Quality of Life
Little known fact, but evil lairs have terrible insulation. It gets absolutely sweltering in there in the summer! Of course, the Evil Party’s new wall AC unit is just one small consequence of a broader theme.
One of my DM buddies insists that, if D&D were real, every soldier in every army would have at least one caster level. Quality of life spells like create water, create bonfire, and mending would all be invaluable for a fighter force on the go. But if you follow that line of reasoning, you begin to wonder what other spells a normal person would actually need. And that in turn raises an interesting question: Are there any non-adventuring spells that simply aren’t listed in the Magic chapter?
Think about it. Our rulebooks were written with violent casters in mind: mages who regularly venture into dungeons and blast seven hells out of their residents. But every settlement you’ve ever come across has a cleric in his temple and local druid in her tree house. What are they doing all day? And more importantly, what are they casting?
Suppose you’re a bog-standard village wizard. Your day consists of advising the town council about arcane matters, feeding mice to your pet owl, and scaring would-be apprentices off your front lawn. There’s relatively little use for fireball and chain lightning in your day-to-day existence. Chances are you’d want spells to make scrivening easier. Maybe something like a magical copy + paste or a search function. Perhaps you could use some kind of illusion spell as a ring tone / alarm clock to remind you of important appointments? What if you’re a randy old bugger? Then you’ll definitely need some from of magical contraceptive. And if that means you’re heading out for a hot wizard date, you might want cosmetic spells that do slightly more than clean your favorite robe.
So for today’s discussion, what do you say we put our heads together and come up with a few spells that ought to exist? I’m talking about the non-adventuring, quality of life stuff that you’d like in your everyday life. Sound off with all your best ideas down in the comments! And if you’re feeling really creative, invent a few spells that would be helpful in our modern world as well!
THIS COMIC SUCKS! IT NEEDS MORE [INSERT OPINION HERE] Is your favorite class missing from the Handbook of Heroes? Maybe you want to see more dragonborn or aarakocra? Then check out the “Quest Giver” reward level over on the The Handbook of Heroes Patreon. You’ll become part of the monthly vote to see which elements get featured in the comic next!
A controlled version of that spell Mickey Mouse used to animate the mops and buckets, so your house gets cleaned and not destroyed.
A ward that keeps out species of vermin, number of species based on caster level.
A spell for women giving birth, so the baby’s passage into the world goes more smoothly.
An alarm spell for senior citizens, that triggers if they slip and fall when alone.
„Teleport Spawn“
Target: one ready to be born litter
Range: not quite touch
I always pointed to that as the ur-example for “what unseen servant is supposed to do.”
“A ward that keeps out species of vermin, number of species based on caster level.”
In Pathfinder 1e, Repel Vermin is a level 4 spell, though something to cast on a house instead of on just yourself would be great.
“A spell for women giving birth, so the baby’s passage into the world goes more smoothly.”
Delay Pain is a level 2 spell, and is more effective than its name implies.
there is „Unseen Servant“ so I’m sure there also should be an „Unseen Master“.
The “strike self with whip” school of magic is more popular on the Handbook of Erotic Fantasy than regular-type Handbook.
A ward to keep pests away from a field/granary.
Locate Keys
Cure wood
Remove Muscle Ache
Scry Current Market Value
Oof. Hard to resist innuendo with that one, but I shall persevere!
https://www.handbookofheroes.com/archives/comic/in-your-end-o
That’s not innuendo to anyone who’s ever wanted to light a fire or build something. 😉 … It’s a bitter necessity.
Cure “morning” wood.
A 1st-level cleric and/or druid spell that would really come in handy would be a spell that gives a bonus to saves against disease for the next week or so. Not a full Remove Disease, someone capable of 3rd-level spells may not be easily available for smaller or more rural settlements, but that spell combined with a variant that does a similar thing for poisons and the basic cure spells would mean a dramatically improved quality of life.
For something with a more wizardly bent, a spell that grants resistance to rot, rust, and other corrosion to inanimate objects, to make the wood and steel in buildings and tools last longer.
Ooh! Actually, there’s a spell from Dragon Magazine that my 2e Druid actually has: Prevent Spoilage. Basically Gentle Repose, but for foodstuffs, and repels mundane vermin as well.
An awful lot of ancient dungeons out there are made of “magically treated stone” and similar materials to explain their durability and longevity. I don’t know if any PCs spells can do that, but obviously someone knows how to do it.
On that note, something that permanently makes wood far less flammable would make an enormous difference in medieval-ish cities, which are chronically prone to giant fires. (Even if heatless Continual Flame spells drastically cut down on the amount of fire-causing light sources.)
I’m running a couple of players through this thing at the moment:
https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Lady%27s_Light
You better believe the place is full of magic that makes the place immune to the ravages of time. Makes you wonder what shenanigans PCs could get up to with a similar “resist wear and tear” spell.
I always figured normal first level Druids just cast Speak with Animals or Commune with Birds and solved disputes out in nature, with the occasional Cure Light Wounds to help woodland creatures. Or Restore Corpse plus Purify Food and Drink to make some guilt free meat. Or Tears to Wine plus Create Water for massive amounts of free mead. Now that I think about it, Druids have a lot of spells that could be used to make money.
The image of Druid Court is… Actually, I think that one is going on the list of “comics to be drawn.”
I’ve heard of kangaroo courts, but this is ridiculous.
:p
We were just recently discussing with my group (aftre losing yet another ship crew) that in the same vein of real industial revolutions, a lot of magician’s research efforts would likely be directed to automatizaion of some sorts – making permanent magical workforce en masse.
5e has this partically filled with Unseen Servant/Animate Dead/Animate object/Create Homunculus/Create Magen, but most of those are short duration and/or bound to the spelcaster (and undead will go rogue sooner of later). However, there is most likely an NPC spell or a feat in the vein of “Create Construct”, becasue all of those service/defence constructs PCs meet (Animated Armor, Scartecrow) are made by someone.
Candlekeep Mysteries even has whole village of CR 0 Animated Commoners created by Harpers. If Harpers are so concerned about tyranny, how about creating automatization to help oppressed proletariat?
In addtion, some other utility spell ideas:
Autonomous Vehicle
Modify Heritage (Genetic Code)
Sending with Video
Create Picture
Create Prosthesis
Potion of Love
Potion of Remove Love
Locate Stolen Object
You might dig the idea of Geb. It’s a necromantic take on the problem.
https://pathfinderwiki.com/wiki/Geb
Historically (as in: found in writing by archeologists and historians) most spells were either interpersonal spells (love potions, curses, attraction or repulsion), skrying or other information and future gleaning spells, or safeguard (or destruction) of life, namely ensure crops and animal (or human) fertility, or curse the other people from not having this. Protection from harm (either natural, in war, or magical) was also very popular.
So I’m thinking the wizard would be casting curses on persons, crops and animals for the one half of the village, and removing them, or warding against them, for the other half.
The D&D version of magic is, in my view, mostly engineering (military or otherwise) but done by guys in pointy hats uttering words in a funny language, instead of a crew hard-bitten people in hard-hats, shouting words in a funny language at each other.
To bring this back to Roleplaying: In his one attempt to introduce magic in Pendragon, Greg Stafford (the designer) mostly put spells that do the interpersonal thing in the book, instead of the D&D Flash-Bang and combat engineering stuff of most RPGs. And he made magic-users kind of broken (on purpose, as KAP to him was a knighjtly game) as they pay for their spells in life-force, which only gets replenished by sleeping a lot. Also explains why Merlin is not around all the time, as he is regaining Life Force spent on big spells.
The ‘curse’ vs ‘protect’ would do two specialist wizards well.
It’s said that one lawyer in a town will starve but two will both become wealthy 😉
I’m imagining St. Christopher charm. Imagine a charm for “safe travel” that interacted with a random encounter table, lowering your chances of encountering roaming monsters or road hazards.
Refill Ink
Freshen Herbs
Dye Fabric
Turn Insect Swarm
Gust of Light Breeze
Sort Grain
Detangle
Massage Hand
Using Message to give long distance commands to your sheepdog without shouting
„Refill Ink“
key word to remember a 0lvl spell I asked a DM for: Dissolve Gem
The idea beeing that dumping gemstones in ink and dissolving them this way would create magic ink that can be used to scribe scrolls and spell books, with a 1:1 GP value rating to what the dissolved gems had.
Heh. Digging the fairy tale reference. It would be nice replicate that sort of thing in a game. Though I imagine vampires would abuse it for rice-counting purposes….
Cone of Cold may not be a thermostat, but I still used Ray of Frost as a portable freezer when no one in the part could cast Gentle Repose and we needed folks back in town to be able to identify the body of the bounty.
As for utility spells, I do have to wonder about sorcerers. Statistically, not everyone with magic in their blood is going to roll twelve kinds of explosion. (Figurative rolling; I’m aware the player chooses their known spells, but the character may not know what to expect.) But it still has to be awkward for the guy with phenomenal yet limited and mundane cosmic power because their mother got too close to that magitech reactor while she was pregnant.
‘ray of frost’ the original ‘chill beer’ spell 🙂
FoME I’m disappointed. It’s not ray of frost you use for food preservation, it’s purify food and drink.
I have trouble conceptualizing a magical ray that deals instant damage to a creature and also doesn’t freeze my beer. Makes you wonder if there should be some kind of feat that turns “spell of your choice” into the “dynamic powers” of Silver Age Sentinels, giving you Ice Man or Human Torch level control over an element….
Of course, it’s hard to design that sort of spell and keep it from being OP, but I’m willing to bet that ice witches who can do “general ice stuff” would be popular. Freeze water to walk on it… chill beverages… create ice bridge… preserve corpses… At what point are these things so niche that they need to be rolled up into a general spell rather than specific ones?
All you need is Prestidigitation. Need air conditioning? Hang a rock as high as you can still reach with Presti’s range and continuously cool it. It’ll suck the heat out of the air up there (hot air rises) so that the cooler air drifts down to you. Need a space heater in the winter? Put another rock on your table and continuously warm it and just bask in the heat. Honestly both of these are great uses for those pesky would-be apprentices who keep showing up.
Need to cool your drink? Presti to cool it works quite well too.
Need to do some cooking? Presti to heat the pan, Presti to stir the pot on the other side of the kitchen while you’re arranging the plating, Presti to imitate that super expensive spice from the other side of the world that would just perfect the meal, and if you’re actually rubbish at cooking just Presti to make it all taste delicious anyways. Then just Presti away the mess at the end like a magical dishwasher.
Going out for a date? Presti makes sure you and your finery are perfectly clean. Then you can Presti to adjust coloring, making a brand new getup if you want, or even some magical makeup. Presti can even provide some decorative accoutrement as long as you make sure it’s not gonna be examined too closely.
That strikes me as putting an awful lot of pressure on a single cantrip. The design for prestidigitation is “general minor magical effects.” That doesn’t really help with “general ice magic” or “general alchemy” though. For the latter, polypurpose panacea is an interesting reference point:
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/p/polypurpose-panacea/
It does stuff that’s slightly more powerful than “minor magical effects.” I’d love to see the same sort of thinking applied to other caster types and themes.
I think the argument of “every soldier would have at least one caster level” suffers the same fallacy as “why doesn’t the local 12th or 18th level hero just deal with this?” And thats the answer of “it’s just not that common”.
Sure, we can reach those levels. Sure, there is nothing stopping a full martial fighter from dipping into wizard or sorcerer just because. But, unless the world setting is “everyone can do magic”, I just don’t think it’s that common.
Even having all 10s is supposed to be above average, when compared to a random farmer, or npc; and that means most people are 8 or lower. How many of those do you think used intelligence, wisdom, or charisma as a dump stat? Considered the average npc, it’s nearly all of them.
that’s assuming NPCs even have a choice about stat distribution.
Pathfinder standard distribution (table 14-6) has the basic caster at 13 of the relevant score. Basic fighter NPC is at max 10 for a mental score.
“But, unless the world setting is “everyone can do magic”, I just don’t think it’s that common”. You might want to have a look at RuneQuest (and Glorantha in general) as that is indeed one of the things that happen there. Everyone, including the non-human intelligent (or not, like baboons) races have magic. But that magic is never very powerful, unless you work together as a group. So a phalanx of spearmen have the Stand Fast spell, that makes them into a unmovable object, and thus enhances their fighting prowess.
I vaguely recall going down that rabbit hole once upon a time. I have no wish to make a second go at the infinite Google. Start here if you like:
https://rpg.stackexchange.com/questions/112556/how-common-is-magic-in-golarion
I think I managed to find semi-official Faerun numbers (or maybe it was Waterdeep?) but I’ll be damned if I can remember where.
More broadly though, I’m not sure that you can get away from “A score of 10 or 11 is the normal human average,” even in 5e. If you have the ability to learn basic wizardry (as it seems about 50% of folk do), it stands to reason that you might want to regardless of official lore about class demographics.
Having even a significant minority of soldiers in an army able to cast basic spells would be exceptionally valuable, it’s a huge military advantage
Honestly, I just revised the system to allow everyone a degree of “magical” ability relevant to their class since anybody at or past 3rd level is blatantly supersapient anyways.
Pathfinder (and Golarion) is a very high magic game, and I’ve always disliked how DnD occupied this horrible and bizarre blind spot between gritty low famtasy and high sci fantasy.
Honestly good old Mending alone and some mild divination is probably enough to keep a hedge wizard in spell components. And prestidigitation for keeping whites whiter than white.
I’ve always been a bit confused about mending. Can it fix a large broken thing piecemeal over multiple castings, or does the whole object need to fit in the space? Bleh.
Pathfinder actually lists ‘laundry – magical’ as a 1gp service you can purchase. It’s pretty much a wizard using prestidigitation to clean someone’s outfit.
And for anyone who wishes to do charity work in their games, the Purify Food & Water spell is amazing for that purpose – all you need to do is go to local farmer or other establishment that produces waste/rotten food, buy off the spoiled/rotten food from them for peanuts, then cast Purify Food & Drink on it to make it fresh and edible – enough to open a soup kitchen for the poor and needy in almost any city or village. It’s also a decent way to purify large amounts of polluted water, or sustain a population with only access to salt water.
https://aonprd.com/SpellDisplay.aspx?ItemName=Purify%20food%20and%20drink
Gotta pay tuition at wizard school somehow. Not all of us can be left a huge pile of gold galleons by our conveniently dead parents.
In my settings, every major settlement has at least one hairomancer, a cosmetic sorcerer who can shorten, lengthen, style, or recolour hair. I once even had one travel with the party as a lovable NPC. Minor cosmetic spells have little to no combat application, but in a magic-filled world it’s reasonable that they would still exist.
I also introduce strain after strain of magic-resistant diseases and curses that can only be cured by a specific combination of magics and herbs, in order to make the local druids more useful and to annoy the heck out of my players.
Ha, one of my player groups took that to eleven. They are a bunch of longhaired blondes, both men and women, who always hung out in that same hairdresser\barbershop. They, together with the redhaired hairdresser, took up adventuring. And they are now a traveling magical hairdressing\spa\body modification troupe, that do adventuring on the side.
Well now you’ve got me curious. What’s the most extreme piercing that they offer?
More like plastic surgery and enhancing the naughty bits. Also top notch tattoos and indeed any piercing anyone can think about. They have started with gem inlays in skin, to “enhance natural beauty” and such. And, as they started as a group that was hanging out at the hairdresser, they do a lot of things with hair. Extensions, curling, straightening, colouring, stuff like that. And they give very good full body massages (hence the Spa thing).
Hey, a well-timed haircut can be absolutely brutal:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kkAYze6ae18&t=241s
Artistic Expression; 10min cast illusion Cantrip; Duration: Varies;
A modified and enhanced version of the Arcane Mark spell, this spell creates an artistic illusion on any object capable of being painted. The quality of the artwork created, which can include graffiti, murals, or paintings, depends on the caster’s skill in creating such artistry, but is always discernable as an illusion (disbelief checks succeed automatically). The spell lasts 1 hour by default, though the caster may expend 10gp worth of material components in the form of painting dyes to make it permanent. If using special/magical dyes, they impart their visual qualities on the illusion, as though it was drawn using such ink, but displays no other magical properties.
Any existing or permanent illusions created by this spell can be removed by the casting of the Prestidigitation spell to ‘clean’ the surface.
TLDR: An illusionary Graffiti spell.
I suggest “erase” instead of prestidigitation.
https://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/e/erase/
That poor spell gets little enough love.
Also, this concept would be a great fit for the Prismari school in the Strixhaven setting:
https://mtg.fandom.com/wiki/Prismari
Man’s Best Friend; 1st lvl conjuration; Mat components: A piece of beef jerky; Duration: 1hr/level;
This spell conjures a magical canine companion capable of performing complex tasks and tricks, such as herding, guarding, or hunting. This summoned creature has the stats of an ordinary dog, trained for a specific purpose (hunting, herding, etc) and three extra animal tricks, chosen when summoned. Its appearance, generally of a common canine of any breed, is chosen by the caster.
Whilst capable of keeping watch, intimidating creatures, tracking scents or performing other skill checks befitting a canine, it is unable to use any attacks and is otherwise limited in combat like an Unseen Servant is.
I’m torn here. I like that we’re interacting with a seldom-used subsystem, but it’s always a bit of a pain to have to tab around to several different pages to understand what your spell actually does. In either case though, this is a fine variation on “unseen servant.” I could picture more rustic casters preferring it.
Tapping in Warhammer lore here, you really don’t want to use magic for mundane purpose(turning lead into gold to pay your ferry is a borderline case) as anytime you tap into winds of magic you risk your head blowing up to ripping a hole in reality and letting deamons out.
Perhaps more magically carefree setting all that there is to stop you is your creativity. pretty sure I have been shown one but can’t remember it’s name… it alao may be a finnish indy project as I think the rule book wasn’t in english.
This is a good point. If you’re running in a setting or system where “magic comes at a terrible cost,” it would take a madman to waste magic on mundane pursuits. Coincidentally, it seems that there are plenty of madmen in Warhammer….
Though while it can be a bad idea in warhammer (though not quite as bad as the memetic version often implies, minor magic is really unlikely to go wrong to an actual lethal degree even if it can go wrong) that doesn’t mean that people doesn’t do it.
I remember a cleaning spell from the 2nd edition magic source book explaining how apprentices at the astrologers college sometimes tried using it to clean the lenses on the big telescopes. It had this neat detail about how the cleverer of them carefully ran a bit of cloth over them afterwards to introduce tiny almost imperceptible smudges to hide the magically perfect job the spell had done.
My homebrew solution is to let prestidigitation solve nearly everything domestic, at the cost of one of the hedge wizard’s few 0-level slots.
Way back in 1E AD&D, the cantrips were far more powerful than the effects of prestidigitation. Clean, for example, would let even a 0-level apprentice remove dirt from a 31′ x 31′ area (1,000 square feet). Two or more editions later, Merlin himself could only sweep a 1′ cube each round with prestidigitation–a 10′ x 60′ castle corridor went from a cleaning time of “1/2 segment” to one hour. It would be faster to do it by hand!
I have a list of some of the stuff that cantrips used to do (minus things replaced by other 0-level spells). If a caster (PC or NPC) wants to do something covered by that list (seasoning dinner, polishing their shield, removing that funky stench from the south corridor), then I hand-wave it as covered by prestidigitation. If, however, I get someone trying to do something completely original in the middle of a dungeon to circumvent a trap/monster/hazard, I default to the rulebook text.
That said, my son’s fledgling wizard owns a small tower, but lacks a Craft or Profession skill and so faces the constant dilemma of using his gold to learn new spells or to buy candles and food.
The clean function is more for removing stains and grime I think. And it’s certainly a faster and easier way to clean anything fragile and/or oddly shaped.
A cantrip for going ctrl+f and/or indexing on actual books and scrolls.
I think weather prediction and manipulation spells, while useful to anyone, would be vital in an agricultural community, especially if they could predict in the long-term, like a whole season. “Predict first frost” and so on.
“I think weather prediction and manipulation spells, while useful to anyone, would be vital in an agricultural community, especially if they could predict in the long-term, like a whole season. “Predict first frost” and so on.”
In a way Bless Crop would be that. It is there to mitigate the averse effects of the weather, and maybe even the effects of war, like keeping the crop standing, or at least be less trampled, while there is a fight going on in the field. Just predicting would be of some help, but as the growing season is rather fixed during the Middle Ages, that would give just a small window for changing it. Whereas Bless Crop would at least ensure that the majority of the crop would be unharmed and grow enough, even if it would rain in the wrong period, or not enough sun would shine when needed.
Mend, Find, Heal, Protect Crops (increase yield, save from pests, keep good during storage), Protect Livestock, Protect Village/Boat. If you want a full list, just check out your basic preindustrial history book and see what people have festivals and sacrifices for and guess that’s what the village witch/wizard does.
Oops, forgot midwife.
Summon midwife is only half as potent as summon wife.
However, it is a lower spell level and has a duration “hours/level” rather than “permanent”. Also has lower material components.
Heat Metal is probably very useful when applied to cooking. Just cast it on a cauldron or other metallic cooking surface.
Sounds To Words; Cantrip, illusion;
Useful for those who can’t communicate verbally but have literary skills, this spell allows the targets words to be changed from auidble sounds to visible illusionary letters and words in their desired script. For the duration of the spell, the subject cannot speak aloud – any utterances become visible words escaping their mouth like puffs of pipe smoke, their size matching their volume. Spellcasting with verbal components has a 20% failure chance under this effect by normal circumstances, though long-time users might adapt to this unusual way of ‘speaking’.
Weather Rock; Divination Cantrip; Focus: 1lb. Slab of volcanic rock;
Inspired by a village joke, this spell enchants a rock to display what weather it is likely to experience in the next 8 hours. For example, if it’s going to rain and snow in 8 hours, the rock will be wet and covered in snow or slush, or it might be warm and dry on a sunny day. The spell has a 80% accuracy rate – the other 20% of the time, it chooses a similar but incorrect outcome for the weather.
And the big question on my mind is: “Where are Paladin and Antipaladin, and how are their friends dealing with their absence?”
I think the Evil Party’s put out a “help wanted” if nothing else
A spell that heats food to cooking temperature or preserves it, something to alleviate migraines, a magic laser pointer to make it clear what you’re pointing at, are options. A spell that helps you remember something you forgot in the last couple of minutes would almost displace presti for me as what I’d want to be able to do most in real life.
An easy source of inspiration would be an old 3.0e splatbook “Tome and Blood” that recommended additional functions for Prestidigitation (because ol’ reliable “Least Wish” apparently wasn’t flexible enough for some people)- Gather (collects a specific type of non-magical unattended object no larger than Fine size in the affected area), Polish (gives a polish-able item a nice sheen, but it must already be clean), Dampen (makes something slightly moist), Dry (removes moisture from an object), Stitch (closes small holes with thread), Tie (can tie a simple knot in string/rope or two such objects very close to each other), Sketch (‘draw’ a simple 2-dimensional image).
Dry would be pretty handy for a few chores and just for dealing with rain, Gather for clearing messes or transporting grain/rice/something spilled. Sketch it handy for helping illustrate a point where expensive inks aren’t available or you’ve got to make a big picture for multiple people.
Honestly, even Presti minus that stuff ranks high on list of ‘if I could have any spell real which one would I pick’- rapid easy cleaning even in those hard to reach spots like behind the toilet, flavoring terrible diet food to taste like a sugary snack, cooling or heating drinks, lifting tiny things I drop without having to bend over, etc.
Some stuff Presti can’t do would also work nicely; you can’t clean living things with Presti (directly at least- scrub, presti, scrub helps), so just an ‘instant shower’ spell would be a huge time saver (and potentially a life saver for communities or families without running water, disease is no joke). An instant measuring spell to tell how long by wide by tall something is within a limit would help with carpentry and organization, or for merchants trying to identify imitations(a ‘weigh’ spell would help similarly, or a ‘count’ spell letting you know the exact number of x unattended fine object in an area for similar reasons).
The Prestidigitation cantrip actually already does most day to day things. But you’re right, there’s a big gap for things that aren’t day to day but aren;t combat related either
Magic oven mitts/gloves. A localized protection spell that keeps your hands safe from high temperatures and thorns alike, ideally without restricting your
manual dexterity. Handy (heh) for baking, chores, gardening, construction, and lab experiments.
Schattensturm’s D4-proof feet and Schattensturm’s D4 foot healing sounds like spells many people would buy me truck loads of scrolls 😀
Warhammer fantasy roleplay has “protection from rain”, very useful indeed. Of course, given the nature of magic in warhammer, and the fact it’s only available to hedge wizards, using the spell is both highly dangerous and illegal.
Rain is awesome, can’t blame the empire for hating wizards that act like fancy dry elves 😛
Elves can’t even use that spell. The rain just knows better than to mess up their hair. :p
XD
Magic is supposed to be rare. Wizards are people with the equivalent education to a post-grad degree in a world without universal public education. In a medieval-ish setting 90% of people are doing farming. (There are exceptions like the Forgotten Realms where there’s apparently an Archmage on every gods-damned corner because the setting-bloat got out of hand)
Additionally, most Wizards presumably never make it that deep into their craft. The AD&D books had actual tables for this, but the idea of finding someone who can cast 5th level spells in a small town is absurd. Adventurers get to level up quickly because they’re holding a special magical item that invisible to all called a “Protagonist ball”. Everyone else took years of training to reach the next level.
Agreed. You need a large town for 5th level spells. Small towns only have 4th level magic. Everybody knows that.
https://www.aonprd.com/Rules.aspx?Name=The%20Settlement%20Stat%20Block&Category=Settlements%20in%20Play
What about those old wizards who decide to retire in the countryside, once they’ve gotten fed up with all the politics and spell-dueling?
Same GM I mentioned in the OP speculated about “tower wizards” who level up by extended periods of seclusion and study. A safer (but much slower) form of arcane advancement than the trial-by-fire of adventuring.
Isn’t that just getting a college degree or PHD?
How much XP is a successfully defended dissertation worth?
Sure, 9th-level wizards are rare. But what about the village wise-woman who makes effective good-luck charms and love potions on top of the usual bonesetting and midwifery? What about the washed-out apprentice who can be hired for some black-market cantrips if you don’t want to deal with the Guild? What about the magic student who joins the army in order to graduate without debt, and helps out their unit with a bit of magical support?
And heck, maybe a wizard doesn’t have any use for a 5th-level slot today, and figures he may as well spend it on goodwill.
Looking through my laundry list of D&D/fantasy ideas, I just found the following note:
“lv0 divination to find out who farted”
So like… Is it a compass? Or does the flatulent light up?
I can only assume “whoever smelt it dealt it”, and you just look for whoever starts gagging when you finish casting.
I don;t rightly know. It’s from a list of ideas that I haven’t gotten around to developing yet.
Other interesting ideas on the list include:
An evil sentient manor house named Charles Mansion [sic]; fidget spinner prayer wheel; Where’s Waldo in Hell; replenishing bag of pills with random effects; backstreet’s back all wrong; fungus demon named Haustor (portmanteau of Hastur and Haustorium); the sorting hat is a nazi; the lance of ito; literal data mine; sibriex demon is Wizard of Oz; Onajor the god of donkey shows; ‘the house that jack built’ but about plague (‘…the rats that carried the fleas that carried the germ…’); the dungeons are uniformly low level but the cr of the bar fights (during downtime) gets higher and higher; vow of promiscuity; Axiomatic dagger or rapier called The Point of Order; a military AI called the Linux Colonel; and so on…
Sort: arrange unattended inanimate objects by some trait (color, title, etc.)
Inventory: get a list of what is in an area, as though you had personally checked
Electrify: charge a battery, or keep an electronic device powered
Patch Signal: connect a network device to a specific network regardless of range
Instant Coffee: suspend effects of fatigue
One perk of the squillion sourcebooks printed for 3.5 and PF1 is that those systems have a lot of weird utility spells. Even if you only print half a dozen out of one book in five, that can add up quickly. And unlike the core of 3.5 and Pathfinder, the weird utility spells are mostly not shared.
Some spells I like include:
Polypurpose panacea, which relieves aches, pains, and minor diseases afflicting the caster. Or gives them a saving throw bonus if they’re lame.
Scholar’s touch, which lets you absorb the information in a book as if you’d read it once.
Spendelard’s Chaser, which clears up hangovers and other post-drug-binge problems. Presumably, Spendelard was whatever the wizard-school equivalent of a frat boy is. (A Gryffindor?)
Sticks to Snakes is probably intended as a combat spell, just like a bag of tricks is probably intended as a combat item. But I think it’s more useful for creating animal friends, pranking schoolmates, and pretending to be a prophet.
Waterbane, which keeps you dry even if you go swimming.
Scholar’s Touch is definitely the best.
Also, you left out its weaker counterpart Amanuensis, which writes stuff down rather than reads it
Scholar’s Touch’s greatest potential is if it were made into an at-will magic item. It could potentially replace the whole educational system.
Prestidigitation would be wonderful. Pointing and going “Pres” at the carpet a bunch of times is still faster than vacuuming. Not to mention that the spell says a foot CUBED, not a foot squared. I don’t see any rules saying you can’t flatten that cube to cover a nice big chunk of carpet.
Mage Hand would be great for getting groceries out of the car in a single trip.
The Light spell would be easier than hunting down a working flashlight.
MENDING. Never need to repair things again!
I don’t think magic would be ANYWHERE near as common in armies as the DM imagines, for one simple reason: it is power that cannot be tracked, limited, or taken away, and NO ruler wants John Public to have that, ESPECIALLY in a group that is by definition some kind of organized.
I mean, just imagine if a small squad of, no, even just one irate levy-man decided they didn’t like your rule and cast create bonfire in/next to your granary one random night, burning away your winter stockpile?
If there weren’t that many casters around, say even a dozen, it wouldnt be hard to track down who dunnit, but when you have a suspect pool of few hundred entry level soldiers, it becomes worrying, and thats ignoring the possibility of a full scale rebellion of spellswords.
If you have that many spellcasters, it also means that you do train them, and then set them to guard that same granary. This also supposes that magic is not traceable. Depending on how you define magic (i.e. what the magic system is, and how it gets fueled) that may, or may not, be the case. And if you do have that irate levy-man, it would just be good policy for the lord to treat them better, or have a magic-equipped secret police to ensure things like this do not happen.
I absolutely ADORE mundane utility amongst the specially empowered: Enhance Ability to more quickly sew up a garment, or to lift the couch while cleaning? GREAT! Magic Missile, if flavored right, makes you a never-miss hunter who can also produce surprisingly flawless pelts!
But I absolutely agree: There are magics that adventuring parties simply have no access to either because they take too long to learn, are too fidly and have to be made from the ground up by each caster, or they’re just not super useful on the road. Imagine a wizard who gets tired of prestidigitating his tower clean, who instead puts everything the way he likes it, casts ‘Save State’ on the tower, and then when he needs to clean up after a lab session just casts ‘Load State’ to set it all back where it was, nice and clean, minus any supplies he used!
Sending getting obnoxious between you and your long distance team/conclave/strategic commander? Have it keyed to inscribe the message on the nearest blank scroll so you can read it and respond at leisure!
A market food stall vendor or Innkeeper with ‘Create Coffee’ would be a huge hit if it came out hot and fresh! Hell, Heat Metal would make for a super simple way to have a hotplate for cooking in an instant with only the plate required for setup! ‘Alphabatize’ for a pencil pusher to speed filing, Calm Emotions for a school teacher, a version of the light cantrip that dimmed the area outside of the spotlight for a theatre, or perhaps a way to cut down on how far sound travels (a kind of reverse-Thaumaturgy) for performances or speeches! Lots of possibilities, low and high on the magical spectrum!
So did Oathbreaker Paladin quit the evil party, or did he just walk away from the ritual? Because he ain’t here.
You don’t need to go very far to imagine what a non-adventurer caster would look like. You can find some of them in the real world! The effectiveness and realness of their magic is, of course, not guaranteed.
Anyways, let’s see the kind of spells they offer: remove curse, speak with dead, improve your chances of succeeding at exams or job interviews so probably INT and CHA buff spells, luck bonus for playing the lottery, curing alcohol and tobacco addictions, curing sex life problems such as erectile dysfunction, weight loss, and custom spells to make your spouse come back. That one must be very low-level given how often it’s advertised, meaning that apparently just about every one of them can cast it. That’s what I get in the flyers for the various local marabouts. All of them claim to be internationally famous, so I figure you probably get the same flyers.
Humor aside, those advertisement tracts are, well, advertisement tracts. The supernatural powers that they boast about are what can cause some people to actually go consult them for their spiritual help. And that’s why, in a fantasy setting where you look at what spells a non-adventuring professional magic-user would be interested in obtaining, those would be high up in the list. Because it’s what their customers would want.
The idea of quality of life, and more generally allowing players to fulfill their fantasies, are major themes in my custom RPG system.
Besides allowing for skill/attribute abilities and augmentations (which resolve many issues already), my system’s magic system allows for great flexibility and power, and also allows players to synergize their magic abilities with class abilities, etc.
Incidentally, my system’s (and setting’s) ideas are based off of what would happen if a fantasy world’s inhabitants advanced, with magic and features as they are in 5e, 3.0, etc. being seen as outdated, and/or a precursor to advanced magic and abilities. (A way to work campaigns in those games into the metaplot, and also inspired by PF’s lore.)
Funny thing, I actually dedicated my main Druid (and his 17th-level Druid mom/teacher) to having spells useful for life as a rancher, farmer, hunter, healer, etc. Lots of utility spells, but also some crowd control in there as well for stampeding animals and unruly teens or sneaky thieves.
It’s so fun to think about what would be convenient for a village wise one to have. Hell, Stone Wall and Move Earth are FANTASTIC for construction of new homes, and smiths of all types would love to have someone with Heat Metal around! Or Locate Object! Do you know just how CONVENIENT Locate Object would be? Anyone who knows it would be in high demand just for finding lost keys!
Locate Object is like ctrl + f IRL. I think that’s a function I’d want in the next patch.
I was recently reminded of how absurdly useful some of the soulmelds would be for day to day tasks and situations. Especially the blink shirt (short distance teleportation), pheonix belt (ignore hot weather effects below 140 farenheit), airstep sandals (short distance flight), and pauldrons of health (immunity to disease) And if you have 13 constitution you can get a specific one for free at level one without any special class.
A few ideas:
Lesser Locate Object: 0th level, as Locate Object except with a Short range/area (25 ft + 5 feet/2 caster levels). Really really handy if you just want to find your lost keys or wallet.
Stabilize Temperature: 1rst level Abjuration, 10 min casting time, effects a circular area within 40 ft/level of the casting point, Duration 24 hrs. Ambient temperature within that area is altered to a comfortable level for the majority of the creatures present. Does not function if the ambient temperature would be greater than 140 degrees Farenheit or less than -50 Farenheit, and does not prevent fires or protect from fire- or cold-based damage. Can be made permanent with permanency.