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Sotharsyl
2009-05-19, 05:32 AM
Hello I'm a DM in the planning stages of a campaign and I would greatly apreciate help for the world I am building, the players and I discused about it and they want a world that if Eberron is steampunk with magic this would be cyberpunk with magic, aworld were you would still have a tanker but if let's say he's gotten into adventuring without magic,pure fighter or the like even though I don't think they will chose that,he wouldknow the top 5 archmages so to know when to run away and if he knows his party member is a Dread Necromancer not to roleplay all surprised and shocked when he raises the dead to fight.
So in short a world which has accepted high magic exists, "medium" magic is reacheable and low level magic is everywere that crazy mages who want to destroy the world exists but there are 3 stronger ones which don't and as a last solution if the heroes won't they will stop him.
If the board could please sugest apropriate house rules caster ish cclasses for the NPC maybe evenan alternative sistem if it suits the project, thank you in advance.

Coidzor
2009-05-19, 07:02 AM
So you're looking for a mixture of Eberron and Shadowrun?

Jack_Simth
2009-05-19, 07:20 AM
D&D can do it; just use the Trap rules with beneficial spells - automatic reset, and in some cases periodic trigger do wonders, although the economy gets strange.

Suppose we tier this by spell level for what's available for beneficial traps:

0: Just these three make the world a LOT more palatable:
Cure Minor Wounds means injuries are either very short term or fatal. Anyone who's injured is taken to the local temple, where the injured party gets healed, for free, just by walking him across the trap a few times.
Create Water means that there's a very lot of water available - people can wash up without much hassle, so disease goes way down, and the place smells a little better. A periodic Create Water Trap (every round?) placed up high also leads into modern plumbing just with a tank and a lot of pipes.
Purify Food and Drink means that food doesn't spoil nearly as easily.
Prestidigitation means all food is tasty.
1: This stage doesn't change much, except fashion and housing.
Endure Elements means you don't need to worry about the weather, except in how it affects farming. As a side effect, this means that fashion is based strictly on appearance and social rules - as the girl walking around in a bikini is exactly as fine with freezing snow or desert heat as is the girl walking around in a parka. You still need to worry about hail, lightning, and particularly strong winds, so you still need buildings, but you'll start to see some odd stuff here. Other first level spells don't have much of an impact.
2: Here you get proper elevators, and as much light as you want (which reduces violent crime a fair amount, assuming that there's at least an honest attempt at enforcement)
Levitate traps make for dandy elevators - you step into the chute, and you start going up. Doesn't have much impact on society, other than permitting tall buildings, but quite amusing nonetheless. As each elevator needs it's own Levitate trap, you won't see them in most people's homes, just in places where you've got really rich people, or in places where there's a lot of people - basically anywhere you'd see someone who went to the expense of installing an elevator in modern times.
A Continual Flame trap means that everburning torches cost about the same as a regular torch (once the trap is in place, all you need is a vessel for receiving the effects of the trap) - which means you can line the streets with them, and have one in each corner of each room in your home. When there is good lighting everywhere, violent crooks have a bit more trouble plying their trade. This tends to reduce the violent crime rate. It also causes people to want to clean up more, when they can see all the dirt.
3: This is where society changes. Farming isn't done, except for what amounts to the entertainment of the rich. As farming isn't actually needed, most people are craftsmen, entertainers, or soldiers, rather than being farmers. Whoever controls the traps at this stage controls what society looks like, if they're smart about it. If they're stupid about it, they get smashed in a food riot. In an Evil society (or if you remove the [Evil] descriptor from the spell Animate Dead) nobody living does brute labor - the only living labor is skilled labor.
Create Food and Water changes the world. Significantly. Food is now labor-free - and with the Prestidigitation added in from level 0, it's even tasty. This means that nobody needs to farm. Assuming the person with control of the trap charges a nominal fee (say, 1-9 cp, compared to the 1 sp for a "poor" meal done traditionally) he becomes a cash sink - which is bad; cash needs to flow at least somewhat, or society crashes (it doesn't matter that your food only costs a penny if someone else has all the pennies). So he hires people to do stuff. Whether that's crafting, butlering, dancing, or just standing on the city wall with a sling and some stones looking outwards, he hires people to do stuff. Keep it up long enough, and everyone is paying this guy, and everyone is either working for him or working for someone that works for him. If there's multiples of these traps in an area, there isn't as much of a problem with that - but if all are controlled by the same person, that person is pretty much king if he sets his mind to it. Society looks like whatever the guys who control the no-labor food want it to look like.
Animate Dead is a very icky spell - but potentially removes the need for brute-force labor. If, you know, you can find some way to control all the undead....
Remove Blindness/Deafness and Remove Disease traps mean that everyone is healthy. Nobody stays ill for longer than it takes them to get to morning services at the church.
4: Doesn't change much - poison's stop mattering (due to Neutralize Poison), but things are otherwise the same. Illusory Wall needs an actual caster, but if it's spammable, this means that all walls are decorated (and, due to the nature of the Illusory Wall spell, if the original caster is still around, they can be changed fairly trivially).
5: Crashes the cost of material goods, and can make housing pretty bloody cheap.
Fabricate: Any material mundane good now costs just a hair over 1/3rd list price, because they can be made with no labor beyond materials ... provided the Wizard that made the trap knows how to make it (and Wizards do have Craft as a class skill, plus a really high Intelligence). Everyone has lots of stuff.
Mark of Justice means that caught criminals are either one-time offenders only, or are rich enough to afford a remove Curse spell or similar.
Wall of Stone: Needs the caster on-location, but causes housing to be really fast and easy to make - lay out a stone foundation, cast Wall of Stone to build the walls, ceiling, and floor. A caster has a full building in a day.
Also of note is that this is where you meet the requirements for a Lyre of Building - which means a decently skilled Bard can build a city without too much hassle.
Raise Dead traps mean no worrying about most forms of death... other than how you're weakened, after.
Teleport: is a bit too chancy to actually use in-mass.
6: Crashes the cost of iron (Wall of Iron), and makes travel much faster (wind walk), but doesn't otherwise have an impact.
7: Travel to fixed destinations is now effectively free (Greater Teleport Trap), and you can get wheels that produce an absurd amount of torque for cheap (Reverse Gravity effect on one half of a heavy stone wheel - the heavier, the better) and through that, you get everything that could come with it, but this has surprisingly little effect, because everything you'd use a turning wheel for can already be done, and nobody's had any real need to travel long distances for a long time. Likewise, while Resurrection is superior to Raise Dead, it doesn't have much of an impact, practically speaking.
8: Who do you want to be?
Polymorph Any Object can be used for all sorts of things. The village idiot? Yeah, he now has average intelligence - Polymorph Any Object updates your Int. You also have the little issue that everybody could potentially be exactly what they want to be - just for going through the correct door. As a side effect, you can be Permanently turned into a younger version of yourself. Why bother with old age?
9: True Resurrection. Now the only cause of permanent death is old age or wanting to retire from society. Oh, wait... see 8. Sorry, now the only reason soemone doesn't come back is because they either don't want to, or someone took steps to hide the body.

Sotharsyl
2009-05-19, 07:22 AM
Maybe, Shadowrun is that the one where magic came back and changed some humans into elves and orcs etc, if that's the one I don't want the world to start from a RL Earth base ,I mean they might have magic TVv sets but it won't be let's take Tv set and not power it with electricity but with magic.
Edit: Wow thanks, I'm thinking 1 for everyone, 2 for those with power and money,3 being in the research phase are there any fluff reasons for having casters which don't spend all day making traps,I mean to increase the number of casters as a whole and make spells still worth grinding xp for.

bosssmiley
2009-05-19, 08:09 AM
High Magic world? Google "Transhumanist fantasy" (for the bright shiny future) or possibly "Rifts" (for the dark and dirty one).

More helpfully: do you intend the world to be a magic-rich, anything goes Tippyverse? A low-powered, but magic-abundant Mystara? Or a high-powered, low-heroism Dark Sun setting? The latter practically already is a dystopian cyberpunk/post-apoc setting with magic.

Mechanically. You may want to add partial casting ability (as the paladin, ranger, assassin etc.) to all non-caster classes, or perhaps just allow non-caster levels to stack half with caster levels (as the non-initiator levels stacking rule from Tome of Battle).

Tsotha-lanti
2009-05-19, 08:20 AM
Jack_Smith's post puts me to mind of Michael Moorcock's The Dancers at the End of Time. Great vision of what society looks in a billion years, when everyone has access to what amounts to infinite energy, instant energy-matter conversion, and complete control over energy and matter. Recommended just for the fact it's incredibly fun.

Sotharsyl
2009-05-19, 08:27 AM
Actualy the Dark Sun model would be better,Mystara is looking pretty good also but didn't Dark Sun have the whole post magic apocalypse bacstory, I don't want CandyLand but I also don't want to cast some high level spells and everybody's Mad Max being alwas on the edge of collaspse is good enough for me.

Tsotha-lanti
2009-05-19, 09:00 AM
athas.org (http://athas.org/)

Download and enjoy.

Jack_Simth
2009-05-19, 05:19 PM
Wow thanks, I'm thinking 1 for everyone, 2 for those with power and money,3 being in the research phase are there any fluff reasons for having casters which don't spend all day making traps,I mean to increase the number of casters as a whole and make spells still worth grinding xp for.

The fun part of this:
For the most part, I'm actually assuming that the city in question has maybe one or two traps of each type. Picture "a day in the life" of a commoner-1 in, say, Tier 3:


Dear Diary:
This morning, I got up out of my hut to the sound of melting snow splashing off my skin. It made for some amusing rivulets across the hair on my legs. I then took my wife, my children, and our wooden bowls over to Elhonnia's temple, and stood in line with a few thousand other people doing the same thing. We knelt down at the alter to receive a blessing, gave our tithe of five coppers to the priests for myself, my wife, and my three children, then we took our bowls over to the kitchen for some gruel. It tasted like strawberries today; I think I preferred yesterday's steak flavor. Well, it's off to work.

This afternoon, while cutting timber for the Priest's newest temple, I found Fred. He'd missed morning services two days in a row, and Elhonnia had dealt with him harshly. His feet were actually turning blue where they were in contact with the melting snow! Elhonnia's punishments can be harsh to those who do not worship her. Well, I managed to drag him over to the temple in time, and the priests took pity on him. He couldn't walk, so we had to drag him around the Circle of Repentance for the first two laps, but after that, he was able to crawl around it on his knees, as befits the penitent. By his third lap, it was clear: All had been forgiven; his wounds were healed. Praise be to Elhonnia in Her Mercy.

Afterwards, I finished my work, and received my pay of six coppers. I spent two on a new bowl - one of the ones we have seems to be starting to rot - and put the rest away for tomorrow. I'll need to dip into our savings slightly for tomorrow's Tithe, but that's not a problem, as I've been saving up one copper each day for the last month.

All of the traps are at the Church of Elhonnia. The standard Endure Elements (Extended, effectively 2nd level, for full coverage) is in the hallway just past where Al put in his "tithe" - one cp/person. Everyone goes every day, so there's no worry about it wearing off. Past that is the dining hall - where there's a periodic trigger Create Food and Water trap spitting out gruel into a trough, with a Prestidigitation trap that changes the flavor at random from a long list once per hour; he scoops some up in his bowl and continues on (along with the rest of his family). Fred missed services two day's running, so the Endure Elements wore off - as it was the middle of winter, with snow on the ground, he got frostbite. They took him to church, and dragged him around the "Circle of Repentance" - which is where a Cure Minor Wounds trap is located. He couldn't walk, so he was dragged around it twice. After that, he was sufficiently healed that he could go around it on his own, and Al went back to work - he's in the indirect employ of the church (he's working for someone who's doing construction at the Church's request), and is getting paid basically just enough to get by. He's got some savings, but that amounts to emergency funds - he had to dip into it to replace one of his family bowls. He'll also need to dip into it when his children grow enough that they'll need replacement clothing. The Create Water trap for the public fountain in the courtyard didn't rate a mention. There's exactly one of each type of trap, and they're supporting an entire city. The church controls the traps, so they're the money sink. As they're bright enough to realize that accumulating the cash forever is a really bad idea, they're spending it on projects of various natures (in Al's case, he's helping build a new building for a high-ranking church official).

At 1 cp/person, and, say, 10,000 people per day, those traps have a return of 100 gp/day. An automatic reset trap of Extended Endure Elements (effectively a 2nd level spell, no material components) markets at 6,000 gp; the Create Food and Water trap markets at 15,000 gp; the Cure Minor Wounds trap markets at 500 gp, and the Create Water trap likewise markets at 500 gp. Market price for the traps is 22,000 gp - in this setup, the church made it's money back in 220 days after everything was operational; it took 23 days to Craft all the traps. There may or may not be a Remove Disease or a Remove Blindness/Deafness trap in there (at another 15k each, another 15 day Crafting time each, and another 150 days to reach break-even at market price for a 10,000 person client body). Since then? Pure profit... except that they make sure to spend to keep the money flowing to keep everyone doing actual work for them - and that labor produces useful goods for the church, which have a value. The church gets progressively richer in terms of material wealth (just not ready cash). The average commoner stays exactly where he is.

If you can get the starting capital, one Cleric-5 with Craft Wondrous Item, an appropriate building, and a Wizard-1 helper with Prestidigitation can set this up.

Devils_Advocate
2009-05-19, 11:31 PM
Suggested house rule: Everyone counts as a zero-level caster in every class.

This means that anyone can activate any spell trigger item. Wands, like potions, now serve as a means for spellcasters to sell their magic to non-spellcasters. (Scrolls, on the other hand, are dangerous because they can backfire.)

"The TV was on, showing the morning news. Some self-proclaimed expert was talking about the supposedly looming peak loot crisis and how it wasn’t really as bad as everybody said."
- Tales of MU

Lamech
2009-05-20, 12:50 AM
4: Doesn't change much - poison's stop mattering (due to Neutralize Poison), but things are otherwise the same. Illusory Wall needs an actual caster, but if it's spammable, this means that all walls are decorated (and, due to the nature of the Illusory Wall spell, if the original caster is still around, they can be changed fairly trivially).
Reincarnate? Thats a useful spell. The whole not dying of old age. (Although you'll change bodies...)



9: True Resurrection. Now the only cause of permanent death is old age or wanting to retire from society. Oh, wait... see 8. Sorry, now the only reason soemone doesn't come back is because they either don't want to, or someone took steps to hide the body. A wish trap is cheaper (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/traps.htm#magicDeviceTrapCost). XP costs gp not xp when making traps. I would assume that the wishes be changed at will, but one could set the trap to make components for all sorts of differant things; like the components for a true ressurection trap.

P.S. The wish could be whatever "this piece of paper says" so the wish could be changed at will although safe guards would be needed.

Jack_Simth
2009-05-21, 09:56 PM
Reincarnate? Thats a useful spell. The whole not dying of old age. (Although you'll change bodies...)

Catch: Level/Con loss. You'll still eventually kick the bucket if you don't have a continuing source of XP to gain them back. Also, the dreaded 00 result of "other". For purposes of society at large, though, this doesn't actually have all that much of an impact ... other than that assassins have a bit harder of a job.

The impacts of that particular type of magic that has a lot of metagame components (level loss, con-loss) is way too subject to DM interpertation to say firmly what it'll do.



A wish trap is cheaper (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/traps.htm#magicDeviceTrapCost). XP costs gp not xp when making traps. I would assume that the wishes be changed at will, but one could set the trap to make components for all sorts of differant things; like the components for a true ressurection trap.

P.S. The wish could be whatever "this piece of paper says" so the wish could be changed at will although safe guards would be needed.
The market price is the same (you need 100* the componet cost, and the component for Wish costs 25,000 gp due to the xp-> gp conversion). Granted, a periodic Wish trap could make for a nice factory (even assuming the results are completely fixed on creation, a couple of Eberron Artificers would just need to Wish traps - one that's been upgraded enough that it can make some minor magic item that the artificers can drain of XP, another making the "magical materials" needed for crafting), but... it doesn't really change much from Fabricate, ESPECIALLY because you still need to have people doing stuff regardless.