Quote:
Originally Posted by Turhan's Bey Company
Most of the problems are campaign background issues. The biggest stink is raised over what someone has usefully called "creating and ennobling spells." Some people have done the math and figured out that a moderately skilled wizard can produce more raw metal than any two or three Medieval European nations you'd care to name combined. If a handful of wizards (as in, not enough to fill a minivan) can replace industries on a continental scale...well, campaigns resembling any real-world society stop making sense. There are two recommended fixes for this:
1) Ignore it. You're playing a fantasy game, not a strategic socioeconomic simulation.
2) Crank down the power of the permanent creation spells. Instead of being permanent, have Earth to Stone and anything with Create in the name last a day; multiply cost by 50 to 100 to have the change made permanent. IIRC, Essential (Material) spells have similar issues.
There are, IIRC, also some problems with damage types for some spells, but I'm sure someone will be along momentarily to explain.
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I prefer a variation on #1; assume that the socioeconomic effects of creating and ennobling spells (and healing ones, and plant ones, etc.) are
precisely the reason that most fantasy worlds don't really much resemble any real-world societies of their TL once you take a good look at them.
Think about it; in many, if not most, fantasy RPG settings, the populace is better fed, healthier, has more readily available metal weapons, armor, and other tools, is better educated, further traveled, and so on, than in any comparable medieval or early Renaissance locale. It's sometimes enough to make the setting seem like a Ren Fest version of itself. Far from being a problem, I find that assuming widespread use of 'utility' spells actually serves to
justify these aspects of the setting.
You might want to set certain limits, such as only letting wizards create metals from earth and stone that are already present in ore form, at least in trace amounts.