this post was submitted on 20 Jan 2024
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Baldur's Gate 3
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Baldur’s Gate 3 is a story-rich, party-based RPG set in the universe of Dungeons & Dragons, where your choices shape a tale of fellowship and betrayal, survival and sacrifice, and the lure of absolute power. (Website)
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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.
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.