MGuy wrote:Frank says earlier in this thread. A caster can create 2 gallons of water out of nowhere and that is equal to a kid going to a well. No... it is not. This 0 level spell alone (0 level VERY easy to learn even for an untalented commoner who has 10 for a wisdom score) does a few things better than a kid with a well. Firstly its reliable. The well could be poisoned, empty, over used, frozen, destroyed, or non existent. In harsher environments (Deserts/Tundras) or during harsh conditions (Droughts/Winter) you have an ever present free source of water without taking from the environment. An invaluable element always on hand that makes it easier to live just by knowing it, especially if water is a rarity. And all you have to do to use it is sleep for 8 hours and pray for 1. its a 0 level spell so you don't even have to be particularly talented to use it.
Cure wounds, mending, purify food/drink, detect animals/plants, Prestidigitation (spices food, cleans, provides entertainment (if you care about that), all little tricks that with widespread use make the lives of the dirt farmers easier and requires just average potential to use.
This thinking here is essential to the problem.
The description of the wizard class indicates that you have years of study into the cosmic forces of the universe. The Sorceror class indicates that your magic is a byproduct of your heritage and cannot be taught. The cleric class requires a supreme devotion to your diety and a druid requires equal devotion to a nature diety or nature itself.
Heck even the NPC caster class in the dmg indicates that those that attain even the lowest levels are the shaman and wise people of their villiages and that they have spent their lives attaining what power they have.
You say that it only takes an average ability score to learn 0 level spells. This is not true. The average ability score is the minimum it takes to learn 0 level spells but it is not sufficient to just get you 0 level spells.
First you must find somebody to teach you magic, and you probably don't want to begin well after all your firends have been apprenticed to other trades. You might hope to be a sorceror, but if you are a sorceror are you probably don't decide to stick it out as the town water boy, why would you? You could adventure and become more powerful just by living.
Back to our lowly 10 int wizard apprentice. First you must find the wizard willing to take you in. Then he must decide to keep you even though your potential sucks. You study for years and years and at the end of it you have a skill set that is only slightly better than just doing the labor yourself.
You argue that the well could be poisoned, frozen, destroyed, or empty. Except, if its not any of these RIGHT NOW then making water is not of value because if you are a poor peasant you don't have the money to be choosy about using the free/cheap well or the services of the water vendor.
Look at the other low level tricks: Which of them cannot be learned while learning some other trade that doesn't have any stat requirement at all, and wouldn't be cheaper to just have the non magical craftsman do it?
Cure wounds = heal skill. Additionally, most peasants are not getting into swordfights that often (when they do they just die) and so healing broken bones and farm injuries can usually be done with heal. Hell the farmers themselves probably have a rank or 2 of this just out of self suffiency.
Mending: It takes no attribute requirement to be a tailor. While a wizards ability to mend is impressive and instant, mending also does not do the other things a tailor can do such as
resize clothing, convert cloth used for one purpose (say shirts) to another (say pants, or even blankets or sails). Again, mending only makes things whole it has no creativity it cannot repurpose something, which any trade skill could do easily.
Purify food and drink: This is a crisis ability and being able to magically solve this sort of problem is probably the one area where people would pay to have it resolved instantly. However, condensation collectors can generate clean drinking water and is a skill sailors and farmers will know. Brewing/fermenting alchol was likely developed as a way of sterilizing water.
Detect Plants/Animals: Most people are probably pretty happy with tracking and nature skills.
Prestidigation: Most people won't pay somebody else to clean for them. And as far as entertainment goes you probably need some performance training to to back up your prestidigation otherwise you are a one trick poney and that is not a stable lifestyle.
Then there is the aspect we have not even mentioned: If you trained as a wizard would you really settle down and make water all day as a way of supporting yourself?
You have pulled back the curtain of the cosmos and discovered that its filled with secrets man was never meant to know and you are going to use those secrets to run a midevil quick trip!
The players handbook prices are fixed, they are fixed because if it just said "values will fluxuate from market to market ask your DM" people would go crazy because they would have no fixed reference about what they can buy.
However, the fact that it says that laborors make 2 silver pieces a day does not mean that all laborers make 2 silver a day. It also does not mean that if you put up a sign that says paying 2 sivler for day laborers in D&D town you would get ANY takers. Actually you would probably get LoTS of unskilled laborers who normally make much less than 2 silver day.
The wizarding servives and costs to have spells cast for you in the phb really only apply to people with considerable disposable income and the ability to deal with wizards on anything like an equal playing field.
Unless your setting has a hogwarts and converts every third son of a farming family into a mnor wizard, wizards/casters are going to be a prestige position. Like doctors or laywers or famous theritical physicists. They are not going to compete against trades that can be learned with much less effort. Even if in the employ of some minor lordling, paying a wizard to make your clothes is probably not good choice economically.
This is the sort of thing that resolves the "why is everything not overrun with low level magic" It doesn't resolve the issues that allow magic to crash the economy from the top, but it does explain why its not illogical to have settings where every peasant doesn't have a rock of continual light.
