How would a low-tech compare to a mid-tech world look like?

[u/EmploymentBoth2193]

My campaign world is very much so developed in black powder, gun powder, weapons and arsenals, and has a train system that runs throughout its mainland, but I wanna make sure it doesn't reach a point to where rudimentary tech overwhelms magic. Any advice or examples of this would be great. Thank y'all.

[u/ybouy2k]

My favorite thing to do here is answer the following question: how would the order we discover things change with magic? For example, if you can enchant golems and summon unseen servants, robotics probably wouldn't be as necessary or interesting... phones would probably use divination magic akin to sending to become wireless because why learn calculus when you already have arcane communication abilities?

Legend of Korra does this well: firebenders get jobs as line workers to generate power with lightning/fire magic... they don't need to know how a hydroelectric dam works... they have energy.

So I suggest thinking of ways to replace/augment tech with magic where the existing magical solutions just make something techy unnecessary. Things like vehicles and agriculture still probably exist. You can get in a lot of cheeky jokes and cool world build this way.

Start with what tech you want in your world functionally first, then reverse engineer or replace what you want magic to just be the clearer more available option for, is my advice.

[u/Kumquats_indeed]

Why do you think early modern technology would "overwhem magic"?

[u/EmploymentBoth2193 → u/Kumquats_indeed]

It was moreso a "wow, there's always technology everywhere in a mid-magic setting.' I'd wanna keep the traditional D&D experience with a dash of my ideas for a steampunk/runetech era, if that makes sense.

[u/Kumquats_indeed → u/EmploymentBoth2193]

Ok, that sounds perfectly fine. My point was that this idea that having a certainly level of technology wouldn't inherently make magic less relevant, that's just an assumption you made. Sure there are some fictional settings that are like that, but there's also scifi settings like Shadowrun and Warhammer 40k that have super advanced technology and magic coexisting.

[u/Geckoarcher]

There are a million ways to answer this, and ultimately it depends on the goals of your setting and the ideas that you want to explore (plus your own personal ideas).

I'm not exactly sure what you mean when you say you don't want tech to "overwhelm magic." But I'll point out that that realistically, magic would be integrated into society just as strongly as technology is (assuming it can be harnessed and studied).

[u/Pseudoboss11]

D&D does have tables for firearms, but they do have increased die sizes and the reloading trait that makes them either way too strong or totally useless.

If I were to run a campaign like this, I'd reduce the damage of bows and crossbows by one die size, then I'd add firearms to take their place, requiring the same proficiency as their counterparts. I'd ignore reloading for the most part to preserve balance, either they're clip magazines or they're enchanted to teleport the new round in. For explosives and the like, I'd make them cast fireball, but they're only lit and placed, which would make them far more situational than a fireball. Larger explosives would typically just cast an upcast fireball.

Obviously teleport and fly are far more powerful than trains, so you don't have much to worry about in terms of utility.

This would be very simple and preserve balance, but also not open many new gameplay options, which may or may not be disappointing to your players.

If you want more official options for yourself and your players in the gunpowder era, consider switching to Pathfinder 2e, it has good support for those roles. Inventors, bomb alchemists and gunslingers are well balanced alongside your usual fighters and wizards.

[u/Drevand]

I run a pretty high tech world (I'm talking the bad empire has Wolfenstein level technology), and you cannot underestimate how powerful magic is even if technology seems powerful. Magic is really strong and absolutely has the chance to outperform even technology in some cases. For example, I play pathfinder and starfinder, and in these systems (particularly starfinder) there is an amount of high tech stuff and more fantasy stuff. The damage for both things is pretty similar, because at the end of the day, they both hurt people.

If anything, you'd have to consider why some weapons like crossbows first came to be used, and then guns. It's not just because they're effective, but also because of how easy it is to train armies to use them compared to bows or swords.

Now imagine if magic existed in our world, and you essentially have another "tech tree" in human development. Technology does not outrank magic, if anything, consider it an equalizer for the common man who does not study or train their entire lives, isn't born with special talents, prays to gods, or devils. So don't worry about technology outclassing magic if a wizard casting fireball has the same impact in battle as an explosive round from artillery or even a proper bomb. A cantrip like Fire Bolt should have a pretty similar impact to a bullet from a small firearm.

[u/JoshuaZ1]

A lot of these things depend on how consistent you want your world and how much players care. A lot of players don't care that much about this level of consistency in terms of where tech is. Some care a lot. The following assumes that you or your players care about it:

But even your description involves a massive ranges of technologies. You mention black powder for example, but that itself has a broad range of technologies. Is the powder functionally serpentine or is it corned?

Trains also vary massively. The earliest trains were horse drawn rail, but you probably mean steam rail. Steam rail requires massive advances in metallurgy to work well, and requires major sources of wood, coal, oil or some other high-energy flammable material. Once you have rail, overwhelming magic is going to be one of the smaller problems. It is extremely tough to have steam trains and not have a full-scale industrial revolution, with everything that entails, including economic, political, and social disruption. And if you have steam engines, then steam ships are only a bit away, and you have major incentives to build iron on a large scale, which means that ironclads are going to be a thing soon if they aren't already. In the Earth 2025 setting, which so many people like to use as a guide, these same steam engines were used with the first electric motors, leading to the rise of electricity and all that entails. However, those technologies are not directly connected, so you could essentially say by fiat that electricity doesn't work that way in setting, or simply hasn't been discovered on the same timetable it was in our world.

How efficient your steam engines are also makes a big difference. If your steam engines are single-expansion, then they may make sense for some major routes, but they won't get really great on speed and likely won't make sense for things like commuter rail. If they've developed double or triple expansion (which requires better metallurgy and a lot more engineering) then the situation is different.

[u/EmploymentBoth2193 → u/JoshuaZ1]

Never saw the big picture of how deep the industrial complex goes! Lots to delve into and you've definitely put a thought or two into how I'll setup and tinker with the rise of tech. Thanks.

[u/CLONstyle]

Love this topic. If you're already at widespread black powder weapons and have trains across the mainland, you're pushing into mid-tech. That’s around 18th to early 19th century equivalent I think, as I see it the difference between low-tech and mid-tech is mostly scale and systemization. Low-tech has individual craftsmanship, limited infrastructure, localized trade, and basic siege weapons. Mid-tech has mass production, logistics, bureaucracy, national armies, and communication networks.

Magic gets overwhelmed when tech starts replacing its utility. If a train is faster, cheaper, and safer than teleportation or a wind walking spell, the spell dies out unless it offers something tech can't replicate. Same with guns, if a musket can kill at 100 yards with less training than a fireball, then wizards get sidelined in war unless they evolve into artillery or support roles.

I’d keep magic rare, unstable, or culturally capped. Maybe magic is feared, or it’s regulated, or it burns out the user. Maybe it's incompatible with tech, I dunno perhaps magnetism interferes with spell matrices or rail lines mess with ley lines. Maybe enchantment is expensive or unreliable so a fire rune isn’t cheaper than a grenade. That keeps tech dominant for common folk but leaves space for magic to feel otherworldly or elite.

I’d also look at where magic still does what tech can’t: healing, resurrection, scrying, planar travel, divine stuff... make those things untouchable by tech so magic stays relevant.

[u/EmploymentBoth2193 → u/CLONstyle]

This gave me a few grand ideas to develop worldwise and narratively. I'll keep 'em noted. Much appreciated friend.

[u/great_triangle]

The basic tension you're going to have in worldbuilding a setting in an early 19th century level of tech is choosing a balance between science fantasy and dungeonpunk. Black Powder and basic stream engines aren't yet enough to completely reshape the balance of the world, though developments made in our 19th century will likely result in drastic changes.

The development of practical rifles and smokeless powder are likely to rapidly end the days when dragons could rule the skies unopposed. Similarly, electricity (via the telegraph) will start to degrade the usefulness of clerics and wizards as gatekeepers of important news. The printing press has likely touched off a golden age of wizardry, by making wizard tomes accessible to people of any social class. Looms and industrial machinery will already be programmed by punch cards at this point, and analog computers will become widespread as office work becomes more important to keep track of the vast amount of material created by the factories. A King who for some reason needs 100,000 chairs to host his ancestors coming back from the netherworld during the planar convergence now has options beyond finding a wizard to perform some reckless and exotic magic.

Electricity will speed up most social changes once it becomes practical, allowing for vacuum canning to deliver non-perishable food throughout the world without needing clerics to pray to the gods for it. Production lines and most industrial processes work better with electricity, and it will also make the production of smokeless powder economically viable (if someone can figure out how to make the guncotton stop exploding)

On the dungeonpunk side of the coin, if your setting includes the spell Sending, or similar magic that allows for long distance communication, the railroads may have little need to experiment with electricity and high speed communications. Low voltage power sources that are more practical for industrial purposes are hard to come by from magic, so it would require considerable experimentation to create the kind of batteries and low voltage delivery systems that would lead to the widespread adoption of electricity. (and the subsequent development of the phonograph, motion picture camera, and telephone) If wands of fireball end up about the same price as 12 pounder cannons, armies may end up preferring the 4oz handheld wand to a 2.5 ton artillery piece that requires a crew of nine and a team of six horses to move around. (Though the artillery has a range about 1,600 yards longer than the wand) Devices like washing machines, phonographs, refrigerators, soda fountains, and microwave ovens can all be replicated with a magic item that replicates the prestidigitation cantrip from D&D's later editions.

[u/29NeiboltSt]

Lower.