The vast majority of work in medieval farming was harvesting. Doubling the output of crops doubles the amount of labor needed to harvest a crop. Plowing and milling also take a lot of labor, but cantrips like shape earth (plow 25 square feet in 6 seconds) and shape water (power a water mill without a river) would dramatically reduce those, but the harvest would still be all hands on deck.
So glad I looked up your Fabricate video. This spell is a doozy. The post-scarcity discussion reminds me of something. I have a headcanon about these high fantasy settings and their ubiquitous apocalypses leaving trapped/haunted ruins everywhere, and their wild chaotic societies protected by wandering mavericks and cutthroats: You cannot have such ready access to such consequential magic and enjoy a stable society. It's like the existential threat of posting nuclear weapon designs on the internet - someone would push the button and there's no way to know who before it's too late. Now imagine that on the interconnected scale of magic in a D&D setting. For every mass construction of roads, there's an evil wizard melting all that infrastructure into slag. For every shining utopia there is a demon lord capable of wiping said utopia off the map. We can see clear examples of such consequences in our own world with firearms, social media, drones, AI... But in D&D that's all exaggerated 100-fold. How can society exist in any state BUT savaged by monsters and amoral witches?
I'm pretty sure this actually happened a few times in the forgotten realms. that is in fact why they are called the forgotten realms because there have been so many societies that have risen and then fallen and been wiped from the history books that you could literally pick any point on the map and their are like at least 12 massive history tomes filled with the rise and fall of Great empires that spanned centuries in just that region
Forge clerics not only get this spell inately at 7th lvl, but also have access to Smithing tools prof and their o so handy channel divinity "Artisan's Blessing". The channel divinity allows you to turn any amount of metal worth 100gp or less into any object *involving* metal (key word) equal to the input gp's worth of metal. So for example you can upcycle all those rotting swords, rusty chains, and iron bars you found in your most recent dungeon into brand new weapons, armor, etc. Or into a solid block of iron. Or even into an albeit smaller block of Gold, silver, platinum, etc. You could in theory just slap iron or copper bands, or wire around just about any raw material youd need for the purposes of fabricate if it isnt already metal. Then using fabricate you can cract things beyond the gold piece limit of the channel divinity. Combine all this with a race and or background that give you other tool proficiencies and you are the forge gods chose
Elves get to choose two proficiencies after a long rest thanks to trance. So with the stranded wizard example they can get proficiencies in water vehicles and carpenters tools over a long rest.
Maybe I don’t know enough about the forgotten realms, but about the plant growth being world breaking. In my opinion the smaller towns(a few thousand) and hamlets(maybe a few hundred people) in Faerun could only support the large cites like waterdeep(a million people) with this strategy.
So I have one technicality for the bit about spell books - you could create any kind of book no problem, but you couldn't produce functional copies of books full of working spells specifically because it is explicitly stated in the Wizard class description in the "copying spells" section that it requires magical inks. The books are not magical, but the INK the spells are written in IS magical and therefore can't be replicated via Fabricate.
ALso- level 17 Wizards feature lets you cast 2 level 1 spells at will without expending spell slots. Most ppl overlook a spell like "Unseen Servant" you can create servants that last 1 hour at will. All you need is one wizard with this ability to completely displace hundreds of mundane workers.
Thats why i made the craftsman guild, its heavily frowned upon to buy non guild sources. Also made this spell scarce to find. Gives a good smuggling hook too.
There`s a handful of spells I make sure to take on MOST of my Wizard characters, just because they`re world altering, and on about the same scale. Shape Water, Mold Earth, Arcane Lock, Magic Mouth, Continual Flame, Fabricate, Stone Shape, Wall of Stone. With Shape Water you can apply the same logic of mass producing things in sheets that you do with Fabricate(javelins for example), Plus there are spell combos with things like Tasha`s Hideous Laughter to drop an enemy prone, incapacitated, and completely helpless, then encase them in Ice using Shape Water(two castings) because it doesn't do ANY damage to break Hideous Laughter(see spell description), where they start suffocating. Depending on the DM, they may or may not have been able to hold their breath(they are laughing after all), but then they do eventually suffocate. (can they hold their breath for an hour?) Death, without a single point of damage, unless they can break a five foot cube of solid Ice with raw strength. Good combo. Also lets you build a boat that lasts an hour, but only five by ten. Or a cart. Or gear, Or weapons, Or etc... Also I`m leaving out the interactions with objects like the Decanter of Endless Water, and the Alchemy Jug. Then you have the Backhoe spell, Mold Earth. It literally does everything a backhoe does, as a cantrip. Unlimited uses per day. How useful this spell is to you, depends on how creative you are as a player. Everything from half cover, to traps, to construction, etc... On the Fly. Then you have the next pair of spells, Arcane Lock, and Magic Mouth. These can be used to build an arcane version of modern electronics(Magitech?), including handheld things like tablets and motion sensors, Fingerprint scanners, a version of the Alarm spell that can be set up by anyone whether or not they have magic, A detector that can tell the difference not only between species(Undead, Orc, Human), but individuals as well. Arcane Telescopes and detectors that can see MILES, using a simple Hole in a box(Camera Obscura, look it up.), computers, etc... Arcane Lock lets Magic Mouth interact with the Physical world... This is leaving out things like the interaction between Magic Mouth and Programmed Image, stuff like that. It also leaves out using a Homunculus as a sentient CPU... Or to put it a different way, you no longer need a crew to man that ship you made using Fabricate... You can control that ship from anywhere on the same plane of existence, with your mind. It also leaves out things like telecommunications from the telegraph, telephone, Arcane Blue Tooth, etc... Continual Flame can be used for everything from street lights, to flashlights, to a display for your Magic Mouth computer, to a (Morse Code like) signal tower for long range wireless communications when combined with both Magic Mouth and Arcane lock. That`s not counting things like a Flaming Skull mask(Intimidation?), or a Flaming sword. Or just Flaming gear in general... (I`m pretty sure that guys on fire, and he says he wants to hurt me.) Then you have the construction spells. Fabricate, which you covered, Also Stone Shape, and Wall of Stone which you didn't. Wall of Stone lets you summon?, create?, Non Magical Walls of stone from NOTHING. You can use this to build a Castle, Bridge, Road, Boat, Or even just a chunk of stone for Fabricate. Stone Shape lets you form that stone in various ways, from doors, to statues, to fountains, to weapons, etc... Useful when paired with Wall of Stone, but even without it`s good for equipping your entire group with weapons, gear, whatever. There are a bunch of spells I left off, like Permanent Image(Major Image), Programmed Image, Glyph of Warding, etc... That are NEARLY as strong. Is your castle under manned? Not with Illusions manning the walls! It looks like you have three times the number of guards than you actually do! Oh no! An Invasion! Glyph of Warding can summon extra soldiers, or just go boom!
Quote from Kawrl, The Bone Smith, Mcgee: "*Fun fact: you can't create or transmute creatures or magic items with this spell. Funner fact: this is a relatively high level spell so most people wouldn't know the arcane minutiae of the spell so as a bluff "I'll cube your bones" is a great tactic. Even more funner fact: corpses are objects (ie raw materials) not creatures Even more funnerest fact: "I will trap you with in a cube made of the bones of your people" is not just a threat but a warning.* :D"
Have you seen the rules for making potions of healing? They're wack! A simple potion takes 8 hours of uninterrupted work, and a potion of greater healing takes 1 workweek to make... You think people are going to actually spend an entire day crafting 1 potion? Just get proficiency in herbalism kit and cast one of these!
Better yet, dig out a 10 foot cube pit in the ground then fill that whole pit with that sweet, sweet healing juices. Doesn’t count as mineral since there’s no glass involved.
For your employment issue, I think a big missed element is the science and engineering element. If everyone is studying magic to fabricate, then that's a large part of one's day learning, fabricating, casting plant growth...ect. You'll need large groups of people dedicating their lives and time to specialize in engineering and science. For example, a fabricator can't fabricate a combustion engine, gun powder, or a coal power plant unless those have been engineered and designed. You'll need groups of specialists to do this, a fabricator certainly won't have the time. Plant growth is great, it doubles harvest yield. In the 1950s it was a widely held belief that India would starve itself due to rapid population growth, causing mass casualties. Over the ensuing decade of research and breeding, a novel strain of wheat was developed that was quadruple the yield of standard wheat. Making each square meter of land 4 times as productive. Saving India from starvation. Now, with plant growth its 8 times the yield of standard. Instead of just being capped at double. You'll lose the construction jobs but this theoretical society would have specialist roles for its workforce. You would likely wind up with something more advanced than normal for its time period.
Plant growth doesn't eliminate a single job. Most of medieval european agriculture work is plowing, planting, and harvestimg, with a heaping helping of pest control. Plant growth only maybe limits the amount of plowing and planting you need, does nothing to make harvesting less. Though fabricate could. Also. Populations grow to fit their food source, people don't just stop growing food because it is enough.
Castles? Uh, no. Unless you are going to build it in 5 ft cubes. Stone falls under the mineral rule. Better way to make a castle is casting wall of stone.
I think the easy thing to forget when you consider the imbalance of power/economy caused by magic is that even in high magic settings, the spells you're worried about are WELL beyond most people. The equivalent is like, look at how much coding experts get paid. Why in the world is anyone in the world NOT an engineer in light of the value of that skill? Well the answer is that most people just aren't good at it, like, everyone can't be an engineer because that's not how it works. Everyone can't be an investor or an inventor or a professional gamer or an influencer, everyone does different stuff because that's how people are. Fabricate wouldn't change that because Fabricate is REALLY hard to learn for most people, it would take a lifetime of study to even approach it and/or it would take really extreme circumstances to trigger the amount of knowledge and expertise it would take to comprehend how to use the spell. It's not about "why doesn't everyone learn the useful spell" - in that line of logic, why doesn't everyone just learn Wish and change the world? The answer is just because 99.9% of people can't, it's like asking why everyone in the world doesn't just train for the Olympics and be in flawless physical health or why doesn't everyone just become a doctor or scientist, it's literally not possible lol. It's maybe one percent of people who are even possibly capable of not being "a regular dude", and then it's less and less from there that have the potential of being like, "really good at it". Most people, the dramatic majority of even somewhat talented people, are still just not THAT good and don't undergo enough stress and personal accomplishment (AKA "XP") to even approach the proficiency it takes to pull off "the big stuff". TLDR everyone doesn't learn Fabricate because most people are too pumpkin spice to even try lol.
@Dispel Magic That's a good point. With everything already taken care of, there is nothing to stop Joe Average Wizard from spending the extra time to level up. In fact, they'd be INCENTIVIZED to do so as this would be one of the last viable skillsets.
I'm not sure that you would have half the population studying magic. The effects of fabricate and plant growth are very similar to technology in our world. Fertilisers, combine harvesters, ect all increasing crop yield and significantly reducing the number of people needed to farm, and machines being able to produce most commodities very fast and reduce the number of people needing to work in producing goods. But not everyone is studying sciences, their are still people who work in government, business, ect. In dnd, the fabricators would still have people who's gob it was to sell those goods, and so on. Likely a whole society would form around it, where a lot of people worked in non menial jobs but not necessarily studying magic.
The idea that Fabricate alone will displace EVERY job every is just ludicrous. As for your Plant Growth idea, that is fundamentally flawed. Plant Growth only makes the ground fertile it does not harvest the food, so Plant Growth by itself would have a massive effect but not in the way you described. But then not everyone is a farmer that is working in agriculture. Either way look at farms today. In comparison to the Middle Ages the crop yield is so much more. The numbers I have come up with is 7-15 bushels per acre. Modern yields are some where around 37.1 bushels per acre. You still need people to harvest it all. Back then it took 4-6 (so average of 5) acres per person per day to produce enough food. This is very simplified because this is not taking into account hunting or raising livestock. Nowadays it is down to .75 acre per person per day. That means back then it would take 217,800 square feet of space per person per day. Plant Growth halves that amount so 108,900 square feet of space per person per day. Now the math does change when you throw in an other spell like fabricate. One fabricate spell can effect 45,239 square feet per spell. That means you would need to be able to cast Fabricate 2 times for for one person's food. Baring any magical items that give spell slots back one 18th level wizard can innately cast Fabricate 8 times if they use every spell slot 5 and above plus Arcane Recover. That would feed 4 people per day. That is making a bunch of assumptions sure but then if Plant Growth + Fabricate would equal the displacement of every job in the ag sector for spell casters, It won't. Look at modern times the ag industry is built on the millions of people willing to do crappy jobs, at long hours, for crappy pay. Would an 18th level wizard go out to the fields just to harvest enough food for 4 people? No they won't. What would happen, because of Plant Growth, the work force that is needed to harvest the crops would be cut in half to harvest the same amount of wheat or grain to feed the same amount of people. Half the harvesting work force would bring it all into one central pace. So people are still working harvesting and people are still working transporting. This would allow you to pile the wheat in a tighter are then needing the space needed to grow individual plants. How much wheat can you fit into 45,239 square feet? That I don't know. I can't find any thing on the bulk of harvested wheat stalks, leaves, and kernels. Now let's look at a Fabricate Wizard (or team of) replacing every shipwright. How many trees does it take to make a middle ages ship? 1,000 to 2,000 trees for one ship, lets go with the average of 1,500 trees per ship. Well now much land would it take to grow that many trees in a forest? 15 to 20 hectares of land. How many trees per hectare roughly? On average that would be 83 and 1/3. How many hectares can one Fabricate spell prosses? That would be 0.42 of a hectare. Lets say you purpose plant an orchid to increase the density of tree per acre, how many would that be? I don't know, I can't find any information on that except a modern day quote of 10,000 per hectare. Is that a reasonable increase? I don't thinks so because that use modern tech to achieve that density. For easy math lets just say a 10 fold increase so that would be 833 trees per hectare. Given that number means one Fabricate can harvest around 349-350 trees. That would mean just for harvesting the trees needed you would need to cast it 5 times for enough wood to make one ship. Lets also say that the trees need are in an area where you can launch a ship. What happens when you deplete those trees? You have to go deeper inland to find the wood needed. It take several years for trees to grow large enough to be harvested again. But I can hear you say, "I got you. Uses of fabricate will use the entire tree roots branches and all." Roots can add 80%, Branches add in another 15%, and then add another 30% for no sawdust or of cuts. I am fine with adding in 125% because the roots system and the stump is never harvested. But lets add in another 25% for everything a tree can grow. One Fabricate can prosses 525 trees worth of stuff. But then each casting would be separated from each other by 240 feet. Moving lumber 240 feet is way easier then having to move it miles away but still it needs to be moved. That casting it for JUST making a ship. Wood has many other uses then just making a ship. That is not even talking about mining because in theory you could just fabricate all the metals out of a rock. The spell does not even work well for ranching or hunting because those are live animals. So at minimum you would need a 9th level level Wizard, 9th level Forge Domain Cleric or 17th level Artificer to gain the Fabricate spells. Arcane Trickster and Eldritch Knight could also cast it with a spell scroll but then that would require a check and the scroll does have a chance of not working so that scroll would be wasted effort if the spell fizzled. Even so you would need tens of thousands of trained spell casters to convert over to a Fabricate driven economy for just one decent size city. If everything is processed trough Fabricate what would that do for prices? How long does a wizard or a forge domain cleric take to get to a minimum level nine? Is it months? Years? Wouldn't that person want to be compensated for their time? Would that drive up the prices in a Fabricate driven society? TL;DR A wizard would have a massive edge over common workers and skilled trades men. But to convert over to a completely Fabricate driven economy would require nearly 80% of the population. What you would have would be a large work force to harvest the plants for food, harvest the trees for lumber, mine the ores for the metals, and any other incidence of gaining resources I did not mention. Then you would have a large work force transporting all those raw goods to one central area to be processed buy some skilled professional that uses Fabricate. After that you would have a large work force to take those processed goods and transport them out to the mass market. All of those workers would just be Joe Schmoe no magical person the ones that process the stuff would be the magical part of the equation. Joe Schmoe would far out number magical dudes. Oh wait that sound like modern day with farmers, miners, lumber jacks and such. Then you have fleets of truckers and cargo hauling ships. Mills that make flour don't go to the fields. Sawmills don't go to the forest. Foundries don't go to the mines. Fabricate wizards would not replace menial jobs. A fabricate wizard can go out there but if you were that wizard would you go out the places where the raw stuff is our would you want to stay in one place to process all the stuff?
On the note of their being many spellcasters... these guys are totally wrong because almost all the spell casters just like farmers would still be level 1. A commoner is not allowed to level up in the world of DND. Really what would happen because there is such a massive gap between commoners and immortal demi god druids is all the people would simply be slaves or worshippers of the few 500.000 year old or older demi god druids who would rule every inch of the world with an iron fist.
You can't consider how spells or character abilities or classes would really effect a world in DND. If you did your would be full of tens of billions of people because of the infinite food caused by plant growth, basic things like druid craft able to force seeds to instantly bloom and all the ways to heal and remove sickness. DND is the most simple most basic of systems and it requires players and the DM to turn their brain off. DND only works if instead of you thinking of the ''world'' as a real world you think of it as a fictional world in a poorly written book or TV show. Or as a virtual world. Take for example the fact that kobald characters have the same starting strength and con as a 9ft tall goliath. Or that diamonds can be used to rez people, so the world would be covered in diamond mines and all the peasants would be the slaves of either Wizards or immortal Druid kings.
if you have an artificer there is a magic item called "all purpose tool" that, among other things, will give you any tool proficiency you need.
Knowledge Domain Clerics have a simular abiloty for their channel Divinity at level 2.
The vast majority of work in medieval farming was harvesting. Doubling the output of crops doubles the amount of labor needed to harvest a crop.
Plowing and milling also take a lot of labor, but cantrips like shape earth (plow 25 square feet in 6 seconds) and shape water (power a water mill without a river) would dramatically reduce those, but the harvest would still be all hands on deck.
Our ep coming out this next Tues could really address this nicely. Also Animate dead!
Thats where fabricate harvests everything
So glad I looked up your Fabricate video. This spell is a doozy. The post-scarcity discussion reminds me of something. I have a headcanon about these high fantasy settings and their ubiquitous apocalypses leaving trapped/haunted ruins everywhere, and their wild chaotic societies protected by wandering mavericks and cutthroats:
You cannot have such ready access to such consequential magic and enjoy a stable society. It's like the existential threat of posting nuclear weapon designs on the internet - someone would push the button and there's no way to know who before it's too late. Now imagine that on the interconnected scale of magic in a D&D setting.
For every mass construction of roads, there's an evil wizard melting all that infrastructure into slag. For every shining utopia there is a demon lord capable of wiping said utopia off the map. We can see clear examples of such consequences in our own world with firearms, social media, drones, AI... But in D&D that's all exaggerated 100-fold. How can society exist in any state BUT savaged by monsters and amoral witches?
Absolutely love where your head is at.
It`s also why I absolutely hated the "points of Light" setting idea from 4E. Why were there only tiny pockets of civilization again?
I'm pretty sure this actually happened a few times in the forgotten realms. that is in fact why they are called the forgotten realms because there have been so many societies that have risen and then fallen and been wiped from the history books that you could literally pick any point on the map and their are like at least 12 massive history tomes filled with the rise and fall of Great empires that spanned centuries in just that region
Forge clerics not only get this spell inately at 7th lvl, but also have access to Smithing tools prof and their o so handy channel divinity "Artisan's Blessing". The channel divinity allows you to turn any amount of metal worth 100gp or less into any object *involving* metal (key word) equal to the input gp's worth of metal. So for example you can upcycle all those rotting swords, rusty chains, and iron bars you found in your most recent dungeon into brand new weapons, armor, etc. Or into a solid block of iron. Or even into an albeit smaller block of Gold, silver, platinum, etc.
You could in theory just slap iron or copper bands, or wire around just about any raw material youd need for the purposes of fabricate if it isnt already metal. Then using fabricate you can cract things beyond the gold piece limit of the channel divinity.
Combine all this with a race and or background that give you other tool proficiencies and you are the forge gods chose
Elves get to choose two proficiencies after a long rest thanks to trance. So with the stranded wizard example they can get proficiencies in water vehicles and carpenters tools over a long rest.
I love this spell for lore reasons
As my magic kingdoms use artificers and wizards to build their civilizations
15:30 put the stupidly old vinegar in bottles, and then throw them at enemy wizards to break concentration
Maybe I don’t know enough about the forgotten realms, but about the plant growth being world breaking. In my opinion the smaller towns(a few thousand) and hamlets(maybe a few hundred people) in Faerun could only support the large cites like waterdeep(a million people) with this strategy.
So I have one technicality for the bit about spell books - you could create any kind of book no problem, but you couldn't produce functional copies of books full of working spells specifically because it is explicitly stated in the Wizard class description in the "copying spells" section that it requires magical inks. The books are not magical, but the INK the spells are written in IS magical and therefore can't be replicated via Fabricate.
ALso- level 17 Wizards feature lets you cast 2 level 1 spells at will without expending spell slots. Most ppl overlook a spell like "Unseen Servant" you can create servants that last 1 hour at will. All you need is one wizard with this ability to completely displace hundreds of mundane workers.
You could go into a woodworker shop collect all the saw dust and turn it back into workable wood or planks.
15:00 I'd argue that youd need both alchemist supplies and brewery kit proficiencies (if not expertise) to do the whole aged wines.
Thats why i made the craftsman guild, its heavily frowned upon to buy non guild sources. Also made this spell scarce to find. Gives a good smuggling hook too.
There`s a handful of spells I make sure to take on MOST of my Wizard characters, just because they`re world altering, and on about the same scale. Shape Water, Mold Earth, Arcane Lock, Magic Mouth, Continual Flame, Fabricate, Stone Shape, Wall of Stone.
With Shape Water you can apply the same logic of mass producing things in sheets that you do with Fabricate(javelins for example), Plus there are spell combos with things like Tasha`s Hideous Laughter to drop an enemy prone, incapacitated, and completely helpless, then encase them in Ice using Shape Water(two castings) because it doesn't do ANY damage to break Hideous Laughter(see spell description), where they start suffocating. Depending on the DM, they may or may not have been able to hold their breath(they are laughing after all), but then they do eventually suffocate. (can they hold their breath for an hour?) Death, without a single point of damage, unless they can break a five foot cube of solid Ice with raw strength. Good combo. Also lets you build a boat that lasts an hour, but only five by ten. Or a cart. Or gear, Or weapons, Or etc... Also I`m leaving out the interactions with objects like the Decanter of Endless Water, and the Alchemy Jug.
Then you have the Backhoe spell, Mold Earth. It literally does everything a backhoe does, as a cantrip. Unlimited uses per day. How useful this spell is to you, depends on how creative you are as a player. Everything from half cover, to traps, to construction, etc... On the Fly.
Then you have the next pair of spells, Arcane Lock, and Magic Mouth. These can be used to build an arcane version of modern electronics(Magitech?), including handheld things like tablets and motion sensors, Fingerprint scanners, a version of the Alarm spell that can be set up by anyone whether or not they have magic, A detector that can tell the difference not only between species(Undead, Orc, Human), but individuals as well. Arcane Telescopes and detectors that can see MILES, using a simple Hole in a box(Camera Obscura, look it up.), computers, etc... Arcane Lock lets Magic Mouth interact with the Physical world... This is leaving out things like the interaction between Magic Mouth and Programmed Image, stuff like that. It also leaves out using a Homunculus as a sentient CPU... Or to put it a different way, you no longer need a crew to man that ship you made using Fabricate... You can control that ship from anywhere on the same plane of existence, with your mind. It also leaves out things like telecommunications from the telegraph, telephone, Arcane Blue Tooth, etc...
Continual Flame can be used for everything from street lights, to flashlights, to a display for your Magic Mouth computer, to a (Morse Code like) signal tower for long range wireless communications when combined with both Magic Mouth and Arcane lock. That`s not counting things like a Flaming Skull mask(Intimidation?), or a Flaming sword. Or just Flaming gear in general... (I`m pretty sure that guys on fire, and he says he wants to hurt me.)
Then you have the construction spells. Fabricate, which you covered, Also Stone Shape, and Wall of Stone which you didn't. Wall of Stone lets you summon?, create?, Non Magical Walls of stone from NOTHING. You can use this to build a Castle, Bridge, Road, Boat, Or even just a chunk of stone for Fabricate. Stone Shape lets you form that stone in various ways, from doors, to statues, to fountains, to weapons, etc... Useful when paired with Wall of Stone, but even without it`s good for equipping your entire group with weapons, gear, whatever.
There are a bunch of spells I left off, like Permanent Image(Major Image), Programmed Image, Glyph of Warding, etc... That are NEARLY as strong. Is your castle under manned? Not with Illusions manning the walls! It looks like you have three times the number of guards than you actually do! Oh no! An Invasion! Glyph of Warding can summon extra soldiers, or just go boom!
Quote from Kawrl, The Bone Smith, Mcgee:
"*Fun fact: you can't create or transmute creatures or magic items with this spell.
Funner fact: this is a relatively high level spell so most people wouldn't know the arcane minutiae of the spell so as a bluff "I'll cube your bones" is a great tactic.
Even more funner fact: corpses are objects (ie raw materials) not creatures
Even more funnerest fact: "I will trap you with in a cube made of the bones of your people" is not just a threat but a warning.* :D"
Have you seen the rules for making potions of healing? They're wack! A simple potion takes 8 hours of uninterrupted work, and a potion of greater healing takes 1 workweek to make... You think people are going to actually spend an entire day crafting 1 potion? Just get proficiency in herbalism kit and cast one of these!
Better yet, dig out a 10 foot cube pit in the ground then fill that whole pit with that sweet, sweet healing juices. Doesn’t count as mineral since there’s no glass involved.
Fabricate is all fun and games until the Pynkertons from the Arisains Guild shows up.
For your employment issue, I think a big missed element is the science and engineering element. If everyone is studying magic to fabricate, then that's a large part of one's day learning, fabricating, casting plant growth...ect. You'll need large groups of people dedicating their lives and time to specialize in engineering and science.
For example, a fabricator can't fabricate a combustion engine, gun powder, or a coal power plant unless those have been engineered and designed. You'll need groups of specialists to do this, a fabricator certainly won't have the time.
Plant growth is great, it doubles harvest yield. In the 1950s it was a widely held belief that India would starve itself due to rapid population growth, causing mass casualties. Over the ensuing decade of research and breeding, a novel strain of wheat was developed that was quadruple the yield of standard wheat. Making each square meter of land 4 times as productive. Saving India from starvation. Now, with plant growth its 8 times the yield of standard. Instead of just being capped at double.
You'll lose the construction jobs but this theoretical society would have specialist roles for its workforce. You would likely wind up with something more advanced than normal for its time period.
Plant growth doesn't eliminate a single job. Most of medieval european agriculture work is plowing, planting, and harvestimg, with a heaping helping of pest control. Plant growth only maybe limits the amount of plowing and planting you need, does nothing to make harvesting less. Though fabricate could. Also. Populations grow to fit their food source, people don't just stop growing food because it is enough.
Castles? Uh, no. Unless you are going to build it in 5 ft cubes. Stone falls under the mineral rule. Better way to make a castle is casting wall of stone.
I think the easy thing to forget when you consider the imbalance of power/economy caused by magic is that even in high magic settings, the spells you're worried about are WELL beyond most people. The equivalent is like, look at how much coding experts get paid. Why in the world is anyone in the world NOT an engineer in light of the value of that skill? Well the answer is that most people just aren't good at it, like, everyone can't be an engineer because that's not how it works. Everyone can't be an investor or an inventor or a professional gamer or an influencer, everyone does different stuff because that's how people are. Fabricate wouldn't change that because Fabricate is REALLY hard to learn for most people, it would take a lifetime of study to even approach it and/or it would take really extreme circumstances to trigger the amount of knowledge and expertise it would take to comprehend how to use the spell.
It's not about "why doesn't everyone learn the useful spell" - in that line of logic, why doesn't everyone just learn Wish and change the world? The answer is just because 99.9% of people can't, it's like asking why everyone in the world doesn't just train for the Olympics and be in flawless physical health or why doesn't everyone just become a doctor or scientist, it's literally not possible lol. It's maybe one percent of people who are even possibly capable of not being "a regular dude", and then it's less and less from there that have the potential of being like, "really good at it". Most people, the dramatic majority of even somewhat talented people, are still just not THAT good and don't undergo enough stress and personal accomplishment (AKA "XP") to even approach the proficiency it takes to pull off "the big stuff".
TLDR everyone doesn't learn Fabricate because most people are too pumpkin spice to even try lol.
Most npc are very low level magic casters. Most can only cast a few cantrips and 1 or 2 first level spells.
Based on what?
@Dispel Magic That's a good point. With everything already taken care of, there is nothing to stop Joe Average Wizard from spending the extra time to level up. In fact, they'd be INCENTIVIZED to do so as this would be one of the last viable skillsets.
I'm not sure that you would have half the population studying magic. The effects of fabricate and plant growth are very similar to technology in our world. Fertilisers, combine harvesters, ect all increasing crop yield and significantly reducing the number of people needed to farm, and machines being able to produce most commodities very fast and reduce the number of people needing to work in producing goods. But not everyone is studying sciences, their are still people who work in government, business, ect. In dnd, the fabricators would still have people who's gob it was to sell those goods, and so on. Likely a whole society would form around it, where a lot of people worked in non menial jobs but not necessarily studying magic.
The idea that Fabricate alone will displace EVERY job every is just ludicrous.
As for your Plant Growth idea, that is fundamentally flawed. Plant Growth only makes the ground fertile it does not harvest the food, so Plant Growth by itself would have a massive effect but not in the way you described. But then not everyone is a farmer that is working in agriculture. Either way look at farms today. In comparison to the Middle Ages the crop yield is so much more. The numbers I have come up with is 7-15 bushels per acre. Modern yields are some where around 37.1 bushels per acre. You still need people to harvest it all. Back then it took 4-6 (so average of 5) acres per person per day to produce enough food. This is very simplified because this is not taking into account hunting or raising livestock. Nowadays it is down to .75 acre per person per day.
That means back then it would take 217,800 square feet of space per person per day. Plant Growth halves that amount so 108,900 square feet of space per person per day.
Now the math does change when you throw in an other spell like fabricate. One fabricate spell can effect 45,239 square feet per spell. That means you would need to be able to cast Fabricate 2 times for for one person's food. Baring any magical items that give spell slots back one 18th level wizard can innately cast Fabricate 8 times if they use every spell slot 5 and above plus Arcane Recover. That would feed 4 people per day.
That is making a bunch of assumptions sure but then if Plant Growth + Fabricate would equal the displacement of every job in the ag sector for spell casters, It won't. Look at modern times the ag industry is built on the millions of people willing to do crappy jobs, at long hours, for crappy pay. Would an 18th level wizard go out to the fields just to harvest enough food for 4 people? No they won't. What would happen, because of Plant Growth, the work force that is needed to harvest the crops would be cut in half to harvest the same amount of wheat or grain to feed the same amount of people. Half the harvesting work force would bring it all into one central pace. So people are still working harvesting and people are still working transporting. This would allow you to pile the wheat in a tighter are then needing the space needed to grow individual plants. How much wheat can you fit into 45,239 square feet? That I don't know. I can't find any thing on the bulk of harvested wheat stalks, leaves, and kernels.
Now let's look at a Fabricate Wizard (or team of) replacing every shipwright. How many trees does it take to make a middle ages ship? 1,000 to 2,000 trees for one ship, lets go with the average of 1,500 trees per ship. Well now much land would it take to grow that many trees in a forest? 15 to 20 hectares of land. How many trees per hectare roughly? On average that would be 83 and 1/3. How many hectares can one Fabricate spell prosses? That would be 0.42 of a hectare. Lets say you purpose plant an orchid to increase the density of tree per acre, how many would that be? I don't know, I can't find any information on that except a modern day quote of 10,000 per hectare. Is that a reasonable increase? I don't thinks so because that use modern tech to achieve that density. For easy math lets just say a 10 fold increase so that would be 833 trees per hectare.
Given that number means one Fabricate can harvest around 349-350 trees. That would mean just for harvesting the trees needed you would need to cast it 5 times for enough wood to make one ship. Lets also say that the trees need are in an area where you can launch a ship. What happens when you deplete those trees? You have to go deeper inland to find the wood needed. It take several years for trees to grow large enough to be harvested again.
But I can hear you say, "I got you. Uses of fabricate will use the entire tree roots branches and all."
Roots can add 80%, Branches add in another 15%, and then add another 30% for no sawdust or of cuts. I am fine with adding in 125% because the roots system and the stump is never harvested. But lets add in another 25% for everything a tree can grow. One Fabricate can prosses 525 trees worth of stuff. But then each casting would be separated from each other by 240 feet. Moving lumber 240 feet is way easier then having to move it miles away but still it needs to be moved. That casting it for JUST making a ship. Wood has many other uses then just making a ship.
That is not even talking about mining because in theory you could just fabricate all the metals out of a rock. The spell does not even work well for ranching or hunting because those are live animals.
So at minimum you would need a 9th level level Wizard, 9th level Forge Domain Cleric or 17th level Artificer to gain the Fabricate spells. Arcane Trickster and Eldritch Knight could also cast it with a spell scroll but then that would require a check and the scroll does have a chance of not working so that scroll would be wasted effort if the spell fizzled. Even so you would need tens of thousands of trained spell casters to convert over to a Fabricate driven economy for just one decent size city.
If everything is processed trough Fabricate what would that do for prices? How long does a wizard or a forge domain cleric take to get to a minimum level nine? Is it months? Years? Wouldn't that person want to be compensated for their time? Would that drive up the prices in a Fabricate driven society?
TL;DR
A wizard would have a massive edge over common workers and skilled trades men. But to convert over to a completely Fabricate driven economy would require nearly 80% of the population.
What you would have would be a large work force to harvest the plants for food, harvest the trees for lumber, mine the ores for the metals, and any other incidence of gaining resources I did not mention. Then you would have a large work force transporting all those raw goods to one central area to be processed buy some skilled professional that uses Fabricate. After that you would have a large work force to take those processed goods and transport them out to the mass market. All of those workers would just be Joe Schmoe no magical person the ones that process the stuff would be the magical part of the equation. Joe Schmoe would far out number magical dudes.
Oh wait that sound like modern day with farmers, miners, lumber jacks and such. Then you have fleets of truckers and cargo hauling ships. Mills that make flour don't go to the fields. Sawmills don't go to the forest. Foundries don't go to the mines. Fabricate wizards would not replace menial jobs.
A fabricate wizard can go out there but if you were that wizard would you go out the places where the raw stuff is our would you want to stay in one place to process all the stuff?
Two words vegan necromancer animate dead it just says a a pile of bones of a medium sized humanoid never said it had be of a living living thing
Plate armor. The best use for fabricate is plate armor or half plate.
On the note of their being many spellcasters... these guys are totally wrong because almost all the spell casters just like farmers would still be level 1. A commoner is not allowed to level up in the world of DND. Really what would happen because there is such a massive gap between commoners and immortal demi god druids is all the people would simply be slaves or worshippers of the few 500.000 year old or older demi god druids who would rule every inch of the world with an iron fist.
You can't consider how spells or character abilities or classes would really effect a world in DND. If you did your would be full of tens of billions of people because of the infinite food caused by plant growth, basic things like druid craft able to force seeds to instantly bloom and all the ways to heal and remove sickness. DND is the most simple most basic of systems and it requires players and the DM to turn their brain off. DND only works if instead of you thinking of the ''world'' as a real world you think of it as a fictional world in a poorly written book or TV show. Or as a virtual world. Take for example the fact that kobald characters have the same starting strength and con as a 9ft tall goliath. Or that diamonds can be used to rez people, so the world would be covered in diamond mines and all the peasants would be the slaves of either Wizards or immortal Druid kings.
Sounds like this might not be for you.