While we can nitpick the case of the invisible wizard and fireball, I think there is an underlying truth. RPG magic systems are usually designed around the intended adventures. Thus, typical RPG magic makes it much easier for a small band to break into a stronghold and kill key inhabitants, and is poor at helping the defenders coordinate protection against such bands. I wrote about this long ago regarding the effects of magic on society. (1)

If one assumes that this magic system is true throughout the world over time, though, this would have logical consequences for society.

The simplest answer is just to ignore those consequences, and live with some inconsistency. This works reasonably well - issues sometimes come up, though, if the PCs get into conflict with local authorities. Typically, the GM likes to encourage them to break in and kill a hill giant chieftan in his fortress, but considers it a major problem if they want to take out a dwarf lord or human duke.

If you want to patch these problems, though, I suggest actually modifying the magic system with some house rules to put in more powerful spells and options for defense.

A third, rarely-tried option is to rewrite the setting so that it follows through on the social consequences of the magic system as written.

Quote from: CRKrueger;808766Wizards are just like any new technology, they require counters and strategies to deal with them.  You assume a security apparatus that works on countering the work of another security apparatus, magical or otherwise.

Often, there isn't a countering strategy that neutralizes the new technology. Instead, the new technology simply becomes dominant. For example, there is no particular counter to firearms other than just using more firearms.

Changes in technology can have major effects on patterns of living and social organization.

Quote from: Arohtar;808740Suggestions: fun, revenge, power trip, the enjoyable experience of panicking humans trying to flee or begging for their lives, only to get slain, the enjoyment of destruction. Wiping out a farmstead must surely be more interesting than to haunt a deserted ruin. But who knows? Many people explain the absence of the spectres with their desire for loneliness, and that is a fair enough explanation.

As was pointed out many times before, your entire broken world assumption rests almost entirely on your own assignment of motivations. You would be the first non-comedic source I am aware of for suggesting ghosts/spectral undead actually enjoy... er... life.  

If your assumption about the motivations of Specters is correct, then why aren't people going out in droves to get this free power-up?

More likely: the default assumption most people have is that being dead sucks all the fun out of having fun is correct, and therefore Specters don't really get a thrill out of scaring people or a frisson of pleasure out of casual murder... or really anything else.  

QuoteOf course they did. Are you crazy? Those measures stopped lots of killings of political leaders. Do you think the Russian tsar would survive for long without his castles and his guards?

That's funny. I haven't heard from a Romanov lately.  

QuoteI think the possibility of an invisible man, flying in and dropping a hand grenade next to the king and then flying away, would change something. I am not sure exactly how the world would deal with it, but I think it would have an impact.

I never suggest it wouldn't.  On the other hand, I also don't suggest that all non-wizards would simply give up and accept living in, I dunno, caves or something, since if they ever had anything nice a wizard would just teleport in and kill them for it... which seems to be your point.

QuoteIn D&D a fire ball from a 20th level (and above) caster does 20d6 damage, and such a caster can have several of those. The range of the fire ball is longer than the range of the longbow,

You OP did restrict editions. Neither fact is true of recent editions.  I have neither the time nor inclination to debate facts from a forty year old book that no one I've ever met (personally, anyway) uses, or in fact has ever used in my thirty years of gaming.

Quoteso even if the caster misjudges his altitude and is within arrow range, the archer would need to more or less directly underneath the wizard to hit him (shooting straight up and at long range). Three 20d6 fire balls will be a serious problem, even to the highest level of fighters, and the fire ball will "remove" the archers too, if they are too close to the king (in order to shoot at the wizard).

Aaaaannnnnndddddd.... you're whiteboxing. Why on earth, or Mystara, or Toril or wherever you like, is everyone standing in the radius of the fireball, and only the fireball. Since you are postulating a Flying wizard here, that implies out of doors. Why/how is the wizard perfectly placing himself directly at exactly his maximum range? None of this mythical wizard/assassins gets a bit sloppy and overconfident about distance? What if the archers are in nearby towers?   How is the wizard popping off three fireballs all at one time?

And just how many of these 20th level wizard king-killers are running around that no one would ever bother building a castle?

 

QuoteAfter firing the three fireballs (doing around 105 hp of damage if all saving throws are made), the wizard gains altitude and flies away. Next day he comes back (invisible). If the king survived the first day, we must hope he had a good rest before getting grilled again. Also the Wizard can use spells to protect him from arrows. 'Mirror image' and 'protection from normal missiles' for example.

Ahh, yes: The wizard has an answer for every problem, even the ones he hasn't thought of yet.  Whiteboxing again. An actual wizard assassin, such as you postulate, only controls events up until he teleports in. In this case, he expects archers and is invisible but also mirror imaged... and the king hasn't got some dude with magic arrows nearby, on account of all those pesky 20th level wizards that keep killing his peers.  

Of course, if the King doesn't happen to go outside when the wizard is ready to pounce... and please tell me your assassins have inhuman patience too... and he has to teleport into the 'useless' castle in order to strike? Well, then 'protection from normal missiles' will be useless when somebody sticks a shiv in him.  We haven't even gotten into intelligence/counter-intelligence yet.

QuoteThe "food chain" is not a real chain. There are several creatures on top. Or do you not think that humans are on top?

Yes, I understand that. Clearly, despite your ability to parrot it from somewhere, you do not or I would not have pointed it out.

QuoteIf many wild animals were around, we humans would need to take measures. Build fences etc.

In the real world humans are not used to large, flying monsters swooping down on them. If large, flying monsters WERE around, humans would need to take measures. It should impact the setting.

And yet: your ancestors were quite used to large and vicious fanged and clawed beasts jumping out at them. They took measures, namely killing enough of them that it stopped being an issue.

So we can presume that if any specters in the past were inclined to go on 'kill all the living' sprees, they were ruthlessly dealt with, despite all their numerous advantages over the living. Just like ancient humans dealt with other dangerous things.  

My point is that the clear numeric/ability superiority your assumption rests on exists in the real world, and yet we don't spend our days trying to avoid becoming lion chow.  I have yet to see one solitary "anti-lion" defense in my life.

QuoteI just argue that it takes a rather large customer base to support an inn.

Bullshit.  The problem is not the assumption that every town or hamlet or two horse village has an 'inn', its that you're assuming every 'inn' has to be a the fantasy equivilent of a modern sport's bar.

QuoteOther wizards is a problem to a wizard. But if someone does not have magic, they are finished.

The king doesn't need magic, just the ability to convince/hire/sweettalk another wizard.  And one of the default setting assumptions for most fantasy worlds is the cliche of a 'court wizard'.  So right there we have just broken your entire argument that the setting is inconsistent because any sufficiently high level wizard can kill the king.

Never mind that so can a chamber maid with a dull breadknife.

QuoteI am not talking about necessarily slaughtering thousands of people.

Sure you are. You are suggesting that no one would build castles or lead armies because Wizards would just kill them all. That implies an awful lot of killing.  Furthermore: Human nature, and history, suggests strongly that if someone kills the king, then all the kings rivals and subordinates will strive to take the king's place, so killing the guy wearing the shiny hat presumably doesn't solve the wizard's problem. He'll have to repeat his murder several times per kingdom he wants to overthrow, at the very least. If he's trying to stop an army? He'll have to kill enough to seriously demotivate the troops, which we can generally suggest is equivilent to killing as many troops/officers as could be killed in a loss in battle.

So yes, you are in fact suggesting thousands of deaths, per event. Repeated often enough to significantly change the shape of the setting as a reaction.

QuoteWhat is the relevance of the hard and sweaty stuff? There is no reason to get sweaty if you have fire balls.

lol

QuoteHere is what I imagine. The 20th level wizard casts 'fly' and 'invisibility' and flies over the enemy army. He identifies the enemy leader and positions himself above him, at the maximum range of the fire ball. (His experience with shooting fire balls should make him able to judge this quite well. The range of the fire ball is 240', and the range of the longbow is 210', so there is room for some error before getting within archer range). At a good time, for example when the enemy leader is surrounded by many advisors, the magic user throws a fire ball. The 20d6 of damage will instantly kill up to around 9th level fighters regardless of their saving throw. In the coming two rounds the wizard fires two more fire balls. Then he gains in altitude, casts 'invisibility' and flies away (so nobody will be able to see in what direction he goes).

You aren't suggesting anything of the sort. You are suggesting that many 20th level wizards routinely do this to any and every army and/or king that appears, so much so that purely mundane political acts and wars SIMPLY.DO.NOT.OCCUR.    You are suggesting that there are enough bored 20th level wizards just waiting around, with nothing more pressing to do than to keep those damn mudbloods (or whatever) from getting uppity, that whenever its been tried, a Wizard has simply shown up and killed everyone he had to until the ruckus died down again and he could get back to being bored.

QuoteAn enemy wizard would be a problem to the wizard, but if the army consisted of vikings or natives without magic, the plan should work fine, don't you agree?

How is the setting inconsitent and broken if it requires YOU to assume a consistently unequal distribution of wizards?  

Why should I agree to such a sloppy assumption?

Quote from: The Ent;808734Plenty of bears in Europe, bub.  

Ah, a correction that manages to be almost equally incorrect, in the opposite fashion.

QuoteWhat goes around, comes around...

By all means, bub. Ridicule me. Right now you're just lazily claiming to do so without putting in the work.

Quote from: Spike;808852Ah, a correction that manages to be almost equally incorrect, in the opposite fashion.

"Plenty" is a rather subjective term, so maybe it wasn't the best choice of words on his part. But that aside, you do know and acknowledge that bears still exist in Europe, roughly 55,000 of them; and that contrarily to your earlier absolute claim were NOT completely wiped out by the Romans, right? RIGHT?

Part of creating a more congruent and logical setting/system match is using/creating/amending a system whose system of magic mimics the type of game you play and intend.

I agree with jhkim there.  I include a number of magical types, with the spell, that try to answer the question of, "what type of magic would people study and create outside of the adventuring phase of the game?"  Often easily answered when you look at magic the same way as technology.

We also assume for every mundane spell we create, there are dozens of other versions.  

Since the games I prefer to run deal with the mundane and non-adventuring more than most, this gets looked at a lot.  Some examples.


http://celtricia.pbworks.com/w/page/14955498/Disrupt%20Moon%20Cycle%20spell
http://celtricia.pbworks.com/w/page/14955482/Destruction%20of%20Unborn%20Foetus
http://celtricia.pbworks.com/w/page/14956684/Weight%20of%20Gold%20and%20Electrum-Earth
http://celtricia.pbworks.com/w/page/14956440/Tea%20Time

Quote from: Spike;808851your ancestors were quite used to large and vicious fanged and clawed beasts jumping out at them. They took measures, namely killing enough of them that it stopped being an issue.

First good laugh of the day

Quote from: jhkim;808837A third, rarely-tried option is to rewrite the setting so that it follows through on the social consequences of the magic system as written.

A thought exercise,

First some assumptions.

To keep it simple lets use Swords & Wizardy with the four classes (fighter, magic-user, cleric, thief) and start out with just humans.

1) Assume that humans were primitive and like our own history discovered technology through invention this includes arcane magic (magic-users).

2) Assume that deities are real and confer knowledge of divine magic through revelation (i.e. clerics).

My opinion is that things would progress more or less as our own history until about 100,000 BC give or take a couple of thousand of years. This is the point where things progressed to the point where primitive humans have inner life in their mind. Where things like art, and religion started to take form.

Religious magic would start as supplication. As language developed a sense of a larger world also developed. Along with the idea that there was something out there to appeal to make to make bad things stop happening.

And in this world, what out there answers unequivocally with divine magic. The problem of divine magic would likely be imagination. You have to think of a thing in order to imagine it as magic. So cultural sophistication would play a part as well as the desires of the invoked deity.

With arcane magic it would likely start out as imitation, like effects like and other traditional principles of historical magic. Not only the caster has to have to think of a thing in order to make it happen as magic, he has to discovered the means by which to do it with. So it is chained to the same limits of technological progression without the presence of a divine being as a shortcut.

Both form of magic suffer from the problem that their practitioners are not gathering food. There is a upper limit of people studying religion or arcane magic that a paleolithic tribe can support.

The situation would likely result in a comfortable existence as hunter gatherer tribes. While bad things will still result, they will be mitigated by the use of divine and to a lesser extent arcane magic.  The shamans would a vital but small part of the entire population.

This could result in a long period of cultural stagnation as while human culture would develop leading to a rich life of art, song, and dance. However technology itself retarded to the Paleolithic set of tools and techniques.

However the existence of Create Food & Drink means that somewhere, someplace a lot of people can live together without the need for agriculture. Likely they will do so to establish a religious centers involving megalithic structures (stuff built of giant stones like Stonehenge). These would double as trade and cultural centers as well.

There would a limit to the size of the area dominated by these megalithic religious centers due to the speed of communication, limits of mass producing food by magic, and limits of hunter gatherer for resources.

Arcane magic would be a sideshow during this time, a lesser form of magic practiced on the side or practiced by people unable or unwilling to believe in any deity.

As static this landscape first appears, the odds of a major disaster, or more likely the appearance of rival humans will led to a catastrophe as the centuries roll on. It is in these catastrophes that the progress of technology will continue including that of arcane magic.

Because Divine magic depends the context of a religion. The culture that surrounds the worship of a deity. Culture needs people and the more people it has the more it thrives. Take away the people the culture will collapse or disappear.

At first this would result in a period of cycles. The building of religious centers with their influence over a wide area. Then some catastrophe and the population scattered. Then another period of rebuilding.

Eventually at some point various parts of Neolithic technology including agriculture will be discovered. Neolithic technology would spread alongside the existing form of magic because it provides a reliable backup. A culture with both magic and Neolithic technology would survive and thrive better than a magic and Paleolithic society

Likely things would start to progress a little more quickly than our own history after the discovery of agriculture, and animal husbandry. Again divine magic would be used to mitigate disease and minor disasters. Allowing for larger populations to live together and to live longer.

Eventually this will lead to increasing cultural sophistication including the first cities, the discovery of writing, mega temples, and last but not least the use of metal.

However increasing technological sophistication particularly animal husbandry will lead to more diversity in human society.  In our own history the landscape of the Middle East was dominated by two major group. The agricultural intensive societies of Egypt, and Sumeria, and the pastoralist nomad tribe that surrounded them.

The agricultural societies in normal times could resist the pastoralist because they had the number. Note they did not necessarily had much of a technological advantage. Pastorialism is an alternative development not a relic of the old hunter gather tribes.

Again the presence and use of divine magic would give agricultural societies an advantage. But as the centuries roll on, eventually there will be the disaster that they are not able to cope with. Like in our history the pastoralists will invade. The old society will fragment and in the chaos different things will be tried.

It is here where the medieval world assumed by Swords & Wizardry and D&D can arise.

As cultural sophistication grows, what will grow along side it is the realization that religion involves service to beings with powers greater than one's own.  That their goals are not always your goals. Also likely is the realization that certain deities may not care about particular aspects of life.

The net result is that from focusing on mostly placating a all-mighty deity as the reason for everything, the focus now diversify. Religion is still hugely important but other area of society develop. Among these will be the arcane based magic-users.

Eventually the higher level and more powerful spell will be discovered by the magic users. But their use will be in the context of long established cultures with powerful pre-existing supernatural powers namely the temples and their clerics.

And while magic-users will be more powerful than any prior time, they still have to contend with the fact that in or to achieve such power using Swords & Wizardry they have to study. A lot of study. This is their Achilles heel in any society. Along with the fact that it is easier to find, develop, and become a high level cleric than it is for a magic-user.

A magic-user will enjoy power, wealth and fame, but it will not be without limits. Likewise despite their dominance clerics will also have limits. The vast majority of people still need protection and the best methods of providing that protection are the things that were developed in our history. Like walls, castles, etc.

Anyone mention Inevitables yet?

Divine robots dedicated to keeping the universe in order, including one major branch entirely devoted to keeping undead in check.

Standard in 3e, not sure about other editions.

Quote from: Will;808913Anyone mention Inevitables yet?

Divine robots dedicated to keeping the universe in order, including one major branch entirely devoted to keeping undead in check.

Standard in 3e, not sure about other editions.

BECMI, which the OP is basing off of, had Immortals who are ascended beings. They do all the grunt work of keeping the multiverse running and making sure nothing gets out of hand on the worlds they take interest in or built/populated.

Quote from: Will;808913Anyone mention Inevitables yet?

Divine robots dedicated to keeping the universe in order, including one major branch entirely devoted to keeping undead in check.

Standard in 3e, not sure about other editions.

I don't recall them in 1st edition AD&D, but maybe they were in something like the Manual of the Planes. (They're from another plane, aren't they?)

Checked:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inevitable_%28Dungeons_%26_Dragons%29

Quote from: Will;808933Checked:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inevitable_%28Dungeons_%26_Dragons%29

Looking stuff up?! Hmm, hmm, hmm. No, I don't think it'll catch on.

Quote from: estar;808906A thought exercise,

First some assumptions.

To keep it simple lets use Swords & Wizardy with the four classes (fighter, magic-user, cleric, thief) and start out with just humans.

1) Assume that humans were primitive and like our own history discovered technology through invention this includes arcane magic (magic-users).

2) Assume that deities are real and confer knowledge of divine magic through revelation (i.e. clerics).

My opinion is that things would progress more or less as our own history until about 100,000 BC give or take a couple of thousand of years. This is the point where things progressed to the point where primitive humans have inner life in their mind. Where things like art, and religion started to take form.

Religious magic would start as supplication. As language developed a sense of a larger world also developed. Along with the idea that there was something out there to appeal to make to make bad things stop happening.

And in this world, what out there answers unequivocally with divine magic. The problem of divine magic would likely be imagination. You have to think of a thing in order to imagine it as magic. So cultural sophistication would play a part as well as the desires of the invoked deity.

With arcane magic it would likely start out as imitation, like effects like and other traditional principles of historical magic. Not only the caster has to have to think of a thing in order to make it happen as magic, he has to discovered the means by which to do it with. So it is chained to the same limits of technological progression without the presence of a divine being as a shortcut.

Both form of magic suffer from the problem that their practitioners are not gathering food. There is a upper limit of people studying religion or arcane magic that a paleolithic tribe can support.

The situation would likely result in a comfortable existence as hunter gatherer tribes. While bad things will still result, they will be mitigated by the use of divine and to a lesser extent arcane magic.  The shamans would a vital but small part of the entire population.

This could result in a long period of cultural stagnation as while human culture would develop leading to a rich life of art, song, and dance. However technology itself retarded to the Paleolithic set of tools and techniques.

However the existence of Create Food & Drink means that somewhere, someplace a lot of people can live together without the need for agriculture. Likely they will do so to establish a religious centers involving megalithic structures (stuff built of giant stones like Stonehenge). These would double as trade and cultural centers as well.

There would a limit to the size of the area dominated by these megalithic religious centers due to the speed of communication, limits of mass producing food by magic, and limits of hunter gatherer for resources.

Arcane magic would be a sideshow during this time, a lesser form of magic practiced on the side or practiced by people unable or unwilling to believe in any deity.

As static this landscape first appears, the odds of a major disaster, or more likely the appearance of rival humans will led to a catastrophe as the centuries roll on. It is in these catastrophes that the progress of technology will continue including that of arcane magic.

Because Divine magic depends the context of a religion. The culture that surrounds the worship of a deity. Culture needs people and the more people it has the more it thrives. Take away the people the culture will collapse or disappear.

At first this would result in a period of cycles. The building of religious centers with their influence over a wide area. Then some catastrophe and the population scattered. Then another period of rebuilding.

Eventually at some point various parts of Neolithic technology including agriculture will be discovered. Neolithic technology would spread alongside the existing form of magic because it provides a reliable backup. A culture with both magic and Neolithic technology would survive and thrive better than a magic and Paleolithic society

Likely things would start to progress a little more quickly than our own history after the discovery of agriculture, and animal husbandry. Again divine magic would be used to mitigate disease and minor disasters. Allowing for larger populations to live together and to live longer.

Eventually this will lead to increasing cultural sophistication including the first cities, the discovery of writing, mega temples, and last but not least the use of metal.

However increasing technological sophistication particularly animal husbandry will lead to more diversity in human society.  In our own history the landscape of the Middle East was dominated by two major group. The agricultural intensive societies of Egypt, and Sumeria, and the pastoralist nomad tribe that surrounded them.

The agricultural societies in normal times could resist the pastoralist because they had the number. Note they did not necessarily had much of a technological advantage. Pastorialism is an alternative development not a relic of the old hunter gather tribes.

Again the presence and use of divine magic would give agricultural societies an advantage. But as the centuries roll on, eventually there will be the disaster that they are not able to cope with. Like in our history the pastoralists will invade. The old society will fragment and in the chaos different things will be tried.

It is here where the medieval world assumed by Swords & Wizardry and D&D can arise.

As cultural sophistication grows, what will grow along side it is the realization that religion involves service to beings with powers greater than one's own.  That their goals are not always your goals. Also likely is the realization that certain deities may not care about particular aspects of life.

The net result is that from focusing on mostly placating a all-mighty deity as the reason for everything, the focus now diversify. Religion is still hugely important but other area of society develop. Among these will be the arcane based magic-users.

Eventually the higher level and more powerful spell will be discovered by the magic users. But their use will be in the context of long established cultures with powerful pre-existing supernatural powers namely the temples and their clerics.

And while magic-users will be more powerful than any prior time, they still have to contend with the fact that in or to achieve such power using Swords & Wizardry they have to study. A lot of study. This is their Achilles heel in any society. Along with the fact that it is easier to find, develop, and become a high level cleric than it is for a magic-user.

A magic-user will enjoy power, wealth and fame, but it will not be without limits. Likewise despite their dominance clerics will also have limits. The vast majority of people still need protection and the best methods of providing that protection are the things that were developed in our history. Like walls, castles, etc.

I think in the world you describe the creation of states based on religions is inevitable. The secural power would be so beholden to the sacred that priest kings will be the defacto leaders.
However, depending on the omnipotence of the dieties those that reject religion in favour of "science" ie arcane study will congregate in groups and look to establish their own political groups. Much as occurred with the renaissance and enlightenment in our world.

From a technological perspective in say warfare you may well find that the medieval armoured knight is skipped as you jump through the dominance of horse and metal working to something more akin to the dominance of firearms with magically equipped forces making ranks of armoured knights obsolete.

I think the Wizards would get pretty bored of killing the King over and over again after they realize that he is massively wealthy and can make donations to the church to be raised repeatedly.

Quote from: Phillip;808760There must be 50 ways to whack a wizard.

Yeah, no kidding.  One of the things that's amused me about the tiresome Wizards Would Rule The World riff is that I don't see too many game systems where they're invulnerable from all conceivable attack forms, or too many PCs playing them as paranoid as they'd have to be to survive in such an environment.

And by the bye?  Could someone answer me a question?  Exactly how many 20th level wizards are depicted in any D&D campaign setting?  Swear to Hades, some of these hypotheticals seem to have them as ubiquitous as PFCs.