters you'd need. So how do you reconcile this?

it would be expensive but then again so were cannon lets say that a kingdom had a large navy and was a trading powerhouse (mages are expensive ) lets use the english navy in the mid 1700s as an example they had about 300 warships divided by "Rates"

they had about 20 first and second rate ships (the largest and best armed first rate 100+ guns second 90-100 guns)
around 40 third rate (70-90 guns ) and the rest were various lesser rated ships anything from 10 gun sloops to small frigates and brigs and the like

lets just say that our fictional kingdom has 100 warships because england was very aggressive in its colonization and power projection all over the world (and 100 is eaiser to work with) so it has a breakdown like this

10 first rate
20 second rate
30 third rate

50 lesser warships to include medium/ small warships,transports, couriers ect.

lets look at what levels of spells each ship would be expected to be able to bring to bear (going to focus on combat)

well i believe a ship of the first and second rates would have the most powerful mages so lets say capable of fireball at a minimum so a 5th level caster at the least and if each 1st and 2nd rate ship gets at least one 5th level caster thats 30 5th level casters so extremely expensive to field that kind of magic but i figure each first rate should have 3 mages of at least 5th and their apprentices so without some sort of magic academy i dont see them putting up those numbers because remember a 5th level caster is near godlike to normal people

[Laserlight]

(also applies to Laserlight) Alright, I concede the point. It's unlikely that a significant number of people have class levels. Can we agree it is possible in most D&D worlds to learn both a few weak spells and how to use wands?

No. It is possible that in some D&D worlds, etc. etc. but I don't think most DMs have peasants casting spells.
Of course, you can certainly do that in your setting, but that boils down to "if you move the Setting Dials in such a way that mass warcasters become possible, then mass warcasters become possible."

What about crossbows, though? How long does it take to train up a new crossbowman vs an arquebusier?

Not particularly relevant, since the point was that a weapon which appears worse in theorycrafting can be better in practice, due to logistical reasons.

But to answer the question anyway...I'd say gunpowder won out for several factors: your cavalry can use gunpowder pistols, morale effect of noise, you can use a firearm as a club, and of course it can penetrate plate.

[PhoenixPhyre]

Even if NPCs can take the equivalent of feats, how many peasants are going to take combat spells? I'd put light, mending, and prestidigitation way ahead of fire bolt. Note that NPCs (or any character really, outside of game conveniences) don't get a list of spells and classes that they can choose from. If they know a cantrip, it's because they've picked up a knack somewhere that relates to their background and history. There are also (I'd imagine) lots of spells not in the PHB--farming, cooking, and manufacturing spells. The songs that a bardic-ly inclined peasant sings as he plows which helps the ground be fertile and the oxen pull straight and not get sick. The rituals that cooks perform over the rising bread dough or over the preserves to ward off spoilage. Etc. Those are the spells that most people learn. PHB spells are for adventurers, whose job often involves killing things. So those are the spells adventurers learn. But those aren't all the spells, nor are they the common ones to be learned.

And we know that magic (even wizardry) can't be a matter of just knowing the right words. If it were so, wizards wouldn't be limited to spell slots, because perfect repetition would have the same effect. You need talent. And the fiction is full of this--wizard apprentices who were better than others, some that wanted to be wizards but couldn't hack it, and not just because of raw intellect (a common source of fiend warlocks if you ask me), etc.

My setting has ~10% of the people able to cast a single 1st level spell/day. Which type depends on race and society--high elves tend to be wizards (because their race selected for wizardry and invented it in the first place). Wood elves tend toward druidism and ranger-style casting, because they invented that. Humans and halflings tend to the clerical, because they were the ones that first gained power by worshiping the gods. Dragonborn tend to sorcery (because, well, dragons). Etc.

Edit: and wands, by the basic rules, are super expensive. There are a few wands (secrets, war mage +1, magic detection, and magic missiles in the SRD) that are uncommon, most are rare+. And even an uncommon wand (500 gp) is most of a year's wage for a skilled hireling, or 3 years wage for an unskilled one. A rare wand is oodles more (more than several suits of plate). If you can find them--it's not like there are factories churning out wands in most settings.

[Vogie]

I like this idea just because I like diversity of options and counterplay... these are great game mechanics, but not how real life works. In general, whoever wins is copied, and the people group who win the most get copied the most, which evens the memetic battlefield until someone with a new idea comes along.

In a world without gunpowder, but one where magic exists, I would explore the "evolution in isolation" idea applied to those countries. If something as awesome and world bending as magic exists, each locale should warp that idea to their own perspective. Sure, there's going to be heirarchical countries, where there's legions of mooks around their handful of supertalented ultrapowerful wizards - but they may be matched by a rival nation where they train EVERYONE to do basic magic, where even the average Helmet bro can launch magic missiles.

In starting with a diversity mindset, the different nations will look at magic in their own ways.

• Nautical-focused nations would have aggressive focus on using magic to control the seas and weather, perhaps even making it so that the only way one can become a captain of a vessel is by mastering nautical magic.
• A hypermiltiaristic culture, such as the Spartans, may require magic as a part of their discipline and toughness regimen that everyone goes through.
• An existing feudal, bloodline-oriented culture may warp their "houses" so that magic is part of solely the ruling classes.
• A Socially Specialist-oriented culture may opt for their magic-users as specialists, to be operating as a support systems for the "real" troops.
• A Capitalist-materialist nation may eschew actual practitioners instead focusing a way to mass-produce magic items
• A noble-combat-venerating culture may only focus on the "buffing" or subtle magical arts, treating the obvious use of magic as dishonorable.
• An isolationist nation will prize different aspects of magic than a nomadic one

[PeteNutButter]

A few unrelated points, many have been touched on:

1) D&D worlds tend to be balanced on the idea that magic (at least high level magic) is extraordinarily rare. If high level isn't rare in your world, then you have do a ton of work explaining how the world is still how it is, or how that magic has changed it, or just ignore if you treat your game world like a video game.

2) Combat in a D&D world with even a moderate amount of magic would probably more closely resemble modern combat than it would medieval combat. Armies would not face each other in the open all lumped together in "fireball formation." Armies would be spread out as far as communication would allow. Being 40 ft apart should prevent most AoE spells from really doing much.

3) Wealthy non-magical folks would be CONSTANTLY looking for ways to level the playing field. In fact, you could make the case that magic would hasten the development of military technology, as non-mages would be desperate for a fair fight. History has shown many times that people generally advance out of necessity. If you have a sword and he has a sword, ok that's fine. But if you have a sword and he can shoot fireballs at you, it's time to hit the books and labs to see what we can do.

4) This is more directed at the video than the OP, but it ignores a couple major things. First, it makes a presumption that European civilization dominated the world due to gunpowder, when they didn't even invent it. Perhaps there is a cultural element there... like all that war they were doing. Second, it ignores all the other modern weapons that exist or could theoretically exist, that aren't in widespread use just because guns are so cheap and effective. It turns out war is an Optimizer. If they invent a ray gun they have to ask, does it kill faster, further, easier, and cheaper than a gun? If not, then keep making dem guns. If guns didn't exist, we would decidedly NOT be using swords in warfare in the 21st century. For crying out loud, the Byzantines had flame throwers in their boats. Don't you think people would perfect that? All you need is a pump system, and something sprayable and flammable. These technologies exist in most D&D worlds separately already.

[Regitnui]

No. It is possible that in some D&D worlds, etc. etc. but I don't think most DMs have peasants casting spells.
Of course, you can certainly do that in your setting, but that boils down to "if you move the Setting Dials in such a way that mass warcasters become possible, then mass warcasters become possible."

I didn't say you have every peasant casting spells. I said you have maybe 1 in 5-10 casting cantrips and a first-level spell. Is it possible in your average D&D world to teach the average person to cast basic spells? I don't propose we have John on the farm casting plant growth daily on the crops. I propose we have John conscripted into the army during war and taught fire bolt alongside where to aim the pointy end of a sword.

Not particularly relevant, since the point was that a weapon which appears worse in theorycrafting can be better in practice, due to logistical reasons.

But to answer the question anyway...I'd say gunpowder won out for several factors: your cavalry can use gunpowder pistols, morale effect of noise, you can use a firearm as a club, and of course it can penetrate plate.

Your cavalry can cast spells from horseback (at least, there aren't any rules against a wizard throwing spells while mounted), you can find louder noises than gunfire in basic cantrips (thunderclap), I'll give you the part about the club, but a staff is similar, and an attack cantrip (by RAW) can hurt someone in plate just as effectively as a gun.

How long does it take to train a crossbowman? "Why gunpowder won" isn't an answer to "why aren't enhanced crossbows an equal option".

[Tiadoppler]

Your cavalry can cast spells from horseback (at least, there aren't any rules against a wizard throwing spells while mounted), you can find louder noises than gunfire in basic cantrips (thunderclap), I'll give you the part about the club, but a staff is similar, and an attack cantrip (by RAW) can hurt someone in plate just as effectively as a gun.

How long does it take to train a crossbowman? "Why gunpowder won" isn't an answer to "why aren't enhanced crossbows an equal option".

A commoner (who isn't amazingly intelligent or charismatic) who is taught Fire Bolt or Eldritch Blast has a weak and very short range attack that requires a free hand for Somatic components. It's up to the DM how long it takes to teach a commoner a spell, but even a shortbow would be more effective than a weak cantrip as an enemy army approaches. If you have superior range, you can start attacking the enemy before they get close enough to hurt you at all. Defeating the enemy without being hit is a good thing, and Fire Bolt and Eldritch Blast have a base range of only 40 yards.

Crossbows are similar in training time to early muskets. Crossbows are bulky, and difficult to reload while seated. Gunpowder weapons are much less bulky, and cavalry could carry multiple single-shot pistols, firing one after another. I could definitely see wizards on horse-(or gryphon-)back supporting an army, but the truly high level wizards are rare and valuable.

The cantrip thunderclap can only be heard a hundred feet away. For hearing safety, you should be wearing ear protection if you're that close to a rifle. Rifles are easily audible for a mile or more (depending on terrain). Thunderclap does have a damaging close range magical effect, but the actual sound level seems more like a quiet shout.

I'll admit that the DMG guidelines for firearms are freakishly short-ranged, and using them as written wouldn't make combat spellcasting (or even the other standard D&D weapons) obsolete.

[War_lord]

How long does it take to train a crossbowman? "Why gunpowder won" isn't an answer to "why aren't enhanced crossbows an equal option".

Eh, yes it is an answer, to get a Crossbow with the same power behind it, you need a higher draw weight. A higher draw weight means more tension on the weapon, so it needs thicker wood and a heavier string. So they're very heavy. And at that point the string becomes for too taut to be pulled but a human hand and needs a special winding device. By the time you have a Crossbow with the penetrating power of an arquebus, you don't have an individual weapon, you have a small ballista. That's the hard limitation of a crossbow, the only way to really "enhance" it is to make it bigger, and a bigger crossbow is more complex and harder to wield.