It must be considered that 10 minutes for a spell that lasts an hour is still a long time, and learning magic also takes a lot of time, so a wizard would not want to spend the entire day on something like that, in which case the logical thing would be to think that these kinds of jobs would be done by low-level wizards without enough money to pay for their studies, so it is most likely that experienced wizards will start taking apprentices to force them to do these kinds of jobs in exchange for teaching them magic, spells like this and prestidigitation would be the first ones that would be taught to each apprentice, since they are easy to use and the repetitiveness of the act can be a good way to learn magic, a city built around a magic academy would be full of cheap products with apprentices acting as the main source of labor in that place, in that sense the apprentices would be the equivalent of interns in the magical world.
Grad student wizard casting unseen servant for 40 hours a week for minimum wage after studying for 5 years just to be able to do that 😂 Exactly like real life lol
So, Mordenkainen’s Magnificent Mansion could be Mordenkainen’s Magnificent Manufactory. MMM gives you any floorplan and furnishings you want with 100 magical servants for 24 hours.
Imagine multiple castings of it (or a similar spell), keeping the entrance to the extra dimensional space open: almost infinite space can then be kept within 60 feet of the caster! A Dimensional Unseen Servant spell would also be in other to allow something like this with pocket dimensions, whose entrance are within reach, even if they are currently closed…
@@MauroDraco I'd do a demiplane since it's permanent and can be infinitely expanded, and have a small army of simulacrums ritually casting unseen servant unto eternity. The best part is that as long as you never let anyone see the demiplane, it's 100% inaccessible even to the most powerful wizards. In case of any contention on whether simulacrums can ritual cast, simulacrum says: "the illusion uses all the statistics of the creature it duplicates, except that it is a construct."
It could become Mordakainens Means of Production if opened up in or near a mine and staffed partly by elementals you also summon. Just imagine that Wizard.... Like holy shit I wish I could get into a game that allowed me to be this guy
@@tnt_rebel2796 that rule about simulacrums isn't part of the game, it's from adventurer's league. in the actual rules there's nothing stopping you from having as many simulacrums as you can afford.
Labor and thus the economy it is based on, is a necessity from nature; as living beings need to eat, to prepare shelter, dress themselves and so on. More efficient or easier labor either frees the group from its burdens or gives power to the group controlling and spreading it. That said, a group either will desire and proceed to implement the changes as much as possible to lessen life’s risks or will have its consequences forced on them by another group that got powerful enough to do it, because of said changes. As long as the society doesn’t collapse, one way or another, sooner or later, the technological advancements will happen if the conditions are right. So it is generally unstoppable, albeit societies can more or less shape, direct and delay or accelerate the transformations of these production systems.
@@MauroDraco Labor is certainly a necessary part of nature, but an economy definitely isn't (unless you really stretch the definition of "economy" or "nature").
Why would you choose paid workforce over free workforce? This is all viewed through a capitalism lense, where an individual's only goal is to make money.
Then I have an idea for a dungeon for you: Factories that genuinely don't need to worry about worker safety would be ridiculously dangerous compared to our old systems. Now imagine your party has to navigate through one where perhaps the wizard died long ago and they have to puzzle their way through machinery that would kill them if handled incorrectly, or the wizard died recently and everything is still running but out of control, or maybe there's still a wizard working the factory and there could be any number of reasons your party has to get in there, but depending on their actions could mean the wizard doesn't know they are there or could even turn into an adversary due to the intrusion if said intrusion is destructive, improvising the machines to be directly dangerous
A single wizard or sorcerer can build a city. I know as my Sorcadin (6 Open Sea Paladin/10 Aberrant Mind Sorcerer) used Wall of Stone and Mold Earth to create a functional port town over 3 weeks time. All buildings and docks structurally sound and all made of stone. Three pier dock, two warehouses, a stretch of 10x10 vendor stalls, his own mansion, a smithy house, a tailor shop building, a ship crafters building, several stone houses, a bank, patrolable town walls and a lighthouse tower.
Everyone wants a nice magic mansion. I usually make permanent magic rare. But slapping up a guard tower overnight that will melt in a month or weeks is still nice.
@@grimtygranule5125 Around level 3-5, all of you are pretty wealthy. Some classes like paladins and clerics could have rules for donating profits to the aith or putting them into projects for their deity but could walk around in expensive kit.
@@SusCalvin i mean, the entire thing about a wizard is that this is a normal person who worked for and learned to use magic, so unless you ban wizard as a class in theory all classes should have access to a wizard's spell list if they're willing to put in the money and resources to learn the spell
@@d3str0i3r It depends on how you look on multiclassing and classless RPGs. I like the simplicity without multiclassing. Everyone could do their time and become a civil engineer. NPCs do anything you need, they are not bound by class rules. Call of Cthulhu is a game where it's easy to use magic. Any human can write down or teach another human a spell. All humans have magic points, some have more and some have less. There is no skill to use a spell, you say you do the spell and pay the cost in SAN, mp and possibly pemanent POW sacrifice. You might have a scholar or sorcerer profession in BRP games but more often there's no special magic class.
It essentially depends on whether a level 1 wizard is worth more or less than 6 unskilled manual workers. Acting as a translator with comprehend languages, or even simply using the mending cantrip to fix valuable items and objects are arguably more valuable and more profitable jobs for a wizard.
As someone who works maintenance, no, an unseen servant couldn't do much. It's 2 strength means only 30 pounds, and any cleaner needs to be able to lift 50lb minimum. That 60ft is actually a pretty big limitation. They would probably be Good at sewing, and housekeeping style cleaning
Your thinking in reality and how things are. If this was the norm for the world sending out 30lb boxes is what they do and nothing says you can't have them in a line to move them to bypass 60ft
@@armorclasshero2103And? The person you replied to said they'd just make smaller boxes, buckets, bags, etc. If you want to counter that, you have to show how lighter things aren't viable, not tell us how we do things now. That was his entire point.
Reminds me of a story of "boob job wizard". I'm hazy on the details but story went like this: during time between adventures party of players went about augmenting their sources of income. One of them a wizard had a spell that could change the body In a minor way. Normally spell would wear off after a while but with investment of ingredients and time it could be made permanent. The player of that character thought "well why not play up to human vanity" and became essentially "boob job wizard"
@@unpronouncable2442 RUclips doesn't allow links and I don't have everything neatly written down but basically there is a type of magic that specifically alters the body and deals with living organic beings. I mostly used it for healing, grafting, Frankstein like creature creations, but I simply forgot about cosmetic surgeries. It would 100% exist and that would be quite easy for an experienced mage, the elites would undoubtedly be of an alien beauty, even more different and separated from the rest of the population.
Keep in mind there are also the Ritual Caster and Magic Initiate feats that would allow non spellcaster classes to also cast spells such as Unseen Servant. So, with the increase in education from more books, you could have a setting where ritual casting is relatively common and instead of having to pay an actual wizard or bard to create unseen servants, you just have a butler, artisan, tailor, etc who knows how to cast the spell. So the Ritual Caster feat could just be something people can learn that exponentially increases the amount of work they can do. Kind of like the invention of tractors and farm equipment making it so one worker can perform the work of many. Though there's also the issue of unseen servants being... well... unseen. Even if the rules prevent the servants from attacking and doing damage, they can also steal stuff, lay traps, poison food, open doors, and other things. It could also be hard to tell who's invisible summoned blob of force is who's. Doubly so if an actual spellcaster can make themselves invisible with an army of unseen servants, walk into a factory, and walk out with their servants carrying stuff (or plop it into a bag of holding). So, I imagine something like the Ritual Caster feat letting non casters cast rituals would be awesome and many people would want to learn and share it, but the potential for misuse would make crime in cities basically hell on earth. Or at least the potential for getting stuff stolen. In rural farming communities it would be awesome. Farmers who learned to cast rituals could drastically increase their labor, at least in some areas depending on the unseen servants strength score or ability to interact with animals. (I don't know if an unseen servant could really milk a cow if the cow gets spooked by having haunted buckets floating around. ) Rural communities could benefit from the labor saving the unseen servants provide, would want their children to study and learn to cast rituals so they can help out, and committing crimes using unseen servants would be a bit harder since everyone in town knows eachother and the Alarm spell is also a 1st level ritual (though reading it, it's possible unseen servants might not trigger an alarm since they aren't creatures). Anyway, Ritual Caster feat is a thing that could let more common folk in a D&D setting harness the power of low level spells to improve their lives.
Yes! I almost mentioned ritual caster but that's a whole can of worms itself. In my mind, feats are reserved for leveled characters, but technically with raw, anyone with a custom lineage could get it... Definitely worth considering, and thanks for typing this instead of me going on a whole tangent lol
If approaching from a 5e framework you need to be level 4 or a special type of human. Given how much of a power boost it gives, I don't see it being the accepted standard in any world.
Since the name of the feat is RITUAL Caster, as well, you can flavor the "rituals" to be more rural lifestyle in nature. Maybe the village's children practice by making the dolls (maybe styled with little hats/tools, to indicate the work the unseen servant is needed for), candles, etc. required for them.
Farmers probably have somewhat less use for them, because of the need to stay within 60'. They would greatly help with the processing of a harvest. Want potatoes peeled en masse? Easy. Want the harvest washed, or polished, or seeds and husks removed? Done. Imagine a depopulated area after a war resorting to learning magic to get the harvest processed. Historically, the millers of a town were often the wealthiest, because they took a share for all the grain their processed, and because of the expense of their capital equipment. With magic, you could see other concentrations of wealth in the agricultural sector. But there is always room for conflict between the miller and the farmer, or any townsman who processes the food and generates wealth from it and the farmer.
I ran the with the animate dead spell. As long as there is someone to cast it often enough, you can have an entire shop pumping out products without issue. Skeletons are able to do more complex tasks, like load balistas for example. Zombies are unable to do that sort of thing. But Zombies could be used as a dumb labor force, beasts of burden type of thing.
Skeletons are also absurdly strong compared to unseen servants. They have the strength (10) of an average human, and only require one casting per day to control. Zombies are even stronger, and both are able to carry out pretty complex vague tasks. The spell gives the example of “guard a particular chamber or corridor” as a potential order, which is pretty comparable in required skill or autonomy as “clean this room” or an assembly line task, or really any other monotonous low skill task
Pathfinder has this thing where you can put bodies together to make bigger undead. Needless to say, a necromancer has a lot of options when it comes to a 'factory floor' situation. Undead can even be made intelligent and still be loyal to the summoner, without compulsion, using the right type of necromancer. For your necromancer is going to want a vacation one day.... Loyal Undead at least stay put.
You should look into Pathfinder 2e's rituals. These take more then 10min to cast, but can have truely permanent effects. Animate Object requires only level 2, or higher for more complex creations. Simply enchant a heavy stone, wood or metal disc/cylinder to spin on command, ad a few gear and you have a magic powerd engine.
A thought I had is looking at unseen servant not as labor in itself, but as a cheap clean source of mechanical energy. Just have it turn a crank to wind a spring, storing the energy for later use. Now you have a spring that could produce hundreds of pounds of force once released. Seems like the makings of a clockpunk industrial revolution
Mass produced unseen servant tokens that a wizard has spent 10 minutes ritual casting unseen servant on. Activated on demand by lay people for one man hour of simple labor. Any mildly intelligent person with 11 int could make their living producing them and selling them to a wholesaler in town. For a modest lifestyle, you only need 1gp per day, so 42 servant tokens could be sold for 2.5 copper each for 1.05 gp and sold individually by a wholesaler for half a silver each, which is 4x more efficient than the 2 silver per day a "poor" lifestyle costs and twice as efficient as the 1 silver per day that the ultra-poor endure.
This solves my biggest problem with this, that the mage, an educated specialist, has to spend time ordering the servants around. With a token/scroll, you could have some "seen handlers," unskilled workers, whose job is to just summon the servants and order them, while the mage spends his time mage-ing. Even taking into consideration ritual caster or magic initiate fears, this would be more efficient as feats are also somewhat rare (hence the name). Wait.... what if tokens of unseen servant are used as the primary currency for the country in question. Two values, charged and used. Could be referred to like "this costs 5 charges and 2 base."
@@qq-wy7zs The state wouldn't like to release control over valuable good that can be easily produced. Same as in our world with alcohol. It's easily produced (even high proof), but the state has monopoly on issuing licenses to manufacture it. If you are doing in on your own, hush hush, then you're a criminal. The worst kind of criminal - that stole from the state by not paying taxes. So realistically it would be: - in civilized land: state approved tokens, heavily taxed. And maybe a group of IRS-type inquisition force tasked with detecting illegal tokens. -on a frontier: wizards with spheres of influence, acting as small oil magnates (token is basically burnable fuel, can't be reused), with squabbles and even wars for influence and and to capture enemy's hoard of token.
11:40 A better point of comparison is Slavery in Rome. Rome got so glutted on slaves it had to provide massively subsidised entertainment and food. Roughly 30% of its working citizens were out of a job because they couldn't compete with slavery. On one hand, you're then moving the servants into technology like rolls, on the other hand unseen servants are taking job, and then taking the technological jobs. Given the low level of the spell and the variety of lists it's on I foresee people being forced into taking caster classes or becoming psuedo technicians/expert labourers doing things skeletons and unseen servants cannot. Also in your maths for wizards creating servants, you haven't considered wizards getting distracted, taking breaks, or that they could work longer than 8 hours.
This sounds fascinating! Thank you for motivating me to get on with the (nearly) mindless task of calling my mother's bank so I can get back to watch the rest. ❤
Imagine focusing for eight hours straight, to continually perform all the rituals required. A caster would be exhausted at the end of the day, much more than if they just had done the work themselves. And on top of that, issuing orders continually.
There are a lot of things not discussed about the costs of the spell itself Namely that a wizard has to consistently shoot out ritual spells (and probably use spell slots to take a break), having to command the unseen servant well enough, then make sure that by the time the servant disappears, it doesn't completely ruin what they were working on, and making sure the task can be "picked up" by a new unseen servant where the previous left off All these things would surely make hiring wizards expensive and we'll likely see a market equilibrium between wizards and regular labor force
1 housekeeper can clean a residence with 25 people, and the benifet to the maid is she's not a brainless fish that you have to be close to when she works, and she can lift more than 30 pounds.
I am pretty sure that in the days before such inventions as stainless steel, prepackaged cleaning products, central heating, etc. one housekeeper would have been swamped cleaning for 25, unless her employers did a lot of cleaning themselves.
Have you looked into historical house servant numbers or are you talking about a modern housekeeper? Also cleaning the residence is just one aspect of the duties that need to be carried out in the household, cooking, sewing, weaving, washing and repairing clothes, preserving foods and all sorts of other tasks we wouldn't even think of.
I have a background underlying conflict in my campaign between "old guild" that makes things in traditional ways and "new guild" that employs magic. In some cases, the magic produced items are cheaper, produced in mass, and with less artisanal flair. But traditional guilds competing with mass production would have to cut corners to produce more things quicker. And with a sufficiently finely tuned assembly line can produce things to a high degree of precision and consistency. In conflicts between the two, the old guilds often have superior numbers, with a lot of them heavily muscled where the new guilds employ magic and mills and magically powered mills, fewer workers, and rather bookish sorts. Mold earth can be used to mass manufacture pots and dishes of a consistent quality and shape. Shape water can be used for irrigation or to shift significant volumes of water into a mill pond to power a mill. A chain of ponds with about 4' altitude differences could each have an apprentice pumping water up hill, a 5' cube at a time. Beast speech as a ritual can be tedious to set up, but allow for sophisticated detective work when needed. And players can have different perspectives on different parts of the general conflict. One of the other labor effects of these spells is that if some ruler has x number of peasant/hours service they can consistently compel, they and their lands will be wealthier if that labor is magic initiate or level 1 apprentice instead of grunt muscle labor. Some rulers would see great wealth in encouraging the teaching of magic. And some traditionalists would prefer to restrict the teaching of magic. Wizards would be on both sides of that, as some wizards think it is irresponsible to teach just the magic, instead of the traditional ethos, responsibilities and chains of obedience to the Arch Mage. The traditional apprentice system wouldn't yield masses of apprentices, but they would be inculcated with the values and loyalties of their teachers to a high degree. And when the actions of rogue mages can cause prejudice against all mages.
60 feet range (from the caster). 120 feet diameter. 14,400 square feet of movement area they can manufacturer in. The biggest caveat is what the DM defines as simple enough for them to do / make.
I only allow Unseen Servant to do unskilled work. I know it lists mending, but IMHO back in the 16th century mending was skilled labor. As was the process of taking cotton from its basic form and spinning it into thread. I think this is one of those places where D&D is shaded by how we look at things in modern times, not how they actually were.
'Actually were' is a problematic statement, when referring to D&D. Deities and Magic ensure their worlds are unlikely to match ours. An example: Governments in D&D settings are not Feudal, even those claiming a king, because the presence of magic allows for better communications. The system of Barons and Dukes came about so locals could handle things for a far-distant, out of contact, King. If that King has a way to rule on the day-to-day events within a barony, by hiring a single person who can send instant messages to said baron and verify from a distance the order was obeyed to the letter, then the Feudal system falls apart. The Barron doesn't have the independence they would have on Feudal Earth.
There is a wide range of "how good is the mend"? I would argue that spinning would be an almost ideal task for unseen servants, IF you could get consistent quality. And that would be the really tough bit, as you would need a very consistent input. I do NOT think that an assembly line would work well, because of scheduling issues. Namely, every ten minutes, part of the line shuts down. And historically, spinning was the most manpower or womanpower intensive part of the craft. You would displace a LOT of people, but greatly increase the quantity of cloth produced, and some other part of the craft would become the bottleneck. When a player wants to introduce something new, some gadget, some combination of magics, I include an experimentation process, and I encourage them to come up with some ideas for failures and issues they had in development that they fixed and addressed. Almost NOTHING works as intended the first time it is thought of.
I 100% agree that spinning fiber into thread is skilled labor beyond the ability of an Unseen Servant, unless you want it lumpy and inconsistent. On the other hand, there are repetitive tasks that would be much easier for it, like carding (straightening the fibers and removing debris), washing, weaving, and felting. You could even work this into the worldbuilding. An Unseen Servant can't weave a complicated pattern, like a plaid tartan, so wearing plaid shows you're wealthy enough to buy fabric made by actual people.
@@lordpessimism IF the input fiber is of consistent quality that doesn't require skilled adjustment, an Unseen Servant could probably handle coarse thread. And they could probably braid very well, building those individual threads into rope. There would probably be a huge difference in cost between the mass produced low quality stuff for the workers, who might not care as long as it was warm, and clothes built for comfort and fashion. So a lot of the mass produced stuff has an effect on the economy, but not necessary an instant ticket to wealth, since any job that can be done easily by magic will pay less because of that ease.
Fantasia is a good example of how an Unseen Servant thinks and works. A single Servant told to mop would keep mopping, one with a bucket would keep hauling water.
A magic item I made was an unseen servant casting item. It allowed a non spell casters to cast the spell. It was pathfinder, so the rules were a bit different. You could only summon a certain number at a time. The upfront cost is pretty high, but once you had the device you could set a skilled laborer to summoning and directing the servants.
Presumably, we could see Invisible Servants harvesting individual ears of corn, or handfuls of wheat. Granted, even if the Invisible Servants can handle a needle and thread, some fabrics are too heavy, and thus may require human (or ingame analogues) labor.
Old Unseen Servants are about as strong as a midget. They are not that clever. I could order one to mop floors or use a bucket to fetch water but not tailor. They would not be able to do crafts unless you spend double the time supervising one.
I like this. I can see a campaign about a rebellious workforce displaced by unseen servants. Maybe some previously skilled workers whose work is no longer viable are forced to work in the fields or mines to earn a living.
Nice. I think it was the Wheel of Time where sorcerers were so uncommon that you could only learn sorcery by going to one central location where all the other sorcerers were (been a while since i saw the show, never read the books). In any case such small numbers means that they would all need to congregate to learn, giving way to the wizard academy theme people tend to do, and it also makes sense from a governance standpoint since they are easier to keep track of if all in one place.
I can see this working to a point. That point being the "Yes, I got into higher education just to get a job in manufacturing. The key to cosmic secrets are in my hands, and my day is spent maintaining a section of an assembly line!" We are talking about people that (last I checked) needed a proper education, a minimum Intelligence/IQ and were willing to plug away at the same ritual and commands for hours on end. I have yet to make the jump to 5th ed, but in the Edition that I run? We are talking a minimum Intelligence of 11 to cast fist level spells. That 11 Int? That if I am reading things right is you needing an IQ of 110+. Doable, but quite a bit more limiting than everyone with an education can learn magic sort of thing.
Int doesn't translate to IQ in a 1:1 ratio. It's be better to use the bell curve of IQ with the bell curve of 3d6. 11 is just slightly above average. 110 is probably the top of int 11.
This is a beautiful lead in to a background conflict in the campaign. You have traditional wizards who only take one or a few apprentices at a time, and teach them the liberal arts part of being a wizard, the values, the history, the hierarchal loyalty to the Archmage, adhering to practicing what is the legally acceptable uses of magic in the area. And you have those who teach the basics as fast as possible to as many as possible. The apprentice system teaches the fundamentals and the theory that eventually allow for a much broader grasp of magic, and a higher level cap, but there is something to be said for sheer numbers.
I had a character that did this back in 3.5. Ended up establishing a nation of magical labor for mass production, endless and free water, endless tasteless gruel, cheap mass-produced housing to provide (not the best or really comfortable, but safe) barracks, the ability to remove and disease or sickness in seconds, and low quality clothing. All your basic needs were covered. Dangerous and deadly labor was covered by guilds controlling golems, spell servants, familiars, and undead laborers. Goods were valued for their quality and originality. Wealth was based on what originality and craftsmanship you could bring. Those that turned to criminal interests had to deal with the guild of thieves that was sponsored by my character and his government who were regulated in how much could be stolen from any region yearly, which means the bigger the guild the smaller everyone's cut, and when some thief not belonging to the guild steals, it cuts into the guild's margins. It only took a couple tries before the guild pf thieves learned not playing by the government's regulated numbers they had the wrath of my character's 30k strong private army of undead knocking on their doors. Sounds dystopian to some, utopian to others, but it was always fun to have the party able to fall back on the self-carved empire when needed.
There's a great OSR book by Skerples all about this idea - Magical Industrial Revolution. It gives eight scenarios where magic leads to economic growth, and then catastrophic hijinks. It also details a whole city and has tons of great ideas for a magicpunk campaign setting.
I always enjoy how deep you go down the rabbit hole on the topics of your videos.. They certainly keep my mind busy as I finish my final semester of college. I can't wait to find a group to play D&D with after I graduate.
So interesting! Thanks for all of your amazing ideas. Here are some other Cantrips or 1st level spells from D&D 5e to consider Animal Friendship, Beast Bond, Ceremony, Comprehend Languages, Create or Destroy Water, Encode Thoughts, Find Familiar, Floating Disk, Goodberry, Longstrider, Mending, Message, Minor Illusion, Mold Earth, Purify Food and Drink, Shape Water, and Speak with Animals.
Considering in some systems, a Level 1 Wizard is considered an "Apprentice", the role of housekeep cleaning manager does sound like a job that would be placed upon Apprentices. I can imagine some patrons of the local Wizard's guilds would likely paying something like a monthly fee to ensure there's always a wizard on staff ready for them if needed, and as such when greater spellcasting isn't needed, these patrons will instead assign the apprentices to clean their houses to give them practical experience with using magic to fulfil a job.
I can imagine using this to create basic computers. If you create a rig, an abacus would do, and have perhaps two (or more) flags , you can get an unseen servant to react to something and either raise one flag or another, and/or change the value on the abacus in a particular way. The instructions would be very simple, but different for different servants. In that way an unseen servant can emulate a logic gate, only not limited to binary operations. You then need only arrange the servants in a particular order and when instructing them tell them which flags and abacus numbers to react to. If flags are placed in holders, the state represented by the flag can be made independent of the servant. So when one instance disappears another can replace it without harming the on going calculations. The instructions for a particular gate servant can be written next to the position, so that when the supervising mage tells the gate servant what to do, they don't have to keep it in there heads. You can make these very small if you wish too, as they need only be visible to the servants, perhaps with the end result abacus being bigger so other creatures can easily read it. You may well have scribe servants at the end of the process to write down results. If you create a big enough army of servants you can produce a relatively large computing machine, but even small arrangements could be useful.
I'm reminded of Eragon, where at one point the rebels make lace (extremely repetitive but theoretically simple work) with magic to fund the army. One more bit: if any NPCs without class levels are humans who are able to start with feats due to human variant rules, one with Ritual Caster (Wizard) with this plus Tenser's Floating Disk can go into business with a Magic Initiate (Wizard) with Prestidigitation and Mending (probably Find Familiar or Comprehend Languages for the 1st level spell, neither would be as valuable as rituals) and the two of you are making bank.
I could see something happening where a job like 'Unseen Servant Technician' becomes a thing, like there's no reason that a the person casting unseen servant has to commit to the bit of becoming a full on wizard. It could be that this kicks off the birth of what is effectively a 'Magic Trade School', with UST and other personnel responsible for overseeing the production side of things, much as we have welders, machinists, and mechanics today. There might even be 'Magic Trade Unions'. It could make for an interesting dynamic between 'White Collar' and 'Blue Collar' spellcasters, maybe even be the basis for a few quests/storylines. Maybe the party's fancy professional wizard tries to infiltrate the local Golem Fitters Union Hall to get information on some underground illegal golem fight club, and they struggle to fit in because while they're a 'Wizard', they aren't a Golem Fitter, and it's a constant balancing act to see whether or not they can pass themselves off for long enough. It could also go the other way, maybe the party's spellcaster went to Magic Trade School and has to go undercover in a Mages College. Bear in mind these are just ideas off the top of my head, I didn't put a whole lot of thought into them, but i figured I'd put them here in the event someone might be inspired to try something with them.
My favorite Eberron character was a Warforged Necromancer. He owned IBM (Infernal Business Machines) and used undead he purchased the bodies from commoners, totally legal. He liked that he used meat's shell like his people had been used. Also Unseen Servant is GREAT for distractions. It can start a fire.
Ever thought of contacting Ed Greenwood for the purpose of making a video together? I get the feeling it would be something truly wonderful to watch :)
I once used 5 ritually cast unseen servants to stand in front of a moving cart, causing the driver to stop because he thought he ran someone over, so we could rob it without giving chase.
This was an issue my group dealt with like 5 years ago. My players started trying to push the boundaries of the spell in Pathfinder, and I quickly had to issue some limitations to the spell because of the impact it would have on the world. I had to explain almost exactly all of this to my players and how big of a deal the spell would be if you could maintain more than one at a time, and that the technological state of the world wouldn't make a lot of sense with something like this available, especially give how pathfinder item crating works.
I wonder if this may have negative consequences too - for example a low demand to end dull and inefficient jobs may mean that there is far less of a push to make them more efficient with industrialisation; Perhaps this wide availability of free unskilled labour leads to stagnation of technology because unpaid labourers already make simple tasks far more efficient because they can be aggressively paraelisaed
As ever, very interesting examination of the topic. The prospect of a female-dominated wizard guild could be very alarming to some more patriarchal societies, and could happen so quickly that many existing authorities would be caught napping. Another proto-industrial process this spell could help with would be distilling / brewing, or even aspects of alchemy. It doesn't take much strength to stoke or put out a fire, or take a bottle with a few ounces of fluid from one location to another.
Super interesting! One thing about the consequences of widespread unseen servant use is that the spell seems to get invented/discovered fairly late. It seems like a spell that would exist as long as real servitude. I wonder what it would mean for a fictional timeline in which the spell comes about much earlier, e.g. the end of the stone age.
While I do like the idea of an Unseen Servant factory (especially with the whole "it's actually haunted" cover you suggest), I don't think Unseen Servant quite tracks with the real world industrial revolution as neatly as you describe. While the Unseen Servant is "mindless", from the spell's description its abilities are quite different from the mindless robots we're familiar with in reality. It can handle tasks that are, technically speaking, quite complex (in machine instruction terms) with relative ease -- the cleaning, mending, and folding laundry described in the spell -- but nothing in the spell description suggests that looping instructions (which are the bread and butter of machines IRL) would work properly. With an assembly line, it seems to me that one iteration of the assigned step would complete the Servant's assigned task, leaving it idle until you tell it to do the same thing again on the new item that's been passed to it, requiring a lot of babysitting from the overseeing mage. And on the other hand, there are things an Unseen Servant could do without even needing more advanced industrial technology to leverage. While finer fabrics would still require the human touch, spinning coarse thread and weaving simple textiles would likely be within an Unseen Servant's parameters even with the same ordinary looms and spinning wheels used in preindustrial cottage work. If this were widespread, it might actually forestall the invention of such machines, since the impetus for them would be reduced only to making it feasible for Unseen Servants to make higher-quality textiles than they otherwise could.
Well, this would explain the motivation for so many people leaving there home to go into a remarkably dangerous world to adventure. They have no hope back home. No way to make a better life. They're choices are a squalid yet relatively safe environment, or a very dangerous lifestyle with the chance of making some gold.
An additional concept: Repeated and higher level casting of Unseen Servants could result in them becoming Living Spells and starting to demand workers rights, or even becoming unseen servants that can cast unseen servant.
If a wizard was continuously ritual casting the spell they could sustain at most 6 unseen servants at a time because of their hour duration. I would assume significantly detailed instructions for each servant would further delay the wizard in conjuring the next servant. To learn magic in the first place, the average wizard would likely have either had the rare privilege of attending schooling, or lives in a setting with public education. Unless there is some barrier to the progression of wizards' abilities, I feel a novice wizard would be more useful if they spent time improving their magic rather than replicating six "mindless" and very weak workers. Your general concept still stands true, though. A single wizard could definitely run a factory but unless your factory can run on just six mindless workers staying within 60 feet of their manager it would require a higher level wizard. A higher level wizard would also have better options for automation. They could still supplement those options with unseen servants but I feel those hours of repetitive casting would be better spent studying even higher level magic or training apprentice wizards. It might take a world where low level magic is commonplace but even intermediate level magic is rare for unseen servant to see frequent use.
would love to see you delve into the potential ramification of the Magic Jar spell, from goodly wizards remaining around as disembodied teachers that borrow a person hired as the meat suit. to evil ones stealing the body of an ork chief and expanding his new tribe with superior intelligence and magical prowess.
I have a setting that is a low-level magic setting where magic is still incredibly ubiquitous. When/if my spellcasting players are high enough level, they're going to find it harder and harder to find/make high level spells for lore reasons. I am absolutely stealing this idea for guilds in my world. The best I came up with for world building was wizards making excessively complex equations to create crazier lower level spells, spellcasting groups artificially upcasting beyond 9th level with enough people or repurposing water mills and wind mills for charging runes and glyphs.
I have just one note, and that is that the 6 second rule only applies to turns in combat, out of combat the only limitations on time are any specifically stated in the spell.
I'd argue that in Fantasia, Mickey was casting Animate Objects. Yes, it lasted more than a minute, and yes he didn't need concentration as he fell asleep. He was however casting it by means of a magic item with unspecified properties.
I think am important element to think about is time. I think those who argue the market corrects itself aren't wrong as such but time is an important factor. Like you mentioned shifts in spinning led to women forced into different jobs but that was generations in the making. There was also the luddites in the 1800s and ex industrial workers in the UK. if your DnD world doesn't its own Australia to send rioters ex workers to or a welfare system to limit the impact of generational unemployment, you might find it a rather the world is rather a revolutionary one
Back in 3rd edition, the Unseen Servant was potentially much more powerful, as you could have a conjuration wizard with Augmented summons, with +4 strength to all their summons, and you could have longer durations, especially with higher level versions of it. The difference was that it was only really powerful with higher level casters.
I think 3e Unseen Servant was a "creation", not a "summoning" spell and therefor not affected by the Augmented Summoning feat, I am pretty sure WotC had a 3rd level version of the spell printed somewhere, named Servant Horder, which created 1 servant/level and had a durition of 1 hour/level.
@@JCAB_Bodilsen A reasonable interpretation, I suppose. It is why I as a GM like to communicate with players about the intentions of their builds so they are not surprised by a GM ruling that nerfs their plans in a way that didn't make sense to them.
The end of your video makes me think of the movie hidden figures. In case you haven't seen it that movie is about three black women and their effect they had on the NASA program and sending people into space. There were a lot of women who were hired as computers by the space program to compute math that needed to be done. There were multiple teams of women doing this job. One of the three main characters is what I would only describe as a really good manager. she saw her employer bringing in automated computers and realized how that would affect the women under her leadership. So in response she basically taught her team how to take care of this equipment so that their leadership so that they would still be relevant in their field. I can definitely see some women who sees early how unseen servant is shaping up to affect her and the women around her taking the initiative to make sure that the women in her community are prepared to be on the forefront of this wave of change instead of being pushed aside by it.
According to my community college British literature course, medieval monks would copy books by having one person at the front of a room reading the book out loud, and everyone else in the room would write what they heard. May not have been universal, though.
The artificer, mage, and necromancer just staying in the starting town building an full industrial army of zombies. The enemy appears with swords while the player team mows them down with bolt action zombies
I had an interesting thought: a small cabal of spellcasters using "ethically sourced" necromancy and unseen servants. Manufacturing and mining guilds could/would make a fortune
something like this was put into place by an ancient magi-emperor, before his empire crumbled due to his hubris in thinking he could kill death in the ways he's already attempted to subdue the natural world to his whims
Perfect video! This is how I've viewed magical labour and stuff for a long time, makes a lot more interesting things you can do with it! Also where did you get that electric oil lamp on your shelf from? it looks great!
pay to train a level 1 wizard in exchange for service as a butler for a couple years. between a butler, a chef and a maid wizard with prestidigitation and unseen servant, you could keep an entire mansion running. potentially you could have a gardener too with the servants picking produce, sewing seeds, and watering.
I love this concept! As always, I have plenty to think about after your videos. I’m just trying to workout how one of my nations (in a homebrewed campaign) wouldn’t have this impact. (This is due to the fact that, although they are very much an advanced civilisation, they traditionally will make things by hand. (Cultural belief that says making things enables an expression of the soul that otherwise won’t occur.) Nevermind, I talked myself out of it, only the mass produced stuff (like books or other miscellaneous things that lack a personal context) would be mass produced in this way with other things still being made by hand.
In my own setting a single wizard made a small fortune using unseen servants to copy dozens of rare manuscripts and selling them to noble houses. He was then copied by others who made books for other nobles, making more and more, cheaper and cheaper books until after a century the nation was at nearly 80% literacy. This lead to a huge boom in mages apprenticeships for people who wanted to join the new 'spell binder' cottage industry. mages collages soon came into being training folks up to be about level 3 for the low cost of 500gp, training petty wizards who would then work as book-makers, potion crafters, or court mages for anyone more powerful than a mayor. every common peasant laborer or farmer had enough gold to have a couple books around the house or a healing potion for emergencies. life threatening labor injuries plummeted, quality of life went up, and the nation became an enormous exporter of fine goods, books, and magical items. long story short I went down this thought exercise myself ages ago, and it (combined with player actions) turned one of my setting's nations into the magical holy roman empire.
Awesome, i like this concept! I've had a similar idea in my head for years: A religious society in a land alien to necromancy, discovers a form of raising the dead. Based on rituals imported from far away lands. It's seen as a miracle, as if they have returned to serve their religion after death. To become a "servant" is a great honor. They are carefully mummified to preserve their flesh, and put to work as laborers or soldiers. They are mindless, but can fulfill simple orders. This society grows rapidly as their productivity increases dramatically, and starts to subjugate neighboring lands under their rule. They must spread the gospel. Their forces are numerous and unrelenting. Conquered lands are assimilated into the empire, enforcing their religion and practice of using their dead as servants. To many other cultures this is strange, if not blasphemous. Warring countries resist viciously, not wanting to lose their people to these defilers of the dead. But most bend the knee in the end. After all, life in the empire isn't so bad. Just get used to having your diseased being picked up by your local clergymen. And when you walk along the countryside, don't look to hard at the servants working the fields, as you may disturb yourself. You might recognize your kin among them. Fun times :)
I was a fabulous wizard and used Uneeen Servant all the time. Each time I summoned it, the first task was to put a pair of white gloves and a bow tie on. Thus was born Invisible Jeeves!
One thing i think is worthy of consideration would be advancements in the field of magic itself. A great deal of magical items that exist either cast a spell for the user on cool down or have spell like effects on their own. If one were two say... Craft a great number of "wands of unseen servant" That would take a good chunk of the mental strain required ritual cast of that much out of the equation and with magical items often functioning as devices of some kind It might be possible to have some mechanism activate the effect on its own. That's not to mention living spells which we know can be created intentionally even if we don't have an official way to do so for player characters. I recall reading somewhere in some module or other about a mad mage who created living unseen servants. Living spells do not have a duration or a limit of distance. If one knew how to create a living unseen servants they could theoretically create an unlimited number of them
Something I forgot to mention Living unseen servant is capable of attacking a targets. Given a ranged weapon that can be loaded and fired with under 30 lb of force You now have a fully autonomous weapon That could be stationed at high points and simply shoot at any foe that comes within range. So given its intelligence of one as it is not a thinking creature friendly fire might be an issue Less of an issue if they were to be actively overseen by some kind of spellcaster that can control them. If they were to say load and fire muskets a single spellcaster with the knowledge to create a living unseen servant could project the same force as an entire company or even army of men. I've run the calculations and employing this method could create a truly dreadful volume of fire.
I like this kind of “urban fantasy” where there’s both magic and tech. But it’s also just boring if the steam train is just heated using some kind of magic. But it is still great to imagine how someone could use spells in everyday life.
There is a fascinating paradox in our societies capability to produce goods and our leisure time. In much of the modern world 8+ hour working days are the norm leaving little time for anything else but some hunter gatherer tribes only seem to dedicate about four hours of their day to Work. We invent things to make our lives easier but also end up creating auxiliary work to compensate for the work we take away despite the point being to make life easier by removing or reducing the work of the task. Often instead of being able to do the days task more quickly we end up doing more work in the day despite much of it being redundant.
I think that's about tribes living in paradise environments with abundant resources, best case scenario. I definitely wouldn't want to live in the past, where vast majority of population were farmers of some sort who had to work really really hard without much rest part of the year, and then have anxiety about possible famine. We didn't really make much more work for ourselves, but the paradox is that with every improvement in technology, theoretically everyone needs to work less. There is less labour per person needed to satisfy everyone's needs (yes, even the new needs), yet we are not working less for it. When you start looking where all the labour goes, it becomes obvious that it's the rich and powerful becoming richer and powerfuler. If someone among the richest people decides he wants to build a great pyramid alike the ones pharaohs had, it would cost him just spare change.
@arcturuslight_ well, there is that, but you also need to remember that the "rich and powerful" also includes the impoverished. For example, the American poverty line is currently set at 25,000 dollars per year. That's more money than most kings would ever see in their lives. Average citizens have access to purified drinking water, freshly cooked meals, high-speed transportation, and more information than was contained in the library of Alexandria. By the way, all of that can be accessed for under $20 per day in the United States, so literally everyone has that. Sure, it isn't all sunshine and rainbows living in modern society, but it's not all doom and gloom either.
I am not exactly sure if you covered these topics but I would love to hear your take with these spells starting with the lowest spells: Either summon spells of the conjure spells Animal Messenger/Animal Friendship Continual Flame Stone Shape Major Image Wall of Stone Creation yes it only last a limited amount of time but what how many people can you feed with a 5' cube of vegetable matter. Like make flour and use that to make some type of unleavened bread or other pastries? How many hearths, fireplaces and stoves can you supply with fuel from a 5’ cube of wood? Would that get rid of lumberjack jobs? But the biggest two spells with far reaching implications in my mind would Fabricate and Plant Growth. Fabricate is pretty obvious but I think Plant Growth has some sneaky use cases. Sure the 8 hour casting time can double the yield of food crops but the "combat" use just makes EVERY plant overgrown that includes shrubs, vines, and trees but there is no mention of the effect ending. There is no time limit on the overgrown area so to me it seems that it would last until it is cleared or dead. What if you target an area with plants that don't produce food crops but plants where it is the plant itself. Like a field of Flax? Flax is use for many different things like; Rope, sackcloth, nets and more important linen. Target an area where cannabis is growing? What about a grove of willows? I don't think that the tree trunk itself would grow but the branches and leaves would, that means that you could use the willow bark from the overgrown limbs for an aspirin like effect. How does the 4 to 1 movement speed reduction relate to the amount of plants in the area? Would that mean a field of flax produce 4 times the amount of fiber for use in everything I mentioned?
the spell is fairly consistent in it's description in that it only creates a single unseen servant for one hour per casting. that means that if the caster started ritually casting the spell at noon, by 1:10pm the first servant would disappear and the caster would have just started on the 7th consecutive casting of the spell. meaning realistically you'd only get at maximum 5-6 servants at once with a constantly rotating shift change. which is considerably more limited than what it seems like you're talking about. and the caster would absolutely still need to periodically take breaks.
running a steam engine away from the boiler would be very cool, the 2 man crew is sort of critical to the running of the very complex engines, and for the moral of the workers firing the firebox and running the boiler and running gear, but if the worker doesn't have to be so punished by the fire and shovel, they might be okay to run with only the ghostly companionship of their lever pulling and gauge reading spells
This is why I multi-class wizard, artificer if the DM allows it and if there's a storage medium for spells that can be remotely activated imagine a vehicle like a horse-drawn carriage being fully crewed by unseen servants at your disposal, now I have a whole tank crew all of a sudden !
I'm definitely stealing the idea with my next mage. During downtime I'd contract with a local business to provide a product in bulk, hire a skilled worker to have him direct my unseen servants and make stuff to sell. Easy money and relative net profit.
Guidance may be an interesting response to all these efficiency spells. By slowing somethings done by an action a minute you can get better quality results. And since it is a cantrip it is easier to learn and is repeatable. It is very limited, focused on a single task, but that could boost craftmanship, investigations, performances, and more in a way that would end up noticeable in a competitive society. Would it become banned or expected in exams? Is it cheating in athletic competitions or something expected from fans on their favourite players? If your lawyer uses it when presenting your case is it manipulating the judge? Does magically concentrating on a spell interfere with intellectually concentrating on something else? Given its broad useability and ease of learning and use these sorts of things would come up a lot in a D&D setting.
A +d4 to a roll is comparable to the difference between someone who is merely proficient and someone who has a feat that boosts that skill. That is the difference between a journeyman and a master in skill, potentially. Or at least between a journeyman and a senior journeyman. Taking a bit more time to get a dramatic improvement in quality could be an answer to the bulk low quality goods produced by mindless magic. So even in the areas where magic is employed in industry, there is a potential for interesting conflicts between different areas of the market.
It must be considered that 10 minutes for a spell that lasts an hour is still a long time, and learning magic also takes a lot of time, so a wizard would not want to spend the entire day on something like that, in which case the logical thing would be to think that these kinds of jobs would be done by low-level wizards without enough money to pay for their studies, so it is most likely that experienced wizards will start taking apprentices to force them to do these kinds of jobs in exchange for teaching them magic, spells like this and prestidigitation would be the first ones that would be taught to each apprentice, since they are easy to use and the repetitiveness of the act can be a good way to learn magic, a city built around a magic academy would be full of cheap products with apprentices acting as the main source of labor in that place, in that sense the apprentices would be the equivalent of interns in the magical world.
Precisely
This is such a great thought. Apprenticeships are basically the same as being interns anyway
Grad student wizard casting unseen servant for 40 hours a week for minimum wage after studying for 5 years just to be able to do that 😂
Exactly like real life lol
@@bulldozer8950THIS
A ministry of magic...
So, Mordenkainen’s Magnificent Mansion could be Mordenkainen’s Magnificent Manufactory. MMM gives you any floorplan and furnishings you want with 100 magical servants for 24 hours.
Imagine multiple castings of it (or a similar spell), keeping the entrance to the extra dimensional space open: almost infinite space can then be kept within 60 feet of the caster!
A Dimensional Unseen Servant spell would also be in other to allow something like this with pocket dimensions, whose entrance are within reach, even if they are currently closed…
@@MauroDraco I'd do a demiplane since it's permanent and can be infinitely expanded, and have a small army of simulacrums ritually casting unseen servant unto eternity. The best part is that as long as you never let anyone see the demiplane, it's 100% inaccessible even to the most powerful wizards.
In case of any contention on whether simulacrums can ritual cast, simulacrum says: "the illusion uses all the statistics of the creature it duplicates, except that it is a construct."
It could become Mordakainens Means of Production if opened up in or near a mine and staffed partly by elementals you also summon.
Just imagine that Wizard.... Like holy shit I wish I could get into a game that allowed me to be this guy
@@thalmorjusticiar1the thing is tho you can only have 1 simulacrum so I would be a necromancer and use the spell “create Magen”
@@tnt_rebel2796 that rule about simulacrums isn't part of the game, it's from adventurer's league. in the actual rules there's nothing stopping you from having as many simulacrums as you can afford.
This is a very interesting concept. It seems like no matter what world we live in, we all want an economy that runs on free labor.
Labor and thus the economy it is based on, is a necessity from nature; as living beings need to eat, to prepare shelter, dress themselves and so on. More efficient or easier labor either frees the group from its burdens or gives power to the group controlling and spreading it. That said, a group either will desire and proceed to implement the changes as much as possible to lessen life’s risks or will have its consequences forced on them by another group that got powerful enough to do it, because of said changes. As long as the society doesn’t collapse, one way or another, sooner or later, the technological advancements will happen if the conditions are right. So it is generally unstoppable, albeit societies can more or less shape, direct and delay or accelerate the transformations of these production systems.
Yes because it's the cheapest form of labor
@@MauroDraco
Labor is certainly a necessary part of nature, but an economy definitely isn't (unless you really stretch the definition of "economy" or "nature").
@@gimligimlass5509 no
Why would you choose paid workforce over free workforce? This is all viewed through a capitalism lense, where an individual's only goal is to make money.
Then I have an idea for a dungeon for you:
Factories that genuinely don't need to worry about worker safety would be ridiculously dangerous compared to our old systems. Now imagine your party has to navigate through one where perhaps the wizard died long ago and they have to puzzle their way through machinery that would kill them if handled incorrectly, or the wizard died recently and everything is still running but out of control, or maybe there's still a wizard working the factory and there could be any number of reasons your party has to get in there, but depending on their actions could mean the wizard doesn't know they are there or could even turn into an adversary due to the intrusion if said intrusion is destructive, improvising the machines to be directly dangerous
I mean, if killing the party procures any kind of benefits, just consoder the wizard an enemy
thats fucking awesome
A single wizard or sorcerer can build a city. I know as my Sorcadin (6 Open Sea Paladin/10 Aberrant Mind Sorcerer) used Wall of Stone and Mold Earth to create a functional port town over 3 weeks time. All buildings and docks structurally sound and all made of stone. Three pier dock, two warehouses, a stretch of 10x10 vendor stalls, his own mansion, a smithy house, a tailor shop building, a ship crafters building, several stone houses, a bank, patrolable town walls and a lighthouse tower.
Everyone wants a nice magic mansion. I usually make permanent magic rare. But slapping up a guard tower overnight that will melt in a month or weeks is still nice.
Lyre of building made anyone that could play the instrument for a long enough time capable of this too
his own mansion is crazy
I used Mord's Magnificent Mansion in a fort; temporary, yet great, not unlike Unseen Servant 😉
Not just affordable homes, homes for the cost of a shilling (¥20)
Remember, it doesn't even have to be a true caster. There is a feat to be able to cast ritual spells, which means it is something anyone can learn.
That's why you don't give all classes magic.
@@SusCalvinwizard: *gets free magical labor*
Barbarian: I'm homeless
@@grimtygranule5125 Around level 3-5, all of you are pretty wealthy. Some classes like paladins and clerics could have rules for donating profits to the aith or putting them into projects for their deity but could walk around in expensive kit.
@@SusCalvin i mean, the entire thing about a wizard is that this is a normal person who worked for and learned to use magic, so unless you ban wizard as a class in theory all classes should have access to a wizard's spell list if they're willing to put in the money and resources to learn the spell
@@d3str0i3r It depends on how you look on multiclassing and classless RPGs. I like the simplicity without multiclassing. Everyone could do their time and become a civil engineer. NPCs do anything you need, they are not bound by class rules.
Call of Cthulhu is a game where it's easy to use magic. Any human can write down or teach another human a spell. All humans have magic points, some have more and some have less. There is no skill to use a spell, you say you do the spell and pay the cost in SAN, mp and possibly pemanent POW sacrifice. You might have a scholar or sorcerer profession in BRP games but more often there's no special magic class.
It essentially depends on whether a level 1 wizard is worth more or less than 6 unskilled manual workers.
Acting as a translator with comprehend languages, or even simply using the mending cantrip to fix valuable items and objects are arguably more valuable and more profitable jobs for a wizard.
6 peasants is probably much cheaper, considering that they probably dont have a choice anyways as serfs
As a Warforged Fighter/Wizard... I got robots to do what my magic cannot.
Even in D&D: FACTORY MUST GROW
It must always grow, no matter what game your playing
As someone who works maintenance, no, an unseen servant couldn't do much. It's 2 strength means only 30 pounds, and any cleaner needs to be able to lift 50lb minimum. That 60ft is actually a pretty big limitation. They would probably be Good at sewing, and housekeeping style cleaning
A combinat i n of unseen servant, skeletons, and a handful of golems would be pretty crazy.
All those high windows, interior chandeliers and ceiling beams would be spotless; not a grain of dust to be found!
Your thinking in reality and how things are. If this was the norm for the world sending out 30lb boxes is what they do and nothing says you can't have them in a line to move them to bypass 60ft
@@DorianBroggy A single box of paper, a single bucket of water, or a single bag of dry goods exceeds 30 lbs.
@@armorclasshero2103And? The person you replied to said they'd just make smaller boxes, buckets, bags, etc. If you want to counter that, you have to show how lighter things aren't viable, not tell us how we do things now. That was his entire point.
Reminds me of a story of "boob job wizard". I'm hazy on the details but story went like this: during time between adventures party of players went about augmenting their sources of income. One of them a wizard had a spell that could change the body In a minor way. Normally spell would wear off after a while but with investment of ingredients and time it could be made permanent. The player of that character thought "well why not play up to human vanity" and became essentially "boob job wizard"
Oh no, you made me realize parts of worldbuilding I haven't considered, you singlehandedly changed my world's beauty standards right now, thanks lol.
@@VoicedNat You have my sincerest apologies and can you link me to your story I would love to read it :P
@@unpronouncable2442 RUclips doesn't allow links and I don't have everything neatly written down but basically there is a type of magic that specifically alters the body and deals with living organic beings.
I mostly used it for healing, grafting, Frankstein like creature creations, but I simply forgot about cosmetic surgeries. It would 100% exist and that would be quite easy for an experienced mage, the elites would undoubtedly be of an alien beauty, even more different and separated from the rest of the population.
Keep in mind there are also the Ritual Caster and Magic Initiate feats that would allow non spellcaster classes to also cast spells such as Unseen Servant.
So, with the increase in education from more books, you could have a setting where ritual casting is relatively common and instead of having to pay an actual wizard or bard to create unseen servants, you just have a butler, artisan, tailor, etc who knows how to cast the spell.
So the Ritual Caster feat could just be something people can learn that exponentially increases the amount of work they can do. Kind of like the invention of tractors and farm equipment making it so one worker can perform the work of many.
Though there's also the issue of unseen servants being... well... unseen. Even if the rules prevent the servants from attacking and doing damage, they can also steal stuff, lay traps, poison food, open doors, and other things. It could also be hard to tell who's invisible summoned blob of force is who's. Doubly so if an actual spellcaster can make themselves invisible with an army of unseen servants, walk into a factory, and walk out with their servants carrying stuff (or plop it into a bag of holding).
So, I imagine something like the Ritual Caster feat letting non casters cast rituals would be awesome and many people would want to learn and share it, but the potential for misuse would make crime in cities basically hell on earth. Or at least the potential for getting stuff stolen.
In rural farming communities it would be awesome. Farmers who learned to cast rituals could drastically increase their labor, at least in some areas depending on the unseen servants strength score or ability to interact with animals. (I don't know if an unseen servant could really milk a cow if the cow gets spooked by having haunted buckets floating around. ) Rural communities could benefit from the labor saving the unseen servants provide, would want their children to study and learn to cast rituals so they can help out, and committing crimes using unseen servants would be a bit harder since everyone in town knows eachother and the Alarm spell is also a 1st level ritual (though reading it, it's possible unseen servants might not trigger an alarm since they aren't creatures).
Anyway, Ritual Caster feat is a thing that could let more common folk in a D&D setting harness the power of low level spells to improve their lives.
Yes! I almost mentioned ritual caster but that's a whole can of worms itself. In my mind, feats are reserved for leveled characters, but technically with raw, anyone with a custom lineage could get it...
Definitely worth considering, and thanks for typing this instead of me going on a whole tangent lol
If approaching from a 5e framework you need to be level 4 or a special type of human.
Given how much of a power boost it gives, I don't see it being the accepted standard in any world.
Since the name of the feat is RITUAL Caster, as well, you can flavor the "rituals" to be more rural lifestyle in nature. Maybe the village's children practice by making the dolls (maybe styled with little hats/tools, to indicate the work the unseen servant is needed for), candles, etc. required for them.
Farmers probably have somewhat less use for them, because of the need to stay within 60'. They would greatly help with the processing of a harvest. Want potatoes peeled en masse? Easy. Want the harvest washed, or polished, or seeds and husks removed? Done. Imagine a depopulated area after a war resorting to learning magic to get the harvest processed. Historically, the millers of a town were often the wealthiest, because they took a share for all the grain their processed, and because of the expense of their capital equipment. With magic, you could see other concentrations of wealth in the agricultural sector. But there is always room for conflict between the miller and the farmer, or any townsman who processes the food and generates wealth from it and the farmer.
@@Grungeon_Masternot just custom lineage. Variant human too. Any level 1 human with no actual classes could have magic initiate or ritual caster.
I ran the with the animate dead spell. As long as there is someone to cast it often enough, you can have an entire shop pumping out products without issue. Skeletons are able to do more complex tasks, like load balistas for example. Zombies are unable to do that sort of thing. But Zombies could be used as a dumb labor force, beasts of burden type of thing.
Skeletons are also absurdly strong compared to unseen servants. They have the strength (10) of an average human, and only require one casting per day to control. Zombies are even stronger, and both are able to carry out pretty complex vague tasks. The spell gives the example of “guard a particular chamber or corridor” as a potential order, which is pretty comparable in required skill or autonomy as “clean this room” or an assembly line task, or really any other monotonous low skill task
Pathfinder has this thing where you can put bodies together to make bigger undead. Needless to say, a necromancer has a lot of options when it comes to a 'factory floor' situation. Undead can even be made intelligent and still be loyal to the summoner, without compulsion, using the right type of necromancer.
For your necromancer is going to want a vacation one day....
Loyal Undead at least stay put.
You should look into Pathfinder 2e's rituals. These take more then 10min to cast, but can have truely permanent effects. Animate Object requires only level 2, or higher for more complex creations. Simply enchant a heavy stone, wood or metal disc/cylinder to spin on command, ad a few gear and you have a magic powerd engine.
That's amazing
A thought I had is looking at unseen servant not as labor in itself, but as a cheap clean source of mechanical energy.
Just have it turn a crank to wind a spring, storing the energy for later use.
Now you have a spring that could produce hundreds of pounds of force once released.
Seems like the makings of a clockpunk industrial revolution
A donkey can do the same (and did in real life) all for the price of some hay.
And a donkey wont plot to murder you in order to take over your kingdom
Ooooo I love the idea of a bunch of magic springload batteries
Party walkes into the factory full of mechanisms working on Unseen Servants.
*Adeptus Mechanicus theme starts*
Mass produced unseen servant tokens that a wizard has spent 10 minutes ritual casting unseen servant on. Activated on demand by lay people for one man hour of simple labor. Any mildly intelligent person with 11 int could make their living producing them and selling them to a wholesaler in town. For a modest lifestyle, you only need 1gp per day, so 42 servant tokens could be sold for 2.5 copper each for 1.05 gp and sold individually by a wholesaler for half a silver each, which is 4x more efficient than the 2 silver per day a "poor" lifestyle costs and twice as efficient as the 1 silver per day that the ultra-poor endure.
This solves my biggest problem with this, that the mage, an educated specialist, has to spend time ordering the servants around. With a token/scroll, you could have some "seen handlers," unskilled workers, whose job is to just summon the servants and order them, while the mage spends his time mage-ing. Even taking into consideration ritual caster or magic initiate fears, this would be more efficient as feats are also somewhat rare (hence the name).
Wait.... what if tokens of unseen servant are used as the primary currency for the country in question. Two values, charged and used. Could be referred to like "this costs 5 charges and 2 base."
@@qq-wy7zs The state wouldn't like to release control over valuable good that can be easily produced. Same as in our world with alcohol. It's easily produced (even high proof), but the state has monopoly on issuing licenses to manufacture it. If you are doing in on your own, hush hush, then you're a criminal. The worst kind of criminal - that stole from the state by not paying taxes.
So realistically it would be:
- in civilized land: state approved tokens, heavily taxed. And maybe a group of IRS-type inquisition force tasked with detecting illegal tokens.
-on a frontier: wizards with spheres of influence, acting as small oil magnates (token is basically burnable fuel, can't be reused), with squabbles and even wars for influence and and to capture enemy's hoard of token.
11:40 A better point of comparison is Slavery in Rome.
Rome got so glutted on slaves it had to provide massively subsidised entertainment and food. Roughly 30% of its working citizens were out of a job because they couldn't compete with slavery.
On one hand, you're then moving the servants into technology like rolls, on the other hand unseen servants are taking job, and then taking the technological jobs.
Given the low level of the spell and the variety of lists it's on I foresee people being forced into taking caster classes or becoming psuedo technicians/expert labourers doing things skeletons and unseen servants cannot.
Also in your maths for wizards creating servants, you haven't considered wizards getting distracted, taking breaks, or that they could work longer than 8 hours.
Misread "Run" as "Ruin" and thought "ooh, is this a video on the setting of Arcanum: Of Steamworks and Magick Obscura?"
Get to the back of the train with thee, mage!
@@lostbutfreesoul GET TO THE BACK OF MY PERSON *casts 50 hurt spells in 2 seconds using real-time combat*
This sounds fascinating! Thank you for motivating me to get on with the (nearly) mindless task of calling my mother's bank so I can get back to watch the rest. ❤
Imagine focusing for eight hours straight, to continually perform all the rituals required. A caster would be exhausted at the end of the day, much more than if they just had done the work themselves. And on top of that, issuing orders continually.
Solution: robot wizard butler. All the servants are just code executions
@@hellohi8062
Warforged for the win... Just make more without the "soul" stuff.
There are a lot of things not discussed about the costs of the spell itself
Namely that a wizard has to consistently shoot out ritual spells (and probably use spell slots to take a break), having to command the unseen servant well enough, then make sure that by the time the servant disappears, it doesn't completely ruin what they were working on, and making sure the task can be "picked up" by a new unseen servant where the previous left off
All these things would surely make hiring wizards expensive and we'll likely see a market equilibrium between wizards and regular labor force
And that's why I make Robots. The Nation of Machines. Warforged is the name. Home of the Artificers.
@@absolstoryoffiction6615
This is why it makes no sense to me that having artificers in DnD would break the lore.
They are an inevitability.
@@blksmagma
Blacksmiths who can use Magic, in short.
1 housekeeper can clean a residence with 25 people, and the benifet to the maid is she's not a brainless fish that you have to be close to when she works, and she can lift more than 30 pounds.
For sure. This is mostly for large residences, castles, palaces, noble houses etc, for whom housekeepers would be more commonly employed historically
I am pretty sure that in the days before such inventions as stainless steel, prepackaged cleaning products, central heating, etc. one housekeeper would have been swamped cleaning for 25, unless her employers did a lot of cleaning themselves.
Have you looked into historical house servant numbers or are you talking about a modern housekeeper? Also cleaning the residence is just one aspect of the duties that need to be carried out in the household, cooking, sewing, weaving, washing and repairing clothes, preserving foods and all sorts of other tasks we wouldn't even think of.
60 feet may not be a huge distance in relation to mansions or castles, but its also not exactly standing at someone's elbow...
@@Grungeon_Master tiny question: can you be on a different floor from the Unseen Servants you've set in motion?
I have a background underlying conflict in my campaign between "old guild" that makes things in traditional ways and "new guild" that employs magic. In some cases, the magic produced items are cheaper, produced in mass, and with less artisanal flair. But traditional guilds competing with mass production would have to cut corners to produce more things quicker. And with a sufficiently finely tuned assembly line can produce things to a high degree of precision and consistency. In conflicts between the two, the old guilds often have superior numbers, with a lot of them heavily muscled where the new guilds employ magic and mills and magically powered mills, fewer workers, and rather bookish sorts.
Mold earth can be used to mass manufacture pots and dishes of a consistent quality and shape. Shape water can be used for irrigation or to shift significant volumes of water into a mill pond to power a mill. A chain of ponds with about 4' altitude differences could each have an apprentice pumping water up hill, a 5' cube at a time. Beast speech as a ritual can be tedious to set up, but allow for sophisticated detective work when needed.
And players can have different perspectives on different parts of the general conflict.
One of the other labor effects of these spells is that if some ruler has x number of peasant/hours service they can consistently compel, they and their lands will be wealthier if that labor is magic initiate or level 1 apprentice instead of grunt muscle labor. Some rulers would see great wealth in encouraging the teaching of magic. And some traditionalists would prefer to restrict the teaching of magic. Wizards would be on both sides of that, as some wizards think it is irresponsible to teach just the magic, instead of the traditional ethos, responsibilities and chains of obedience to the Arch Mage. The traditional apprentice system wouldn't yield masses of apprentices, but they would be inculcated with the values and loyalties of their teachers to a high degree.
And when the actions of rogue mages can cause prejudice against all mages.
60 feet range (from the caster). 120 feet diameter.
14,400 square feet of movement area they can manufacturer in.
The biggest caveat is what the DM defines as simple enough for them to do / make.
I only allow Unseen Servant to do unskilled work. I know it lists mending, but IMHO back in the 16th century mending was skilled labor. As was the process of taking cotton from its basic form and spinning it into thread.
I think this is one of those places where D&D is shaded by how we look at things in modern times, not how they actually were.
Strictly, even lifting and carrying is skilled work.
'Actually were' is a problematic statement, when referring to D&D.
Deities and Magic ensure their worlds are unlikely to match ours.
An example:
Governments in D&D settings are not Feudal, even those claiming a king, because the presence of magic allows for better communications. The system of Barons and Dukes came about so locals could handle things for a far-distant, out of contact, King. If that King has a way to rule on the day-to-day events within a barony, by hiring a single person who can send instant messages to said baron and verify from a distance the order was obeyed to the letter, then the Feudal system falls apart.
The Barron doesn't have the independence they would have on Feudal Earth.
There is a wide range of "how good is the mend"? I would argue that spinning would be an almost ideal task for unseen servants, IF you could get consistent quality. And that would be the really tough bit, as you would need a very consistent input. I do NOT think that an assembly line would work well, because of scheduling issues. Namely, every ten minutes, part of the line shuts down. And historically, spinning was the most manpower or womanpower intensive part of the craft. You would displace a LOT of people, but greatly increase the quantity of cloth produced, and some other part of the craft would become the bottleneck.
When a player wants to introduce something new, some gadget, some combination of magics, I include an experimentation process, and I encourage them to come up with some ideas for failures and issues they had in development that they fixed and addressed. Almost NOTHING works as intended the first time it is thought of.
I 100% agree that spinning fiber into thread is skilled labor beyond the ability of an Unseen Servant, unless you want it lumpy and inconsistent. On the other hand, there are repetitive tasks that would be much easier for it, like carding (straightening the fibers and removing debris), washing, weaving, and felting.
You could even work this into the worldbuilding. An Unseen Servant can't weave a complicated pattern, like a plaid tartan, so wearing plaid shows you're wealthy enough to buy fabric made by actual people.
@@lordpessimism IF the input fiber is of consistent quality that doesn't require skilled adjustment, an Unseen Servant could probably handle coarse thread. And they could probably braid very well, building those individual threads into rope. There would probably be a huge difference in cost between the mass produced low quality stuff for the workers, who might not care as long as it was warm, and clothes built for comfort and fashion. So a lot of the mass produced stuff has an effect on the economy, but not necessary an instant ticket to wealth, since any job that can be done easily by magic will pay less because of that ease.
Only one thought: Remember Fantasia? Mickey tried the Magical Automated Water Carry Device - with disastrous results.
there was no time limit on those brooms - also, they multiplied on their own. :)
Fantasia is a good example of how an Unseen Servant thinks and works. A single Servant told to mop would keep mopping, one with a bucket would keep hauling water.
@@keenirr5332 A perfect example of a miss-cast. : O
A magic item I made was an unseen servant casting item. It allowed a non spell casters to cast the spell. It was pathfinder, so the rules were a bit different. You could only summon a certain number at a time. The upfront cost is pretty high, but once you had the device you could set a skilled laborer to summoning and directing the servants.
Presumably, we could see Invisible Servants harvesting individual ears of corn, or handfuls of wheat. Granted, even if the Invisible Servants can handle a needle and thread, some fabrics are too heavy, and thus may require human (or ingame analogues) labor.
Old Unseen Servants are about as strong as a midget. They are not that clever. I could order one to mop floors or use a bucket to fetch water but not tailor. They would not be able to do crafts unless you spend double the time supervising one.
I enjoy all of The Grungeon Master videos 😊
They are all really great! Sure food for thought and solid world building counsel! 😊
I like this. I can see a campaign about a rebellious workforce displaced by unseen servants. Maybe some previously skilled workers whose work is no longer viable are forced to work in the fields or mines to earn a living.
Nice. I think it was the Wheel of Time where sorcerers were so uncommon that you could only learn sorcery by going to one central location where all the other sorcerers were (been a while since i saw the show, never read the books). In any case such small numbers means that they would all need to congregate to learn, giving way to the wizard academy theme people tend to do, and it also makes sense from a governance standpoint since they are easier to keep track of if all in one place.
I can see this working to a point.
That point being the "Yes, I got into higher education just to get a job in manufacturing. The key to cosmic secrets are in my hands, and my day is spent maintaining a section of an assembly line!"
We are talking about people that (last I checked) needed a proper education, a minimum Intelligence/IQ and were willing to plug away at the same ritual and commands for hours on end.
I have yet to make the jump to 5th ed, but in the Edition that I run? We are talking a minimum Intelligence of 11 to cast fist level spells.
That 11 Int? That if I am reading things right is you needing an IQ of 110+.
Doable, but quite a bit more limiting than everyone with an education can learn magic sort of thing.
Int doesn't translate to IQ in a 1:1 ratio.
It's be better to use the bell curve of IQ with the bell curve of 3d6.
11 is just slightly above average. 110 is probably the top of int 11.
True on the not 1 to 1.
But it still states a ground floor on who can cast wizard spells.
This is a beautiful lead in to a background conflict in the campaign. You have traditional wizards who only take one or a few apprentices at a time, and teach them the liberal arts part of being a wizard, the values, the history, the hierarchal loyalty to the Archmage, adhering to practicing what is the legally acceptable uses of magic in the area. And you have those who teach the basics as fast as possible to as many as possible. The apprentice system teaches the fundamentals and the theory that eventually allow for a much broader grasp of magic, and a higher level cap, but there is something to be said for sheer numbers.
You can make a whole compaign setting from the ideas in this one video. Truly amazing work
I had a character that did this back in 3.5.
Ended up establishing a nation of magical labor for mass production, endless and free water, endless tasteless gruel, cheap mass-produced housing to provide (not the best or really comfortable, but safe) barracks, the ability to remove and disease or sickness in seconds, and low quality clothing.
All your basic needs were covered. Dangerous and deadly labor was covered by guilds controlling golems, spell servants, familiars, and undead laborers. Goods were valued for their quality and originality. Wealth was based on what originality and craftsmanship you could bring.
Those that turned to criminal interests had to deal with the guild of thieves that was sponsored by my character and his government who were regulated in how much could be stolen from any region yearly, which means the bigger the guild the smaller everyone's cut, and when some thief not belonging to the guild steals, it cuts into the guild's margins. It only took a couple tries before the guild pf thieves learned not playing by the government's regulated numbers they had the wrath of my character's 30k strong private army of undead knocking on their doors.
Sounds dystopian to some, utopian to others, but it was always fun to have the party able to fall back on the self-carved empire when needed.
There's a great OSR book by Skerples all about this idea - Magical Industrial Revolution. It gives eight scenarios where magic leads to economic growth, and then catastrophic hijinks. It also details a whole city and has tons of great ideas for a magicpunk campaign setting.
Yes. I mention it explicitly in my video on magic mouth; an excellent read.
I always enjoy how deep you go down the rabbit hole on the topics of your videos.. They certainly keep my mind busy as I finish my final semester of college. I can't wait to find a group to play D&D with after I graduate.
So interesting! Thanks for all of your amazing ideas. Here are some other Cantrips or 1st level spells from D&D 5e to consider Animal Friendship, Beast Bond, Ceremony, Comprehend Languages, Create or Destroy Water, Encode Thoughts, Find Familiar, Floating Disk, Goodberry, Longstrider, Mending, Message, Minor Illusion, Mold Earth, Purify Food and Drink, Shape Water, and Speak with Animals.
During working hours the factory keeps blasting Real Wizard FM non-stop
Considering in some systems, a Level 1 Wizard is considered an "Apprentice", the role of housekeep cleaning manager does sound like a job that would be placed upon Apprentices. I can imagine some patrons of the local Wizard's guilds would likely paying something like a monthly fee to ensure there's always a wizard on staff ready for them if needed, and as such when greater spellcasting isn't needed, these patrons will instead assign the apprentices to clean their houses to give them practical experience with using magic to fulfil a job.
Love this. Haven’t seen many people discuss how magic would influence economics.
I can imagine using this to create basic computers. If you create a rig, an abacus would do, and have perhaps two (or more) flags , you can get an unseen servant to react to something and either raise one flag or another, and/or change the value on the abacus in a particular way. The instructions would be very simple, but different for different servants. In that way an unseen servant can emulate a logic gate, only not limited to binary operations.
You then need only arrange the servants in a particular order and when instructing them tell them which flags and abacus numbers to react to.
If flags are placed in holders, the state represented by the flag can be made independent of the servant. So when one instance disappears another can replace it without harming the on going calculations. The instructions for a particular gate servant can be written next to the position, so that when the supervising mage tells the gate servant what to do, they don't have to keep it in there heads.
You can make these very small if you wish too, as they need only be visible to the servants, perhaps with the end result abacus being bigger so other creatures can easily read it.
You may well have scribe servants at the end of the process to write down results.
If you create a big enough army of servants you can produce a relatively large computing machine, but even small arrangements could be useful.
I'm reminded of Eragon, where at one point the rebels make lace (extremely repetitive but theoretically simple work) with magic to fund the army.
One more bit: if any NPCs without class levels are humans who are able to start with feats due to human variant rules, one with Ritual Caster (Wizard) with this plus Tenser's Floating Disk can go into business with a Magic Initiate (Wizard) with Prestidigitation and Mending (probably Find Familiar or Comprehend Languages for the 1st level spell, neither would be as valuable as rituals) and the two of you are making bank.
I could see something happening where a job like 'Unseen Servant Technician' becomes a thing, like there's no reason that a the person casting unseen servant has to commit to the bit of becoming a full on wizard. It could be that this kicks off the birth of what is effectively a 'Magic Trade School', with UST and other personnel responsible for overseeing the production side of things, much as we have welders, machinists, and mechanics today. There might even be 'Magic Trade Unions'. It could make for an interesting dynamic between 'White Collar' and 'Blue Collar' spellcasters, maybe even be the basis for a few quests/storylines.
Maybe the party's fancy professional wizard tries to infiltrate the local Golem Fitters Union Hall to get information on some underground illegal golem fight club, and they struggle to fit in because while they're a 'Wizard', they aren't a Golem Fitter, and it's a constant balancing act to see whether or not they can pass themselves off for long enough. It could also go the other way, maybe the party's spellcaster went to Magic Trade School and has to go undercover in a Mages College.
Bear in mind these are just ideas off the top of my head, I didn't put a whole lot of thought into them, but i figured I'd put them here in the event someone might be inspired to try something with them.
My favorite Eberron character was a Warforged Necromancer. He owned IBM (Infernal Business Machines) and used undead he purchased the bodies from commoners, totally legal. He liked that he used meat's shell like his people had been used.
Also Unseen Servant is GREAT for distractions. It can start a fire.
Loving your videos dude this is one of my favorite spells and now it just got better
Ever thought of contacting Ed Greenwood for the purpose of making a video together? I get the feeling it would be something truly wonderful to watch :)
I have long thought of the economic exploits by a wizard using Magnificent Mansion as a resort for rich people.
This implies that the wizard or spellcaster is interested or skilled in these areas to figure out how to monopolize labor
Or that the person funding, employing, or teaching them is. Which I think is more likely, granted.
I once used 5 ritually cast unseen servants to stand in front of a moving cart, causing the driver to stop because he thought he ran someone over, so we could rob it without giving chase.
This was an issue my group dealt with like 5 years ago. My players started trying to push the boundaries of the spell in Pathfinder, and I quickly had to issue some limitations to the spell because of the impact it would have on the world. I had to explain almost exactly all of this to my players and how big of a deal the spell would be if you could maintain more than one at a time, and that the technological state of the world wouldn't make a lot of sense with something like this available, especially give how pathfinder item crating works.
I wonder if this may have negative consequences too - for example a low demand to end dull and inefficient jobs may mean that there is far less of a push to make them more efficient with industrialisation; Perhaps this wide availability of free unskilled labour leads to stagnation of technology because unpaid labourers already make simple tasks far more efficient because they can be aggressively paraelisaed
As ever, very interesting examination of the topic. The prospect of a female-dominated wizard guild could be very alarming to some more patriarchal societies, and could happen so quickly that many existing authorities would be caught napping. Another proto-industrial process this spell could help with would be distilling / brewing, or even aspects of alchemy. It doesn't take much strength to stoke or put out a fire, or take a bottle with a few ounces of fluid from one location to another.
How very timely for my worldbuilding. Thanks, Tom! Good video! 😃
Super interesting!
One thing about the consequences of widespread unseen servant use is that the spell seems to get invented/discovered fairly late.
It seems like a spell that would exist as long as real servitude.
I wonder what it would mean for a fictional timeline in which the spell comes about much earlier, e.g. the end of the stone age.
While I do like the idea of an Unseen Servant factory (especially with the whole "it's actually haunted" cover you suggest), I don't think Unseen Servant quite tracks with the real world industrial revolution as neatly as you describe. While the Unseen Servant is "mindless", from the spell's description its abilities are quite different from the mindless robots we're familiar with in reality. It can handle tasks that are, technically speaking, quite complex (in machine instruction terms) with relative ease -- the cleaning, mending, and folding laundry described in the spell -- but nothing in the spell description suggests that looping instructions (which are the bread and butter of machines IRL) would work properly. With an assembly line, it seems to me that one iteration of the assigned step would complete the Servant's assigned task, leaving it idle until you tell it to do the same thing again on the new item that's been passed to it, requiring a lot of babysitting from the overseeing mage.
And on the other hand, there are things an Unseen Servant could do without even needing more advanced industrial technology to leverage. While finer fabrics would still require the human touch, spinning coarse thread and weaving simple textiles would likely be within an Unseen Servant's parameters even with the same ordinary looms and spinning wheels used in preindustrial cottage work. If this were widespread, it might actually forestall the invention of such machines, since the impetus for them would be reduced only to making it feasible for Unseen Servants to make higher-quality textiles than they otherwise could.
Well, this would explain the motivation for so many people leaving there home to go into a remarkably dangerous world to adventure.
They have no hope back home. No way to make a better life.
They're choices are a squalid yet relatively safe environment, or a very dangerous lifestyle with the chance of making some gold.
An additional concept: Repeated and higher level casting of Unseen Servants could result in them becoming Living Spells and starting to demand workers rights, or even becoming unseen servants that can cast unseen servant.
If a wizard was continuously ritual casting the spell they could sustain at most 6 unseen servants at a time because of their hour duration. I would assume significantly detailed instructions for each servant would further delay the wizard in conjuring the next servant. To learn magic in the first place, the average wizard would likely have either had the rare privilege of attending schooling, or lives in a setting with public education. Unless there is some barrier to the progression of wizards' abilities, I feel a novice wizard would be more useful if they spent time improving their magic rather than replicating six "mindless" and very weak workers. Your general concept still stands true, though. A single wizard could definitely run a factory but unless your factory can run on just six mindless workers staying within 60 feet of their manager it would require a higher level wizard. A higher level wizard would also have better options for automation. They could still supplement those options with unseen servants but I feel those hours of repetitive casting would be better spent studying even higher level magic or training apprentice wizards. It might take a world where low level magic is commonplace but even intermediate level magic is rare for unseen servant to see frequent use.
I have seen unseen servants in Curse of Strahd that seem to be permanent. If this was possible the value of the spell would be much higher.
would love to see you delve into the potential ramification of the Magic Jar spell, from goodly wizards remaining around as disembodied teachers that borrow a person hired as the meat suit. to evil ones stealing the body of an ork chief and expanding his new tribe with superior intelligence and magical prowess.
I have a setting that is a low-level magic setting where magic is still incredibly ubiquitous. When/if my spellcasting players are high enough level, they're going to find it harder and harder to find/make high level spells for lore reasons. I am absolutely stealing this idea for guilds in my world.
The best I came up with for world building was wizards making excessively complex equations to create crazier lower level spells, spellcasting groups artificially upcasting beyond 9th level with enough people or repurposing water mills and wind mills for charging runes and glyphs.
I have just one note, and that is that the 6 second rule only applies to turns in combat, out of combat the only limitations on time are any specifically stated in the spell.
I'd argue that in Fantasia, Mickey was casting Animate Objects. Yes, it lasted more than a minute, and yes he didn't need concentration as he fell asleep. He was however casting it by means of a magic item with unspecified properties.
A bueracramancer, a wizard who ritually summons a clerical staff.
I think am important element to think about is time. I think those who argue the market corrects itself aren't wrong as such but time is an important factor. Like you mentioned shifts in spinning led to women forced into different jobs but that was generations in the making. There was also the luddites in the 1800s and ex industrial workers in the UK. if your DnD world doesn't its own Australia to send rioters ex workers to or a welfare system to limit the impact of generational unemployment, you might find it a rather the world is rather a revolutionary one
Back in 3rd edition, the Unseen Servant was potentially much more powerful, as you could have a conjuration wizard with Augmented summons, with +4 strength to all their summons, and you could have longer durations, especially with higher level versions of it. The difference was that it was only really powerful with higher level casters.
I think 3e Unseen Servant was a "creation", not a "summoning" spell and therefor not affected by the Augmented Summoning feat, I am pretty sure WotC had a 3rd level version of the spell printed somewhere, named Servant Horder, which created 1 servant/level and had a durition of 1 hour/level.
@@JCAB_Bodilsen A reasonable interpretation, I suppose. It is why I as a GM like to communicate with players about the intentions of their builds so they are not surprised by a GM ruling that nerfs their plans in a way that didn't make sense to them.
The end of your video makes me think of the movie hidden figures. In case you haven't seen it that movie is about three black women and their effect they had on the NASA program and sending people into space.
There were a lot of women who were hired as computers by the space program to compute math that needed to be done. There were multiple teams of women doing this job. One of the three main characters is what I would only describe as a really good manager. she saw her employer bringing in automated computers and realized how that would affect the women under her leadership. So in response she basically taught her team how to take care of this equipment so that their leadership so that they would still be relevant in their field. I can definitely see some women who sees early how unseen servant is shaping up to affect her and the women around her taking the initiative to make sure that the women in her community are prepared to be on the forefront of this wave of change instead of being pushed aside by it.
According to my community college British literature course, medieval monks would copy books by having one person at the front of a room reading the book out loud, and everyone else in the room would write what they heard. May not have been universal, though.
The artificer, mage, and necromancer just staying in the starting town building an full industrial army of zombies.
The enemy appears with swords while the player team mows them down with bolt action zombies
I had an interesting thought: a small cabal of spellcasters using "ethically sourced" necromancy and unseen servants.
Manufacturing and mining guilds could/would make a fortune
something like this was put into place by an ancient magi-emperor, before his empire crumbled due to his hubris in thinking he could kill death in the ways he's already attempted to subdue the natural world to his whims
Phantom steed, works similarly to unseen servant and can also perform the service of oxen for plowing fields or can be given out as a taxi service.
Perfect video! This is how I've viewed magical labour and stuff for a long time, makes a lot more interesting things you can do with it! Also where did you get that electric oil lamp on your shelf from? it looks great!
The Mickey’s access to the spell joke got me 😅
Did you change the name from, "One Wizard Can Run a Factory" to this?
I feel like I've hallucinated or something
I definitely haven't changed the title, but yours seems better phrased tbh. Whoops!
pay to train a level 1 wizard in exchange for service as a butler for a couple years. between a butler, a chef and a maid wizard with prestidigitation and unseen servant, you could keep an entire mansion running. potentially you could have a gardener too with the servants picking produce, sewing seeds, and watering.
This is absolutely perfect for my setting, perfect timing lol
I love this concept! As always, I have plenty to think about after your videos. I’m just trying to workout how one of my nations (in a homebrewed campaign) wouldn’t have this impact. (This is due to the fact that, although they are very much an advanced civilisation, they traditionally will make things by hand. (Cultural belief that says making things enables an expression of the soul that otherwise won’t occur.) Nevermind, I talked myself out of it, only the mass produced stuff (like books or other miscellaneous things that lack a personal context) would be mass produced in this way with other things still being made by hand.
In my own setting a single wizard made a small fortune using unseen servants to copy dozens of rare manuscripts and selling them to noble houses. He was then copied by others who made books for other nobles, making more and more, cheaper and cheaper books until after a century the nation was at nearly 80% literacy. This lead to a huge boom in mages apprenticeships for people who wanted to join the new 'spell binder' cottage industry. mages collages soon came into being training folks up to be about level 3 for the low cost of 500gp, training petty wizards who would then work as book-makers, potion crafters, or court mages for anyone more powerful than a mayor.
every common peasant laborer or farmer had enough gold to have a couple books around the house or a healing potion for emergencies. life threatening labor injuries plummeted, quality of life went up, and the nation became an enormous exporter of fine goods, books, and magical items.
long story short I went down this thought exercise myself ages ago, and it (combined with player actions) turned one of my setting's nations into the magical holy roman empire.
Awesome, i like this concept!
I've had a similar idea in my head for years:
A religious society in a land alien to necromancy, discovers a form of raising the dead. Based on rituals imported from far away lands. It's seen as a miracle, as if they have returned to serve their religion after death. To become a "servant" is a great honor. They are carefully mummified to preserve their flesh, and put to work as laborers or soldiers. They are mindless, but can fulfill simple orders.
This society grows rapidly as their productivity increases dramatically, and starts to subjugate neighboring lands under their rule. They must spread the gospel. Their forces are numerous and unrelenting. Conquered lands are assimilated into the empire, enforcing their religion and practice of using their dead as servants. To many other cultures this is strange, if not blasphemous. Warring countries resist viciously, not wanting to lose their people to these defilers of the dead. But most bend the knee in the end. After all, life in the empire isn't so bad.
Just get used to having your diseased being picked up by your local clergymen. And when you walk along the countryside, don't look to hard at the servants working the fields, as you may disturb yourself. You might recognize your kin among them.
Fun times :)
I was a fabulous wizard and used Uneeen Servant all the time. Each time I summoned it, the first task was to put a pair of white gloves and a bow tie on. Thus was born Invisible Jeeves!
One thing i think is worthy of consideration would be advancements in the field of magic itself. A great deal of magical items that exist either cast a spell for the user on cool down or have spell like effects on their own. If one were two say... Craft a great number of "wands of unseen servant" That would take a good chunk of the mental strain required ritual cast of that much out of the equation and with magical items often functioning as devices of some kind It might be possible to have some mechanism activate the effect on its own. That's not to mention living spells which we know can be created intentionally even if we don't have an official way to do so for player characters. I recall reading somewhere in some module or other about a mad mage who created living unseen servants. Living spells do not have a duration or a limit of distance. If one knew how to create a living unseen servants they could theoretically create an unlimited number of them
Something I forgot to mention
Living unseen servant is capable of attacking a targets. Given a ranged weapon that can be loaded and fired with under 30 lb of force You now have a fully autonomous weapon That could be stationed at high points and simply shoot at any foe that comes within range. So given its intelligence of one as it is not a thinking creature friendly fire might be an issue
Less of an issue if they were to be actively overseen by some kind of spellcaster that can control them. If they were to say load and fire muskets a single spellcaster with the knowledge to create a living unseen servant could project the same force as an entire company or even army of men.
I've run the calculations and employing this method could create a truly dreadful volume of fire.
I like this kind of “urban fantasy” where there’s both magic and tech. But it’s also just boring if the steam train is just heated using some kind of magic. But it is still great to imagine how someone could use spells in everyday life.
Unseen servant computer. Just get 50 wizards together to run it.
You could have 50 clerks tabulating numbers in a room instead.
There is a fascinating paradox in our societies capability to produce goods and our leisure time. In much of the modern world 8+ hour working days are the norm leaving little time for anything else but some hunter gatherer tribes only seem to dedicate about four hours of their day to Work. We invent things to make our lives easier but also end up creating auxiliary work to compensate for the work we take away despite the point being to make life easier by removing or reducing the work of the task. Often instead of being able to do the days task more quickly we end up doing more work in the day despite much of it being redundant.
I think that's about tribes living in paradise environments with abundant resources, best case scenario. I definitely wouldn't want to live in the past, where vast majority of population were farmers of some sort who had to work really really hard without much rest part of the year, and then have anxiety about possible famine. We didn't really make much more work for ourselves, but the paradox is that with every improvement in technology, theoretically everyone needs to work less. There is less labour per person needed to satisfy everyone's needs (yes, even the new needs), yet we are not working less for it. When you start looking where all the labour goes, it becomes obvious that it's the rich and powerful becoming richer and powerfuler. If someone among the richest people decides he wants to build a great pyramid alike the ones pharaohs had, it would cost him just spare change.
@arcturuslight_ well, there is that, but you also need to remember that the "rich and powerful" also includes the impoverished. For example, the American poverty line is currently set at 25,000 dollars per year. That's more money than most kings would ever see in their lives. Average citizens have access to purified drinking water, freshly cooked meals, high-speed transportation, and more information than was contained in the library of Alexandria. By the way, all of that can be accessed for under $20 per day in the United States, so literally everyone has that. Sure, it isn't all sunshine and rainbows living in modern society, but it's not all doom and gloom either.
Sorcerers, being able to Twin and/or extend the duration to 24 hours would be very valuable indeed, in such a society.
I am not exactly sure if you covered these topics but I would love to hear your take with these spells starting with the lowest spells:
Either summon spells of the conjure spells
Animal Messenger/Animal Friendship
Continual Flame
Stone Shape
Major Image
Wall of Stone
Creation yes it only last a limited amount of time but what how many people can you feed with a 5' cube of vegetable matter. Like make flour and use that to make some type of unleavened bread or other pastries? How many hearths, fireplaces and stoves can you supply with fuel from a 5’ cube of wood? Would that get rid of lumberjack jobs?
But the biggest two spells with far reaching implications in my mind would Fabricate and Plant Growth. Fabricate is pretty obvious but I think Plant Growth has some sneaky use cases. Sure the 8 hour casting time can double the yield of food crops but the "combat" use just makes EVERY plant overgrown that includes shrubs, vines, and trees but there is no mention of the effect ending. There is no time limit on the overgrown area so to me it seems that it would last until it is cleared or dead.
What if you target an area with plants that don't produce food crops but plants where it is the plant itself. Like a field of Flax? Flax is use for many different things like; Rope, sackcloth, nets and more important linen.
Target an area where cannabis is growing? What about a grove of willows? I don't think that the tree trunk itself would grow but the branches and leaves would, that means that you could use the willow bark from the overgrown limbs for an aspirin like effect. How does the 4 to 1 movement speed reduction relate to the amount of plants in the area? Would that mean a field of flax produce 4 times the amount of fiber for use in everything I mentioned?
12:33 How a commoner would need to learn magic to get a good job. That's just collage nowadays.
Gets crazier if you got a real high level wizard with signature spell on unseen servant. meaning they can do an absurd amount of work with it.
the spell is fairly consistent in it's description in that it only creates a single unseen servant for one hour per casting. that means that if the caster started ritually casting the spell at noon, by 1:10pm the first servant would disappear and the caster would have just started on the 7th consecutive casting of the spell. meaning realistically you'd only get at maximum 5-6 servants at once with a constantly rotating shift change. which is considerably more limited than what it seems like you're talking about. and the caster would absolutely still need to periodically take breaks.
running a steam engine away from the boiler would be very cool, the 2 man crew is sort of critical to the running of the very complex engines, and for the moral of the workers firing the firebox and running the boiler and running gear, but if the worker doesn't have to be so punished by the fire and shovel, they might be okay to run with only the ghostly companionship of their lever pulling and gauge reading spells
I've always wanted to play a wizard with a cannon man by Unseen Servants. Get a few up and you can fire every round.
I foresee an economic arms race between magical industrial powers
A5E has a mage build/subclass that can do rituals in one minute rather than 10. Riches! Wealth!
If you're a mage building/running factories you may as well be an artificer. Or its how you get them
I don't run 5e D&D, but this world building stuff is really great.
This is why I multi-class wizard, artificer if the DM allows it and if there's a storage medium for spells that can be remotely activated imagine a vehicle like a horse-drawn carriage being fully crewed by unseen servants at your disposal, now I have a whole tank crew all of a sudden !
I'm definitely stealing the idea with my next mage. During downtime I'd contract with a local business to provide a product in bulk, hire a skilled worker to have him direct my unseen servants and make stuff to sell. Easy money and relative net profit.
Guidance may be an interesting response to all these efficiency spells. By slowing somethings done by an action a minute you can get better quality results. And since it is a cantrip it is easier to learn and is repeatable. It is very limited, focused on a single task, but that could boost craftmanship, investigations, performances, and more in a way that would end up noticeable in a competitive society. Would it become banned or expected in exams? Is it cheating in athletic competitions or something expected from fans on their favourite players? If your lawyer uses it when presenting your case is it manipulating the judge? Does magically concentrating on a spell interfere with intellectually concentrating on something else? Given its broad useability and ease of learning and use these sorts of things would come up a lot in a D&D setting.
A +d4 to a roll is comparable to the difference between someone who is merely proficient and someone who has a feat that boosts that skill. That is the difference between a journeyman and a master in skill, potentially. Or at least between a journeyman and a senior journeyman. Taking a bit more time to get a dramatic improvement in quality could be an answer to the bulk low quality goods produced by mindless magic. So even in the areas where magic is employed in industry, there is a potential for interesting conflicts between different areas of the market.
Putting people's job at risk is a good way to bring about social discontent. I could see an anti-magic peasant revolution happening.
In the end Luddites lost to the industrial revolution, though
An angry mob chasing after a mad science/mage? Seen it.
I love this. It is the start of a ton of interesting stories.