Do caster out of combat options matter?

[Psyren]

That raises an interesting question: Did I decide to make it matter that some classes have out of combat magic and others don't?

Because I wrote a relatively mainstream setting with flying castles, underwater civilizations, pocket dimensions, planes, and a limited number of links between them. Some of the world building and adventure potential that arose from that is predicated on things like there not being convenient planar portals, commercial teleport services, easily acessible flying critters to carry armored riders, or common herbs to allow people the breath underwater. I didn't do that to screw over noncasters or make having noncombat spells matter, I just didn't consider it because the game already gives the options to do all the stuff right in the PH.

I appreciate that people make settings without these trappings. That's fine, I'm not knocking that in any way. But it's a choice. These are not "handicap" choices; these are fantasy elements.

Alice didn't need 7th level spells to get to Wonderland, nor did the children need Plane Shift to get to Narnia. Nor did Frodo need Teleport to get to Mordor, despite the urgency of growing evil and coming war.

We can't project the settings/choices some DMs make, onto the game as a whole.

^ What Samurai said but I'll add - nobody said alternate routes to spellcasting have to be "convenient." Just attainable. Finding a portal or scroll or a magical creature willing to serve as a mount or a capable NPC could in fact be a huge pain in the donkey relative to having someone who can plane shift on staff. Or they might be equally difficult in entirely different ways. Neither approach locks you into a specific permutation of worldbuilding, especially not one you don't want to be.