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From: showard@udenva.UUCP (Mr. Blore)
Newsgroups: net.games.frp
Subject: Re: Social implications of magic
Message-ID: <1249@udenva.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 24-Mar-86 14:53:26 EST
Article-I.D.: udenva.1249
Posted: Mon Mar 24 14:53:26 1986
Date-Received: Fri, 28-Mar-86 05:02:19 EST
References: <9865@ucla-cs.ARPA> <386@weitek.UUCP>
Reply-To: showard@udenva.UUCP (Mr. Blore)
Organization: Karmic Research Center and Kama Sutra Hot Tub
Lines: 74

In article <386@weitek.UUCP> robert@weitek.UUCP (Robert Plamondon) writes:
>
>The biggest problem with D&D-style magic is that Clerics are as
>common as dirt. You don't need much in the way of stats to become a
>Cleric, and you certainly don't need much in the way of
>faith---most PC clerics don't have much!
>
>If the average person can become a Cleric (and he can), and being a
>Cleric looks like a good deal (and it is), you'd expect a society of
>Clerics!  I don't find the idea very appealing.

   Well, the average person can become a cleric, if he's willing to invest
the time, money, effort, and risk in training.  Being a cleric looks like
a good deal until you realise that a cleric is described as a servant and
emissary (read 'pawn') of his/her deity(ies).  

   For these reasons there probably won't be too many people who want to be
clerics.  And if there are too many who want to be clerics, the gods and their
temples will start to be more selective about whom they accept as trainees.
If you think of the world as a market economy, the producers of clerics (the
gods and high-level clerics who train them) will attempt not to flood the 
market.  There will not be more clerics in a society than that society could
reasonably support.
  
>If you don't put some kind of limits on spell-casters, things get
>wierd fast. Castles simply aren't suitable for defense against
>airborne attack, teleportation, large monsters, etc., so they
>wouldn't logically be part of the landscape.

   Agreed, to a certain extent.  Remember that the builders of the castle
will have just as much access to magic as the attackers.  In the official
D&D/AD&D rules, there aren't a lot of large-scale defensive spells, but there
are:  wall of force, anti-magic shell, protection from evil/good, globe of
invulnerability, as well as lots of magic items which could be used, like
the magic of a ring of spell turning or certain ioun stones.

>                                               Men-at-arms aren't
>enough to guard towns, so SWAT teams of mages (or something even
>stranger) would be necessary.

   Agreed, again.  But what's wrong with that?  If there is magic available,
why wouldn't cities and armies use it to their advantage?  While we're on
the subject, why should city watchmen always be untrained rabble?  Sure, they
were in the real world, but this isn't the real world we're talking about.  
A city's militia should have trained military (read 'high-level fighters')
in command of it, or the city won't last long.
 
>                                Armored knights would (by and large) be
>dogmeat when they encountered their first medium-level mage, so
>armored chivalry as the dominant force is highly unlikely.

   No they wouldn't.  The armored knight is in all probability a medium-level
fighter or cavalier.  His retainers might be in trouble, but I'll play a 7th
level fighter against a 7th level MU (or the other way around) and give you
even odds any day of the week.

>
>My own campaign is a medieval campaign with custom rules, which (like
>PENDRAGON from Chaosium) has no PC spellcasters, and few NPC
>spellcasters. There IS magic, and it IS powerful, but very few people
>have the ability to use it. You have to be in the 99.5th percentile
>just to have measurable aptitude, but only with 99.99 is the ability
>very powerful.

  That sounds interesting, and plausible.  But how do the players feel about
being unable to use magic?  Let's face it, being able to decimate those pur-
suing orcs with a fireball is fun!


"On second thought, let's not go to Camelot.  It's a silly place"
-- 
Mr. Blore, the DJ who would not die
                      {hplabs, seismo}!hao!udenva!showard
or {boulder, cires, ucbvax!nbires, cisden}!udenva!showard