Magic, Or, How I Learned To Stop Worrying And Love Maximized Fireballs

One of the first things I needed to work on was magic. Specifically, I needed to make sure a lot of the tropes of a post-holocaust game could not be undone by casters. Thus, communication and travel were nerfed, and death needed to gain a considerable sting -- no more revolving door afterlife. The 'Soulstorm' mentioned here currently exists in my head as a vague concept with a cool name; it will be quantified soonish.

These changes don't unbalance general play much, but do change the nature of the world. Arithian society, dependent on scrying and teleportation networks, was just as damaged as Earth society when its communication and transport systems failed.

Oh...and to someone who mentioned satellites...yes. They're up there. And there is no 'anti tech' field, if you can get the hardware powered, most of the old systems still function. It's been 20 years, of course, and I'm sure some satellites are showing their age...but if there's anyone out there with generators and technicians, they can maintain a global communication network. For example, people in secure bunkers designed to outlast the effects of a global nuclear war. Of course, such places are things of legend and rumor...no one has found a functioning redoubt of that nature.

Anyway, magic:
It is undebatable that magic works in the Shattered World; doubters and skeptics were silenced within days of the Crush. With only a few important exceptions, the power of magic is as great as it ever was, but what has changed, dramatically and terribly, is the state of magical knowledge. In the span of days, millennia of learning were wiped out, along with the knowledge and experience stored in thousands of living minds.

On Arith, magic had long been more science than art. Vast libraries stored the details of thousands of spells. The precise means by which reality could be warped to a man's will were documented, defined, and enumerated. Fairly complete theoretical models of magic were well known, and only a few niggling details – such as the exact nature of the thaum – remained to be resolved. Magical societies and associations spanned the globe, linked by networks of scrying devices and teleportation sigils.

Then it all went away. Libraries burned along with the cities, and spellcasters were slain in the ensuing chaos. The common folk of Arith, terrified and confused, blamed wizards and sorcerers (not altogether incorrectly in general, but tragically wrong in specifics) for their blight, and weapons designed to keep enemy spellcasters from wreaking havoc were turned on allies. Storehouses of materia were destroyed. The networks of communication which kept the Orders together shut down instantly. Apprentices were separated from their masters. Clerics of various pantheons decreed that the tragedy could be blamed on those who worshiped the wrong gods, and holy wars exploded across the land. When the first of the upwellings began about a month after the Crush, those few casters who remained alive and protected were pressed into service against the newly emboldened hordes of the Underdark, and most perished in that fight.

Today, twenty years later, magic remains a powerful force, but no longer a well known one. Only a small number of the Free Peoples were spellcasters, and, as with most of the folk of both worlds, only some 5% of them survived the first year post-Crush. Many have retreated into hiding; others have found some small measure of safety in the few stable outposts and villages, where they might take on one apprentice every few years. The Earthborn have begun the study of magic, but many are viewed with hostility by both the Arith and their fellows.

The altered magical field of the Shattered World has changed how some magic works. Powerful storms in the Ethereal Plane limit the range of all spells to Long at best; no spell has 'unlimited' or 'same plane' range. The Soulstorm makes easy returns from the higher planes impossible; no magic of less power than True Resurrection or Wish will bring the dead back from the land of the Gods. The revolving door has been bolted shut.

Stockpiles of wands, scrolls, and potions were consumed during the Decade of Fire, and the materials needed to make more are in short supply. Costs for the manufacture of magic items have increased tenfold, and the small wealth of most settlements means that few are made. No more does every soldier keep a Potion of Cure Light Wounds and some Oil of True Strike on his belt for emergencies; no more is there a store selling common scrolls in every large city. Items of magic are horded, used only in the direst of emergencies, and given how common dire emergencies are, the hordes are getting pretty thin...

Of course, it's not all dire. The desperation of the survivors for any seeming of safety has led some to seek the shelter of the friendly neighborhood spellcaster, no matter how insane, depraved, or violent he may be. No small number of the holdfasts are under the rule of a magical overlord...did I say overlord? I meant protector. Of course, when one considers that during a time of great crisis, when the forces of light tried to array themselves against the onrushing darkness, the ones most likely to survive would be the ones whose entire system of ethics could be summed up as "Me first!", one gets an idea as to the sort of casters most likely to have lived long enough to become petty lordlings...and about how well they take to the idea of any competitors.