Despite what Frank says, I believe this is the case. I'd actually say that the example is based on the book-only DnD paradigm, rather than the DnD paradigm in general. For discussion purposes, I think limiting it to DnD is fine since I believe that's the point of this thread - to rehash old points already made about DnD. If that isn't the point the discussion fails simply from the weight of its assumptions which would no longer be moored to anything discernible.RiotGearEpsilon wrote:Just to be clear, the magical paradigm at work here is explicitly the DnD paradigm, right? Because other magical paradigms - Exalted, Earthdawn, etc - can have very different implications on how effectively magic can serve as economic capital and how high the barriers to getting that capital are.
To take the book-only comment further: considering that DnD magic has no real limits on what it can do, the fact that there are few spells specifically to allow industrial-level production is more a symptom of the game's focus on individual heroics than a limitation. There is nothing preventing the invention of multiple spells to assist production, even if they are as simple as a massive area-effect Mending spell at 2nd+ level that frees up a massive amount of a farmer's time otherwise spent maintaining equipment. Fabricate is spectacular but also generic: it's easy to imagine a version which had only a single application would be lower-level, more readily-available and possibly also create more. A similar permutation would take it in the opposite direction and simply have a higher-level version with DnD's typically exponential increase in output.
So simply saying that there are limits on magicians because there are, at the most permissive level, only a few hours in a day is akin to saying that modern industrial factories are similarly limited and negligible because they, too, can only be run a certain number of hours in a day. It's a poor conclusion.