Funny Events of the "Woke" world

[Ag3ma]

Tell me you don't know what happens in Halruaa, Thay, and Lantan without saying you don't know what happens in Halruaa, Thay, and Lantan. This is exactly what happens in Halruaa, Thay, and Lantan.

No, it really isn't. For a start, they are exceptions in the extent of magic use and unrepresentative of the continent as a whole.

Mass creation, export, and sale of scrolls, reagents, and magical items through its enclaves, expedited by teleportation, is a staple of the Thayan economy for god's sake.

Sure, people make good money selling Porsches and Ferraris, too. Doesn't mean they're common and everyone has one.

+1 magic weapons as uncommon items are literally on the loot table for tier 1 encounters.

Yet more bullshit. You mean the hoard loot. This is what you might get at the end of a tier 1 campaign/chapter for taking down a who street gang and plundering their base, not for randomly killing a few steet thugs in an encounter. And even in the hoard you've a fair chance of not getting one.

And this is it, really, isn't it? Your answer every time is to cherry pick the extreme and act like it's the norm.

 

[Eacaraxe]

That's some random's homebrew. Admittedly, yeah, it looks like a bad homebrew, but still

That's not some random's homebrew, that's the very homebrew that started this shit in the first place. It's what's specifically cited in the KYM page:

D&D Combat Wheelchair

D&D Combat Wheelchair refers to a homebrew wheelchair for use in Dungeons & Dragons campaigns (specifically for Dungeons & Dragons 5E) in an ef

knowyourmeme.com

On November 19th, 2019, Sara Thompson, aka @mustangsart, posted to Twitter[1] announcing a few exciting projects she had been working on, including a "combat wheelchair supplement for 5e." On July 6th, 2020, version 1.0 of the Combat Wheelchair rulebook was released.[2] On August 7th, version 2.0 was released and announced via a tweet, gaining over 14,000 likes and 4,400 retweets in a year. Version 2.1 was released on February 18th, 2021,[3] featuring an updated rulebook (announcement art shown below).

 

[Thaluikhain]

That's not some random's homebrew, that's the very homebrew that started this shit in the first place. It's what's specifically cited in the KYM page:

D&D Combat Wheelchair

D&D Combat Wheelchair refers to a homebrew wheelchair for use in Dungeons & Dragons campaigns (specifically for Dungeons & Dragons 5E) in an ef

knowyourmeme.com

Ah, ok, missed that bit. That particular wheelchair is way over powered, or perhaps under priced.

Or alternatively everyone should have them, and the game is Mad Max but with very small vehices.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

What do you understand "high magic" to mean? Because it D&D terms, it tends to refer to the overall prevalence of magic in society. The occasional intervention of deities and a handful of superpowerful NPC wizards does not tell us anything about the overall prevalence of magic.

Uh, it kinda does. It means magic is extremely common. Random townsfolk are highly likely to see magic in their day to day life. Like a necromancer trying to drain a whole city. Or indeed, tons of scrolls and minor magical conveniences in the homes of the middle classes.

For instance, one uber-mage might be able to make a volcano erupt, but it doesn't mean they operate as a magical artefact factory churning out magic lamps and +1 swords for the mass market - and indeed, such a mage would probably see that sort of task as well beneath them and a huge distraction from the important stuff. You don't tend to fight a random bunch of brigands or orc raiding party and find a ring of protection and magic sword in the loot. You go into dungeons and otherwise take on "special" NPCs to find this stuff because it isn't readily available from general stores or stealable from half the houses in every village in the land.

That was in fact how FR was before 5e. Eac wasn't kidding, Aurora runs a magic item shop that will teleprt goods from warehouses to storefronts all over the world.

Aurora's Emporium

Aurora's Emporium was a chain of curio shops located throughout Faerûn. The shops sold exotic items sourced from all over world.[4] Aurora was a former adventurer who travelled the Realms. After retirement she sought a way to stave off boredom, so she founded the first shop in Waterdeep. Demand...

forgottenrealms.fandom.com

FR is (or at least was) very much an exploration of how society would be if mages existed. So yeah, it might seem to be below them to make magic items when they can likely planeshift to the plane of earth and mine gold directly, but if a mage wanted to make an honest living, being a crafter makes a lot of sense, even if the majority of your products can only be bought by the middle class and up.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

Ah, ok, missed that bit. That particular wheelchair is way over powered, or perhaps under priced.

Or alternatively everyone should have them, and the game is Mad Max but with very small vehices.

But don't you see what that says about the degradation of modern society? Some people might release a sourcebook where dungeons have ramps!

 

[Eacaraxe]

No, it really isn't. For a start, they are exceptions in the extent of magic use and unrepresentative of the continent as a whole.

Of course we can add to that Silverymoon and Luruar as a whole, the former of which has an all-spellcaster militia in addition to its organized military forces, the all-spellcaster Spellguard and the Knights in Silver, which were equipped with magical arms and armor by standard issue and had a large number of eldritch knights, paladins, and arcane archers under its banner, who worked in tandem with wizards and (typically spellcaster) Harpers. And of course, Luruar had its Argent Legion and its martial-magical combined arms doctrines, and its teleportation circle network to act as force multiplier and logistic network.

Then of course we have Sembia, with its Silver Ravens and magical navy replete with ships' wizards in its merchant marine corps.

And there's the Purple Dragons of Cormyr, whose heavy cavalry was magically-fortified and war wizards were attached to every detachment, from border patrols to large-scale invasion or defensive forces. To the point the Purple Dragons didn't even bother with siege weapons, as their war wizards did the job more efficiently and practically.

Then, there's Amn and its Cowled Wizards, compared to which any conventional guard or armed force is merely formality, who formed not because of any rarity of magical ability but rather to preserve monopoly against its prevalence.

Oh, and Waterdeep, Waterdeep, Waterdeep. The city so rife with magic it's a popular tourist destination for dragons in human form, which had to implement traffic control and regulations for spelljammers, and its fire department is actually a organization of arcanists who are paid by the city to put out fires by summoning water elementals.

Exceptions, indeed.

Sure, people make good money selling Porsches and Ferraris, too. Doesn't mean they're common and everyone has one.

And here we go with the "common and mundane magical items don't exist" nonsense yet again.

And this is it, really, isn't it? Your answer every time is to cherry pick the extreme and act like it's the norm.

My answer every time is to point out the norm and act like it's the norm.

So yeah, it might seem to be below them to make magic items when they can likely planeshift to the plane of earth and mine gold directly, but if a mage wanted to make an honest living, being a crafter makes a lot of sense, even if the majority of your products can only be bought by the middle class and up.

By the way this is exactly why I keep bringing up Amn, Tethyr, Calimshan, and Zakhara because this is what actually happens. It's usually genies bringing mortals back to their home planes to do the work, but it is in fact what happens.

 

[Kae]

1) The other stuff already exists solution wise.

2) The people pushing for a combat wheelchair basically had it have 0 downside, so you could basically cancel out any challenge from a disabled character because magic indestructible wheelchair that works as well if not better than legs because you can get shot and hit in legs but the wheelchair can magically block and absorb blows.

3) an actual wheelchair accessible ramp is harder to build than a set of stairs. Years ago I was helping build a fence. There was a bit of a grassy slope down to where me and others were building it with the materials at the top of the slope. By day 2 the slope was becoming a mud slide and people were slipping and nearly getting injured. I took a shovel and with some broken bits of tile and slabs I spent about 15 to 20 minutes to dig out a set of steps in the side of the slope and use the broken tile and slab to sort of embed them into the steps. They basically lasted the whole rest of the job building the fence. Cutting rough steps out of stone would likely be easier than cutting a specific incline ramps out of said stone which due to the need to be a specific incline would likely need more space while the small spiral staircase of a tower? yeh not needing that much space.

4) The further counter the "Ramps are easier" argument. I've been in numerous buildings where the wheelchair accessible option rather than a ramp was an electric lift because it required less room for construction.

Counterpoint, the combat wheelchair is homebrew, not even in an official book, so who cares how they made it work or not work.

Second I work in a wheelchair accessible building, I'm aware the best solution is elevators, which I mean canonically exist in D&D, there are lots of dungeons with elevators that either work with mechanical technology or magic in the D&D canon, so it wouldn't even be out of place to have that, since lots of those same dungeons that already have these things are ancient and abandoned.

Also I meant ramps are easier to build than robot arms, which already canonically exist in D&D, prosthetic, fully automatic robot arms are so hard to build that they don't even exist IRL, but technology that even existed in medieval times is somehow unreasonable?

The only reason you are upset it's because you're involved in a silly culture war that makes no fucking sense at all, I bet that if it weren't for that you wouldn't even care unless you are like incredibly fucking stupid (Which I do believe you are), you would just take it as a quirk of a fantasy setting that already has wild stuff to help with all sorts of things, I mean I literally played a Dwarf with a robot arm that turned into a gun, a flamethrower and also a protective magic cannon, arm was also detachable and could walk on it's own, so really having accessible buildings isn't a stretch at all for the setting.

 

[Kae]

There are fucking tanks in Descent into Avernus, but a wheelchair accessible building and wheelchairs are too much, fucking nerds.

 

[Asita]

https://i.4pcdn.org/tg/1594519312524.pdf

It grants two tool proficiencies free, a free backpack that ignores encumbrance (not that anyone uses it), additional weapon and item slots, automated movement and remote control, three natural attacks including free bull rush/charge (thereby replicating a whole-ass feat), free dash, the ability to ignore difficult terrain (a permanent effect equivalent to a 4th level spell), advantage against bull rush and trip attacks, limited levitation regardless, and resistance to damage well above that of iron, adamantine, platinum, titanium, and even diamond golems. Without even requiring attunement, or going into the "upgrades" which straight-up replicate mid-level class features, feats, and spells at practically zero cost.

That is far in excess of merely compensating for lack of mobility. That is a fucking artifact, my dude. It doles out more goodies than Blackrazor without any corresponding drawbacks. You wanna talk about how a flying broom is actually overpowered, all along, while giving this Tumblr-quality piece of work a pass? That's the bullshit, not my reminding everyone solutions to these issues are already baked into the game.

Said proficiencies being the very niche "Land Vehicles" and "Tinker's Tools" and meant to reflect necessary familiarity with the usage and maintenance of the item, the ability to ignore difficult terrain is shared by the broom, the upshot of damage resistance just functionally translates to 'you aren't going to be de-facto removed from combat and derail the session because an enemy got a lucky hit on your mount'. The upshot f it is simply that for the purposes of combat, the enemy will not be treated as targeting your mount. And you want to talk about replicating a feat? About effects equivalent to a 4th level spell? Limited Levitation? Again: 9TH LEVEL overland flight! Every day. Easily available at level 1-4, by your count. No spell slot, no skill, no class restrictions, "without even requiring attunement". You just get that daily.

Now, do I think the wheelchair as described has issues? Yes. As you say, the version you cited does too much and is way too cheap. But I do call bullshit on the double standard in citing the broom as a more balanced, cheaply available level 1-4 alternative to a wheelchair when it's an open secret that 1) easy access to flight is a gamechanger (arguably one of the most powerful abilities in the game) that the GM needs to rebalance the entire campaign around and 2) the cost/rarity balance of magic items is nonsensical with little in the way of internal consistency (or apparent design philosophy), and with flying items being particularly good at illustrating the problem.

For fuck's sake, whereas the Broom of Flying is only uncommon rarity and costs 400 gold, a single use potion of flying is very rare and costs a whopping 50,000 gold for a lifetime total of one hour of flight time at your walking speed. There is no way that happens in a world where Winged Boots are much more common (uncommon rarity), much cheaper (400 gold) and gives you the same function for four hours per day. Hence why you see projects like "Sane Item Prices" pop up, and things like Pathfinder which peg a Fly potion as a third level potion costing 750 gold while the Broom of Flying as a CL9 item is bumped up to 17,000 gold, which goes a long way towards explaining why broomsticks haven't monopolized the travel market.

 

[Elijin]

What I'm largely hearing is that inclusiveness is fine, so long as it's not mentioned. Because god forbid you point out a setting is inclusive, because then all the pitchforks will come out, with cries of "ruining our hobby" and "driving us out" and "back in my day the minorities knew their pla... oop we aren't meant to say that one out loud"

 

[Absent]

"back in my day the minorities knew their pla... oop we aren't meant to say that one out loud"

Yet this one is the most important, because the area where inclusiveness becomes real bad is the realm of power fantasies.

 

[Ag3ma]

Uh, it kinda does. It means magic is extremely common. Random townsfolk are highly likely to see magic in their day to day life. Like a necromancer trying to drain a whole city. Or indeed, tons of scrolls and minor magical conveniences in the homes of the middle classes.

Sure, and yet to read the Iliad is to see the gods constantly fiddling with the affairs of mankind, there's the odd prophecy, nymph, etc., one hero is immune except for his foot, yet nary a Greek or Trojan can even cast produce flame.

High magic would conventionally represent magic perhaps similar to the way we have technology - mages are very common and it's an everyday occurence, like magic items routinely being household items or facilities. At the low magic end you'd have something like the Iliad or Tolkein's LoTR era Middle Earth. There are a handful of wizards and other demigod types, some of the really powerful elves, and after that there's basically no magic except maybe a few odds and sods that can be discovered or gifted.

Most fantasy RPG exists in the middle. The vast majority of the population should see a wizard occasionally, can procure healing from a priest, occasionally may use consumables like potions, scrolls, etc. but to all intents and purposes have no regular interaction with it. It is, if you like, a "luxury": easily available to the elites, and then through decreasing availability for the middle classes to the peasantry who will basically never own a magic (non-consumable) item. I would argue this is part of the rationale of the "dungeon" in the first place: to find items of power, not just pop into the local general store to buy them. Hence my point about Porsches and Ferraris. These are around, if you're rich enough you can definitely buy one, but they simply aren't everyday, mass available devices.

I hesitate to go into D&D economics because it's inconsistent and a mess, but as a general rule a +1 magic sword would be be several hundred gps (if it can even be bought) and given the sorts of pay suggested for various professions, that's potentially years of dedicated saving for a skilled craftsperson and over a decade for a peasant.

 

[TheMysteriousGX]

What I'm largely hearing is that inclusiveness is fine, so long as it's not mentioned. Because god forbid you point out a setting is inclusive, because then all the pitchforks will come out, with cries of "ruining our hobby" and "driving us out" and "back in my day the minorities knew their pla... oop we aren't meant to say that one out loud"

There's a small town in Florida that was in the middle of a food desert because their only grocery store shut down. The city council did an experimental thing where they bought the building and started running a wildly successful non-profit store in it's place. Despite it providing a public service, being affordable due to lack of profit motive, providing jobs, and generally being very popular, they have to beg journalists to avoid calling it a socialist grocery store

The wrong nomenclature could kill it dead

 

[crimson5pheonix]

Sure, and yet to read the Iliad is to see the gods constantly fiddling with the affairs of mankind, there's the odd prophecy, nymph, etc., one hero is immune except for his foot, yet nary a Greek or Trojan can even cast produce flame.

Yet that is part of what D&D defines as a high magic vs low magic setting. Even in the most practical of instances, a world with a ton of clerics means death is a gold cost, but in a low magic setting, you can't pay to raise a dead comrade because literally nobody knows the spell. Gods intervening usually gives your party some magic advantage or your enemy a magic advantage of their own. The world having more mages does impact both the players and the world as a whole and determine what is or isn't high magic.

High magic would conventionally represent magic perhaps similar to the way we have technology - mages are very common and it's an everyday occurence, like magic items routinely being household items or facilities. At the low magic end you'd have something like the Iliad or Tolkein's LoTR era Middle Earth. There are a handful of wizards and other demigod types, some of the really powerful elves, and after that there's basically no magic except maybe a few odds and sods that can be discovered or gifted.

Most fantasy RPG exists in the middle. The vast majority of the population should see a wizard occasionally, can procure healing from a priest, occasionally may use consumables like potions, scrolls, etc. but to all intents and purposes have no regular interaction with it. It is, if you like, a "luxury": easily available to the elites, and then through decreasing availability for the middle classes to the peasantry who will basically never own a magic (non-consumable) item. I would argue this is part of the rationale of the "dungeon" in the first place: to find items of power, not just pop into the local general store to buy them. Hence my point about Porsches and Ferraris. These are around, if you're rich enough you can definitely buy one, but they simply aren't everyday, mass available devices.

I've been trying very hard not to go into setting comparisons because when we start comparing FR to other standard D&D settings, the only one I can say definitively as being of higher magic is Planescape. If we step down we go to Dragonlance, which assuredly has a fair amount of magic going on, but it's far tamer than FR. We go a step below that and we get to Greyhawk, where a 5th level cleric would be a worldwide celebrity saint and a +3 sword would be a weapon of legend. We go below that and we're in Darksun where mages are killed on sight. Other settings waver here and there, Eberron is up there with FR due to the commonplace magic items, but lacks the density of mages and free magic in society that FR has, Ravenloft could be said to be high magic too, but due to literally everything being cursed. Spelljammer is too variable to say, you definitely have a centerpiece magic item in the spelljammer itself, but then you can roll up on any plane and be subject to the magic rating of that plane. But in any case, the vast majority of published D&D settings are lower magic than FR, and there's only one I would say is definitively higher magic.

I hesitate to go into D&D economics because it's inconsistent and a mess, but as a general rule a +1 magic sword would be be several hundred gps (if it can even be bought) and given the sorts of pay suggested for various professions, that's potentially years of dedicated saving for a skilled craftsperson and over a decade for a peasant.

Take it up with Ed Greenwood, he's the one who put magical magic item delivery services into his setting. It's up to you to reconcile how that works out with the average earnings of a peasant. The money scaling goes back to Greyhawk which again, has +3 weapons being things of legend. There's been a general creep in the magic of D&D over the editions, and part of that has come with changes in the default setting. The jump to FR has, as Eac did correctly say, caused a written "nerfing" to the magic of FR because prior to 5e, it was certainly in the high magic category. In 3.x most people would probably have said Dragonlance was the standard level of magic you would expect in a D&D world, and before that Greyhawk was the official setting. So now we're in a wonky place where we're told FR in all it's magic silliness is a baseline mid-magic campaign world despite all evidence to the contrary.

 

[Trunkage]

What I'm largely hearing is that inclusiveness is fine, so long as it's not mentioned. Because god forbid you point out a setting is inclusive, because then all the pitchforks will come out, with cries of "ruining our hobby" and "driving us out" and "back in my day the minorities knew their pla... oop we aren't meant to say that one out loud"

Setting?

This happens in real life too. It's not exclusive to 'settings'

 

[Eacaraxe]

High magic would conventionally represent magic perhaps similar to the way we have technology - mages are very common and it's an everyday occurence, like magic items routinely being household items or facilities.

Which is -- I reiterate -- exactly where and how Forgotten Realms actually is. You're the one who keeps acting as if mundane and common magical items simply don't exist, and focusing exclusively on martial shit you know damn well are the minority of all magical items to exist in a game or a universe.

At the low magic end you'd have something like the Iliad or Tolkein's LoTR era Middle Earth. There are a handful of wizards and other demigod types, some of the really powerful elves, and after that there's basically no magic except maybe a few odds and sods that can be discovered or gifted.

Tell me you don't actually know how magic works in Middle-Earth without saying you don't actually know how magic works in Middle-Earth. The "magic" to which you're referring is only one form of it, and not the most prevalent or impactful by a wide margin to the point it's not even comparable.

Hint: genuinely-spoken oaths and curses in Tolkien's legendarium are every bit as magical and powerful as Gandalf's flaming pine cones, and they are far more widely-used and powerful (even inadvertently) if not more subtle. You would do well to yourself to re-read LotR with that in mind, as to who said what to and of whom, and to what end.

...the peasantry who will basically never own a magic (non-consumable) item...

It's a little early for the goalposts to migrate south for the winter.

...the ability to ignore difficult terrain is shared by the broom...

Yes, at the disadvantage of being potentially knocked off it and taking falling damage, plus that of whatever may have caused the difficult terrain in the first place. Something that stupid chair does not have, and in fact resists.

...the upshot of damage resistance just functionally translates to 'you aren't going to be de-facto removed from combat and derail the session because an enemy got a lucky hit on your mount'. The upshot f it is simply that for the purposes of combat, the enemy will not be treated as targeting your mount. And you want to talk about replicating a feat?

Yeah let's talk about replicating a feat. That's a second feat the chair obviates, thanks for reminding me!

About effects equivalent to a 4th level spell? Limited Levitation? Again: 9TH LEVEL overland flight! Every day. Easily available at level 1-4, by your count. No spell slot, no skill, no class restrictions, "without even requiring attunement". You just get that daily.

Hey, remember when I mentioned Phantom Steed? You sure seem to have forgot I mentioned Phantom Steed. It's only a third-level spell that provides unlimited movement twice that of the broom, provided it can be ritual cast (and you can ritual cast a spell on horseback). You'd have done a better job arguing about that than a 5th (not 9th) level spell that's not even in 5e. Something you might have noticed in your anger, that you couldn't even be arsed to link to a D&D 3.5 SRD and instead went for Pathfinder 1st edition.

You want to be taken seriously about this when you can't even get the game we're talking about right?

...when it's an open secret that 1) easy access to flight is a gamechanger (arguably one of the most powerful abilities in the game)...

Yes, it is powerful. No, it is not a game changer. Flight is one of the most common abilities in the entire damn game, as evidenced by the sheer number of PC races which can do it innately at 1st level, and it's on the DM to account for it from the onset.

...that the GM needs to rebalance the entire campaign around...

See earlier commentary about shitty DM's. DM's not knowing how to account for flight, and inadvertently design unviable campaigns and encounters, isn't a "me" problem.

Maybe if they'd spent half as much time reading and internalizing rules and settings, as they did virtue signaling on social media...

...The money scaling goes back to Greyhawk which again, has +3 weapons being things of legend. There's been a general creep in the magic of D&D over the editions, and part of that has come with changes in the default setting...

Honestly I blame 3rd edition, which tried to standardize prices in accordance to caster and spell levels opposed to tailor cost to effect and utility. Case in point, those magical soaps with baked-in Cleanse/Prestidigitation effects that cleaned anything washed with them regardless what dirtied it or how dirty it was, which in past editions sold for a silver or two and were available in any adventuring market, but under 5e rules would go for 25-100gp apiece and "had" to be special ordered.

Then there was that infinite soap bar, and that magical candle that never burned down and only snuffed with a command word, too. You know, because someone specified non-consumable magic items. Those were only like a couple gold because regardless of being magic, they had trivial effects absent real adventuring utility and basically just replicated a cantrip.

And, there was that magical scroll and document case that behaved identically to handy haversack and protected its contents from the elements. It was only like 5gp due to how limited its utility was, but again, under new editions' rules it would cost the same as a full common item. Meanwhile, in 5e instead of common magical items with genuine utility like that, we get...the cloak of billowing. For some reason.

...caused a written "nerfing" to the magic of FR because prior to 5e...

Which, I'll add, only happened because the morons at WotC implemented bounded accuracy without the first clue how to balance it with magical items. So, they just calculated CR assuming PC's had no magic items (level comparability be damned), with a "baseline low-magic setting" default, and then to cover for their own incompetence retconned Toril to be a lower-magic setting than it actually is, which their own later publications contradict.

Reading some of these modules published in 5th edition really shows off how big a joke that is. Hell, one of the first encounters in SKT allows for a good- or neutral-aligned arcane PC to adopt a tressym.

 

[Ag3ma]

Take it up with Ed Greenwood, he's the one who put magical magic item delivery services into his setting.

I'm not sure why you seem to think that piece of trivia matters.

Aurora's shop is not Amazon: a colossal, world-striding, multinational with greater revenue that some decent-sized countries' GDP that services any household in any land it operates. Back in the medieval era, those rich enough could order stuff from distant providers, too. It is perfectly reasonable to imagine that in a world with magical travel, someone uses that to provide goods. What it is emphatically not, is the standard way of doing things most people experience.

In the Player's Handbook and DM Guide, both explicitly make reference to the fact that practitioners of magic should be considered rare (e.g. Player Handbook p. 8): most people will witness magic in some form, but it is something out of the ordinary, and they do not generally own magic items unless they are substantially wealthy. Forgotten Realms is standard. Vanilla, basic, whatever you want to call it, cleaving to the D&D basic assumptions. It's literally there in the text of the DM Guide. Therefore, all those statements on the rarity of magic users, magic items etc. in the Player's Handbook and DM Guide apply to Forgotten Realms.

I'm going to have to borrow an internet source here because I don't own the book so I'm taking it on trust but it quotes the 3e Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting book as saying:

"Wielders of arcane magic—also known as the Art—are rare in most Heartlands societies. No more than one person in a hundred or so is likely to have any ability as a wizard or sorcerer." (Whether that figure means just the potential to be a spellcaster or an actual spellcasters is unclear, but implicitly I might suspect the former.)

"Magic is not technology. Wizards and clerics do not manufacture levitating elevators or mass-produce magic portals for simple convenience or crude commerce... Nearly all Faerûnians, no matter how humble, have seen minor magic gimmicks at some point in their lives. Fewer actually own such treasures, but it's not unheard of for well-off merchants or low nobles to save their money for minor trinkets such as a pot that can make itself hot, or a broom that can sweep itself."

So that appears to be the general stretch of magic in Faerun even at 3e: even the minor nobility have to save for a basic household magical item. Peasants might see a wizard perform in a travelling show. That is our baseline.

What you will get as commented by Eacaraxe is that there will be pockets within the whole setting that vary enormously, just like our own world does. Silicon Valley has an unusually high concentration of tech firms, especially ones at a high level, but you can't then claim Silicon Valley as representative of the IT industry density across the whole of the West. So there will be cities and even realms within Faerun where the number of wizards greatly exceeds the norm, such a city with a college of magic, or some other place which fosters magical development in its people. But these are unusual pockets.

 

[crimson5pheonix]

I'm not sure why you seem to think that piece of trivia matters.

Because lower magic settings don't have an equivalent? I don't remember such a thing in Dragonlance and I know there isn't one in Greyhawk or Darksun. I don't even think a teleporting goods store exists in Eberron (though if it did I also wouldn't be surprised). This is one of those things that paints FR as a high magic setting, one of many things.

In the Player's Handbook and DM Guide, both explicitly make reference to the fact that practitioners of magic should be considered rare (e.g. Player Handbook p. 8): most people will witness magic in some form, but it is something out of the ordinary, and they do not generally own magic items unless they are substantially wealthy. Forgotten Realms is standard. Vanilla, basic, whatever you want to call it, cleaving to the D&D basic assumptions. It's literally there in the text of the DM Guide. Therefore, all those statements on the rarity of magic users, magic items etc. in the Player's Handbook and DM Guide apply to Forgotten Realms.

As I said at the start of this, that's the convention of 5e specifically which threw me off. Previous to 5e...

I'm going to have to borrow an internet source here because I don't own the book so I'm taking it on trust but it quotes the Forgotten Realms Campaign Setting book as saying:

"Wielders of arcane magic—also known as the Art—are rare in most Heartlands societies. No more than one person in a hundred or so is likely to have any ability as a wizard or sorcerer." (Whether that figure means just the potential to be a spellcaster or an actual spellcasters is unclear, but implicitly I might suspect the former.)

"Magic is not technology. Wizards and clerics do not manufacture levitating elevators or mass-produce magic portals for simple convenience or crude commerce... Nearly all Faerûnians, no matter how humble, have seen minor magic gimmicks at some point in their lives. Fewer actually own such treasures, but it's not unheard of for well-off merchants or low nobles to save their money for minor trinkets such as a pot that can make itself hot, or a broom that can sweep itself."

So that appears to be the general stretch of magic in Faerun even at 3e: even the minor nobility have to save for a basic household magical item. Peasants might see a wizard perform in a travelling show. That is our baseline.

What you will get as commented by Eacaraxe is that there will be pockets within the whole setting that vary enormously, just like our own world does. Silicon Valley has an unusually high concentration of tech firms, especially ones at a high level, but you can't then claim Silicon Valley as representative of the IT industry density across the whole of the West. So there will be cities and even realms within Faerun where the number of wizards greatly exceeds the norm, such a city with a college of magic, or some other place which fosters magical development in its people. But these are unusual pockets.

Well, not quite.



This is from one of the older campaign settings, I expect you found a link to 5e's version, or maybe 4e post spellplague. FR was well and truly the premier high magic setting of D&D. It's what you turned to when you wanted your party to be loaded with +5 swords of Whatever Bane and fought world ending threat after world ending threat.

 

[Eacaraxe]

Aurora's shop is not Amazon: a colossal, world-striding, multinational with greater revenue that some decent-sized countries' GDP that services any household in any land it operates.

Yes, it absolutely is: Aurora's has outlets in every major city, magical warehouses replete with their own demiplanes for housing merchandise, and they're all connected via a teleportation circle network. Even where there aren't outlets, adventuring gear shops often have Aurora's catalogs -- and those catalogs are themselves magical as they update themselves with available stock and prices in real time, and act as teleportation beacons for employees to send purchased goods straight to that shop. Users can command them to open themselves to the very section they want to browse! Aurora's even guarantees two- to three-day (or same-day with an additional surcharge) delivery.

Hell, Aurora's is even inter-planar and inter-planetary as her business extends to the Feywild, Shadowfell, at least the elemental planes of fire and earth, good-aligned outer planes (and Avernus if memory serves), Selune, and (if I remember right) Karpri. Aurora's does business in Sigil, technically making it a multi-universal business.

That's not just specialty gear, either. Those soaps, candles, and scroll cases I mentioned? They're from Aurora's.

"Wielders of arcane magic—also known as the Art—are rare in most Heartlands societies. No more than one person in a hundred or so is likely to have any ability as a wizard or sorcerer." (Whether that figure means just the potential to be a spellcaster or an actual spellcasters is unclear, but implicitly I might suspect the former.)

It, just as the same as with martials, means to have adventuring levels. Hence the reference to "wizard" and "sorcerer". Not every city guard is a fighter, not every clergy is a cleric, and not every reghed or rashemi is a barbarian. The rules are no different here, which also means people are entirely capable of learning cantrips without adventuring levels -- without accounting for races with innate spellcasting.

What you will get as commented by Eacaraxe is that there will be pockets within the whole setting that vary enormously, just like our own world does. Silicon Valley has an unusually high concentration of tech firms, especially ones at a high level, but you can't then claim Silicon Valley as representative of the IT industry density across the whole of the West. So there will be cities and even realms within Faerun where the number of wizards greatly exceeds the norm, such a city with a college of magic, or some other place which fosters magical development in its people. But these are unusual pockets.

Funny how these "unusual pockets" vastly outnumber the "usual everywhere else".

 

[Thaluikhain]

Er, it looks like this is not going to be resolved, I might suggest dropping it.