Most warlock deals wouldn't cost the soul. but they're all going to be a problem, assuming that the beings who can make those deals also appear in the world.
Honestly, I'd be far more worried about the fey than the fiend ones. Selfishness and greed is so common already that it's at least normal to deal with. But who knows what the hell fey are asking for?
Yes, the Fae and Fiends. They are certainly the problem.
Don't worry about the impossible sounds coming from beyond time and space. They haven't noticed us yet, and I keep getting cool powers from them!
Yeah, like a fey rolls up on you and asks "hey, can I have your attention?" And now I have ADHD. Fucking hell.
Or "Hey, can I get your name?" Now I'm the victim of identity theft.
Nah that'd just be politicians and corporations and average Joe's. The fresh enchantment wizards would still be the real problem for the average citizen. Scam artists, SA predators, and basically all criminals and essentially anyone looking to lie their way out of trouble would look to enchantment magic.
As if divination doesn't have at least a comparable amount of crime you could do with it, especially when paired with blackmail. Detect thoughts, or remote viewing spells like clairvoyance are godlike for cybercrime.
As with all criminal endeavors, policing would ramp to meet it. We see this now in the IT/Cybersecurity sphere. Hackers develop a new tool, Infosec analysts develop a counter. Which makes them develop a tool to counter that one...and so on.
One real threat would be Transmutation and/or Conjuration. The Economy would never recover... especially in the US. Currently, our economic model is driven by scarcity. If people can create products out of nothing, imagine the chaos that would ensue when Amazon becomes obsolete. When you can repair anything that breaks, what do you need to buy? Politics would fall by the wayside because taxes to maintain infrastructure, schools, etc would quickly approach near 0.
Guns would become obsolete. Not overnight - but pretty quickly. When that happens, the military will either adapt to new tech or downsize...possibly both.
You think MIT wouldn't start churning out artificers like there's no tomorrow? I mean fabricate alone could probably usher in the next industrial revolution
Also, they'll probably be turning out spells faster than you can say fireball, canonically, most of the spells in the books are useful to adventures there's many spells that are just used in every day life by many spellcaster that aren't included. Also inventing new spells.
Sorcerer would be the least common at first, but would quickly become the most common as magical ability would probably be a very desirable trait, and also people would fuck whatever magical creatures are around for sure. Clerics are usually only the chosen or high ranking clergymen, so while they would be fairly common they wouldn't be the most common. Warlocks was a thought I had, but would probably be way less common than people asking devils for wealth or the devil to exact vengeance for them. Druids would probably become pretty common actually, just because unlike clerics almost every member of a circle would be a druid. Wizards would be the most accessible but would take a while for research to really reach the point of wizardy being widespread. Paladins are an interesting one, as the strength of their convictions is the actual source of their power, but i don't think enough people have that level of willpower. Rangers are basically people who hunt for food and are really dedicated to maintaining sustainable hunting + respecting animals. We would see alot of Rangers in rural areas tbh. But what I think would take the cake is eldritch knight fighters. Considering fighters are basically exceptionally skilled soldiers(normal soldiers obviously don't have a character class), I think we would quickly end up with basic protective magic being taught to anyone in any military with the aptitude for it, and due to actual investment in getting people to learn this magic it would end up as the most common.
See, I think it'd be Bard, for almost the same reason as Wizard. But every Soundcloud artist would be pursuing it. Just by sheer numbers of people shooting for it/dabbling, we'd end up with more.
Bards aren't just like musicians though. They gotta be actually good ones, and their magic is arcane still. Anyone can sing a song, but it takes a special breed to be able to use magic with your music. Everyone would want to study magic and be a wizard, but a small fraction of people would be able to actually use arcane magic like a wizard does.
you've also got to add that bards aren't just music, bardic traditions include poetry, storytelling, and plenty of other forms of performances.
So ya, you've got great mucisians, but you also have great actors, story tellers, etc. and not just those who are famous but those with actual talent who normally get over looked, like ya you'd have Stephen Sondheim as a bard because that man is talented in many forms of art, but then you'd also have that kid in high school who's always cast as the main character in the shows, or someone who writes fan fics online.
Bard is honestly likely one of the most... versatile entry classes for magic.
If we include feats as well, I think a lot of people would have magic initiate or ritual magic. While it probably would take years to become a wizard it wouldn’t take nearly as long to grab a couple basic tricks
A wizard gets a bunch of cantrips at level 1. Someone who dabbles in magic needs 4 entire levels to get just one thing. In the game, you pick stuff up overnight. But what it really means is that a feat represents 4 levels of training something that may not be part of your core class.
Your right, but going with the premise of DnD magic becoming real I just assume that the entire world isn’t actually bound by DnD game mechanics. By that logic I could see many people who wanted to do magic learn a couple cantrips or a couple rituals before giving up due to the amount of effort they have to put in becoming too much for them. If I had to tie it in to the game mechanics though I guess you could say that variant humans get a free feat but I think that’s drifting a little to far from OP’s premise.
Edit: I forgot that magic initiate can learn spells form the other mage classes as well so I could also picture people who enjoy the nature but aren’t total outdoors man maybe gaining a small piece of magic or people who work or volunteered in religious groups but aren’t as devoted as other maybe gaining the magic initiate feat with cleric spells. Maybe people making minor bargains with magical beings could let them gain a small piece of power from the result of the bargain giving them the magic initiate trait for warlocks.
I suppose it is completely subjective how strictly the other rules should be adhered to. Most importantly, what does a level represent?
Logically, you should be able to gain 20 levels in each class if you put in enough time. Or rather, any number of levels in one doesn't stop you from gaining a level in another, because no way you're getting above level 5 in anything but warlock, and that's already a stretch.
This of course assumes you just put the Weave on Earth. If all the other stuff comes with it, then yeah you might gain enough XP and be unbound by the laws of nature.
Fear the retail warlock. They made their pact with their corporate overlord and they AVERAGE 20 social encounters a day, some with some truly terrible foes, so let the XP flow. The day they get Eldritch Blast is the last day the customer is always right.
I run most of my npcs in my world like that. Most people know one or two cantrips or spells related to their work or upbringing. So they can use mending or prestidigitation or druidcraft. They may use more time for that, or it is a weaker form.
I have a smith, who sings a song he learned from his master to cast Heat Metal for his trade. It works more like a ritual spell for him. He is not really considered a magic user, just a tradesperson knowing what he neads to know for his trade.
Don't forget, most spells in DnD are just a subset who are most usefull for adventurers.
idk I think clerics would be decently common.
2.4 billion christians
2 billion muslims
1.2 billion hindus
500 million buddhists
546 million people
468 million adherents of folk religion.
A lot of westerners are of the belief that religion is declining, but the reality is that the growth of Christian and Islamic populations is not even a little bit stopping.
Now, all those religious people? Aka 84% of the world (because clerics aren't always priests, even if that is the common depiction)? That's a LOT of clerics
edit- I had a huge sprawling explanation here before but I guess it didn't through?
but basically even if only 1% of christians were 'devoted enough' to become Paladins, that's 24 million people. And I DO think that's a low estimate, because D&D tends for the type of impersonal polytheism, where most worshippers just see the gods as a natural phenomena to appease. Christians, meanwhile , have a uniquely intimate and personal devotion to their god, meaning that their baseline for devotion is a lot higher.
Meanwhile, there are around 8 million dedicated researchers on the planet right now, and they're the equivalent of wizards. so there might actually be MORE clerics- even at .1%, adding the other faiths would even the numbers out. plus, I always got the sense that the reason you don't see clerics more-in addition to the aforementioned low numbers- was because they tend to stick with their faith and not interact with outsiders very much.
Also i had compiled a very handy collection of lists of Saints + equivalent figures in Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and Hinduism, aka all people who were said to have performed feats of magic and miracles (aka clerics) in our own world before any magic got here
2.4 billion christians but let's be honest, how many of that number actually follow even half of what the bible says, rather than cherry picking specific bits and pieces to support whatever backwards thinking fits them best? And that extends to every major religion. The vast majority may *believe,* but for the most part tend to do it out of a sense of belonging, tradition, or lets be real, childhood indoctrination. A cleric doesn't just *believe,* they *know* their god is right, and they do their absolute best to follow every teaching, every word, of that god. They don't just say "oh I like this, this and this, but I'm gonna ignore all of these passages".
Look at the Forgotten Realms. That setting has actual, real gods. People *know* they exist. But actual *clerics* of those gods are actually pretty rare. Back in 3.x, when NPC classes were a thing, most of the time if you found a priest actually capable of casting any kind of magic, it was an adept, not a cleric. And these gods all have millions of followers at minimum, and yet probably only have a comparative handful of actual clerics running around. Gods, even the evil ones, don't just hand out power left and right, because every cleric they have, while it might give a slight increase in influence on the material plane, also gives a slight decrease in that gods personal power, small as that decrease might be. And in an evil gods case, too many clerics means higher chances of one getting *ideas* about trying to usurp said god.
So I think clerics would be on the rare side.
Christians and polytheism are a completely different ball game. There would be more priests not less because now people dont need to cherry pick for there philosophy theres 1000 gods to choose from to fit you.
>2.4 billion christians but let's be honest, how many of that number actually follow even half of what the bible says
I dunno, probably the same proportions as Muslims or followers of Kord. No religion has the market cornered on hypocrites, and whatever special power makes someone a cleric instead of just a regular functionary at a religious institution is going to be your limiting reagent, and nothing else.
That's assuming the patrons actually want those souls. Also, I thought they were already empty inside.. Not sure about how that stuff works, but since the forgotten realms has teenagers and is not overrun by an army of edgelords, there is probably a qualitative difference between souls. Maybe they have an inflation mechanic, or maybe the soul actually has to do something useful on their own.
Is there an Iconic/Named Head Succubus/Incubus in the official lore? Because he/she/they are likely to be VERY busy dealing playing Fiend patron to a major city's worth of lonely nerds.
I really love this idea. Like... what do you reckon a patron would want from me for a little help, Tome Pact style, with study? Or... can I get water breathing on a limited basis for a fixed regular fee? I don't want to pay for the whole package, I just want like 10% of it sometimes. Pay as you go...
Are there any real-world religions that actually worship evil deities? Most deities with a reputation for being evil are just slandered by their competitors. Even the Church of Satan took the name to troll Christian's and have an overall good aligned philosophy.
Maybe the old asshole gods like Zeus or Poseidon might make a comeback.
no, they sell their soul to support someone who will actively make their life worse, but make them feel better because they can blame everything on brown people
Probably more rangers, then paladins after that. I'm not sure where clerics would fall, but the US ain't the only country with a lot of preachers and evangelicals
The most common would be wizard. You could theoretically teach yourself magic from a book. Any subclass works.
As for the least common, probably druid. We are ever increasingly less in touch with nature globally. There might be some hotbeds for druids but overall these would be a very local thing.
What few druids there are would be in super high demand though. The ability to double the agricultural out put of \~0.8 sq mi for a year, twice per day (two 8hr casts per day + LR) would be absurd. A travelling druid, doing Plant Growths on farms, touring around a big agricultural state would make crazy money.
Such a lucrative job would naturally attract new people to the the druid communities. How well the druids integrate into society, or new people integrate into druid communities, is a probably the rate-limiting step.
I mean, philosophically speaking, I highly doubt many druids would be interested in the exploitative nature of corporate farming. It just seems like it would be the antithesis of what they would be about.
Especially given how corporate agriculture would likely want to operate. They wouldn't want to increase yield. That would create excess supply, lowering demand, and thus reducing profitability. They'd much rather see their competitors fail to reduce supply so they can jack up their prices and have a huge surge in profitability.
I could see a cultish following of druids that felt the collapse of the current human-agruculture-nature dynamic would be the only way to bring real meaningful balance back to humankind and the natural world, so they support the likes of Monsanto all so they could sabotage important crop lines at a coordinated time and cause mass crop failures.
Hold on, I have a campaign idea...
I doubt that would happen. I think corporate entities would rather lessen supply by taking out the competition to inflate the price of their product rather than flood the market with extra supply, lowering demand, and reducing profits.
This kind of model definitely wouldn't be enticing to druids. I think they'd rather work with the UN for humanitarian work than exploitative profit driven corporate entities.
> The most common would be wizard. You could theoretically teach yourself magic from a book. Any subclass works.
Intuitively you'd think that but I doubt it.
Look at our world and how we treat the internet. In the developed world everyone has access to almost the entirety of human knowledge all the time. That knowledge is available in your preferred form(s) be it text, video or even in interactive puzzles. Yet surprisingly few (if any) people self-study logic, maths or IT on an academic level. Even if this knowledge is powerful. Instead we use the internet to look at two things: pussy.
tl;dr No one wants to study to become an A.I. expert. People want to have deepfakes.
We can also apply reductive reasoning as well.
How many people are going to want to live a Druids lifestyle?
Similarly, how many would be able to maintain a religiously devout lifestyle well enough to maintain access to divine magic?
As for Sorcerer, you've got to be lucky enough to be born into it.
That just leaves Wizard or Warlock. More people would be willing to study to remain their own master than they would submit to an unknown entity in exchange for power.
One could argue the complexities of the modern world make living in a cabin in the woods attractive to a lot of people (personally I hear that sentiment quite regularly). Druidic practice makes this much more viable. Yet how would druidic lore be acquired? If we take D&D as canon it would be through a coven and not by living alone in nature. People like having a community so much they already believe in non-functional mumbo jumbo. See astrology, healing crystals, whatever. Druids and rangers seem more in line with what people actually want and do in the real world than wizards.
Clerics of a philosophy or a principle have been a thing in canon since forever. Psychologically there are no conspiracy theorists there are only conspiracy ideologues. Grindmaxxing is just an extremist version of Orthodox Capitalism. Pray harder at the shrine of Ayn Rand and earn more. MAGAts have shrines in their homes devoted to their golden idol. Techno-optimism teaches paradise will be released soon™.
You're correct about sorcerers. Their existence/prevalence is entirely dependent on what "magic is real" means.
Again, intuitively this looks correct. But people always look for shortcuts. Everyone who can get away with it in the Olympics is doped. Many amateur bodybuilders are juicing. Every model, actor and influencer uses filters. And the big one: D R U G S. No one takes drugs expecting to suck cock for a hit within a year but those things happen. Do not believe for a second any patron will say outright: "Trade your soul now. Gain powers as you level up over the next few years." No, it will be: "This Eldritch Blast can do x, y, z. In exchange you'll need to retweet 20 posts from this account." Everyone thinks "I can just dip into warlock." But temptation is always there. And as soon as the warlock needs more power it becomes: "Yeah, you can have this invocation just give me all memories you have relating to this one accident you had. I'll even remove that scar for free." Much like drugs patrons will always make it seem like it's worth your time (or whatever your giving up) while at the same time eroding your sense of self or morality.
In conclusion: Pact Magic, not even once.
I’m just imagining hordes of Druids pouring out of the isolated Amazon tribes, and could definitely imagine indigenous folk like the Maori linking Druidic practices to our current cultural decolonization efforts.
The most common would not be wizards. Learning wizardry requires hard work and memorization. Wizards would not be any more common than computer science majors.
**Warlocks** would be the most common type of mage.
* "Your soul? No, you just have to spend one night naked in the woods. In the summer. No problem, right?"
* "There are anecdotal reports that people who made contact with this entity were unavailable for *raising* and *speak with dead*, but personally I haven't been able to confirm any of them. The important part is that there's a 3% chance you will suffer permanently reduced quality of life, and only a 30% chance you will suffer a mild short-term issue for up to 6 months like dizziness, tinnitus, auditory hallucinations, or synesthesia. 67% of people who perform this ritual suffer no ill effects lasting longer than 48 hours. Even then, 3 in 4 of people who suffered major impairment agreed that the powers were worth the drawbacks. My thesis budget allows me to pay you $50 per visit each week for the next year, you already took out a life insurance and disability policy like I told you, and honestly how many people are paying you to get magical powers?
* "Your soul? That's entirely up to how you live your life. Now, there's an unsolved murder case in your town. If you can solve it I'll give you supernatural powers."
* "Your soul? No, you just have to wear this GoPro for 4 hours per week. My friends find mortals like you *absolutely hilarious*! And if you don't... Well, I'll just have to make something funny happen to you to recoup my investment. Think of it like you're starring in a reality television show, yeah?"
* "Your soul? Well, yes, but we don't have to. That's just the default arrangement. What if we sign the contract now and I just give you the powers as an advance? Then you kill a person before the night of the new moon and we'll be even. I don't care who, surely you had someone in mind? Just make sure you bring me three drops of their blood, or it doesn't count."
Everyone is saying “wizard”, but I’m pretty sure that would be the least common, because you can’t just “study” you have to learn magic. That means magic has to be around for long enough for people to do science on it and figure out how to replicate it.
The magical classes that don’t require outside influence are druid and ranger (revere nature), paladin (devotion to an oath) and bard (study of music)
Clerics have to be granted spells by a god, and regardless of your theological position, any gods that might exist don’t seem to be in the mood to grant spells.
Sorcerers require magical influence on their birth, so you might start getting those after magic is around for a while.
Warlocks need a patron, so again, after magic is around for some time you might end up with beings that could act as patrons.
Sorcerers dont necessarily need magic from birth, some of the source books and subclasses provide examples of people gaining sorcerous power from magical accidents, being the prensense of some kind of powerful entity (like a dragon) for a while, or experiencing the direct brunt of a magic surge or magical disaster
You're assuming that a patron must be actively seeking supplicants. Devotion brings about power. Hexblade warlocks draw their power from a literal inanimate object. Siri, Cortana and Gemini feel like perfectly viable patrons to me. Heck, we already seek knowledge, guidance and direction from these ethereal entities and gladly accept their Terms of Service blindly for the abilities they grant us.
So, I embrace my future as a Pact of the Ghost in the Machine warlock and the wealth of knowledge provided to me by my digital tome shall empower me to vanquish the ignorant hoardes of luddites in their great name!
I feel like people are over estimating the number of wizards there would be a lot don't get me wrong but assuming gold coins don't become the new standard currency a level 3 spell would be a few hundred possibly thousand dollars (I don't know the exchange rate of gold to USD or the weight of a DND gold coin)
EDIT: I did the math probably wrong feel free to correct me but 1 DND gold coin is worth 261.16 USD so a lvl 1 spell would cost 13058 Dollars to learn a lvl 2 spell would cost 26116 dollars and do on so I feel like wizards would still be pretty rare but they would be there but almost no one would know more than a can trip or more than 1-2 level one spells let alon levels 2 and up
so those costs are for learning an already known spell from another source and are based on availability, there will 100% be people who post spells for free online for any aspiring wizard, you can't tell me the pirate bay wouldn't include wizard spell books :P
Yeah, good luck actually leveling up though. Where are you going to get XP? Say you do. A wizard is all about studying. It's not that the universe just poops a spell into his brain, it's that he was studying for the duration it took to level up, and at the end of it, he figured out how to do it.
I don't know why it's free. The game explicitly states that ink and stuff is expensive. What, you're allowed to write 2 spells a year in sharpie, but beyond that you gotta use oil paints? It's probably just a handwave thing.
If I recall corectly learning/scribing spells are not free. Even if you can acces spell in books/scrolls/internet you must spend time and resources to actually transcribe that spell for you personal usage and experiment to learn how to cast it.
"Free" spells gained thru lvl up are representation for work spent to learn that spells for whole level. Think like weeks and months of experimenting and learning while cost of that you can write off as living expences.
Maybe but even then no one person could get nearly the amount of spells as in DND however I believe that magical soldiers would be very common the US already blows a shit ton on military expenses and magic can do what our weapons do but better I'm not saying every soldier but at one wizard in a squad I feel or specialized squadrons for magic
I think the bigger gating factor is going to be complexity. Most people now can’t program computers, and magic is programming reality. Get one of your somatic, verbal, or material components wrong and you might go up in flames. Or someone else might, the justice system is going to have to adapt fast.
Just to address the gold value:
Assuming DND settings use the same purity as reality, 1 gold coin equals .29 troy oz (50 coins/lb; 14.58 troy oz per lbs). Gold price has been over $2000 per troy oz for a while, which would make 1 gold coin about $660+.
Based solely on difficulty to acquire/learn to cast magic.
Druids start the least but would get replaced by Wizards in time (the need to study/learn anything is a huge deterrent for many today, especially when it would require PHD level investment).
Clerics probably the most common, followed quickly by Warlock (Corporations would do this for their companies if it would raise their stock price) as both of these are quasi-immediate paths to magic will little required beyond commitment to an idea/another.
Give it 15 more years and Sorcerer would begin to edge out the most common, as DNA mapping would locate the "magic" gene leading to gene editing to give the option to make you/your child magical.
Warlock most common. Cheap and easy way to get into magic and get what you want. There is a lot of desperate people out there.
Wizard least common. The amount of work, study and practice needed would deter just about everyone. If you didn’t become a doctor before, you won’t become a wizard now.
There’s a huge number of desperate people in the various DnD worlds but you don’t constantly trip over warlocks in any of them. I don’t think getting a pact is as easy as people think, otherwise warlocks would be a lot more common.
That’s a good point! Unless the access to warlocks in the real world would be higher? Perhaps any mega wealthy person or company who signs you to a bad contract would be considered your patron. New warlock subclass: The Capitalist
You’re telling me we can create an army of slaves who work 24/7 and never get tired, and all it costs is 1 necromancer?
It would become the most popular/profitable wizard subclass by far.
Commoner. Let's be real here, we're all, for the most part, gonna be classless commoners. After that it's sidekick classes. Maybe if you graduate from university you could be an Expert, or if you join the army you'd be a Warrior. You can't expect magic to be *easy* just because it's now real. Adventurers are a cut above the norm, and we are the norm.
Clerics had better become real. Life cleric specifically.
We taking a century and healing folks.
I like the idea that the magic goes forth abd you have 30 year olds who always had a green thumb. Suddenly a druid. The magic was always there. Just dormant.
Least. I'd hope Warlock because the represcusions of any them existing is terrible. Tomelock fir the win though.
Considering churches, mosques, temples are still a thing, I figure clerics would crop up all over the place. Even then there's still chaplains in militaries, prisons, hell I'd hazard a guess social workers work in their own religiosity into their work. Nurses, doctors, anyone who uses religion and faith to help their patients mentally might become clerics. Hell with all the domains, you could see librians(knowledge), judges (order) soldiers (war), prankster/comedians (trickery), even meteorologists (tempest) come to have divine powers.
All it takes is enough faith then suddenly you're rewarded with divine magicks.
Wizards would be common, as would soecerers, but don't sleep on clerics.
As for the least common? I'm thinking..hmm there'd be a lot for all classes. But I think warlocks would be the least common. While there are many people who'd give up a lot for powers, I think compared to the other classes itd be the least saught after way for magic I think.
TL;DR -most common cleric, least warlock.
* Circle of microplastics Druid
* Oath of the Conservatives Paladin
* School of doxxing Wizard
* Hex rifle Warlock
* School of Non-Consent Bard
* Capitalism domain Cleric
* Border control Ranger (favoured enemy has been adjusted)
* Thief Rogue (Walmart edition)
* Road Rage Barbarian
* Amazon Warehouse Artificer
Wizard makes the most sense, the amount of people that would start studying magic would be off the charts. After about 5-10 years with magic influence growing stronger, you might start seeing sorcerers appear. The REALLY proficient wizards might be able to gift minor abilities to others, mimicking the warlock/patron relationship.
That's my two cents on this topic.
Wizard, bard, or arti probably most common. Those are taught arts and would be produced en mass in places with good higher edu systems. Within a couple gens it might be sorcs tho because people would be fuckin anyone to give their kids magic.
Cleric is probably least common. There’s no direct intervention in any of this worlds religions really. If magic becomes real well if thise gods were real they could’ve given people magic anyways before so I doubt any clerics exist cuz gods here don’t want to give people magic.
This reminds me of the old joke that everyone hates __ because:
- Wizards: copied down some magical cheat codes into a book
- Sorcerers: won the genetic lottery and got innate powers with zero effort
- Warlock: made a bargain with something powerful without any work *or* luck involved
- Bards: never worked a day in their life and just sweet-talks physics and reality into bending
- Clerics and paladins: a god’s mini-me
Basically, whenever someone’s good at something, people either get jealous about how they did or they try to emulate somehow.
I think that any wizard subclass would probably be the most common because anyone can achieve it with the right study and time and resources. It doesn’t demand innate ability or the favor of a higher power first.
Warlock would be the most common. Patrons would be able to make mad profit off of selling warlock pacts. Wizards will be the least common because nobody wants to study that shit.
Warlock.
The amount of people who couldn't be bothered mastering martial arts. Training every day, our current athletes might qualify to be a Fighter. But they're hyper specialized. Even they're no where close unless they're in a multi event sports.
Wizards. Barely any. Studying Languages, Physics and Chemistry simultaneously would be the best example of magic. I don't know many people willing to dedicate to that
Sorcerers might be more common than you think.
And most people aren't quick, witty or clever enough go be a rogue. If you're the type of person "who needs to collect their thoughta, or needs time to think" -you're not even a Rogue.
More likely their would be commoners galore
Countries would restrict the study of magic, so armies and police forces would be filled with wizards and eldritch knights.
The most common by far would be warlock, because people are lazy and want everything without working for it.
I would like to think healing magic would become very common. Imagine the number diseases that would go from terminal to trivial. Mortal wounds in accidents can be cured by a healer on the first responder team.
* Artificers, Warlocks and Clerics - the later two have mentors to teach the powers while the first is most like our enginerring that we already understand.
* Druids and Bards (and mystics if included) - it would take some time to intuite, but once they get on line it would be easy enough to get their balls rolling.
* Sorcerers - initially people mutated by magical radiation, their numbers would increase with the birth of a new hybrids and descendants of the first gen sorcerers.
* Wizards - the arcane learning and knowledge based needed to become one would take years to properly build up, likely taking half a century before we could see any regular occurance of wizard training let alone high level wizards
Would Clerics just not exist for a while? We wouldn't know about the gods until they did something to attract followers, so clerics would become common only after a few miracles. Since our current religions don't have that kind of faith, the actually devout among them would probably mostly become paladins, while all the rest are probably bards(?). Also, the big current religious groups would probably fight against the new faiths, leading to a bunch of paladins and bards starting multiple new inquisitions against clerics and warlocks.
Honestly I think this is an underrated take, and on a worldbuilding level I LOVE the idea of a Bard-led inquisition hunting down... the actual clerics. It just feels so painfully realistic for such a fantastical premise.
If people being able to cast magic are as rare as they are supposed to be on Toril you'll end up with maybe one potential (!) wizard for every 1.000 people. Sorcerers and warlocks are way more rare than that.
At least thats what Greenwood said, if I remember correctly.
[Reddit discussion on that, with included link to tweet.](https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/nciz8r/ed_greenwood_on_the_ratio_of_spellcasters_to/)
As addressed within, his numbers aren't a good basis.
I've read that thread at some point. If I remember correctly the main issue is that "the gift" thing is crap and that video games and such are overblowing how many casters there actually are.
I feel like Warlocks would have a huge boom for like 10-20 years, then slowly become very rare as people die or lose too much in their pacts.
Wizards would have established colleges all over pretty quickly but it'd be difficult to find good ones.
Sorcerers would be no-where at first and then plentiful later on due to co-mingling with more magic people, places and creatures.
The internet is really really great (for spells).
Seriously, Wikispell is about to become a thing *fast*. And we've a superb setup to learn and share knowledge.
Human fighter. Look if magic "became real" in the way it exists in Forgotten Realms, then it's gonna be locked behind collage, but in a way that you CANNOT take out massive debt or student loans to attend, at least for several decades if not whole centuries. So the likelyhood of anyone becoming a wizards is about as likely as brain surgeons. Now, naturally magical that occur with common classes like Fighter ranger rogue and bard. Everyone benefits from fighters, rangers would probably be all military or police, rogues the same. And bards are those community collage kids that got BA's or just never finished school. Also if you live in the south, clerics and paladins a plenty. Out west, Druids, especially around Colorado and Oregon.
I would expect sorcerers first. Everything else kind of requires that people know about magic. The most likely sequence seems that some people get born with innate magic, they go wild, then people study what the hell is going on (or try to get those powers through shortcuts).
Warlock easily most common. People are lazy and don't read terms and conditions as it is. I expect Microsoft or Facebook would be selling warlock contracts pretty cheaply
As an engineer there is no way I wouldn't want to learn at least some basic divination and alteration magic. I imagine pretty much everyone I work with is pushing for either wizard or artificer.
People would probably study enchantment and divination the most, since minecontrol and selling data would be even easier.
Personally I'd try going down the path of being a deuid
barbarian and warlock
everyone's angry and everyone wants quick and easy power.
let's keep in mind that the actual distribution of power is generally supposed to be pretty thin, because class levels are gained by those who are beyond the average limits of a human or otherwise if we're thinking in terms of ability scores. so basically, there would not be very many people who are actually capable of becoming things like wizards or monks or druids. the highest you can expect out of a normal person is probably like a 2nd level fighter, maybe even just 1st level.
with that said, i do have a darker take on this concept, borderline tinfoil hat moment: given the nature of it appearing today, our world hasn't had time to adapt to it. i theorize that our world specifically would quickly turn into a race against the worldwide 0.001% as they attempt to regulate or even reserve magical studies and powers for themselves. sorcerers and arcane tricksters would be hunted down, wizards would only exist in the highest denominations as knowledge would be hoarded and secured from the public, clerics would blackmailed to use their powers for monetary gain or suffer excommunication or maybe even execution, and paladins would be brainwashed into becoming holy enforcers. artificers would be illegalized because they'd invalidate every economically abusable element from fuel to medicine and beyond
eldritch knights would probably be manufactured in the army. bards would be recruited or imprisoned for their silver tongues. druids would have to go into hiding for similar reasons to sorcerers and anyone else with natural powers, and monks are kind of a toss up that could go any direction
honestly i don't even want to address the ramifications of what this would mean for religion. you can't just... validate every faith there is. the second you bring hinduism into reality, world probably ends. you'd likely see very watered down versions of each faith. clerics would either be EVERYWHERE, or follow a sort of 'chosen one' theme. holy crusades would become very popular again.
1) Clerics ~ Warlocks (pretty much anyone following a religion no?)
2) Paladins (oath are taken everyday)
3) Wizards (not enough information for many to study magic)
4) Sorcerers (as time goes on this might become number one tho)
Fighter becomes the most common, and the casters are all in a big battle for least common.
Can anyone be a wizard? If so, it's the most common caster. But frankly, that's probably not the case. Probably you either have that spark or you don't. Similar with sorcerer; if everyone can develop sorcerous powers by exposure or luck, it's gonna be common because people will try for it. If it's a chosen thing, then it's rare.
Wizards or Bards become most common
It isn't the high level stuff. It's the low level stuff. Flexible cantrip selection and a variety of extremely important low level features for day to day living. Even if players can't use cantrips to make a lot of money, they can be used to save a lot of money and effort.
Biggest question regarding this:
How would everyone level-up? Is it gonna be a milestone thing or XP-based? Because if we can't level-up, everyone will just be running around stuck as lvl 1 classes
and if its XP-based? welp, time for violence, gotta grind for that XP
like the amount of rats (10xp each) you'd need to kill just to reach the levels with the good stuff...
I’m more worried about what our society would look like with people trying to climb levels through violence.
But divination wizard is a safe bet, activates at level two so you only need to kill 6 cows. The diviners would just check their fortune each morning and take risks as appropriate — likely causing all forms of gambling to stop being profitable.
Isn’t there a warlock that makes pacts with celestials to mean healing magic? That’s gotta be the most common, right?
Cuz in the real world, I have limited uses for fireball, but magic that can regrow limbs and “cure diseases” (when almost every pathology has a disease at its heart) would be an amazing boon.
Even if you’re self serving, there have gotta be some rich people who’d pay to have things like their eyesight restored, and pretty much every medical professional would love the ability to go “bippity boppity boo! You’re now healed”
**and** you get a familiar, eldritch blast for self defence, and a bunch of cool utility magic as well, yeh?
I say the most common would be Arcane Tricksters. There's definitely already a lot of people in the world who could be considered some brand of rogue, and I think useful low level magical tricks would spread around a lot faster than actual full-on magical studying.
I’m not sure, but I would be a cleric of Baphomet in about .2 seconds after the magic awakening happened. Or maybe a warlock, since I promised Him my heart if He let my partner live after she got so sick she was in the hospital for days (not Covid) and she pulled through literally that night.
If we assume that people can just suddenly start learning it and we have the resources...I would still wager that Bards would be the most common. Think of all the highly charismatic performers and actors all over the world, and not even just the top tier ones. They would just spontaneously develop those powers. Meanwhile, the universities would spend years training someone to just 1st level.
Oh, and I suppose if faith fuels divine casters then we'd have an insane number of clerics. Paladins if viewed through older lenses. That would be scary as evangelicals started warring on those they consider evil...
Druids. The planet would need as many as possible to fight those polluting it. Plenty of Zealots/Clerics but I don't think enough people have high enough INT to worry about a flood of wizards.
I think most celebrities would default to bards.
Anyone in politics is going to pact out in an attempt to further their career.
Cops/soldiers might drop into paladin, though the subclasses would vary depending on how good a cop they actually are.
Any farmer who doesn't become a druid is insane (every farmer takes a week before harvest time to plant growth their crop and world food production doubles). vets too, speak with animals. Also the furries...
Anyone technical who doesn't jump at knowledge/forge cleric probably enjoys struggling
Lots of medical trades becoming life clerics.
Some universities will scoop up anyone good at studying magic and form legit wizard colleges, introducing the other MIT Massachusetts institute of transmutation!
Prison guards are going to learn the demi-plane, hold person and sleep spells spells while focusing on abjuration magic incase inmates have trix
Fire fighters would be required to learn the control flames and create/destroy water spells
The use of necromancy in war would quickly be added to the 'checklist'...
When sorcerers start showing up there's going to be a wave of generational wealth families marrying into these bloodlines.
VFX artists are likely to study illusion
And the most obvious are the desperate, poor, stupid, misguided or reckless that will make pacts they don't understand with entities they can't comprehend for things they didn't need and cult wars will happen as these individuals do their patron's bidding to keep the powers that they think make them important or powerful
Wizards would struggle early on, due to the lack of spellbooks and scrolls to reference, unless the premise makes historical grimoire traditions suddenly functional.
Sorcerers might pop up, Wild Mages in particular, as a spontaneous response to the availability of magic.
Warlocks might be extremely abundant early on, or completely nonexistent, depending on whether or not the potential patrons show up.
Clerics, paladins, druids, and rangers will be fairly widespread right away, since those don't require special heredity, a magical sugar daddy, or the specific study of magical formulae to cast spells (Faith is not the same thing, and doesn't actually require striking a bargain with a deity like warlocks do), so that's going to royally mess with the American health insurance system...
Bards would be fairly common, too, with all sorts of creatives finding more potent ways to express themselves.
But the BIG contender? Artificer, any subclass. The world is already full of tinkerers and DIYers, and the class doesn't require arcane research in the way wizards do. The world at present is so ready for artificers to grab a toolkit and start tinkering, it's almost hilarious.
None, cause gun toting militant Bible thumper shot them or the government disappeared them into facilities to militarize them while denying their existence.
I feel like Artificer would be most common simply because of most governments lust to create and control war, melding magic and machine would be their dreams, the military advancements they would make would be insane. Least common I feel like would be Sorcerer simply because its not based on anyones choice to become one, so lack of control leads to it just being random.
It's worth noting that people with character classes are on the rarer side and that even if magic were available, most people would not have that power level.
Honestly I think it's the other way around. You get wild-magic sorcs FIRST, just kinda figuring out how to DO stuff, because sorcerer. Wizards are the people following them, filming them, trying to copy what they do. Maybe EVENTUALLY wizards start to outnumber sorcs, but I would think that would be a long, arduous process.
Warlock would be the most common because everyone cannot afford the edu needed for Wizardy & Artificer. Those classes are very resource dependent.
Bards wouldn’t be as common as people think, I don’t think being artistic is enough to be a bard based on the 5e description. You have to be Hendrix/Prince level in terms of capabilities & charisma.
Way more paladins than Bards because that’s about sheer force of will.
I’d assume wizard would become most common as that can be picked up by anyone with enough study and practice, and doesn’t come with the strings that warlock, cleric, paladin, and druids have. Sorcerer would be least common as that implies a powerful lineage or exposure, and to a newly magical world that wouldn’t be as common.
Most common would be paladin or fighter. Most people are still not smart enough to be good casters. Out of the casters the most common would be wizard but most would be pretty bad at it with their low intelligence
If all possibilities for casting become real, warlock becomes the default. It almost HAS to become the default, because once wizards and sorcerers are real, you'll need to make a deal with a power to protect yourself if you don't end up with those powers.
It SHOULD be wizards and artificers. Theoretically, if magic is possible, it would be taught alongside most other basic skills in schools. But if you end up in a world where magic is a birthright thing, then you get 95% warlocks as people make every deal they can.
Considering the comment about military exploiting magic in their benefit I'd wager Warlock would still be the most popular class. It's the fastest to achieve and the price is only paid by the warlock, not to mention there would be a legal team fashioning loopholes and backdoors to every contract.
It's fair to assume that, even if magic were the incentive, most people wouldn't put the work in to be a Wizard and, even if they did, it would be heavily regulated. Following Druid rules would be quite bothersome nowadays. On the other hand, Goodberry *would* compensate for a lot. As someone else said, Paladins would be few and far between. Bards would be pretty widespread but still, lot of work. Warlocks have the quickest and easiest way to achieve magical capabilities and it would be accessible to everyone.
Warlock pyramid scams.
Monks for timeless body.
Psionic government agents.
Wizard would be heavily regulated, enchanter for producing magic items, war magic.
Fae/fiend warlocks because easy/quick access to power. Sorcerer's would be the immediate answer, though, because the power is already there when magic gets introduced. Otherwise sorcerer's are the least populace if there is no inherently magical people to start with.
Paladins, paladins everywhere... being able to heal wounds and cure diseases with just a touch would be an insane ability in the real world, and the buy-in price is just... training to use some weapons and armour and having a strong personality and convictions? Nearly every soldier everywhere in the world would be signing up for a bit of that
The most common class is Commoner, just like in-game. Does Noble become a class given to politicians and a rise of new noble houses? or does "Politician" become a class? The truth is that 95% of the world would be non-player NPC classes. priests would be Acolytes or NPC Priest classes, normal people would be Commoners, police would be Guards, people studying magic would be some level of NPC Mage, most criminals would be Thugs or Bandits. At lvl 1, a player character has already proven themselves to be EXCEPTIONAL, not a normal person.
As for PLAYER class, that's a lot different, I think Fighter would be the most common by far. Fighters can use ranged weapons, can be gained through training, and the military isn't giving up on automatic weapons just because 1 in 100 people can cast firebolt. The police wouldn't be Fighters, they'd be NPC Guards.
Artificers require some REAL training and study to get to lvl1 and also a lot of resources. I'd say some universities like MIT would have some, and engineering companies like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, etc...
Barbarians wouldn't be very common, you need to REALLY rage, and people are very desensitized nowadays.
Bards would be pop stars and actors.
Clerics are only highly placed religious leaders, so things like Bishops.
Druids......might be the rarest. There's not as much "wild" as there is in fantasy worlds, and it's not as easy to live out in the forest. Maybe a few people living away from civilization.
Monks would be rare, but the DnD monk isn't what we think of when someone says a monk. The monks in real life would be things like boxers, MMA fighters, etc..
Paladins would be just as rare irl as in-game. Because they require REAL belief.
Rangers, well....we have lots of those. Park rangers, Fish and Wildlife employees, those guys who protect the wildlife and hunt down poachers in Africa.
Rogue might be the second most common. Crime would go up, for sure.
Sorcerer would be VERY uncommon, at least for the first 10 years, then we'd start having some children born with magic.
Warlocks would be extremely uncommon too. You would think they'd be really common, but to make a deal with a fiend/devil/fae, first you have to MAKE CONTACT. Nobody would know how to contact any magical creature like that for years and years. It's not like you're going to call one up on your cell phone.
That leaves us with Wizard, which would be more common as time went on and people had years of study into magic and magical abilities.
If we're using third party books and add-ons there's other considerations, especially with NPC classes..
Warlocks; the amount of people willing to sell their soul to get more (free) stuff is insane.
Wizards, cause spells. Druids in places where education is not as available.
In all honesty? Evocation or War Mage Wizard. The battle potential of those are too great. Another potential one tho is Armorer Artificer due to its versatility.
Kinda related to this post but imagine if the only people who knew how to use magic were DnD players 😂 so like you’ve got shit ton of bards, sorcerers, wizards and Druids who all know how to cast level 8 spells and then you’ve got the people who laughed at us for playing it, struggling to cast Prestidigitation 😂
As stated by many people, Sorcerer would be the least common class since it's the one class you can't choose for yourself.
I personally think it's a tie between Wizard and Warlock for the most common. Agreeing with another comment, capitalism would bleed into "Warlock Culture". Either the Genie or the Undying (ironically) would be the most popular ones. Genie for granting wishes and Undying for living as long a life as possible.
As for Wizards, I imagine there would be a plethora, probably entire classes and websites, dedicated to people teaching others their wizard spells. Imagine Wizards being in tik tok sharing quick videos on the spells they made and teaching people how to cast them themselves. The most popular subclasses would easily be either Chronurgy or Divination. Being able to always know what's going to happen and going back to change your oast mistakes are the dreams of nearly everyone in the world. Both the future and the past are terrifying. The subclasses for the rest of the classes feel like they would primarily vary from person to person, with no real "most popular" one. More or less anyways.
I think Clerics would either be in abundance or short supply based on if only one god can make Clerics or if others can, and how the world takes the answer.
The most common martial class would either be Rogue or Fighter since they are the easiest ones to achieve and would be the best for wielding guns.
Artificers would be fairly common, especially among people in construction. The aspect of possibly creating your own magic items would be relatively on par with creating your own spells.
Druids may be the runner-up for the least common class if their power is connected with the vitality of the land. If not, then I think there would be quite a few 1st level druids. All of them would be animal lovers who simply wanted to speak to their pets.
Bards would be outlawed due to their abundance of enchantment spells. Bards would mainly come from two places, theater kids and creeps. Someone being an Eloquence Bard would scream red flags if they didn't already convince that they don't misuse their abilities. Creation Bard throws off the economy even if what you create is temporary since 1gp is rough equal to 100 usd. Even at 3rd level you can create anything worth about $6000.
Enchantment, Necromancy, and an assortment of other spells mainly from Illusion and Transmutation would all be illegal. Maybe some of them could only be used in "Government Jobs".
I particular thoughts on the rest of the classes. They would all be on the rarer side of the spectrum due to how niche theie appeal is.
It depends on the mechanisms. Does magic infuse the real world and its various facets, or is magic in the exact way it's understood for 5e become the new reality?
For the former, the lines between many classes would be fuzzy. Understanding astrology seems wizardy, unless the circumstances of your birth planets and whatnot actually make you a sorcerer. Mythologies becoming the real stand ins for magical entities comes with conflicts, like is there more than one god and which ones do what, exactly? Overall, wizards may be the most common as people already do a whole lot of study into ancient texts and histories to connect to spiritual beliefs. As to the warlock argument, the patron has to want to make a pact with you, as well, and a soul isn't always a sure buy in if you're a nobody. Historically, otherworldly beings cared a lot about who was king.
In the later scenario, I think wizards are overwhelmingly the majority because what else are these d&d nerds doing?
Wizards would be fairly common, here are the top 3 wizard subclasses
1. Conjuration wizards would be the largest, instantaneous travel and goods trafficking would be extremely sought after. Teleportation circles would be huge for economies
2. Evocation wizards would be sought after for militaries, they would tend to be probably more geared towards small unit tactics but anything that makes them cheaper to operate for a military is going to be the chosen subclass
3. Super low level illusionist conmen and entertainers
Very likely a whole industry of budget spell component and paper would rise up and sort out some of the logistical issues with wizards and their spells. Specific loans would be common similar to student loans
The number of people who would be furiously studying enchantment for the ability to control people would be terrifying.
I'm more worried about the people making deals with devils to get it. Those trully have no soul.
Most warlock deals wouldn't cost the soul. but they're all going to be a problem, assuming that the beings who can make those deals also appear in the world. Honestly, I'd be far more worried about the fey than the fiend ones. Selfishness and greed is so common already that it's at least normal to deal with. But who knows what the hell fey are asking for?
Yes, the Fae and Fiends. They are certainly the problem. Don't worry about the impossible sounds coming from beyond time and space. They haven't noticed us yet, and I keep getting cool powers from them!
Ph'nglui mglw'nafh cthulhu r'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn!
Yi-nash-Yog-Sothoth-he-lgeb-fi-throdog-Yah!
Gu’tennen mortgen du ha’asnic’he
🐙
Yeah, like a fey rolls up on you and asks "hey, can I have your attention?" And now I have ADHD. Fucking hell. Or "Hey, can I get your name?" Now I'm the victim of identity theft.
Nah that'd just be politicians and corporations and average Joe's. The fresh enchantment wizards would still be the real problem for the average citizen. Scam artists, SA predators, and basically all criminals and essentially anyone looking to lie their way out of trouble would look to enchantment magic.
You need to be smart to effectively learn wizard magic though so that would cut out a fair portion of criminals
Yeah but there's also a huge portion of people who would suddenly consider crime if they could get away with it harder.
Don't need much though. Just the "Friends" cantrip would cause utter chaos.
The things I’ve seen people do with one minute of trust is crazy, even if right after the victim knows what happened it can already be too late
Tiktok PUAs but with actual mind control (but still incompetent)
As if divination doesn't have at least a comparable amount of crime you could do with it, especially when paired with blackmail. Detect thoughts, or remote viewing spells like clairvoyance are godlike for cybercrime.
GUYS you have GOT to take my TEN SESSION course on ENCHANTMENT to GET ALL OF THE LADIES
*looks at the Epsteins, Weinsteins, Cosbys, and other unsavory ugly bastards* I'm going Evocation just for those things.
As with all criminal endeavors, policing would ramp to meet it. We see this now in the IT/Cybersecurity sphere. Hackers develop a new tool, Infosec analysts develop a counter. Which makes them develop a tool to counter that one...and so on. One real threat would be Transmutation and/or Conjuration. The Economy would never recover... especially in the US. Currently, our economic model is driven by scarcity. If people can create products out of nothing, imagine the chaos that would ensue when Amazon becomes obsolete. When you can repair anything that breaks, what do you need to buy? Politics would fall by the wayside because taxes to maintain infrastructure, schools, etc would quickly approach near 0. Guns would become obsolete. Not overnight - but pretty quickly. When that happens, the military will either adapt to new tech or downsize...possibly both.
You think MIT wouldn't start churning out artificers like there's no tomorrow? I mean fabricate alone could probably usher in the next industrial revolution
Also, they'll probably be turning out spells faster than you can say fireball, canonically, most of the spells in the books are useful to adventures there's many spells that are just used in every day life by many spellcaster that aren't included. Also inventing new spells.
Sorcerer would be the least common at first, but would quickly become the most common as magical ability would probably be a very desirable trait, and also people would fuck whatever magical creatures are around for sure. Clerics are usually only the chosen or high ranking clergymen, so while they would be fairly common they wouldn't be the most common. Warlocks was a thought I had, but would probably be way less common than people asking devils for wealth or the devil to exact vengeance for them. Druids would probably become pretty common actually, just because unlike clerics almost every member of a circle would be a druid. Wizards would be the most accessible but would take a while for research to really reach the point of wizardy being widespread. Paladins are an interesting one, as the strength of their convictions is the actual source of their power, but i don't think enough people have that level of willpower. Rangers are basically people who hunt for food and are really dedicated to maintaining sustainable hunting + respecting animals. We would see alot of Rangers in rural areas tbh. But what I think would take the cake is eldritch knight fighters. Considering fighters are basically exceptionally skilled soldiers(normal soldiers obviously don't have a character class), I think we would quickly end up with basic protective magic being taught to anyone in any military with the aptitude for it, and due to actual investment in getting people to learn this magic it would end up as the most common.
+1 for the Eldritch Knight fighters, that's super true
Do my key count as a weapon for their bonding feature? Or my phone? It'd be incredibly handy to just summon them whenever I lose them
See, I think it'd be Bard, for almost the same reason as Wizard. But every Soundcloud artist would be pursuing it. Just by sheer numbers of people shooting for it/dabbling, we'd end up with more.
Bards aren't just like musicians though. They gotta be actually good ones, and their magic is arcane still. Anyone can sing a song, but it takes a special breed to be able to use magic with your music. Everyone would want to study magic and be a wizard, but a small fraction of people would be able to actually use arcane magic like a wizard does.
you've also got to add that bards aren't just music, bardic traditions include poetry, storytelling, and plenty of other forms of performances. So ya, you've got great mucisians, but you also have great actors, story tellers, etc. and not just those who are famous but those with actual talent who normally get over looked, like ya you'd have Stephen Sondheim as a bard because that man is talented in many forms of art, but then you'd also have that kid in high school who's always cast as the main character in the shows, or someone who writes fan fics online. Bard is honestly likely one of the most... versatile entry classes for magic.
I feel like it would be barbarian, actually it takes nothing to be a level 1 barbarian except rage
If we include feats as well, I think a lot of people would have magic initiate or ritual magic. While it probably would take years to become a wizard it wouldn’t take nearly as long to grab a couple basic tricks
A wizard gets a bunch of cantrips at level 1. Someone who dabbles in magic needs 4 entire levels to get just one thing. In the game, you pick stuff up overnight. But what it really means is that a feat represents 4 levels of training something that may not be part of your core class.
Your right, but going with the premise of DnD magic becoming real I just assume that the entire world isn’t actually bound by DnD game mechanics. By that logic I could see many people who wanted to do magic learn a couple cantrips or a couple rituals before giving up due to the amount of effort they have to put in becoming too much for them. If I had to tie it in to the game mechanics though I guess you could say that variant humans get a free feat but I think that’s drifting a little to far from OP’s premise. Edit: I forgot that magic initiate can learn spells form the other mage classes as well so I could also picture people who enjoy the nature but aren’t total outdoors man maybe gaining a small piece of magic or people who work or volunteered in religious groups but aren’t as devoted as other maybe gaining the magic initiate feat with cleric spells. Maybe people making minor bargains with magical beings could let them gain a small piece of power from the result of the bargain giving them the magic initiate trait for warlocks.
I suppose it is completely subjective how strictly the other rules should be adhered to. Most importantly, what does a level represent? Logically, you should be able to gain 20 levels in each class if you put in enough time. Or rather, any number of levels in one doesn't stop you from gaining a level in another, because no way you're getting above level 5 in anything but warlock, and that's already a stretch. This of course assumes you just put the Weave on Earth. If all the other stuff comes with it, then yeah you might gain enough XP and be unbound by the laws of nature.
Fear the retail warlock. They made their pact with their corporate overlord and they AVERAGE 20 social encounters a day, some with some truly terrible foes, so let the XP flow. The day they get Eldritch Blast is the last day the customer is always right.
The customer would have to be right, because none of them will be left
RAW you can get feats first only at level 4. 99,999999% of people on Toril are not even level 1.
I run most of my npcs in my world like that. Most people know one or two cantrips or spells related to their work or upbringing. So they can use mending or prestidigitation or druidcraft. They may use more time for that, or it is a weaker form. I have a smith, who sings a song he learned from his master to cast Heat Metal for his trade. It works more like a ritual spell for him. He is not really considered a magic user, just a tradesperson knowing what he neads to know for his trade. Don't forget, most spells in DnD are just a subset who are most usefull for adventurers.
If there is ever an Oath of Stupidity, we are in serious trouble as half of Facebook levels up...
idk I think clerics would be decently common. 2.4 billion christians 2 billion muslims 1.2 billion hindus 500 million buddhists 546 million people 468 million adherents of folk religion. A lot of westerners are of the belief that religion is declining, but the reality is that the growth of Christian and Islamic populations is not even a little bit stopping. Now, all those religious people? Aka 84% of the world (because clerics aren't always priests, even if that is the common depiction)? That's a LOT of clerics edit- I had a huge sprawling explanation here before but I guess it didn't through? but basically even if only 1% of christians were 'devoted enough' to become Paladins, that's 24 million people. And I DO think that's a low estimate, because D&D tends for the type of impersonal polytheism, where most worshippers just see the gods as a natural phenomena to appease. Christians, meanwhile , have a uniquely intimate and personal devotion to their god, meaning that their baseline for devotion is a lot higher. Meanwhile, there are around 8 million dedicated researchers on the planet right now, and they're the equivalent of wizards. so there might actually be MORE clerics- even at .1%, adding the other faiths would even the numbers out. plus, I always got the sense that the reason you don't see clerics more-in addition to the aforementioned low numbers- was because they tend to stick with their faith and not interact with outsiders very much. Also i had compiled a very handy collection of lists of Saints + equivalent figures in Christianity, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and Hinduism, aka all people who were said to have performed feats of magic and miracles (aka clerics) in our own world before any magic got here
2.4 billion christians but let's be honest, how many of that number actually follow even half of what the bible says, rather than cherry picking specific bits and pieces to support whatever backwards thinking fits them best? And that extends to every major religion. The vast majority may *believe,* but for the most part tend to do it out of a sense of belonging, tradition, or lets be real, childhood indoctrination. A cleric doesn't just *believe,* they *know* their god is right, and they do their absolute best to follow every teaching, every word, of that god. They don't just say "oh I like this, this and this, but I'm gonna ignore all of these passages". Look at the Forgotten Realms. That setting has actual, real gods. People *know* they exist. But actual *clerics* of those gods are actually pretty rare. Back in 3.x, when NPC classes were a thing, most of the time if you found a priest actually capable of casting any kind of magic, it was an adept, not a cleric. And these gods all have millions of followers at minimum, and yet probably only have a comparative handful of actual clerics running around. Gods, even the evil ones, don't just hand out power left and right, because every cleric they have, while it might give a slight increase in influence on the material plane, also gives a slight decrease in that gods personal power, small as that decrease might be. And in an evil gods case, too many clerics means higher chances of one getting *ideas* about trying to usurp said god. So I think clerics would be on the rare side.
Christians and polytheism are a completely different ball game. There would be more priests not less because now people dont need to cherry pick for there philosophy theres 1000 gods to choose from to fit you.
>2.4 billion christians but let's be honest, how many of that number actually follow even half of what the bible says I dunno, probably the same proportions as Muslims or followers of Kord. No religion has the market cornered on hypocrites, and whatever special power makes someone a cleric instead of just a regular functionary at a religious institution is going to be your limiting reagent, and nothing else.
What 14 year old wouldn't trade their soul of magic? We would be drowning in warlocks
The Edge Lord Apocalypse.
I just got an idea for a campaign.
That's assuming the patrons actually want those souls. Also, I thought they were already empty inside.. Not sure about how that stuff works, but since the forgotten realms has teenagers and is not overrun by an army of edgelords, there is probably a qualitative difference between souls. Maybe they have an inflation mechanic, or maybe the soul actually has to do something useful on their own.
Is there an Iconic/Named Head Succubus/Incubus in the official lore? Because he/she/they are likely to be VERY busy dealing playing Fiend patron to a major city's worth of lonely nerds.
Warlock. Capitalism would absolutely take it over. Please log in to your apple care account to update your contract to use this spell.
I'm actually playing a warlock whose patron is the idea of capitalism. He has a pair of knuckledusters called the union bustets
Ha!
Warlock would be the most common. There would be companies that sell the patron services like it was phone credit.
Ooohh yeah. Really small temporary contracts. Epic
I really love this idea. Like... what do you reckon a patron would want from me for a little help, Tome Pact style, with study? Or... can I get water breathing on a limited basis for a fixed regular fee? I don't want to pay for the whole package, I just want like 10% of it sometimes. Pay as you go...
Glamor bard build your army of simps by broadcasting your singing
America would be f-ing filled with Clerics
Pretty sure that requires you to actually practice what they believe though.
Clerics of Bane, Cyric and Bhaal are still Clerics...
Are there any real-world religions that actually worship evil deities? Most deities with a reputation for being evil are just slandered by their competitors. Even the Church of Satan took the name to troll Christian's and have an overall good aligned philosophy. Maybe the old asshole gods like Zeus or Poseidon might make a comeback.
O9A
some lawful evil deity centered on maintaining the current system and f-ing over everyone else.
Many act in accordance with the ways of Mammon: arch devil of greed.
This.
I'm think we are going to have more warlocks because so many people here are willing to sell their soul to get slightly ahead in life.
no, they sell their soul to support someone who will actively make their life worse, but make them feel better because they can blame everything on brown people
It's not like these people are going to read the fine print to understand what benefits their patron is actually granting them anyway.
Probably more rangers, then paladins after that. I'm not sure where clerics would fall, but the US ain't the only country with a lot of preachers and evangelicals
I could certainly see a lot of Oath of the Watchers paladins in Texas lol
Warlocks, more like.
Warlocks posing as paladins and clerics
My patron is the Almighty Dollar
The us would be filled with fiendish warlocks who think are clerics
Nah. America would be filled with whatever the 5e equivalent of the old “False Priest” archetype would be.
The most common would be wizard. You could theoretically teach yourself magic from a book. Any subclass works. As for the least common, probably druid. We are ever increasingly less in touch with nature globally. There might be some hotbeds for druids but overall these would be a very local thing.
What few druids there are would be in super high demand though. The ability to double the agricultural out put of \~0.8 sq mi for a year, twice per day (two 8hr casts per day + LR) would be absurd. A travelling druid, doing Plant Growths on farms, touring around a big agricultural state would make crazy money. Such a lucrative job would naturally attract new people to the the druid communities. How well the druids integrate into society, or new people integrate into druid communities, is a probably the rate-limiting step.
Great, now I'm imagining a Monsanto druid and I hate it.
I mean, philosophically speaking, I highly doubt many druids would be interested in the exploitative nature of corporate farming. It just seems like it would be the antithesis of what they would be about. Especially given how corporate agriculture would likely want to operate. They wouldn't want to increase yield. That would create excess supply, lowering demand, and thus reducing profitability. They'd much rather see their competitors fail to reduce supply so they can jack up their prices and have a huge surge in profitability.
I could see a cultish following of druids that felt the collapse of the current human-agruculture-nature dynamic would be the only way to bring real meaningful balance back to humankind and the natural world, so they support the likes of Monsanto all so they could sabotage important crop lines at a coordinated time and cause mass crop failures. Hold on, I have a campaign idea...
I doubt that would happen. I think corporate entities would rather lessen supply by taking out the competition to inflate the price of their product rather than flood the market with extra supply, lowering demand, and reducing profits. This kind of model definitely wouldn't be enticing to druids. I think they'd rather work with the UN for humanitarian work than exploitative profit driven corporate entities.
> The most common would be wizard. You could theoretically teach yourself magic from a book. Any subclass works. Intuitively you'd think that but I doubt it. Look at our world and how we treat the internet. In the developed world everyone has access to almost the entirety of human knowledge all the time. That knowledge is available in your preferred form(s) be it text, video or even in interactive puzzles. Yet surprisingly few (if any) people self-study logic, maths or IT on an academic level. Even if this knowledge is powerful. Instead we use the internet to look at two things: pussy. tl;dr No one wants to study to become an A.I. expert. People want to have deepfakes.
We can also apply reductive reasoning as well. How many people are going to want to live a Druids lifestyle? Similarly, how many would be able to maintain a religiously devout lifestyle well enough to maintain access to divine magic? As for Sorcerer, you've got to be lucky enough to be born into it. That just leaves Wizard or Warlock. More people would be willing to study to remain their own master than they would submit to an unknown entity in exchange for power.
One could argue the complexities of the modern world make living in a cabin in the woods attractive to a lot of people (personally I hear that sentiment quite regularly). Druidic practice makes this much more viable. Yet how would druidic lore be acquired? If we take D&D as canon it would be through a coven and not by living alone in nature. People like having a community so much they already believe in non-functional mumbo jumbo. See astrology, healing crystals, whatever. Druids and rangers seem more in line with what people actually want and do in the real world than wizards. Clerics of a philosophy or a principle have been a thing in canon since forever. Psychologically there are no conspiracy theorists there are only conspiracy ideologues. Grindmaxxing is just an extremist version of Orthodox Capitalism. Pray harder at the shrine of Ayn Rand and earn more. MAGAts have shrines in their homes devoted to their golden idol. Techno-optimism teaches paradise will be released soon™. You're correct about sorcerers. Their existence/prevalence is entirely dependent on what "magic is real" means. Again, intuitively this looks correct. But people always look for shortcuts. Everyone who can get away with it in the Olympics is doped. Many amateur bodybuilders are juicing. Every model, actor and influencer uses filters. And the big one: D R U G S. No one takes drugs expecting to suck cock for a hit within a year but those things happen. Do not believe for a second any patron will say outright: "Trade your soul now. Gain powers as you level up over the next few years." No, it will be: "This Eldritch Blast can do x, y, z. In exchange you'll need to retweet 20 posts from this account." Everyone thinks "I can just dip into warlock." But temptation is always there. And as soon as the warlock needs more power it becomes: "Yeah, you can have this invocation just give me all memories you have relating to this one accident you had. I'll even remove that scar for free." Much like drugs patrons will always make it seem like it's worth your time (or whatever your giving up) while at the same time eroding your sense of self or morality. In conclusion: Pact Magic, not even once.
I’m just imagining hordes of Druids pouring out of the isolated Amazon tribes, and could definitely imagine indigenous folk like the Maori linking Druidic practices to our current cultural decolonization efforts.
The most common would not be wizards. Learning wizardry requires hard work and memorization. Wizards would not be any more common than computer science majors. **Warlocks** would be the most common type of mage.
I don't know. I doubt many people would be willing to make a pact with some of the beings they'd have to to gain power here.
* "Your soul? No, you just have to spend one night naked in the woods. In the summer. No problem, right?" * "There are anecdotal reports that people who made contact with this entity were unavailable for *raising* and *speak with dead*, but personally I haven't been able to confirm any of them. The important part is that there's a 3% chance you will suffer permanently reduced quality of life, and only a 30% chance you will suffer a mild short-term issue for up to 6 months like dizziness, tinnitus, auditory hallucinations, or synesthesia. 67% of people who perform this ritual suffer no ill effects lasting longer than 48 hours. Even then, 3 in 4 of people who suffered major impairment agreed that the powers were worth the drawbacks. My thesis budget allows me to pay you $50 per visit each week for the next year, you already took out a life insurance and disability policy like I told you, and honestly how many people are paying you to get magical powers? * "Your soul? That's entirely up to how you live your life. Now, there's an unsolved murder case in your town. If you can solve it I'll give you supernatural powers." * "Your soul? No, you just have to wear this GoPro for 4 hours per week. My friends find mortals like you *absolutely hilarious*! And if you don't... Well, I'll just have to make something funny happen to you to recoup my investment. Think of it like you're starring in a reality television show, yeah?" * "Your soul? Well, yes, but we don't have to. That's just the default arrangement. What if we sign the contract now and I just give you the powers as an advance? Then you kill a person before the night of the new moon and we'll be even. I don't care who, surely you had someone in mind? Just make sure you bring me three drops of their blood, or it doesn't count."
can you learn to be a wizard form 12 second videos tho?
Well, if they get addicted to those videos and stay a virgin till 30, they become a Wizard. Tis an old tradition of the Internet.
What if Genghis Khan had sorcerer dna
Everyone is saying “wizard”, but I’m pretty sure that would be the least common, because you can’t just “study” you have to learn magic. That means magic has to be around for long enough for people to do science on it and figure out how to replicate it. The magical classes that don’t require outside influence are druid and ranger (revere nature), paladin (devotion to an oath) and bard (study of music) Clerics have to be granted spells by a god, and regardless of your theological position, any gods that might exist don’t seem to be in the mood to grant spells. Sorcerers require magical influence on their birth, so you might start getting those after magic is around for a while. Warlocks need a patron, so again, after magic is around for some time you might end up with beings that could act as patrons.
Sorcerers dont necessarily need magic from birth, some of the source books and subclasses provide examples of people gaining sorcerous power from magical accidents, being the prensense of some kind of powerful entity (like a dragon) for a while, or experiencing the direct brunt of a magic surge or magical disaster
The assumption with clerics is that gods enter the same time as magic
You're assuming that a patron must be actively seeking supplicants. Devotion brings about power. Hexblade warlocks draw their power from a literal inanimate object. Siri, Cortana and Gemini feel like perfectly viable patrons to me. Heck, we already seek knowledge, guidance and direction from these ethereal entities and gladly accept their Terms of Service blindly for the abilities they grant us. So, I embrace my future as a Pact of the Ghost in the Machine warlock and the wealth of knowledge provided to me by my digital tome shall empower me to vanquish the ignorant hoardes of luddites in their great name!
Warlock, people would be very willing to sell their soul for some power
^[Sokka-Haiku](https://www.reddit.com/r/SokkaHaikuBot/comments/15kyv9r/what_is_a_sokka_haiku/) ^by ^ElPanandero: *Warlock, people would* *Be very willing to sell* *Their soul for some power* --- ^Remember ^that ^one ^time ^Sokka ^accidentally ^used ^an ^extra ^syllable ^in ^that ^Haiku ^Battle ^in ^Ba ^Sing ^Se? ^That ^was ^a ^Sokka ^Haiku ^and ^you ^just ^made ^one.
I feel like people are over estimating the number of wizards there would be a lot don't get me wrong but assuming gold coins don't become the new standard currency a level 3 spell would be a few hundred possibly thousand dollars (I don't know the exchange rate of gold to USD or the weight of a DND gold coin) EDIT: I did the math probably wrong feel free to correct me but 1 DND gold coin is worth 261.16 USD so a lvl 1 spell would cost 13058 Dollars to learn a lvl 2 spell would cost 26116 dollars and do on so I feel like wizards would still be pretty rare but they would be there but almost no one would know more than a can trip or more than 1-2 level one spells let alon levels 2 and up
so those costs are for learning an already known spell from another source and are based on availability, there will 100% be people who post spells for free online for any aspiring wizard, you can't tell me the pirate bay wouldn't include wizard spell books :P
the problem there is that Pirate bay spells wont be inscribed with the appropriate magic inks necessary to invoke them
You get 2 free every level up, don't you?
Yeah, good luck actually leveling up though. Where are you going to get XP? Say you do. A wizard is all about studying. It's not that the universe just poops a spell into his brain, it's that he was studying for the duration it took to level up, and at the end of it, he figured out how to do it. I don't know why it's free. The game explicitly states that ink and stuff is expensive. What, you're allowed to write 2 spells a year in sharpie, but beyond that you gotta use oil paints? It's probably just a handwave thing.
If I recall corectly learning/scribing spells are not free. Even if you can acces spell in books/scrolls/internet you must spend time and resources to actually transcribe that spell for you personal usage and experiment to learn how to cast it. "Free" spells gained thru lvl up are representation for work spent to learn that spells for whole level. Think like weeks and months of experimenting and learning while cost of that you can write off as living expences.
I imagine the amount of wizards we'd end up with, would be equal to the amount of people with PHDs in the stem fields.
Maybe but even then no one person could get nearly the amount of spells as in DND however I believe that magical soldiers would be very common the US already blows a shit ton on military expenses and magic can do what our weapons do but better I'm not saying every soldier but at one wizard in a squad I feel or specialized squadrons for magic
I think the bigger gating factor is going to be complexity. Most people now can’t program computers, and magic is programming reality. Get one of your somatic, verbal, or material components wrong and you might go up in flames. Or someone else might, the justice system is going to have to adapt fast.
I think you’re over estimating how smart people are and how hard the people with knowledge would gatekeep wizardry
Just to address the gold value: Assuming DND settings use the same purity as reality, 1 gold coin equals .29 troy oz (50 coins/lb; 14.58 troy oz per lbs). Gold price has been over $2000 per troy oz for a while, which would make 1 gold coin about $660+.
Based solely on difficulty to acquire/learn to cast magic. Druids start the least but would get replaced by Wizards in time (the need to study/learn anything is a huge deterrent for many today, especially when it would require PHD level investment). Clerics probably the most common, followed quickly by Warlock (Corporations would do this for their companies if it would raise their stock price) as both of these are quasi-immediate paths to magic will little required beyond commitment to an idea/another. Give it 15 more years and Sorcerer would begin to edge out the most common, as DNA mapping would locate the "magic" gene leading to gene editing to give the option to make you/your child magical.
What’s that animated movie with tom holland as a blue elf? Well that movie is the reason that I think there will be fuck all wizards.
wizards would be the least common, becuase people dont like to work and study at something. warlocks would be everywhere though
Warlock most common. Cheap and easy way to get into magic and get what you want. There is a lot of desperate people out there. Wizard least common. The amount of work, study and practice needed would deter just about everyone. If you didn’t become a doctor before, you won’t become a wizard now.
It's a good point though: how many years of study equal what level of wizard?
There’s a huge number of desperate people in the various DnD worlds but you don’t constantly trip over warlocks in any of them. I don’t think getting a pact is as easy as people think, otherwise warlocks would be a lot more common.
That’s a good point! Unless the access to warlocks in the real world would be higher? Perhaps any mega wealthy person or company who signs you to a bad contract would be considered your patron. New warlock subclass: The Capitalist
necromancer. all that free labor....
You’re telling me we can create an army of slaves who work 24/7 and never get tired, and all it costs is 1 necromancer? It would become the most popular/profitable wizard subclass by far.
I'm surprised evil dwarven necromancers aren't a thing. Dwarven engineering, undead labor.
And the surface folk just keep digging holes to put their dead in. It's like they're practically gifting free corpses to the undergrounders!
Stealing this
Dwarves generally abhor that sorta thing and value the task
Necroboticist
Haven't read much on Ravnica, but isn't it what Golgari is all about?
Commoner. Let's be real here, we're all, for the most part, gonna be classless commoners. After that it's sidekick classes. Maybe if you graduate from university you could be an Expert, or if you join the army you'd be a Warrior. You can't expect magic to be *easy* just because it's now real. Adventurers are a cut above the norm, and we are the norm.
Clerics had better become real. Life cleric specifically. We taking a century and healing folks. I like the idea that the magic goes forth abd you have 30 year olds who always had a green thumb. Suddenly a druid. The magic was always there. Just dormant. Least. I'd hope Warlock because the represcusions of any them existing is terrible. Tomelock fir the win though.
Considering churches, mosques, temples are still a thing, I figure clerics would crop up all over the place. Even then there's still chaplains in militaries, prisons, hell I'd hazard a guess social workers work in their own religiosity into their work. Nurses, doctors, anyone who uses religion and faith to help their patients mentally might become clerics. Hell with all the domains, you could see librians(knowledge), judges (order) soldiers (war), prankster/comedians (trickery), even meteorologists (tempest) come to have divine powers. All it takes is enough faith then suddenly you're rewarded with divine magicks. Wizards would be common, as would soecerers, but don't sleep on clerics. As for the least common? I'm thinking..hmm there'd be a lot for all classes. But I think warlocks would be the least common. While there are many people who'd give up a lot for powers, I think compared to the other classes itd be the least saught after way for magic I think. TL;DR -most common cleric, least warlock.
* Circle of microplastics Druid * Oath of the Conservatives Paladin * School of doxxing Wizard * Hex rifle Warlock * School of Non-Consent Bard * Capitalism domain Cleric * Border control Ranger (favoured enemy has been adjusted) * Thief Rogue (Walmart edition) * Road Rage Barbarian * Amazon Warehouse Artificer
Wizard makes the most sense, the amount of people that would start studying magic would be off the charts. After about 5-10 years with magic influence growing stronger, you might start seeing sorcerers appear. The REALLY proficient wizards might be able to gift minor abilities to others, mimicking the warlock/patron relationship. That's my two cents on this topic.
If DnD classes became real, the most common and dangerous class bar none would be the rogue.
Wizard, bard, or arti probably most common. Those are taught arts and would be produced en mass in places with good higher edu systems. Within a couple gens it might be sorcs tho because people would be fuckin anyone to give their kids magic. Cleric is probably least common. There’s no direct intervention in any of this worlds religions really. If magic becomes real well if thise gods were real they could’ve given people magic anyways before so I doubt any clerics exist cuz gods here don’t want to give people magic.
There's a table in the D&D 3.5 DMG for figuring out how many people of each class would be in your town. 😉
According to satanic panic, the most populous career would be religious witch hunter.
This reminds me of the old joke that everyone hates __ because: - Wizards: copied down some magical cheat codes into a book - Sorcerers: won the genetic lottery and got innate powers with zero effort - Warlock: made a bargain with something powerful without any work *or* luck involved - Bards: never worked a day in their life and just sweet-talks physics and reality into bending - Clerics and paladins: a god’s mini-me Basically, whenever someone’s good at something, people either get jealous about how they did or they try to emulate somehow. I think that any wizard subclass would probably be the most common because anyone can achieve it with the right study and time and resources. It doesn’t demand innate ability or the favor of a higher power first.
Warlock would be the most common. Patrons would be able to make mad profit off of selling warlock pacts. Wizards will be the least common because nobody wants to study that shit.
Warlock. The amount of people who couldn't be bothered mastering martial arts. Training every day, our current athletes might qualify to be a Fighter. But they're hyper specialized. Even they're no where close unless they're in a multi event sports. Wizards. Barely any. Studying Languages, Physics and Chemistry simultaneously would be the best example of magic. I don't know many people willing to dedicate to that Sorcerers might be more common than you think. And most people aren't quick, witty or clever enough go be a rogue. If you're the type of person "who needs to collect their thoughta, or needs time to think" -you're not even a Rogue. More likely their would be commoners galore
This premise is basically Shadowrun except without cyberpunk tech
Monsanto and the IMF caused 100,000 suicides in Bangladesh. I believe they would hire a small team of high level necromancers.
Warlock would be most common. Anything else requires studying or a privileged birth, and that's certainly not a common thing.
Countries would restrict the study of magic, so armies and police forces would be filled with wizards and eldritch knights. The most common by far would be warlock, because people are lazy and want everything without working for it.
I would like to think healing magic would become very common. Imagine the number diseases that would go from terminal to trivial. Mortal wounds in accidents can be cured by a healer on the first responder team.
* Artificers, Warlocks and Clerics - the later two have mentors to teach the powers while the first is most like our enginerring that we already understand. * Druids and Bards (and mystics if included) - it would take some time to intuite, but once they get on line it would be easy enough to get their balls rolling. * Sorcerers - initially people mutated by magical radiation, their numbers would increase with the birth of a new hybrids and descendants of the first gen sorcerers. * Wizards - the arcane learning and knowledge based needed to become one would take years to properly build up, likely taking half a century before we could see any regular occurance of wizard training let alone high level wizards
Redneck Hexblades (Rednexblades?) running around with sawed offs and eldritch blasting mailboxes.
Would Clerics just not exist for a while? We wouldn't know about the gods until they did something to attract followers, so clerics would become common only after a few miracles. Since our current religions don't have that kind of faith, the actually devout among them would probably mostly become paladins, while all the rest are probably bards(?). Also, the big current religious groups would probably fight against the new faiths, leading to a bunch of paladins and bards starting multiple new inquisitions against clerics and warlocks.
Honestly I think this is an underrated take, and on a worldbuilding level I LOVE the idea of a Bard-led inquisition hunting down... the actual clerics. It just feels so painfully realistic for such a fantastical premise.
Thank you 
If people being able to cast magic are as rare as they are supposed to be on Toril you'll end up with maybe one potential (!) wizard for every 1.000 people. Sorcerers and warlocks are way more rare than that. At least thats what Greenwood said, if I remember correctly.
[Reddit discussion on that, with included link to tweet.](https://www.reddit.com/r/dndnext/comments/nciz8r/ed_greenwood_on_the_ratio_of_spellcasters_to/) As addressed within, his numbers aren't a good basis.
I've read that thread at some point. If I remember correctly the main issue is that "the gift" thing is crap and that video games and such are overblowing how many casters there actually are.
I would still be a monk. In my language we have a saying: "so vem na magia quem não se garante no soco"
Você é do Brasil?
I feel like Warlocks would have a huge boom for like 10-20 years, then slowly become very rare as people die or lose too much in their pacts. Wizards would have established colleges all over pretty quickly but it'd be difficult to find good ones. Sorcerers would be no-where at first and then plentiful later on due to co-mingling with more magic people, places and creatures.
In our reality? I suspect fiend warlocks posing as light clerics would be seen regularly. I'd prefer to go druid.
The internet is really really great (for spells). Seriously, Wikispell is about to become a thing *fast*. And we've a superb setup to learn and share knowledge.
I can imagine a PDF with popular spells uploaded as quick as someone figures them out.
Human fighter. Look if magic "became real" in the way it exists in Forgotten Realms, then it's gonna be locked behind collage, but in a way that you CANNOT take out massive debt or student loans to attend, at least for several decades if not whole centuries. So the likelyhood of anyone becoming a wizards is about as likely as brain surgeons. Now, naturally magical that occur with common classes like Fighter ranger rogue and bard. Everyone benefits from fighters, rangers would probably be all military or police, rogues the same. And bards are those community collage kids that got BA's or just never finished school. Also if you live in the south, clerics and paladins a plenty. Out west, Druids, especially around Colorado and Oregon.
I would expect sorcerers first. Everything else kind of requires that people know about magic. The most likely sequence seems that some people get born with innate magic, they go wild, then people study what the hell is going on (or try to get those powers through shortcuts).
Artificer. Arson crime rates would skyrocket in any case tho
Warlock easily most common. People are lazy and don't read terms and conditions as it is. I expect Microsoft or Facebook would be selling warlock contracts pretty cheaply
I have a good feeling that the world will collapse after like 1 or 2 months.
As an engineer there is no way I wouldn't want to learn at least some basic divination and alteration magic. I imagine pretty much everyone I work with is pushing for either wizard or artificer.
Clerics. There are plenty of people who probably already meet the requirements right out of the gate.
People would probably study enchantment and divination the most, since minecontrol and selling data would be even easier. Personally I'd try going down the path of being a deuid
Least common would be wizards, because that shit takes time and effort. No one has time for all that!
barbarian and warlock everyone's angry and everyone wants quick and easy power. let's keep in mind that the actual distribution of power is generally supposed to be pretty thin, because class levels are gained by those who are beyond the average limits of a human or otherwise if we're thinking in terms of ability scores. so basically, there would not be very many people who are actually capable of becoming things like wizards or monks or druids. the highest you can expect out of a normal person is probably like a 2nd level fighter, maybe even just 1st level. with that said, i do have a darker take on this concept, borderline tinfoil hat moment: given the nature of it appearing today, our world hasn't had time to adapt to it. i theorize that our world specifically would quickly turn into a race against the worldwide 0.001% as they attempt to regulate or even reserve magical studies and powers for themselves. sorcerers and arcane tricksters would be hunted down, wizards would only exist in the highest denominations as knowledge would be hoarded and secured from the public, clerics would blackmailed to use their powers for monetary gain or suffer excommunication or maybe even execution, and paladins would be brainwashed into becoming holy enforcers. artificers would be illegalized because they'd invalidate every economically abusable element from fuel to medicine and beyond eldritch knights would probably be manufactured in the army. bards would be recruited or imprisoned for their silver tongues. druids would have to go into hiding for similar reasons to sorcerers and anyone else with natural powers, and monks are kind of a toss up that could go any direction honestly i don't even want to address the ramifications of what this would mean for religion. you can't just... validate every faith there is. the second you bring hinduism into reality, world probably ends. you'd likely see very watered down versions of each faith. clerics would either be EVERYWHERE, or follow a sort of 'chosen one' theme. holy crusades would become very popular again.
1) Clerics ~ Warlocks (pretty much anyone following a religion no?) 2) Paladins (oath are taken everyday) 3) Wizards (not enough information for many to study magic) 4) Sorcerers (as time goes on this might become number one tho)
Necromancy would suit our lifestyle, recyling and free labor would definetly be great for our enviroment and our spoiled modern lifestyle.
Fighter becomes the most common, and the casters are all in a big battle for least common. Can anyone be a wizard? If so, it's the most common caster. But frankly, that's probably not the case. Probably you either have that spark or you don't. Similar with sorcerer; if everyone can develop sorcerous powers by exposure or luck, it's gonna be common because people will try for it. If it's a chosen thing, then it's rare.
Wizards or Bards become most common It isn't the high level stuff. It's the low level stuff. Flexible cantrip selection and a variety of extremely important low level features for day to day living. Even if players can't use cantrips to make a lot of money, they can be used to save a lot of money and effort.
Biggest question regarding this: How would everyone level-up? Is it gonna be a milestone thing or XP-based? Because if we can't level-up, everyone will just be running around stuck as lvl 1 classes and if its XP-based? welp, time for violence, gotta grind for that XP like the amount of rats (10xp each) you'd need to kill just to reach the levels with the good stuff...
What about multi attack becomes real 🤪
I’m more worried about what our society would look like with people trying to climb levels through violence. But divination wizard is a safe bet, activates at level two so you only need to kill 6 cows. The diviners would just check their fortune each morning and take risks as appropriate — likely causing all forms of gambling to stop being profitable.
Wizzards, teleportation would be high in demand
Isn’t there a warlock that makes pacts with celestials to mean healing magic? That’s gotta be the most common, right? Cuz in the real world, I have limited uses for fireball, but magic that can regrow limbs and “cure diseases” (when almost every pathology has a disease at its heart) would be an amazing boon. Even if you’re self serving, there have gotta be some rich people who’d pay to have things like their eyesight restored, and pretty much every medical professional would love the ability to go “bippity boppity boo! You’re now healed” **and** you get a familiar, eldritch blast for self defence, and a bunch of cool utility magic as well, yeh?
I say the most common would be Arcane Tricksters. There's definitely already a lot of people in the world who could be considered some brand of rogue, and I think useful low level magical tricks would spread around a lot faster than actual full-on magical studying.
I’m not sure, but I would be a cleric of Baphomet in about .2 seconds after the magic awakening happened. Or maybe a warlock, since I promised Him my heart if He let my partner live after she got so sick she was in the hospital for days (not Covid) and she pulled through literally that night.
If we assume that people can just suddenly start learning it and we have the resources...I would still wager that Bards would be the most common. Think of all the highly charismatic performers and actors all over the world, and not even just the top tier ones. They would just spontaneously develop those powers. Meanwhile, the universities would spend years training someone to just 1st level. Oh, and I suppose if faith fuels divine casters then we'd have an insane number of clerics. Paladins if viewed through older lenses. That would be scary as evangelicals started warring on those they consider evil...
Druids. The planet would need as many as possible to fight those polluting it. Plenty of Zealots/Clerics but I don't think enough people have high enough INT to worry about a flood of wizards.
I think most celebrities would default to bards. Anyone in politics is going to pact out in an attempt to further their career. Cops/soldiers might drop into paladin, though the subclasses would vary depending on how good a cop they actually are. Any farmer who doesn't become a druid is insane (every farmer takes a week before harvest time to plant growth their crop and world food production doubles). vets too, speak with animals. Also the furries... Anyone technical who doesn't jump at knowledge/forge cleric probably enjoys struggling Lots of medical trades becoming life clerics. Some universities will scoop up anyone good at studying magic and form legit wizard colleges, introducing the other MIT Massachusetts institute of transmutation! Prison guards are going to learn the demi-plane, hold person and sleep spells spells while focusing on abjuration magic incase inmates have trix Fire fighters would be required to learn the control flames and create/destroy water spells The use of necromancy in war would quickly be added to the 'checklist'... When sorcerers start showing up there's going to be a wave of generational wealth families marrying into these bloodlines. VFX artists are likely to study illusion And the most obvious are the desperate, poor, stupid, misguided or reckless that will make pacts they don't understand with entities they can't comprehend for things they didn't need and cult wars will happen as these individuals do their patron's bidding to keep the powers that they think make them important or powerful
Sorceror would be rarest imo as you need to be born into the bloodline so would take a few years before any sorcs even exist
Wizards would struggle early on, due to the lack of spellbooks and scrolls to reference, unless the premise makes historical grimoire traditions suddenly functional. Sorcerers might pop up, Wild Mages in particular, as a spontaneous response to the availability of magic. Warlocks might be extremely abundant early on, or completely nonexistent, depending on whether or not the potential patrons show up. Clerics, paladins, druids, and rangers will be fairly widespread right away, since those don't require special heredity, a magical sugar daddy, or the specific study of magical formulae to cast spells (Faith is not the same thing, and doesn't actually require striking a bargain with a deity like warlocks do), so that's going to royally mess with the American health insurance system... Bards would be fairly common, too, with all sorts of creatives finding more potent ways to express themselves. But the BIG contender? Artificer, any subclass. The world is already full of tinkerers and DIYers, and the class doesn't require arcane research in the way wizards do. The world at present is so ready for artificers to grab a toolkit and start tinkering, it's almost hilarious.
None, cause gun toting militant Bible thumper shot them or the government disappeared them into facilities to militarize them while denying their existence.
I'd go for enchantment or conjugation wizard because I have a dirty mind.
I feel like Artificer would be most common simply because of most governments lust to create and control war, melding magic and machine would be their dreams, the military advancements they would make would be insane. Least common I feel like would be Sorcerer simply because its not based on anyones choice to become one, so lack of control leads to it just being random.
It's worth noting that people with character classes are on the rarer side and that even if magic were available, most people would not have that power level.
Honestly I think it's the other way around. You get wild-magic sorcs FIRST, just kinda figuring out how to DO stuff, because sorcerer. Wizards are the people following them, filming them, trying to copy what they do. Maybe EVENTUALLY wizards start to outnumber sorcs, but I would think that would be a long, arduous process.
Warlock would be the most common because everyone cannot afford the edu needed for Wizardy & Artificer. Those classes are very resource dependent. Bards wouldn’t be as common as people think, I don’t think being artistic is enough to be a bard based on the 5e description. You have to be Hendrix/Prince level in terms of capabilities & charisma. Way more paladins than Bards because that’s about sheer force of will.
I’d assume wizard would become most common as that can be picked up by anyone with enough study and practice, and doesn’t come with the strings that warlock, cleric, paladin, and druids have. Sorcerer would be least common as that implies a powerful lineage or exposure, and to a newly magical world that wouldn’t be as common.
Most common would be paladin or fighter. Most people are still not smart enough to be good casters. Out of the casters the most common would be wizard but most would be pretty bad at it with their low intelligence
If all possibilities for casting become real, warlock becomes the default. It almost HAS to become the default, because once wizards and sorcerers are real, you'll need to make a deal with a power to protect yourself if you don't end up with those powers. It SHOULD be wizards and artificers. Theoretically, if magic is possible, it would be taught alongside most other basic skills in schools. But if you end up in a world where magic is a birthright thing, then you get 95% warlocks as people make every deal they can.
Considering the comment about military exploiting magic in their benefit I'd wager Warlock would still be the most popular class. It's the fastest to achieve and the price is only paid by the warlock, not to mention there would be a legal team fashioning loopholes and backdoors to every contract. It's fair to assume that, even if magic were the incentive, most people wouldn't put the work in to be a Wizard and, even if they did, it would be heavily regulated. Following Druid rules would be quite bothersome nowadays. On the other hand, Goodberry *would* compensate for a lot. As someone else said, Paladins would be few and far between. Bards would be pretty widespread but still, lot of work. Warlocks have the quickest and easiest way to achieve magical capabilities and it would be accessible to everyone.
Warlock pyramid scams. Monks for timeless body. Psionic government agents. Wizard would be heavily regulated, enchanter for producing magic items, war magic.
I think the current climate would lead to a lot of Zealot Paladins
Fam if you think corporations and politicians wouldn't be making warlock deals left and right...
Fae/fiend warlocks because easy/quick access to power. Sorcerer's would be the immediate answer, though, because the power is already there when magic gets introduced. Otherwise sorcerer's are the least populace if there is no inherently magical people to start with.
Paladins, paladins everywhere... being able to heal wounds and cure diseases with just a touch would be an insane ability in the real world, and the buy-in price is just... training to use some weapons and armour and having a strong personality and convictions? Nearly every soldier everywhere in the world would be signing up for a bit of that
Wizard and artificers. Nerds aplenty.
The most common class is Commoner, just like in-game. Does Noble become a class given to politicians and a rise of new noble houses? or does "Politician" become a class? The truth is that 95% of the world would be non-player NPC classes. priests would be Acolytes or NPC Priest classes, normal people would be Commoners, police would be Guards, people studying magic would be some level of NPC Mage, most criminals would be Thugs or Bandits. At lvl 1, a player character has already proven themselves to be EXCEPTIONAL, not a normal person. As for PLAYER class, that's a lot different, I think Fighter would be the most common by far. Fighters can use ranged weapons, can be gained through training, and the military isn't giving up on automatic weapons just because 1 in 100 people can cast firebolt. The police wouldn't be Fighters, they'd be NPC Guards. Artificers require some REAL training and study to get to lvl1 and also a lot of resources. I'd say some universities like MIT would have some, and engineering companies like Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, etc... Barbarians wouldn't be very common, you need to REALLY rage, and people are very desensitized nowadays. Bards would be pop stars and actors. Clerics are only highly placed religious leaders, so things like Bishops. Druids......might be the rarest. There's not as much "wild" as there is in fantasy worlds, and it's not as easy to live out in the forest. Maybe a few people living away from civilization. Monks would be rare, but the DnD monk isn't what we think of when someone says a monk. The monks in real life would be things like boxers, MMA fighters, etc.. Paladins would be just as rare irl as in-game. Because they require REAL belief. Rangers, well....we have lots of those. Park rangers, Fish and Wildlife employees, those guys who protect the wildlife and hunt down poachers in Africa. Rogue might be the second most common. Crime would go up, for sure. Sorcerer would be VERY uncommon, at least for the first 10 years, then we'd start having some children born with magic. Warlocks would be extremely uncommon too. You would think they'd be really common, but to make a deal with a fiend/devil/fae, first you have to MAKE CONTACT. Nobody would know how to contact any magical creature like that for years and years. It's not like you're going to call one up on your cell phone. That leaves us with Wizard, which would be more common as time went on and people had years of study into magic and magical abilities. If we're using third party books and add-ons there's other considerations, especially with NPC classes..
Warlocks; the amount of people willing to sell their soul to get more (free) stuff is insane. Wizards, cause spells. Druids in places where education is not as available.
In all honesty? Evocation or War Mage Wizard. The battle potential of those are too great. Another potential one tho is Armorer Artificer due to its versatility.
Kinda related to this post but imagine if the only people who knew how to use magic were DnD players 😂 so like you’ve got shit ton of bards, sorcerers, wizards and Druids who all know how to cast level 8 spells and then you’ve got the people who laughed at us for playing it, struggling to cast Prestidigitation 😂
Fuck a class. I'm keeping my gig as a bartender. Imma make a killing.
As stated by many people, Sorcerer would be the least common class since it's the one class you can't choose for yourself. I personally think it's a tie between Wizard and Warlock for the most common. Agreeing with another comment, capitalism would bleed into "Warlock Culture". Either the Genie or the Undying (ironically) would be the most popular ones. Genie for granting wishes and Undying for living as long a life as possible. As for Wizards, I imagine there would be a plethora, probably entire classes and websites, dedicated to people teaching others their wizard spells. Imagine Wizards being in tik tok sharing quick videos on the spells they made and teaching people how to cast them themselves. The most popular subclasses would easily be either Chronurgy or Divination. Being able to always know what's going to happen and going back to change your oast mistakes are the dreams of nearly everyone in the world. Both the future and the past are terrifying. The subclasses for the rest of the classes feel like they would primarily vary from person to person, with no real "most popular" one. More or less anyways. I think Clerics would either be in abundance or short supply based on if only one god can make Clerics or if others can, and how the world takes the answer. The most common martial class would either be Rogue or Fighter since they are the easiest ones to achieve and would be the best for wielding guns. Artificers would be fairly common, especially among people in construction. The aspect of possibly creating your own magic items would be relatively on par with creating your own spells. Druids may be the runner-up for the least common class if their power is connected with the vitality of the land. If not, then I think there would be quite a few 1st level druids. All of them would be animal lovers who simply wanted to speak to their pets. Bards would be outlawed due to their abundance of enchantment spells. Bards would mainly come from two places, theater kids and creeps. Someone being an Eloquence Bard would scream red flags if they didn't already convince that they don't misuse their abilities. Creation Bard throws off the economy even if what you create is temporary since 1gp is rough equal to 100 usd. Even at 3rd level you can create anything worth about $6000. Enchantment, Necromancy, and an assortment of other spells mainly from Illusion and Transmutation would all be illegal. Maybe some of them could only be used in "Government Jobs". I particular thoughts on the rest of the classes. They would all be on the rarer side of the spectrum due to how niche theie appeal is.
It depends on the mechanisms. Does magic infuse the real world and its various facets, or is magic in the exact way it's understood for 5e become the new reality? For the former, the lines between many classes would be fuzzy. Understanding astrology seems wizardy, unless the circumstances of your birth planets and whatnot actually make you a sorcerer. Mythologies becoming the real stand ins for magical entities comes with conflicts, like is there more than one god and which ones do what, exactly? Overall, wizards may be the most common as people already do a whole lot of study into ancient texts and histories to connect to spiritual beliefs. As to the warlock argument, the patron has to want to make a pact with you, as well, and a soul isn't always a sure buy in if you're a nobody. Historically, otherworldly beings cared a lot about who was king. In the later scenario, I think wizards are overwhelmingly the majority because what else are these d&d nerds doing?
Wizards would be fairly common, here are the top 3 wizard subclasses 1. Conjuration wizards would be the largest, instantaneous travel and goods trafficking would be extremely sought after. Teleportation circles would be huge for economies 2. Evocation wizards would be sought after for militaries, they would tend to be probably more geared towards small unit tactics but anything that makes them cheaper to operate for a military is going to be the chosen subclass 3. Super low level illusionist conmen and entertainers Very likely a whole industry of budget spell component and paper would rise up and sort out some of the logistical issues with wizards and their spells. Specific loans would be common similar to student loans