Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 zombiegleemax Jul 17, 2004 6:00:54	The claims I intend to argue in this document are the following: 1) The D&D magic system (3.5, but also as far back as the original basic set) is nonsensical and leads to contradictions. Fantasy worlds built on it are not believable. 2) It has no basis in fantasy literature, and in fact the fantasy literature reveals the flaws inherent in the D&D magic system. Why do I say the D&D magic system is nonsensical and leads to contradictions? Just by looking at what it entails for the campaign world. Let's start with clerics with cure spells. Why should any serf or peasant remain sick or wounded? Clerics get their spells each day, and they cost nothing (at least most of them, like cure wounds, remove disease, etc.). If the cleric doesn't cast it, it is gone at the end of the day anyhow. Combine this with the Lawful Good alignment, and the cleric has to use his powers. The farmer's lad fell from a tree and broke his leg? Off to the clerics, and good as new in 1 round (plus the time to get there and back). In a large enough city, even lost limbs can be restored (by regenerate). Now, the only way to limit this is to say that there aren't enough clerics (or enough LG clerics) to go around. This seems to imply a low-magic world (unlike most campaigns), but that only solves part of the problem. Now, the 3.5 rules 'solve' the issue by charging 10 gold per spell level times the caster level. This makes perfect sense as a cost for the PCs to make, balance-wise. But it makes no sense in the campaign. Why would a LG cleric charge the PCs? He has the spell, free to use, anyhow (or he'll take it tomorrow if it isn't a cure spell). Does he have the spell and offer it to the highest bidder? Seems not completely LG to me. Perhaps he charges the PCs because he knows they can pay (and he needs money to finance himself, the temple, etc.)? In this case, he wouldn't charge penniless peasants. So when the PCs are broke, they should also get free healing. The end result is the ridiculous situation where the common man has virtually no fear of injury or illness. Except perhaps for sudden death or loss of limb, since raise dead DOES cost quite a lot (and thus has its own quirks - do the clerics explain how they don't have enough funds to raise everyone, so they only raise those who can pay? I hear basically the same thing from my HMO), and regenerate is high-level so finding a suitable cleric might take time. About the time it takes to travel to the nearest large city. An entire book could be written about the problems with arcane magic, so let's stick to the divine stuff. So are we all to play in worlds where the common man is cured of his wounds and his illnesses? That is more fantastic than a world in which dragons exist. A major societal change like removing disease and injury is FAR more a stretch of my imagination than ogres or manticores. It isn't even the magic itself which is a problem, rather it is the effect of magic. How can you design a plot that makes sense? PCs: "Why does Harry hate Roger?" "Roger beat up Harry, breaking his arm. Harry lost his livelihood as a farmer, and sank into despair and loneliness, eventually . . ." "Umm, Mr. DM, why didn't he just go to the clerics to be healed?" "Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Ok, Harry got healed, and lived happily ever after. Now, I'll just make up an adventure on the spot for tonight . . ." Normal plotlines just don't work. Moving away from curing, how about a murder mystery? GM says, "The victim was apparently strangulated, found clutching at his bruised throat." "I cast detect poison and detect magic." GM says, "Ok, you see that he has been poisoned." "I cast detect evil on all his acquaintances while my friends interrogate them." GM says, "Ok, you see that two of them are evil." "Great, I cast detect thoughts as the interrogation continues, while one of my friends casts discern lies," etc. etc. etc. Okay, let's move on to my second point. D&D is obviously indebted to the fantasy literature, so how is this resolved there? First, I suggest we ignore the official D&D books in print. Many suffer from various logical problems (a small minority are actually very good, but let's not go there). I suggest we examine the better sources of fantasy literature the 20th century had to offer. An obvious place to start is with Tolkien. Solution: magic is very rare, and even Gandalf doesn't seem to actually use it except for once or twice (aside from lighting his staff, which really isn't much). Magic is simply nowhere near as ubiquitous it is in the D&D magic system. And while Tolkien fans can argue about various issues with his work, I hope we could mostly agree that although magic exists in Middle Earth, it remains very believable, logical, and enjoyable. Going farther back, in Howard's Conan (and other) works, magic appears in nearly every tale. But it is always mysterious, and never a part of normal life. In this, Howard presents a world similar to how it was perceived by people in our world's past - magic is real, and vastly powerful, but not common. Most people only whisper about it. Again, none of the problems as with the D&D magic system. Why do we have the current D&D magic system? My guess is this: when the original basic set was in work, the need arose for a wizard character that would be fun to play. The only goal was to get 4-5 characters into a dungeon so they could have some fun. Rules were made up that allowed that: several spells per day, at no cost, that could do astounding things. In a typical game the fighter hacks a lot, the thief hides, and the wizard fires away a few spells per day. I think plenty of people like me had a lot of fun dungeoneering under those rules. But those rules were good for that purpose only: taken outside the dungeon, they cause the problems mentioned above. Good writers of fantasy did NOT fall into such traps, because they DID consider the 'big picture' of the fantasy world.
#2 zombiegleemax Jul 29, 2004 8:44:41	Forgetting it’s a low magic world, let's look at your cleric analogy in the first claim of your argument against D&D magic. Even if every cleric only sticks to healing spells and heals every single peasant that comes to the stoop of their church, they is no way they could heal everyone. Most churches are not made up of many members. Just as an example, lets take the Catholic church during the 15th and 16th centuries as opposed to the rest of the population as a good comparison (because, even though Protestants are beginning to form in the 16th century, the Catholic church is wide spread in the Western Society). Now, this statistic could be arguable, but the population was well into the millions during this time period, probably ~60 million in Europe alone. The structure of the Catholic church is little changed, it has a Pope (the president) and the Cardinals (the cabinet, or supreme council), then it has Arch-Bishops in charge of large metropolitan areas and Bishops in charge of diocese, and then there are the priests. Priests cannot do everything a bishop can (like confer holy orders (recruit new members) or confirm members in their faith). Priests head up parishes that usually consist of several hundred members and may have the assistance of junior priests (more common in modern times). Bishops are generally over areas with tens to hundreds of thousands of people, Arch-Bishops even more so, the Cardinals and the Pope are a select few only and oversee the entire church. So, assuming all 60 million people in this model are Roman Catholic (or part of the Catholic). Assuming there is one member of the clergy per 300 people, there are only 20 thousand members of the clergy. Now, this is a very exaggerated number and there was probably far less than this. Of that 20 thousand, 600 are bishops, 30 are Archbishops, 12 are Cardinals and 1 is the Pope. I use this breakdown to show that not everyone is really comparable of casting the hire level spells in the church hierarchy, especially since most priests are not adventurous (and probably not leveled above 1st or 2nd at the most). Assuming all priests are at least 1st level clerics, with a high wisdom score and the healing domain - they most spells the majority of the church could cast in one day is 3 healing spells a day. This means if more than 3 people in a parish injure themselves in one day, the priests cannot cope with all 60 million people effectively to eliminate all injuries. Further still, to remove diseases, this requires 5th level clerics. Most people cannot go to the local perish to have this done, even assuming a few perishes in a dense area of population have a priest that is 5th level or higher that can cure disease, there is no realistic way that a a spreading disease could effectively be managed or contained by a church of 20 thousand in a population of 60 million. Inevitably what I am saying is that what you define as 'low-magic' is actual closer to the norm for a given campaign. Not everyone has a higher density of clerics compared to other classes/professions. Even in a world were they could have enough spell slots to cure everyone of ever minor infliction they received, would every cleric do this? Most likely not, first they would probably reserve such things for members of their perish only (and, based on circumstances, for members of the same faith away from their home perish). Likewise, using every spell slot for curing wounds and removing diseases and blindness would mean they can use their divine powers for nothing else whatsoever - like blessing crops, homes, marriages, performing divine rights, sanctification of holy areas, and everything else the church should be doing. Making them into fantasy hospitals is devaluing the development of a church organization all together. As for your second point, your arguing that D&D literature is inherently filled with fallacies of logic. However, these books continue to sell and be read. Where am I going with this? If you don't like D&D magic, play another game. Find another system with a realistic system of magic that you believe to play, don't argue against D&D magic if you don't like it.
#3 zombiegleemax Aug 13, 2004 16:57:28	It's unfortunate that I can't access www.enworld.org Theres a thread there that goes through the issues (starting from information IN THE CORE BOOKS) you raise and explains them. Why should any serf or peasant remain sick or wounded? There aren't enough clerics to go around. There aren't enough clerics with Cure Disease. And a quirk--broken bones apparently cannot be healed with positive energy. See the Regenerate spell description. Broken bones are listed as one of the things that Regenerate can cure. 2) It has no basis in fantasy literature, and in fact the fantasy literature reveals the flaws inherent in the D&D magic system. It does have a basis in fantasy. Just not in most fantasy literature. It's called the Vancian system.
#4 jarlaxle_the_rogue_dup Aug 18, 2004 14:57:16	Clerics aren’t everywhere. Further more, casting such spells is taxing on their god. Their church might demand the people to pay. Also have you ever heard the expression "Time is money" There aren’t enough clerics in the world to counteract the number of people hurt. Not everyone has access to spells like discern lies and such. And I find that the existence of magic allows for even better plot hooks and such. You know magical gates and evil wizards kidnapping people for experimentation!
#5 ormiss Aug 22, 2004 17:12:43	2) It has no basis in fantasy literature, and in fact the fantasy literature reveals the flaws inherent in the D&D magic system. Although I think that the comparisons you make to fantasy literature are irrelevant, I would like to contest this claim. Jack Vance's "The Dying Earth", which is a collection of short stories from the 1940s, was quite clearly the literary basis of the D&D system of memorization system. As far as I can recall, there was even a spell called Prismatic Spray used in the stories. However, I agree that the D&D magic system is lacking. Vance's system was one of the early attempts to make a science out of magic, and for that purpose I think it is an admirable attempt. (You could draw parallels to the fact that modern fantasy more or less grew out of science-fiction, but I digress.) The fact is that, in our time, D&D's magic does not lend itself as well to roleplaying and story-building as it does to game mechanics. Of course, this is why I tend to favor home-made roleplaying systems to D&D, but also why when I do play D&D, I alter the system according to my needs. Like all things in Dungeons and Dragons, the basic rules exist as a stepping stone for people who have no desire to make their own rules. Why would a LG cleric charge the PCs? He has the spell, free to use, anyhow (or he'll take it tomorrow if it isn't a cure spell). Does he have the spell and offer it to the highest bidder? Seems not completely LG to me. Perhaps he charges the PCs because he knows they can pay (and he needs money to finance himself, the temple, etc.)? In this case, he wouldn't charge penniless peasants. So when the PCs are broke, they should also get free healing. The end result is the ridiculous situation where the common man has virtually no fear of injury or illness. While I agree with your basic point; that the commonness of magic makes this world very different from ours, I don't see it as a problem that cannot be fixed with some explanatory setting warping. Firstly, it does seem logical to me for a lawful character to charge people for healing. Although he would not deny a person healing because of his inability to pay "up front," I would assume that the poor sod would eventually cough up the money. I'm not American, but I had some (positive) experience with the American health care system recently. Compare that to the church where you go for healing. Why do you need to pay, unless these people are neutral or evil? No fear of injury or illness? In our world, we have modern medicine, which I would argue is, in some ways, equal to magical healing in fantasy worlds. However, people still die of disease, people still get hit by cars and die, etc... Sometimes there's just no one around to cast that cure light wounds on you, and although a lot of DMs have level 34 sorcerers running around these days, thanks to experience inflation (particularly in 3rd edition) it was not the intention of original D&D to have high level characters running around all over the place. Remember, an elite soldier might be level 2. In comparison--and let's forget about Forgotten Realms for a moment--a high priest might be level 3 or 4. A farmer might be able to locate a level 9 cleric walking around, but there are probably 100,000 people for every level 9 person in an average fantasy world. Who gets healed/resurrected first? All of this depends on the level of available magic in your campaign setting, but there's nothing in the rules of D&D that say you need to have people running around casting true resurrection all over the place. You are fully in charge of when and where magic, divine or arcane, is available. But yes, clerics, wizards and sorcerers are massively overpowered compared to the other classes.
#6 zombiegleemax Sep 03, 2004 2:13:28	That's all very fine and good, but, you are also assuming 2 things in your argument about the peasants: 1) All priests are willing to help the sick and dying. Are there no evil gods? The truly violent and cruel gods (Erythnul and Nerull come to mind) send clerics to poison wells, slit throats, spread contagions and all other forms of cruelty. 2) Secondly, you must remember that the priests and other spellcasters are considered to be somewhat exceptional. For every approximately 100 average joe commoners, you might have 1 exceptional character. Then you would have to presume he chose to take levels in cleric rather than say, fighter, or wizard. Then, you have to assume that the cleric in question is a friendly cleric. If he should happen to be evil, then you might have a lot of very hurt peasants soon. Also, keep in mind that wizards and sorcerers are supposed to be somewhat rare. I can understand how one could say that magic is supposed to be rarely seen and is an awe inspiring thing. That is a very true point. However, how could you take away someone's freedom of choice and say "you can not be a wizard, sorcerer, druid, or cleric". Why not remove all the spellcasting classes? Just a world of fighters and rogues and barbarians. Because to be fantasy, things have to be fantastic! Magic and dragons and flaming swords are the meat and potatoes of fantasy literature, and all the novelizations of the Dungeons and Dragons worlds are just that: truly fantastic.
#7 krichaiushii Sep 14, 2004 21:36:08	Give credit where it is due. Jack Vance was a good writer of fantasy, and his magic system was adopted from his Dying Earth series for use in D&D. Both in the limited amount of spells memorized per day, and in the more elaborate spell names that can be found in the PHB, of which Rary's Mnemonic Enhancer and Mordenkainen's Lucubration are perhaps the best examples. If you check the venerable 1st edition AD&D DMG, you will find a recommended reading list (anyone care to post it?) that sums up the original literary influences for the original game.
#8 hamham Sep 17, 2004 12:46:05	In the DMG, the example they give has one 3rd level cleric and two 1st levels for a hamlet of 200 people. A 3rd level cleric with the Healing domain and a decent Wis has 11 healing spells. The 1st levels both have 6. And there's also an Adept who can cast about 5. That's more than enough healing to deal with just about any life threatening injuries that may occur in one day.
#9 zombiegleemax Sep 30, 2004 16:12:14	First, I apologize for forgetting about Vance. I never read any of his books, so I don't know how things work there (my only knowledge of him is seeing his name pop up now and then in newsgroups). Perhaps everything makes sense in his novels, I can't say. But in the vast majority of fantasy literature, the magic system is so-called 'low-magic' (I think). Aside from that, the most common response to my initial post seems to be that 'there aren't enough clerics to go around'. There is something to this, in that no-one is free from worry (the worry being 'that not too many other people are hurt today'). However, even by the DMG numbers quoted by HamHam, he is right in saying that there are enough clerics to deal with serious injuries. One cleric per 100 people? That's just fine for events that occur in one out of 100 people per day (i.e. have a probability of 1/100 each day). So even a few clerics to go around markedly alter the world. And they alter it in regards to the serious, life-threatening issues. So skinned knees remain common, but being near-impaled by a pitchfork gets cured. Still very problematic in my opinion. In addition, this just makes the rare clerics have great value. So a PC cleric can arrive in a town, and make tons of money for his services. In other words, if 'there aren't enough clerics to go around', and the PC has one cure disease, regenerate, cure serious wounds, etc. a day to spare, he may as well sell it for a high price. NPCs should flock to a PC cleric when he reaches their hamlet which only has one permanent priest, because suddenly there is double the healing to go around. If the PC is LG, he will possibly also heal them for free, to boot. Again, very problematic. Compare this to a fighter: say a 5th level fighter enters town. He makes far less of an impact than a 5th level cleric. And all of this just addresses clerics and their healing spells. How about other issues raised in my post? Even if spellcasters are fairly rare, they are a problem, since the rich and powerful (dukes, etc.) can have one. They can then avail themselves of detect poison, detect evil, detect magic, locate object, etc. etc., making plots very hard to set up. I see no solution to this.
#10 zombiegleemax Oct 08, 2004 11:08:46	I see your points, and they're good ones, but I also agree with the rebuttals. The solution is to work logically through the differences that the use of magic implies in the world-scape and accommodate the changes that need to be made, and *then* build your plot on *that*, instead of working a real-world-based plot and then trying to force it on a very different world, and getting mad because it doesn't work. See also: Round peg, square hole. eudas
#11 aerynsun Oct 17, 2004 23:02:52	Great post, and I generally agree. My party and I have had issues with this for a long time, and we recently switched to a SWRPG campaign for a lot of these reasons. Star Wars is at least internally consistent in that you basically know what Jedi can do, their abilities are limited (compared to D&D magic), and they are astonishingly rare. As for why people buy and read the books, I think that is largely because they don't correlate very much with the rules. The settings and plots the authors devise are great and cool, and they also don't generally run anything like a normal D&D adventure. The party members care about dying (PCs in most campaigns, especially at mid-level, don't), disease and harm are serious threats, and so on. Look at the Dragonlance series or the Drizzt books.
#12 zombiegleemax Nov 13, 2004 16:42:54	One simple expedient is lowering the frequency of spellcasters. In the real world priests do their job just fine without any magic at all; a particular setting can work the same way. In my campaigns most priests aren't 'clerics', they're either commoners with Skill Focus (Profession: Priest) and Skill Focus (Knowledge: Religion) or they're experts. Higher level priests tend to be expert/aristocrats. The number of priests with the Cleric class (i.e. people actually capable of performing miracles) can be as high or low as you like. Even very simple spells can totally reform medieval society if common. Create food and water can replace a huge chunk of the economy in agrarian societies, and the legislative consequences of even one Commune spell are unthinkable. The general solution is to just make casters rare unless you want a high magic world. Either that or campaign specific reasons why spellcasters stay out of the economy. -Stephen
#13 zombiegleemax Nov 24, 2004 12:47:08	I handle things very much like sgingell. "True" clerics are even more rare than the DMG states. Most are Experts or commoners, with a few aristocrats in the mix. Depending on their God, they might have lots of ranks in healing, but no spells. High level true casters are likewise even rarer. I find this makes it even more interesting for the party, when entering an unfamiliar community. Though there are twenty priests at the local temple, which, if any are true casters? This becomes even more difficult to determine in a non-structured setting, or with an evil cleric in the midst of a community. As for the detect alignment spells, they don't work on your average peasant planning a murder. And those that they will work on, often realize this fact, and will take magical steps to hide themselves from such spells. Same goes for detect poison spells. Sometimes these things work, sometimes they are expected and planned around. It's sometimes hard to convey the lack of true casters in a setting, when half of your party are just such casters, but it can be done, and your players eventually get the idea. This also means that a cleric of a lawful good deity who walks into a village will not be immediately surrounded by injured peasants begging a free healing. The peasants have no overriding belief that this cleric is necessarily any different than their town priest, who already examined the wound and prayed for a quick and safe healing, while bandaging and applying a poultice. Should the party cleric demonstrate his healing abilities, he may well be mobbed by peasants. I consider this a rightful perk of the class, since he is special and must follow a code to keep these powers. BUT, "with great power comes great responsibility" yada yada, etc. That great responsibility often includes more important things than sticking around a little town as its divine hospital. Sure it's great PR, but if the BBEG shows up and he's depleted of power, he will have failed his party at a crucial moment. Ah the moral dilemmas. All the same points above hold true for arcane casters in most areas of my world, with the added speed bump that arcane casters are often judged evil before opening their mouths. I've got that whole Priest/Wizard enmity thing going on. As one last side note, I have a special house-rule in my game that only clerics of the "Mistress" (my campaign's goddess of healing) and paladin's dedicated to her, get healing spells of 4th level and higher. I mention this last, since it is a house-rule and isn't necessary to support my points above. It's just that little extra nudge that keeps magical healing from running rampant in my world.
#14 zombiegleemax Nov 24, 2004 18:32:33	This thread has a very misleading title. It's beef isn't with the Vancian magic system (Which some people have mentioned Jack Vance's novel inspiring D&D Magic), but with the silly tables presented in the DMG, which would have you believe that EVERY city with a sizable amount of people in it has enough clerics to heal everyone, and enough wizards to make entire troops out of them in an army, which is baloney. I ignore those tables, and most people with sense do as well.
#15 ozzymandias Nov 25, 2004 2:24:00	Never before have I encountered something in these message boards that encompasses the true scope of humanity's ability to create such massive institutions through the interaction of just a few individuals. Just a few small, low-level spells can create such a drastic change in the world in which we live. Shame that it doesn't absolutely have to be that way. The real issue here, I believe, and feel free to tell me I'm wrong, is that the game world, the fantasy world, is built around the rules. If we were to model the rules around the world, we'd have to define the world first. The amount of labor that goes into such a task is oft-times more than a simple GM can handle on his own. (As an example, I've been working on the same world for the past ten years, and I still don't know what the heck is going on!) Thus, for most players of the game, they need a set of structured rules that their GM can use to start the creation of the world. In the case of these message boards, I'd say that for most of us that rule set is D&D, 3.5. To elaborate and simplify, we're talking about clerical magic. How is it that, since so many of the healing spells don't actually use up any real resources, there is still hardship and pain and suffering and death? First, not that many clerics. This was mentioned, and I'd like to clarify: 1 in 100 is an exceptional character (use the 4d6 method from the PHB for stats). This individual now has access to 12 base classes, four of which get access to heal spells. Of those four, one is extremely restrictive (the Paladin class is based more on an institution than a 'class-type' and really only appears in game worlds where such an institution exists), one is extremely limited (Bards don't get much in the way of healing magic) and one is extremely anti-social (Druids have a 'way' about them, due to their religion). Therefore, it's reasonable to assume that out of 100 people, we'll have one exceptional character. Out of one exceptional character, we'll have one cleric. But it gets worse. Since there's three parts to the moral-alignment axis, we must conclude that half the clerics in the world can cast cure spells spontaneously. So now our numbers look like this: about 1 in 2400 in a cleric capable of casting cure spells with enough rapidity to actually make a difference for the common man. Not that bad, really. But consider external factors now. How many wars are being fought in this world? What about attacks by monsters? Orcs and goblins and owlbears, oh my! But wait! There's more! We must also consider where this clerical power comes from. In the books the source of a cleric's spells and other awesome powers is left mostly undefined. Sure, we know it comes from the gods, but are the gods limited or unlimited? That's something that the GM must define, and if we just decide to say that gods are limited, say, by the number of devout followers they have (more followers equates to a more powerful god), then we have a perfectly logical reason to justify a lack of 'free-cure-care.' Indeed, this can be applied to all the spells a cleric has access to, thus reducing the overall affect such magic has on a continuing game.
#16 tallforadwarf Nov 25, 2004 5:34:24	This reminds me of something that cropped up (if you'll excuse the pun) in our game not so long ago. A Druid-esque PC was absolutely furious when the local ruler (a very wise dude) refused to let him use his magic to boost the crop yield. The ruler knew his people had a lot to rebuild before the harvest and not enough manpower to go out and bring in all the crops the PC was promising. If the PC had gone ahead with his plan, the original harvest and the super harvest would both have been lost, and the grain houses and all the people's homes would not yet be built. Everyone would be starving and homeless during the winter. The same situation could occur with clerics and their healing. During a period of plague, for example, everyone cured by the cleric would go out and get reinfected unless the cleric's church was on hand to help organize the population and help out with the essential labour. Of course, summoned outsiders could always help out. Angels working the fields, Pit Fiends fetching from the well, anyone? :D In summary, magic is not the answer to all of a fantasy world's population's problems. There's a lot it can't do by itself. Peace, tfad
#17 zombiegleemax Nov 25, 2004 14:11:45	A lot of the responses to this thread have given spurious examples of how many clerics might or might not be available in a town, with the intent of proving that their aren't enough healing spells to go around. Fortunately, the DMG gives a perfect opportunity to work out exactly how many healing spells are going to be available in each sized community. A large town of about 3500 people, will, on average, have one sixth level cleric, two third levels, and four first levels. Expecting a wisdom of 12 per cleric, this gives the town: 25 x 0 level 18 x 1 level 5 x 2 level 2 x 3 level clerical spells per day! But wait, there is more! Don't forget, it is not the clerics who bear the brunt of healing the masses... that falls to the Adepts! Again, according to the game balance assumed by the DMG, there will be an equal number of adepts in the town, giving access to another pool of healing. Live on one of the outlying farms? Not to worry, there are just as many druids living around the town as there are clerics in it! Don't really like the whole going to church to get healed thing? Just the thing for you ...go to a bard! They can cast healing spontaneously, and it isn't even divine! And, once again, there are just as many of them as there are Clerics! So now, I the one community of 3 500 people, we have 4 sixth level casters, eight third level casters, and no less than sixteen first level casters. Not including any paladins who happen to be passing through. Now I am not going to sit down and add all the healing spells up, but how many towns really need 28 individuals who can return a wounded man from deaths door to being able to walk out at a touch (or two)? Fairly clearly, the whole divine healing thing doesn't balance out to a world as we can easily interpret it. Injury and illness are not going to be a factor! Even if you assume that 1/3 of all clerics are evil, there is still too much healing going free!
#18 wibble Nov 26, 2004 8:36:10	Charging for the use of spells to overcome these single traumatic events is not so different to charging to protect a merchant caravan from attack or to steal (or "find") a magic item needed to save or greatly enhance someone's life. It would be nice for the person who needs it if they didn't have to pay, but charging for services can hardly be considered unusual or particularly contrary to good behaviour (I concede some exceptions for groups who would be quite conditioned to promoting some form of altruistic behaviour, such as clerics of a good healing god). I would think a setting in which large groups of people routinely help other groups just because they can, and can afford to do so because they in turn get what they need from others for free, would be a setting at least as fantastic and hard to play in as one in which everyone is free from illness and injury; but I'd kind'a like to play in such a setting to see how it goes! As for other uses of magic; again it is not hard for a DM to populate the world with ordinary people in familiar situations, in which magic is just another tool for individuals to achieve their ends. How useful a tool it is will depend on a whole range of easily controllable factors. We have great forensic science and lie detectors, but many crimes are still a mystery (maybe our science is not as fool proof as magic, but it is probably much more routinely used in investigating crime in our world than magic is in a "typical" D&D world- because we have better organised law enforcement agencies). Many crimes will remain a mystery in D&D worlds as long as these worlds have smart and resourceful criminals with a knowledge of the most common investigative techniques and how to avoid them. This seems easy enough for a DM to ensure, as well as believable enough, and it is hardly contradictory to the D&D fantasy settings I have read about. I believe magic in D&D simply enables certain individuals (most importantly PCs) to achieve astounding things. The nature of the whole rest of the world, as set up by the DM and laid out in the core rule books (including magic), is influenced by so many factors, that it is hard to see magic as an unduly distorting force.
#19 davereaves Nov 26, 2004 18:02:22	I can see your point, and it is quite valid. Why would a cleric of Pelor refuse to cure a man's disease just because he could not pay, knowing his family will suffer from his loss? I will have to agree however, that there are just not enough clerics to go around. As PaladinKD said, the majority of clerics (sitting in the church of Pelor, Ehlonna, Cuthbert, or any of the other good gods) are not "Clerics", as in the class described on page 30 of the PHB. They are clerics, they teach the word of the deity. They show compassion for the injured, but have little way of helping beyond some feeble healing skill. They give sermons, but can only tell you to eat boiled honey and goat milk to get rid of your cold. There may be one Cleric in the whole temple that has been given the gift of spell casting by his deity, and he has probably gone adventuring to spread the word to others. As for the arcane, wizards are an iatrical part of many of the worlds. If you would like to see something a little more along the lines of a D&D wizard, look at Merlin of King Arthur fame. He had quite the array of spells (in the cartoon version he even had quite the battle with a witch involving more polymorphing than you can shake a stick at.) Being able to cast these spells is a quite powerful and mystical, but I think it can be helped game wise by proper role playing. If a wizard comes into town and starts casting spell after spell (especially something useful like minding or prestidigitation) then there are going to be peasants around him begging him to fix their wagon tongues or flavor their gruel, until he gets tired of it and escapes into a secluded castle or tower for years on end, or stop casting spells in town. And besides, Gandalf would not last three rounds against a wizard who had a few fire balls prepared. And what fun would it be to be a wizard be that after ascending to near godhood charges into battle on a horse and swings a sword. All in all it depends on the world you’re playing in. There may be a world where every farmer is actually a first level fighter, the guy singing in the streets is a 3rd level bard, and the man arranging the landscaping at the temple is a cleric. In lower powered world, where those classes are rare, the farmer is a commoner, the performer is an adept, and the gardener is an expert. It’s all in how you set up the world.
#20 dyne Nov 27, 2004 16:15:05	Why should any serf or peasant remain sick or wounded? Clerics get their spells each day, and they cost nothing (at least most of them, like cure wounds, remove disease, etc.). If the cleric doesn't cast it, it is gone at the end of the day anyhow. Combine this with the Lawful Good alignment, and the cleric has to use his powers. The farmer's lad fell from a tree and broke his leg? Off to the clerics, and good as new in 1 round (plus the time to get there and back). In a large enough city, even lost limbs can be restored (by regenerate). Now, the only way to limit this is to say that there aren't enough clerics (or enough LG clerics) to go around. This seems to imply a low-magic world (unlike most campaigns), but that only solves part of the problem. First off, in the average campaign, 99.9% of the population is a level 1 Commoner. If Clerics went around casting their spells as anyone who is injured, there would be no way for absolutely every injured person to be healed. In a Low-Magic Campaign Setting, you are lucky to have even a single Cleric in even the larges of cities. Now, the 3.5 rules 'solve' the issue by charging 10 gold per spell level times the caster level. Actually, this was present in 3.0. And it's 10 xlevel of spell xcaster level. This makes perfect sense as a cost for the PCs to make, balance-wise. But it makes no sense in the campaign. Why would a LG cleric charge the PCs? He has the spell, free to use, anyhow (or he'll take it tomorrow if it isn't a cure spell). Does he have the spell and offer it to the highest bidder? Seems not completely LG to me. Perhaps he charges the PCs because he knows they can pay (and he needs money to finance himself, the temple, etc.)? In this case, he wouldn't charge penniless peasants. So when the PCs are broke, they should also get free healing. Clerics do more than just sit around healing people. Temples also make Holy Water. Some Temples have the responsibility of educating the population, and some are in charge of keeping records. Seeing as gold doesn't grow on trees or sprout out of people's ears, it makes sense for Clerics to charge for their services in order to cover their own expenses. And, not all Clerics are LG. In fact, very few of them are. Clerics, like any other class, come in all alignments. The average healer is probably a Neutral Good Cleric. The end result is the ridiculous situation where the common man has virtually no fear of injury or illness. Except perhaps for sudden death or loss of limb, since raise dead DOES cost quite a lot (and thus has its own quirks - do the clerics explain how they don't have enough funds to raise everyone, so they only raise those who can pay? I hear basically the same thing from my HMO), and regenerate is high-level so finding a suitable cleric might take time. About the time it takes to travel to the nearest large city. Actually, the end result is a fantasy world in which certain individuals can work miracles by their faith. And, since Regenerate is a 7th-level spell, it would take a 13th-level Cleric to cast it. Unless you went to a Metropolis or stumbled upon a high-level Cleric in the wilderness, you would never find a Cleric to cast it on you. Also, the majority of the world lives in either rurally or in very small towns. The nearest large city could be at least 100 miles away, or even further. And since peasants rarely have more than the clothes on their backs and barely enough food to get by, I doubt any of them would want to walks over 100 miles to fix a broken bone, since they probably wouldn't survive the journey anyway. How can you design a plot that makes sense? PCs: "Why does Harry hate Roger?" "Roger beat up Harry, breaking his arm. Harry lost his livelihood as a farmer, and sank into despair and loneliness, eventually . . ." "Umm, Mr. DM, why didn't he just go to the clerics to be healed?" "Oh yeah, I forgot about that. Ok, Harry got healed, and lived happily ever after. Now, I'll just make up an adventure on the spot for tonight . . ." Normal plotlines just don't work. Well, I doubt the majority of plots center on someone getting beaten up and not being able to be healed. Even so, if the DM truly understands the campaign world in which he runs his campaign, he would know that to have an arm healed would cost 910 gp minimum, which is far being the stretch of income a farmer makes, and the trip to find a Cleric which could cast the spell would be near impossible for that farmer to make. Moving away from curing, how about a murder mystery? GM says, "The victim was apparently strangulated, found clutching at his bruised throat." "I cast detect poison and detect magic." GM says, "Ok, you see that he has been poisoned." "I cast detect evil on all his acquaintances while my friends interrogate them." GM says, "Ok, you see that two of them are evil." "Great, I cast detect thoughts as the interrogation continues, while one of my friends casts discern lies," etc. etc. etc. If the PC's were high enough level to cast all those spells, then for the sake of a challenge, the person behind the murder should have access to the large number of spells that fool such divinations. There are Undetectable Alignment, Nondetection, Misdirection, Mind Blank, and Screen to name a few. There are also plenty of magic items that help to fool divinations.
#21 zombiegleemax Nov 29, 2004 0:57:19	There isn't any way you could prove alone that D&D is inconsistent with fantasy literature, for the simple reason that D&D actually is fantasy literature. There are over a hundred books based on the D&D ruleset in various editions; more than ten of these books have risen to the top of the New York Times best sellers list. Not only that, but fantasy literature doesn't adhere to any one magic system. Mainstream fantasy (dare I coin the term) tends to follow predictable patterns such as wizards casting spells and fighters using swords, but fantasy is too broad in general to claim that one magic system doesn't belong there. Technically, Anne Rice's novels are fantasy, and they don't involve much spellcasting at all. Conversely, Ursula K. LeGuin's Earthsea series presents many different methods of casting magic, some even changing depending on the location of the caster. Your claim is akin to denying that Discworld isn't fantasy because a gigantic turtle supports the world on which they live. Fantasy literature before Discworld never involved a planet-sized amphibian that controlled the path of the world's movement. And logically speaking, the turtle would die from either freezing, radiation, or suffocation before malnourishment, and so would the four elephants above him, and the world wouldn't abide by any realistic form of gravity either. So logic nor fantasy support that type of world, yet it exists as near-canon Fantasy Literature. One thing about your argument is valid. There isn't any reason a church couldn't mend a majority of the illnesses / mishaps that occur in society. But in which D&D book did it say commoners suffer irreparable, frequent damage? Come to think of it, I haven't suffered a fatal disease in 21 years, thanks to inoculations and modern medicine, yet I live in a logical world. Therefore, D&D can be thought of as quite logical, just not a mirror of the dark ages of Europe on Earth. The fact is, the DMG says nothing about how that aspect of society has to function. And for every good cleric curing diseases, there could easily be an evil one creating more. It sort of balances out, in a theoretical sense.
#22 zombiegleemax Nov 29, 2004 15:11:32	The current capital of my D&D world made using the strict PHB rules has 30 clerics and a total population of 8238. The highest-level cleric is 11th level. The next highest is 9th, 2x7th, 2x6th and 8x3rd. The vast majority, 7235 of those people, is commoners with 1d4 or 2.5 hit points. Some of these people are at various older stages in their life and have correspondingly lower hit points because their constitution has dropped. Let's estimate that about 2000 of these people have 1 hp. The average longsword does 4.5 damage without any strength behind the blow. A 10 foot fall does an average of 3.5 damage. The heal check needed to stabilise someone who's bleeding to death is DC 15, with exceptional and expensive tools - a healing kit, that's DC 13. People stabalise from bleeding 10% of each bleeding round. If you are hurt, severely, let's say by a fall then you are at on average 2.5 - 3.5 = -1 hp and bleeding to death. You get 8 rounds to stabilise, which is under a minute, and the cumulative probability of this happening is 1 - 0.9^(8) = 0.56. So if you have one fall during your life time and no one is within 48 seconds of noticing/reaching you, you have about a 50% average chance of dying then and there. Let's say there's someone right beside you the moment you hit the ground around to try and help you with your wounds. They get 8 rounds to try and hit DC 15, 1 - 0.25^(8) = 0.99. Needless to say it helps to have someone around when you're bleeding to death. Now let's say you just happen to be one of the population that has 1 hp. Let's say it's a bad fall, and it does 6 damage. You're at -5. Your chance of making it without help in the remaining 24 seconds is only 1-0.9^(4) = 0.34 or about 35%. If you have immediate help they can patch you up in enough time to save your life 1 - 0.25^(4) = 0.99. Needless to say again, it helps to have someone around when you're bleeding to death. So the real world situation of a fall is in fact quite fatal in D&D -- but simple first aid will save you. This is reasonably consistent with reality, even the elderly can walk away from a bad fall with help nearby but without help in the immediate vicinity this can be fatal indeed. At which point does the cleric come in you ask? Well the cleric it's obvious won't be able to reach most injured people within the time it takes for them to bleed to death by D&D rules. However they will be able to make them walk sooner. Recover with help is much speeded by the existence of clerics. A solid blow from an adversary will, it's obvious, kill you. A strong adversary, +2 to damage, using a longsword in two hands does 11 damage might kill the peasant inadvertantly with a solid blow. Even an above average strength of 12 gives you precious little time. War is harsh, very harsh - clerics or no clerics. Permanent injuries, like missing fingers, limbs, broken bones, and so forth require spells beyond even that which the high priest of this town can cast. So those go untreated and your peasants look much like peasants from the middle ages. Each time a character touches something which is infected with a disease, item, clothing etc... they must make a fortitude save to see if they are diseased. It's obvious by the simple probabilistic mathematics presented that even a DC 13 filth fever can rain havoc on an entire population, especially one uneducated in simple hygiene. There is no way, even wands, spells and other means that the clerics of this small city will be able to stem the spread of a disease. If you happen to touch filth fever diseased clothing even twice you have a 50% chance of contracting the disease (1 - 0.7^(2)). Three times and you've got a 65% chance. The loss of a 1d3 constitution for the 1 hp one forth of the population after the incubation period puts a large fraction of them into negative hitpoints and they are dying - quickly and without warning. They just drop like flies in the streets and those that rush to their aid are in like danger of catching their disease. And then you have to tend to them after they've stabilized. It is the medieval plague. The impact of clerics on the campaign world can be best described as "powerful but powerless". They are powerful in that their spells can bring back the dead, heal the wounded, cure disease, repair missing limbs but truthfully this is only for the privileged few who can take the injuries, survive the disease, pay for the revivals and pay for the resurrections. Divine magic does not conflict with the mediaeval European feel of the D&D game and is in all ways consistent with a dangerous world and brave heroes able to defend themselves against those threats that would slay the average man.
#23 mind_rogue Nov 29, 2004 17:42:57	Well, don't forget that those "free" spell slots are still a very valuable resource, and you never know when you will need them. The wizard does not simply fly from town to town because he doesn't know when he will need the spell slot for something else, such as to fly away later in the day (when the duration would have long expired). Likewise, the cleric doesn't heal every single peasant who accidentally cuts himself because the cleric doesn't know when she'll need to use protection from evil or sanctuary or other such goodies instead. If the character is dying, she might pump a cure minor wounds into the peasant to instantly stabilize him, but then she just bandages the wounds and lets them heal on their own (albeit at twice the normal rate).
#24 zombiegleemax Nov 29, 2004 20:28:21	Sure, a high level Cleric could just show up in a Hamlet and start healing people. But I very much doubt that they would, PC or NPC. If the PC performs healing for free, not only are they taking away spells from their party, but they are upsetting the local priesthood. If they charged a small stipend for a cure spell, and a new fellow is tossing them around for free, they will lose business, the church will get weaker, and they will be upset with you to say the least. Hey, cool, I found a plot hook. If they do charge for healing, that's like 10 gold per healing spell. First of all, in a small town, not many people have 10 gold lying around. In a large city, where many people do, there are also a lot more Clerics to heal, and the PC would not get as much business due to competition. Even NPCs who do not adventure would charge to support their religion. If PCs want to make money, they should stick to adventuring.
#25 Arcane_Guyver Nov 29, 2004 22:03:59	I highly recommend checking out the first chapter of Sharn: City of Towers. Sharn, one of biggest city in the Eberron setting has only a handful of people who can cast raise dead (and you'll have to jump through many hoops just to repay the favor). Most of the 'healers' are people with a whole lot of ranks in Heal. Similarly, there are many people who can use arcane magic in Sharn, but very very few are close to level 10, and they probably aren't too keen on selling their talents.
#26 rogue1stclass Dec 07, 2004 7:46:59	The average Commoner 1 has 2 hit points. Falling from a roof (1d6 of damage) will most likely mean he's dead in less than a minute. Clerical healing isn't going save that many folks...
#27 taltamir Dec 10, 2004 4:22:01	You just brushed up against it, but don't forget the whole alignment axes stuff :P. To "I don't remember who" I would like to point out, that if you make claims to disregard the charts that state how many clerics are in each town, you are only serving to prove his point. Saying "The system is fine and totally correct as it is, that is why I have to disregard half of it for it to work" fails the logical coherency check! He is merely pointing out that you HAVE to ignore those charts, or something else, for it to work. Also brknlf... with his wonderful gem of: "Where am I going with this? If you don't like D&D magic, play another game. Find another system with a realistic system of magic that you believe to play, don't argue against D&D magic if you don't like it." He isn't here to pick on you and steal your lunch money, he is giving a well thought out argument as to why the system is flawed, and suggests it be improved because he cares!
#28 angryman Dec 13, 2004 2:34:27	I generally agree with the notion that the original hypothesis was flawed simply because he assumed that there were more casters (and more high level casters) than would reasonably be. Also, don't forget many clerics are adepts. Take the example of my homebrew world, which is based off (partially) the medieval Catholic Church. Most of the clerics are neutral or lawful neutral. They ask for a non-voluntary donation for even the simplest cure spell. Wounded knights or strong warriors with otherwise crippling injuries are dragooned into the churches armies in exchange for being whole of limb again. The only people that get "free" healing are those that the church owes money to. Diseases spread too quickly to be stopped by Remove Disease. Poisons usually do their work long before a cleric can be summoned to remove it. People die of injuries before they can be healed even if they can pay. And then there are the charlatan clerics. Long story short, my world is a fairly average magic world which is not too different to medieval Europe- the church and the crown are in charge and most peasants lives are terrible. Magic hasn't improved their lot one ounce. Just like poor folk these days (in certain countries) cannot have access to medical facilities and decent hospitals. Just because it's there, doesn't mean the greedy don't hoard it, and leave the poor to suffer.
#29 zombiegleemax Dec 30, 2004 14:02:28	He isn't here to pick on you and steal your lunch money, he is giving a well thought out argument as to why the system is flawed, and suggests it be improved because he cares! That's all well and good, but what does he suggest it change to? The author of the article makes a very telling admission about halfway into his arguments. He says, "It isn't even the magic itself which is a problem, rather it is the effect of magic." Setting aside the fact that the article is entitled Problems with the D&D Magic System (and therefore the author has negated the very point he was trying to prove), the issue the author seems to genuinely have a beef with is the availability of certain types of magic at lower levels. The issue of cure wounds is simply the availability at low spell levels, and the fact that spellcasters have more low level spell slots per day than they do higher level spells. There is a cure wounds spell at every spell level through four, and a cure wounds, mass spell starting at fifth and going through eighth (not to mention heal at sixth level). Combined with a good cleric's ability to spontaneously cast any cure wounds spell, this provides rampant healing opportunities. But this isn't a fault of the limited-per-day spellcasting system. The problem is simply that healing is available throughout the entire range of the spell system. Imagine, if you will, that there was only cure moderate wounds and cure critical wounds and their corresponding mass versions. The landscape of the D&D world suddenly looks a lot starker. Using hawktalisman's calculations, there are only five cure moderate wounds spells per day available in a town of 3,500 people -- and that's assuming that the clerics of the town use their spells for nothing but cure spells. The example involving detect poison and detect evil, as written, is an even worse example, because it's plot-busting capabilities hinge on a completely unrelated aspect of the D&D system: absolute alignment. The fact that a particular spell causes plot problems by immediately filtering a pool of suspects is not the fault of the spell itself. Instead, it's a reflection on the inherent problems of D&D's nine-dimensional moral and ethical stereotyping, where PCs are assured that only certain types of characters would ever use poison. But let's give the author a break here: the intent of his example was to prove that the certain spells can ruin plots by easily exposing information that the players would otherwise have to go through a longer process to uncover. The key term there is "easily," and the reason it's easy is because it's highly available. Spells to reveal alignment are first level; spells that compel targets to tell the truth are second (zone of truth); mind-reading spells also are low-level (the third round of detect thoughts). Now, bump each of those spells up two levels. It takes an entirely different caliber of spellcaster to perform an investigation, and makes it much harder for low-level characters to disrupt a poisoning plot. Not to mention that at those levels, there are far more resources available to the poisoner to prevent or disrupt the actions of the investigators (undetectable alignment, nondetection, detect scrying, and so forth). The "problem" of D&D magic has nothing to do with the spellcasting system, or even the effects of the spells themselves -- as Basic_Set himself noted. Where the system breaks down is balancing the spell levels with their commensurate effects.