Cousin Herman's ShortBus School of Magical Studies

[Beldar]

In most D&D worlds, the setting is medieval, which, among other things, comes with lots of minor nobility - counts, barons, dukes, earls, and so on.
Some of these will have the money to hire a court wizard. These may be of greater or lesser ability, depending on pricing & availability & to what extent the noble is hiring them for appearances rather than actual utility. In other words, you would have some fairly low-level wizards here & there serving as court wizards - it's a cushy safe job for the most part, & some would want a break from the stress of adventuring etc.

One more foundational factor is that nobility are absolutely notorious for nepotism - they hire their cousins, nephews & so on, regardless of ability, and they do so fairly often.
Frequently, these hired relations are more or less useless. That can cause stress & the desire that they'd be more useful.

That sets the stage.

Imagine a Cousin Herman. This is not any specific person, but the concept of a certain type of person. Somewhere, at some time, this kind of person (by whatever name) will have existed in a D&D setting.
One is enough.
Cousin Herman is your typical unimpressive relative of a noble, hired solely because he is a relative. He has no particular skills, talents, or achievements. But he has pride - he WANTS to be impressive.
And he imagines he can be impressive if only he was called a Court Wizard and actually had some magic to go with the job.
So he bugs his cousin the baron (or duke or whatever) for training.
He points out that the existing Court Wizard actually has some free time available - he mostly spends his time standing around looking impressive (some such would be hired merely to intimidate others by their presence alone not to try things, such as lying, in the Baron's presence).
But whatever the reason, and however busy the Court Wizard actually was, some such situations would result in the baron telling the Court Wizard to spend some time training Cousin Herman in whatever magic he can learn.

Poor Cousin Herman only has a 10 or 11 intelligence, but that's enough to learn cantrips or 1st level spells, which, over time, he does.
Now Cousin Herman is ecstatic - he can cast real spells, and loves to prove that by casting prestidigitation, mage hand and similar. The baron gains status for having TWO Court Wizards (and though one is pretty weak, most people don't know that).

These Prestidigitations actually prove useful from time to time, and Cousin Herman casts them freely - he doesn't hoard his regular spells like most wizards do (in case they get into combat, about which Herman is not worried since he's of noble blood and so he has the mindset that it is other people's job to protect him).

So the baron's food is often flavored with Prestidigitation, and his clothes are often cleaned by Prestidigitation. And the keys (or anything else you want to retrieve) that a small child tossed down the sewage pipe can be retrieved with Mage Hand (if they don't have that specific example, you still get the idea - something which rolled into a small hole works too) & a ring stolen by a raven and taken to its nest can be retrieved as well.

Cousin Herman has not become quite useful.

Aunt Zelda notices that. She is getting older & feeling less useful & wants to counteract that - to some degree at least. She does the same as Cousin Herman did - bug the count for training - and succeeds.
Now her life is better - she can have Unseen Servant do things for her (assuming she is int 11 or better), use mending on things she wants fixed right now (rather than waiting for a servant), get stuff off high shelves with mage hand, open stuck drawers with open/close, stick notes in convenient places with Stick (or hold cloth together without pins, while she completes her sewing), make pretty displays with Dancing Lights and maybe even Silent Image, etc.
Sure, she can do some of that other ways, or by having servants do it, but it feel empowering to get it immediately & to do more things herself again after age has stolen some of her ability to do so.

Other relatives notice, get jealous and want to improve their lives similarly.
So the Baron gets bugged some more.
So several of his relatives get trained. He may even have to hire another Court Wizard just to do the training. But he can afford that, and it makes his relatives stop hassling him, which is worth it to him.

At some point something will happen. It may be an assassination attempt or a coup. It may be an ogre charging his carriage from out of the woods as he travels to another town. It may be an attack by skeletons or zombies as he [asses by a village graveyard.
Whatever form it takes, There will be a dangerous situation. This is an opportunity for Cousin Herman. Say he blasts the zombie with Disrupt Undead, or scares off the ogre with Dancing Lights that look like Will 'o The Wisps, or foils the assassination attempt by using Daze, then Acid Splash to distract/delay the assassin until the guards come & finish him.

Whatever form it takes, the realization will hit the baron that these trained relatives - or others like them - can be useful to him in certain military or guard functions.
So he sets out to get more trained.

And, as always happens with nobles, there are those who want to imitate him - prominent merchants & similar will want some of their guards trained too.

And thus is born...

The ShortBus School of Magic

Assume that most magic schools are like modern universities - many people want to get in, for the benefits they perceive it will be to their lives, but the schools limit enrollment via entrance requirements (my nephew is applying to a medical school that, last year, had 10,000 applicants and accepted 184 of them, for example), and by high tuition.

The people they 'weed out' are the people the ShortBus school of magic, targets.

Assume that most magic colleges, in taking 'only those who can succeed' are taking those with 18's in their primary casting stat - for the best schools at least.
Some lesser schools take 17's and maybe even 16's.

They're missing an untapped resource.

People with 11's in the primary casting stat can still cast 1st level spells.
Many of those spells are quite useful.

Even 10 in a primary casting stat can still cast cantrips (a few in D&D & unlimited per day in Pathfinder, with a wider selection to boot.)

The ShortBus school would still administer entrance exams to make sure you have at least a 10 primary casting stat, but given that requirement is met, they'd accept all applicants, even the homeless & destitute, for the same reasons many militaries have accepted whomever wanted to join.

And stats of 12's and up are even better.

So the ShortBus school of magic, run by any enlightened kingdom near you, accepts them all.

Signing up is like signing up for a term in the modern military - you contractually commit to a certain term of service (usually a few years) during which time you will follow their rules and commands and accept their punishments for infractions. In exchange, you get room & board & pay, in the form of training. Maybe a little actual pay on top of that too (varying by kingdom).

The Magic Service, for which you sign up does many functions - fighting, guarding the walls, and, given the right spells, something like the Army Corps of Engineers.

Rank and file graduates are all 1st level wizards & so can all use light crossbows, slings, daggers and quarterstaves & so are equipped with these.

So, even without any magic, they can serve in exactly the same way and role as did the Roman Velites or Macedonian Peltasts - light armed troops not weighed down by armor (so moving fast) & acting in the missile-skirmishing role - go out ahead of the main body of troops, fire ranged weapons while the armies close, then retreat behind the front lines to leave the main fighting up to them (though they come out and shoot at the flanks once everyone is too busy to come kill them)

They have crossbows for the damage, and slings as backup, since you never run out of sling ammo (though what rocks you find may not all fly straight and true, even the worst ones will fly and go somewhere in the direction of the enemy).

That is a very useful role, even without any magic, add in magic and familiars and the scribe scroll feat and they become far more useful.

With familiars, scouting becomes easy (training for certain signals so the animals can communicate clearly about a couple things - such as training a bird familiar to peck the right square, on a shield covered by such squares, to indicate whether he saw open fields, a monster, troops, a source of water, etc - the 1st such animal trained may be difficult unless you have a druid available to Speak with Animals, even just once). And with Improved familiars (like fire or ice mephits), fighting takes on a whole new flavor - magic missiles, scorching rays etc, in those numbers, make a big difference.

With scrolls, you can save up what 'magical oopmh' you have. So instead of just casting Magic Missile once & then defaulting to your crossbow, you can cast two or more times. This gives flexibility too, since you can carry scrolls of spells that are only useful in certain situations.

Cantrips like disrupt undead, mage hand, prestidigitation, light, dancing lights, ghost sound, mending, message, open/close, stick, and others can be used in combat (dancing lights as a signal flare for instance) to some degree, and for general utility (Army Corps of Engineers types of stuff).

Most of the 1st level spells would be useful in battle - some more than others, such as Hail of Stone, Magic Missile, or Light of Lunia - but some would also be very useful as Army Corps of Engineers-types of things or in other ways.

A preliminary list of useful 1st level spells (leaving off most of the obvious combat spells):
Summon Monster 1 would be great for training - tell the summoned monster to stick to non-lethal damage and have combats among the unit for xp.
Mount would be great for surprise mobility - a whole unit of 'Velites' suddenly mounts up and moves much faster than expected.
Animate Rope, done rationally (more than 3 or so commands) would be insanely useful - basically a big long animated snake that can take things in its coils and bring them here or take them there.
Charged Object (from the Sorcery and Steam book) lets you store up blast-em power for later use.
Charm Person and Comprehend Languages would both be very useful in the diplomatic sphere, as is Friendly Face (Races of Destiny).
Create Bricks (from the Mythic Vistas-Testament book) is too useful for words. Not only can it crank out vast amounts of bricks for use in buildings, bridges, roads, sewers etc, but it makes them match your 'seed' brick. So make a few that look a bit like legos & now the bricks fasten together easily (though not snapping, since they're not flexible like plastic) - they could have dovetail or mortise-and-tenon joints on each end, and dowel-joints in top/bottom (holes in the bottom matching rods coming out of the top). It can also make pottery, tableware etc - anything made of clay that you declare a 'brick', including sling ammo.
Discern Bloodline (Races of Destiny) can be very useful in guarding the city gates & similar 'vetting' situations, as would Know Protection - vampires and werewolves & similar could be caught by such approaches.
Endure Elements is even useful - many times in history one army has surprised another and defeated it because it could move at times or through places that the enemy thought it could not move through. Think Washington crossing the Delaware river in a cold winter - it was unexpected because nobody attacked in winter. If you can attack in a blizzard or over a glacier or desert which was thought to be impassable, you have big advantages. If they don't know you can do it, you have surprise, and if they do, that knowledge forces them to guard against more possibilities and thus weaken their forces by spreading them out.
Similarly Feather Fall could enable, for instance, your Velites to pass by an impassable cliff for a surprise attack.
Eyes of the Avoral would tremendously help your scouts (see details for 10 miles, per the fluff text).
Float makes river transport very easy and enables recovery of sunken ships or anything else.
Grease and Glue can both be used for civil engineering (aka Army Corps of Engineers) types of applications, as well as impairing the enemy's movement.
Ghostly Tail (Races of the Dragon) is a very potent surprise your frontline troops could use - flanking these has been a primary military goal through the ages, but with this they can 'accidentally' leave themselves open in ways that will provoke attacks of opportunity, which this spell gives them as a touch attack for 2d6 & lasts for 1 hour (at 1st level caster). Having that up on all your frontline troops could multiply their effectiveness in most fights.
Guided Shot would make for devastating longest-ranged attacks, since it ignores distance penalties. Most armies did not shoot at max range for ammo-conservation reasons & so would be caught off-guard by a hail of accurate fire at max range, especially if you had a longer-than-usual max range (such as from Great Bows or Flight arrows).
Launch Item can be tremendous - imagine a unit of 100 Velites launching a flask of oil each (with 1 in 10 flasks being Alchemists fire instead, so they self-ignite and catch the rest on fire too) at an enemy 440' away.
Locate City would be occasionally useful, if the army is lost in a blizzard, or in unknown enemy territory, or for caravan guards to help guide the caravan.
Low-Light Vision could give you the ability to do effective night-attacks, whether from scouts/snipers, or on a whole unit of troops charging in.
Message could help coordinate night attacks & pass orders in a noisy battle & similar.
Obscuring Mist would be very useful in the same situations & for the same reasons that the army uses smoke - hide your advance or retreat.
Scholar's Touch is great for your Velites to educate themselves generally, allowing you to recruit uneducated hobos etc.
Silent Image is amazingly useful in combat for tricking the enemy about what units you have, where they are going, how they are armed etc. Sun Tzu said all war is deception. In Civil Engineering it is also useful for mass communication - think huge neon sign showing everybody some kind of announcement.
Tenser's floating disk can be used to aid in army Logistics as well as in civil engineering (like taking roof-repair supplies to the roof & such).
Unseen Servant is useful in as many ways as you can think of. Sure it can't fight, but it can dig foxholes & trenches, clean or repair equipment, cook food, carry things etc. And in Civil engineering roles it is unsurpassed. While it takes one farm worker multiple trips up and down a ladder to pick all the apples off a tree, for example, an Unseen Servant can do it without any such hindrance or delays. Used intelligently (ie, don't tell it to haul heavy loads), it can multiply the work you get done.

And 2nd level spells, if you get some Velites that high, can be far more useful.
Just one example:
Spider Climb is great for civil engineering operations - you don't need ladders, ropes etc to go do work on a roof, or recover someone stuck on a cliff face or down a well. It is also great for sieges - city walls are no obstacle when your troops can just walk right up them.

A unit of, say, 100 such Velites - graduates of the ShortBus school - even if they only have 11 Intelligence and have no other stats with bonuses to speak of, could easily, with the right leader and forethought, take out a unit of 100 fighters or similar (which is the kind of troops most other kingdoms will be training).

The simplest example would be the fighter unit being shot at, as it advances, by crossbows, then when it closes to 110 feet, being hit by 100 magic missiles. Even with maxed hit points and good constitution bonuses, 4 magic missiles will bring down a fighter, meaning a quarter of the enemy force simply drops dead. That's enough of a morale hit to stop most of the armies that have ever marched.
But if they keep coming, you do it again next round with scrolls and drop another quarter of them, totaling half.
And if you have Improved Familiars, then the mephits fire a third volley of magic missiles and leave only a quarter of the enemy's original force (if they do not have con bonuses, then you drop a third of them per volley and are now done in any case).

For the last 25% (assuming they have unbreakable morale somehow & so keep coming), you 'kite them' by firing with your crossbows and retreating on your ponies (which you bought for all casters instead of, and a lot cheaper than, armor). Or you have the mephits close in for breath-weapon attacks. Or simply disengage to fight another day, as you prefer.

And that's 1-on-1. These Velites are a lot more effective as support troops.
With some Velites and some normal heavy infantry, you can play a lot of tricks, like having the spots just in front of your front lines be sticky with the Glue spell (-2 to their attack among other things, which is significant at these levels and scales) and then, once the enemy is stuck, have your front line back up 5' and fight with reach weapons while the enemy stands there more or less unable to strike back.
That takes only about half your spells, so we can still fit in Silent Images, Hails of Stone to break up groups, Ghostly Tails for the troops guarding the flanks, and the like.

Then, here's the kicker.
We only need one Cousin Herman, somewhere, sometime, to start all this off. Once one baron gets to the point of having such Velites (graduates of the ShortBus school of magical studies), you get the same effect that the HMS Dreadnought had: the mere existence of such a unit makes the forces of anyone who doesn't do the same obsolete. They have to do similarly or fall behind.

And so the idea will spread like fire - everyone adjacent to the source will catch on, then everyone adjacent to them & so on.

And so most of the world will eventually end up with such magical training available (for Clerics and druids too, for similar reasons). It is, effectively, suicide not to, militarily.

And many folks would be willing & even eager to sign up for it - a few years military service in trade for life skills of such value is a bargain. Even the least imaginative, least ambitious graduate could, after his term in the army, easily support himself as, say, a janitor, by using Prestidigitation to clean, in minutes, what would have taken hours otherwise. At that rate, he could even hold down several janitor jobs - one per Prestidigitation spell he has and one more done manually. Evan at a janitors pay, holding 3-5 jobs at once gives a pretty good income.
And of course, they could do far far better than aiming for such low-end jobs.

[Goaty14]

TL;DR OP is saying that commoners with class levels, even with an 11 INT, are still useful... I'm a bit confused if this is supposed to spark a discussion about the capabilities of a bunch of low-level wizards (read: they're wizards, what did you expect?), but it kinda looks like the OP is overvaluing how well 1st level spells go.

All I can think of right now is about this

less of a guild and more of a collection of dilettantes who meet every Tuesday over lunch to discuss how "totally awesome" it would be to learn 2nd-level spells.

[Elkad]

It could work, if you completely ignore training costs.

Training a Wizard (and equipping him with a spellbook and such) isn't written down anywhere, but since they start older it presumably takes longer. Years longer.
And while a new character gets a spellbook for free, theoretically someone paid. For both the book and scribing all those cantrips and 1st level spells in it. 2200gp with just core stuff (19 L0, 3xL1)

Meanwhile a warrior needs some time sparring, and 75gp worth of gear.

[Blue Wizard]

In very real terms, the wealth and prosperity of a nation is determined largely by the quality of their tools.

What the OP is pointing out here, is that wizards, even at first level, have opened up to them a fantastic array of tools usable by them, and no one else.

Something like 55% of any random population, if stats got rolled on straight 3D6 with no modifiers, would have 10 or higher in any particular ability score. Or, as the OP points out, the ability to use cantrips if they had a level or so of the wizard class. 45% would have an 11 or higher, or the ability to use first level spells.

And yes, I agree with everything he said. Even at first level, even casting only cantrips, the utility of spells as tools would be so transformative that no one, on seeing it done elsewhere, could afford not to do the same.

Simple, basic tools like the seed drill and combination harvester have taken simple farming from the miserable, subsistence level of a medieval peasant and made it profitable to the extent people starting talking about "wealthy farmers" and meaning it literally!

And the magic available, even to first level wizards, has that kind of power. +5 to a single skill check? Well, since most of peasant life is their skill checks, and a +5 bonus is about all they could get without spending a feat, that one spell doubles the profit earned by those skill checks.

Just about every change that led up to the industrial revolution was less significant and important than doubling the spending cash of 45% of the population.

[Goaty14]

And yes, I agree with everything he said. Even at first level, even casting only cantrips, the utility of spells as tools would be so transformative that no one, on seeing it done elsewhere, could afford not to do the same.

No? Most cantrips can be easily copied in mundane means, most likely better than the cantrip.

Simple, basic tools like the seed drill and combination harvester have taken simple farming from the miserable, subsistence level of a medieval peasant and made it profitable to the extent people starting talking about "wealthy farmers" and meaning it literally!

Yes. Mundane advances in technology could certainly improve the lives of peasants. Dunno how that relates to magick tho.

And the magic available, even to first level wizards, has that kind of power. +5 to a single skill check? Well, since most of peasant life is their skill checks, and a +5 bonus is about all they could get without spending a feat, that one spell doubles the profit earned by those skill checks.

Which spell is this? The OP mentioned something that gives a bonus to a knowledge check, but one does not simply double profits by remembering stuff.

Just about every change that led up to the industrial revolution was less significant and important than doubling the spending cash of 45% of the population.

??? What's your point here? I'm a bit set off when you say "was" which implies some sort of a real-world magic revolution has already happened (spoiler: it didn't).

[Vizzerdrix]

So basicly retraining commoners to have the magical training feat? Sure! Heck, look up the commoner handbook for some other things they can be trained in.

Also don't forget craft alchemy becomes far more common. This opens up healing salve and antidote, acid, breath masks, eggshsll grenades, explosives, and best of all shapesand.

[Beldar]

Elkad
True, I had not considered spellbook costs.
But you're assuming I need each member to have each of these possible spells.
But we're not training these folks to be adventures with the ability to cover jack-of-all-trades types of needs.
In the army (real world), soldiers specialize. Some learn to spot for artillery, some learn to drive tanks, some cook, etc
It happens in other areas too. Where I take my car for service, they have full-on well-trained widely-capable mechanics, and they have "oil-cheange techs" who know only that one thing.
These Velites don't need huge spellbooks. Each only needs a couple for his specialty and a general attack spell or two (if they want more, they can pay for that themselves).
At half-price for copying from an existing spellbook (page 179 PHB), a 4-spell spellbook costs 200gp (50 per page, single page per cantrip or 1st level spell).
Crossbow, ammo, dagger, quarterstaff, sling, pony bring the total cost of the basic outfit to 269 gp.

A "heavy infantry" soldier, by contrast, varies a lot by equipment chosen, but costs in the same ballpark (250 for banded mail or 200 for breastplate, plus 15 for longsword and 20 for a shield).

Training time is unspecified. The only source I know of is in the Pathfinder Kingmaker setting, where it is basically a level per month of training. Even if it was 10 times that, this is in the realm of 'reasonable' - folks go to college for 4 years to 'get ahead in life', and a level of wizard will certainly do that (a lot better than a degree in art history, for example). And it isn't like we're facing any deadline here. People live for decades and will spend that somehow.

Vizzerdrix
Very close - we're training them to be first level wizards, though some will be magical trainers as well, so we can expand.
And yes - yes exactly, you and Blue Wizard get it - Magic is a tool (as is alchemy) that would find uses & spread & get more widely used. Just like the invention of the Steam Engine - folks find uses for it and, though it doesn't do anything that can't be done in other ways, it does it faster or better & eventually transforms society thereby, as magic would transform D&D society if you think about it.

I posted/offered this idea as an idea to spice up the setting, for anybody who was getting tired of it & wanted some spice. It can change any campaign setting (if you want it to/allow it) by having 1st level wizards (and other spellcasters too) be plentiful and army units made of them.

In such a setting, many things change. Where, in the plain vanilla setting a monster (say a giant or ogre) coming out of the woods stomps a village flat, taking out the few warriors willing to face it, in this setting such encounters get taken out (not a lot can stand up to 100 magic missiles - one from each Velite in your army unit). This leads to less chaos which leads to more prosperity, for one thing.

[JeenLeen]

One major benefit is that Magic Missile can't miss (barring the Shield spell or magic items that emulate it). Thus, a group of level 1 wizards could potentially one-shot a mid-to-high level adventurer--just need a group large enough to spam the spell.
A webcomic I read had a Thrallherd give his spellcasters Wands of Magic Missile and kill another PC. ('twas an evil campaign)

If you want to make the setting realistic, this would probably mean that Shield spells (also level 1) become more and more commonly prepared, or that simple magic item that protects from Magic Missile is a lot more valuable to an adventurer than it previously was.

On spellbook costs: you could probably wing some sort of logic about how wizards don't pay for their starting spells or spelled gains at level up, so maybe that means these wouldn't either. But, even ignoring that, I can see it being worth it to have a few cantrips (instead of all of them) and a couple level 1 spells. This might limit enrollment unless the government/noble can pay for the scribing. But maybe scribing those isn't too much more expensive than arming a soldier.

Alternatively, maybe the Spell Mastery feat could somehow factor in... though it saying you need to know the spells implies they're already in your spellbook.

[unseenmage]

...

On spellbook costs: you could probably wing some sort of logic about how wizards don't pay for their starting spells or spelled gains at level up, so maybe that means these wouldn't either. But, even ignoring that, I can see it being worth it to have a few cantrips (instead of all of them) and a couple level 1 spells. This might limit enrollment unless the government/noble can pay for the scribing. But maybe scribing those isn't too much more expensive than arming a soldier.

Alternatively, maybe the Spell Mastery feat could somehow factor in... though it saying you need to know the spells implies they're already in your spellbook.

Hmm, is there any RAW against sharing spellbooks?

[Fouredged Sword]

Hmm, is there any RAW against sharing spellbooks?

You can. It imposes a spellcraft check on any wizard who didn't scribe that spell themselves.

You also need access to the book for up to 15 minutes per day before you start casting.

[Beldar]

As far as sharing spellbooks - good idea., and here's a possible enhancement of it:

Page 178 PHB says

"To record an arcane spell in written form, a character uses complex notation that describes the magical forces involved in the spell. The notation constitutes a universal arcane language that wizards have discovered, not invented. The writer uses the same system no matter what her native language or culture. However, each character uses the system in her own way."

That "use it in their own way" is the crux of the whole "decipher it" thing. And since the opposite of "decipher" is cipher (aka encrypt), that suggests folks are encrypting their copies for security purposes - it says "many wizards jealously guard" their spells. (PHB page 179)

Ergo, it could be said (up to a DM of course) that the encryption is optional - that an organization intent on working together, such as an army, could either skip encrypting it, or all use the exact same encryption.

So, in such a case, sharing spellbooks gets a bunch easier. You'd still need a spellcraft check to prepare each spell, but you wouldn't need to decipher them.
And for advanced schools, they could help with those spellcraft checks.
DMG page 285 says that items that give Skill Bonuses cost the bonus squared, x 100 gp. So a +16 spellcraft item would cost 25,600, list price. Half that is you have the Court Wizard make it & so get it at cost. And then either magical architecture ala Stronghold builders guide, or a magical trap (both are the same price), gives a 75% discount. So a big monolithic table of Spellcraft +16 would end up costing 3200 - what you spend of outfitting a dozen soldiers (either magical Velites or heavy infantry).
That's doable.

And having such a monolithic table would skip past the need of having individual spellbooks for those Velites who'd be staying in town anyway (gate guards, wall guards, civil engineers etc) - they just go to the school when they need to prepare spells, and you keep one big spellbook at the school they could share. It could even be in the form of something like a big blackboard (with multiple sliding boards like at colleges) - where the whole class can read/study the current page at once.


Here's an idea - As I recall, wizards can prepare spells from scrolls (ie, memorize it as if from spellbook), and as long as they don't *cast* from the scroll, the spell stays there on the scroll.
Can anyone verify that?
I couldn't find it in a quick search though. I just found that if you copy it into your spellbook from a scroll, it gets erased from the scroll.

If memorizing from a scroll does not use up the scroll, the school could have a set of scrolls - not to be used for casting, but just for memorization. They'd be sort-of cheap, 1-page spellbooks that could be shared and re-used at need (and, in emergencies, cast from).

[JeenLeen]

As far as sharing spellbooks - good idea., and here's a possible enhancement of it:

Page 178 PHB says

"To record an arcane spell in written form, a character uses complex notation that describes the magical forces involved in the spell. The notation constitutes a universal arcane language that wizards have discovered, not invented. The writer uses the same system no matter what her native language or culture. However, each character uses the system in her own way."

That "use it in their own way" is the crux of the whole "decipher it" thing. And since the opposite of "decipher" is cipher (aka encrypt), that suggests folks are encrypting their copies for security purposes - it says "many wizards jealously guard" their spells. (PHB page 179)

Ergo, it could be said (up to a DM of course) that the encryption is optional - that an organization intent on working together, such as an army, could either skip encrypting it, or all use the exact same encryption.

I've generally taken the "uses the system in her own way" to mean that the spellcaster uses a notation system that is necessarily unique. That is, every spellcaster records their spells using slightly different notation, despite them all using the same underlying "universal arcane language." That is, while it does act as a cipher, that is not its purpose: its purpose is just to have some form the universal arcane language can be written in that the given spellcaster understands.

Thus, while another spellbook could be used for some purposes (as you noted), it can't really count as one's own spellbook.

[Fouredged Sword]

The idea of an enchanted table to give a large spellcraft bonus is good. Your soldiers can also use it in shifts, and you likely do not need such a steep bonus. Remeber, 4 ranks of the skill and at least a zero stat bonus, minimum roll of 1. You only need a +11 or so. I also see nothing preventing taking 10, so you can maybe even drop it down to +2 or so, VERY cheap.

With an auto roll of 10 and 4 ranks in spellcraft you can even get away with a "Army Standard Spellbook Cheat Sheet" +2 masterwork tool for 50gp you can have crafted with mundane crafting for 16-17 gp a piece. And your soldiers can use THOSE in shifts you you are really stingy.

See the read magic cantrip. It allows you to read another wizards spellbook and ALL wizards can prepare and cast this cantrip without a spellbook. Better yet, once this spell is used once you can forever read the specific things you read while under the effect.

All your soldiers go through a study period where they learn the "army standard" spellbook by casting read magic and reading all the pages 1 per minute for a day or so and can forever then automatically decipher it.

[Beldar]

Good idea - +2 from masterwork is a ton cheaper than +16 on a monolithic table, and will still get the job done.

[ericgrau]

Magical study takes a long time, especially with 10-11 int. Several years of room and board perhaps. And spellbooks are expensive. But... neither is prohibitive. The usefulness is plenty plausible.

OTOH PC classes are supposed to be uncommon because for some reason few people can grasp them at all. Even fighter levels. Your school might only produce a bunch of adepts, if that.

It actually takes prestidigitation a couple hours to clean a 1,000 square foot abode. But it's nice for smaller things that are hard to clean.

[Jack_Simth]

A number of sizeable assumptions in the OP....
1) That Wizards are, in fact, trainable in mass that way (and by extension, just about any other class).
2) That you can get Improved Familiars at 1st (turns out there's CL requirements on most of them...), but this is hardly central to the idea.
3) That you're going to get value out of the training (spellbooks are EXPENSIVE, and it has to come from somewhere).

Also something you're missing within those assumptions:
On a straight 3d6, "at least 11" has a 50% chance (see here and have fun playing with options). So there's a 50% chance that any given character will make a minimally-competent Wizard. However... there's ALSO a 50% chance that any given character will make a minimally-competent Cleric or Druid. There's ALSO a 50% chance that any given character will make a minimally competent Sorcerer. If you can train people into those classes, of course. As all three stats are generally independent (outside of point buy, which is for PC's and Major NPC's), this means that 7 out of 8 humans can make a minimally-competent caster (probabilities change for races with different mental ability scores). If you go with the "a 10 is OK" assumption, then it's 62.5% for each ability score, in which case, only 5.27... % of a human population cannot become a minimally competent caster... and middle age changes those numbers again.

[Lord Raziere]

It actually takes prestidigitation a couple hours to clean a 1,000 square foot abode. But it's nice for smaller things that are hard to clean.

Which wouldn't be worse than other things taking a couple hours to clean to be honest. Speaking as someone whose had to clean things like yards and such.

I do like this OP's analysis, I find it more plausible than some other ideas about how magic would spread, because this could reasonably happen and not break the game in any way. it changes the world in a logical reasonable manner but doesn't go crazy and up-ends everything into something completely different.

[Goaty14]

At half-price for copying from an existing spellbook (page 179 PHB), a 4-spell spellbook costs 200gp (50 per page, single page per cantrip or 1st level spell).
Crossbow, ammo, dagger, quarterstaff, sling, pony bring the total cost of the basic outfit to 269 gp.

Why half-price? Only the PCs are the ones who sell stuff at 1/2 price, not NPCs. Not to mention that you pointed out a total of 25 spells that could be used. A wizard's main strength is her ability to draw from a huge list of spells that fit her needs. If your wizards only ever know 4 at first level, you may as well try to make an army of sorcerers who know more spells, and cast more a day.

Also, RAW, wizards start with all cantrips except those from her banned school(s), whether you like it or not.

Training time is unspecified. The only source I know of is in the Pathfinder Kingmaker setting, where it is basically a level per month of training. Even if it was 10 times that, this is in the realm of 'reasonable' - folks go to college for 4 years to 'get ahead in life', and a level of wizard will certainly do that (a lot better than a degree in art history, for example). And it isn't like we're facing any deadline here. People live for decades and will spend that somehow.

The SRD states that it takes (at minimum for humans and half-orcs) 2d6 years after reach adulthood to become a 1st level wizard. Elves take 10d6 years to reach their level, so I wouldn't see your "armies" taking elves any time soon.

I do like this OP's analysis, I find it more plausible than some other ideas about how magic would spread, because this could reasonably happen and not break the game in any way. it changes the world in a logical reasonable manner but doesn't go crazy and up-ends everything into something completely different.

Sure, if you don't mind enlarging tier differences in your campaign world.

[Luccan]

I've been of the opinion for some time that all it takes is one well meaning wizard of sufficient influence (or one scheming Baron looking to empower his forces, in this case) for a fair percentage of the population to have magical training. It would take time, but eventually you could expect most people of average intelligence to have a basic grasp of at least cantrips. I've wanted to use a "post-popularization of magic" setting for a D20 game for a while and I basically imagine it developing the same way regular education did in our world: things like reading/writing spells go from a skill of scribes and priesthoods to including royalty and noblemen, then merchants and so on, until you reach more recent examples of education where a fair portion of the population can expect 14-16 years of education at least. Magic is a subject (or set of subjects, more likely) just like science, language, and mathematics.

Maybe it takes longer to train real wizards, but I'd rule that any place with sufficient magical education and a history of it (giving it a chance to develop better methods) pushes wizards out a few years earlier than average and everyone with a 10 or better Int knows a couple cantrips.

[Fouredged Sword]

That would be a really funnsetting potentially. Give everyone spellthief progression casting, likely in wizard casting format.

The assumption being that everyone is so exposed to magic that by 4th level you can cast spells more or less regardless of being focused on something like swordplay.

[mabriss lethe]

You've got options that can handle this pretty well without handing out wizard levels, and I think, especially in the case of dear ol' Cousin Herman, A combination of magic granting feats on an aristocrat NPC chassis would be better.

Magical training has already been mentioned and thematically is rather good. There are several SLA feats in complete arcane, each granting two 0 level and one 1st level spells 1/day. they're pretty limited, but they provide a good template for custom feats if you wanted to go that route. If you want to go further afield, Psionics gives you Hidden Talent, host feats, and bootstrap manifesting. The Devotion line of feats in Complete Champion give minor magic to devout worshipers, Tome of Magic gives feat based access to both the Binder's Vestiges and the Truenamer's Utterances. Magic of Incarnum gives us Shape soulmeld. There are Draconic auras, rituals, and the more supernaturally inclined Maneuvers that you can get from feats. I almost forgot, there are also the Ritual rules from UA (not to be confused with the ritual feats).

Your Academy of Magic Mediocrity could draw from some or all of the above, teaching whatever feats anyone can master/have an interest in. The instructors themselves would all probably be members of appropriate classes, maybe tenured, maybe hired on to simply add to the Academy's body of knowledge. Squads of NPCs could be made up of graduates from the different curricula, and would prove to be really, really nasty compared to mundane counterparts.

A handful of Warriors with an Adept backing them up is a minor encounter. The same number of NPCs with Warriors packing Death Devotion and overlapping draconic auras backed up by an adept with a good soulmeld is a whole different ballgame.

[Beldar]

For those of you who are interested, I found 2 resources on training time/requirements (Disregarding the 1d6 years from "minimum starting age" as imprecise at best - it does not refer to training time specifically & will have other components involved. Just as, in real life, the "average age for buying your fist house" has nothing to do with training, a little to do with maturity, and a lot to do with how long it takes you to get the income & savings you need, folks in a standard game will need time to save up their own tuition for magic colleges. That would be a factor, as would maturity - in real life we have minimum ages to vote and to drink & they have everything to do with waiting for folks to mature & very little to do with training. Magic college would be similar - you don't want to try to teach those who are not yet mature enough. So, with at least 3 factors involved, we don't have any direct way to guess how much of that 'minimum starting age' time the training factor took.)

Repeating in case you missed it - Cousin Herman's school is not training folks to be well-rounded wizards (it can, but that need not be its focus).
One training resource referred to "magical theory" and several other such things that Cousin Herman's training (which is entirely focused on practicalities) can skip. If you go to Cousin Herman's school & never learn how to, say, research new spells, or the requirements for higher-level spells, that's fine with the school. If you want to & feel able to, you can study that kind of thing on your own later.
It's the difference between studying to be a doctor (7 ish years so they can learn to handle anything) and studying to be a paramedic (a couple months to a year or so depending). Paramedics deal with certain kinds of trauma & a very few other things, so their reduced training is enough for their needs.
Cousin Herman's teaches a student a few specific cantrips (which ones vary by what their job will be in the military) and a couple specific first level spells & what's necessary in order to cast those & ONLY that (ok, scroll scribing too, but you get the idea).

Several have mentioned that the army would be more effective if it went instead with Sorcerors & Warlocks.
That's very true.
But this article was not looking at what's the most effective army we could make - rather we're looking at what, logically, would happen with what we have (what people would make of themselves, really).
And the big difference here is Bloodlines - sorcerors and warlocks need magic running in their blood. To get that (in army-sized volumes) you'd need generations of selective breeding & that's outside the scope of Cousin Herman's.
Similarly, I know of no way for folks to get feats except by training in the class levels that grant them.

The Cousin Herman's idea is neither about RAW nor RAI (Directly), but is rather trying an attempt to determine, by logic, what the situation would (or could) naturally grow into - what folks would do in such a setting to 'get ahead' - how the setting would look like if someone hit 'play', let it run, and thereby let cause and effect alter it instead of insisting it stay static as imagined by game designers who were busy with other aspects.

Anyway, on to the 2 sources I found on training.
First we have a very simplified, but more recent source. For the Pathfinder Kingmaker campaign, there is the Book of the River Nations, which, on page 23 says that arcane casters take only 2 weeks to train to 1st level (this rate is doable by the 2nd source too, though more difficult).

Clearly, that's on one end of the spectrum.
On the other end we have the very detailed, but far less compatible (since it is 1st edition D&D) second source - an article in Dragon Magazine number 123.
It is a *really* long article, but the gist is this:
New students come in to a wizard-college with negative xp (2000 of it) and train that off by study for the first 1000 & then by a combination of study and adventuring for the 2nd half, at which point they become 1st level.
If they have "private tutoring", they come in with only -1000 xp and can begin adventuring right away.
Study gives xp thus: 1d6*int score every month, plus some other bonuses. Easy-to achieve bonuses (like having the headmaster personally involved in teaching classes) give another 15 xp per month.
So, a 10-int Cousin Herman's student would get, on average, 50 xp per month & take 20 months of training before he could adventure for the rest of his xp needed to become first level.
That's doable, and a reality check from real life suggests a long list of real training situations that take about as long or longer.
And once he gets to the point where he can go 'adventuring' and fill out his remaining xp that way, you simply have past graduates cast Summon Monster 1, tell the summon to attack the new student non-lethally & "adventure' that way. CR1 vs CR1 gets 300 xp per encounter (DMG page 38). We're at more like CR 1/2 vs CR 1/2 & it doesn't cover that, but assume you get only 150 xp. Then halve that again for a non-lethal encounter. Even at that 75 xp, it'll take him 14 days, at one casting per day, to get the rest of the way to 1st level.
Learning things by defeating monsters doesn't hold up well, logically, but it's the foundation of the D&D system, so we'll leave it alone & simply accept that it works that way for some reason.

And that's the time (20 months, 14 days, for a dull student) for getting to be a full-featured wizard at 1st. Presumably our "Paramedic not doctor" forcus would speed it up a lot.

We could further speed it up by about 4 months by enchanting the classroom as magical architecture of Fox's Cunning (+4 int) for a price of: spell level * caster level *2000, then divided by 4 (magical architecture discount as discussed earlier), for a net price of 3000 (or 1500 if we made it ourselves) - about the price of equipping a squad of soldiers (any kind).

As for the idea that 1st level wizards get a spellbook with "all the cantrips" - you can't have it both ways. Either they are treated like PC"s and get all the cantrips in a free spellbook, or they are treated as NPC's and must buy a spellbook but can, logically (since the rules do not address it directly) buy only what they intend to use: a couple cantrips and a couple more 1st level spells. Which, made by duplicating an existing spellbook (the school's copy), is at half price per PHB page 179:

"Duplicating an existing spellbook uses the same procedure as replacing it, but the task is much easier. The time requirement and cost per page are halved"

Though, with that, I'm done trying to clarify what folks missed. I presented the idea for your use IF you find it useful. Use it or not as you like.
Thanks to those helpful folks who came up with refinements & useful ideas.

[unseenmage]

...

And the big difference here is Bloodlines - sorcerors and warlocks need magic running in their blood. To get that (in army-sized volumes) you'd need generations of selective breeding & that's outside the scope of Cousin Herman's.
Similarly, I know of no way for folks to get feats except by training in the class levels that grant them.

...

As far as bloodlines are concerned, Savage Species has a bit that allows one to gain subtypes via a ritual that uses the Wish spell. No reason it shouldn't be able to grant bloodlines too.
Though PaO could be able to as well. Just use it to turn yourself into a version. of you who has the bloodline.


For feats it's much more straightforward. There's a sidebar in Arms and Equipment Guide that let's you put feats in magic items. 10,000gp per feat plus 5,000gp per prerequisite.
Making them on the cheap as Wondrous Architecture helps with cost but is only convenient for certain feats, crafting feats for example.

Both of the above are probably too rich for Cousin Herman's but I figured I'd point them out.

[icefractal]

Sure, but why not Druids? No spellbook costs, full access to their list, and an animal companion could come in pretty handy. And if anyone reaches high enough level, earlier access to long-duration flight, which is pretty key militarily-speaking.

Or Clerics, but gods tend to have agendas. So do Druids, but theirs are more reliably accommodated.

[Andor13]

This thread boils down to "PC classes are better than NPC classes, and tier 1 classes are best." Yes? Duh? Obviously a society that turned it's entire citizenry into PCs would be superior one that did not if they could do it without bankrupting themselves during the transition. The PC vs NPC is a can of worms that occupies a grey zone between Gm fiat and cosmology, but let's ignore that. (Although it's worth noting that turning your whole populace into Adepts or Magewrights would also be pretty handy.)

Similarly, I know of no way for folks to get feats except by training in the class levels that grant them.

This is true, but I fail to see how it's relevant in a thread about giving everyone class levels. If your stated goal is to give everyone a touch of magic rather than a full class level, (especially in a Human society where you can use the bonus feat) then it makes just as much sense to posit a primary education system that cranks out Expert 1s with their choice of a [SLA/Hidden Talent/Soul Meld/Devotion] feat as not. For filling out Army ranks I'd just as soon have Experts (or Warriors (or Rangers!)) with a magic feat as a squishier Wizard.

Also, was I the only one to think of the 5 minute University?