I was referring to those places where the availability of food and water are quite scarce. Those spell might make a huge difference.
True, although it would make settling in those areas still undesireable, since they would be dependent on the spellcasters to survive. If spellcasters are plentiful, that's reasonable. Otherwise, not so much.
An enterprising spellcaster could make a killing selling their services in a little pop up stand in the desert, maybe using Light to attract people to them.
Also you would only need a couple casters per settlement to make a desert livable. People already live in the Sahara. Give one guy per tribe/village/whatever the ability to water bend and create water? That is huge. The whole life of those people changes for the better.
If that person can also predict the weather, and air bend a little, thus being able to help keep everyone safe from sandstorms, that person has a high place in the social order, and there is huge incentive to try to teach everyone in the group those spells, and identify all kids that can learn them, early.
Hi there, sorry if a month+ later counts as thread-o-mancy, but I just discovered this site and really enjoyed this thread. Plus, this is something our group went deep on way back in the ancient 80’s when UA 1 ed first rolled them out. LSS, the lowly cantrip created big power struggles at the source – the gods of both magic and the mundane in our campaign. And created a Mutually Assured Destruction dynamic that we applied even into Planescape days and beyond.
The basic concept we came up with was that the gods operated under a balance of powers agreement. With gods of magic, war, and destruction needing to balance with gods of nature, agriculture, trade, technology, etc. We bounced between Greyhawk, the FR, and eventually went wide in the Planescape days. But always kept this dynamic. It’s how we justified gunpowder never being “allowed” to properly evolve over thousands of years and other big suspended disbelief issues. Here’s how it applies to this thread –
When cantrips arrived suddenly on the scene, it was due to a subtle power shift to Mystra or whomever. The gods of the mundane then went to work undermining her magic free-wheeling approach to protect their spheres of influence. Eventually a détente was agreed to and enforced that stated magic was allowed to flow to the prime material as long as it was used primarily in wondrous and spontaneous ways. Not as a substitute for the laws of nature or other mundane spheres. So the rival gods allowed for high magic “moments”, but no systemic institutionalizing of magic as a tool. Create food and water for your adventuring party in the underdark occasionally? No probs. Open a soup nazi counter for regular commerce? You would roll for spell failure at an increasing rate of likelihood, eventually creating toxic soup or have wild magic moments. Halruuan airships had similar rules that made a few trips a year fairly reliable, but set up a metro bus service and those babies would all eventually Hindenburg away.
Some may think “cuz the gods said so” might be a cop out. Maybe. But in play it was always a lot of fun for the DM to provide omens to PCs and as background to NPCs that their unseen servants or risen zombies farming their fields might arouse the ire of the gods of the mundane spheres.
Hope this viewpoint adds, and maybe resurrects, this cool thread. Great topic guys!
If nobody has said yet, I recommend you to check the Dragon Age setting. Its premise its the same. Just a minority is able to use magic (and they are more like sorcerers in the way they can use magic), and so magic hasn't affected too much the way the world works (and there is also the fact that magic is stigmatized by the religious power... btw, clerics are powerless there).
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Time fades even legend...
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We do bones, motherf***ker!
Really enjoyed reading all of this! Congrats guys!
Hi there, sorry if a month+ later counts as thread-o-mancy, but I just discovered this site and really enjoyed this thread. Plus, this is something our group went deep on way back in the ancient 80’s when UA 1 ed first rolled them out. LSS, the lowly cantrip created big power struggles at the source – the gods of both magic and the mundane in our campaign. And created a Mutually Assured Destruction dynamic that we applied even into Planescape days and beyond.
The basic concept we came up with was that the gods operated under a balance of powers agreement. With gods of magic, war, and destruction needing to balance with gods of nature, agriculture, trade, technology, etc. We bounced between Greyhawk, the FR, and eventually went wide in the Planescape days. But always kept this dynamic. It’s how we justified gunpowder never being “allowed” to properly evolve over thousands of years and other big suspended disbelief issues. Here’s how it applies to this thread –
When cantrips arrived suddenly on the scene, it was due to a subtle power shift to Mystra or whomever. The gods of the mundane then went to work undermining her magic free-wheeling approach to protect their spheres of influence. Eventually a détente was agreed to and enforced that stated magic was allowed to flow to the prime material as long as it was used primarily in wondrous and spontaneous ways. Not as a substitute for the laws of nature or other mundane spheres. So the rival gods allowed for high magic “moments”, but no systemic institutionalizing of magic as a tool. Create food and water for your adventuring party in the underdark occasionally? No probs. Open a soup nazi counter for regular commerce? You would roll for spell failure at an increasing rate of likelihood, eventually creating toxic soup or have wild magic moments. Halruuan airships had similar rules that made a few trips a year fairly reliable, but set up a metro bus service and those babies would all eventually Hindenburg away.
Some may think “cuz the gods said so” might be a cop out. Maybe. But in play it was always a lot of fun for the DM to provide omens to PCs and as background to NPCs that their unseen servants or risen zombies farming their fields might arouse the ire of the gods of the mundane spheres.
Hope this viewpoint adds, and maybe resurrects, this cool thread. Great topic guys!
If nobody has said yet, I recommend you to check the Dragon Age setting. Its premise its the same. Just a minority is able to use magic (and they are more like sorcerers in the way they can use magic), and so magic hasn't affected too much the way the world works (and there is also the fact that magic is stigmatized by the religious power... btw, clerics are powerless there).
Time fades even legend...