Maps during similar periods of Earth history have been laughably inaccurate, so we assume that Faerunian cartographers are offering “best estimate” distances.
Hard disagree on this as a gauge, they have access to magic that can answer universal truths. If a cartographer or merchant of that time period had the access to those answers they’d’ve been uses then too. You can cast a spell as simple as Message (with a known max distance) along with Find Familiar to measure distances as you document, and you have wizard researchers that have access to Wish (or clerics that talk to gods) for creating fixed, atomically precise, measuring tools.
I don’t disagree with the rest of your post but this addition really weakens your argument because they have so many more resources in the setting.
Edit: oops this was meant to reply to one you your other replies
Great, this spell combo is an example created by someone outside of the setting without the ability to test. Locate Object give you a 1000ft range. If that’s also inaccurate to ±0.25ft, we now have an even more accurate measure. Would you say a 0.00025 error rate acceptable.
you moved a decimal, 0.0025, and 1/400 error per 1000ft is still pretty bad, considering you also need to factor in elevation, blocked line of sight etc.
It would also means less than a handful of measurements per day for even an adept mage.
But that’s not the point. The game mechanics are an abstraction to make the system playable. There is no reason to believe the distances in spell descriptions are set in stone, and don’t depend on caster, or ambient conditions, or a myriad of other factors. You could certainly research a purpose-built spell for mapping purposes, but we’re not aware of one at the moment.
Oh good catch, my math was wrong, and after I wrote this I realized that elevation would definitely increase the error rate too. However, my point was that mapmakers in the setting have way more resources than a medieval mapmakers had. While I don’t have perfect answers, I think it’s acceptable to assume those limitations in the setting aren’t correct. How would a 98% accurate map compare with a map from 1300?
The game mechanics are an abstraction to make the system playable
Agreed, but I’d also like to believe that the mechanics are reflective of the setting within an unknown degree. Locate Object could’ve easily used mechanics that added uncertainty, like 1000ft±2d10 or 1000ft+100ft/lvl, but didn’t, so I think it’d be appropriate to assume that that number is more consistent than something with a scaling factor.
There is no reason to believe the distances in spell descriptions are set in stone, and don’t depend on caster, or ambient conditions, or a myriad of other factors.
Why wouldn’t there be any flavor text somewhere that would say that? I know may other systems that promote that flexibility, but 5e doesn’t really, not beyond “DM ruling is final,” which applies to all games everywhere with a DM, regardless of what the rules say anywhere.
We don’t need flavor text. We know that the Realms have existed through multiple editions of the game; if spells were this consistent then they would operate consistently across the different rulesets. They do not, though.
Using Locate Object as an example:
2E Distance: 60 feet per level of spellcaster (so variable between 120 and 1200 feet for levels 2-20)
3E Distance: 400 feet plus 40 feet per level.
4E Distance: ???
5E Distance: Up to 1000 feet.
The spell itself is the same, but the gameplay limitations vary for the purposes of game balance. I sincerely doubt that a spell in-world changed; rather, we set limits to ensure balance in gameplay. We should be distinguishing between rules meant to balance play and in-world realities, here.
Oh, I see where you’re coming from! I had not considered you were assuming that all systems were reflecting a single setting; I had been coming from the opposite perspective: each system has its own version of the Realms, which all are distinct to their system, which is why all of their lore is varying. However if you’re assuming the world is the same, you’re absolutely correct.
This, exactly. We can get a sense of this from the old novels too; magic is not nearly as restrictive as it is in-game; those rules exist to simplify gameplay, not to turn combat, magic, travel and healing into math problems.
Heck, Long Resting is an excellent example of how things 100% do NOT work in “real” Faerun. We think someone who survives being tagged with dragon claws, burned in a breath weapon, and sent flying with a tail attack is healed and ready to go with a nice 8 hour nap? Nah…
I don’t think this weakens my argument at all. It is fact from 1E to 5E, the official maps of Faerun are off by quite a bit. Looking for an in-game explanation isn’t unreasonable as the fact that the map distances are off is… well… fact. But don’t take my word for it… Elminster’s Guide to the Forgotten Realms says the following about maps:
Maps in the Realms are expensive works, being rare, easily damaged or destroyed, and more often inaccurate than not. Large, detailed, good maps are usually owned by rulers, from mayors of cities who have sewer and street maps, up to kings who own large and varied collections of old and fanciful maps from everywhere.
…
Nautical charts tend to be cruder, more inaccurate, and even more precious than maps.
Is Elturel 200 miles as the crow flies from Baldur’s Gate, or is it 215 miles from Baldur’s Gate? Apparently, even cartographers of the Realms cannot agree.
If someone is using a wish spell to make a better map, do you really think they’d just proceed to make that map freely available to everyone?
Also, even our maps have issues. Like projecting a sphere’s surface onto a 2d image, you end up with scaling issues that make Greenland look as big as South America. You can’t take a string representing 100 km or something and accurately determine the distance between points in any global map. Some do it better than others (like the projection that tries to peel the earth like an orange and then flatten that peel in 2d), but even they lose some accuracy (you can only measure accurately if you don’t need to cross a tear in the “peel”).
You can keep casting it till it stops in a measured location, then know how far you can cast it and have that as a measure later. Think of it like having a slingshot that shoots 120ft but in a straight line.
To measure 100 miles, assuming your 120 foot measurement and assuming that game mechanics = in-world logic, you’d need to cast your spell 4400 times per 100 miles, moving at a glacial pace as you measured. You’d also need to ensure that your path was perfectly straight, you accounted for elevation changes, that you precisely marked each endpoint, etc etc etc.
If you’re seeking accuracy, measuring the outside of a 200mi x200mi square would require doing all those calculations across 35,200 castings. If you were measuring the internal dimensions to about a one mile accuracy, you’d be in the millions of castings and you’d still need to ensure you accounted for all of the above.
Regardless, we know that it doesn’t work that way because FR sourcebooks tell us that maps are inaccurate, rare, and expensive. We know that the maps are inaccurate because they’ve told us so!
Locate Object. That other spell combo was an off the head example from someone who hasn’t played in a bit. What I’m trying to get at is that they have way more resources than a ‘similar’ time period, and that you using that as a basis is not well founded, not that your final answer is invalid or anything.
It’s not a video game. If you cast locate object, it’s not going to pop up with a map marker with the distance counting down below it as you get closer. It just located an object within that range. You don’t see the range circle, you just know the object is somewhere in range of your spell.
You’ve been proven wrong. Official text in a source book even states the maps aren’t accurate. So take the L and stop trying to prove you’re right. You come across as a sore loser, and honestly, a bit of a dick to keep pushing when you’ve been proven wrong.
My friend, I’m not a sore loser and there is no reason to attack me. I know it’s not a video game. If it only locates an item within a range, then you can keep moving away from it till it stops magically pinging. Then you can measure that range and use the same process to determine when something is that distance again. Think of it like measuring the total length of a straight of wood then reusing the wood to measure another object. You dont need to know anything more than that to begin measuring something.
I know that the maps in the setting are inaccurate, however I will to also point out that the maps we are referencing are not in the setting. My arguments are being misconstrued, but you seem to think that I should be okay with them being misrepresented. I’m having a fun time talking here, and I’ve also been considering this for over 20 years and this is the first time I’ve been able to test my thoughts on this in a dialogue setting, so yeah I’m going to keep talking in this thread. Do not confuse my resoluteness with being a sore loser. If someone brings a point up that I cannot refute with prior information I will concede, however people seem to not be understanding what I’m saying.
I want to see the right answer, or the most right answer we can get, and I’m willing to aid in removing the cruft that is refutable until we get that most right answer.
Locate object does not provide measurements, it provides a direction and whether the object is moving… Canonical lore states very clearly that maps are inaccurate in the FR. That is a canon statement, pulled from a sourcebook written by the man who created the Realms. Whatever explanation we prefer, that is an in-game reality. We can assume that the “easy” methods of offering accurate maps have failed, which would necessarily include magical means.
That maps are as accurate as they are is likely a reflection of the use of magic to assist with their creation.
@optissima@GBU_28 don’t want to necropost, but just stumbled upon that discussion.
I take the distance in the rule more like game mechanics.
If we take the description of the magic in the FR, I would say distance depends on the density of the threads of the weave, the dead magic area, etc. So not very dependable.
On the wish spell, I could agree though, that you could get more accurate info via this.
There are a couple things that need addressing in this line or argument.
First is a certain assumption of rigour in logic; rigour in proof was a very nebulous thing until concrete efforts to codify rigour in the 19th century. We used to simply assume Euclid’s Elements was true because it was old, reasonably argued, and some easier results were verifiable. There’s no guarantee that Forgotten Realms wizard, who lives in a magical late renaissance analogue, would hold a scientific philosophy similar to our modern philosophy, rather than having a scientific philosophy similar to that of a renaissance scientist.
Supplementary to the first point, there is also the question of religion. Given how much the Catholic church impeded scientific progress that challenged their worldview, we could expect the many churches of the FR pantheon - many with opposed views to one another - to interfere with scientific progress.
The second point comes from the measurement units used in the rulebooks of the game. Unless we’re accepting that FR society independently came up with the imperial system or a measurement system that translates rather cleanly to the imperial system, we can assume that the measurements in the game book are approximations for the purpose of ease of use to the player. I doubt a wizard in canon is calling a distance “about 10 feet” and Ed Greenwood is just doing the common fantasy thing of “translating their language and measurements to a form understandable by earthlings.”
The third point is the Wish issue. The Wish spell is undeniably the strongest spell in the canon and requires a wizard of tremendous power to cast. Given the hubris of powerful wizards in the Forgotten Realms and fantasy in general, it’s doubtful that a wizard would use their one 9th level spell per day to either altruistically progress the knowledge of the realm or to improve mapping methods to sell a better map. If a wizard were to use their strongest spell for something as trite as monetary gain, That same knowledge gained from a Wish could be hoarded and exploited for substantial personal gain.
Finally, there’s the time commitment. You mentioned using Find Familiar to measure distances but that still requires a wizard in the field, essentially using a sentient trundle stick. Mapping requires a ridiculous level of effort from a huge team of surveyors, and is almost always backed by a government. The Sword Coast, where all the main plot happens in FR canon, is a handful of city states and frontier towns in a wild region. The Open Lords of Waterdeep would probably have hired a set of wizards to accurately calculate the acreage of farmers fields in the immediate vicinity. For something like the distance from Baldur’s Gate to Elturel, distances would be approximate, about 200 miles or 10 days travel with time to pray at every shrine.
I’ll expand later when I have my coffee, but here’s a quick rundown:
1st: that is because we lacked the access to universal answers, if we had access to answers earlier we’d have gotten them.
1b: Why are you presuming that the religion is a rip from Catholicism, it has similar features but is not the same. It coexists with magic. Other religions (Bhuddism and Islam) allowed the sciences to bloom.
2: I never claimed that our measuring system was the same as theirs, simply that they do have a standard that is reproducible. It could be ‘1 dingle = the width of a kings foot’ or ‘a wizard created a measuring standard with the length of 1/73rd of a fireball burn circle’ for all it matters.
3: Wish was the extreme example, but an easy example (all it takes is one pissed wizard one of their 365 annual wishes to ask for ‘maps to be accurate’). In a more expanded consideration, a cartographer could access flight through a spell immediately gains accurate top down views of areas, greatly increasing accuracy and removing one of the huge limitations of mapmaking (getting a vantage point that gives you a good view of an area!). On top of that, it moves at a measurable, fixed, max speed. Just imagine a mideval monk with helicopter access and think about how much more accurate they would be.
4: Find Familiar scroll is 50gp and a professional cartographer would certainly find that a reasonable investment for having a traveling companion that can accurately follow commands and has a comprehension of measuring. No wizard required.
Some good points. I’m just going to continue this discussion because it’s interesting and it helps me prepare my games to consider these things.
1: Universal answers don’t necessitate universal acceptance, and it can make for more interesting lore when that’s the case. As an example: in the lore of Legend of the Five Rings, it’s common knowledge in the Empire that the official map of the Empire has a massively inconsistent scale, with journeys of similar charted length having up to a threefold difference in travel time. Savvy travellers know to plan accordingly, but no one would ever question Imperial doctrine, as the charting of the Empire was an act of a very real and tangible living god. This is where I got my praying at every temple comment; it’s common for people to avoid accidentally badmouthing the Empire by saying “I took longer than expected as I took every opportunity to honour my ancestors at every shrine on the road.”
1b: The pantheon of the Forgotten Realms is ever expanding and there are gods in that pantheon that are opposed to Mystra, as well as luddite gods who are oppose the gods of innovation such as Gond. Gondians certainly promote the advancement of science, and Mystrans and Oghmans promote the advancement of magic to a very certain extent, but there are gods in the pantheon who would task its worshippers with direct opposition of these missions, if for nothing else than to piss off their rival god.
2: This comes back to point 1. Different states will have their own standards of measurement, often using the same name, and the usage of these standards are very often more political than logical. A famous example from history is Napoleon’s height. Napoleon was “5 foot 2 by the French measurement and 5 foot 6 by the English measurement,” which made him a French adult man of average height. It was a common political tool to report him in the British Press as 5 foot 2, thus implying that he was short of stature.
Imagine the compounding issue of different species interacting in the Sword Coast. A human-majority patriarchal city state may define an inch as the average length of the the second knuckle of an adult human male’s middle finger, while an elvish-majority patriarchal enclave may define it exactly the same but for an elf’s finger. These slight discrepancies aren’t an issue until they can be exploited for political gain; an elvish embassy may be established at a distance no closer than a mile to the Palace of the Magistrates, but there’s roughly a 10 human-yard difference between an elvish mile and a human mile.
If someone casts a spell asking for a measurement and they are told “10 miles,” is that 10 miles from their perspective, 10 miles from the perspective of whoever invented the measurement spell, 10 miles according to some third “universal” perspective, or something else entirely?
3: Again from my previous comment, the precise limitations of spells are assumptions and generalisations made for the purpose of codifying into a game. In the actual fiction, spells are quite variable dependent on the caster and their abilities. The only general assumption we can actually make is that a set of repeatable actions yield roughly the same result: if you rub a glass rod with a bolt of fur and sing the chorus of Tubthumping backwards, lightning appears. The reason that in the current edition of the game we have somewhat concrete descriptions of spells is that we as the players require a certain level of abstraction in order to play the game; The GM shouldn’t need to have an idea of wind speed, the aerodynamics of the flier, and all other forces in order to make a quick decision to determine how the flier flies. Some randomness of outcome is still evident on the modern game rules, such as the damage from spells being random and spells like sleep affecting a random number of creatures. Older editions were a lot more meticulous with this.
Edit: specifically tackling Wish, assuming even a perfect casting would not yield a perfect map. Check out the Coastline Paradox for a real world example of how natural bodies such as coastlines fail to have well-defined length. No amount of arbitrary precision measurement is going to change the facts that coastlines and waterways have fractal dimension.
4: At least in 5e rules as written (and I dislike this and usually houserule it when forced to play D&D), with the exception of protection scrolls, reading a spell scroll requires caster to have the given spell on their spell list.
You might be able to achieve something beyond the scope of the above examples. State your wish to the GM as precisely as possible. The GM has great latitude in ruling what occurs in such an instance; the greater the wish, the greater the likelihood that something goes wrong. This spell might simply fail, the effect you desire might only be partly achieved, or you might suffer some unforeseen consequence as a result of how you worded the wish.
As the Faerun canonically has inaccurate maps, we can assume that Wish has failed to provide accurate maps. I cannot imagine that a Wizard hasn’t tried to create one in the thousands of years that Toril has been populated, after all. Heck, if we are talking magic, Wish is amateur hour when one considers ancient Netheril and the possibility of 10-12th level spells.
This is a great observation. I just generally think a world that poses questions such as “why haven’t wizards fixed this” is more interesting than a world with arbitrary precision measurements and walk-in cancer curing services in every hamlet.
Hard disagree on this as a gauge, they have access to magic that can answer universal truths. If a cartographer or merchant of that time period had the access to those answers they’d’ve been uses then too. You can cast a spell as simple as Message (with a known max distance) along with Find Familiar to measure distances as you document, and you have wizard researchers that have access to Wish (or clerics that talk to gods) for creating fixed, atomically precise, measuring tools.
I don’t disagree with the rest of your post but this addition really weakens your argument because they have so many more resources in the setting.
Edit: oops this was meant to reply to one you your other replies
So you think spells work with distances with this kind of accuracy? That’s bold, especially to talk about the realism of map making in the game.
Yeah, I do believe that the mechanics of their world are reflected in the game mechanics.
It could be 120ft±2.5ft without changing anything about game mechanics, but introduces at least 2% error already.
Great, this spell combo is an example created by someone outside of the setting without the ability to test. Locate Object give you a 1000ft range. If that’s also inaccurate to ±0.25ft, we now have an even more accurate measure. Would you say a 0.00025 error rate acceptable.
you moved a decimal, 0.0025, and 1/400 error per 1000ft is still pretty bad, considering you also need to factor in elevation, blocked line of sight etc.
It would also means less than a handful of measurements per day for even an adept mage.
But that’s not the point. The game mechanics are an abstraction to make the system playable. There is no reason to believe the distances in spell descriptions are set in stone, and don’t depend on caster, or ambient conditions, or a myriad of other factors. You could certainly research a purpose-built spell for mapping purposes, but we’re not aware of one at the moment.
Oh good catch, my math was wrong, and after I wrote this I realized that elevation would definitely increase the error rate too. However, my point was that mapmakers in the setting have way more resources than a medieval mapmakers had. While I don’t have perfect answers, I think it’s acceptable to assume those limitations in the setting aren’t correct. How would a 98% accurate map compare with a map from 1300?
Agreed, but I’d also like to believe that the mechanics are reflective of the setting within an unknown degree. Locate Object could’ve easily used mechanics that added uncertainty, like 1000ft±2d10 or 1000ft+100ft/lvl, but didn’t, so I think it’d be appropriate to assume that that number is more consistent than something with a scaling factor.
Why wouldn’t there be any flavor text somewhere that would say that? I know may other systems that promote that flexibility, but 5e doesn’t really, not beyond “DM ruling is final,” which applies to all games everywhere with a DM, regardless of what the rules say anywhere.
We don’t need flavor text. We know that the Realms have existed through multiple editions of the game; if spells were this consistent then they would operate consistently across the different rulesets. They do not, though.
Using Locate Object as an example:
2E Distance: 60 feet per level of spellcaster (so variable between 120 and 1200 feet for levels 2-20)
3E Distance: 400 feet plus 40 feet per level.
4E Distance: ???
5E Distance: Up to 1000 feet.
The spell itself is the same, but the gameplay limitations vary for the purposes of game balance. I sincerely doubt that a spell in-world changed; rather, we set limits to ensure balance in gameplay. We should be distinguishing between rules meant to balance play and in-world realities, here.
Oh, I see where you’re coming from! I had not considered you were assuming that all systems were reflecting a single setting; I had been coming from the opposite perspective: each system has its own version of the Realms, which all are distinct to their system, which is why all of their lore is varying. However if you’re assuming the world is the same, you’re absolutely correct.
This, exactly. We can get a sense of this from the old novels too; magic is not nearly as restrictive as it is in-game; those rules exist to simplify gameplay, not to turn combat, magic, travel and healing into math problems.
Heck, Long Resting is an excellent example of how things 100% do NOT work in “real” Faerun. We think someone who survives being tagged with dragon claws, burned in a breath weapon, and sent flying with a tail attack is healed and ready to go with a nice 8 hour nap? Nah…
I don’t think this weakens my argument at all. It is fact from 1E to 5E, the official maps of Faerun are off by quite a bit. Looking for an in-game explanation isn’t unreasonable as the fact that the map distances are off is… well… fact. But don’t take my word for it… Elminster’s Guide to the Forgotten Realms says the following about maps:
…
Is Elturel 200 miles as the crow flies from Baldur’s Gate, or is it 215 miles from Baldur’s Gate? Apparently, even cartographers of the Realms cannot agree.
If someone is using a wish spell to make a better map, do you really think they’d just proceed to make that map freely available to everyone?
Also, even our maps have issues. Like projecting a sphere’s surface onto a 2d image, you end up with scaling issues that make Greenland look as big as South America. You can’t take a string representing 100 km or something and accurately determine the distance between points in any global map. Some do it better than others (like the projection that tries to peel the earth like an orange and then flatten that peel in 2d), but even they lose some accuracy (you can only measure accurately if you don’t need to cross a tear in the “peel”).
Eh, “known” max distance is game logic.
You can keep casting it till it stops in a measured location, then know how far you can cast it and have that as a measure later. Think of it like having a slingshot that shoots 120ft but in a straight line.
To measure 100 miles, assuming your 120 foot measurement and assuming that game mechanics = in-world logic, you’d need to cast your spell 4400 times per 100 miles, moving at a glacial pace as you measured. You’d also need to ensure that your path was perfectly straight, you accounted for elevation changes, that you precisely marked each endpoint, etc etc etc.
If you’re seeking accuracy, measuring the outside of a 200mi x200mi square would require doing all those calculations across 35,200 castings. If you were measuring the internal dimensions to about a one mile accuracy, you’d be in the millions of castings and you’d still need to ensure you accounted for all of the above.
Regardless, we know that it doesn’t work that way because FR sourcebooks tell us that maps are inaccurate, rare, and expensive. We know that the maps are inaccurate because they’ve told us so!
Locate Object. That other spell combo was an off the head example from someone who hasn’t played in a bit. What I’m trying to get at is that they have way more resources than a ‘similar’ time period, and that you using that as a basis is not well founded, not that your final answer is invalid or anything.
It’s not a video game. If you cast locate object, it’s not going to pop up with a map marker with the distance counting down below it as you get closer. It just located an object within that range. You don’t see the range circle, you just know the object is somewhere in range of your spell.
You’ve been proven wrong. Official text in a source book even states the maps aren’t accurate. So take the L and stop trying to prove you’re right. You come across as a sore loser, and honestly, a bit of a dick to keep pushing when you’ve been proven wrong.
My friend, I’m not a sore loser and there is no reason to attack me. I know it’s not a video game. If it only locates an item within a range, then you can keep moving away from it till it stops magically pinging. Then you can measure that range and use the same process to determine when something is that distance again. Think of it like measuring the total length of a straight of wood then reusing the wood to measure another object. You dont need to know anything more than that to begin measuring something.
I know that the maps in the setting are inaccurate, however I will to also point out that the maps we are referencing are not in the setting. My arguments are being misconstrued, but you seem to think that I should be okay with them being misrepresented. I’m having a fun time talking here, and I’ve also been considering this for over 20 years and this is the first time I’ve been able to test my thoughts on this in a dialogue setting, so yeah I’m going to keep talking in this thread. Do not confuse my resoluteness with being a sore loser. If someone brings a point up that I cannot refute with prior information I will concede, however people seem to not be understanding what I’m saying.
I want to see the right answer, or the most right answer we can get, and I’m willing to aid in removing the cruft that is refutable until we get that most right answer.
Locate object does not provide measurements, it provides a direction and whether the object is moving… Canonical lore states very clearly that maps are inaccurate in the FR. That is a canon statement, pulled from a sourcebook written by the man who created the Realms. Whatever explanation we prefer, that is an in-game reality. We can assume that the “easy” methods of offering accurate maps have failed, which would necessarily include magical means.
That maps are as accurate as they are is likely a reflection of the use of magic to assist with their creation.
@optissima @GBU_28 don’t want to necropost, but just stumbled upon that discussion.
I take the distance in the rule more like game mechanics.
If we take the description of the magic in the FR, I would say distance depends on the density of the threads of the weave, the dead magic area, etc. So not very dependable.
On the wish spell, I could agree though, that you could get more accurate info via this.
deleted by creator
There are a couple things that need addressing in this line or argument.
First is a certain assumption of rigour in logic; rigour in proof was a very nebulous thing until concrete efforts to codify rigour in the 19th century. We used to simply assume Euclid’s Elements was true because it was old, reasonably argued, and some easier results were verifiable. There’s no guarantee that Forgotten Realms wizard, who lives in a magical late renaissance analogue, would hold a scientific philosophy similar to our modern philosophy, rather than having a scientific philosophy similar to that of a renaissance scientist.
Supplementary to the first point, there is also the question of religion. Given how much the Catholic church impeded scientific progress that challenged their worldview, we could expect the many churches of the FR pantheon - many with opposed views to one another - to interfere with scientific progress.
The second point comes from the measurement units used in the rulebooks of the game. Unless we’re accepting that FR society independently came up with the imperial system or a measurement system that translates rather cleanly to the imperial system, we can assume that the measurements in the game book are approximations for the purpose of ease of use to the player. I doubt a wizard in canon is calling a distance “about 10 feet” and Ed Greenwood is just doing the common fantasy thing of “translating their language and measurements to a form understandable by earthlings.”
The third point is the Wish issue. The Wish spell is undeniably the strongest spell in the canon and requires a wizard of tremendous power to cast. Given the hubris of powerful wizards in the Forgotten Realms and fantasy in general, it’s doubtful that a wizard would use their one 9th level spell per day to either altruistically progress the knowledge of the realm or to improve mapping methods to sell a better map. If a wizard were to use their strongest spell for something as trite as monetary gain, That same knowledge gained from a Wish could be hoarded and exploited for substantial personal gain.
Finally, there’s the time commitment. You mentioned using Find Familiar to measure distances but that still requires a wizard in the field, essentially using a sentient trundle stick. Mapping requires a ridiculous level of effort from a huge team of surveyors, and is almost always backed by a government. The Sword Coast, where all the main plot happens in FR canon, is a handful of city states and frontier towns in a wild region. The Open Lords of Waterdeep would probably have hired a set of wizards to accurately calculate the acreage of farmers fields in the immediate vicinity. For something like the distance from Baldur’s Gate to Elturel, distances would be approximate, about 200 miles or 10 days travel with time to pray at every shrine.
I’ll expand later when I have my coffee, but here’s a quick rundown:
1st: that is because we lacked the access to universal answers, if we had access to answers earlier we’d have gotten them.
1b: Why are you presuming that the religion is a rip from Catholicism, it has similar features but is not the same. It coexists with magic. Other religions (Bhuddism and Islam) allowed the sciences to bloom.
2: I never claimed that our measuring system was the same as theirs, simply that they do have a standard that is reproducible. It could be ‘1 dingle = the width of a kings foot’ or ‘a wizard created a measuring standard with the length of 1/73rd of a fireball burn circle’ for all it matters.
3: Wish was the extreme example, but an easy example (all it takes is one pissed wizard one of their 365 annual wishes to ask for ‘maps to be accurate’). In a more expanded consideration, a cartographer could access flight through a spell immediately gains accurate top down views of areas, greatly increasing accuracy and removing one of the huge limitations of mapmaking (getting a vantage point that gives you a good view of an area!). On top of that, it moves at a measurable, fixed, max speed. Just imagine a mideval monk with helicopter access and think about how much more accurate they would be.
4: Find Familiar scroll is 50gp and a professional cartographer would certainly find that a reasonable investment for having a traveling companion that can accurately follow commands and has a comprehension of measuring. No wizard required.
Some good points. I’m just going to continue this discussion because it’s interesting and it helps me prepare my games to consider these things.
1: Universal answers don’t necessitate universal acceptance, and it can make for more interesting lore when that’s the case. As an example: in the lore of Legend of the Five Rings, it’s common knowledge in the Empire that the official map of the Empire has a massively inconsistent scale, with journeys of similar charted length having up to a threefold difference in travel time. Savvy travellers know to plan accordingly, but no one would ever question Imperial doctrine, as the charting of the Empire was an act of a very real and tangible living god. This is where I got my praying at every temple comment; it’s common for people to avoid accidentally badmouthing the Empire by saying “I took longer than expected as I took every opportunity to honour my ancestors at every shrine on the road.”
1b: The pantheon of the Forgotten Realms is ever expanding and there are gods in that pantheon that are opposed to Mystra, as well as luddite gods who are oppose the gods of innovation such as Gond. Gondians certainly promote the advancement of science, and Mystrans and Oghmans promote the advancement of magic to a very certain extent, but there are gods in the pantheon who would task its worshippers with direct opposition of these missions, if for nothing else than to piss off their rival god.
2: This comes back to point 1. Different states will have their own standards of measurement, often using the same name, and the usage of these standards are very often more political than logical. A famous example from history is Napoleon’s height. Napoleon was “5 foot 2 by the French measurement and 5 foot 6 by the English measurement,” which made him a French adult man of average height. It was a common political tool to report him in the British Press as 5 foot 2, thus implying that he was short of stature.
Imagine the compounding issue of different species interacting in the Sword Coast. A human-majority patriarchal city state may define an inch as the average length of the the second knuckle of an adult human male’s middle finger, while an elvish-majority patriarchal enclave may define it exactly the same but for an elf’s finger. These slight discrepancies aren’t an issue until they can be exploited for political gain; an elvish embassy may be established at a distance no closer than a mile to the Palace of the Magistrates, but there’s roughly a 10 human-yard difference between an elvish mile and a human mile.
If someone casts a spell asking for a measurement and they are told “10 miles,” is that 10 miles from their perspective, 10 miles from the perspective of whoever invented the measurement spell, 10 miles according to some third “universal” perspective, or something else entirely?
3: Again from my previous comment, the precise limitations of spells are assumptions and generalisations made for the purpose of codifying into a game. In the actual fiction, spells are quite variable dependent on the caster and their abilities. The only general assumption we can actually make is that a set of repeatable actions yield roughly the same result: if you rub a glass rod with a bolt of fur and sing the chorus of Tubthumping backwards, lightning appears. The reason that in the current edition of the game we have somewhat concrete descriptions of spells is that we as the players require a certain level of abstraction in order to play the game; The GM shouldn’t need to have an idea of wind speed, the aerodynamics of the flier, and all other forces in order to make a quick decision to determine how the flier flies. Some randomness of outcome is still evident on the modern game rules, such as the damage from spells being random and spells like sleep affecting a random number of creatures. Older editions were a lot more meticulous with this.
Edit: specifically tackling Wish, assuming even a perfect casting would not yield a perfect map. Check out the Coastline Paradox for a real world example of how natural bodies such as coastlines fail to have well-defined length. No amount of arbitrary precision measurement is going to change the facts that coastlines and waterways have fractal dimension.
4: At least in 5e rules as written (and I dislike this and usually houserule it when forced to play D&D), with the exception of protection scrolls, reading a spell scroll requires caster to have the given spell on their spell list.
I’m having a great time talking too and will continue when I have a moment!
I’ll address Wish.
Wish states the following:
As the Faerun canonically has inaccurate maps, we can assume that Wish has failed to provide accurate maps. I cannot imagine that a Wizard hasn’t tried to create one in the thousands of years that Toril has been populated, after all. Heck, if we are talking magic, Wish is amateur hour when one considers ancient Netheril and the possibility of 10-12th level spells.
This is a great observation. I just generally think a world that poses questions such as “why haven’t wizards fixed this” is more interesting than a world with arbitrary precision measurements and walk-in cancer curing services in every hamlet.