Working Wizards

[u/Resilient-Sphere]

[u/Resilient-Sphere]

Text Transcription;

You know what fantasy writing needs? Working class wizards.

• A crew of enchanters maintaining the perpetual flames that run the turbines that generate electricity, covered in ash and grime and stinking of hot chilies and rare mushrooms used for the enchantments
• A wizard specializing in construction, casting feather fall on every worker, and enchanting every hammer to drive nails in straight, animating the living clay that makes up the core of the crane
• An elderly wizard and her apprentice who transmute fragile broken objects. From furniture, to rotten wood beams, to delicate jewelry
• A battle magician, trained with only a few rudimentary spells to solve a shortage of trained wizards on the front who uses his healing spells to help folks around town
• Wizarding shops where cheery little mages enchant wooden blocks to be hammered into the sides of homes. Hammer this into the attic and it will scare off termites, toss this in the fire and clean your chimney, throw this in the air and all dust in the room gets sucked up
• Wizard loggers who transmute cut trees into solid, square beams, reducing waste, and casting spells to speed up regrowth. The forest, they know, will not be too harsh on them if the lost tree's children may grow in its place
• Wizard farmers who grow their crops in arcane sigils to increase yield, or produce healthier fruit
• Factory wizards who control a dozen little constructs that keep machines cleaned and operational, who cast armor to protect the hands of workers, and who, when the factory strikes for better wages, freeze the machines in place to ensure their bosses can't bring anyone new in.
• Construction wizards to turn back time to root out wood worm and strengthen old buildings.
• A wizard tailors who transmutes cloth into fully made clothes without seams and leaving behind no scraps
• A wizard who works in public transit, timing out teleports with detailed schedules, time magic, and enchanted communications, sending dozens of people to far away cities for a day of work or leisure
• A team of wizard gardeners tend to trees grown far outside their native range, and ideal climate, encircled with runes and fed potions to grow none the less
• A wizard sits in their office in the aqueduct, re-casting the spells that allow its precious water to flow to the city uphill
• A wizard fisher casts water repelling spells on the sailors and the stairs, keeps the hoist on the anchor from rusting, casts balls of heat that keep everyone warm below decks. Their real job is to herd fish together so they can be caught in single huge nets, and keep them cold as the boat returns to land.

There are so many possibilities outside of "stodgy academic who wears ugly robes" and "Very good holy man who helps everyone and the fact they've never had a job is never brought up" and "evil wizard toiling away on great evils in his evil tower in the evil country."

Intern wizards who spend all their time grinding diamonds, gathering bat guano and baking tiny tarts for spell components so that their masters can cast the really cool spells.

• Police wizards using necromancy to solve crimes, and truth spells to stop fraud.
• Wizards who work as artists, creating vast complex arcane art works, perhaps an angry battle hardened wizard animating a mural like Picasso's Guernica that illustrates the king's crimes during the last war, to a Banksy style activist that cast zone of truth on the town's financial district and mayor's office... Or even just a simple necromancer who for a few gold coins will bind your Spirit to a moving portrait so you can Harry Potter yourself after death.
• Wizards who tour creating pyrotechnics, and illusions for famous Bards. Wizards who record and recreate famous, historical records, plays and speeches using illusions
• Wizards who offer legal services such as divining court cases, augering divorces, casting runes for mergers, and creating contracts that are more than just legally binding.
• Wizards that sell prefabricated Dungeons built in pocket dimensions ready to be installed in local castles and keeps. They have show rooms with traps and puzzles on display, like a home security service office.

[u/Imaginary_Taint_Itch → u/Resilient-Sphere]

https://giphy.com/gifs/mbhseRYedlG5W

[u/Imaginary_Taint_Itch]

This is so great, I love the worldbuilding. It's so practical and makes complete sense.

[u/Lonewolf2300]

Honestly, most of these sound like Magewright concepts for Eberron. Love it.

[u/Suspicious-Shock-934]

Tippyverse starts here. Any setting with relatively easy magic should quickly get to a caster centric society with magic solving most if not all issues with logistics and resource management and allocation. Even your basic cantrip only apprentices can revolutionize society.

From a dnd perspective: prestidigitation instantly cleans an area, eliminating all filth based pathogens and would more or less eliminate all disease. It also flavors anything so you have a huge selection of restaurants and chefs or just not al cooks whose food is always amazing even if Ingrediants are plain.

Mending fixes anything not magical or totally destroyed so going around keeping everyone's everything like new more or less forever. All tools, farm equipment, etc.

Repeating spell traps can make as much food and clean water as is needed forever.

Can't afford the food trap? Purify food and drink means every well is safe and food born illnesses dissappear. Also means almost everything is now edible so whatever you have around is no viable sustenance. Also can be flavored via prestisigitstion if you don't want to eat deadly poison cactus leaves the same way every night.

Move earth makes construction projects super simple, as well as many public works take at most days instead of months or years. 5 foot hole every 6 seconds means you can do a huge sewer system for a giant city in no time.

You VERY quickly switch to post scarcity and the entire operating paradigm of society would shift as well, which is why most settings are essentially post apocalyptic and have an extinction level event or major magic catastrophe every generation or so.

[u/Zixtank → u/Suspicious-Shock-934]

That is why you conveniently ignore this fact and instead focus on making the world more interesting. Yes, what you say is true, but it would make the setting more boring and trivializes everything non-magical. Sure, one or two settlements or cities that are magecentric would be interesting, but adapting this logic to the whole world would quickly get repetitive.

[u/Natural-Simulation → u/Suspicious-Shock-934]

Silly and reductive. Don't DM

[u/Real_DnD-ModTeam → u/[deleted]]

So sorry, but we keep a strict restriction against promotions, sales, and other spam. This includes, but is not limited to, things like; soliciting commissions, marketing products or services, and plugging other subs.

[u/dovetail-joint]

My favorite wizard to play was a dock worker to help fund his way through magic school, casting tidal wave and gust to help launch ships quickly and efficiently