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Dervag
2009-12-04, 02:42 PM
For the gang that was interested in D&D army logistics, I'd like to suggest a few references. A good starting point for the mindset with the Dungeonomicon articles. The most relevant one for these purposes is the Economicon (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Dungeonomicon_(DnD_Other)/Economicon).

Also the first post in this thread (http://forum.candlekeep.com/topic.asp?TOPIC_ID=10821), especially the bit about "the turnip economy." Understanding the difference between the "gold economy" where adventurers and nobles live and the "turnip economy" where subsistence farmers and most other commoners live is crucial to understanding the dynamics of how an army can function in D&D.
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To summarize: if there are peasant dirt farmers in D&D at all, and there typically are, then they live on a scale of economics where gold and rubies and such are effectively worthless, because they can't be used for anything they need. They could buy goods in the city... but the city is a long walk away. A peasant who goes to the city with a bag of silver to buy tools is likely to get ambushed and robbed, because he's a 1st level commoner and even the house pets are tougher than he is.

Moreover, subsistence farmers subsist on their crop; they don't have all that much surplus. If I give a farmer a pile of gold for a big pile of wheat, and the next wheat crop doesn't do well, he might well run out of wheat and starves even if he has a pile of gold.

So to a farmer, there are only two commodity types: food (which he produces at the cost of labor) and tools (which are the working capital he uses to make the food). The unit of currency in a subsistence farming economy is food: turnips, loaves of bread, bunches of bananas, things like that. Tools may well be bartered for in direct exchange for food. At best, the food is sold in a marketplace for money which is then immediately traded for tools, before anyone else gets a chance to steal the money. The actual little metal coins stay in the market town; they don't come home to the place where the farmers live.

That has consequences. If I work for a subsistence farmer as a hired hand, I get paid in food and a warm place to sleep, not in silver pieces per week. If I rule over a large territory of dirt farmers, then I have to collect the taxes in food, because they don't have gold pieces. They're growing potatoes, not gold; even if they had any gold to begin with, and if I could keep it from being stolen by bandits or monsters, sooner or later they'd run out of gold to pay taxes with and start having to pay in barley.

Conversely, the cities are full of people who will take money, both because they know more people who they can give it to in exchange for desirable goods and because cities usually have some kind of police force that tries to discourage people from stealing the money. From the point of view of people for whom the standard medium of exchange is the gold piece, dirt farmers are almost irrelevant to the economy, so long as they keep supplying a steady stream of food to the cities and the armies.
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Armies work because (like any large mass of people in a semi-medieval economy) they can receive a large chunk of their pay in food. Thus, they can draw much of their support directly from the turnip economy* and not from the gold economy. And armies can help a lot with the task of keeping the turnip economy stable, because they have the numbers to spread out and patrol large areas of cropland.

Sure, they're not helpful if a vast horde of giant superhuman monsters come charging through, but they're crucial to explaining why orcish raiders and occasional marauding ogres don't destroy all the farm villages. One guy, no matter how powerful, wouldn't be able to deter all the raiders across such a wide area. An army can.

To deal with really dangerous enemies, of course, you need more than an army. You need heroes. Either your army has champions, or it is commanded by feudal overlords with great personal fighting ability, or the kingdom hires powerful adventurers as mercenaries.

The leveled characters are part of the gold economy, not the turnip economy; they're rich enough that they don't need to worry where their next meal is coming from. They can't be supported by the villages, but can be supported by a city where taxes are levied in gold and not in bushels of wheat.

*the "not being stabbed in the face" tax...
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Obviously all armies have Cleric support making food for them as they go. One level 5+ Cleric per a dozen men. Or just a wagon with a resetting Created Food trap. That'd make for quite the interesting target for sabotage missionsTrouble is, one level 5+ Cleric is arguably worth a dozen men in a fight, or more. At that point you might as well just have a martial order of fighting clerics and skip the army. The same goes for Create Food traps or magic bowls that create nutritious gruel or whatever. Such items are expensive enough that it may honestly be more profitable to extort food from whatever peasants are to be found. You have to pay a cleric good gold, or even magic items and the like, to get him to create a trap. Whereas you can pay peasants in the far cheaper currency of "not being stabbed in the face." Clerics are tough enough that that won't work on them.
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Armies of humans?
Please, to raise a competent DnD army you need about 100 slaves and 1 wight under your command.
The one wight raises a small unit of 101 wights within the hour. Raid some small settlements to reinforce that number, with the "head wight" remaining behind as he is your most valuable asset, and well, you now have a town's worth of equipment for your wight army to wear.

After that you establish a Wraith battalion (the wights keep you effective during daylight hours)The danger of doing this kind of thing is that you're not the first person smart enough to think of it, or smart enough to do the math on an exponential growth curve.

Other people know quite well where an exponentially growing army of wights (or other undead) leads: a world where everyone is undead. If I like getting a tan or not eating brains, I will naturally oppose your undead army, and will join with others who do. Assuming the world isn't populated entirely by undead already, the existing social order will be dominated by people who have an unspoken agreement to gang up on any clever little necromancer who decides to try this stunt.

Building your own monster army that converts its victims into more monsters isn't just declaring war on your obvious opponents; it's declaring war on civilization as a whole. That means you get a lot more opposition from organizations that specialize in beating whatever kind of creature you use for your army than you might expect. The disproportionate response results in your army being destroyed before your it reaches a large enough size to be as invincible as you'd like.
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You're forgeting that merchants in the D&D world are all retired dangerous wandering violent guys wich don't really have contact with each other due to wandering monsters in the trade routes, so it's quite hard to stablsih something as a country wide economy.That depends on the world. In some worlds, this is true. In others, you have a well defined "civilization" with a "frontier" and monsters beyond the frontier. The country-wide economies exist in the civilized parts of the world, the areas that were once cleared by powerful heroes (now retired or dead) and kept clear by a smaller number of heroes backed by large armies... because armies can live on territory that doesn't have dungeons full of buried magic items and which is dominated by turnip farmers.

Armies need gold to keep them running, but only minimal XP to provide champions, officers, and spellcaster support. They have high GP costs but low XP costs. By contrast, adventurers need land to adventure on, and are thus found only in XP-rich areas with lots of monsters. Civilized territory is GP-rich but XP-poor, so it supports relatively few adventurers.

Myrmex
2009-12-04, 02:52 PM
I imagine commoners have a small earthenware jug with copper in it buried under the radishes.

For transactions within the village, they trade in what they can grow or raise or make, since transaction costs will be low. I'll trade you carrots for eggs; that sort of thing.

For manufactured good that a level 3 expert made, they'll trade copper or silver, or maybe even gold. They'll get this by taking a cow, horse or pig to market and selling it. Markets are typically only a day's journey from a village. They'll take their goods to market at the time of year when everyone's going to market- when law enforcement is out in force, and there's safety in numbers.

The money they get from selling a high value item at market will be turned into salt and spices and things they can't make themselves, like belt buckles, blades, nails or horseshoes. A little will be buried in the back yard, or kept under the fireplace, since money keeps better than grain, and can be insurance when times get tough, they have a bad harvest, or have to flee marauding orcs.

The velocity of coinage, of course, is dependent on how stable the society is, and how stable it will be in the future. In a reasonably developed area, run by a LN or LG figure, coinage will see more use. Violence & corruption destroys markets.

Dervag
2009-12-04, 03:23 PM
I imagine commoners have a small earthenware jug with copper in it buried under the radishes.

For transactions within the village, they trade in what they can grow or raise or make, since transaction costs will be low. I'll trade you carrots for eggs; that sort of thing.Yes. And within that economy you don't really need a big pile of copper pennies in the village. Speaking idealistically you can run the village like a commune, with everybody doing whatever they're good at, and with the village being collectively responsible for giving any individual enough of an impetus to do their share.

Less idealistically, you can set up a favor economy. The blacksmith will make you a new plow if you agree to dig up ten wheelbarrows full of gravel from the swamp from which he can cook down some more iron*, or if you give him a couple of chickens. He has to hit pieces of iron with a hammer all day... but his family gets a chicken dinner at the end of it, instead of just another big bowl of oatmeal.

Currency is not a helpful abstraction for an economy operating at this level. It might be present, but things work just fine without it, so long as everyone involved plays by the rules. And they do, because this is a small town social dynamic. If you start screwing with the village economy, you will get run out of town on a rail.

*This is actually possible; bog iron is real.
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For manufactured good that a level 3 expert made, they'll trade copper or silver, or maybe even gold. They'll get this by taking a cow, horse or pig to market and selling it. Markets are typically only a day's journey from a village. They'll take their goods to market at the time of year when everyone's going to market- when law enforcement is out in force, and there's safety in numbers.Yes. And I talked about this: the only time most peasant farmers even touch the "gold economy" is in specialized marketplaces (and markettimes), where they typically sell valuable goods for money and then immediately trade it for something else- working capital in the form of tools, or luxury goods if they're doing insanely well that year. They don't just take the money home, with rare exceptions.
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The money they get from selling a high value item at market will be turned into salt and spices and things they can't make themselves, like belt buckles, blades, nails or horseshoes. A little will be buried in the back yard, or kept under the fireplace, since money keeps better than grain, and can be insurance when times get tough, they have a bad harvest, or have to flee marauding orcs.The catch is that these are rich peasants: you've got them buying spices, for God's sake. Rich peasants can only survive in regions guarded by benevolent leadership, and even there they don't always do very well.

If it is common knowledge that most peasants in a region have small stashes of money, you're going to see a lot of people trying to rob peasant villages and escape with the money. Money is portable, and bandits love portable wealth. The same effect applies to things like weapons, and even livestock (livestock isn't easy to carry, but it carries itself, so who cares?).

So keeping very much wealth around a peasant village in forms that are desirable to non-peasants is dangerous unless the village has powerful defenders living immediately nearby. And the amount of danger grows rapidly with the value of the wealth; farmers can probably get away with having a small stash of silver pieces, because it isn't very profitable to run a bandit troop around in the middle of nowhere collecting a dozen silver pieces from a hamlet of several dozen farmers, even if you can do it every day. Give the same farmer a bag of gold, and he many not be able to keep it safe from his own neighbors, let alone from outsiders.
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The velocity of coinage, of course, is dependent on how stable the society is, and how stable it will be in the future. In a reasonably developed area, run by a LN or LG figure, coinage will see more use. Violence & corruption destroys markets."Velocity" of coinage? I'm not sure I understand. Do you mean the rate at which money moves through an economy?

I see we broadly agree about what happens when violence is introduced to a peasant society. The peasants themselves may survive fairly well, as long as the violent types aren't constantly riding through and amusing themselves at the villagers' expense. But they aren't going to be able to hang onto portable wealth if there is any appreciable level of theft going on in the general area.

Myrmex
2009-12-04, 03:59 PM
Yes. And within that economy you don't really need a big pile of copper pennies in the village. Speaking idealistically you can run the village like a commune, with everybody doing whatever they're good at, and with the village being collectively responsible for giving any individual enough of an impetus to do their share.

Less idealistically, you can set up a favor economy. The blacksmith will make you a new plow if you agree to dig up ten wheelbarrows full of gravel from the swamp from which he can cook down some more iron*, or if you give him a couple of chickens. He has to hit pieces of iron with a hammer all day... but his family gets a chicken dinner at the end of it, instead of just another big bowl of oatmeal.

Currency is not a helpful abstraction for an economy operating at this level. It might be present, but things work just fine without it, so long as everyone involved plays by the rules. And they do, because this is a small town social dynamic. If you start screwing with the village economy, you will get run out of town on a rail.

*This is actually possible; bog iron is real.

But this doesn't preclude that, in good times, most peasants will have a small stash of coinage somewhere.


Yes. And I talked about this: the only time most peasant farmers even touch the "gold economy" is in specialized marketplaces (and markettimes), where they typically sell valuable goods for money and then immediately trade it for something else- working capital in the form of tools, or luxury goods if they're doing insanely well that year. They don't just take the money home, with rare exceptions.

Peasants rarely touch the gold economy. Copper and sometimes silver, but they will rarely see 75 gp for their horse. They're likely to get it a few hundred silver and spices/salt.


The catch is that these are rich peasants: you've got them buying spices, for God's sake. Rich peasants can only survive in regions guarded by benevolent leadership, and even there they don't always do very well.

Rich peasants? No, just peasants that occasionally have the chance to do well. For anyone with an intimate dependence on the land, your wealth will fluctuate. When you get the harvest in and can keep your pig fed all winter, then you will have a sudden influx of cash when you sell it that spring. All those coins aren't doing you any good, and they're certainly at risk to theft, so it's best to spend the bulk of them on things you consume or use daily. Spices are a good investment, since they last a long time, and you can downgrade the quality of food you're eating.


If it is common knowledge that most peasants in a region have small stashes of money, you're going to see a lot of people trying to rob peasant villages and escape with the money. Money is portable, and bandits love portable wealth. The same effect applies to things like weapons, and even livestock (livestock isn't easy to carry, but it carries itself, so who cares?).

NPossibly. You'll rarely get peasants in wilderness areas. Homesteaders, settlers, and the like, sure. But not full scale agrarian operations. They'll be protected by a local government. Roving bandits won't fare well unless it's a period of lawlessness or they're an edge community. This, of course, doesn't preclude the local government from taking the peasants' wealth, but as I said, I'm making LN/LG assumptions of leadership. Or at least a LE leader who isn't a fool or has a wise advisor.

Level 1 rogues are much better off risking their lives as an adventurer than risking their lives trying to rob peasants out of copper. Criminals will only target communities that aren't protected, and unprotected communities tend to be the ones too poor to afford anything.

If we're talking Legend of Zelda style peasants, where everyone has rubies buried in their backyard, then yeah, we'll see some hardcore raiding.

But a bag of 20 or 30 copper? A level 1 NPC class may go after that.


So keeping very much wealth around a peasant village in forms that are desirable to non-peasants is dangerous unless the village has powerful defenders living immediately nearby. And the amount of danger grows rapidly with the value of the wealth; farmers can probably get away with having a small stash of silver pieces, because it isn't very profitable to run a bandit troop around in the middle of nowhere collecting a dozen silver pieces from a hamlet of several dozen farmers, even if you can do it every day. Give the same farmer a bag of gold, and he many not be able to keep it safe from his own neighbors, let alone from outsiders.

I doubt any farmers have a bag of gold. But if they did, they could certainly afford the mercenaries or militia or ranger or paladin or cleric or wizard or druid to keep them safe from bandits.

Bandits won't go after stationary targets, anyway, since most of their wealth is too heavy to carry away, and too well protected by local governments. They will instead target travelers & merchants in forests and other lonely places.


"Velocity" of coinage? I'm not sure I understand. Do you mean the rate at which money moves through an economy?

Yeah, it's the rate at which money changes hands. An integral value to anyone designing a stimulus program.


I see we broadly agree about what happens when violence is introduced to a peasant society. The peasants themselves may survive fairly well, as long as the violent types aren't constantly riding through and amusing themselves at the villagers' expense. But they aren't going to be able to hang onto portable wealth if there is any appreciable level of theft going on in the general area.

Violence introduced to any society will have the same results. Instability is bad for the economy.

Riffington
2009-12-04, 04:31 PM
In a lot of medieval societies, nobles did not have much interest in taking taxes in barley. They demanded a set amount of tax (in copper or silver) from each peasant. Those peasants then had to figure out how to get the copper or silver - by selling crops. This doesn't mean the peasants spent much time with the coins - they would probably spend them soon after getting them, so the noble would likely demand the coins right around harvest...

A noble could make the whole thing more efficient by demanding the crops and selling them himself (negotiating a higher price for the lot). But that would kind of defeat the whole point of being a noble.


Trouble is, one level 5+ Cleric is arguably worth a dozen men in a fight, or more. At that point you might as well just have a martial order of fighting clerics and skip the army.

This. If you have multiple level 5 clerics who can be relegated to "support", then the concept of armies (and logistics) goes really wonky. You no longer need food, castles, or a host of other things. Medieval-style armies only work with lower-level combatants.

Dervag
2009-12-05, 04:20 AM
But this doesn't preclude that, in good times, most peasants will have a small stash of coinage somewhere.No, but it's going to be small, because there's a critical threshold above which being a bandit and preying on the peasant becomes profitable even in "good times" (broadly speaking, times when the realm is efficiently policed). For that matter, there's always the risk that the police themselves will take your stash of coinage, for the same reasons the bandits would. After all, the distinction between a nondemocratic government and a bandit troop is often just a matter of organization and longevity...


Peasants rarely touch the gold economy. Copper and sometimes silver, but they will rarely see 75 gp for their horse. They're likely to get it a few hundred silver and spices/salt.Salt, maybe; that's an essential nutrient. But spices? Spices that can't be gathered from the immediate neighborhood aren't normally part of peasant fare for a reason. Any sane peasant can think of better things to spend silver or, gods be praised, gold, than something that you eat once and then never see again. Like multiple milk cows, say.

Of course, there are surely peasants who will buy pepper at its weight in gold (or something cheaper at its weight in silver). But to me, it's questionable whether they're all that much smarter than the ones who spend it all on liquor.

And that's a rare blessing- the peasant who owns their own horse is already on the rich side, let alone the peasant who can sell horses that are surplus to requirements.
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Rich peasants? No, just peasants that occasionally have the chance to do well. For anyone with an intimate dependence on the land, your wealth will fluctuate. When you get the harvest in and can keep your pig fed all winter, then you will have a sudden influx of cash when you sell it that spring.Yes, but to get up into the range where you're in significant contact with anything but the very bottom fringe of the gold economy, the average peasant is likely to need several consecutive good years, without intervening bad years to hurt them. That's far more probable in areas where the peasant can prosper consistently- fertile soil, stable climate, good policing of the surrounding terrain (which requires armies which demand taxes... which cuts into the farmer's profit margin, but generally less so than bandits would).

And then there are the villages that got hit by several bad years in a row, on the opposite end of the bell curve. They're not even touching the gold economy anymore; they're just praying that the barley will do well enough that they'll have something to eat in February this time around.

*As in, you're selling actual horses that might conceivably be bought by adventurers, not big sacks of potatoes that might conceivably be bought by innkeeps who feed adventurers hearty potato stew.
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NPossibly. You'll rarely get peasants in wilderness areas. Homesteaders, settlers, and the like, sure. But not full scale agrarian operations. They'll be protected by a local government. Roving bandits won't fare well unless it's a period of lawlessness or they're an edge community.This is true. On the other hand, the peasants that you're most likely to see in D&D are the ones who live relatively close to the frontier (where foreigners can raid them), or to monster-infested terrain (where monsters can raid them).

The ones who live in a fat land where even the dirt farmers have silver more often than not... they usually only show up in contrast to the ones on the frontier, or as victims if the barbarians manage to redefine the frontier in their favor.


This, of course, doesn't preclude the local government from taking the peasants' wealth, but as I said, I'm making LN/LG assumptions of leadership. Or at least a LE leader who isn't a fool or has a wise advisor.Even such leaders can take it into their heads that they need the money for something important. Sometimes it's even something the peasants benefit from in the long run (building roads or border forts)... but that doesn't make it any easier for them in the short term.

And sometimes, it's not so important; being Good-aligned does not render you immune to folies de grandeur, or to "Greater Good" reasoning. You may not be taxing peasants for gold-plated chamberpots the way an evil tyrant might, but taxing them to decorate cathedrals in honor of the God of Benevolence isn't much different from their point of view.
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Level 1 rogues are much better off risking their lives as an adventurer than risking their lives trying to rob peasants out of copper. Criminals will only target communities that aren't protected, and unprotected communities tend to be the ones too poor to afford anything.

If we're talking Legend of Zelda style peasants, where everyone has rubies buried in their backyard, then yeah, we'll see some hardcore raiding.

But a bag of 20 or 30 copper? A level 1 NPC class may go after that.YES. Exactly. What I'm getting at is that this is a vicious cycle, and peasants remember the cycle. So they don't necessarily even want to enter the gold economy; they remember how Uncle Vanya got his fool head bashed in by a wandering ogre who came barging into the village looking for gold. Poverty can be a defense mechanism, and once people start using defense mechanisms they don't always stop the minute it makes sense.

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In a lot of medieval societies, nobles did not have much interest in taking taxes in barley. They demanded a set amount of tax (in copper or silver) from each peasant. Those peasants then had to figure out how to get the copper or silver - by selling crops. This doesn't mean the peasants spent much time with the coins - they would probably spend them soon after getting them, so the noble would likely demand the coins right around harvest...Yes, and this is another variation on the theme I was talking about where peasants who find themselves in the specie economy (the generalized gold economy, the one that includes silver and maybe even copper coins) will turn around and get back out of it as soon as possible, trading in their "invitation to theft, can only spend on market day" coins in exchange for something more useful.

In this case, the more useful thing they're buying is another year of not being stabbed in the face by Baron von Burbleheimer's pikemen.


A noble could make the whole thing more efficient by demanding the crops and selling them himself (negotiating a higher price for the lot). But that would kind of defeat the whole point of being a noble.Though it does happen. The definition of "the point of being a noble" varies wildly between different civilizations. Especially in societies where the nobles originated as Imperial officials delegated to manage land in the provinces, rather than as local warlords who decided to settle down and protect a particular bit of ground.

Aux-Ash
2009-12-05, 04:53 AM
This is a very interesting topic, so thank you so far for a good read.

However, it seems your text primarily deal with free peasants, those that do own their own land and pay taxes for it. Free peasants did not become particulary common until the later middle ages though. The vast majority were serfs (or equalient). It should be worth mentioning that here in northern europe and in eastern/central europe, Friherre and Freiherr (meaning free man) are noble titles. In other words, with a few exceptions, either you were a noble, priest, a craftsman/burger or a serf.

Serfs don't own land and they don't pay taxes. Instead they pay their tithe to the lord with labour. In exchange for a little plot of land to grow their food on they are required to work on their landlords land. I think 80 full days of work per peasant was standard here in Sweden, though it varied greatly. The vast majority of this would be spent tending to their landlords crops, but it could also be spent cutting down wood, maintaining roads and bridges, working in a quarry or mine, fishing, collecting honey and whatnot (naturally it was the landlords decision, not the serfs).

The vast majority of the food that reached the markets? It was produced by the serfs, yes. But it was owned and sold by the nobles, taken from the surplus they had after having fed their household and their soldiers. The money that circulated virtually never reached the peasants.

Myrmex
2009-12-05, 05:18 AM
No, but it's going to be small, because there's a critical threshold above which being a bandit and preying on the peasant becomes profitable even in "good times" (broadly speaking, times when the realm is efficiently policed). For that matter, there's always the risk that the police themselves will take your stash of coinage, for the same reasons the bandits would. After all, the distinction between a nondemocratic government and a bandit troop is often just a matter of organization and longevity...

Salt, maybe; that's an essential nutrient. But spices? Spices that can't be gathered from the immediate neighborhood aren't normally part of peasant fare for a reason. Any sane peasant can think of better things to spend silver or, gods be praised, gold, than something that you eat once and then never see again. Like multiple milk cows, say.

Of course, there are surely peasants who will buy pepper at its weight in gold (or something cheaper at its weight in silver). But to me, it's questionable whether they're all that much smarter than the ones who spend it all on liquor.

And that's a rare blessing- the peasant who owns their own horse is already on the rich side, let alone the peasant who can sell horses that are surplus to requirements.
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Yes, but to get up into the range where you're in significant contact with anything but the very bottom fringe of the gold economy, the average peasant is likely to need several consecutive good years, without intervening bad years to hurt them. That's far more probable in areas where the peasant can prosper consistently- fertile soil, stable climate, good policing of the surrounding terrain (which requires armies which demand taxes... which cuts into the farmer's profit margin, but generally less so than bandits would).

And then there are the villages that got hit by several bad years in a row, on the opposite end of the bell curve. They're not even touching the gold economy anymore; they're just praying that the barley will do well enough that they'll have something to eat in February this time around.

*As in, you're selling actual horses that might conceivably be bought by adventurers, not big sacks of potatoes that might conceivably be bought by innkeeps who feed adventurers hearty potato stew.
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This is true. On the other hand, the peasants that you're most likely to see in D&D are the ones who live relatively close to the frontier (where foreigners can raid them), or to monster-infested terrain (where monsters can raid them).

The ones who live in a fat land where even the dirt farmers have silver more often than not... they usually only show up in contrast to the ones on the frontier, or as victims if the barbarians manage to redefine the frontier in their favor.

Even such leaders can take it into their heads that they need the money for something important. Sometimes it's even something the peasants benefit from in the long run (building roads or border forts)... but that doesn't make it any easier for them in the short term.

And sometimes, it's not so important; being Good-aligned does not render you immune to folies de grandeur, or to "Greater Good" reasoning. You may not be taxing peasants for gold-plated chamberpots the way an evil tyrant might, but taxing them to decorate cathedrals in honor of the God of Benevolence isn't much different from their point of view.
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YES. Exactly. What I'm getting at is that this is a vicious cycle, and peasants remember the cycle. So they don't necessarily even want to enter the gold economy; they remember how Uncle Vanya got his fool head bashed in by a wandering ogre who came barging into the village looking for gold. Poverty can be a defense mechanism, and once people start using defense mechanisms they don't always stop the minute it makes sense.

I think we are largely in agreement. I would like to clarify a bit- that the majority of peasants are likely in a stable area, but the majority of peasants adventurers run into are edge dirt farmers, harried by raiders & monsters. Also, it's not that a Good or Lawful ruler won't tax the peasants, it's that they'll be more wise in their levies, and more efficient/equitable in where they collect. You can grind the peasants now, but that means they'll make less in the future. A peasant's life really depends on how much the lord wants to take from them, and that depends on the lord's disposition. I could see living under a cold, evil, efficient tyrant as better for the peasant, so long as you get your grain in, than living under a chaotic good knight errant whose army usurps your goods and his heavy taxes for better crusading equipment. I imagine mind flayers run a tight ship.

bosssmiley
2009-12-05, 09:01 AM
Hey Darvag, have you read Life in a Medieval Village by Frances and Joseph Gies? It is an excellent historical source for the turnip economy in D&D.

Also of interest might be the Tao of D&D (http://tao-dnd.blogspot.com/) blog. The guy who writes it has waaaaay too much interest in the economic side of pre-modern societies.

Yahzi
2009-12-05, 12:15 PM
Poverty can be a defense mechanism, and once people start using defense mechanisms they don't always stop the minute it makes sense.
Excellent point.

One way to make this work is to have your PC land owners collect their taxes in food, and have their soldiers agree to work for food. Now you can justify large armies, because even though the 0th level soldiers are kind of ineffective, they're basically free.

Or in other words, there are two economies: silver and gold. And you can't exchange between them.

In my world I go a step further: I create a XP economy and a cash economy. This is really the dividing line in D&D. You can spend money on useless things like castles or armies, and you can spend XP on valuable things like magic and levels.

No D&D economic system will make sense until you figure out where XP comes from. Because wherever it comes from, people are going to be doing as much of that as possible. If leveling is merely the result of study, practice, and training, then your world is going to be flooded with 9+ casters, and it isn't going to look medieval at all.

Check out my worldbook for my idea. I know it's a download, but it's free. :smallsmile:

Dervag
2009-12-05, 03:56 PM
Excellent point.

One way to make this work is to have your PC land owners collect their taxes in food, and have their soldiers agree to work for food. Now you can justify large armies, because even though the 0th level soldiers are kind of ineffective, they're basically free.

Or in other words, there are two economies: silver and gold. And you can't exchange between them.Umm... no? It's not that simple. First of all, there's no reason for "silver" and "gold" to be segregated that much. If you mean the "turnip" and "gold" economies, what you're saying makes more sense, but there's still some overlap, mainly because the people in the gold economy still need goods that are exchanged in the turnip economy. That requires either an endless program of extorting turnip-economy goods from the peasants, which collapses (as it should; it's a form of banditry), or some degree of connection in the economies. Soldiers won't work exclusively for food; they're going to insist on something they can trade for beer and such, or something they can save up for when they retire from the army and go back to the farm.

The trick is that while the turnip and gold economies overlap, they don't overlap perfectly- you cannot just call of a medieval farmer as X sp a week, because he is producing actual food, not abstract units of money.


In my world I go a step further: I create a XP economy and a cash economy. This is really the dividing line in D&D. You can spend money on useless things like castles or armies, and you can spend XP on valuable things like magic and levels.The guys who came up with the "gold" and "turnip" economies did something vaguely similar to this, creating a "magic" economy that is far above the gold economy. The "magic" economy is dominated by beings powerful enough to obtain any amount of gold, gems, or minor magic items they desire using magic. Their currencies are extremely exotic things that cannot be had for money (but might be obtainable for love, by taking it and distilling it into a bottle, if nothing else).

For instance, if genies can create 100 pounds of gold with a wish as a routine action, but cannot create +5 swords, you're not going to be able to buy such a sword from a genie with any amount of gold, even a room full of it. That much gold might buy you a million ordinary swords, but it will not buy you even one +5 sword: to the genie a roomful of gold can be created from nothing over the weekend, but the +5 sword cannot possibly be.

But you just might be able to buy the sword in exchange for the distilled essence of true love or crystallized souls or the raw stuff of chaos, because (hypothetically) those are things the genie cannot create at will. Or you might be able to buy the sword by promising to do the genie a favor, something that would be dangerous or inconvenient for him.

XP plays a similar role in your "Prime" setting, with one major difference: your XP economy stretches all the way down to the low levels, and is to some extent interchangeable with the cash economy.

Riffington
2009-12-05, 04:58 PM
Salt, maybe; that's an essential nutrient. But spices? Spices that can't be gathered from the immediate neighborhood aren't normally part of peasant fare for a reason. Any sane peasant can think of better things to spend silver or, gods be praised, gold, than something that you eat once and then never see again. Like multiple milk cows, say.


I think this is more a matter of degree than of type here. Throughout medieval history, peasants had a number of small luxuries. What herbs would be affordable, they would use - even though it would be eaten once. They had musical instruments, furs, alcohols, etc - spices from the Orient might be prohibitively expensive for most of the middle ages, however. Human nature is the same everywhere: there will be those who spend their surplus wealth on luxuries for immediate gratification, and others who try to save so their child may be/marry a miller, brewer, or priest.

Myrmex
2009-12-05, 06:06 PM
I think this is more a matter of degree than of type here. Throughout medieval history, peasants had a number of small luxuries. What herbs would be affordable, they would use - even though it would be eaten once. They had musical instruments, furs, alcohols, etc - spices from the Orient might be prohibitively expensive for most of the middle ages, however. Human nature is the same everywhere: there will be those who spend their surplus wealth on luxuries for immediate gratification, and others who try to save so their child may be/marry a miller, brewer, or priest.

It's an adaptive mechanism. If Lord Rapington McPillage rides through town every month and take everything you own, you're going to be more likely to spend on consumables that don't last more than a month. Societies with less risk will encourage greater capital investment.

Cuaqchi
2009-12-05, 07:27 PM
In a lot of medieval societies, nobles did not have much interest in taking taxes in barley. They demanded a set amount of tax (in copper or silver) from each peasant. Those peasants then had to figure out how to get the copper or silver - by selling crops. This doesn't mean the peasants spent much time with the coins - they would probably spend them soon after getting them, so the noble would likely demand the coins right around harvest...

This actually a lie. Until the rise of nationalism and national standing armies coinage was exceedingly rare as few jobs would be worth the effort of converting the hard currency into something valuable.

The Gold Economy that is being described was almost non-existant, being a source of payment for large capital projects or when outside of ones local borders. This is all because only the church and the noble class had the resources to enjoy the fruits of hard currency.

The Turnip Economy however was infinate in scope as all activity could be connected to it. For example a church tithes the surrounding populace (Nobles included) anywhere up to 30% of their earnings in food and goods. This collection feeds not only the priests but also allows them to feed the poor, and to 'pay' the craftsman for any maintaince without worrying about exchange of coinage.

Even the Roman Legions, the first true example of a standing army where paid in a combination of bread and coin. With that coin a direct result of pillage and conquest in the lands subjegated, and as a result a losing army was fed but otherwise had to return to their farms and work for themselves.

Another example is Feudal Japan, where the currency was only held by nobles and was in the form of what we would almost consider IOU's. This 'currency' was measured in Rice, specifically the amount of rice required to feed a family for a year. This meant that payment was through both the movement of food and control of farms and land, almost like a Golden Turnip Economy.

Riffington
2009-12-06, 12:10 AM
This actually a lie.

False, sir. The Domesday book, for example, helped the king assess taxes in shillings and pence.

Dervag
2009-12-06, 02:57 PM
Though that raises a question: did he extract all taxes in shillings and pence? Or only taxes on businesses and noble houses, who have enough resources to function in the gold economy? Did his assessors accept taxes in kind- as in, sacks of grain or pigs instead of coins?

It's very convenient for the royal assessors to have records where they keep track of the value of businesses and the expected tax revenue in terms of currency. That's always desirable, for the same reason we like using currency instead of barter: it's easier to keep track of, and it lets you abstract out a wide range of goods in terms of some hypothetical "value number." But that doesn't mean the taxes are always being paid in currency.

Johel
2009-12-06, 03:55 PM
About the taxe issue, there was indeed different types of taxes during the middle age. One of them you seem to have forgotten was the corvée.

Basically, a lord had the right to requisition a peasant for X days each year and make him work at whatever project he needed men for.

The main use was to work the lord's fields, to maintain roads, to cut down forests and to repair castles and public buildings. There were other uses, though.

This being said, these are all excellent points you develop here. :smallsmile:

deuxhero
2009-12-06, 04:08 PM
After all, the distinction between a nondemocratic government and a bandit troop is often just a matter of organization and longevity...


You are thinking of a Republic. A democracy's separation from a bandit troop is that 51% agree to it.

Really, medieval society does not work in fantasy at the very least due to the old question of why in a world where powerful men who can make your head explode (not sure if there a spell to do exactly that, but that isn't the point) are quite common, why is someone is ruling because of his birth.

Johel
2009-12-06, 05:26 PM
Really, medieval society does not work in fantasy at the very least due to the old question of why in a world where powerful men who can make your head explode (not sure if there a spell to do exactly that, but that isn't the point) are quite common, why is someone is ruling because of his birth.

Actually, it's addressed in the Economicon.

Basically, you rule by birth because your family make sure you get access to the training to become a competent fighter/wizard/whatever. Chances are you'll then spend your youth seeking "glory, power, wealth and knowledge" with other adventurers and return when you get tired of it (and are powerful enough to assume the crown).

If you are too incompetent to get adventurer class, then you become an aristocrat, which is basically a mix between diplomat, administrator and warrior, a jack-of-all trade that make you useful as a lord, since you've been raised to lead or at least supervise.

Now, my take would be that adventurers don't want to GOVERN a country. Damn, most of them don't even want to RULE a country !! Kingdoms are just big schemes for adventurers to get what the hell they want and to get it at-will : ale, babes, exotic foods, precious cloths, big house, ancient tomes of forbidden knowledge, rare magic components, magic items... They appoint a royal dude with a lot of local connection, put him in charge and as long as the guy provides them with what they ask, they let him handle the daily problems and pretend to be somebody. Some adventurers will even play along and be respectuous and all, if only for the face. If the adventurers are the moral type, they might also put some restriction to how the kingdom has to be ruled but nothing to complicated.

Now, things get interesting when a King is competent enough to both provide his "pet" adventurers with what they want and make a few bucks on the side. That way, he can maybe have dozens of low-level adventurers and make sure, like some big companies today, that he enlists as much potential talents as soon as possible. By doing this, he makes sure that his heirs will have dozens of powerful people who'll keep them in charge when he dies. And if some monster/adventurer/rival king threaten the dynasty, the King better have enough adventurers under his payroll, the more powerful the better.

Volkov
2009-12-06, 05:28 PM
Does this account for Undead, Construct, Outsider, Plant, and Elemental armies? None of these require sustenance. Well the plants do, but they can nourish themselves with the sun, well most of them can. This really cuts down on the cost of logistics. As you no longer need to supply food. Ammunition for ranged weapons will still be needed, but anyone who can get these can use magic to make arrows. And magic can be used for weapon and armor maintenance, which may not be needed depending on what type of creature your using in the first place. The only problem is that undead usually need money to make, and require a few clerics to control, and constructs are almost always quite expensive. Outsiders and Elementals though are a different matter.

Mike_G
2009-12-06, 05:35 PM
Does this account for Undead, Construct, Outsider, Plant, and Elemental armies? None of these require sustenance. Well the plants do, but they can nourish themselves with the sun, well most of them can.

Most, if not all of these fall under the "magic/wish/favor economy" rather than the "turnip economy."

Sure, you don't have to feed the undead, but the material cost to create them would feed a mercenary bowman for quite some time. Constructs would be expensive to build, Outsiders must be summoned, which is the magic economy, and so on.

If you are a local lord and have domain over a hundred square miles of farmland, you can get some guys to carry pikes and crossbows in return for what you can squeeze from your peasants. Good luck collecting taxes in gold or rubies or the blood of virgin unicorns or spell components or XP.

Johel
2009-12-06, 05:40 PM
Does this account for Undead, Construct, Outsider, Plant, and Elemental armies? None of these require sustenance.

Good point.

Outsiders and Elementals will probably be more of a "leasure" economy : they will want things that they consider luxury.
That can be a tasty precious gem for your average earth elemental (what ? They don't need to feed, that doesn't mean they can't...) or a orphan's smile for your average angel... or the same orphan's tears of agony and despair for your local fiend.
Or you could somehow bind them to your service with threats. My guess is, if they escape alive, that tactic won't work well in the long run.

Constructs require roughly the same as siege weapons or mindless Undeads : a bit of maintenance and a few spare parts, just in case.

Intelligent undeads may have needs but that either falls into the "leasure" economy bit or into the "evil-aligned food requirement" like blood, souls, ect...

Plants... I'd treat them like animals or vermins : most of them are mindless or not very smart, after all. They will need food and that's it.

Volkov
2009-12-06, 05:43 PM
Most, if not all of these fall under the "magic/wish/favor economy" rather than the "turnip economy."

Sure, you don't have to feed the undead, but the material cost to create them would feed a mercenary bowman for quite some time. Constructs would be expensive to build, Outsiders must be summoned, which is the magic economy, and so on.

If you are a local lord and have domain over a hundred square miles of farmland, you can get some guys to carry pikes and crossbows in return for what you can squeeze from your peasants. Good luck collecting taxes in gold or rubies or the blood of virgin unicorns or spell components or XP.
Karranth in eberron's entire army is more or less comprised of undead. The undead army concept works.

Now let's say there's an evil cabal of high to epic level liches, all of which are sorcerers, necromancers, or clerics, and they rule a mineral rich nation. If they want to start a world war, will they rely on undead or their people?

Volkov
2009-12-06, 05:44 PM
Good point.

Outsiders and Elementals will probably be more of a "leasure" economy : they will want things that they consider luxury.
That can be a tasty precious gem for your average earth elemental (what ? They don't need to feed, that doesn't mean they can't...) or a orphan's smile for your average angel... or the same orphan's tears of agony and despair for your local fiend.
Or you could somehow bind them to your service with threats. My guess is, if they escape alive, that tactic won't work well in the long run.

Constructs require roughly the same as siege weapons or mindless Undeads : a bit of maintenance and a few spare parts, just in case.

Intelligent undeads may have needs but that either falls into the "leasure" economy bit or into the "evil-aligned food requirement" like blood, souls, ect...

Plants... I'd treat them like animals or vermins : most of them are mindless or not very smart, after all. They will need food and that's it.

They don't need to be fed if they are true mobile plants and not walking fungi due to photosynthesis, which makes an army of treants a formadible force. Just so long as the enemy isn't equipped with flamethrowers. Then your druidic army of animal and plant friends is screwed to the nine hells and back.

clockworkmonk
2009-12-06, 05:49 PM
Well, one thing to consider is the base for the economy. In Rokugon, (Legend of the Five Rings) the base unit of currency, the koku, is based on the value of 5 bushels of rice. So as a unit, it varies from year to year. The only people who really use the koku though are the nobles, the peasants are more likely to find value in the rice and through barter.
Also, the value of the Koku varies from clan to clan, as each clan mints its own. And it is possible to exchange a koku for a bushel of rice.

Johel
2009-12-06, 06:20 PM
They don't need to be fed if they are true mobile plants and not walking fungi due to photosynthesis, which makes an army of treants a formadible force. Just so long as the enemy isn't equipped with flamethrowers. Then your druidic army of animal and plant friends is screwed to the nine hells and back.

Meh...

Treants are intelligent. And more than humans, even so.
While all their strict material needs are answered by simply sipping water and taking a sunbath, they might fall into the "leasure" economy : they won't fight unless you can give them something worth their time.

That can be luxury food... or simply a moral cause to fight for, such as "defend the forest because it's your moral duty to protect your lesser brothers..."

Volkov
2009-12-06, 06:26 PM
Meh...

Treants are intelligent. And more than humans, even so.
While all their strict material needs are answered by simply sipping water and taking a sunbath, they might fall into the "leasure" economy : they won't fight unless you can give them something worth their time.

That can be luxury food... or simply a moral cause to fight for, such as "defend the forest because it's your moral duty to protect your lesser brothers..."

A druidic circle could lead teh army of Treants and other plants, Magical beasts, Fey, and Animals to assault an highly industrial nation, A la lord of the rings.

Yahzi
2009-12-06, 07:31 PM
there's no reason for "silver" and "gold" to be segregated that much.
I meant it as a game mechanism. Dividing it into two currencies lets the DM/players do easier accounting. (Yes I meant counting turnips in silver :smallbiggrin:) In other words, PC rulers get to collect their taxes in silver and gold. The silver part is stuff they get from peasants and tradesmen, and they can only spend it on stuff peasants and tradesmen can make.

The gold is cash they get from merchants and other nobles. They can spend it on magic items and other things like that. People with class levels are going to want to be paid in gold.

I actually did this in a GURPS game and it worked great - the players (who were rich nobles) got most of their cash in "barter points" which they could only spend on stuff their own people made, and a small percentage in gold which they could spend on stuff made outside of their barony.

Now of course there's some overlap, but as DM you don't care if your players want to spend gold on food. You only care when they try to spend food on magic items.



The guys who came up with the "gold" and "turnip" economies did something vaguely similar to this, creating a "magic" economy that is far above the gold economy.
F&K's stuff is great, but I feel that their magic economy is too far above the gold economy to really enter play a lot. Plus, an awful lot of abuse can happen down in the gold economy, with magic items that cost less than 15K.

And they didn't really iron out their magic economy ideas, or show how they relate to ordinary adventurer's lives. I feel my XP economy solves those problems.


XP plays a similar role in your "Prime" setting, with one major difference: your XP economy stretches all the way down to the low levels, and is to some extent interchangeable with the cash economy.
Neatly addressing your concerns about how they should overlap. :smallbiggrin:

I wish I could get more people to read the World of Prime and let me know what they think. It's been working really well in my local game; the players like making those resource-allocation choices, and the world seems to make a lot of sense to them.

Oslecamo
2009-12-06, 07:57 PM
Really, medieval society does not work in fantasy at the very least due to the old question of why in a world where powerful men who can make your head explode (not sure if there a spell to do exactly that, but that isn't the point) are quite common, why is someone is ruling because of his birth.

Let's put it this way.

Country leaders are relatively few.
Dudes with guns are a dime a dozen.
Guns do blow up heads.
Yet, country leaders are still there, leading and stuff.

The pen is mightier than the sword, because the sword wielding dudes rarely have the wits to want to rule a country, so they take orders as long as the rulers supply them with good food, money and diversion.

Knaight
2009-12-06, 08:35 PM
Sure, but said guys with guns can be killed off by any other guy with a gun. Or some guy at a bar with a knife, or an angry person in a car. Where said 12th level fighter in D&D will bear the crap out of guards and violent civillians. They put themselves at a much lower risk, because they are not a dime a dozen, they are few and very, very hard to deal with for everyone else. Casters are the same, even more so.

Myrmex
2009-12-06, 10:33 PM
Hereditary leaders lead for the following potential reasons in D&D:
1. It's Scrubville, where the most powerful person in the kingdom is a level 5 fighter, and all the king's men can easily put him down. This is dirt-farm territory that nothing carries about.

2. Hereditary rulers get access to training that lets them be powerful, such as becoming a caster, or really sweet magic items. Barons inherited castles, which meant that even if they were rather incompetent swordsmen, they were still well protected. Now the rulers get things like scrying crystals and the like.z

3. Hereditary rulers inherit some kind of template that lets them rule, or spellcasting.

4. Hereditary rule because people follow them. A badass level 12 fighter follows a level 3 aristocrat because the fighter believes in honor and duty. There are also a dozen other level 12s who follow for the same reason, and would be quick to put down an insurrection. The leader keeps enough people on payroll at any one time to prevent hostile take over.

5. The gods will it.

Volkov
2009-12-07, 07:34 AM
Any way, in a new campaign of mine, I'm having the war between the Chaotic and Lawful start once more due to vecna's mechanizations. Which of the sides should possess the upper hand? And yes, this war includes the celestials too, the archons are waging war upon the eladrins as well.

Dervag
2009-12-08, 05:11 PM
I actually did this in a GURPS game and it worked great - the players (who were rich nobles) got most of their cash in "barter points" which they could only spend on stuff their own people made, and a small percentage in gold which they could spend on stuff made outside of their barony.I think using barter points makes more sense than using silver. Barter points are a sort of convenient abstraction where it's obvious you're talking about goods that physically exist- actual turnips and lumber and man-hours of unpaid labor. Silver implies physical silver that people can steal flowing around the economy, rather than stuff you can't steal without a train of pack mules and a lot of time on your hands.


Now of course there's some overlap, but as DM you don't care if your players want to spend gold on food. You only care when they try to spend food on magic items.Agreed.


F&K's stuff is great, but I feel that their magic economy is too far above the gold economy to really enter play a lot. Plus, an awful lot of abuse can happen down in the gold economy, with magic items that cost less than 15K.

And they didn't really iron out their magic economy ideas, or show how they relate to ordinary adventurer's lives. I feel my XP economy solves those problems.I see what you're saying, but they want their magic economy to make sense at the high-to-epic level, where physical XP becomes a bit awkward as a currency because of the sheer quantity of the stuff you need to get anything done.

But you could run a version of the magic economy off of physical XP easily enough; the trick is that there's every reason to include other 'magic currencies' that are more valuable per unit mass than the relatively mundane 'elemental magic' that is the physical XP substance.


Any way, in a new campaign of mine, I'm having the war between the Chaotic and Lawful start once more due to vecna's mechanizations. Which of the sides should possess the upper hand? And yes, this war includes the celestials too, the archons are waging war upon the eladrins as well.Well, since this is supposed to be a logistics thread, my natural inclination is to give the Lawfuls the upper hand; they're organized.

Oslecamo
2009-12-08, 05:19 PM
I see what you're saying, but they want their magic economy to make sense at the high-to-epic level, where physical XP becomes a bit awkward as a currency because of the sheer quantity of the stuff you need to get anything done.


Nitpick: their magic economy doesn't make sense. Before you needed to bind efreetis(of wich are a limited number, so if everybody was trying to bind them, chances aren't that you weren't geting anything).

With their system you can just bindwhatever you please, take their souls, and get filthy rich whitout risking anything! Or even easier, farm creatures, and take their souls! Hurrah! They made D&D even more broken!

fusilier
2009-12-08, 07:08 PM
This is a very interesting topic, so thank you so far for a good read.

However, it seems your text primarily deal with free peasants, those that do own their own land and pay taxes for it. Free peasants did not become particulary common until the later middle ages though. The vast majority were serfs (or equalient). It should be worth mentioning that here in northern europe and in eastern/central europe, Friherre and Freiherr (meaning free man) are noble titles. In other words, with a few exceptions, either you were a noble, priest, a craftsman/burger or a serf.

Serfs don't own land and they don't pay taxes. Instead they pay their tithe to the lord with labour. In exchange for a little plot of land to grow their food on they are required to work on their landlords land. I think 80 full days of work per peasant was standard here in Sweden, though it varied greatly. The vast majority of this would be spent tending to their landlords crops, but it could also be spent cutting down wood, maintaining roads and bridges, working in a quarry or mine, fishing, collecting honey and whatnot (naturally it was the landlords decision, not the serfs).

The vast majority of the food that reached the markets? It was produced by the serfs, yes. But it was owned and sold by the nobles, taken from the surplus they had after having fed their household and their soldiers. The money that circulated virtually never reached the peasants.

Thanks Auf-aux. Would a lord be expected to provide tools and other necessary items to the serfs (which could effectively be paid for with additional labor)? I ask because I was thinking about itinerant craftsmen. They would probably rather deal in small currency, than have to cart bushels of grain around with them. While cobblers and tinkers would probably accept a meal for their services, eventually they'll get full, and they may need to save up money to buy a new hammer from the blacksmith two towns over. So I suspect that most free peasants would have some small reserve of cash that they gained when they sold their goods at market.

Thieves were caught and hanged, even among peasants.

Devag, your argument that peasants would immediately exchange money for tools or some other good to prevent theft doesn't really make any sense. Instead of money to steal thieves now have tools and goods to steal, which can be converted back into money. Wealth is wealth. Unless it's invested directly in something like real-estate it can be stolen (and for that matter even land can be stolen), or at has to be consumed immediately (which at this tech level pretty much means it's a perishable food).

However there are problems with systems like D&D. Historically, sneaking into a peasant's hut trying to dig up the money they've buried in the floor (which is probably dirt anyway), you would run the risk of having your skull bashed in by a staff, or maybe even an axe! In D&D that's not really a threat for any competent character.

Free-peasants on the frontier without the protection of a feudal lord, would have to be competent enough to defend themselves from raiders, wouldn't they? At the very least through some sort of militia, and the ability to quickly react to a raid. If the enemy doesn't want a fight they usually abandon slow moving livestock and goods (unless they're particulary vicious like the Comanches). Frontiersmen would probably see very little coinage, and, as you suggest, probably rely primarily on barter. But they must of some sort of good to barter, and it can't always be perishable -- gift-giving economies were actually more common in "tribal" like societies.

Brief description of gift-giving economy:
Let's say person A is a good farmer, but a lousy fisherman. Person B is the opposite: a good fisherman, but a poor farmer. Chances are when the crop comes in person A will have plenty of grain to spare, but fish could be out of season. Person A will give grain to person B as a "gift." Person A expects to be given a gift back when he is in trouble, but there isn't any requirement to do so (but somebody who doesn't "gift back" can earn a reputation for being stingy, and then the community might shun him/her). It's mostly about the survival of the community. When all/most of your goods are perishable/seasonal, this kind of arrangement is necessary, because barter won't work.

Anyway, it's an interesting discussion. Most peasants' wealth is not going to be in hard currency, but that doesn't mean they lack wealth altogether. Likewise, I believe there were usually official "exchange rates" when it came to collecting taxes, which allowed tax collectors to accept grain and other goods that can be exchanged for money. Sometimes tributes were expected to be paid in certain goods, such as grain or luxury items. Armies on the march would often simply requisition supplies from the local populace, and soldiers could be paid in coin, but often it was in loot secured from the enemies baggage train, or the sacking of a town/city.

What's most interesting is how to play these situations in the D&D universe, which is rather coinage heavy, and prices seem inflated.

Dervag
2009-12-09, 03:41 AM
This is a very interesting topic, so thank you so far for a good read.

However, it seems your text primarily deal with free peasants, those that do own their own land and pay taxes for it. Free peasants did not become particulary common until the later middle ages though. The vast majority were serfs (or equalient)...Serfs don't own land and they don't pay taxes. Instead they pay their tithe to the lord with labour. In exchange for a little plot of land to grow their food on they are required to work on their landlords land..

The vast majority of the food that reached the markets? It was produced by the serfs, yes. But it was owned and sold by the nobles, taken from the surplus they had after having fed their household and their soldiers. The money that circulated virtually never reached the peasants.Forgot to reply to this. Yes, it's all true, but taxing serfs in labor is functionally equivalent to taxing them in food. Serfs are near the bottom of the "turnip economy," with virtually no contact with the money economy. Free peasants (and especially the craftsmen who associate with them) tend to be near the top; they see money on a semi-regular basis even if it isn't the main medium of exchange in their lives.

The intersection between the turnip and gold economies has drawn a lot of attention in this discussion, so the free peasants who live there get a lot of notice.


Nitpick: their magic economy doesn't make sense. Before you needed to bind efreetis(of wich are a limited number, so if everybody was trying to bind them, chances aren't that you weren't geting anything).

With their system you can just bindwhatever you please, take their souls, and get filthy rich whitout risking anything! Or even easier, farm creatures, and take their souls! Hurrah! They made D&D even more broken!The catch is that this requires an investment of time and labor by high-level characters, and one that there's no shortcut for. The problem is not that characters can earn currency they use to buy things, it's when they can do so easily, out of proportion to the value of the goods the currency will buy them.

It would not be hard to calibrate the price of souls such that it is appropriate, I think.


Devag, your argument that peasants would immediately exchange money for tools or some other good to prevent theft doesn't really make any sense. Instead of money to steal thieves now have tools and goods to steal, which can be converted back into money. Wealth is wealth.No, it's not. It's really not, and the main reason is weight. If a blacksmith does some work for a nobleman and is paid half a pound of gold, I can steal that gold easily enough. But if before I get to it, he uses that half pound of gold to buy a contract for half a ton of iron ore, I'm out of luck. I can't just walk away with several hundred pounds of rocks the way I can with a bit of gold. Of course, that's an extreme example, but there are others. Big barrels of smoked hams and other long-lasting, high nutritional value foods, for instance. Valuable to the owner, but not very cost-effective to steal, because they are heavy.

Moreover, goods, unlike money, are not infinitely liquid. I cannot spend them just anywhere; I have to go find a person who wants the specific item I'm carrying. That limits my options, increases the risk that I'll be caught with Farmer Bob's tools, and generally forces me to fence my stolen goods through someone else... which cuts into my profit margin on the theft. I'd rather steal 15 sp worth of silver pieces than 15 sp worth of tools that some merchant is willing to buy for 12 sp.

"Able to be stolen in theory" does not equate to "can be stolen easily and profitably." It takes a well organized band of raiders with plenty of transport to loot heavy metal tools and large stockpiles of foods... and raiders who bring their own wagons are vulnerable to defending cavalry patrols.


Brief description of gift-giving economy...:Oh, of course; the gift economy is really just another way to implement the turnip economy. It still amounts to barter, of course; the main difference is that many of the negotiations are implicit and that you're doing a lot of futures trading and bartering of services. In effect, you trade X now for the probability of Y later, or maybe Z a month after that, or... you get the idea.


What's most interesting is how to play these situations in the D&D universe, which is rather coinage heavy, and prices seem inflated.Those prices are part of the gold economy- what you see in the cities where the currency stays, and in boom towns where essential goods are mostly imported rather than being made from scratch by the local dirt farmers. Very little of that currency goes to the rural laborers at the bottom of the economy, and very little of that stays there.

Oslecamo
2009-12-09, 11:46 AM
The catch is that this requires an investment of time and labor by high-level characters, and one that there's no shortcut for. The problem is not that characters can earn currency they use to buy things, it's when they can do so easily, out of proportion to the value of the goods the currency will buy them.

It would not be hard to calibrate the price of souls such that it is appropriate, I think.

Get a trap of planar binding, with a trap of magic circle, a soul capture trap and a insta kill trap on the midle. Kinda expensive, but by no means inacessible, and then you're geting a soul every 6 seconds.

That's 15000 souls per day. Each one worth 6000 gold, assuming you're geting 6HD creatures. That's 90 millions gold! If you just have a single soul trap line. May as well start growing radishes, because souls will be cheaper than air in no time!


Heck, but you don't even need that. Butchers will hapily start collecting their animal's souls before killing them.

So, you would need to make souls as cheap as meat. Wich kinda defeats the initial point.



"Able to be stolen in theory" does not equate to "can be stolen easily and profitably." It takes a well organized band of raiders with plenty of transport to loot heavy metal tools and large stockpiles of foods... and raiders who bring their own wagons are vulnerable to defending cavalry patrols.


Yoh, gawd, I heard you liked holding big robberies, so we put your holdings into a bag of holding so you can do some holding while holding.

Encumbrance is indeed the bane of a lot of criminals, but in D&D verse, there's plenty of ways to overcome it.

Sliver
2009-12-09, 11:55 AM
Encumbrance is indeed the bane of a lot of criminals, but in D&D verse, there's plenty of ways to overcome it.

Unless you are an NPC with NPC wealth and not so high level and you don't want to waste all your money on a magical bag so you could steal some farmer's tools..

fusilier
2009-12-09, 06:30 PM
No, it's not. It's really not, and the main reason is weight. If a blacksmith does some work for a nobleman and is paid half a pound of gold, I can steal that gold easily enough. But if before I get to it, he uses that half pound of gold to buy a contract for half a ton of iron ore, I'm out of luck. I can't just walk away with several hundred pounds of rocks the way I can with a bit of gold. Of course, that's an extreme example, but there are others. Big barrels of smoked hams and other long-lasting, high nutritional value foods, for instance. Valuable to the owner, but not very cost-effective to steal, because they are heavy.

Moreover, goods, unlike money, are not infinitely liquid. I cannot spend them just anywhere; I have to go find a person who wants the specific item I'm carrying. That limits my options, increases the risk that I'll be caught with Farmer Bob's tools, and generally forces me to fence my stolen goods through someone else... which cuts into my profit margin on the theft. I'd rather steal 15 sp worth of silver pieces than 15 sp worth of tools that some merchant is willing to buy for 12 sp.

"Able to be stolen in theory" does not equate to "can be stolen easily and profitably." It takes a well organized band of raiders with plenty of transport to loot heavy metal tools and large stockpiles of foods... and raiders who bring their own wagons are vulnerable to defending cavalry patrols.

Well, I kind of see what you're saying, but don't totally agree. These kinds of commodities will not depreciate in price very much, and furthermore there will be some demand for them, if they are utilitarian in nature. Besides, selling a tool that you stole for *any* amount is still a good deal -- the thief pays nothing. Remember, quite often thieves would steal ladles, pots, candlesticks, whatever had the slightest amount of value.

Secondly, your example of a half-ton of coal can still be stolen. Oh it will take a wagon and some friends, but the coal can't be secured as easily as some coins. Nor can it be easily hidden, especially if you intend to use it -- as a blacksmith would. Furthermore, what's so suspicious about a cart-load of coal that's going to make the guards stop you? How would the gendarmes even know that somebody had stolen some coal? A few hours head start and it could be sold, used, or stashed somewhere. Also the coal is obvious wealth (like tools and livestock), it is usually visible to passers-by. A few coins stashed somewhere don't stick out. A thief would have to have some sort of magical knowledge of the location of money to steal only money from someone's hut. Admittedly, something like coal, livestock, or a large tool (like a plow), can't be taken with a simple snatch and grab or cut-purse/pickpocket operation.

Being robbed while traveling was always a danger, because travellers had to carry their wealth with them. This I imagine is the main danger with peasants having money. Not the stashing it in their huts, but the getting it from the fair to home. For that matter, there's a danger of losing the money at the fair to thief even if they did intend to spend it immediately.

Nonetheless, I believe that peasants should have very little money, it needs to be spent on commonplace items as they wear out -- although certain times of the year or in a good year, they may have a bit more. It shouldn't amount to much. I just feel your position is overstated.

fusilier
2009-12-09, 06:37 PM
I'd rather steal 15 sp worth of silver pieces than 15 sp worth of tools that some merchant is willing to buy for 12 sp.

Specifically towards this. Would you rather starve than steal a tool that could be sold or bartered for food a town over?

Not all thieves can be big time bank robbers -- there is such a thing as petty theft. It's not going to make you a millionaire, but you might survive, and also not draw too much attention. The sheriff's not going to invest too much of his incredibly limited resources, when the occasional tool, bucket of coal, or sheep goes missing.

Mike_G
2009-12-09, 06:51 PM
Specifically towards this. Would you rather starve than steal a tool that could be sold or bartered for food a town over?

Not all thieves can be big time bank robbers -- there is such a thing as petty theft. It's not going to make you a millionaire, but you might survive, and also not draw too much attention. The sheriff's not going to invest too much of his incredibly limited resources, when the occasional tool, bucket of coal, or sheep goes missing.

Nobody's saying that people don't steal big, bulky items and resell them

It's just that it's more work for less payoff, and goods are harder to hide, transport and fence than good old fashioned cash. Given a choice, a bandit will mug a peasant returning from market with a big smile and an empty wagon, expecting a bag of silver that the peasant made from selling his turnips than mug a similar peasant with a wagon full of heavy, hard to fence goods.

Vikings liked to hit churches because of the concentration of portable wealth. A few jeweled mitres and Bibles are an easier haul than a few sheaves of wheat from the next farm over.

One of the keys to security is to make it difficult enough to rob you that a thief will rob the next guy instead.

Johel
2009-12-09, 07:12 PM
Any way, in a new campaign of mine, I'm having the war between the Chaotic and Lawful start once more due to vecna's mechanizations. Which of the sides should possess the upper hand? And yes, this war includes the celestials too, the archons are waging war upon the eladrins as well.

Lawful will be able to hold their own against a vastly superior number of Chaotic foes, what with the lack of organization and internal bickering of the latter.

Now, we are talking Outsiders : this changes the rules of logistic big times.

Most of these guys have Greater Teleport at-will, which means battle will be a lot less easy to handle, with movement a lot less predictable. Also, anybody who doesn't have Greater Teleport at-will is a sitting duck waiting to be kill and can therefor only be garrison, as it's too long to transport him to the battlefield.

This also make fortresses nearly impossible to hold, unless you got somebody to cast Dimensional Lock on the whole area. Fortresses are going to rely on small, narrow rooms, most of them isolated with no access but Greater Teleport (which is impossible unless somebody brought you inside once before or showed you the room through scrying).

Lawful people, if they can divide their enemies, coordinate quick teleportation strikes and maintain communication lines, will win easily even in 1:100 situation, as they'll use local tactical superiority to crush the disorganized groups one after another.

Chaotic people can win if they stay grouped as one, single, cohesive block where their usual problems won't be too much of a weight.

Karoht
2009-12-09, 08:35 PM
Loving this thread BTW.


In a lot of medieval societies, nobles did not have much interest in taking taxes in barley. They demanded a set amount of tax (in copper or silver) from each peasant. Those peasants then had to figure out how to get the copper or silver - by selling crops. This doesn't mean the peasants spent much time with the coins - they would probably spend them soon after getting them, so the noble would likely demand the coins right around harvest...

A noble could make the whole thing more efficient by demanding the crops and selling them himself (negotiating a higher price for the lot). But that would kind of defeat the whole point of being a noble.No, that would make him an intelligent noble, and this is precisely what a smart noble would do. Mind you, the higher price for the lot might be translated into another good like weaponry and armor or the skills of some trades person such as a bowyer and fletcher VS a sack of coins. More to the point, the intelligent noble who now finds himself with a surplus of barley, beyond what he needs to feed his household and his forces, probably either stored it, or made liquor out of it. This is again what separated smart nobles from complete fools.


This. If you have multiple level 5 clerics who can be relegated to "support", then the concept of armies (and logistics) goes really wonky. You no longer need food, castles, or a host of other things. Medieval-style armies only work with lower-level combatants.This is largely true, mind you such characters are not prevelant. Remember, when you start at level 1 (any class) it took your entire life to get to that point. Day's or even hours later, you might be level 2. But the point is, how many people do you think lived to survive to level 1? Or level 2? Or 5? How many level 20's do you think were ever running around? How long would it take a level 1 commoner to reach level 20 (commoner) with no adventuring?
Those clerics, lets say are aged around 22. They were level 1 at age 20. They spent their entire lives training in the divine arts as well as combat, to get to that point. Wizards are an even better example of this.

Riffington
2009-12-09, 08:38 PM
Lawful will be able to hold their own against a vastly superior number of Chaotic foes, what with the lack of organization and internal bickering of the latter.

Sometimes. Other times, determined Chaotics can hold their own against a vastly superior number of Lawful foes, what with the predictable reactions, lack of flexibility, and lumbering bureaucracy of the latter.

Guerrilla warfare often does well against large disciplined conventional armies, for example. Proper counterinsurgency requires special flexible commanders, but it's often hard for those kind of unconventional thinkers to get through the ranks to become commanders in the first place.

fusilier
2009-12-10, 12:08 AM
Nobody's saying that people don't steal big, bulky items and resell them

It's just that it's more work for less payoff, and goods are harder to hide, transport and fence than good old fashioned cash. Given a choice, a bandit will mug a peasant returning from market with a big smile and an empty wagon, expecting a bag of silver that the peasant made from selling his turnips than mug a similar peasant with a wagon full of heavy, hard to fence goods.

Vikings liked to hit churches because of the concentration of portable wealth. A few jeweled mitres and Bibles are an easier haul than a few sheaves of wheat from the next farm over.

One of the keys to security is to make it difficult enough to rob you that a thief will rob the next guy instead.

Yes, I'm not disagreeing with most of what you say. But the argument from Dervag appears to be that coins are the only thing worth stealing. My counter is that coins are also far easier to secure (i.e. protect from theft) than large bulky items.

You would agree?

. . . and goods are harder to hide, transport and fence than good old fashioned cash.

So while coins might be easier to carry off, they would be harder to steal in the first place, because they're less obvious and harder to find (excepting at markets where people would be carrying the money on them). Even if there's only peasants to protect them -- assuming, as I am, that peasants don't have a lot of money -- such small amounts of money could easily be hidden.

Goods are not necessarily as hard to hide as you might think. Whose to say you didn't buy that sheep a week ago at a fair, or you didn't chop that pile of wood yourself? (OK, livestock can be marked - tools can be marked but those marks can be removed). Whereas some peasant spending a lot more money than somebody in his station should wouldn't be suspicious?!? You would have to have the right connections to ditch that money, or be able to act like a merchant or noble (which could get you executed).

So why wouldn't peasants keep some money? They're not going to have much, it's not going to be obvious that they have it, and if there are more lucrative targets like churches, why would raiders bother? If people are willing to raid peasants for what little coin they may have, then wouldn't they be willing to raid them for what other wealth they have, like livestock, tools, and grain?

fusilier
2009-12-10, 12:12 AM
A friend just pointed this out to me:

The Seven Samurai

Yahzi
2009-12-10, 12:23 AM
A friend just pointed this out to me:

The Seven Samurai
One of the best exchanges of movie dialogue ever:

Peasant: "Sir, how do we defend ourselves against the bandits?"

Wise Man: "Hire samurai."

Peasant: "But sir, we have no gold. Only rice."

Wise Man: "Then hire hungry samurai."

Dervag
2009-12-10, 02:43 AM
Get a trap of planar binding, with a trap of magic circle, a soul capture trap and a insta kill trap on the midle. Kinda expensive, but by no means inacessible, and then you're geting a soul every 6 seconds.All right, but that involves trap cheese, which is some of the lowest cheese in the 3rd Edition ruleset. You can ALWAYS break any ruleset with trap cheese so long as your trap creation rules allow it; saying that the magic economy rules are badly flawed because of trap cheese is like saying that my house is poorly designed because it isn't nuke-proof.


So, you would need to make souls as cheap as meat. Wich kinda defeats the initial point.Or make capturing souls more difficult. Or rule that unintelligent beings don't have souls (a common theme), which means that mass soul capture involves mass human sacrifice, which is the sort of thing that draws opposition.


Encumbrance is indeed the bane of a lot of criminals, but in D&D verse, there's plenty of ways to overcome it.Yes, but not in the price range at which it's economical to steal stuff like iron ore or a farmer's tools or big sacks of potatoes. You don't want to be the equivalent of the comic book guy who built a gun that turns things into gold... and then used it to rob banks.
_______


Yes, I'm not disagreeing with most of what you say. But the argument from Dervag appears to be that coins are the only thing worth stealing.Ah, no, this is the grossly oversimplified version of my argument.


So why wouldn't peasants keep some money? They're not going to have much, it's not going to be obvious that they have it, and if there are more lucrative targets like churches, why would raiders bother? If people are willing to raid peasants for what little coin they may have, then wouldn't they be willing to raid them for what other wealth they have, like livestock, tools, and grain?That's the key. What LITTLE coin they have. Peasants will still be keeping a great deal of their wealth in durable goods, and it is often wise for them to spend any money on durable goods that help them survive, because survival is tough and having the tools may well improve your odds of getting a good enough harvest to survive the winter more than having the money would.

There are of course exceptions, because there are exceptions to any statement anyone can make about society, as any sane person would cheerfully admit. That doesn't prove much.
________


Well, I kind of see what you're saying, but don't totally agree. These kinds of commodities will not depreciate in price very much, and furthermore there will be some demand for them, if they are utilitarian in nature. Besides, selling a tool that you stole for *any* amount is still a good deal -- the thief pays nothing. Remember, quite often thieves would steal ladles, pots, candlesticks, whatever had the slightest amount of value.Yes. But there's a large difference between that and, say, jewelry. Give a thief a choice between stealing money and stealing big heavy stuff, and they will go for the money.

This isn't an absolute 100% thing, but it shouldn't have to be. Real life is not about syllogisms, about absolute immunity to damage or theft. What I'm getting at is that when you view money as a physical good, rather than as the kind of abstraction it becomes in a world with checking accounts and credit cards... peasants don't have a lot of incentive to keep much of it around. It is relatively less valuable to them than it would be to someone who can count on being able to spend it, and who lives in a secure location where they are less likely to be robbed by enemies charging out of the woods. And once they have it, the incentive is normally to spend and not save, for the same reasons. They can still get pillaged if they're using normal goods, but it becomes less likely.


Also the coal is obvious wealth (like tools and livestock), it is usually visible to passers-by. A few coins stashed somewhere don't stick out. A thief would have to have some sort of magical knowledge of the location of money to steal only money from someone's hut. Admittedly, something like coal, livestock, or a large tool (like a plow), can't be taken with a simple snatch and grab or cut-purse/pickpocket operation.Yes. It can be done, and I never meant to deny that it can be done... but it can't be done casually, and it won't be done especially often. Heavy goods are less attractive to thieves than cash, even if they are not immune to theft, especially determined theft or well organized theft. However, relative vulnerability can matter a lot.


Being robbed while traveling was always a danger, because travellers had to carry their wealth with them. This I imagine is the main danger with peasants having money. Not the stashing it in their huts, but the getting it from the fair to home. For that matter, there's a danger of losing the money at the fair to thief even if they did intend to spend it immediately.Exactly.

What's really interesting is that this gets even more perverse for large amounts of money. A peasant with a sack of silver can bury it for emergencies. A peasant with a sack of rubies must live in fear for the rest of his life, because the rubies are so valuable that someone who actually does have magical knowledge and powers (and the ability to slaughter his village out of hand) might want to steal it.

fusilier
2009-12-10, 03:42 AM
I think we are in basic agreement here. I would still argue that peasants would have a chance of having a small amount of money around, to replace tools that break at inopportune moments, pay the tinker to repair the pots, etc. But they wouldn't just have bags of money lieing around, like in computer rpg's. Yes, a thief that had a choice between a purse of coins and a hammer would go for the purse . . . but my point is he/she wouldn't necessarily have that choice (or might just opt for both).

As for traveling back from a market fair, communities probably traveled in good-sized groups (hmm, that might make a decent hook), and a fair would be one of the times there would typically be extra protection around. However, it's still a draw for thieves. It should be remembered that farmers didn't typically get around a lot, so there wouldn't be many opportunities to rob them on the roads. Of course in D&D a group of peasants isn't really a match for a house-cat, so strength in numbers doesn't play out too well.

I don't really think that peasants would go out of their way to be rid of money, at least not a reasonable amount for a peasant to have. Livestock is both a resource, and a resource drain. Other goods can spoil, or may require more storage facilities, so you can't simply buy more of something that you use. Or I should say, buy more than you can use, that's just waste. Still I am talking about very marginal amounts of coin saved up.

There's also the basic question of how much coinage is available period. D&D makes it pretty clear that coins are pretty prevalent. The "turnip economy" and the "gold economy" do overlap. So expecting some money to get into the hands of the peasants isn't unreasonable. However, I would agree that it would be unreasonable for them to have significant amounts of money, because any money they do receive would wisely be spent on basic items. Although it may be pooled for items like a new grindstone for the mill. Also I'm not arguing that every peasant would have a cache of money year-round.

I agree with you completely about money basically being a form of easily carried good. As are rubies and fine jewelry. While D&D doesn't touch this whatsoever, most merchants would accept any coin from any country with it's value determined by weight.

I think I got a little bit confused, because it sounded like you were arguing that peasants would be afraid of even a tiny amount of money, and would rather spend it than keep it. Other than it's wiser to spend it -- not because it will be stolen, but the stuff they buy will help them survive?

Fizban
2009-12-10, 04:49 AM
Huh. I was going to post on the idea that you have to be tougher to live on the "frontier", cause I distinctly remember their being a table in the random town generation part of the DMG that accounted for that. I remember thinking "dang, don't mess with dudes from a swamp, they start at 4th level!". But I can't find it in the 3.5 or 3.0 DMGs. Anyone seen it elsewhere?

taltamir
2009-12-10, 05:35 AM
you cannot have a peasant army in DnD, they are completely worthless in combat.
Best you can do is take a group of peasants and transform them into abominations. (undead, weres, aberrations, magical beasts, whatever...)

As for the economy, it heavily depends. how available are clerics? castings of wall of salt? castings of create food? items of create food at will? etc. Subsistence farming makes no sense in a world where magic can feed people in perpetuity rather inexpensively.

There is absolutely no sane reason for DnD to be medieval, none, ziltch.
It is stuck in medieval lock for no reason other than author fiat by the WOTC people.

Riffington
2009-12-10, 06:35 AM
you cannot have a peasant army in DnD, they are completely worthless in combat.
Best you can do is take a group of peasants and transform them into abominations. (undead, weres, aberrations, magical beasts, whatever...)

As for the economy, it heavily depends. how available are clerics? castings of wall of salt? castings of create food? items of create food at will? etc. Subsistence farming makes no sense in a world where magic can feed people in perpetuity rather inexpensively.

There is absolutely no sane reason for DnD to be medieval, none, ziltch.
It is stuck in medieval lock for no reason other than author fiat by the WOTC people.

This is one extreme (well technically Tippy is the extreme of your position) but there's another valid position. Many people want their D&D to be medieval. It's a perfectly sane desire. If you want your D&D to be medieval, you have to allow farming (not necessarily subsistence - lots of people/places in the middle ages were well above subsistence) and armies of low-level warriors to be relevant. This means you have to make create food an uncommon spell and the ability to turn an army into abominations/beasts a doomsday device level power.
D&D works well at low levels in a medieval setting. It just breaks if you have lots of higher level characters running around.

taltamir
2009-12-10, 07:39 AM
This is one extreme (well technically Tippy is the extreme of your position) but there's another valid position. Many people want their D&D to be medieval. It's a perfectly sane desire. If you want your D&D to be medieval, you have to allow farming (not necessarily subsistence - lots of people/places in the middle ages were well above subsistence) and armies of low-level warriors to be relevant. This means you have to make create food an uncommon spell and the ability to turn an army into abominations/beasts a doomsday device level power.
D&D works well at low levels in a medieval setting. It just breaks if you have lots of higher level characters running around.

D&D doesn't, a heavily houseruled system based on D&D where clerics flat out don't exist; the gods don't interfere, most monsters don't exist, and a wide variety of core spells don't exist CAN be theoretically medieval.

If clerics and wizards are not sufficiently wide spread, then self replicating abominations would take over humanity in a heartbeat. Human armies of low level beat sticks with no magic items simply cannot harm a plethora of monsters that can self replicate.

And if magic is as rare as that, then the lone wizard on side A means side A is guaranteed to win the war. And also that the local king has no practical defenses against said wizard, who proceeds to take over the kingdom (or at least be a shadow ruler... charm person goes a long way).

PS. sane desire, but impossible and impractical according to the system as written...

Johel
2009-12-10, 08:23 AM
you cannot have a peasant army in DnD, they are completely worthless in combat.
Best you can do is take a group of peasants and transform them into abominations. (undead, weres, aberrations, magical beasts, whatever...)

1 peasants + sling = weak
1.000 peasants + 1.000 slings = usable
1.000 peasants + 1.000 crossbows = good
Sure, they'll be worth nothing against old dragons, outsiders or anything with a DR 10, really. But so are most people up to level 5.

Since 1st level commoners are a lot more...well, common than wizards, let alone 5th level wizard, I guess we can have a good 1.000 of such commoners aiming at our squishy one-man-army. Then, it's whoever get in range first.

5th level wizards get to be invisible and then to fireball things at 600 feet.
Commoners get to shoot at up to 800 feet with a range malus of -20 and probably a -4 malus for not being proficient with crossbows, which basically mean they only hit on natural 20.

That's still 50d8 piercing damage. 225 damage (average) per round. Stone Skin melt down and wizard screams "-Freedom !!" as the hail goes down on him. Alternatively, he can scream "-Teleport !!", which he does, since he's smart.

Now, that kind of tactic isn't cost-efficient if we consider gold only. But if we consider the destructive power of magic, a lord will more likely sacrifice a few serfs (those guys reproduce like rabbits anyway, what with the lack of warming, television and contraception) rather than spending good gold for mercenaries, since both serf and mercenary burn alike.

A greedy lord can even go for shortbows instead of crossbows, what with the lower price (or simply the ease to craft them : they ain't paying the crafter if he's a serf too...). Serfs don't even need armors : they just overwhelm the enemy with clouds of arrows. 1 out of 20 will touch but they'll fire a good 10 times before the enemy get into melee.

Still, because such war would literally be genocide, most lords will indeed rather hire a single, powerful adventurer... or invest into a "PaO" trap, along with a "Dominate Monster" trap and drop serfs in. :smallamused:

Karoht
2009-12-10, 04:07 PM
One reason why DnD stays mostly medieval (it's now going into some excellent steampunk territory depending on DM) is the magic economy. The technology economy just doesn't compete. A fighterjet really isn't much of a challenge to a common mage, if range is available. Guns and bombs and missiles are nice direct damage, but technology (unless you go beyond modern and into future tech/sci-fi) doesn't have all the cool flexibility of spell casting. Unless you have a very creative DM, and to date, I have yet to see an adequet pricing system on tech gear (based on magic) such as a create food machine (replicator from star trek), which would break the economy of the game or render it mostly obsolete. Either the gear is too common because of mass production, or because of mass production it is too cheap and too available. Sure, a raygun could replace most of the SoD spells (think a wand, but with a clip system to rapid reload), grenades double as delayed blast fireball, but when EVERYONE and their dog has a raygun that basically functions as Disintegrate, or a rapid firing raygun which shoots say, 2+ Disintegrates per round, the warfare is going to get broken in an aweful hurry.
The other problem is with tech, once you build it, it doesn't really scale. This was the issue with gun using characters in Rifts. Unless you bought a better gun, your damage was never going to go up in any meaningful way. And most DM's wouldn't let you just modify the gun to make it more awesome, without very specific circumstances, or an O.C.C. built for it.

I liked Rifts because it did magic and monsters and aliens and tech really well. DnD and D20 somewhat doesn't do as good a job, unless you severely limit/gimp magic, and I mean in a bad way. And even if you do gimp the magic, there is still the economy debate. Even if the magic and tech economies are remarkably even, their interactions with the Gold and Turnip economies are just out of touch at best.

To go along with other posters on the economy side of the debate...

In any game setting, I never trust rich farmers, unless the reason for their wealth is directly obvious. IE-they are more like a commercial farmer of today (and even they don't make much money really) and own hundreds of acres of land, stretching farther than the eye can see, with produce, orchards, livestock, grain, and everything needed in one place to ensure a large amount of self-sustainability (which tends to indicate more profit), along with the fact that sheer volume is going to make their money.

Unless they happen to be space farmers. Somehow it's more acceptable for them to be wealthy, because they're space farmers.

taltamir
2009-12-10, 06:27 PM
1 peasants + sling = weak
1.000 peasants + 1.000 slings = usable
1.000 peasants + 1.000 crossbows = good
Sure, they'll be worth nothing against old dragons, outsiders or anything with a DR 10, really. But so are most people up to level 5.

And that was exactly my point... DR10 is too common. Immunity to piercing, resistances to physical, etc...

A single troll CAN NOT be killed by those 1000 peasants with bows... unless they have some magic / alchemy on them. (a 100 peasants throwing alchemist fire...)
Maybe a few werewolves... etc... oh, and don't be a dumbass who charges 1000 people with bows, hit them at night, in their tents, in houses, in the city, etc... where your healing factor and immunities / resistances allow you to heal damage as soon as it comes instead of taking 50d8 damage a round (assuming the peasants only hit you on a nat20 and fail to confirm every time).
heck, 2.5 out of the 1000 will roll two 20s in a row, so you are guaranteed to get that many crits a round, that can penetrate some DR. Yes, I can totally see a few trolls or wizards or werewolves slaughtered by CHARGING a LINE of 1000 prepared and armed peasants with crossbows. Heck if you wanna be that dumb, fall into a spike pit near their castle so they can fire at you behind their impenetrable (to you) walls with impunity.

Actually though, a much better approach than the DR (because you also need to be immune to crits for the DR10 to suffice), is to have a spell that makes you totally immune to ranged (spells like wind wall will work, get a creature that has it as at will SLA)... or attack smart and using things with fast healing... All damage from the bow is converted into non lethal, ha!

Stone skin is a very good but situational spell, it is limited to 10 damage per hit, 10 damage per CL, and costs 250gp.

@those guys reproduce like rabbits anyway: no, humans take quite a bit longer to reproduce... and babies don't fight very well... it doesn't matter if they reproduce anyways, you lost the battle, afterwards enemy forces stormed your castle, executed the lord and his family, and took over. The reproducing peasant serfs now belong to the victor.

PS. the weres? they were free... get a natural born were to bite anyone and he turns... (and weres come in all alignment, they don't go insane like in fantasy, just like zombie bite doesn't make you into a zombie in DnD... no in DnD a were causes you to act its alignment... so a bite from a were-bear makes you lawful good when transformed)


The other problem is with tech, once you build it, it doesn't really scale. This was the issue with gun using characters in Rifts. Unless you bought a better gun, your damage was never going to go up in any meaningful way. And most DM's wouldn't let you just modify the gun to make it more awesome, without very specific circumstances, or an O.C.C. built for it.

We have a plethora of guns of progressive awesomeness. And a gun does WAAAAAAY more damage than some other silly weapons.
Gun, it is range touch attack that ignores armor (of the medieval kind), and does massive con damage.

Besides... Nuclear bombs... you don't need "replicators" to combat magic... sure magic CAN do things science can... heck, have you seen science bring the soul back from the dead? communicate with GODS? summon DEMONS? etc... but there are many things that science easily does that magic cannot.

Dervag
2009-12-10, 06:46 PM
A single troll CAN NOT be killed by those 1000 peasants with bows... unless they have some magic / alchemy on them. (a 100 peasants throwing alchemist fire...)Au contraire; they can riddle it with so many arrows that it falls down and can't get up again until they've had time to run up, chop it to bits, and build a bonfire under the bits.

Look. 1000 peasants by themselves lose to a powerful enough monster, yes. This proves absolutely nothing if you're not just making up a thought experiment about 1000 peasants losing a fight to prove that peasant soldiers have a combat value of zero. Real armies are not made up entirely of identical clones; D&D armies are not going to be made up entirely of 1st level commoners or 1st level warriors or 1st level anything.

The peasant soldiers cannot kill a werewolf the way a 10th level fighter can. They can, however, fan out across the countryside and deter raiding orcs, as
a 10th level fighter cannot, because though he can probably kill an elephant with a teaspoon he can only be in one place at a time. Combine the peasant army with the fighter, and you get a synergistic effect: the fighter handles strong monsters, while the peasants handle policing and deterrence of low-CR threats (who far outnumber high-CR threats in any reasonable world).

Replace the fighter with a caster if you now wish to get on the "casters beat noncasters" horse. I'm not denying that, and have no interest in arguing that matter with you.

Riffington
2009-12-10, 08:19 PM
D&D doesn't, a heavily houseruled system based on D&D where clerics flat out don't exist; the gods don't interfere, most monsters don't exist, and a wide variety of core spells don't exist CAN be theoretically medieval.

If clerics and wizards are not sufficiently wide spread, then self replicating abominations would take over humanity in a heartbeat. Human armies of low level beat sticks with no magic items simply cannot harm a plethora of monsters that can self replicate.

And if magic is as rare as that, then the lone wizard on side A means side A is guaranteed to win the war. And also that the local king has no practical defenses against said wizard, who proceeds to take over the kingdom (or at least be a shadow ruler... charm person goes a long way).

PS. sane desire, but impossible and impractical according to the system as written...

You have to houserule some part. If you play that powerful wizards or supernatural abominations are common, then the economy just plain doesn't work as written. You have to change the pricing structure (houseruling that) or allow players to have ten times WBL (itself a houserule) or forbid players to break the economy (a houserule).

So given that you have to houserule something or other, you can as easily houserule that characters tend to be lower level as that the game stops being medieval and starts being candystore.
You don't need to stop deities from intervening or stop clerics from existing or make 1st level wizards rare. You just need to say that the most powerful character that the average Emperor has in his employ is 10th level. As long as the characters are playing at lower levels, that works fine.

High-level D&D can't be medieval, but most games aren't high level.

taltamir
2009-12-10, 10:09 PM
Au contraire; they can riddle it with so many arrows that it falls down and can't get up again until they've had time to run up, chop it to bits, and build a bonfire under the bits.

Look. 1000 peasants by themselves lose to a powerful enough monster, yes. This proves absolutely nothing if you're not just making up a thought experiment about 1000 peasants losing a fight to prove that peasant soldiers have a combat value of zero. Real armies are not made up entirely of identical clones; D&D armies are not going to be made up entirely of 1st level commoners or 1st level warriors or 1st level anything.

The peasant soldiers cannot kill a werewolf the way a 10th level fighter can. They can, however, fan out across the countryside and deter raiding orcs, as
a 10th level fighter cannot, because though he can probably kill an elephant with a teaspoon he can only be in one place at a time. Combine the peasant army with the fighter, and you get a synergistic effect: the fighter handles strong monsters, while the peasants handle policing and deterrence of low-CR threats (who far outnumber high-CR threats in any reasonable world).

Replace the fighter with a caster if you now wish to get on the "casters beat noncasters" horse. I'm not denying that, and have no interest in arguing that matter with you.

you make some very valid points. But the cost of fielding those 1000 peasants are significantly higher then the cost of fielding a few monsters.
Actually, arming those 1000 peasants is MORE expensive than transforming it into monsters.
That was my point... and countries who do not transform them... well...
your 1000 peasants vs his 1000 monsters which can each kill 1000 peasants... it is like the end scene in the movie 300...



You have to houserule some part. If you play that powerful wizards or supernatural abominations are common, then the economy just plain doesn't work as written. You have to change the pricing structure (houseruling that) or allow players to have ten times WBL (itself a houserule) or forbid players to break the economy (a houserule).

So given that you have to houserule something or other, you can as easily houserule that characters tend to be lower level as that the game stops being medieval and starts being candystore.
You don't need to stop deities from intervening or stop clerics from existing or make 1st level wizards rare. You just need to say that the most powerful character that the average Emperor has in his employ is 10th level. As long as the characters are playing at lower levels, that works fine.

High-level D&D can't be medieval, but most games aren't high level.

The more rare you make magic, the more powerful you make mages. The more common magic is, the less powerful mages are.
And level 1 wizards and clerics being rare completely flies in the face of anything that is DnD... this means that every church in a town has no clerics, instead only priests... that paladins don't exist (since they are magical and use magic) or are all level 1, etc.

And it makes the level 10 wizard that there is only one of per country a total fool for being in the EMPLOY of the emperor, he could easily be the emperor, or puppet the emperor with simple low level spells.
Which is a point I have already made before.
You move to a magocracy where the few powerful mages rule the world, and every country for that matter.

You don't even have to be EVIL to take over... "the foolish emperor, he neglects his citizens, wallows in his wealth, and lets countless innocents die for his wars... I must do the noble thing and usurp him!
Oh look, it is EASILY within my power, and there is not a single person to stop me since I am the only one in the country a superweapon others cannot grasp"

Dervag
2009-12-11, 02:21 AM
you make some very valid points. But the cost of fielding those 1000 peasants are significantly higher then the cost of fielding a few monsters.
Actually, arming those 1000 peasants is MORE expensive than transforming it into monsters.
That was my point... and countries who do not transform them... well...
your 1000 peasants vs his 1000 monsters which can each kill 1000 peasants... it is like the end scene in the movie 300...The same guys who wrote all that stuff about the turnip economy have a point about this.

Assuming civilizations exist in D&D, in that there are actual communities of intelligent lifeforms that have not been warped into hideous parodies of nature by magic or something, you can say two things:
-The world has not been overrun by infinite armies of monsters.
-Therefore, somehow the civilizations that exist and have existed for some time now have a way of dealing with the threat.

Most D&D worlds contain civilizations. This proves that something is stopping wights from taking over the world with their unstoppable army of wight-spawning wights. And that cities haven't been destroyed by a dragon flying over and nailing everyone in the city below 5th level with that fear effect. And so on. What is working on civilization's side here?

The most obvious solution is that the civilized races of D&D (including both good and evil races of humans, demihumans, humanoids, and maybe even nonhumanoids) have made a gentleman's agreement to put in the effort required to take down two particular kinds of threats:
-Extremely large monsters such as dragons and giants. Ever wonder why they only live on remote mountaintops and places like that? It's because if a band of giants or a dragon tries to intrude on the life of the city-dwelling plainsmen, all the powerful wizards and fighters and priests of the cities band together to fight the invaders. Even if they'd normally fight each other, something as dangerous as a powerful dragon is an obvious existential threat, and they're prepared to deal with it accordingly.
-People who create monster spawn. This is where your idea runs into trouble. If a wight can make another wight every day, then in a month or two the world is overrun by wights. But the rest of the world can do the math on an exponential growth curve just as easily as you can; they know what's going to happen if your army is allowed to grow unchecked. So as soon as they (or their diviners) catch wind that someone is creating armies of powerful monsters out of random peasants, they rally all the forces at their disposal to crush your army of monsters before it gets too large to stop. You will have everything from warrior armies that outnumber your monsters ten to one to adventuring parties jumping you.

Now, you might win anyway, and manage to destroy a major civilization in a catastrophe that will make your name remembered with terror for a thousand years... but somewhere in the world, life goes on after your army has crumbled to dust. Or it doesn't, and that's the end of the campaign world, with no actual D&D adventures taking place beyond that point.

But any world where D&D adventures can take place is, almost by definition, a world where the Powers That Be are willing and able to squash any self-proclaimed genius who stumbles on the amazing tried a million times new realization that he can overrun the world with an army of wights or werewolves or whatever. Say what you will, the head of the Army of Monsters is just one guy; hire a sufficiently competent assassin and his entire force collapses.

______

Yahzi has a different solution to the problem: making non-natural creatures (beings with magic powers) has an XP cost. To reproduce themselves, produce spawn, or whatever, a monster has to kill enough living beings to earn the XP to make another of itself. This limits the growth rate of the monsters to the point where larger, better organized forces that have many low-XP troops, or smaller forces that concentrate the XP cost of many monsters into a single powerful individual can destroy the monsters faster than they can breed (or at least as fast as...)

Did I mention he makes XP a physical substance that you can totally fill a teacup with? It helps. I think it's pretty cool.
_______


And it makes the level 10 wizard that there is only one of per country a total fool for being in the EMPLOY of the emperor, he could easily be the emperor, or puppet the emperor with simple low level spells.
Which is a point I have already made before.
You move to a magocracy where the few powerful mages rule the world, and every country for that matter.Debatable. First of all, the wizard isn't necessarily higher level than the highest level priest or rogue or paladin in the kingdom, so he may not be able to dictate terms to the Thieves' Guild in the capital city (which is a recipe for a quick fall from power), or to the church (who resent the wizard's overthrow of an emperor they crowned), or to the joint leadership of the army (he can mind control or kill them individually, but collectively they have enough experienced guys with good saves and the magic items accumulated over centuries of warfare to bring him down).

So you get some magocracies, cases where the grand vizier is a mighty sorceror and makes the emperor into his slave, things like that. But that doesn't mean that the magocracies are eternal and all-dominant unless you deliberately set up a world where wizards and only wizards benefit from optimized character builds, from being exceptionally high level, and from being able to make long range plans.

As a thought experiment it's interesting, and it's called the Tippyverse. But that doesn't mean things will "really" go down that way just because it is theoretically conceivable that they could do so.

Zen Master
2009-12-11, 05:45 AM
Karranth in eberron's entire army is more or less comprised of undead. The undead army concept works.

Now let's say there's an evil cabal of high to epic level liches, all of which are sorcerers, necromancers, or clerics, and they rule a mineral rich nation. If they want to start a world war, will they rely on undead or their people?

It's worth mentioning that Karrnath's army is created with an 'Eldritch Machine' - effectively a short cut around limitations on material components, and restrictions on how many undead one can control.

Very solidly placing it outside the gold/turnip economy. By design, by the way.

Zen Master
2009-12-11, 06:10 AM
You have to houserule some part. If you play that powerful wizards or supernatural abominations are common, then the economy just plain doesn't work as written. You have to change the pricing structure (houseruling that) or allow players to have ten times WBL (itself a houserule) or forbid players to break the economy (a houserule).

Or play lower level campaigns (not a houserule).

Though I agree. Anyone getting creative with traps, summons or wishes will have stern words from me. Even if that's never been necessary - we seem to have an agreement that:

Summons cannot summon.
Summons cannot cast really powerful stuff like wish.
There are simply no auto-resetting traps - anywhere. Also, traps do damage - they do not summon food, or monsters, or cast buffs.

All of which are houserules - even if they are never stated in my group, because they are just (to us) simple common sense.

Riffington
2009-12-11, 06:40 AM
The more rare you make magic, the more powerful you make mages. The more common magic is, the less powerful mages are.
Only partially true. Wizards are more common = easier to find the spells you want. More importantly, at <10th level, magic doesn't totally walk over melee so you don't have to worry about that balance so much.



And level 1 wizards and clerics being rare completely flies in the face of anything that is DnD... this means that every church in a town has no clerics, instead only priests... that paladins don't exist (since they are magical and use magic) or are all level 1, etc.

1. I never said level 1 wizards and clerics should be rare. Just that level 5 wizards/clerics should be.
2. Even if they are rare it doesn't fly in the face of D&D at all. There is absolutely nothing wrong with a campaign where churches are staffed by Experts and Aristocrats. They put the Heal skill in the book for a reason, and it should be used. You think the random "town priest" knows how to use platemail for some reason? No, a Cleric is supposed to be a powerful warrior-priest; the peasants can go to a guy with 4 ranks in Knowledge Religion and/or Heal.



And it makes the level 10 wizard that there is only one of per country a total fool for being in the EMPLOY of the emperor, he could easily be the emperor, or puppet the emperor with simple low level spells.
Which is a point I have already made before.
You move to a magocracy where the few powerful mages rule the world, and every country for that matter.
That's a fine Tippyverse argument, but it flies in the face of so many of D&D's inspirations. Arthur was not a wizard, and wasn't even the greatest warrior. Lancelot was better than him at riding, fighting, and making love to Guinevere. But he served Arthur because Arthur was fit to rule.
When Sauron was defeated, Galadriel and Gandalf didn't duke it out. They left it to Aragorn to rule.



You don't even have to be EVIL to take over... "the foolish emperor, he neglects his citizens, wallows in his wealth, and lets countless innocents die for his wars... I must do the noble thing and usurp him!
Oh look, it is EASILY within my power, and there is not a single person to stop me since I am the only one in the country a superweapon others cannot grasp"
You don't have to initially be evil to make that argument, but it leads there quickly and near-inevitably.

taltamir
2009-12-11, 07:05 AM
Most D&D worlds contain civilizations. This proves that something is stopping wights from taking over the world with their unstoppable army of wight-spawning wights. And that cities haven't been destroyed by a dragon flying over and nailing everyone in the city below 5th level with that fear effect. And so on. What is working on civilization's side here?

The only reason that happens is the same DM fiatville (or rather, author fiat) that made the D&D world medieval locked.


You don't have to initially be evil to make that argument, but it leads there quickly and near-inevitably.

Nope, power never corrupted anyone. Evil people pretend to be nice to get power.

As a prime example... during nazi rein people were able to get away with doing horrible things to other people. Some reveled in it, ex: doctor mendele and his ilk.

Others put their life and the life of their family at risk to do what is right and hide innocents from the nazi authorities.

And the thread will not be complete without a hitler reference... The man wrote "mein kaumpf" years before his rise to power.

On the other hand, george washington was approached to become the King of the USA. He refused, believing in democracy. (and he was already in power, he just refused to expand his own power and to make it inheritable to his children)

Choco
2009-12-11, 09:44 AM
Or play lower level campaigns (not a houserule).

Though I agree. Anyone getting creative with traps, summons or wishes will have stern words from me. Even if that's never been necessary - we seem to have an agreement that:

Summons cannot summon.
Summons cannot cast really powerful stuff like wish.
There are simply no auto-resetting traps - anywhere. Also, traps do damage - they do not summon food, or monsters, or cast buffs.

All of which are houserules - even if they are never stated in my group, because they are just (to us) simple common sense.

Thats the way my group does it too. Except traps also summon (temporary) monsters, debuff, SoD, or sometimes simply make distractions. But yeah, the basic point remains, traps do not CREATE anything (other than pain and chaos) and they do not cast helpful effects on those who trigger them.

But then again it has been agreed that, with few exceptions, these munchkin rule abuses/thought experiments are JUST experiments, because any DM who would allow that sort of game breaking cheese to happen in the first place deserves to have his game ruined. And if you cut out munchkinery then Dervag's army works perfectly fine. As he said, the army's purpose is to protect the citizens from roaming bandits and fight other similar armies. It is up to ADVENTURERS (or powerful individuals in the army) to kill the powerful stuff like dragons. Even a troll would not have to be fought by the army. There are plenty of low-level adventurers around to take care of trolls for money. If the army could handle everything itself, why would PC adventurers even be needed?

Johel
2009-12-11, 09:56 AM
Even if that's never been necessary - we seem to have an agreement that:

Summons cannot summon.
Summons cannot cast really powerful stuff like wish.
There are simply no auto-resetting traps - anywhere. Also, traps do damage - they do not summon food, or monsters, or cast buffs.

All of which are houserules - even if they are never stated in my group, because they are just (to us) simple common sense.

Actually, the part about summons is rule by RAW :

Summoning
A summoning spell instantly brings a creature or object to a place you designate. (...) A summoned creature cannot use any innate summoning abilities it may have, and it refuses to cast any spells that would cost it XP, or to use any spell-like abilities that would cost XP if they were spells.

Called creatures, however, can summon, use SLA which mimic costly spells, ect... and that's the problem (and the point where houseruling is necessary).

Mind you, an E6 campaign doesn't have that problem, since it's impossible to call a creature in the first place. :smallwink:

Riffington
2009-12-11, 11:15 AM
On the other hand, george washington was approached to become the King of the USA. He refused, believing in democracy. (and he was already in power, he just refused to expand his own power and to make it inheritable to his children)

But Washington would never have said this:


"the foolish emperor, he neglects his citizens, wallows in his wealth, and lets countless innocents die for his wars... I must do the noble thing and usurp him!
Oh look, it is EASILY within my power, and there is not a single person to stop me since I am the only one in the country a superweapon others cannot grasp"


Power doesn't necessarily corrupt, but the desire for power (even for altruistic reasons) does. Washington guarded against this corruption by refusing the efficient path of Kingship and instead setting up a balance of powers that would limit his (and his successors') efficiency.

Dervag
2009-12-11, 11:37 AM
The only reason that happens is the same DM fiatville (or rather, author fiat) that made the D&D world medieval locked.Not necessarily. You see, the thing about civilizations* is that they tend to be self-stabilizing, at least for a while. The leaders of a civilization will consciously try to avoid allowing a situation to arise in which their civilization is destroyed, regardless of whether they are Good-aligned or Evil-aligned. That's not authorial fiat; that's real life.

Now, if your contention is that civilizations should not exist in D&D, then you have to prove that the Tippyverse scenario of wizards gaining supreme power and overthrowing all opposition would actually happen in real life, rather than merely proving that it is compatible with the Rules As Written. Not everything compatible with the Rules As Written happens in every D&D world.

In real life, wizards would sometimes seek to overthrow a monarch, theocracy, or military dictatorship, but would not always do so. Some wizards will be loyal to a patron. Others will fear the hostility of rival wizards (or clerics or assassins or...) that they would attract by taking too much power too openly. Others are simply not interested in ruling, and will leave the king alone so long as the king respects their interests and treats them with appropriate honor and rewards.

*As opposed to giant revolving lava lamps of adventurers rising to power, casting down other adventurers, and watching the process repeat


Nope, power never corrupted anyone. Evil people pretend to be nice to get power.I must respectfully disagree; there are numerous examples from cases like the French Revolution of honest men who did not take bribes, sincerely believed in laudable goals... and nonetheless committed actions that would shock any but the most bloody-handed of tyrants.

Tyndmyr
2009-12-11, 12:25 PM
Only partially true. Wizards are more common = easier to find the spells you want. More importantly, at <10th level, magic doesn't totally walk over melee so you don't have to worry about that balance so much.

Finding spells is easy. You get 2*level without even looking, 4 if you take collegiate wizard. You get extra first level known and ALL cantrips by default.

So, if you *never* found a single spell, but took collegiate wizard, you would know eight spells per level. That's pretty decent, you just skip the weak ones. You can scribe your own scrolls, so spell volume isn't an issue. Also, if you find a scroll *once*, it's on your list. The UMDing guy needs to find that scroll every time he wants to cast it.

Sorcs, warlocks, etc are completely unaffected.

Low magic campaigns do make mages more powerful compared to non-magic types.

Choco
2009-12-11, 12:27 PM
Low magic campaigns do make mages more powerful compared to non-magic types.

Yeah, thats why it is usually better to go no-magic, OR cap spells at like 3-4th level, with some epic quests required to get anything of level 5 and 6 being legendary.

taltamir
2009-12-11, 12:39 PM
Finding spells is easy. You get 2*level without even looking, 4 if you take collegiate wizard. You get extra first level known and ALL cantrips by default.

So, if you *never* found a single spell, but took collegiate wizard, you would know eight spells per level. That's pretty decent, you just skip the weak ones. You can scribe your own scrolls, so spell volume isn't an issue. Also, if you find a scroll *once*, it's on your list. The UMDing guy needs to find that scroll every time he wants to cast it.

Sorcs, warlocks, etc are completely unaffected.

Low magic campaigns do make mages more powerful compared to non-magic types.

plus, you can also "research" spells if you can't find them... it take 1 week per spell level of the spell being "researched". costs a little gold too.

taltamir
2009-12-11, 12:40 PM
But Washington would never have said this:


"the foolish emperor, he neglects his citizens, wallows in his wealth, and lets countless innocents die for his wars... I must do the noble thing and usurp him!
Oh look, it is EASILY within my power, and there is not a single person to stop me since I am the only one in the country a superweapon others cannot grasp"

Power doesn't necessarily corrupt, but the desire for power (even for altruistic reasons) does. Washington guarded against this corruption by refusing the efficient path of Kingship and instead setting up a balance of powers that would limit his (and his successors') efficiency.

You are aware of the little thing called the american revolution?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington#American_Revolution

Not verbatim what I said... the gist of it is "there is a bad man in power, I must wrest control from him for the good of all".
If your level 10 wizard forms a republic (which he leads) when he usurps the corrupt emperor you end with the same result...
The kicker, is that the 10 level wizard has it easy. While a conventional revolution IRL is a lot more difficult to pull off due to lack of magic.

Riffington
2009-12-11, 01:16 PM
4 if you take collegiate wizard.
You can't take Collegiate Wizard if wizards are rare. No wizard colleges, you see. More importantly, below 9th level or so wizards aren't insanely all-powerful.


You are aware of the little thing called the american revolution?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington#American_Revolution
Duh? I pointed out that George Washington would never have said what you said. He would fight a revolution, but would not set himself up as Supreme Leader. He believed there should never be one.

[quote]
Not verbatim what I said...
I cut and pasted. Maybe you didn't mean to say it, but you did. If you simply meant "this nation needs a revolution, and I must do my duty and then step down", you won't need to be evil.

A level 10 character is extremely powerful if most characters are below level 6. Wizard or Monk, you can certainly make yourself King or Consul if you want. This doesn't prevent the possibility that an emperor could be Aristocrat 1. Caesar didn't take a team to kill because he was so tough - just so the blame could be diffused.

Tyndmyr
2009-12-11, 01:22 PM
You can't take Collegiate Wizard if wizards are rare. No wizard colleges, you see. More importantly, below 9th level or so wizards aren't insanely all-powerful.


Even if you ban the feat, that's four known per spell level. Five, if you go elven generalist.

Combine that with research, and even if you are the only caster on earth, you can do pretty well. On the flip side, rare/no magic means that half the spells are less important, and thus, skippable.

Riffington
2009-12-11, 01:47 PM
Even if you ban the feat, that's four known per spell level. Five, if you go elven generalist.

Combine that with research, and even if you are the only caster on earth, you can do pretty well. On the flip side, rare/no magic means that half the spells are less important, and thus, skippable.

Sure, and you should be powerful. Barbarians of your level are powerful too.

taltamir
2009-12-11, 01:51 PM
I was saying george washington didn't verbatim say what I said. not that you misquoted me.

Second, if you step down you are a fool. You are not "evil" for staying in power to ensure things are ran properly. By leaving you are letting someone unsuited in to replace you. All that work and all those deaths to get rid of an unsuitable ruler, and when you are finally in power you just give it away to another greedy bastard;

And washington did not "do his duty and step down". He refused kingship, but he served terms as president AFTER having won the war of independence.

Johel
2009-12-11, 01:58 PM
You are aware of the little thing called the american revolution?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington#American_Revolution

Not verbatim what I said... the gist of it is "there is a bad man in power, I must wrest control from him for the good of all".
If your level 10 wizard forms a republic (which he leads) when he usurps the corrupt emperor you end with the same result...
The kicker, is that the 10 level wizard has it easy. While a conventional revolution IRL is a lot more difficult to pull off due to lack of magic.

I think that what he meant was that Washington refused absolute power because he knew that, with that kind of power, he would soon become an absolute monster.

To have power is first and foremost to have the freedom to act and to limit said freedom for others. Absolute power is therefor the capacity to do whatever you want and the capacity to forbid others to do what they want, without any limit to both capacities.

While you can wield such power with real good intentions at first, it quickly becomes addictive and you can easily fall prey to the classic traps of indulging your petty desires and doing all you can to keep all power, with the justification that you need that power to make good and that, for all the good you are doing, you deserve to be selfish once in a while.

An absolute ruler who spend his time indulging in private desires and scheming to stay in power isn't deserving anything and isn't doing any good. In the long term, all absolute ruler falls prey to this and all will justify their actions as being "for the Greater Good" or "In the nation's best interest".

I don't know squat about the American Revolt. Georges Washington was a wise man if he choose to let go absolute power to retain moral integrity.


A 10th level wizard takes power from a tyrant to bring freedom to the people ? That's good.
He accepts "temporary" absolute power "because the kingdom is a mess and we need a strong leader to put it back on its feet" ? Well, maybe it will be for the best.
Now, the kingdom is safe but the wizard wants to keep absolute power for a little while longer because "he could do so much more, given a few more years" ? Sounds bad.
The kingdom is thriving under the rule of the wizard, even if things are a bit authocratic. There are beautiful monuments everywhere. The wizard built himself a palace but since its cost was ridiculously low in comparison with the wealth of the kingdom, nobody complained : the ruler deserved a nice lifestyle for all his hard work. What temporary powers ? Things are fine like that, aren't they ?
The kingdom is expanding on all fronts, because the local resources aren't enough for the scales of the new public projects. But that's fine : conquered nations will soon enjoy the same welfare as the kingdom. People complain about the lavish lifestyle of the Court. They also wonder why the wizard isn't waging the war himself... but opposition hesitates to form : the wizard is such a good ruler.
The empire is a medieval superpower. True, things aren't progressing as fast as before but life isn't bad. And even if it was, nobody dare to point it to the wizard since he fried two of his advisers for "mocking him". A few public projects, mainly magical experiments, need a lot of money. Taxes are rising but it's for a better future. The Imperial orgies are internationally famous.
EVERYTHING IS GOOD AND BEAUTIFUL IN TIPPYLAND. ALL HAIL TIPPY !! FOR HE PROVIDES TO OUR EVERY NEED !! TIPPY IS GOOD, TIPPY IS BEAUTIFUL !! DON'T LISTEN TO WHOEVER SAID OTHERWISE : THOSE ARE THOUGHT-CRIMINALS !!


With time, every messiah become a dictator if he can do whatever he wants. Maybe he'll justify his actions for the greater good, for a better future or whatever. Maybe he even believes what he says. But in fact, as soon as he allows HIS desires in any field to go before the people's desires, he is corrupted.

Riffington
2009-12-11, 01:58 PM
I was saying george washington didn't verbatim say what I said. not that you misquoted me.

Oh ok. Fair nuff. I think the greatness of Washington was really his willingness to put the nation first and his own desires last. That's why he refused to grab power - only taking the minimum required to do what needed to be done for the country to work. As President, he made the system inefficient and built in checks and balances to himself to ensure his successor wouldn't be bad.

Also, I seem to be ninja'd by Johel, who is correct :)

taltamir
2009-12-11, 02:10 PM
I think that what he meant was that Washington refused absolute power because he knew that, with that kind of power, he would soon become an absolute monster.
He didn't KNOW it, he THOUGHT it... and he was wrong. He was being misled by countless works of fictions and the inability of most people to comprehend mindsets which are truly alien to themselves.


To have power is first and foremost to have the freedom to act and to limit said freedom for others. Absolute power is therefor the capacity to do whatever you want and the capacity to forbid others to do what they want, without any limit to both capacities.

While you can wield such power with real good intentions at first, it quickly becomes addictive and you can easily fall prey to the classic traps of indulging your petty desires and doing all you can to keep all power, with the justification that you need that power to make good and that, for all the good you are doing, you deserve to be selfish once in a while.
That is the theory, and it is repeated ad nasium in all works of fiction.
In reality, tyrants were always bad before rising to power. And many people have retained their morality when acquiring power.


Now, the kingdom is safe but the wizard wants to keep absolute power for a little while longer because "he could do so much more, given a few more years" ? Sounds bad.
Uh, no...
He keeps it because SOMEONE has to have the power. Stepping down simply means transferring said power to someone else. Which, most often, is the most greedy and corrupt person around (which is why he was in the position to receive said power).


The kingdom is expanding on all fronts, because the local resources aren't enough for the scales of the new public projects. But that's fine : conquered nations will soon enjoy the same welfare as the kingdom. People complain about the lavish lifestyle of the Court. They also wonder why the wizard isn't waging the war himself... but opposition hesitates to form : the wizard is such a good ruler.

You know, most historical "warrior leaders" have led their own armies till the day of their death. They were often brutal conquerers, not moral crusaders, but you assume that once power was acquired, they will fully delegate the war and just wallow in their pleasure palace which is almost never the case.
You make quite a few other assumptions here too about resource harvesting, conquering other nations, etc...


The empire is a medieval superpower. True, things aren't progressing as fast as before but life isn't bad. And even if it was, nobody dare to point it to the wizard since he fried two of his advisers for "mocking him". A few public projects, mainly magical experiments, need a lot of money. Taxes are rising but it's for a better future. The Imperial orgies are internationally famous.
Yes, because choosing to remain in power suddenly make you execute people for disagreeing with you... naturally.


With time, every messiah become a dictator if he can do whatever he wants. Maybe he'll justify his actions for the greater good, for a better future or whatever. Maybe he even believes what he says. But in fact, as soon as he allows HIS desires in any field to go before the people's desires, he is corrupted.
And I have yet to find a single historical incidence where that happened. Every time there were clear warning signs before the person rose to power that he was a corrupt bastard saying what he needed to to gain power.
And the truly good ones lived their whole life without going corrupt.

Tyndmyr
2009-12-11, 02:10 PM
Sure, and you should be powerful. Barbarians of your level are powerful too.

Barbarians cannot fly, and thus, are naught but cannon fodder. By level 9, if you can't destroy the rest of your party in a fair fight as a wizard, either they like tier 1 classes too, or you aren't really trying.

Spell availability is not a huge factor in this, because you don't need a stupid variety of spells to be powerful, and most of the best stuff is core anyway.

taltamir
2009-12-11, 02:11 PM
the REALLY funny bit was about level 10 monk being powerful in a world without magic... HA!

Tyndmyr
2009-12-11, 02:33 PM
Heh...in a world with no magic at all, possibly they'll be decent. And by decent, I mean...can compete with a fighter, sorta.

That's roughly as good as it gets for them.

nepphi
2009-12-11, 02:48 PM
I was saying george washington didn't verbatim say what I said. not that you misquoted me.

Second, if you step down you are a fool. You are not "evil" for staying in power to ensure things are ran properly. By leaving you are letting someone unsuited in to replace you. All that work and all those deaths to get rid of an unsuitable ruler, and when you are finally in power you just give it away to another greedy bastard;

And washington did not "do his duty and step down". He refused kingship, but he served terms as president AFTER having won the war of independence.

Actually, he did step down. Washington had no government post during the post-revolution period when we operated under the Articles of Confederation. It was several years later when he was elected president, after having tried to convince people not to elect him and just let him retire, that he served as the chief of state.

If you're going to argue history, remember all of it please.

Riffington
2009-12-11, 02:58 PM
He didn't KNOW it, he THOUGHT it... and he was wrong. He was being misled by countless works of fictions and the inability of most people to comprehend mindsets which are truly alien to themselves.

Interesting that your example of a noncorrupt powerful leader was a firm believer that power corrupted... I expect that this belief is probably what kept him aware of the temptations and able to avoid them (partly by avoiding giving himself the power in the first place)

I can certainly give you some examples of people who were very nice until they became department chairs... it's possible I misjudged every one of them, but I don't think so.


Barbarians cannot fly, and thus, are naught but cannon fodder. By level 9, if you can't destroy the rest of your party in a fair fight as a wizard, either they like tier 1 classes too, or you aren't really trying.

Spell availability is not a huge factor in this, because you don't need a stupid variety of spells to be powerful, and most of the best stuff is core anyway.
I'm not convinced a level 9 wizard who's contributing to a party can withstand a single level 9 rogue or monk's "surprise boot to the head". I know you said "fair fight", but that's unfair since wizard's don't get spot, listen, move silently, or hide.

Johel
2009-12-11, 03:13 PM
That is the theory, and it is repeated ad nasium in all works of fiction. In reality, tyrants were always bad before rising to power. And many people have retained their morality when acquiring power.

...You are completely right. That's why history remembers them as tyrants.
And again, people don't lose their morality when acquiring power but when they keep it. Hence while the ones we don't remember as tyrants DIDN'T REMAIN in power. None of them.



Uh, no...
He keeps it because SOMEONE has to have the power. Stepping down simply means transferring said power to someone else. Which, most often, is the most greedy and corrupt person around (which is why he was in the position to receive said power).

So, because the people might choose someone incompetent/corrupted/worse-than-you, you will do whatever you can to remain in power ? That's a very open view on political freedom... You would make an amazing 10th level wizard.

The point here isn't that it isn't logic for the wizard to stay in power. The point is that doing so give him freedom to make his desires go before those of the people, as no law applies to him. In fact, with absolute powers, laws even adapt to justify your every actions.

ANYBODY who thinks he can ignore people's opinion and lead the country according to his sole idea is corrupted. Not saying the guy isn't doing a good job at actually LEADING the country. But he isn't letting people making choices beside "I shut it up", "I resist and die" or "I leave". Usually, that result in a lot of hatred from your administrates.



You know, most historical "warrior leaders" have led their own armies till the day of their death. They were often brutal conquerers, not moral crusaders, but you assume that once power was acquired, they will fully delegate the war and just wallow in their pleasure palace which is almost never the case.
You make quite a few other assumptions here too about resource harvesting, conquering other nations, etc...

Yes and No :

That's true for barbarian leaders who built a empire for themselves rather than their people. Said empire crumbled with them.
That's not true for whoever tried to build an empire for his people.
They are exceptions, of course, Genkis Khan being the most famous to build an empire for his people while fighting all his life (well...not all his life but at least until he was physically incapable of fighting)

But overall, VERY FEW military leaders FOUGHT battles themselves, at the side of their troops, sword in hand, once they reached a position of political power. For some, it went as far as not leaving their capital city, for fear of a coup in their absence. Others even refrain from risking their best TROOPS because they saw these troops as an asset to avoid coups.

Now, indeed, to the public's eyes, it will look like they are wasting their time enjoying themselves rather than fighting with their troops. The reason is that, if the public still think their leader is benevolent, they won't even imagine he stays in his palace because he fears to lose all he now has.

Most modern absolute rulers started their career on the front of a civil war, then staid in their presidential palace to oversee things. I can give at least a dozen names but Mao is probably the best example, having fought with his men during 2/3 of the Chinese civil war then never leading the troops again, be it during the Sino-Vietnamian conflict, the Tibet occupation or the Korean War. He maybe visited the front to motivate the troops but so does any leader.



Yes, because choosing to remain in power suddenly make you execute people for disagreeing with you... naturally.

No, but successful people, once they reach a position of real power, can't stand critics. That's human, it's called pride. Only that, when you are a lambda citizen, you clunch your teeth and take it. When you have the capacity to kill a man with but a word, temptation is big... and usually, you don't resist long once you think that you CAN'T be wrong...which is the case when you throw arguments like "I want to keep the power because the people's choice is the wrong choice. Mine is the right one".


And I have yet to find a single historical incidence where that happened. Every time there were clear warning signs before the person rose to power that he was a corrupt bastard saying what he needed to to gain power. And the truly good ones lived their whole life without going corrupt.

Ok...
Again, I can't debate or even give names because of forum rules.
Let's just say these words : Social utopia, 1900, 1945.
Now, make a search for famous political leader during that period.
Half of them were convinced of what they were preaching, best proofs being :

Their life before reaching power was aweful specifically because they were preaching their ideas
They were smart and witty enough to get a honorable position if they so wanted to.
Yet, they choose a life of misery to get a chance at creating their Utopia.

Tyndmyr
2009-12-11, 03:17 PM
I'm not convinced a level 9 wizard who's contributing to a party can withstand a single level 9 rogue or monk's "surprise boot to the head". I know you said "fair fight", but that's unfair since wizard's don't get spot, listen, move silently, or hide.

This isn't even vaguely close to a fair measurement of power.

On one side, you have "a level 9 wizard who's contributing to the party".

On the other, you have a level 9 rogue/monk who gains surprise. In melee range.



Leaving aside the dramatic imbalance showing off this bias, or the fact that pvp isn't the only aspect of balance, lets try to consider why that situation would happen. Sleeping is right out, since level 9 rope trick would make the caster and his party immune to surprise. The wizard has invisibility and flight, which dramatically trump move silently and hide. He also has divination, which is much superior to listen and spot.

Now, what would happen if this wizard did get himself in this situation, just for giggles? Obviously, if the surprise attack misses the wizard, the attacker dies horribly. But if it connects? Assuming a 16 con(wizards being pretty sad, and thus con and dex getting solid numbers), a level 9 wizard will average 51 hp, unbuffed.

The unarmed damage of a level 9 monk is 1d10. Even assuming a nice strength bonus, the BaB is only 6(and the iterative is 1). The wizard definitely lives. The monk then dies.

taltamir
2009-12-11, 03:33 PM
Actually, he did step down. Washington had no government post during the post-revolution period when we operated under the Articles of Confederation. It was several years later when he was elected president, after having tried to convince people not to elect him and just let him retire, that he served as the chief of state.

If you're going to argue history, remember all of it please.

ok, point. Although he did "accept" some of the power and posts. Many have refused, and actually stuck with their refusal instead of "oh you shouldn't have" and then take it. Heck, he personally stuck to his refusal to be king.

Washington is more naive then I thought than, not only thinking power corrupts, but that there are others more suited than him to have said power.

Also, I wouldn't say he personally created the check and balance system. They are called the "Founding FatherS" not founding father.


I'm not convinced a level 9 wizard who's contributing to a party can withstand a single level 9 rogue or monk's "surprise boot to the head". I know you said "fair fight", but that's unfair since wizard's don't get spot, listen, move silently, or hide.

Care to take the challenge to the optimizer forums? Let us make a new thread out of that one if you feel like it.

nepphi
2009-12-11, 03:36 PM
I'd hardly call him naive. He was an adept politician, a skilled military commander, and an esteemed landowner. He understood the nature of men quite keenly, and chose of his own free will to reject the temptations of power after he had done what he deemed his appropriate duty. He simply was of a different moral cloth than the more cynical, more susceptible men. This isn't a failing, but a very different manner of strength.

taltamir
2009-12-11, 03:39 PM
even the greatest of men can make a mistake.
One can be a shrewed politician and an adept leader of man and still make a fundamental mistake about a certain aspect of the nature of humanity.

Tyndmyr
2009-12-11, 03:39 PM
Care to take the challenge to the optimizer forums? Let us make a new thread out of that one if you feel like it.

This'd probably be best, yes. I would gladly fight him using a monk or rogue vs my wizard in a world without available magic. No magic items for anyone, no spells outside of those automatically learned, no collegiate wizard feat. For added amusement, I'll make a wizard that will mesh well with a party, too.

taltamir
2009-12-11, 03:44 PM
This'd probably be best, yes. I would gladly fight him using a monk or rogue vs my wizard in a world without available magic. No magic items for anyone, no spells outside of those automatically learned, no collegiate wizard feat. For added amusement, I'll make a wizard that will mesh well with a party, too.

oh god. :)
I can just smell the slaughter already :)

and remember, both are in a position of power... so they can have several cohorts (lower level of course).

nepphi
2009-12-11, 03:44 PM
Making a mistake hardly counts as naivete. I've made mistakes because I've forgotten something, or because I lacked available information. If it was a mistake for Washington to step down (which I believe it wasn't), it needn't be due to a failing like naivete when many, many other factors could explain it.

For example, his failing health. He was getting up in years, and finding it much harder to move around or even eat properly due to various illnesses. Stepping down was as much for his health as the nation's political future, be aware. He could have had a third term as president, but declined of his own judgment for political AND personal reasons. You're too quick to assume 'everyone's cynical or naive' in very broad terms, and the world is far more nuanced than you give it credit for.

taltamir
2009-12-11, 03:45 PM
it depends on the nature of the mistake. When your mistake is about something philosophical and brought about by a bout of naivety....

Johel
2009-12-11, 03:53 PM
it depends on the nature of the mistake. When your mistake is about something philosophical and brought about by a bout of naivety....

How can you make a mistake about philosophy ?

I mean, sure, strict logic, I can understand.

But since moral values are also part of philosophy, one can hardly make a mistake on that part. And if it was his opinion that power corrupts while duty doesn't, then he was right to step down.

nepphi
2009-12-11, 04:01 PM
Point of disagreement then, though we're starting to get far afield of the original intent of this thread - the turnip economy as represented by DnD.

Tyndmyr
2009-12-11, 04:04 PM
Point of disagreement then, though we're starting to get far afield of the original intent of this thread - the turnip economy as represented by DnD.

I love the turnip economy, and it really does ring true. I suspect the idea of a village pooling their assets to pay an adventurer to help would likely come more in the forms of trade goods, favors(stay and eat free, for example), and so on than an actual pile of convenient gold coins.

Im so bringing turnips in as a reward for a future quest. My players will probably slay the entire town in outrage.

Volkov
2009-12-11, 04:21 PM
I wonder, how hard would an army of twenty thousand level 11 sorcerer Great wyrm Red dragons break the game....

Johel
2009-12-11, 04:25 PM
I wonder, how hard would an army of twenty thousand level 11 sorcerer Great wyrm Red dragons break the game....

Depends what there's on the other side. :smallwink:

Volkov
2009-12-11, 04:29 PM
Depends what there's on the other side. :smallwink:

I'm pretty sure all the gods listed in the deities and demigods handbook would be crushed by such an army. :smallwink:

Zen Master
2009-12-11, 04:39 PM
Mind you, an E6 campaign doesn't have that problem, since it's impossible to call a creature in the first place. :smallwink:

... E6?! Wuzzat?

Zen Master
2009-12-11, 04:49 PM
I feel that ... really, there are only two possible alternatives.

Either, in primordial times, one caster arrived at the infinite power loop - before all others. And to this day he rules everything in existance, across all the planes, forever - and kills of ANYONE with magical skill long before they become any sort of possible threat to him .....

Or:

Such tricks are not possible. The world is governed by men not magics, and no one is powerful enough to rule anything without alliances and the support of others. And alliances and the support of others comes more easily to other people besides wizards and sorcerers - often nobles, or even *gasp* people like paladins.

Any concept that falls between these two seems to fail - to me. So really, either there is no game, because some guy ended everything by becoming God. Or there is a game, and that game includes conscripted dirtfarmers as the basic building block of pretty much all armies.

Tyndmyr
2009-12-11, 04:51 PM
So, you become the all powerful caster, and rule the multiverse. You don't think that somewhere in...oh...infinity, you're going to get bored in killing off anyone who could possibly pose the slightest bit of challenge to you?

Perhaps you eventually say "screw it", and find something more interesting to do? Or await the challenge of up and coming casters?

Dervag
2009-12-11, 05:18 PM
You are aware of the little thing called the american revolution?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Washington#American_Revolution

Not verbatim what I said... the gist of it is "there is a bad man in power, I must wrest control from him for the good of all"...Taltamir, you're missing the important stuff, the bit about "power corrupts." Also the bit about how not EVERY person who is theoretically able to stage a coup tries to do so, even if they think there's a pretty good chance they'll succeed. And the bit about how the court wizard is not necessarily the highest level character, or even the highest level caster, in the kingdom.

Also, if we want to talk about revolutions, there are many, many examples other than the American Revolution to consider, and some of them are a lot more informative because the revolutionaries didn't luck out in having a charismatic leader who wasn't ambitious and self-righteous and zealous.

Ever heard of Robespierre?
_______


He didn't KNOW it, he THOUGHT it... and he was wrong. He was being misled by countless works of fictions and the inability of most people to comprehend mindsets which are truly alien to themselves.Name two of those works of fiction, please. For that matter, name two examples of people who were suddenly blessed with power without checks and balances and remained as saintly as you imply.


Uh, no...
He keeps it because SOMEONE has to have the power. Stepping down simply means transferring said power to someone else. Which, most often, is the most greedy and corrupt person around (which is why he was in the position to receive said power).Naturally, a wizard with the power to overthrow the old empire would knowingly hand power to someone just as bad. It's not as if there's some sort of magical "Detect Evil" or "Detect Thoughts" ability in D&D. And naturally they'd never be happy with the existing government and just, you know, not stage a coup. And naturally they have the best of intentions in holding onto power indefinitely and overthrowing any organs of government that don't depend on them.

Right.


Barbarians cannot fly, and thus, are naught but cannon fodder. By level 9, if you can't destroy the rest of your party in a fair fight as a wizard, either they like tier 1 classes too, or you aren't really trying.

Spell availability is not a huge factor in this, because you don't need a stupid variety of spells to be powerful, and most of the best stuff is core anyway.Please don't go down this road, Tyndmyr; it's a stupid road.

We've all heard the old Logic Ninja optimized wizard build. It's clever, but it's not new. This isn't about whether an optimized wizard build can beat an optimized barbarian build at level X, and it's not about abstract thought experiments where so and so many leveled PCs are transported to an infinite flat plane to fight to the death.

It's about life, or the attempt to simulate it in the game world. It's about governments, about people who have actual thoughts and personalities beyond their stat block. It's about people who might have loyalties and obligations and interests of their own other than seizing power just because they can, people who aren't planning to seclude themselves in an unassailable planar fortress because that's the only way to keep themselves from being murdered in their sleep by a hateful universe.

Johel
2009-12-11, 05:20 PM
I'm pretty sure all the gods listed in the deities and demigods handbook would be crushed by such an army. :smallwink:

(Russia... "-Quantity has a quality of its own" :smallbiggrin:)

I meant that if the world can accommodate thousands of great wyrms, I bet there are billions of other creatures, some of them powerful. Some of them maybe dragons themselves. And a good number of these dragons should be great wyrms themselves, unless the reds annihilated every other dragons and then bred like rabbits for thousands of years...

Better not mix the outsiders and the planes in that one or you'll get answers such as :
"-20.000 Great wyrm Red dragons with 11th sorcerer level ? Ah !! That's nothing for the infinite number of demons from the Abysses !!"

Volkov
2009-12-11, 05:52 PM
(Russia... "-Quantity has a quality of its own" :smallbiggrin:)

I meant that if the world can accommodate thousands of great wyrms, I bet there are billions of other creatures, some of them powerful. Some of them maybe dragons themselves. And a good number of these dragons should be great wyrms themselves, unless the reds annihilated every other dragons and then bred like rabbits for thousands of years...

Better not mix the outsiders and the planes in that one or you'll get answers such as :
"-20.000 Great wyrm Red dragons with 11th sorcerer level ? Ah !! That's nothing for the infinite number of demons from the Abysses !!"

The Dragons would be able to use epic magic, thus defeating the demons. Dang Spellcraft DC mitigation loopholes.

Volkov
2009-12-11, 05:54 PM
So, you become the all powerful caster, and rule the multiverse. You don't think that somewhere in...oh...infinity, you're going to get bored in killing off anyone who could possibly pose the slightest bit of challenge to you?

Perhaps you eventually say "screw it", and find something more interesting to do? Or await the challenge of up and coming casters?

Then another level 21 spellcaster takes you on. Epic spellcasters cannot defeat another Epic spellcaster if both know what they are doing. The only way to defeat infinity is to multiply it by zero, which defeats even infinity, which is proved by the fact that massless particles are always moving at light-speed and do not need to expend energy to do so, which requires infinite energy for objects that possess any mass.

Either that or a horrible monster from the Far realm that's totally immune to any form of harmful magic, whether indirect or direct, and negates all buffs and contigencies in the reality it's in, and is monstrously powerful in magic itself, comes and kicks the caster's rear end for craps and giggles.

Johel
2009-12-11, 06:18 PM
The Dragons would be able to use epic magic, thus defeating the demons. Dang Spellcraft DC mitigation loopholes.

The only way to defeat infinity is to multiply it by zero, which defeats even infinity, which is proved by the fact that massless particles are always moving at light-speed and do not need to expend energy to do so, which requires infinite energy for objects that possess any mass.

But... But... I guess you're right.
I won't argue for epic spellcasting.
Because even the sky isn't the limit.
And with a mitigating factor of 340.000 through additional spellcasters only, a epic spell is going to shatter reality so hard that Ao will blink.

Yet, that means gods too can use this technique...
They can cast epic spells...and have a N number of outsiders who can cast 9th level spells.
Look up the SRD and cry :
http://www.d20srd.org/indexes/divineRanksPowers.htm

Remote Sensing
Portfolio Sense
Spontaneous Casting

Volkov
2009-12-11, 06:22 PM
But... But... I guess you're right.
I won't argue for epic spellcasting.
Because even the sky isn't the limit.
And with a mitigating factor of 340.000 through additional spellcasters only, a epic spell is going to shatter reality so hard that Ao will blink.

Yet, that means gods too can use this technique...
They can cast epic spells...and have a N number of outsiders who can cast 9th level spells.
Look up the SRD and cry :
http://www.d20srd.org/indexes/divineRanksPowers.htm

Remote Sensing
Portfolio Sense
Spontaneous Casting

Sadly, no 3.0 god in the deities and demigods book can cast epic spells. Which is quite sad considering that Frazurblu, who is a Cr 21 Demon lord, has an epic spell-like ability.

taltamir
2009-12-11, 08:07 PM
Point of disagreement then, though we're starting to get far afield of the original intent of this thread - the turnip economy as represented by DnD.

point. lets respectfully agree to disagree...

As for turnip economy. I completely agree about the ECONOMICAL concepts presented here in regards for the turnip economy. I am just disagreeing about the military utility of farmer conscript in a DnD world.
While POSSIBLE utility exist, it is so low that only the most vile lords would practice it, and it will have a minimal effect on their overall army. While more moral lords will draw better quality individuals giving them an overall edge.

For example, if your lord's wizard is 8th level, his max spell is 4th level... on CL9, he gets SL5. The difference? now he can teleport a party into the enemy's bed chamber and back out again after the deed is done in the middle of the night. (technically, there is dimension door which he could do in lvl4, but that requires being a few hundred feet away instead of a few hundred miles away).

Similar jumps in power occur in other levels too... you get so much tools of cool at each level that you really cannot compare. Neither can an army of 1000 peasants (unless you are stupid enough to run head first into them on a flat plain with good visibility...)

Volkov
2009-12-11, 08:09 PM
point. lets respectfully agree to disagree...

As for turnip economy. I completely agree about the ECONOMICAL concepts presented here in regards for the turnip economy. I am just disagreeing about the military utility of farmer conscript in a DnD world.
While POSSIBLE utility exist, it is so low that only the most vile lords would practice it, and it will have a minimal effect on their overall army. While more moral lords will draw better quality individuals giving them an overall edge.

Welcome to Soviet Russia, where conscription is still in practice and it's what let us kick the arses of Nazi Germany.

taltamir
2009-12-11, 08:14 PM
Welcome to Soviet Russia, where conscription is still in practice and it's what let us kick the arses of Nazi Germany.

actually, that was mother nature.
The nazies carried light summer gear and EXPECTED to loot appropriate gear from their conquered enemies. The russians retreated and set everything on fire as they did... and it was the coldest winter in record, -56 degrees...
result? Nazies with frostbite, with vehicles that aren't running because the fuel FROZE...

The conscript themselves were slaughtered to the tune of about 20 million people.

Also, soviet russia did not have to deal with wizards... that is my whole point. IRL it makes SOME sense to have because an enemy wizard cannot teleport into your castle at night, scry your location and defenses perfectly, alter the terrain, mass fabricate equipment, etc etc etc.


Sadly, no 3.0 god in the deities and demigods book can cast epic spells. Which is quite sad considering that Frazurblu, who is a Cr 21 Demon lord, has an epic spell-like ability.

a lot of them have the alter reality as a SLA. Alter reality allows them to cast any spell in existence as a SLA, at will.

taltamir
2009-12-11, 08:19 PM
I love the turnip economy, and it really does ring true. I suspect the idea of a village pooling their assets to pay an adventurer to help would likely come more in the forms of trade goods, favors(stay and eat free, for example), and so on than an actual pile of convenient gold coins.

Im so bringing turnips in as a reward for a future quest. My players will probably slay the entire town in outrage.

lol, this is so awesome!

DM: OH THANK YOU M'LARD! *falls to his knees* thank you thank you! You have saved us!
Please, accept this humble reward
*the bring out two carts loaded to the brim with turnips and dragged by two bulls; the bulls look the like fine specimens*
PC: I ... uh... appraise their value real quick.
DM: The turnips are worth about 2gp total, the bulls are fine specimens and worth more than usual, 1.5gp each.
This would be enough food to feed a family for a year.

taltamir
2009-12-11, 08:23 PM
Naturally, a wizard with the power to overthrow the old empire would knowingly hand power to someone just as bad. It's not as if there's some sort of magical "Detect Evil" or "Detect Thoughts" ability in D&D. And naturally they'd never be happy with the existing government and just, you know, not stage a coup. And naturally they have the best of intentions in holding onto power indefinitely and overthrowing any organs of government that don't depend on them..

Ok, that is just epic!
You can have a lawful good government in DnD!
You simply must make it a requirement that every member of government be tested annually with detect good and detect law. If they fail either they are barred from government.


I feel that ... really, there are only two possible alternatives.

Either, in primordial times, one caster arrived at the infinite power loop - before all others. And to this day he rules everything in existance, across all the planes, forever - and kills of ANYONE with magical skill long before they become any sort of possible threat to him ....

so... pun pun?


I wonder, how hard would an army of twenty thousand level 11 sorcerer Great wyrm Red dragons break the game....

The answer is, not at all...
they would be the equivalent of tanks and heavy guns... and every side would probably have some.

Look IRL in conflicts between countries with spears / bows vs countries with guns. The guns dominate... but nowadays you can have war between two countries with tanks and guns and there is balance between their power.

Likewise, police and the military are able to deal with guns in the hands of criminals.

Volkov
2009-12-11, 08:26 PM
actually, that was mother nature.
The nazies carried light summer gear and EXPECTED to loot appropriate gear from their conquered enemies. The russians retreated and set everything on fire as they did... and it was the coldest winter in record, -56 degrees...
result? Nazies with frostbite, with vehicles that aren't running because the fuel FROZE...

The conscript themselves were slaughtered to the tune of about 20 million people.

Also, soviet russia did not have to deal with wizards... that is my whole point. IRL it makes SOME sense to have because an enemy wizard cannot teleport into your castle at night, scry your location and defenses perfectly, alter the terrain, mass fabricate equipment, etc etc etc.



a lot of them have the alter reality as a SLA. Alter reality allows them to cast any spell in existence as a SLA, at will.
We beat the germans by sheer quantity. Their later tanks were better, but ours were much more numerous. We had more men, and beat them through sheer numbers once we started our beeline to Berlin.

Volkov
2009-12-11, 08:28 PM
Ok, that is just epic!
You can have a lawful good government in DnD!
You simply must make it a requirement that every member of government be tested annually with detect good and detect law. If they fail either they are barred from government.



so... pun pun?



The answer is, not at all...
they would be the equivalent of tanks and heavy guns... and every side would probably have some.

Look IRL in conflicts between countries with spears / bows vs countries with guns. The guns dominate... but nowadays you can have war between two countries with tanks and guns and there is balance between their power.

Likewise, police and the military are able to deal with guns in the hands of criminals.
As in, if you threw them into Oerth. It's a freak accident and it's completely unique.

Dervag
2009-12-11, 09:09 PM
As for turnip economy. I completely agree about the ECONOMICAL concepts presented here in regards for the turnip economy. I am just disagreeing about the military utility of farmer conscript in a DnD world.
While POSSIBLE utility exist, it is so low that only the most vile lords would practice it, and it will have a minimal effect on their overall army. While more moral lords will draw better quality individuals giving them an overall edge.The conscripts are useful for policing, not for direct combat in pitched battles. There's a difference.


actually, that was mother nature.
The nazies carried light summer gear and EXPECTED to loot appropriate gear from their conquered enemies. The russians retreated and set everything on fire as they did... and it was the coldest winter in record, -56 degrees...
result? Nazies with frostbite, with vehicles that aren't running because the fuel FROZE...No, really, it was the Russians. The weather helped, but the Russians fought much better than the oversimplified form of Hollywood World War Two History might lead you to believe. Yes, they took heavy casualties, but they were fighting an enemy who had more industrial production capability than they did; they had to throw something else into the balance. Stalin being Stalin, that was manpower.


We beat the germans by sheer quantity. Their later tanks were better, but ours were much more numerous. We had more men, and beat them through sheer numbers once we started our beeline to Berlin.Gack. Here we have Russians underestimating themselves. If there was a noticeable qualitative difference between German and Soviet late war tanks it wasn't that impressive; the Germans had better doctrine but, again, not that much better. Once the Soviets had been in the war long enough for the disparity in military experience to level off, the effective ratio necessary between the two sides for a Russian win started converging on 1:1, with a few notable exceptions.

taltamir
2009-12-11, 09:12 PM
The conscripts are useful for policing, not for direct combat in pitched battles. There's a difference.
I agree, but that doesn't make them an ARMY... it makes them a police force.
And I'd use "tax and hire" system to improve moral and reduce corruption...

They can deal with the occasional group of bandits, deal with the occasional kobold, etc...
But to send them against another human lord? that is just mean.

Riffington
2009-12-12, 12:13 AM
oh god. :)
I can just smell the slaughter already :)


The rogue has Sense Motive, Diplomacy, and Bluff. The wizard has none. They start off as best friends; only the rogue knows that he intends to kill the wizard. I don't think we need an optimizer board to know how that ends. Your "fair fight" idea is totally unfair to sneaky classes.

Now a beguiler on the other hand. That's an overpowered class in a low-magic world.

Also: most fantasy low-magic worlds are like Lord of the Rings: magic is rare but what magic there is is mighty. No, you can't go to walmart and buy some magic gloves. But you certainly have powerful artifact swords and lyres. This may or may not help wizards a little (none of this "oh I have an item in every slot" bullcrap), but it's not even close to the same as "I crafted a wand while you crafted a masterwork bow".

taltamir
2009-12-12, 12:26 AM
by RAW, player characters are immune to diplomacy and bluff. it can only be used on NPCs. that being said... if you want to go the "i use bluff to make them think I am friendly until I poison their drink"... well, if that is a valid tactic in your "versus" situation than you just made rogues and bards the most powerful classes by far.

Anyways, I never actually said fight fair; who actually said fight fair? that is totally unfair to sneaky classes... but "stab him in the night"... well... the wizard has some cohorts with sense motive, spot and listen (so does the rogue)...
The rogue has noone that can protect him from a "scry and die" into his bedroom in the middle of the night.

Riffington
2009-12-12, 12:36 AM
by RAW, player characters are immune to diplomacy and bluff. it can only be used on NPCs.

Anyways, I never actually said fight fair; who actually said fight fair? that is totally unfair to sneaky classes... but "stab him in the night"... well... the wizard has some cohorts with sense motive, spot and listen (so does the rogue)...
The rogue has noone that can protect him from a "scry and die" into his bedroom in the middle of the night.

PCs aren't immune to diplomacy and bluff. They just don't need rolls: it should be done via roleplaying (based on the diplomacy and bluff and sense motive scores). So the point stands: the wizard believes they are friends. Next, people never know for sure which of their "cohorts" are really loyal and which can be bought (or were just waiting for their chance for revenge). To say "oh, this guy is a Cohort and this is an NPC who wants me to trust him" is just metagaming. The wizard trusts the rogue as much as his Bard cohorts.

taltamir
2009-12-12, 12:42 AM
PCs aren't immune to diplomacy and bluff. They just don't need rolls: it should be done via roleplaying (based on the diplomacy and bluff and sense motive scores). So the point stands: the wizard believes they are friends. Next, people never know for sure which of their "cohorts" are really loyal and which can be bought (or were just waiting for their chance for revenge). To say "oh, this guy is a Cohort and this is an NPC who wants me to trust him" is just metagaming. The wizard trusts the rogue as much as his Bard cohorts.

1. at level 10, the rogue has 13 skill points in it, the wizard 6. and there would be penalty modifiers in convincing someone that you are friends where the test is explicitly to kill each other. (a wizard can bluff a rogue too).

2. PC are totally immune to diplomacy and bluff in the raw, you can disagree, but that is how it is. However, you COULD be comparing a NON PC wizard to a non PC rogue

3. Just comparing skill level without a roll is much worse than a d20 + skill roll, and goes completely against everything in the system, by that logic the rogue will always automatically succeed on a bluff check against anyone but other rogues.

So, yes if you have a rogue knowing he wants to murder a wizard and the wizard does not know it for some reason, he can just come over and pretend to be friends and put poison in the drink... but if a wizard decides to kill the rogue and the rogue doesn't know it than:
1. the wizard can do the same
2. the wizard can scry and kill him.

The point is, if party A wants to kill party B and party B is not aware of party A's intent: than party B is in deep trouble... and the wizard fares better than a rogue would as either role

Dervag
2009-12-12, 01:56 AM
I agree, but that doesn't make them an ARMY... it makes them a police force.
And I'd use "tax and hire" system to improve moral and reduce corruption...Since the "police" in question can also be used for dealing with poorly organized barbarian invasions, something more muscular than the classic concept of "police" is called for. Gendarmerie (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gendarmerie), perhaps?


by RAW, player characters are immune to diplomacy and bluff. it can only be used on NPCs. that being said... if you want to go the "i use bluff to make them think I am friendly until I poison their drink"... well, if that is a valid tactic in your "versus" situation than you just made rogues and bards the most powerful classes by far.Who said the powerful wizard scheming to overthrow the king was a PC, though? If he's an NPC, he's just as vulnerable to Bluffs as everyone else... which is a damn good reason not to tick off the Thieves' Guild too badly.

Zen Master
2009-12-12, 03:33 AM
So, you become the all powerful caster, and rule the multiverse. You don't think that somewhere in...oh...infinity, you're going to get bored in killing off anyone who could possibly pose the slightest bit of challenge to you?

Perhaps you eventually say "screw it", and find something more interesting to do? Or await the challenge of up and coming casters?

No. Power corrupts. Ultimate power corrupts ultimately.

It's possible that at some point you say 'screw it - I'm not going to handle this *personally* for all eternity' and delegate the task to some infinite army of automatons. But no - when, deep inside, you *know* you rule the universe through an infinite power loop ... shame and fear will make sure you never let down your guard.

Anyways - I gotta ask. Are you actually defending infinite power loops here?

taltamir
2009-12-12, 08:41 AM
Since the "police" in question can also be used for dealing with poorly organized barbarian invasions, something more muscular than the classic concept of "police" is called for. Gendarmerie (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gendarmerie), perhaps?

That works, or maybe militia?

Riffington
2009-12-12, 10:40 AM
there would be penalty modifiers in convincing someone that you are friends where the test is explicitly to kill each other.
Metagame consideration?



2. PC are totally immune to diplomacy and bluff in the raw, you can disagree, but that is how it is. However, you COULD be comparing a NON PC wizard to a non PC rogue
PCs don't get skill checks, but they have to roleplay it.
But yeah if it's level 10 guys in a game where 10 is insanely powerful, those guys should probably be NPCs. It's usually lame to have PCs be the most powerful people in the world. And besides, teleport spoils plot.



3. Just comparing skill level without a roll is much worse than a d20 + skill roll, and goes completely against everything in the system, by that logic the rogue will always automatically succeed on a bluff check against anyone but other rogues.
That's not how PCs do it. They take into consideration the relative skills, but they don't "automatically higher wins". Over time and play: if a certain bluff score should succeed against your character 75% of the time, you should have it succeed against your character about 75% of the time. If your decisions vary widely from that ("I'm rarely fooled, and I don't even need to waste points on Sense Motive") you are doing it wrong.



The point is, if party A wants to kill party B and party B is not aware of party A's intent: than party B is in deep trouble... and the wizard fares better than a rogue would as either role
But the rogue gets to choose who's party A and who's party B.

The nature of an all-powerful wizard is that most mistrust and fear him (yes, even Gandalf Stormcrow). The nature of an equally-powerful rogue is that everyone thinks he's just a really nice guy until they're missing their jewels or their trachea. The wizard has much more raw power in any given role, but the rogue is much more likely to be able to choose the roles in the first place. Make all-powerful a higher level than 10 and you tip everything toward the wizard, of course. And as already pointed out, Beguiler simply wins this.

Yahzi
2009-12-12, 12:26 PM
The turnip economy by Frank & K is brilliant, but it misses one important factor.

What is the most valuable thing produced in the D&D world? And where does it come from?

The answers are "Levels" and "XP."

So to build a meaningful economy you need to figure out where XP comes from.

The ease with which XP is obtained will determine what your world looks like. If XP is as rare as it was in 2E (minus the xp for gold), then low-level fighters are the heroes and wizards/clerics are as rare as dragons. If XP is as common as it is in 3.5E, then the Tippyverse seems inevitable. The trick is to set the XP economy at the level you want for your world.

But to do this you have to know where XP comes from. In the books it is represented as "successfully passing tests," that is, the application of training to a significant problem to produce a solution. Generally the problem has to involve life or death to qualify as significant.

This model is absolutely useless. It implies that only adventurers - who kill for a living - have access to large quantities of XP. The problem with this is that no world which contains 9th level professional magic-using murderers is going to have 2nd level Aristocrat kings. All of the arguments about power aside, that is simply too large of a disparity. Plus it means your players get to act like monsters because nobody can stop them (anybody who doubts that absolute power corrupts absolutely needs only to watch how players act in a world where they are x10 as powerful as anyone else).

The other problem with the model is that monsters go from being a terrible problem to being a valuable (and limited) resource. Consider the average number of monsters a PC group goes through to reach 9th level. Either there are so few monsters that the PCs are the only people on the continent to level, or you have so many monsters you need to explain why the hordes haven't overrun all of society. Never mind explaining how all of those monsters actually eat enough to stay alive.

And of course smart people are going to look for ways to exploit the production of the single most valuable resource on the planet. Raising monsters and fighting them in an arena pit will be big business. According to the rules, a fair fight is CR+4, so if two equal level foes enter the arena and only one leaves, the victor usually goes up a level. This means only 32 people fighting to the death yields 1 5th level character. And not all of those people have to die, they just have to lose in a fight with the possibility of dieing: with magic healing, in fact, few of them will stay dead.

None of this produces the world you want to run.

I have a solution for all of these problems. XP has to come from the one source that matters, and its extraction has to require real sacrifice. All you have to do is decide the rate at which this can be done and everything else falls into place.

In my world, rulers of counties (1,000-10,000 population) are 5th-8th level. They have a viceroy of 3rd-6th as second in command, a couple of 2-3rd levels, and a dozen or two 1st level knights. In this kind of world a few hundred commoners with weapons and training are worth raising. They can be equipped out of the taxes the peasants pay, so they're basically free. They can set off traps, trigger ambushes, patrol borders, and even kill low-level monsters or enemies.

5th level clerics are common enough that most towns have one. Wizards are rarer because they're not as popular (and they die easier). People don't die of disease or childbirth, but they can still die in accidents in the field.

Kings are 9th level or higher. The monsters, of course, have their own kings and their own nations. When armies collide, the low-levels take the field first. Everybody knows that initiative wins high level duels, so the low-levels role is to find the enemy high-levels so their own high-levels can insta-gank them. Of course their low-levels are doing the same thing. So there's a big fight between low-levels, until one side is losing so badly they have to be rescued by their higher-ups.

The way I do all this is by making XP something you extract from the brains of sentient people when they die. XP is created by birthing and raising a sentient creature to adulthood, and harvested only on their death. When you consume this XP, you go up in levels - but when you die, only 1/16 of what you had comes back out.

Rulers collect the XP from their communities and distribute it for the common defense. Usually this means consuming it themselves, of course: but a handful of lower-levels is also useful when properly leveled and equipped (hence cohorts and followers!).

This solves several problems.
1) It explains why the ruler is the highest level guy around.
2) It explains why high-levels don't do all the fighting themselves.
3) It explains why high-levels care about the existence of peasants.
4) It explains why adventurers are wanderers - because they don't have a fief of their own to produce their XP in taxes. Instead, they have to adventure for it in the wild.
5) It explains why you can trade gold for XP (like when a wizard makes a magic item for you).

Riffington
2009-12-12, 07:43 PM
So to build a meaningful economy you need to figure out where XP comes from.
Agreed.


It implies that only adventurers - who kill for a living - have access to large quantities of XP.
Agreed that this is a problem.


The problem with this is that no world which contains 9th level professional magic-using murderers is going to have 2nd level Aristocrat kings.
Why the devil not? I can name a couple guys who could take out Queen Victoria or Obama and get away with it. Presumably there are a few thousand more out there.



All of the arguments about power aside, that is simply too large of a disparity.
9th level characters can be stopped by 3rd level guards. Not every time, but often enough that it's not too large of a disparity, and it's not absolute power.



The other problem with the model is that monsters go from being a terrible problem to being a valuable (and limited) resource.

Right. You never want dungeons to be charging an admission fee, but that's where XP as "monster slayage" leads you to.



Kings are 9th level or higher.
Why? What's wrong with 2nd level kings?

Yahzi
2009-12-13, 12:07 PM
9th level characters can be stopped by 3rd level guards.
No, they can't.

That's the problem. It's one thing to be a 7th level badass when the king's champions are 6th level badasses. You're a tough cookie that the king has to be concerned about.

But if you're 9th and the best the king has is 3rd, there is no tension. There is only groveling.

There are people in the world tougher than the soldiers that fought for Victoria, but only on a personal level. Her Household Guards were as dangerous a military unit as any. The problem is that no unit of 3rd levels is as dangerous as a single 9th level party.

This sounds like a challenge. I'll draw up a standard 9th level party - Cleric, Wizard, Fighter, Rogue. Only using magic items they could made themselves, and paid for out of WBL.

You draw up a castle with 1,000 3rd level NPC class guards. And a 2nd level Aristocrat King. No magic items other than what they can make themselves; each guard is limited to WBL for NPCs. You get a free Castle, though.

The PCs have to kill the King within 7 days. The King can't leave the castle (where would he go?). On the other hand the PCs can presumably retire and rest whenever they want - with access to Flight and Teleport they can escape to places the NPCs can't even reach.

Who do you think will win? :smallbiggrin:

Tyndmyr
2009-12-13, 12:24 PM
Metagame consideration?

Um, we're comparing two classes mechanically. It's inherently a metagame activity.


That's not how PCs do it. They take into consideration the relative skills, but they don't "automatically higher wins". Over time and play: if a certain bluff score should succeed against your character 75% of the time, you should have it succeed against your character about 75% of the time. If your decisions vary widely from that ("I'm rarely fooled, and I don't even need to waste points on Sense Motive") you are doing it wrong.

This is your opinion unless you can find some support for this in the rules. So far as I can tell, none exists.


But the rogue gets to choose who's party A and who's party B.

Why? The wizard is excellent at killing people who are unaware of them. They are also excellent at putting themselves beyond reach of mundane attackers. Rope trick is an obvious example.


The nature of an all-powerful wizard is that most mistrust and fear him (yes, even Gandalf Stormcrow). The nature of an equally-powerful rogue is that everyone thinks he's just a really nice guy until they're missing their jewels or their trachea. The wizard has much more raw power in any given role, but the rogue is much more likely to be able to choose the roles in the first place. Make all-powerful a higher level than 10 and you tip everything toward the wizard, of course. And as already pointed out, Beguiler simply wins this.

Will happily prove you wrong in ToS.

taltamir
2009-12-13, 01:29 PM
Why? The wizard is excellent at killing people who are unaware of them. They are also excellent at putting themselves beyond reach of mundane attackers. Rope trick is an obvious example.

He is saying that when the wizard DECIDES to kill the rogue, the rogue says "hey, lets be friends", rolls diplomacy, wins, and is automatically the wizard's "friend" (until he back-stabs him later)...
Aka, he is saying that due to how diplomacy works, a low diplomacy character is effectively FORBIDDEN from ever attacking a high diplomacy character.

Yahzi
2009-12-13, 01:36 PM
He is saying that when the wizard DECIDES to kill the rogue, the rogue says "hey, lets be friends", rolls diplomacy, wins, and is automatically the wizard's "friend" (until he back-stabs him later)...
Isn't this cured by putting cotton in your ears?

"What's that? I can't hear you... 'scuse me while blast you into next week." :smallbiggrin:

GoC
2009-12-13, 03:12 PM
I'm fairly sure extrapolating from the rules and human-like self-interest will create a world completely unrecognizable. It will likely consist of massive soul factories* on demiplanes, armies of millions of high CR creatures battling on the various planes in attempts to destroy or capture other soul factories and not a single dirt farmer anywhere in the universe. Especially not the material plane which will be full of creatures from those very armies.

Anyone without soul factories powering them will soon become irrelevant.

A problem with the idea of a food economy: create food and water traps. If peasant have anything valuable to a high level character at all then he will have unlimited quantities of it.

Tyndmyr: Test of Spite rules gimp wizards.

Sliver
2009-12-13, 03:26 PM
There is a simple reason why there are not many high level characters..

Anyone showing even the slight signs of having actual talent in something actually interesting has a high chance of being noticed by the deity of adventures (or DM, GM, ST or w/e). This deity is highly sadistic and while you can become extremly powerful, it is not worth all the hate you get from the universe. Only few actually dare do so, and they get the title of PCs (or named NPCs, sometimes..).

Oslecamo
2009-12-13, 03:27 PM
I'm fairly sure extrapolating from the rules and human-like self-interest will create a world completely unrecognizable. It will likely consist of massive soul factories* on demiplanes, armies of millions of high CR creatures battling on the various planes in attempts to destroy or capture other soul factories and not a single dirt farmer anywhere in the universe. Especially not the material plane which will be full of creatures from those very armies.

Anyone without soul factories powering them will soon become irrelevant.


Actualy, that's what already happens.

The soul factories are the material planes, where humanoids have to batle against all kind of monsters. Monster wich are spawned by an invisible hand and wich never actualy seek to overrun the cities where new humanoids are born. So the humanoids grow and produce powerful juicy souls.

The administrators of the factories are normaly called "gods". They're always recruiting the souls of the dead to join them to their side. Those who can't get enough souls (aka worshipers) end up dead.

Of course, behind the gods are even stronger older beings. They watch from above, and make sure to destroy anyone who would tamper with their bigger scheme. Meanwhile, they create all kind of games, challenges and reality shows to fight boredom. Wich us mortals normaly know as "dungeons", "quests" and other such stuff.:smallwink:

Riffington
2009-12-13, 08:23 PM
He is saying that when the wizard DECIDES to kill the rogue, the rogue says "hey, lets be friends", rolls diplomacy, wins, and is automatically the wizard's "friend" (until he back-stabs him later)...
Aka, he is saying that due to how diplomacy works, a low diplomacy character is effectively FORBIDDEN from ever attacking a high diplomacy character.
Not quite. My claim is that a smart social guy will typically manage to make friends with powerful wizards. It is of course true that smart social guys have a few powerful enemies as well. It's just that, 90% of the time, the rogue will be the wizard's friend. You are no more forbidden from attacking high-diplomacy characters than you are forbidden to attack your mother. It's just rare.
The corollary to this is that wizard has rope trick, and uses it to help the rogue inside. And that if you set up some kind of "test", you tell the wizard that it's him and the rogue against a druid and a dragon.

Yahzi:


This sounds like a challenge. I'll draw up a standard 9th level party - Cleric, Wizard, Fighter, Rogue. Only using magic items they could made themselves, and paid for out of WBL.

You draw up a castle with 1,000 3rd level NPC class guards. And a 2nd level Aristocrat King. No magic items other than what they can make themselves; each guard is limited to WBL for NPCs. You get a free Castle, though.

The PCs have to kill the King within 7 days. The King can't leave the castle (where would he go?). On the other hand the PCs can presumably retire and rest whenever they want - with access to Flight and Teleport they can escape to places the NPCs can't even reach.

Who do you think will win?

How about a few changes?
*the King gets 1000 3rd level NPC class guards, 100 3rd level PC class guards, and an army of 100,000 1st level NPC class soldiers. He has 10,000,000 GP to spend on anything he wants, or given to any of his men. The King may freely travel anywhere in his country, including any of his 6 castles.

GoC
2009-12-13, 08:30 PM
Actualy, that's what already happens.

The soul factories are the material planes, where humanoids have to batle against all kind of monsters. Monster wich are spawned by an invisible hand and wich never actualy seek to overrun the cities where new humanoids are born. So the humanoids grow and produce powerful juicy souls.

The administrators of the factories are normaly called "gods". They're always recruiting the souls of the dead to join them to their side. Those who can't get enough souls (aka worshipers) end up dead.

Of course, behind the gods are even stronger older beings. They watch from above, and make sure to destroy anyone who would tamper with their bigger scheme. Meanwhile, they create all kind of games, challenges and reality shows to fight boredom. Wich us mortals normaly know as "dungeons", "quests" and other such stuff.:smallwink:
The thing is that it could be made much MUCH more efficient. Create new demiplanes and bread commoners in farms. Have organized arenas, ect.

And the one with the more efficient farming wins.


How about a few changes?
*the King gets 1000 3rd level NPC class guards, 100 3rd level PC class guards, and an army of 100,000 1st level NPC class soldiers. He has 10,000,000 GP to spend on anything he wants, or given to any of his men. The King may freely travel anywhere in his country, including any of his 6 castles.
By RAW he could just hire a high level wizard or buy some really epic magic items. However, as the premise of this thread is injecting a bit of common sense into D&D economics he won't be able to buy anything but mundane and low level magic equipment.

My money is on the PCs.

Riffington
2009-12-13, 08:41 PM
By RAW he could just hire a high level wizard or buy some really epic magic items. However, as the premise of this thread is injecting a bit of common sense into D&D economics he won't be able to buy anything but mundane and low level magic equipment.

My money is on the PCs.

If you start with the assumption that Kings inherit whatever their father possessed, he can "buy" anything including powerful artifacts. He didn't necessarily buy them; he was given it as tribute or left it by his grandfather the dragonslayer or whatever.

snoopy13a
2009-12-13, 10:24 PM
Why does everyone assume that wizards would take over countries or that the nobility would be great warriors?

My hunch is that the nobility would arise from sorcerors.

Ok, in pre-literate times, those fortunate who can naturally harnass magical powers become the best warriors of their tribes and rise to leadership. The magical abilities are passed on genetically and as society develops, the sorceror leaders become the nobility. They claim by right of magical noble birth passed down from generation to generation and bestowed by the gods. The rest of the population fears and admires them.

Soon, organized religion starts to form and clerics develop. The sorcerors realize that the clerics' magic comes from the gods so they immediately ally themselves with the clerics and a mutually beneficial relationship arises. The nobles support the clerics' religions and the clerics give even more support to the nobles. Now, society is being overseen by two magical groups.

Next, a few scholars discover wizardry. This is bad. The nobles are threatened because now mere peasants can actually gain power. The clerics are threatened because up into now, magic is only from the gods (everyone believes the gods gave the nobles their sorceror magic and of course, the clerics get magic via prayer). The wizards threaten society. Thus, the sorcerors and clerics ban wizardry, hang all practictors as heretics, etc.

So, society consists of a small number of aristocratic sorcerors in charge. They are supported by the clerics. The noble sorcerors don't know anything about the knowledge of magic and they really only use offensive blaster spells (which work well to solidify their position). Clerics, great heroes, and a few nobles scour the lands searching for evil, heretic wizards as they pose a threat to society. Thus, no level 10+ wizards arise because no wizards make it to level 2 without being hunted down and killed.

The king or queen is likely elected from the great noble houses and is the greatest sorceror in the kingdom (or at least was when they were elected). The king/queen may even know the powerful fireball spell :smalltongue: (level 6 would be ultra-high in this world). No non-magic user would dare revolt (the Lord can kill a man from 40 paces by just snapping his fingers--> magic missle must seem brutal from a peasant's point of view :smallsmile: ). So the sorcerors and clerics self-regulate on top.

Oslecamo
2009-12-14, 03:45 AM
The thing is that it could be made much MUCH more efficient. Create new demiplanes and bread commoners in farms. Have organized arenas, ect.

Look at the real world. Even with computers and instant comunications and airplanes, we have trouble properly organizing our economy. The system could be much much better, but due to the flawed human nature, it isn't. Heck, we still waste time in huge debates about what is right to wear!



And the one with the more efficient farming wins.

Yeah, because in the real world a company who makes more profits instantly crushes all oposition...Hey, wait!

Lesser super wizards would join efforts against stronger super wizards, leading to all kind of alliances and betrayals, or just a "cold war" with gentleman agreements to prevent mutual destruction. After all, destruction is easier than creation. A wizard may hold their ground by simply having a contigency "blow up the multiverse" epic spell prepared. You can take him down, but he'll take you down with it.

Besides, what's the fun of being the supreme ruler if you don't have people to boss around? Who would want to rule over a perfectly uniform plane where you're the only creature with free will left?:smallamused:



By RAW he could just hire a high level wizard or buy some really epic magic items. However, as the premise of this thread is injecting a bit of common sense into D&D economics he won't be able to buy anything but mundane and low level magic equipment.


Why? Why do the merchants only sell to the PCs? to who will the PCs sell their uber loot besides rich people? Gold is more valuable than souls after all!

Dervag
2009-12-14, 03:58 AM
Why the devil not? I can name a couple guys who could take out Queen Victoria or Obama and get away with it. Presumably there are a few thousand more out there.Personally, in one on one combat? Sure. But in either leader's era, no individual, and damn few small groups, could hack their way through either ruler's security detachment by brute force. Sneaking past the security would have been harder but possible (I don't know about Victoria, but someone actually managed to social engineer their way past Obama's security recently).

Doing it and getting away alive? Maybe in Victoria's day; I don't know what Queen Victoria's security looked like, and assassination was not a particularly realistic concern for British monarchs at the time, so they probably weren't prepared. In Obama's case? Not bloody likely, not with individual-portable weapons.


9th level characters can be stopped by 3rd level guards. Not every time, but often enough that it's not too large of a disparity, and it's not absolute power.How many guards do you need? How many assumptions do you have to make about the limits of what magic the 9th level types have at their disposal? How carefully do you have to secure the principal* to keep wizards with Teleport capability from using scry and die tactics on them?

It is not easy. And it effectively requires the ruler to spend all his time cowering in the castle for fear of assassins. Historically, leaders who do that don't last very long, because they tend to lose control of events. Effective leaders must at least be able to rule their nation well enough to ensure their own safety.

*As in, the person the guards are detecting.
________


Why? What's wrong with 2nd level kings?Nothing per se, but they are anomalies that require an explanation. Because not only are they physically weaker than high-level rivals, the odds are that they are also less intelligent*, less resistant to persuasion**, less persuasive in their own right***, and easier to control by magic****.

*no mind-enhancing magic; a high level character can probably afford an item of Fox's Cunning or Owl's Wisdom or the like.
**lower Sense Motive checks
***lower Diplomacy and Bluff checks
****lower Will saves.

So when a 2nd level character runs the kingdom for long, something funny is going on. Maybe they're secretly a templated being with superhuman baseline abilities- a vampire, or a demonic or celestial creature. Maybe they're actually a figurehead being controlled by someone else, either by direct threat (warriors threatening to stage a coup, assassins leaving daggers on his pillow) or by magic. Maybe they have extremely powerful friends; a king who is the 12th-level sorceror's nephew is almost as coup-proof as the 12th-level sorceror himself would be. Likewise one who has standing pacts with some powerful group of monsters or extraplanar creatures.
_______


Why does everyone assume that wizards would take over countries or that the nobility would be great warriors?

My hunch is that the nobility would arise from sorcerors...
Ok, in pre-literate times, those fortunate who can naturally harnass magical powers become the best warriors of their tribes and rise to leadership. The magical abilities are passed on genetically and as society develops, the sorceror leaders become the nobility. They claim by right of magical noble birth passed down from generation to generation and bestowed by the gods. The rest of the population fears and admires them.

Soon, organized religion starts to form and clerics develop. The sorcerors realize that the clerics' magic comes from the gods so they immediately ally themselves with the clerics and a mutually beneficial relationship arises. The nobles support the clerics' religions and the clerics give even more support to the nobles. Now, society is being overseen by two magical groups.

Next, a few scholars discover wizardry. This is bad. The nobles are threatened because now mere peasants can actually gain power. The clerics are threatened because up into now, magic is only from the gods (everyone believes the gods gave the nobles their sorceror magic and of course, the clerics get magic via prayer). The wizards threaten society. Thus, the sorcerors and clerics ban wizardry, hang all practictors as heretics, etc.
So, society consists of a small number of aristocratic sorcerors in charge. They are supported by the clerics. The noble sorcerors don't know anything about the knowledge of magic and they really only use offensive blaster spells (which work well to solidify their position). Clerics, great heroes, and a few nobles scour the lands searching for evil, heretic wizards as they pose a threat to society. Thus, no level 10+ wizards arise because no wizards make it to level 2 without being hunted down and killed.

The king or queen is likely elected from the great noble houses and is the greatest sorceror in the kingdom (or at least was when they were elected). The king/queen may even know the powerful fireball spell :smalltongue: (level 6 would be ultra-high in this world). No non-magic user would dare revolt (the Lord can kill a man from 40 paces by just snapping his fingers--> magic missle must seem brutal from a peasant's point of view :smallsmile: ). So the sorcerors and clerics self-regulate on top.Hmm. That is clever, assuming sorcery is strongly hereditary. If not, it creates problems, because there will be a constant stream of new sorcerors trying to kick over the existing hierarchy, and it will be easier for wizards to conceal themselves in that stream (the only ways you can tell a wizard from a sorceror reliably is either by metagaming, or waiting for them to study their spellbook).

Riffington
2009-12-14, 04:29 AM
Personally, in one on one combat? Sure.

In one on one combat my little brother could do it.


But in either leader's era, no individual, and damn few small groups, could hack their way through either ruler's security detachment by brute force. Sneaking past the security would have been harder but possible (I don't know about Victoria, but someone actually managed to social engineer their way past Obama's security recently).

Doing it and getting away alive? Maybe in Victoria's day; I don't know what Queen Victoria's security looked like, and assassination was not a particularly realistic concern for British monarchs at the time, so they probably weren't prepared. In Obama's case? Not bloody likely, not with individual-portable weapons.
I know at least 2 people that would have >75% chance of getting past security, killing Obama, and getting away with it. Without getting away with it? I probably know a dozen people who could do it.
The Secret Service is a joke. Note how a shoe-thrower got two (2) shoes off at Bush. Note how the difficulty of getting into poisoning range of Obama is about $50,000 campaign contribution or superb chutzpah?


It is not easy. And it effectively requires the ruler to spend all his time cowering in the castle for fear of assassins. Historically, leaders who do that don't last very long, because they tend to lose control of events. Effective leaders must at least be able to rule their nation well enough to ensure their own safety.

Today or in D&D, leaders can easily be assassinated. What stops people today is that almost nobody actually wants to do it/thinks of it as an option. What stops people in D&D is that *plus* Detect Poison/Cure Light Wounds/etc.


Nothing per se, but they are anomalies that require an explanation.
Can the explanation be Hereditary Rule?


*no mind-enhancing magic; a high level character can probably afford an item of Fox's Cunning or Owl's Wisdom or the like.

But a King can afford more magic and items than a high level character (for certain values of high).



So when a 2nd level character runs the kingdom for long, something funny is going on.
Not just "nobody bothered" or "high level subjects remained loyal"? That's what keeps our rulers around in real life; why can't human nature be the same in D&D?


Hmm. That is clever, assuming sorcery is strongly hereditary. If not, it creates problems, because there will be a constant stream of new sorcerors trying to kick over the existing hierarchy, and it will be easier for wizards to conceal themselves in that stream (the only ways you can tell a wizard from a sorceror reliably is either by metagaming, or waiting for them to study their spellbook).
It works much better/is much more interesting if it's strongly hereditary. Though you can tell a wizard from a sorcerer more easily than that. Whenever a child shows signs of magic, he gets tested to determine his aptitude and to be given a teacher (and/or to be given a minor title and allowed to marry into a noble family). In the course of that testing the sorcery vs wizardry should become evident. To advance as a wizard you'd have to consistently hide your talents from all others while simultaneously devoting your life to study and research. It's a tough road, though of course it's possible.

Oslecamo
2009-12-14, 04:58 AM
Doing it and getting away alive? Maybe in Victoria's day; I don't know what Queen Victoria's security looked like, and assassination was not a particularly realistic concern for British monarchs at the time, so they probably weren't prepared. In Obama's case? Not bloody likely, not with individual-portable weapons.

And did Obama design his own security system? Did he made all the handguns his bodyguards have? Did he train them? Did he built airforce one? The net? Cellphones? His clothes?

Does Obama goes and hand-makes more nukes and bombers every night before going to bed so other countries don't even think about atacking the USA?

Or is he just a really charismatic individual who talks other people into doing all of that for him?



How many guards do you need? How many assumptions do you have to make about the limits of what magic the 9th level types have at their disposal?
That's for what trusty officers are for. You care about ruling the country, and let them care about your security. Obama doesn't care if someone plans to send a stealth bomber blow up the White House. He has well paid military to worry for him.



How carefully do you have to secure the principal* to keep wizards with Teleport capability from using scry and die tactics on them?

That's quite easy actualy. Just build your base in a location of great natural or magic power. Presto, by RAW teleport will fizzle there.



It is not easy. And it effectively requires the ruler to spend all his time cowering in the castle for fear of assassins. Historically, leaders who do that don't last very long, because they tend to lose control of events. Effective leaders must at least be able to rule their nation well enough to ensure their own safety.


And that ALWAYS involves the ruler finding trustworthy people who'll take care of a good chunk of the decisions. You can't expect to be a military, economic, politic and scholar mastermind all at the same time. No man can rule a kingdom bigger than a village by himself. That's why leaders nominate ministers/advisors/generals/governors. The leader just needs to be charismatic enough to make them all work togheter. It's even easier if you let them think they're the ones in control.

Zen Master
2009-12-14, 05:01 AM
I know at least 2 people that would have >75% chance of getting past security, killing Obama, and getting away with it. Without getting away with it? I probably know a dozen people who could do it.
The Secret Service is a joke. Note how a shoe-thrower got two (2) shoes off at Bush.

They are ninjas, right? You know two ninjas, and they can sneak past IR imaging with smokebombs, and past heart beat detectors by stopping their own hearts. Yea! And kill the president and everyone within range with their deadly sharp katanas, then disappear using more smokebombs.

Really ... no. Getting to Obama is not - and I repeat for clarity is not - a question of surveillance penetration. It's not a question of being in a building half a mile away with a powerful rifle. It's not social engineering. The real problem is planning it without using the internet, or telephones - and even then, to have any chance you yourself need to be free of anything suspicious. Or - which is simpler perhaps - have access to a false identity. But then that in itself is a risk, likely one you'd rather not take.

And of course then two random noobs just blunder in using nothing but charm and expensive clothes. Which proves it can be done - but it does not prove it's easy.

Also, I wonder what job the guy who was head of security that day, has now? Shovelling snow ... in antarctica. Maybe. If he's lucky =)

Johel
2009-12-14, 05:33 AM
Personally, in one on one combat? Sure. But in either leader's era, no individual, and damn few small groups, could hack their way through either ruler's security detachment by brute force. Sneaking past the security would have been harder but possible (I don't know about Victoria, but someone actually managed to social engineer their way past Obama's security recently).

Doing it and getting away alive? Maybe in Victoria's day; I don't know what Queen Victoria's security looked like, and assassination was not a particularly realistic concern for British monarchs at the time, so they probably weren't prepared. In Obama's case? Not bloody likely, not with individual-portable weapons.

How many guards do you need? How many assumptions do you have to make about the limits of what magic the 9th level types have at their disposal? How carefully do you have to secure the principal* to keep wizards with Teleport capability from using scry and die tactics on them?

It is not easy. And it effectively requires the ruler to spend all his time cowering in the castle for fear of assassins. Historically, leaders who do that don't last very long, because they tend to lose control of events. Effective leaders must at least be able to rule their nation well enough to ensure their own safety.

Fully agree with the "leaders who are more concerned by preventing coups than by ruling their country aren't effective."

However, some of such leaders DO last.
Some of the worst African dictators were like that, living mostly secluded from their people, with only close advisors as contacts with the actual government. Such advisors were drawn from their family or ethnic group to avoid coups. As with all nepotism, it is never efficient.

For the assassination part, yep, if someone wants to assassinate a important political figure today, he'll either need range, brute firepower and extreme sneakiness if he want to get out of it alive.

Of course, if you don't plan to actually survive, anything goes by, really. My best bet is biological/chemical weapon in a plastic tube, preferably something powerful enough to knock the target as soon as it's in the air and kill it minutes later. Nerve agent ?


Hmm. That is clever, assuming sorcery is strongly hereditary. If not, it creates problems, because there will be a constant stream of new sorcerors trying to kick over the existing hierarchy, and it will be easier for wizards to conceal themselves in that stream (the only ways you can tell a wizard from a sorceror reliably is either by metagaming, or waiting for them to study their spellbook).

And of course, there's nothing wrong with that, story-wise.
Stable governments make boring tales :smallsmile:

You can also tell the difference by asking them to cast specific spells on the spot : a wizard might have prepared two or three versions but rarely more. The sorcerer has no problem to adapt to this problem.

lord_khaine
2009-12-14, 06:47 AM
You can also tell the difference by asking them to cast specific spells on the spot : a wizard might have prepared two or three versions but rarely more. The sorcerer has no problem to adapt to this problem.

And that is not quite foolproof if you dont know the level of the wizard/sorcerer you are testing.

Johel
2009-12-14, 06:53 AM
And that is not quite foolproof if you dont know the level of the wizard/sorcerer you are testing.

It is : whatever their level and intelligence score is, wizards never have more than 4 cantrips a day. Sorcerers have a minimum of 5.

Ask your spellcaster to cast a succession of "Light" spells (or any cantrip with a clearly identified visual effect). If he can't cast 5 in a row, then it's a wizard.

In doubt, you can go up for the 1st level spells and ask him to cast a specific spell several times. He can't at least cast 2 of them ? It's a wizard.

lord_khaine
2009-12-14, 07:16 AM
It is : whatever their level and intelligence score is, wizards never have more than 4 cantrips a day. Sorcerers have a minimum of 5.

Ask your spellcaster to cast a succession of "Light" spells (or any cantrip with a clearly identified visual effect). If he can't cast 5 in a row, then it's a wizard.

In doubt, you can go up for the 1st level spells and ask him to cast a specific spell several times. He can't at least cast 2 of them ? It's a wizard.

But that specific piece of information requires several wizards to get hold off, and all it takes are one wizard who prepares light in a level 1 slot, or comes up with the brilliant excuse of "i allready used a cantrip this morning" to foil the entire test.

Riffington
2009-12-14, 07:23 AM
It's not social engineering.
Yes it is. The easiest way to get access will be with a smile and a badge. A successful assassin will walk right up (as a campaign contributor, a member of the press, a waiter, a chef, an intern) to a position where he/she can get a poison or virus or bullet into him. The bullet is easier to obtain but more difficult to create a diversion to get away afterwards.


The real problem is planning it without using the internet, or telephones
The NSA is just not that good.


It is : whatever their level and intelligence score is, wizards never have more than 4 cantrips a day. Sorcerers have a minimum of 5.

Ask your spellcaster to cast a succession of "Light" spells (or any cantrip with a clearly identified visual effect). If he can't cast 5 in a row, then it's a wizard.

In doubt, you can go up for the 1st level spells and ask him to cast a specific spell several times. He can't at least cast 2 of them ? It's a wizard.

This isn't quite foolproof if the wizard knows about the test beforehand and you lack knowledge of his level, since he can prepare a cantrip and a 1st level spell in two 2nd level spell slots. Now, doing it two days in a row without access to books...

Johel
2009-12-14, 08:04 AM
But that specific piece of information requires several wizards to get hold off, and all it takes are one wizard who prepares light in a level 1 slot, or comes up with the brilliant excuse of "i allready used a cantrip this morning" to foil the entire test.

Don't understand what you mean by that.

We are talking about a dynasty of sorcerers, here.
They had both time and practice to learn the difference between spontaneous casting and prepared casting.

The whole point of the test is that the tested doesn't know before hand and you don't have to use force or whatever : either he agrees to pass it or he is deemed a fraud. It's not an exam or an interrogation.

So basically, it goes :
People get suspicious, they come to you and ask :
"-Hey, you, mighty one who just arrived in Court !! You're famous for using [any of the four 0-level spells this "sorcerer" is known to use]. Please show us."
Unless you, wizard, prepared 5 slots with this exact cantrip, you'll be exposed as a potential fraud. A true sorcerer could always use a a higher slot to cast a weaker spell so that restriction doesn't apply to him.
At that point, it's justification for Riffington's method to be applied : lock you for 2 days and try the test again...

You could use 20 spell slots in cantrips everyday just to be sure not to be busted but that would make you a weak wizard, which means you wouldn't be able to escape if people DID get really suspicious and want to use Riffington's method.

Dervag
2009-12-14, 09:59 AM
In one on one combat my little brother could do it.That proves nothing much, since I don't know your little brother...


I know at least 2 people that would have >75% chance of getting past security, killing Obama, and getting away with it. Without getting away with it? I probably know a dozen people who could do it.
The Secret Service is a joke. Note how a shoe-thrower got two (2) shoes off at Bush. Note how the difficulty of getting into poisoning range of Obama is about $50,000 campaign contribution or superb chutzpah?Me, I am not so sure. However, talking about how to kill heads of state is probably illegal,* so an extended discussion of this is probably against forum rules. Suffice to say that in recent years the Secret Service has managed to block quite a number of assassination attempts.

*This is an illustration of my point. Heads of state have to be in sufficient control to prevent suitably competent people from actively planning their own death, or they aren't in control at all.


Not just "nobody bothered" or "high level subjects remained loyal"? That's what keeps our rulers around in real life; why can't human nature be the same in D&D?Inertia alone isn't good enough in a world where one guy can in fact kill an army without taking a scratch, or teleport into a bedroom and blow it to bits with a fireball... and have that be his least efficient option. Especially not when a fair number of leveled characters are Evil.

In real life, security forces operate by making it difficult to target whatever they protect and get away alive. Not impossible, but difficult. But mundane security forces cannot pose an adequate deterrent to high-level characters in D&D.


And that ALWAYS involves the ruler finding trustworthy people who'll take care of a good chunk of the decisions. You can't expect to be a military, economic, politic and scholar mastermind all at the same time. No man can rule a kingdom bigger than a village by himself. That's why leaders nominate ministers/advisors/generals/governors. The leader just needs to be charismatic enough to make them all work togheter. It's even easier if you let them think they're the ones in control.Yes, but by that token, high-level people are better at convincing others to do things than low-levels, too; in a persuasion contest the 10th level sorcerer beats the 3rd level aristocrat every time. If the ruler is low-level and the ministers are high-level, the odds are that the ministers really are the ones in control, unless the low-level ruler is a legendary genius and all his ministers are merely mediocre. You'd need that kind of massive advantage in innate wit and charisma just to have parity.

Tyndmyr
2009-12-14, 10:29 AM
He is saying that when the wizard DECIDES to kill the rogue, the rogue says "hey, lets be friends", rolls diplomacy, wins, and is automatically the wizard's "friend" (until he back-stabs him later)...
Aka, he is saying that due to how diplomacy works, a low diplomacy character is effectively FORBIDDEN from ever attacking a high diplomacy character.

Well, ignoring the nasty negative modifier from doing a diplomacy check as a standard action...it always requires at least a standard action(at least, pre-epic). So, it's pretty much useless if the wizard goes first.

It's also pretty useless in any situation where diplomacy is impossible. Say, an inability to communicate.

This holds true for PC or NPC.

Tyndmyr
2009-12-14, 10:31 AM
Tyndmyr: Test of Spite rules gimp wizards.

Be that as it may, it doesn't gimp them nearly as much as a complete lack of magic items gimps monks and rogues.

Tyndmyr
2009-12-14, 10:35 AM
Not quite. My claim is that a smart social guy will typically manage to make friends with powerful wizards. It is of course true that smart social guys have a few powerful enemies as well. It's just that, 90% of the time, the rogue will be the wizard's friend. You are no more forbidden from attacking high-diplomacy characters than you are forbidden to attack your mother. It's just rare.
The corollary to this is that wizard has rope trick, and uses it to help the rogue inside. And that if you set up some kind of "test", you tell the wizard that it's him and the rogue against a druid and a dragon.

Yahzi:

How about a few changes?
*the King gets 1000 3rd level NPC class guards, 100 3rd level PC class guards, and an army of 100,000 1st level NPC class soldiers. He has 10,000,000 GP to spend on anything he wants, or given to any of his men. The King may freely travel anywhere in his country, including any of his 6 castles.

10,000,000 GP breaks WBL horribly. Fix that, and I'll happily partake in this.

Tyndmyr
2009-12-14, 10:39 AM
But that specific piece of information requires several wizards to get hold off, and all it takes are one wizard who prepares light in a level 1 slot, or comes up with the brilliant excuse of "i allready used a cantrip this morning" to foil the entire test.

See also, Elven Generalist. Storm Domain has Light as the cantrip slot.

There are a number of ways around the test. Sure, many will fail and be caught. Some will get through though, even if just by luck.

Riffington
2009-12-14, 12:50 PM
However, talking about how to kill heads of state is probably illegal,*
I don't think that's true. It's illegal to plan to actually kill anyone, and it's illegal to suggest one ought to kill the President. I don't suggest doing it; I in fact suggest avoiding murder at all times. Is there a law you know of that I'm missing?


Suffice to say that in recent years the Secret Service has managed to block quite a number of assassination attempts.
Citation?



*This is an illustration of my point. Heads of state have to be in sufficient control to prevent suitably competent people from actively planning their own death, or they aren't in control at all.
Well, I don't believe that the US Constitution actually allows sufficient control to prevent this... yet we've had remarkably few competent* assassination attempts that I know of. Perhaps I am just uninformed of the number there.

*I suggest a minimalist definition of "competent" as non-crazy and IQ>125, while aknowledging that incompetent people have killed Presidents; that fact suggests to me that it's not a question of competence but of willingness.



10,000,000 GP breaks WBL horribly. Fix that, and I'll happily partake in this.

How much gp value do you think the average King has in his overall holdings, including castles, traps, magical artifacts, henchmen's equipment, etc? Presumably a ton.If being King doesn't let you break WBL then I guess every King does have to be Epic just to be allowed the wealth of the Kingdom...

I'm also not convinced we're on the same page regarding "low magic". Low magic doesn't mean low WBL (though it could be compatible with that) or no magic. It means that what magic equipment there is is relatively less likely to be trinkets and relatively more likely to be artifacts.

Tyndmyr
2009-12-14, 01:00 PM
I don't think that's true. It's illegal to plan to actually kill anyone, and it's illegal to suggest one ought to kill the President. I don't suggest doing it; I in fact suggest avoiding murder at all times. Is there a law you know of that I'm missing?

I advise against this entire line of conversation on the basis that:
1. It seems dangerously close to getting into real world politics, and possibly leading to unhappy mods.
2. Real world examples have little bearing on a world in which Teleport and Dimension Door are well known. And is in a faux-mediveal time period.


How much gp value do you think the average King has in his overall holdings, including castles, traps, magical artifacts, henchmen's equipment, etc? Presumably a ton.If being King doesn't let you break WBL then I guess every King does have to be Epic just to be allowed the wealth of the Kingdom...

Yes. That composes his kingdom. That does not compose the total amount of wealth he has to spend on magical toys and gear. In fact, most of those assets are not terribly liquid at all.

SBG has a feat based way to get rather nifty strongholds and castles apart from WBL. Use this. Assume that likewise, his predessors probably used this to some degree. You don't need to be epic, or even close, to get useful castles in this way.

There are also perfectly servicable rules for what it costs to hire henchmen. At low levels, they are not at all expensive, and even a relatively low level king could afford a pretty decently sized force on standby. If you get into ludicrous amounts like hundreds of thousands, then no. But hey, no culture historically kept that many warriors on duty all the time anyhow.


I'm also not convinced we're on the same page regarding "low magic". Low magic doesn't mean low WBL (though it could be compatible with that) or no magic. It means that what magic equipment there is is relatively less likely to be trinkets and relatively more likely to be artifacts.

Never claimed it changed WBL. Low wealth is different from low magic.

However, I see no particular reason why "low magic" should mean "more likely to be artifacts". I had thought that magical artifacts would be vastly more rare in a low magic world, silly me.

Johel
2009-12-14, 01:49 PM
I don't think that's true. It's illegal to plan to actually kill anyone, and it's illegal to suggest one ought to kill the President. I don't suggest doing it; I in fact suggest avoiding murder at all times. Is there a law you know of that I'm missing?

Don't know for the US but, in Belgium, it's illegal to even plot a crime with other people. Not to commit a crime, TO PLOT ONE. It's considered a criminal association as soon as more than one person is involved, whether the crime has already been committed or not. The intent is enough.

A clause exists to exclude from any pursuits somebody who belonged to a criminal organization but denounced the members BEFORE any crime is committed.

Now, the line between innocent (but kinda odd) debate about a theoretical assassination and actual criminal organization is let to the judge to appreciate... :smallamused:

snoopy13a
2009-12-14, 03:22 PM
I don't think that's true. It's illegal to plan to actually kill anyone, and it's illegal to suggest one ought to kill the President. I don't suggest doing it; I in fact suggest avoiding murder at all times. Is there a law you know of that I'm missing?




I'm answering this based on majority US common law and not based on any politics.

Plan to kill anyone:
1) It isn't illegal in most jurisdictions unless you perform a substantial step towards the crime. If you are still in the preparation stage then you haven't committed attempted murder yet. Note, if you agree with other people to plan to kill someone and then commit an overt act (but not a substantial step) in furtherance of this plan then you have committed conspiracy. Overt acts are pretty much anything after the agreement itself. In old common law, some federal laws and according to the Model Penal Code, the agreement alone can constitute conspiracy. If a member of the of the conspiracy takes a substantial step then all members are guilty of attempt. If a member of the conspiracy actually kills the person then all members are guilty of murder.

2) Suggesting that someone kill another person (no matter who they are) is the crime of solitication even if the other person denies your suggestion. If they agree and take an overt act in futherance of the crime, it is conspiracy, etc, etc. If you solict someone and they commit the crime you are guilty of it.

Karoht
2009-12-14, 04:27 PM
This sounds like a challenge. I'll draw up a standard 9th level party - Cleric, Wizard, Fighter, Rogue. Only using magic items they could made themselves, and paid for out of WBL.

You draw up a castle with 1,000 3rd level NPC class guards. And a 2nd level Aristocrat King. No magic items other than what they can make themselves; each guard is limited to WBL for NPCs. You get a free Castle, though.

The PCs have to kill the King within 7 days. The King can't leave the castle (where would he go?). On the other hand the PCs can presumably retire and rest whenever they want - with access to Flight and Teleport they can escape to places the NPCs can't even reach.

Who do you think will win? :smallbiggrin:

What this challenge will also boil down to is tactics. I've seen a group of 30 orcs (all CR 1/2) and 2 CR 4 NPC's hold off a 5 man level 4 party, just with intelligent tactics and spite to keep them going.

IF your party utilizes all the tools at it's fingertips, they can cause quite a bit of damage. Rogue using stealth, doing sabatoge missions, mage doing some scrying and more sabatoge, sending the whole party to do hit and run missions from time to time, slowly weakening the troops and lowering morale, etc.
Consider, that blowing a hole in the wall of the castle, at any point that is not normally a defended choke point (IE-main gates) now causes those forces to spread thinner all around in order to cover any of these new defensive gaps. One fireball per day in the right places, will weaken the forces all around, without killing anyone.
Consider the rogue who manages to sneak in and poison the well or steal food supplies, or quietly shanks one of their healers in their infirmary area (where the healer would logically be not armed or armoured, or even prepared for a fight), or setting fire in a barn or granary.

IF the players just rambo their way in on each day (IE-A poorly aimed scry and die and run every day), my money would still be on the party, as long as they play somewhat smart, and leave once the odds start to become a mild threat.

It would completely depend on how the castle is set up, how well the castle is built, what kind of defenses there are, and the mix of lvl 1 melee and lvl 1 ranged attackers, and what tactics they use.

...but I would be rooting for the castle and it's crew.

Karoht
2009-12-14, 04:46 PM
How about a few changes?
*the King gets 1000 3rd level NPC class guards, 100 3rd level PC class guards, and an army of 100,000 1st level NPC class soldiers. He has 10,000,000 GP to spend on anything he wants, or given to any of his men. The King may freely travel anywhere in his country, including any of his 6 castles.
This amount of force and wealth would be typical for something size of, say, half of Norway. The number of people you are hoping to drum up, along with that level of wealth, would be if the King threw literally EVERYTHING at this potential threat.

"1000 3rd level NPC class guards" Standard men-at-arms, all paid for mercinaries, ranging from poorly armed to well armed.
"100 3rd level PC class guards" Probably typical of Knights, most likely only Knighted perhaps a year ago, or having gone through a single campaign or short tournament season.
"100,000 1st level NPC class soldiers" Peasants, all of them, from the entire country side. All poorly armed, typically armed with long spears, farming impliments, or grandpa's ole sword from the battle of '83.
"10,000,000 GP" This would represent the emptying of the entire treasury, minting new coins from any source of gold or silver or copper they could find, and a hefty amount of loans, most likely 25%-50% of the funds would be loans on such a number.
This is not counting any Allies the King may have, to participate in such a battle.
All this to fight 4 people? To completely decimate the wealth and military position of such a nation, to fight 4 people?

Were I this King, I would call upon my Allies to do everything in their power to convince these people, to sit at banquet with me, so we could parlay, rather than waste an extreme amount of resources in a petty squabble. In other words, I would invite the four of them to dinner with me. If they are that intent on killing me, I would not waste the entire wealth of my people just to defend my life, and would do a King's duty-protect my kingdom-rather than destroy my nation's wealth and military forces just to spare my own skin.

...But, if I were this King, I think I could do it with vastly less force and wealth than this.

Tyndmyr
2009-12-14, 05:02 PM
Well, using the 10% rule of thumb as a cap(no more than 10% of a population can really be troops logistically for any extended period of time. The others are either not physically fit, essential to maintaining production and functioning of the nation, etc), we get the absolute maximum number of defenders. Mind you, pushing the maximum limit would result in a force entirely dependant on numbers and heavily using improvised weapons. Even so, most the troops would likely need to be released for harvest time.

Let's use as our example a city the size of London, 1200 AD, and the surrounding area. It had a population of roughly 30,000 people. Let's assume the surrounding countryside held several times this, for a total population of 200,000. This is a pretty decently sized area, with a capital city that would be notable on a global scale.

We've got a max of 20k troops. More realistically, you would probably have small local castles with a score or less of troops. The central castle would be lucky to clear a hundred, though it would have lots of unarmed support personnel. The vast bulk of the troops are essentially untrained commoners called up by levy in time of need. The king could of course call up his knights and other nobels as needed, but they would not be available to guard him 24/7.

So, you've got a king, his personal guards, and the usual hierarchy of nobles, each of which has lesser personal forces. Towns will have sheriffs, but likely not much in the way of actual troops. Mercernaries may be called in if the situation is dire.

I see nothing a moderately leveled party wouldn't chew through in the usual, everyday defences of a castle.

tyckspoon
2009-12-14, 05:08 PM
How much gp value do you think the average King has in his overall holdings, including castles, traps, magical artifacts, henchmen's equipment, etc? Presumably a ton.If being King doesn't let you break WBL then I guess every King does have to be Epic just to be allowed the wealth of the Kingdom...


The wealth of a Kingdom is usually not terribly liquid and almost certainly has not been spent with the express purpose of trying to foil a gang of superpowered criminals- most of it is going to be crops in the field, livestock in barns, and other things that will not be of much use in this challenge. 10 million GP as a game construct, however, is astoundingly liquid and can buy stupidly powerful things- with that much cash to throw around, the King could be protected by a contingent Timeless Body effect that also summons a Force Dragon which has been given a share of that cash in return for protecting the King. I'm pretty sure you won't find a 9th level party that could deal with that, but you also wouldn't expect to find a 2nd level King sporting that kind of protection.

If you want to claim you can stop a 9th level party with the normal resources available to 3rd level NPCs, just use the normal resources of 3rd level NPCs. They're in the book. Then give the King.. I don't know, 1/10th of the sum total of resources his people have, representing the liquid assets he acquired as taxes, which he can devote to more unusual defences if he wants. It won't come to anywhere near 10 million.

Ormur
2009-12-14, 06:10 PM
I have in a history book before me numbers for the annual income of the English monarchy in the 14th century, which seems to have been about 30.000 pounds. There were 60.000 pounds of ready money in the estate of one of the richest nobles of the time, The Earl of Arundel, and his assets totalled more than 140.000 pounds. His annual income was 1/10th that of the king's or 3000 pounds.

One cow was worth 10 shillings or half a pound. Coincidentally cows also cost 10 gp in D&D so one 14th century English pound would be approximately 20 gp.

So a D&D king of a kingdom the size of late medieval England would have an annual income of 600.000 gp from taxes, tariffs and holdings. Running a kingdom might be a bit different from running a noble estate but since the ready money of the Earl was twice his annual income we could hazard a guess that the same could be true of the king, making his liquid assets more than a million gp. The book mentions that the annual income of the kings of late medieval Europe might have averaged around 4% of national income.

Of course D&D is very different from medieval England, cows may be worth less and kings may not be as powerful but the though experiment seems to be about how low level kings with the resources of a whole kingdom could defend themselves from mid-to-high level threats.

Johel
2009-12-14, 06:36 PM
A wise, wealthy but low-level king would buy a custom ring of AMF, which would be activated with a word of command.

1.800 x 11 x 6 = 118.800 gp

Then he would surround himself with low-level casters, finance their researches and make sure to pit them once in a while against a few badgers, just so they get combat experience practice.

Somehow, these wizards will feel creative afterward and make him a few more trinkets to sunk his wealth into.

These trinkets will equip a large group of loyal fighters who, while mighty with a blade, are puny against casters. These men will form the outer ring of defense and are to stop any sword-wielding idiots who think they can take the castle.

If a powerful caster comes knocking at the door, the King will make sure to receive him politely and offer him a job. If the caster refuse...then the King will grab the bastard, grapple with him and stab him with that dagger full of Black Lotus he keeps on his person. Likely, the wizard will drop dead.

Tyndmyr
2009-12-14, 06:41 PM
And meanwhile, the king will hope very hard that the caster is not an Initiate of Mystra. Because if so, he's dead.

Riffington
2009-12-14, 09:15 PM
However, I see no particular reason why "low magic" should mean "more likely to be artifacts". I had thought that magical artifacts would be vastly more rare in a low magic world, silly me.

Let me explain why I agree with Tolkien on this (also, Eldariel is currently making a similar point in another thread btw). In a low magic world, magic is rarer and more powerful. This means that what fewer magic items there are, should be items of great power. A +1 sword just doesn't excite the way the One Ring does. Besides, it unbalances the game to get rid of powerful magics. What you need to do is ensure that there are fewer stupid minor magics to worry about, which means that what's left are the extremely powerful ones.

Also, Kings don't have that much liquid wealth. They do have powerful magic items. It doesn't empty the treasury for the King to have a powerful Ring or Shield - any more than for him to have a jewelled crown. It would be wrong of him to sell or trade it except along with a marriage - but that's a different story.

Dervag
2009-12-14, 10:26 PM
In any event, while it can be possible to secure a low level target from high level attacks in D&D by throwing money at the problem, it is neither easy nor cost-effective to do so. And it doesn't necessarily save you if the high-level types decide to go back into the wilderness and earn another four or five more levels before taking you on, either, because that gives them even more options. The resources of your kingdom are fixed (though often large); the resources of an adventuring party are not.

It's really much simpler to have high-level monarchs, and there are a number of ways to justify this: feats that let other leveled characters train the heir to the throne, the heir to the throne leading military campaigns and racking up monster kills with the Wealth-By-Level breaking equipment their father handed them, or physical tangible XP that the heir can actually consume, even if they did not personally kill the being the XP came from.


I don't think that's true. It's illegal to plan to actually kill anyone, and it's illegal to suggest one ought to kill the President. I don't suggest doing it; I in fact suggest avoiding murder at all times. Is there a law you know of that I'm missing?Perhaps I am mistaken. However, I'm also on another online forum that is now under intermittent FBI surveillance because a discussion on a similar subject got out of hand, so I'd advise against taking chances.

taltamir
2009-12-14, 10:48 PM
doing some rough conversions, a GP is about 60$ (which is funny since real gold US dollar coins are about 80$).

This, btw, means that the average peasant house costs 400,000$. and the average peasant makes 2$ a day.

Anyways. medieval fiefdoms don't have the equivalent of 600 million USD to be used to fight 4 people.

Also, we established that THERE IS NO MAGIC ECONOMY here...
There is 1 wizard and 1 cleric PER COUNTRY.

And that you may not buy any scrolls, spells, or magic items... so, basically:
The king probably has the only +1 fullplate in the country, and a non magic masterwork sword.

Yes, a bunch of low level fighters with 10,000,000 gp worth of equipment will laugh at a wizard, they will be be carrying enough magic items that the average peasant will be unaware that they AREN'T wizards themselves.

Riffington
2009-12-15, 05:38 AM
doing some rough conversions, a GP is about 60$ (which is funny since real gold US dollar coins are about 80$).

This, btw, means that the average peasant house costs 400,000$. and the average peasant makes 2$ a day.

Woah, weird.



Anyways. medieval fiefdoms don't have the equivalent of 600 million USD to be used to fight 4 people.

Also, we established that THERE IS NO MAGIC ECONOMY here...
There is 1 wizard and 1 cleric PER COUNTRY.
Wow, you're lower magic than I am. I was originally suggesting there could be dozens of 1st level sorcerers (and now you've changed over to talking about the 4 most powerful people in the world somehow deciding to combine their forces to take over one kingdom (fiefdom now?)-of course that wins)... But you're right, no magic economy. No spending 600m to fight 4 people. Rather that if the King has a +5 Holy Avenger, he didn't buy it to fight 4 people. It's part of the crown jewels. He's never allowed to sell it. WIthout an economy, most of the world's magic is in the hands of Kings. Only with an economy is it elsewhere.

The point is that if you have feats (ala Dervag) to allow kings to train their sons to be high level, then that's cool, but it has one minor problem: There's an Aristocrat class for a reason, and you've just decided to get rid of it and say all aristocrats must be clerics. Which is lame.
In the absence of such a feat, who does the King leave his Kindom to? The most powerful wizard he can find? Or his son?
If you want to allow him to leave it to his son and allow for the fact that just like in real life, some kings' sons suck but aren't assassinated, you just let him be Aristocrat 2 and inherit the Crown Jewels and sometimes keep the loyalty of the Royal Vizier, and yes sometimes high level PCs can knock over a Kingdom, but not always.

lord_khaine
2009-12-15, 05:42 AM
See also, Elven Generalist. Storm Domain has Light as the cantrip slot.

There are a number of ways around the test. Sure, many will fail and be caught. Some will get through though, even if just by luck.

My point was that the test would not have been successfull to start with, since i dont belive sorceress would have the option of looking in the PHB.

Volkov
2009-12-15, 07:46 AM
How do other Evil nations with living soldiers compete with Lich run nations with armies of war-mongering undead? This is something that has always occurred to me as somewhat odd.

Name_Here
2009-12-15, 07:57 AM
The PCs have to kill the King within 7 days. The King can't leave the castle (where would he go?). On the other hand the PCs can presumably retire and rest whenever they want - with access to Flight and Teleport they can escape to places the NPCs can't even reach.

Now this is just unrealistic. Kings are the rulers of their country not the castle so why would they risk their neck and the entire country by staying to defend a pile of rocks? Castles were always built with boltholes and secret escape routes so that the nobles could flee from the battle when they needed to.

Johel
2009-12-15, 08:11 AM
doing some rough conversions, a GP is about 60$ (which is funny since real gold US dollar coins are about 80$).

This, btw, means that the average peasant house costs 400,000$. and the average peasant makes 2$ a day.

Anyways. medieval fiefdoms don't have the equivalent of 600 million USD to be used to fight 4 people.

Also, we established that THERE IS NO MAGIC ECONOMY here...
There is 1 wizard and 1 cleric PER COUNTRY.

And that you may not buy any scrolls, spells, or magic items... so, basically:
The king probably has the only +1 fullplate in the country, and a non magic masterwork sword.

Yes, a bunch of low level fighters with 10,000,000 gp worth of equipment will laugh at a wizard, they will be be carrying enough magic items that the average peasant will be unaware that they AREN'T wizards themselves.

Converting D&D currency into US dollars won't work well for you.
While some goods will be roughly the same price because the demand and offer isn't that different in D&D and IRL, most will be a lot different.

Taking your exchange rate "1GP = 60 $" :

1 lb of bread would cost about 2,4 $
1 lb of flour would cost about 1,2 $

IRL, Flour is about 10€ for a bag of 25 kg.
Roughly converting 1kg = 2 lb and 1€ = 1,6$, I get 16$ = 50 lb
That's 0,32 $ per lb of floor (IRL price)
That's 3,75 less than D&D price and it's one of the most basic goods.

IRL, Bread is about 1€ for 400g.
Roughly converting 1kg = 2 lb and 1€ = 1,6$, I get 16$ = 50 lb
That's 2 $ for 1 lb of bread (IRL price)
That's about 20% cheaper than D&D price.

The reason for these differences ? In a medieval setting, food production is a lot less efficient. Yet, the demand per capita for food is the same as ours. The workforce is cheaper, though, hence a higher price for basic goods such as floor but a nearly similar price for finished goods such as bread.

Houses, while there are machines to help us, are still mainly done with inefficient human labor. The cost of such labor is tremendous while the raw materials cost a lot less than in medieval time, as their production is now automated. Demand and offer for houses haven't change that much in regard for demography, too. Hence the fact that prices can be roughly converted from gp to IRL currency.

We can compare other goods but basically, everything that we can produce through automation will be a lot cheaper IRL than in D&D while more labor-intensive productions will have higher cost (because our workforce is more expansive) but a roughly similar price (because the raw material will be cheaper, as their production is mostly automated today).

Anyway, just to say : don't base your prices on a GP/$ ratio, unless you play in a "magic+steampunk" setting.


Now this is just unrealistic. Kings are the rulers of their country not the castle so why would they risk their neck and the entire country by staying to defend a pile of rocks? Castles were always built with boltholes and secret escape routes so that the nobles could flee from the battle when they needed to.

Make sense, somehow :
If the castle is to be compared to the White House, then the King would likely rule from there. Sure, he would travel to inspect some provinces but, since means of travel are slow, he would be vulnerable and wouldn't make such travel unless he had to.

No Air Force One to carry him from one country to another in 12 hours time. That's it, if he doesn't have access to Teleport. But even with that, there would still be the problem of communications : most messengers would aim for the castle rather than running through the countryside to search the current location of the King.

Volkov
2009-12-15, 08:16 AM
I expect a very populous country would have multiple wizards and clerics. Otherwise it's nonsensical.

Friend Computer
2009-12-15, 08:32 AM
I think the biggest problem that people have when talking about the issue of leveled characters totally blowing things apart is this:

Levelled characters are rare.

If we take for granted the basis of e6: That level 6 is pretty much the pinacle of human achievement, then even if we allow higher levels we do not have many problems: those people will be historically rare. Yes, a party of 4 level 9 characters can take over a kingdom. That was probably how the current dynasty was founded 175 years ago. And now? Well, that's probably what this campaign is about. Right now, someone has gotten strong enough to be able to cast the secret teleportation magic that the wizard of the party used to help found the realm. The PC's will be the ones to stop this wizard.

Or something.

The point is to put things in perspective.

Slayn82
2009-12-15, 09:15 AM
Lets talk about comunication and surveilance.

In our world, in medieval times, birds were often used to carry important messages to distant places in a reasonable time. This demanded patience and dedication of the trainer.

In D&D worlds, there are Raven Familiars that can speak with their master and the birds, probably reducing a lot the time of training of those birds, with the Familiar acting like a taskmaster. A kingdom with all the pidgeons in its paying list could probably receive important news very fast. Small and cheap charms could be used to monitore if the birds are still alive while away. Notice that this is even simpler to set up than clarividence in a designated room with a blackboard and chalk to relay the kingdoms news to the capital.

Powerfull magic leaves magical residue when used. Apprentices could be employed to routinelly check the city searching for powerfull auras exceeding certain limits. Laws could be passed banishing the use of spells beyond certain caster levels (7th, for instance), without comunicating the established authorities in a settlement.

Name_Here
2009-12-15, 09:33 AM
Make sense, somehow :

?


If the castle is to be compared to the White House, then the King would likely rule from there. Sure, he would travel to inspect some provinces but, since means of travel are slow, he would be vulnerable and wouldn't make such travel unless he had to.

Actually European kings usually had a series of castles and palaces that they traveled to. It allowed them to winter in warm palaces and the rest of the year stay in central locations.

And yes he wouldn't flee his capital without great need but a party of 9th level super men beating down his gate pausing only to sleep and regain spells for further slaughter would qualify as "He has to."


No Air Force One to carry him from one country to another in 12 hours time. That's it, if he doesn't have access to Teleport. But even with that, there would still be the problem of communications : most messengers would aim for the castle rather than running through the countryside to search the current location of the King.

It would cause chaos and messangers would have to go back to their nobles with their messages undelivered but the king would have a backup castle or palace that he would transfer his ruling to or a heavily fortified castle of one of his nobles where he could resume managing the kingdom and gather an army to hunt down the party or just retake the castle.

Once again the king can be a king and rule from a mud sink while a castle no matter how grand, centrally located or beautifully engineered can do nothing but rot and fall apart on it's own. No king in history would die for his castle if escape and ruling elsewhere is a viable alternative.

Johel
2009-12-15, 09:49 AM
Actually European kings usually had a series of castles and palaces that they traveled to. It allowed them to winter in warm palaces and the rest of the year stay in central locations.

And yes he wouldn't flee his capital without great need but a party of 9th level super men beating down his gate pausing only to sleep and regain spells for further slaughter would qualify as "He has to."

Let's reformulate :
If you know it will take you two or more days travel to reach the next castle, will you get out when a 9th level party is waiting for you outside ?

And while European Kings did travel from one castle to another, they nevertheless remained for months in the same place, unless there was some specific needs for them to travel to another province.

That's in a world where there's no monster on the roads, no superhuman people to bullrush through your bodyguards and survive it, no scrying and such. If you add these factors, moving from one castle to another after having escape a first assassination attempt means you dying horribly while on the road, as the aforementioned 9th level party fly above your royal escort and fireball the column with a wand, with said column not even being able to return fire effectively.

But of course, all this is theoretical discussion.
So, yeah, we'll only know when Tyndmyr kill the king. :smallwink:

Shademan
2009-12-15, 09:56 AM
?




And yes he wouldn't flee his capital without great need but a party of 9th level super men beating down his gate pausing only to sleep and regain spells for further slaughter would qualify as "He has to."



unless he's really ballsy

Name_Here
2009-12-15, 10:05 AM
Let's reformulate :
If you know it will take you two or more days travel to reach the next castle, will you get out when a 9th level party is waiting for you outside ?

And while European Kings did travel from one castle to another, they nevertheless remained for months in the same place, unless there was some specific needs for them to travel to another province.

That's in a world where there's no monster on the roads, no superhuman people to bullrush through your bodyguards and survive it, no scrying and such. If you add these factors, moving from one castle to another after having escape a first assassination attempt means you dying horribly while on the road, as the aforementioned 9th level party fly above your royal escort and fireball the column with a wand, with said column not even being able to return fire effectively.

But of course, all this is theoretical discussion.
So, yeah, we'll only know when Tyndmyr kill the king. :smallwink:

All very true all very correct. Also all ignoring the fact that staying in the castle presents no opportunity for survival while running for the hills presents only minor chances of survival. Retreating with a small group of bodyguards is really the only chance for survival that the king has.

Course I do think that a world where there is enough chaos and things happening for a party to get to 9th level should require the king to be more than a 2cd level aristocrat with retainers of no more than 3rd level. But in that scenario the only hope of survival is for the king to bug out for a better defendable position. Or to lick boot.

Johel
2009-12-15, 10:15 AM
All very true all very correct. Also all ignoring the fact that staying in the castle presents no opportunity for survival while running for the hills presents only minor chances of survival. Retreating with a small group of bodyguards is really the only chance for survival that the king has.

Course I do think that a world where there is enough chaos and things happening for a party to get to 9th level should require the king to be more than a 2cd level aristocrat with retainers of no more than 3rd level. But in that scenario the only hope of survival is for the king to bug out for a better defendable position. Or to lick boot.

He could send messengers out for help while using the castle's defenses to at least slow down the party. If he can hold his castle for 4 days, then an army will come from the castle next door and the party will have to flee.

As the party is routed, the King get the initiative and can contact another party of adventurers, preferably more in line with his politic, to hunt down the criminals in exchange for an awesome reward.

Slayn82
2009-12-15, 10:19 AM
Want your king to escape easilly? Monitore him constantly and use a Bracelet of Friends to take him in case of need to a safe place. Even if he dies, he can be called (unconscious/dead characters are always considered to be willing acording to the rules- except when the effect description explicitly says that they dont, like speak with dead). Four uses for 19,000 gp sounds a lot of budgetable, considerating how much it costs to build a new castle or how the rewards to bold adventurers go.

Also, a secret passage well protected with a good door will prevent the king from being targeted by various effects, due to total cover. In a pinch, just using disguise self while a bodyguard uses alter self to look like the King can buy time for the retreat. And also there is the fact that the Fake king could just use a helmet and hide his face while impersonating the King.

Dervag
2009-12-15, 10:32 AM
Also, we established that THERE IS NO MAGIC ECONOMY here...
There is 1 wizard and 1 cleric PER COUNTRY.We did? Also, please remain calm.


The point is that if you have feats (ala Dervag) to allow kings to train their sons to be high level, then that's cool, but it has one minor problem: There's an Aristocrat class for a reason, and you've just decided to get rid of it and say all aristocrats must be clerics. Which is lame. In the absence of such a feat, who does the King leave his Kindom to? The most powerful wizard he can find? Or his son?The guys who gave you the Turnip Economy had an answer to this.

Generally, high-level types who have any ambition to rule land will rule land. They might carve a new territory out of the wilderness, or they might depose an existing ruler (Good or Evil, it depends), or... this is where the Aristocrat class comes in.

See, assume for the sake of argument that any given nation/principality/whatever is founded by a high level person, one with great powers in at least one useful area. Some of them have the feats to train an heir in their own class, and some don't. Some of them don't even know anyone with the feats to do so, or anyone with both the feats and a class appropriate to their heir's abilities. As you say, what happens to them? The heir becomes an Aristocrat.

Now, that's sustainable as long as the ruling family has powerful members or friends. Those friends or relatives can go off adventuring while you, the Aristocrat, run the kingdom, and that's a mutually beneficial arrangement. They're secure in the knowledge that they have a home base to come back to, and you're secure in the knowledge that no one with any sense is going to try and overthrow you as long as they're worried about what happens when your uncle the 12th level wizard comes back from his latest journey.

But there's a catch. When the last powerful levelled character in or allied with the dynasty dies, or graduates into the magic economy and ascends to a higher plane of reality, or whatever... your position as ruler of the dynasty is in trouble. Those Aristocrats aren't going to be able to secure the kingdom against hostile leveled types. Next thing you know, Team Peregrine has deposed you in favor of the forces of Good, or Redcloak moves in to depose you in favor of the forces of Evil. Either way you wind up fleeing into the wilderness with whatever fraction of your wealth you can carry on your person, and that's the best outcome you can hope for.

So if you're an Aristocrat, your life arguably depends on maintaining alliances with high level characters and ruling on their behalf. That's what you do.
_______

How does this tie into the ways high level characters can get their own kingdom (or fiefdom, or whatever)? Well, traditionally the reward for the knight in shining armor who slays the dragon is to marry the princess and inherit the kingdom. And there's a reason for that; if the knight can slay the dragon when the king's whole army can't, the odds are that the knight could overthrow the king and his army if he really wanted to. If he wants the kingdom, at this point he can probably take it.

And that's why the king offers the knight his daughter's hand in marriage: because that formalizes the relationship between the existing king and this mysterious stranger who rode into town and demonstrated that he's more dangerous than anyone else in a hundred miles. Marrying into the royal family is a way for the dynasty to co-opt this new dragonslayer into the family, on the theory that it's better to have people like that inside your tent than outside.

That is what happens to the low-level Aristocrat members of a royal family: they are married off to powerful leveled characters in an attempt to secure dynastic alliances with those characters... or at least sent to associate with those characters to form more conventional alliances. Which is why Aristocrats focus on charisma and diplomatic skills; that improves their marriage prospects and gives them more influence over potential high-level allies.


If you want to allow him to leave it to his son and allow for the fact that just like in real life, some kings' sons suck but aren't assassinated, you just let him be Aristocrat 2 and inherit the Crown Jewels and sometimes keep the loyalty of the Royal Vizier, and yes sometimes high level PCs can knock over a Kingdom, but not always.And yes, that can happen too. But it's not a stable social model by itself; adding in the factor above improves things considerably.


How do other Evil nations with living soldiers compete with Lich run nations with armies of war-mongering undead? This is something that has always occurred to me as somewhat odd.Evil living nations can call on support from the lower planes more efficiently. They have evil clerics who can rebuke undead. They have a larger population base to draw potential adventurers from (yes, there can be evil adventurers), and adventurers of any alignment are the real bane of undead hordes commanded by liches, as we all know. :smallwink:


No Air Force One to carry him from one country to another in 12 hours time. That's it, if he doesn't have access to Teleport. But even with that, there would still be the problem of communications : most messengers would aim for the castle rather than running through the countryside to search the current location of the King.Of course, the odds are good that someone at the castle knows where the king is and can send someone to catch up with him carrying all those dispatches, but you're right, it's a problem. Many real kings would mortgage a respectable-sized island for a magic item that allowed rapid communication or travel, even if it only affected them personally and not their armies.

Name_Here
2009-12-15, 10:45 AM
He could send messengers out for help while using the castle's defenses to at least slow down the party. If he can hold his castle for 4 days, then an army will come from the castle next door and the party will have to flee.

4 days would mean that the castle next door is about a day's travel away which means that if the king and a small group of bodyguards were to bolt at the beginning of the day's fighting they would have a good chance to reach it before the party rested and found out that the king is on the run. Also why would the party flee when a hastily assembled army from the neighboring castle arrived? They've already spent 4 days chewing through the king's army probably giving them a severe mauling in the process. Why would they turn tail and run because another 100-500 bodies where thrown into the meat grinder.


As the party is routed, the King get the initiative and can contact another party of adventurers, preferably more in line with his politic, to hunt down the criminals in exchange for an awesome reward.

Assuming the party is routed which just doesn't seem likely

Johel
2009-12-15, 11:43 AM
4 days would mean that the castle next door is about a day's travel away which means that if the king and a small group of bodyguards were to bolt at the beginning of the day's fighting they would have a good chance to reach it before the party rested and found out that the king is on the run. Also why would the party flee when a hastily assembled army from the neighboring castle arrived? They've already spent 4 days chewing through the king's army probably giving them a severe mauling in the process. Why would they turn tail and run because another 100-500 bodies where thrown into the meat grinder.


Ah... no, 4 days means 2 days travel away, what with 2 days for the messenger to get there and 2 days for a small army to come back, with the an actual army being gathered in case it fails.

And unless the party got some cheesy build, they will have had to exhaust resources such as wands, potions and the likes if they want to deal with the garrison without becoming sitting ducks. They are still only 9th level and a few 3rd level spells or even a wave of determined warriors can put them out of commission if they lose the tactical initiative (nothing to do with D&D Initiative in combat...).
This means adding a new batch of fresh defenders will force the party to choose between 4 more days of gruesome fighting OR a strategic retreat to try again some day.

Shademan
2009-12-15, 11:50 AM
Also, with several hundred men, flanking the players is easy, and your men can use aid another to always make sure that every enemy is hit at least once each round, not to mention that the chances for crits are waaay up.

AND... let us NOT forget that a proffesional soldier is a fighter. that means, if we go by 13-14th century standards, you'd have armies of these

taltamir
2009-12-15, 12:09 PM
We did? Also, please remain calm.

I am, I capitalized only one word at a time, aka that wasn't shouting it was "emphasis". For it to be "shouting" it would have to be an entire sentence in caps.
Although, maybe italics or bold would have been more clear.

As for establishing it. I opposed the notion but that is what the other side is saying, that somehow no magic economy and no magic items at all will hamper the wizard more than the poor beatstick.

Riffington
2009-12-15, 12:30 PM
at all[/B] will hamper the wizard more than the poor beatstick.

I don't think anyone has said that in this entire thread. I know I haven;t.

Tyndmyr
2009-12-15, 01:10 PM
Let me explain why I agree with Tolkien on this (also, Eldariel is currently making a similar point in another thread btw). In a low magic world, magic is rarer and more powerful. This means that what fewer magic items there are, should be items of great power. A +1 sword just doesn't excite the way the One Ring does. Besides, it unbalances the game to get rid of powerful magics. What you need to do is ensure that there are fewer stupid minor magics to worry about, which means that what's left are the extremely powerful ones.

The one ring isn't really an artifact. It's a cursed ring of invisibility.

LOTR did not have high magic. Gandalf was doing tricks with Prestidigitation. He could also apparently cast fireball. We don't see him casting often at all, or using anything comparable to high level spells. Teleportation apparently does not exist. And Gandalf is one of the absolute top tier magic users in this world.

It makes sense that a +1 sword will be treated as an item of great rarity and value in a low magic world. It does not make sense that +5 swords are ridiculously common compared to +1 swords.

Also, if the king is level 3, his UMD has got to be reasonably low. This limits his options quite a bit.

Tyndmyr
2009-12-15, 01:29 PM
But of course, all this is theoretical discussion.
So, yeah, we'll only know when Tyndmyr kill the king. :smallwink:

Alter Self, merrily walk in, cast the nuke of your choice, dimension door out. Win.

Set up any reasonable scenario using level 1-3 people, and I'll take a party of level 9s and kill the target.

Name_Here
2009-12-15, 01:37 PM
Ah... no, 4 days means 2 days travel away, what with 2 days for the messenger to get there and 2 days for a small army to come back, with the an actual army being gathered in case it fails.

Actually no. Armies move slower than people traveling on their own often to a disgusting degree. So in reality your 4 day window would look more like this 1 day for the messanger to get out to the other castle 1 day and a half to get the army together, secure rations, secure weapons and then another day and a half to get to the King's castle.


And unless the party got some cheesy build, they will have had to exhaust resources such as wands, potions and the likes if they want to deal with the garrison without becoming sitting ducks. They are still only 9th level and a few 3rd level spells or even a wave of determined warriors can put them out of commission if they lose the tactical initiative (nothing to do with D&D Initiative in combat...).

Actually no they engage the army while the wizard keeps a few spells in reserve mainly rope trick and fly/teleport so they can disengage at will and then have a safe place to rest and heal before emerging and rengaging with the King's army. They keep the initiative since the king's army can't keep up with their mobility to hunt them down and they can choose where to engage the army.


This means adding a new batch of fresh defenders will force the party to choose between 4 more days of gruesome fighting OR a strategic retreat to try again some day.

Why? The situation is set up so that they can't really lose so long as the King and company don't get their hands on some magical support that can hunt them down and engage them on equal terms which isn't going to happen with a fresh group of enemies who can't even hit them regularly.

tyckspoon
2009-12-15, 01:49 PM
Also, with several hundred men, flanking the players is easy, and your men can use aid another to always make sure that every enemy is hit at least once each round, not to mention that the chances for crits are waaay up.


If you're engaging an army in an area where you can *be* flanked you deserve what happens to you (although chances are that what happens is you Cleave through five guys every round while enjoying protection from missile weapons because the archers can't even see you past the twenty armsmen milling around and waiting their turn to get in front and get Cleaved.) 9th level characters have plenty of means to force fights to happen in conditions that favor them, especially when they're the ones taking the offense.

jseah
2009-12-15, 01:52 PM
Wizard preps Cloudkill. PCs share a bottle of air.

No more surrounding army.

Jayabalard
2009-12-15, 02:03 PM
Wizard preps Cloudkill. PCs share a bottle of air.

No more surrounding army.While it's certainly a tactic that has some merit, I think you're vastly overestimating it's effectiveness in this particular situation.

jseah
2009-12-15, 02:15 PM
True enough.

I was just giving an example of how the party might deal with getting surrounded by lots of mooks. Bunched up enemies are free frags.

One fireball or a DFA will flatten hordes at one go.

The defenders have a better chance if they take cover and plink away with a hail of crossbow bolts.

tyckspoon
2009-12-15, 02:17 PM
I prefer Wall of Fire for those situations. Burns mooks very effectively, has a Concentration duration so you can keep it running all day if your enemies are crazy enough to keep trying to run through it, and even gives some protection against missile attacks by giving concealment (spell says opaque; I take it to mean that at least hampers line-of-sight if not breaking it entirely) and torching some of the arrows that go through it. If you banned Evocation you can Shadow Evoke it without much loss of effectiveness.

Johel
2009-12-15, 03:03 PM
Actually no. Armies move slower than people traveling on their own often to a disgusting degree. So in reality your 4 day window would look more like this 1 day for the messanger to get out to the other castle 1 day and a half to get the army together, secure rations, secure weapons and then another day and a half to get to the King's castle.

An real army (thousands of men) moves slower because it has to insure its logistic, make sure the mounts aren't exhausted so they'll last the whole campaign, make sure the men are fed, make sure the column doesn't stretch too much, so it's not vulnerable to attack...

But if you are going to just ride for 2 days in friendly territory while the enemy consist of 4 men currently busy fighting, you don't care about logistic, security, ect...
Again, we don't speak of thousands of men and their carts of provision. We speak of 200 men on horse, ridding at full speed, making a stop for the night at some local village, then ridding again and fighting by the end of the day. No heavy supply or anything, just enough for a two-days trip and maybe some more.


Actually no they engage the army while the wizard keeps a few spells in reserve mainly rope trick and fly/teleport so they can disengage at will and then have a safe place to rest and heal before emerging and rengaging with the King's army. They keep the initiative since the king's army can't keep up with their mobility to hunt them down and they can choose where to engage the army.

Again, it's not the place to discuss the issue of how the party will accomplish the assassination. But for the sake of argument :
Your wizard can make 1 Teleport.
Your wizard can cast 3 Dimensional doors.

That means the party can make a maximum of 4 tactical jumps, 3 of which will just bring them a few rooms away from their previous position. That's enough to get away from dangerous situations 3 times then have to teleport out of the castle and call off the whole assault for the day.

This means the garrison of the castle just have to make sure the party don't reach the King for the next 4 days. Then reinforcement will arrive and additional help will be on its way. Make it 2 more days and a level-appropriate party of friendly adventurers can be probably contacted.


Why? The situation is set up so that they can't really lose so long as the King and company don't get their hands on some magical support that can hunt them down and engage them on equal terms which isn't going to happen with a fresh group of enemies who can't even hit them regularly.

And that's what I'm talking about :
If the King holds for 2 days, the word he's in trouble will reach a castle anywhere 96 miles away.
If the King holds for 4 days, the word he's in trouble will have spread in a radius of 96 miles from the point where the messenger dropped the news first. Likely, by that time, hundreds of men will arrive at his castle.
If the King holds for 6 days, the word he's in trouble will have spread in a radius of 192 miles, maybe more if messengers decide to work their horses to death. At that point, if the King's advisors weren't idiots, there's some cleric whose instruction are to use a scroll of Sending to call the Cavalry.

The Cavalry : a group of high-level characters, native from the region but departed long ago, what with adventuring business and such. When they were low-level, they did most of their mission for that kingdom and are still on friendly terms.

If he isn't ruling just a mere city-state or some newly created buffer state, a King can easily offer 36.000 gp. That's the WBL of a 9th level adventurer and would represent 360.000 citizens paying an annual tax of 1 silver coin, which represents 1 day of work.

If the King hasn't already a group of 9th level adventurers among his allies or if it's not possible to contact said allies, the reward alone should be enough to convince any group of 9th level adventurers to come to the castle, battle a difficult encounter and raise their wealth by 20% + whatever they loot on the defeated group.

Once an interested adventuring party ears the word, they teleport near the castle, check the situation with the local and bash the attacking party the next day.

1 week at most and the King would have saved his throne.
Of course, the body count will be heavy but life is cheap in D&D...

Tyndmyr
2009-12-15, 03:29 PM
An real army (thousands of men) moves slower because it has to insure its logistic, make sure the mounts aren't exhausted so they'll last the whole campaign, make sure the men are fed, make sure the column doesn't stretch too much, so it's not vulnerable to attack...

Definitely. Plus the raising and preparing...armies *never* move as fast as scouts/messengers. If they did, it'd be rather difficult to ever use scouts and messengers. It'd be ridiculous.


But if you are going to just ride for 2 days in friendly territory while the enemy consist of 4 men currently busy fighting, you don't care about logistic, security, ect...

Right. If the wizard knows where the messenger(s) are, they die. You can only really solve this by using lots of messengers, widely geographically seperated. Unfortunately, destinations where help can be found are limited in number, and not all equally far away. IE, all those messengers taking creative paths to get help will be travelling *much* more slowly.


Again, it's not the place to discuss the issue of how the party will accomplish the assassination. But for the sake of argument :
Your wizard can make 1 Teleport.
Your wizard can cast 3 Dimensional doors.

Does your wizard lack an int modifier? Odds are rather good that he gets another of each of them, if he wishes.


That means the party can make a maximum of 4 tactical jumps, 3 of which will just bring them a few rooms away from their previous position. That's enough to get away from dangerous situations 3 times then have to teleport out of the castle and call off the whole assault for the day.

Technically, the dimension doors will have a range of 760 ft. I've seen a lot of castles. That's generally sufficient to blow through the defenders. You could accomplish this with just these.


This means the garrison of the castle just have to make sure the party don't reach the King for the next 4 days. Then reinforcement will arrive and additional help will be on its way. Make it 2 more days and a level-appropriate party of friendly adventurers can be probably contacted.

This assumes everything works out *perfectly* for the messengers. The more messengers you send, too, the less you have for defence.

And it's unlikely that they can do so. A level 9 party can kill a *lot* of level 1-3s in 4 days.


And that's what I'm talking about :
If the King holds for 2 days, the word he's in trouble will reach a castle anywhere 96 miles away.
If the King holds for 4 days, the word he's in trouble will have spread in a radius of 96 miles from the point where the messenger dropped the news first. Likely, by that time, hundreds of men will arrive at his castle.
If the King holds for 6 days, the word he's in trouble will have spread in a radius of 192 miles, maybe more if messengers decide to work their horses to death. At that point, if the King's advisors weren't idiots, there's some cleric whose instruction are to use a scroll of Sending to call the Cavalry.

The whole radius thing falls short. Six days, eh? If you sent 100 messengers, and the terrain was perfectly road-like in all directions, and none of them were delayed, then at that radius of 192 miles, there is approximately a six mile gap between each messenger. In short, messengers only work on a point to point basis, which leaves them very vulnerable to interception.

Magic is a much more efficient form of summoning backup, yes.


If he isn't ruling just a mere city-state or some newly created buffer state, a King can easily offer 36.000 gp. That's the WBL of a 9th level adventurer and would represent 360.000 citizens paying an annual tax of 1 silver coin, which represents 1 day of work.

I thought we were using a level 3 king? And even if his WBL *is* 36k, he won't have a pile of 36k gold at hand. See the WBL rules for details.

As for taxes, 360k citizens would be a rather large country. IE, far too large to have another countries castle within 6 miles.


If the King hasn't already a group of 9th level adventurers among his allies or if it's not possible to contact said allies, the reward alone should be enough to convince any group of 9th level adventurers to come to the castle, battle a difficult encounter and raise their wealth by 20% + whatever they loot on the defeated group.

The reward only matters if they know about it. Again, if they are not there, this can only be accomplished in a timely fashion via magic.



What was the lowbie spell in SpC that concentrates on a spell for you...Sonorous Hum? Level 2? That + wall of fire = the melee people can't get in/out without dying horribly. Castles have lots of choke points by design. If they did not, they would be pointless. It's horribly easy to use this against them if you've got magic and levels.

Shademan
2009-12-15, 03:36 PM
most nobles went trough the training as a knight y'know. well before they got all puffy anyhow. so I reckon the king is AT LEAST a lv1 fighter. then add some levels of aristocrat.
also: WBL dosn't count for the king. he got a crown so he screw the rules

Tyndmyr
2009-12-15, 03:40 PM
Saying "screw the rules" makes discussing the outcome within the rules rather impossible, yknow.

We can discuss what would comprise part of his WBL(his gear, for example) and what would not(hiring henchmen). Just because something is not part of WBL does not mean you get as much as you want of it.

The DMG has rules regarding sizes of towns, and what you can expect to find there in terms of levels, guards, etc. Use those, and I'll happily use a standard 9th level party, and I guarantee the king will be dead at the end of four days.

Oslecamo
2009-12-15, 03:57 PM
most nobles went trough the training as a knight y'know. well before they got all puffy anyhow. so I reckon the king is AT LEAST a lv1 fighter. then add some levels of aristocrat.
also: WBL dosn't count for the king. he got a crown so he screw the rules

This raises an interesting point.

In the dark ages, it was common practise to send the princes in military campaigns to prove their worth. Altough not exactly frontline batle, it was expected that they would do something usefull (if not just inspire the troops) and learn a thing or two from the real world from directly experiencing it. After all, that prince would have to hold the borders someday.

Assuming that a victorious army gets exp, and that exp is shared between all the members of the army equaly as in a party, then the prince can get levels relatively safe. If the grunts are considered just minions and don't get exp at all, then the prince can level up pretty fast!

So, when daddy dies and the prince rises to the throne, he'll have a good chunk of levels under his belt, all by RAW.

Considering that those levels can be invested in pretty much anything, then you could technicaly become a super wizard just by watching enough people geting slaughtered!

Hunting wild game also sudenly becomes a quite profitable sport. A boar is a deadly challenge after all. Get the prince in some nice gear, get him a tracker, and you can get some more levels easily.

Make sure to give birth to several princes/princesses and tell them that the one with more experience gets the throne to make sure they do their best.

Tyndmyr
2009-12-15, 04:01 PM
This raises an interesting point.

In the dark ages, it was common practise to send the princes in military campaigns to prove their worth. Altough not exactly frontline batle, it was expected that they would do something usefull (if not just inspire the troops) and learn a thing or two from the real world from directly experiencing it. After all, that prince would have to hold the borders someday.

Assuming that a victorious army gets exp, and that exp is shared between all the members of the army equaly as in a party, then the prince can get levels relatively safe. If the grunts are considered just minions and don't get exp at all, then the prince can level up pretty fast!

Leadership isn't available until 6th level. The minion issue isn't relevant.

Exp is based on encounters, not mere membership in an organization. Sure, the prince can get encounters by going to war(and look, aristocrats have more starting gold, so better gear), but he has to actually take part in encounters to get xp.

Karoht
2009-12-15, 04:08 PM
Once again the king can be a king and rule from a mud sink while a castle no matter how grand, centrally located or beautifully engineered can do nothing but rot and fall apart on it's own. No king in history would die for his castle if escape and ruling elsewhere is a viable alternative.
So assume then, for sake of the example, that this is the king's final bastion, escape is cut off perhaps by other mercenaries, and the party of 4 has been called upon to end the stalemate, rather than waiting for attrition to take it's toll, or speed up the process, so the invading army can finish the job. The party of 4 has no control over the rest of the invading army, and said army has already dealt with the rest of the kings holdings and estates. This castle, and everything he can see from it, is all he has left.

Just a thought.

Oslecamo
2009-12-15, 04:29 PM
Leadership isn't available until 6th level. The minion issue isn't relevant.

You can hire mercenaries with gold. They don't get exp if I'm not mistaken. The war troll is a mighty war machine for just 25 gp/day. Daddy will surely burrow you some gold. Or perhaps he binded some monsters to be your bodyguards. Family business.



Exp is based on encounters, not mere membership in an organization. Sure, the prince can get encounters by going to war(and look, aristocrats have more starting gold, so better gear), but he has to actually take part in encounters to get xp.

Shoot arrows at the enemy from behind some mercenaries with tower shields, then order your troops to charge ahead, go behind and deliver killing blows to weakened enemies wich you previously ordered your troops to leave behinind. Where's the problem?

Johel
2009-12-15, 04:35 PM
Right. If the wizard knows where the messenger(s) are, they die. You can only really solve this by using lots of messengers, widely geographically seperated. Unfortunately, destinations where help can be found are limited in number, and not all equally far away. IE, all those messengers taking creative paths to get help will be travelling *much* more slowly.

The wizard is busy fighting with his friends, as you put it yourself.

While he *can* technically prevent anything on a horse to get out of the castle, that's going to be very messy and wasteful.

If it's the usual tactic of wizards, my first reaction as a King would : "-Send out EVERY children and women !!". More targets means more deads but also more chance to get the message through. Wifes, daughters and sons wouldn't all forsake their fathers who staid behind to protect the King, right ?
Given that a good number of said children are pages and squires at the Court, they will just have to grab a horse, which tend to be common among nobility, and ride like hell, straight on the road.


Does your wizard lack an int modifier? Odds are rather good that he gets another of each of them, if he wishes.
I took into account a Int of 18

This assumes everything works out *perfectly* for the messengers. The more messengers you send, too, the less you have for defence.
And it's unlikely that they can do so. A level 9 party can kill a *lot* of level 1-3s in 4 days.
He can, if they are in one place. The guards will probably be split across the castle when you make your attempt, with only the best around the King and his Court.

The whole radius thing falls short. Six days, eh? If you sent 100 messengers, and the terrain was perfectly road-like in all directions, and none of them were delayed, then at that radius of 192 miles, there is approximately a six mile gap between each messenger. In short, messengers only work on a point to point basis, which leaves them very vulnerable to interception.

Castles are usually deserved by at least one road, are built in open space so that attackers have to advance in the open and have a settlement built not too far away, as a garrison needs to get provision. Some castles (in Whales and Scotland, for example) are built at the top of sharp cliffs but most of the big ones aren't. The point is that there'll be roads and open space for horse to ride.

Interception means the wizard must fly and the spell "Fly" isn't going to last long enough to catch as few as 20 riders. So, you have to go for "Overland Fly", which is 5th level. And since a 9th level wizard got only 1 of such spell with an Int of 18...


I thought we were using a level 3 king? And even if his WBL *is* 36k, he won't have a pile of 36k gold at hand. See the WBL rules for details.

As for taxes, 360k citizens would be a rather large country. IE, far too large to have another countries castle within 6 miles.

@WBL : and of course, everyone knows that the total wealth of a King is barely equal to the price of a castle. :smallamused:
Point is, he doesn't have to get it in gold. If the Kingdom is wealthy enough (and it is : 1 day of work from a part of the population is enough to get the wealth necessary for the reward), people will not ask how the King will do to pay. Worst case, he can offer a castle and a nobility title with it. Or a magic item. Or simply, as I said, levy a tax.

@360k people = large country :
...are you joking ? :smallconfused:

England (not UK, just the Kingdom of England) had a population of 2,5 millions during the 13th century. It reached 3,75 millions during the 14th century then went down to 2,5 millions because of the Black Plague.

It was a very sparsely populated country as, in comparison, France, about 3 times bigger, had about 6 times more people after the Black Plague, with 16 millions inhabitants.

Since England's borders didn't change much since middle-age, it's easy to get the surface. England was 50.346 sq miles for 2,5 millions people. that's 50 people per sq mile. If it was a circle, it would be 126 miles radius.

You seemed to be ok with the 192 miles radius for the Kingdom here. Well, if the total population of said Kingdom was only 360.000 inhabitants, then it would have a density of 3 people per square miles. While I agree that the Gobi Desert might have that kind of density, I'm sure it's not your average medieval kingdom... :smallannoyed:

PS : also, what's that 6 miles-thing ? 2 days ridding is 80 miles when on horse, walking. If you push the horse up to its limits, you can double that distance easy. Not sure the beast might survive but who cares ? the King is in danger !!


The reward only matters if they know about it. Again, if they are not there, this can only be accomplished in a timely fashion via magic.

And again, unless you can track the King while killing his guards and killing all messengers at the same time, I'm not sure you'll succeed to keep that information silent. My point here is not "A large number of 3rd level idiots can kill a 9th level party". My point was that a King can make it very difficult to kill him while still being able to govern efficiently. Now, if a 9th level party hit him every week, he's not going to survive long. But since it's difficult to achieve, one can expect 9th level parties to find other ways to get wealth and power.

jseah
2009-12-15, 04:50 PM
Contact Other Plane knows where your other exit is.

Note 1: Wall of Stone = your gate doesn't open

Note 2: I have a +2 Int item and 16 base + 2 from levels. I get a bonus 5th level slot.
Rock to Mud collapses the exit tunnel that the king could run from.

I fly my party members over the wall and DD back out when we need to. You aren't going anywhere once this is done anyway.

Our party ranger or rogue who isn't part of the actual assault will be infiltrating your castle to pick up on any plans you have to get out of the situation. He has a Status effect on him from the cleric. Worse case scenario, we DD to his location and bail him out.

*************************************

Either that, or the party uses Divination, Dream and Scrying to catch the King asleep and simply use Scry and Die.
Do not forget the cleric has spells as well.

It's not like you can afford to ward your whole castle. Or even more than the immediate room he's sleeping in.

tyckspoon
2009-12-15, 04:51 PM
Personally? If you can get that King to survive for as much as 1 day I will concede that you have made your point. I think a competent party will be able to do the job inside 30 minutes from the time their Wizard says go (not counting any time spent doing recon or prep work, like scribing extra scrolls of Dim. Door- that's the advantage the party gets for being the ones taking the offense and building their plan, just as the king gets the advantage of having a country to tap for resources.) By that time, it should be easy to tell if the party can indeed roll over the kingdom or if they have insufficient resources to do it. Any extended timeframe over that indicates the party has been bogged down in entanglements they should have been able to bypass (ref: trying to fight an entire army/the King's whole household guard instead of just whacking the King and/or looting his treasury.)

Shademan
2009-12-15, 04:57 PM
...
wait... what are we trying to accomplish? if you kill the king his son becomes king and will maybe vow revenge against you. kill him and you got many MANY nibles who all think the throne should go to them, and the neighbouring nations see the chaos and decide to invade blahblahblah. congrats, your evil ways have caused more suffering for the kingdom than ...uh...than... Shia Lebeouf.

I guess

Tyndmyr
2009-12-15, 05:02 PM
You can hire mercenaries with gold. They don't get exp if I'm not mistaken. The war troll is a mighty war machine for just 25 gp/day. Daddy will surely burrow you some gold. Or perhaps he binded some monsters to be your bodyguards. Family business.

You can in fact hire mercernaries. You do not gain free xp from the encounters they participate in while you sit and watch from a safe distance.

If that were the case, then every party hired would be feeding xp to their bosses.


Shoot arrows at the enemy from behind some mercenaries with tower shields, then order your troops to charge ahead, go behind and deliver killing blows to weakened enemies wich you previously ordered your troops to leave behinind. Where's the problem?

Why yes, you can use hirelings to help you. Likewise, you can use tactics and equipment to mitigate risk. However, if it's an exp generating encounter, you need to take part, and there needs to be some risk.

I don't see it as unlikely that an NPC leader has a couple levels of warrior, but it's far more likely he earned those fighting on horseback, heavily armored or some such.

Karoht
2009-12-15, 05:05 PM
In the dark ages, it was common practise to send the princes in military campaigns to prove their worth.
Important figure alert!
Sir William Marshall
He was a famous knight, remarkably wealthy, tournament champion and war hero, and Marshall of England. Which meant he was personally in charge of training the King, the Princes, and the house Knights and standing army in martial combat. How did he do this?
He accompanied King Henry to tournament for much of his early career. And tournament then was pretty much lining up 2 armies and clashing, not one on one combat in an arena. By the end of which, I'd say King Hennry could have stood in single combat against most common opponents, and did on several occasions, stand in non-single combat against well trained opponents.
I'd like to point out that Sir William outlived 5 different kings and Knighted 2 of them.
I'd peg him at 9th level or higher, and King Henry probably around 5th or higher, strictly in terms of martial skill. This is before any levels of aristocrat. Henry spent several years in tournament before dealing with any form of war, though Henry did shirk his duty of the crusade onto William (who served the King's Oath for him), and saw little combat himself beyond that, but was noted for being as skilled a tactician and leader as Sir William.
William was highly skilled politically and economically, and was incredibly wealthy for a Knight. Granted, this is part and parcel to his marriage to the Lady Isabel du Claire, who was a wealthy Baron's daugher, who had claim of title to most of ireland, some holdings in scotland, wales, england proper, france, belgium, and even spain, and castles just about everywhere. William was also granted an estate in the Aquataine after rescuing Queen Elenor, better known as Elenor of Aquataine. The Aquataine is a section of land that was incredibly fertile, tactically valuable, and worth a hefty sum. Whole army's clashed over control of this land.
King Richard I would peg around 7th level (Sir William and King Richard actually had a very famous duel, in which Sir William killed the Kings horse, to make the point that his lance could have been aimed for Richard instead), though I would only give him one level of aristocrat, as he was a very poor noble but an excellent war leader.
Most of the Barons and other Nobles of the age were Knights, as Knightly training was common among the aristocracy, even if said nobles never rode to war. I would estimate this training to be at least 3rd level, possibly as high as 4th, depending on the noble.

As a note, through inheritance and marriage and other such deals, the King is going to break any and all rules regarding estimated wealth. It's the nature of being King. And not every royal family is wealthy in the same level. Henry was rich because of his wife, Queen Elenor, while Richard just about declared bankruptcy twice due to his capture and randsom. If not for his mother granting him one of the largest loans at the time, he would have folded.

So my point? The estimated level of a King and his trained retinue being fixed at 1-3 seems a touch off, for starters. I could see the king having 2-3 levels fighter/knight and 2+ levels of aristocrat. This is assuming he's been King for only around 5 years or less, and it has been a very quiet and peaceful rule.
Lastly, due to the authority of the position, I would grant the King the Leadership feat, so long as they maintain the position, and assuming they have respectable knowledge and training to qualify. Lastly, their wealth level is difficult to measure, at best. Even their liquid assets are difficult to measure, without precise knowledge of the kingdom itself, inheritance, lineage, and acquesitions before or during rule.

Would the King necessarily be a caster? Depends on the culture of the kingdom. Maybe they don't like magic for some reason, or are low magic. Maybe they are an entire nation of tippy mages only kept in check by a higher tippy mage and his cronies. Maybe the nation is full of clerics, perhaps they are anti-religion. Hard to say. Lastly, it would come down to the interests of the king while growing up. Did the prince enjoy church? Or book knowledge? Or martial studies? Or staring off into space aimlessly.

I'm surprised that no one has brought up the possibility of the King being a Bard, with no levels of Aristocrat. Just saying...


Make sure to give birth to several princes/princesses and tell them that the one with more experience gets the throne to make sure they do their best.Watch the film (or wiki the plot) entitled The Lion In Winter, and tell me how well that worked for John, Richard, and Phillip. I'll give you a hint though, the least experienced or qualified eventually ends up with the throne while the most experienced (but also not qualified) goes off to the crusade, and Phillip looses interest.

Tyndmyr
2009-12-15, 05:28 PM
The wizard is busy fighting with his friends, as you put it yourself.

Fly has a fly speed of what, 60? And the wizard has surprise? If the first assault goes poorly, fly around, blast anyone obviously going for help? It shouldn't ever come to that, but it's not terribly unreasonable to pull off.


While he *can* technically prevent anything on a horse to get out of the castle, that's going to be very messy and wasteful.

We're talking about slaughtering an army and storming a castle to pull off a single assassination. Messy and wasteful look to be par for the course.


If it's the usual tactic of wizards, my first reaction as a King would : "-Send out EVERY children and women !!". More targets means more deads but also more chance to get the message through. Wifes, daughters and sons wouldn't all forsake their fathers who staid behind to protect the King, right ?
Given that a good number of said children are pages and squires at the Court, they will just have to grab a horse, which tend to be common among nobility, and ride like hell, straight on the road.

We've been attacked by four men...we'll now sacrifice all our women and children in hopes of overwhelming them with bodies? This does not seem like a recipie for a successful kingdom, sir.



I took into account a Int of 18

Nearly any wizard will start with 18. Some with 20. Those who use age categories, 23. At level 9, they will have gained 2 more points. Affording a +2 stat item at level 9 is easy enough that nearly any wizard will. You can assume a bonus level 5 spell. They may have better than this, but they'll have at LEAST this.


He can, if they are in one place. The guards will probably be split across the castle when you make your attempt, with only the best around the King and his Court.

We don't need to kill them all. Huge masses are only really a distraction. Things like walls of fire serve the purpose of blocking routes. Personally, I prefer using invisible spell on these sorts of things, but that's probably stretching the definition of a standard wizard loadout. At any rate, a wall of fire is utterly lethal to level 1s, and a rather big problem for level 3s. You control when and how movement in the castle is permissable.


Castles are usually deserved by at least one road, are built in open space so that attackers have to advance in the open and have a settlement built not too far away, as a garrison needs to get provision. Some castles (in Whales and Scotland, for example) are built at the top of sharp cliffs but most of the big ones aren't. The point is that there'll be roads and open space for horse to ride.

Anywhere with roads and open spaces is amazingly vulnerable to flying wizards, archers, etc.

The messenger who goes through the woods is slower, but far more likely to live.


Interception means the wizard must fly and the spell "Fly" isn't going to last long enough to catch as few as 20 riders. So, you have to go for "Overland Fly", which is 5th level. And since a 9th level wizard got only 1 of such spell with an Int of 18...

Ninth level wizards do not have an int of 18. They have 22-27.

So, we're looking at 2 level 5 spells minimum. 3 for a domain wizard or specialist. 4 for focused specialist. Not that big of a problem.

And anyhow, Fly lasts for 9 minutes a cast. Thats not bad. Hell, extend it if need be.


@WBL : and of course, everyone knows that the total wealth of a King is barely equal to the price of a castle. :smallamused:

This has already been addressed. See arms and equipment guide regarding the feat based way to pay for a castle. Castles, hired guards, they all have rules. Follow them.


Point is, he doesn't have to get it in gold. If the Kingdom is wealthy enough (and it is : 1 day of work from a part of the population is enough to get the wealth necessary for the reward), people will not ask how the King will do to pay. Worst case, he can offer a castle and a nobility title with it. Or a magic item. Or simply, as I said, levy a tax.

If he doesn't get it in gold, he can't very well offer a gold reward, now can he?


@360k people = large country :
...are you joking ? :smallconfused:

Well, ya'll are saying that a messenger can reach the next country's castle over in a days ride.

Either you get large population, or a short distance to allies. Not both.


England (not UK, just the Kingdom of England) had a population of 2,5 millions during the 13th century. It reached 3,75 millions during the 14th century then went down to 2,5 millions because of the Black Plague.

It was a very sparsely populated country as, in comparison, France, about 3 times bigger, had about 6 times more people after the Black Plague, with 16 millions inhabitants.

Since England's borders didn't change much since middle-age, it's easy to get the surface. England was 50.346 sq miles for 2,5 millions people. that's 50 people per sq mile. If it was a circle, it would be 126 miles radius.

And yes, everything is so much easier to calculate when considered as a perfect circle. Countries are not laid out this way. Thus, in practice, travel takes longer than it does in ideal-physics world.


You seemed to be ok with the 192 miles radius for the Kingdom here. Well, if the total population of said Kingdom was only 360.000 inhabitants, then it would have a density of 3 people per square miles. While I agree that the Gobi Desert might have that kind of density, I'm sure it's not your average medieval kingdom... :smallannoyed:

That's a six day transit time by the previous calculations listed. One way.

The problem with the radius is that, as previously mentioned, no realistic world has symmetric circular kingdoms and such, with easy travel in absolutely any direction.


PS : also, what's that 6 miles-thing ? 2 days ridding is 80 miles when on horse, walking. If you push the horse up to its limits, you can double that distance easy. Not sure the beast might survive but who cares ? the King is in danger !!

Those numbers are from your side.

Your estimates appear wildly off. 80 miles a day on a horse is not a walking speed. I believe world records(tevis cup) are a bit over a hundred miles in a day.


And again, unless you can track the King while killing his guards and killing all messengers at the same time, I'm not sure you'll succeed to keep that information silent. My point here is not "A large number of 3rd level idiots can kill a 9th level party". My point was that a King can make it very difficult to kill him while still being able to govern efficiently. Now, if a 9th level party hit him every week, he's not going to survive long. But since it's difficult to achieve, one can expect 9th level parties to find other ways to get wealth and power.

Earlier in this post you proposed the king protect himself by flooding the adventurers with women and children to overwhelm them with their bodies. Your definition of "govern efficiently" appears to be a very strange one.

Friend Computer
2009-12-15, 06:28 PM
Now, if a 9th level party hit him every week, he's not going to survive long. But since it's difficult to achieve, one can expect 9th level parties to find other ways to get wealth and power.
This, of course, assumes the absurd position that there are enough 9th level parties to be able to attack every week.

9th level parties should be rare, like... once-every-hundred-years-or-more rare. A high level king would be level 6-ish. One could expect normal kings who've lived an 'average' life for a medieval monarch in terms of personal combat and military leadership would be around lv.3 or 4.

Johel
2009-12-15, 06:39 PM
We've been attacked by four men...we'll now sacrifice all our women and children in hopes of overwhelming them with bodies? This does not seem like a recipe for a successful kingdom, sir.

Irony aside, once the 4 men burst through the outer defenses, kill a good dozen guards without losses and start blasting fireballs, it's reasonable to evacuate the civilians, at least for 3 reasons :
they would be worthless mouths to feed during a siege
they can serve as messengers
they can insure at least part of the noble bloodline survive

The women and children don't charge the 4 apocalypse riders. They aim for the exit (or at least the stables), screaming with panicked voices while the warriors make sure to slow down the 4 juggernauths...with their own lifes if necessary. Knight honor and all that...


Nearly any wizard will start with 18. Some with 20. Those who use age categories, 23. At level 9, they will have gained 2 more points. Affording a +2 stat item at level 9 is easy enough that nearly any wizard will. You can assume a bonus level 5 spell. They may have better than this, but they'll have at LEAST this.


A "good" (in the sense "not focus on a single stat") wizard starts at Int 16. He is smart but not obligatory so smart that he can rival Einstein. By level 17, he's reached Int 20 easily.
An optimized wizard starts at Int 18. That guy will do a fantastic wizard and stand out among his peers.
A cheesy wizard "starts" as a venerable gray elf with 23. This wizard spent the last 600 years locked in a tower and only got out recently. The mere sunlight is enough to dazzle him but he can do complex trigonometric calculation on the top of his hat while reading a philosophy treaty.



We don't need to kill them all. Huge masses are only really a distraction. Things like walls of fire serve the purpose of blocking routes. Personally, I prefer using invisible spell on these sorts of things, but that's probably stretching the definition of a standard wizard loadout. At any rate, a wall of fire is utterly lethal to level 1s, and a rather big problem for level 3s. You control when and how movement in the castle is permissible.

That can work.



This has already been addressed. See arms and equipment guide regarding the feat based way to pay for a castle. Castles, hired guards, they all have rules. Follow them.

Well, your opponent didn't seem to agree. Or if he did, that's not the impression I had. And again, the point in what your quoted was :
I offered a huge reward
You countered by saying : "it's out of WBL"
I gave you a way to raise the money that doesn't seem unreasonable for the ruler of a country (1sp per citizen for the year ? That's like 1/365 of their earnings. Worst case, we can even borrow money from our vassals, from the guilds, ect...).
You answer with : "You can't get a single penny more."
Well, as sure as adventurers will loot the King's castle, the King can loot his own country if he wants to. And I'm not talking loot, here, I'm talking tax, and a fairly cheap one, in addition.



If he doesn't get it in gold, he can't very well offer a gold reward, now can he?

He can offer it. He doesn't have to keep his promise, as long as people think he will, it's enough to avoid THIS assassination attempt. And as noted before, he can give magic items as garantee, say he'll have the gold by next month, tax a few cities (the famous 360.000 people) and then pay his saviors and get the magic items back. 9th level adventurers are busy people but not so much that they can't wait a month to get 36.000 gp while being handled magic items for the disagreement.


Well, ya'll are saying that a messenger can reach the next country's castle over in a days ride.

Either you get large population, or a short distance to allies. Not both.

I never said anything about another kingdom. I told you the messenger was going to ride to the next castle. In a medieval setting, castles are common sight, with at least one in every duchy/county. And it's not unreasonable to have 80 miles between two such castles. But again, maybe I don't live in Europe and don't know about what's dotting my own countryside... A hint : most of them aren't exactly new castles :smallannoyed:

And again, unless our King is nothing but a petty warlord, he got vassals who themselves have castles. If not, then we are not talking the assassination of a king but just the murder of some local governor or puppet "king", whatever his title is, whose power doesn't get further than a day travel away from his castle.



And yes, everything is so much easier to calculate when considered as a perfect circle. Countries are not laid out this way. Thus, in practice, travel takes longer than it does in ideal-physics world.

...What ? :smallconfused:
I'm giving you these number so that you can clearly visualize the scale we are talking about. Also, the point was to show you that a medieval kingdom is much more densely populated than you think.

Unless we speak about some remote savage land, there's going to be at least 50 people per square miles. I can even drop that to 10 if you like, that still means a average sized Kingdom is going to have enough people to make the nobility filthy rich, if not in gold then in goods, workforce and real estate. That's it if it's a real kingdom and not just buffer state.

For the distance, I took the ones in the SRD (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/movement.htm), which already assume the lands isn't a perfectly flat area or that you have to travel through woods, ect...



That's a six day transit time by the previous calculations listed. One way.

The problem with the radius is that, as previously mentioned, no realistic world has symmetric circular kingdoms and such, with easy travel in absolutely any direction.

*Face palm*
Yes, you are right, no kingdom is a perfect circle but if you can't agree that somebody can indeed travel 192 miles in 6 days while being on a horse and in a hurry to the point of not carring about the welfare of his horse, then we better stop arguing because you are clearly of bad faith here.

192 miles is the distance listed by the SRD that a horse can travel, walking on a road, calmy, for 4 days. So, if you think my messenger, who's clearly NOT taking his time, can't make it in 6 days, even if he has to take some not-perfect roads then sorry, but we can't discuss.


Those numbers are from your side.

Your estimates appear wildly off. 80 miles a day on a horse is not a walking speed. I believe world records(tevis cup) are a bit over a hundred miles in a day.

SRD (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/movement.htm#tableMountsAndVehicles)
2 days x 48 miles, that's 96 miles.
I took 80 miles as the road won't be perfectly straight.



Earlier in this post you proposed the king protect himself by flooding the adventurers with women and children to overwhelm them with their bodies. Your definition of "govern efficiently" appears to be a very strange one.

Read again, I proposed to SEND OUT THOSE WHO CAN'T FIGHT (children and women) so that they can be used as messengers while not being caught in what looks like an apocalypse in the making. Go at the beginning of this post and you'll find 3 reasons why it's a win-win for both them and the king. If evacuate civilians to avoid casualties isn't both human and efficient in a battle, then I guess we don't have the same values, what with most of these people being related to the kings, as they are nobles.

jseah
2009-12-15, 06:56 PM
And what do you do if the party is smart and seals your gate with a Wall of Stone?

And finds your entrance tunnel via divination spells and collapses it?

I also point out that wizards that start with 16 Int (all too common), have 20 by 9th level.
16 base + 2 level + 2 item = 20
They have 1 bonus 5th level slot. +1 if they're specialist.

Furthermore, the cleric has 1 5th level spell + 1 bonus + 1 domain.
Assuming the domain spell is a random blasty spell, that leaves 2 5th level spells the cleric can contribute as well.
Like Wall of Stone to seal your gates shut.

The party is not only comprised of a lone mage.

And that is if they take the kick-in-the-door route and not be smart about it.

If they break out scry and die, the 3rd level king is as good as dead.

Tyndmyr
2009-12-15, 07:14 PM
Irony aside, once the 4 men burst through the outer defenses, kill a good dozen guards without losses and start blasting fireballs, it's reasonable to evacuate the civilians, at least for 3 reasons :
they would be worthless mouths to feed during a siege
they can serve as messengers
they can insure at least part of the noble bloodline survive

The women and children don't charge the 4 apocalypse riders. They aim for the exit (or at least the stables), screaming with panicked voices while the warriors make sure to slow down the 4 juggernauths...with their own lifes if necessary. Knight honor and all that...

Have you seen castles? The enterance and exit tend to be the exact same place. They try to keep the total number of those harshly limited, often to exactly one. So, sending out the women and children tends to entail sending them dangerously close to the ongoing massacre.

Also, I find the idea that a sobbing peasant will be sufficient to result in another country immediately rallying an army a bit unlikely.

As if that wasn't enough...running women and children make very slow messengers. Also particularily likely to die to the random stuff in the wilds. By the time they make it to the next country over, the king is long dead, and the castles's been looted. The adventurer is long gone.



A "good" (in the sense "not focus on a single stat") wizard starts at Int 16. He is smart but not obligatory so smart that he can rival Einstein. By level 17, he's reached Int 20 easily.
An optimized wizard starts at Int 18. That guy will do a fantastic wizard and stand out among his peers.
A cheesy wizard "starts" as a venerable gray elf with 23. This wizard spent the last 600 years locked in a tower and only got out recently. The mere sunlight is enough to dazzle him but he can do complex trigonometric calculation on the top of his hat while reading a philosophy treaty.


A good wizard will start with 16 int? It's a SAD class. The only other vaguely useful stats are con and dex. He'll have a bit of each of those, but not as much as he will int. Incidentally, this also fits the fantasy image of most wizards, so it's not purely an optimization thing.


Well, your opponent didn't seem to agree. Or if he did, that's not the impression I had. And again, the point in what your quoted was :
I offered a huge reward
You countered by saying : "it's out of WBL"
I gave you a way to raise the money that doesn't seem unreasonable for the ruler of a country (1sp per citizen for the year ? That's like 1/365 of their earnings. Worst case, we can even borrow money from our vassals, from the guilds, ect...).
You answer with : "You can't get a single penny more."

Nice quote. I didn't say it.

I pointed out existing ways within the rules to calculate available power and wealth. You and others apparently wish to ignore all rules regarding wealth and power entirely.


Well, as sure as adventurers will loot the King's castle, the King can loot his own country if he wants to. And I'm not talking loot, here, I'm talking tax, and a fairly cheap one, in addition.

Scroll back to the beginning of the thread. Read the bits about turnip economy and gold economy. Realize that spiking tax rates will not simply result in piles of gold.

Also, your criteria was "govern efficiently". So far, you're taxing the people to death, then sacrificing the women and children en masse. This seems like a poor strategy.


He can offer it. He doesn't have to keep his promise, as long as people think he will, it's enough to avoid THIS assassination attempt. And as noted before, he can give magic items as garantee, say he'll have the gold by next month, tax a few cities (the famous 360.000 people) and then pay his saviors and get the magic items back. 9th level adventurers are busy people but not so much that they can't wait a month to get 36.000 gp while being handled magic items for the disagreement.

So, to solve the problem of an attacking party, you hire a stronger party to kill them. Then you don't pay them. I see some minor flaws in this plan.


I never said anything about another kingdom. I told you the messenger was going to ride to the next castle. In a medieval setting, castles are common sight, with at least one in every duchy/county. And it's not unreasonable to have 80 miles between two such castles. But again, maybe I don't live in Europe and don't know about what's dotting my own countryside... A hint : most of them aren't exactly new castles :smallannoyed:

And most of those could hold less than a dozen men. I've spent a fair bit of time in europe myself.

Hint: If 1000 soldiers isn't going to stop the party, another dozen wont even be noticed.


...What ? :smallconfused:
I'm giving you these number so that you can clearly visualize the scale we are talking about. Also, the point was to show you that a medieval kingdom is much more densely populated than you think.

No. You keep changing the topic whenever I bring up a difficulty. Look back over the quote chain. It started as regarding messengers. I objected to your description of these in theoretical physics terms, resulting in an ever-expanding radius of people swarming to help. Obviously, this was horribly unrealistic.


Unless we speak about some remote savage land, there's going to be at least 50 people per square miles. I can even drop that to 10 if you like, that still means a average sized Kingdom is going to have enough people to make the nobility filthy rich, if not in gold then in goods, workforce and real estate. That's it if it's a real kingdom and not just buffer state.

Savage land? In D&D? Like...with dangers and stuff that might make people not want to live there?

You have played this game, right?


For the distance, I took the ones in the SRD (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/movement.htm), which already assume the lands isn't a perfectly flat area or that you have to travel through woods, ect...

And then you double the speed on the basis of "being willing to run the horse to death".

Here's a hint. The run speed described for...anything...is not a speed it can run at all day long. Even with Endurance, fatigue is going to be an issue in short order if you do that.


*Face palm*
Yes, you are right, no kingdom is a perfect circle but if you can't agree that somebody can indeed travel 192 miles in 6 days while being on a horse and in a hurry to the point of not carring about the welfare of his horse, then we better stop arguing because you are clearly of bad faith here.

A common complaint in victorian times was that the use of hansom horses for 15-40 miles per day was horribly grueling, and resulted in horses dying swift deaths as a result of overwork.

Now, this is was along roads, without random encounters, and without dealing through any particularily crazy terrain.

You're making an argument based neither on reality nor RAW, and claim I am arguing in bad faith.


192 miles is the distance listed by the SRD that a horse can travel, walking on a road, calmy, for 4 days. So, if you think my messenger, who's clearly NOT taking his time, can't make it in 6 days, even if he has to take some not-perfect roads then sorry, but we can't discuss.

Did you miss the terrain part of that, or did you just skip it?

Difficult terrain, Obstacles, Poor visiblity all require double movement cost. It's cumulative.

Moving faster than a walk for extended periods results in nasty penalties. It's not effective on a multi-day scale.

Your math is also only legit for light horses carrying less than 150 lbs. That's pretty light, considering you need a rider, supplies for both of them, and probably a bit of gear.

How many messengers with already loaded horses and gear does this king keep on standby? Seriously?


Read again, I proposed to SEND OUT THOSE WHO CAN'T FIGHT (children and women) so that they can be used as messengers while not being caught in what looks like an apocalypse in the making. Go at the beginning of this post and you'll find 3 reasons why it's a win-win for both them and the king. If evacuate civilians to avoid casualties isn't both human and efficient in a battle, then I guess we don't have the same values, what with most of these people being related to the kings, as they are nobles.

You're using "those who can't fight" as messengers. You proposed sending them out en masse on the basis that the party wouldn't be able to kill them all.

That is something very different from an evacuation.

snoopy13a
2009-12-15, 07:37 PM
A "good" (in the sense "not focus on a single stat") wizard starts at Int 16. He is smart but not obligatory so smart that he can rival Einstein. By level 17, he's reached Int 20 easily.
An optimized wizard starts at Int 18. That guy will do a fantastic wizard and stand out among his peers.
A cheesy wizard "starts" as a venerable gray elf with 23. This wizard spent the last 600 years locked in a tower and only got out recently. The mere sunlight is enough to dazzle him but he can do complex trigonometric calculation on the top of his hat while reading a philosophy treaty.




Well, NPCs don't focus or optimize. They, at least on theory, get their stats through randomization. This is best represented by a 3d6 roll.

So, at young adulthood:
About 16.2% of humans will have an Intelligence of 14+
About 9.2% of humans will have an Intelligence of 15+
About 4.6% of humans will have an Intelligence of 16+
About 1.8% of humans will have an Intelligence of 17+
About 0.5% of humans will have an Intelligence of 18+

In D&D world, every village seems to have a wizard. Plus, the wizard may have an apprectice and we need to take into account adventuring wizards. So, let's say that there is a wizard for every 200 people.

Now, wizarding is a fairly popular job but not everyone wants to be one. Perhaps, the person would rather be a fighter, bard, or cleric. Perhaps, the person hates reading. Or perhaps they are a serf or street tough and no one has taken notice of their intelligence. So, not all high intelligence people are going to be wizards. Let's say 20% of those aspire to it. Wizards are only going to train those of the highest intellgence to be their apprentices. So, 18 Int people will be chosen first then 17, 16, etc.

Thus, out of a population of 1,000 which contains 5 wizards:

About 5 people have a 18 Int, 1 of them becomes a wizard
About 13 have a 17 Int, 2-3 become wizards
About 28 have a 16 Int, about 5-6 of these want to be wizards but only 1 or 2 will be chosen.


About 20% of NPC wizards should have a 18 Int and about 50% will have a 17 Int. Only around 30% of wizards should have a mere 16 Int. Any wizard with less than 16 has been taught because of legacies (their parents were wizards/strong family connections).

So, your best wizards ought to have 18 Int, your average wizards 17 and your below average wizards 16.

Volkov
2009-12-15, 07:40 PM
Any way how much damage could a large scale futuristic army do to say, Oerth? And by futuristic, I mean terminator level.

Tyndmyr
2009-12-15, 07:46 PM
Tell you what. I'll propose the following for a test.

You have a single king. If he dies, I win. I have four 9th level PCs. When they all die, or admit they cannot kill the king, you win. Your king has three levels of aristocrat. Hell, add a level of warrior if you want. I don't care.

Your king has a personal body guard of 100 level 3 NPCs. Choose any NPC classes for this. All of them are in the immediate area of the castle.

Your king also has 1000 lvl 1 NPCs. Choose any NPC classes for this you wish.

Each NPC, including the king, may use their WBL to equip themselves personally however you wish.

The king has a bonus 36,000 gold. Taxes, whatever. Use this money to build the castle, as per SBG or what have you. Traps, items, etc purchased with this are subject to the maximum per-item prices listed in the WBL section for your highest level character(king), to avoid obvious cheese like purchasing the highest level spell trap available.

We use ToS ban rules to prevent pun-punesque stunts from making the whole thing pointless.

The nearest castles are a 2-day, 4-day, 6-day, etc ride away. Each of them has a force identical to your own, and will respond if you get a messenger there. It takes them as long to get to you as it takes the messenger to get to them.

You can of course set up guard rotations, castle layout, etc, etc however you wish.

Players get surprise.

Some neutral party will DM.

jseah
2009-12-15, 08:33 PM
Even if it was 1000 level 3 NPC classes, my money is still on the PCs.

If he had a special +5 Holy Avenger as a relic hand-me-down from before, my money is still on the PCs.

Short of some kind of minor artifact or an exceedingly useful item, I doubt the king will survive this without a servant who is at least 6th level.

Tearing the castle down around him is no more than a knowledge check and a few stone to mud spells away.
Sealing him in with a few walls of stone, which I might like to add the cleric and the wizard can both cast, is also a few spells away.
Scry and die (literally, scry, teleport, stab) is also a few spells away.
Checking the king's status and location is no more than a divination or contact other plane away.
Bashing up level 3s is in the purview of the fighter classes. Even the much looked-down upon monk can easily take your so-called elite knights and bend them over backwards.
Stabbity death from sneak attack by an invisible and silent rogue. Followed by a quick DD rescue.
DFAs and warlocks walking/flying in and simply laying waste and chaos without worry for resources.
Druids walk in with a literal army of animals and slaughter everyone.

Seriously, I do not see a way for a level 3-5 king to survive this without excessive christmas tree of magic items, or a significant number of level 5-7 henchmen.

If the characters planned this, it gets worse. They asked a few Divinations. They know your secret getaway. They know your allies. Someone used Gather Information to know that the allied castles are 2 days away.
A bard walks in and pretends to be someone else with a few glibness spells.

Tyndmyr
2009-12-15, 09:01 PM
Right. They are ludicrously doomed.

I figured I'd go for method of trap everyone inside, then kill them. All. With a relatively normal party. Just to make the point that hey, you don't even need to really optimize to pull this off.

Name_Here
2009-12-15, 09:34 PM
An real army (thousands of men) moves slower because it has to insure its logistic, make sure the mounts aren't exhausted so they'll last the whole campaign, make sure the men are fed, make sure the column doesn't stretch too much, so it's not vulnerable to attack...

Also moves slower because it is supposed to fight at the end of the march. Where as a messenger is expecting a hot meal and a place to rest at the end of his journey.


But if you are going to just ride for 2 days in friendly territory while the enemy consist of 4 men currently busy fighting, you don't care about logistic, security, ect...
Again, we don't speak of thousands of men and their carts of provision. We speak of 200 men on horse, ridding at full speed, making a stop for the night at some local village, then ridding again and fighting by the end of the day. No heavy supply or anything, just enough for a two-days trip and maybe some more.

Where is the local lord getting these 200 horses from? 400 would probably be a better number since we are talking horses who get tired and who are at the best of times a meal away from getting Colic and dieing. Nobles don't keep that number of horses on hand and even if they did most foot men aren't going to be trained riders who can ride full tilt.

And then you seem to be mistaking riding a horse with driving a car. You can't ride full tilt for 2 days straight and then fight without rest. Your legs'll feel like you've maxed out doing squats and your entire body will be sore from the jostling. Troops that arrive this way will be in no condition for any kind of fighting especially not against high level opponents.


Again, it's not the place to discuss the issue of how the party will accomplish the assassination. But for the sake of argument :
Your wizard can make 1 Teleport.
Your wizard can cast 3 Dimensional doors.

That means the party can make a maximum of 4 tactical jumps, 3 of which will just bring them a few rooms away from their previous position. That's enough to get away from dangerous situations 3 times then have to teleport out of the castle and call off the whole assault for the day.

Let's face it once the group gets inside the castle it is game over because they are in their element. The guards won't be able to effectively flank and use their superior numbers to wear down the party while the party can limit the amount of guards they face at any time. And then at any time the party gets a clear shot at the king it's over.


This means the garrison of the castle just have to make sure the party don't reach the King for the next 4 days. Then reinforcement will arrive and additional help will be on its way. Make it 2 more days and a level-appropriate party of friendly adventurers can be probably contacted.

Still think you're a little optimistic about the 4 day limit. But let's say that you are right and 4 days the first reinforcements are arriving.


And that's what I'm talking about :
If the King holds for 2 days, the word he's in trouble will reach a castle anywhere 96 miles away.
If the King holds for 4 days, the word he's in trouble will have spread in a radius of 96 miles from the point where the messenger dropped the news first. Likely, by that time, hundreds of men will arrive at his castle.

Doubtful that help would arrive s quickly as that. Nobles didn't keep those number of horses on hand. Nor could the horses survive the ride.

Now if he held out for 2 days and split at the beginning of the 3rd day he would be able to reach the safety of a new castle that knows about his plight and who can send out fresh messangers to tell everybody where to go.


If the King holds for 6 days, the word he's in trouble will have spread in a radius of 192 miles, maybe more if messengers decide to work their horses to death. At that point, if the King's advisors weren't idiots, there's some cleric whose instruction are to use a scroll of Sending to call the Cavalry.

Actually I think that the advisors are idiots for not storing something like that in the castle where it could be used immidiately. But beyond that the chances of him surviving even that long is completely and totally nill. It would be better for him to escape to a new haven than try to hold the castle with his quickly dwindling forces.

jseah
2009-12-15, 09:48 PM
For one thing,

3rd level NPC defenders have naught more than adepts for spells.

That means level 1 spells. Level 1 Adept spells.

The best thing I can think of for them is to spam Command and hope for a 1. If the players have anticipated this and cast protection from X... They have no spells of use beyond detect magic.

************************************

Defenders have no flight, no means of detecting invisiblity, no means of using alert type spells (Sending isn't on the adept spell list), no monitoring of status, nothing....

They're basically stuck with magical healing and mundane weaponry.
This does not look good.

While I agree that a ballista bolt to the face will ruin anyone's day, but ballistae are too easy targets for sabotage or simple nuking with a call lightning or two.

Tyndmyr
2009-12-15, 10:12 PM
Heck, we can tone it up some.

Say....the leader of each ten man level one squad gets a level three leader. For the body guards, same thing, with level five leaders. Boost the king to five as well, just cause.

I still think he'd have essentially no chance.

jseah
2009-12-15, 10:25 PM
If the level 5s are optimized casters he might win.

To the tune of white dragon spawn loredrake kobolds.

Or maybe not quite that bad, still, level 5 casters can ruin your day if there are enough of them simply by dispel magic spam.

Tyndmyr
2009-12-15, 11:18 PM
If the level 5s are optimized casters he might win.

To the tune of white dragon spawn loredrake kobolds.

Or maybe not quite that bad, still, level 5 casters can ruin your day if there are enough of them simply by dispel magic spam.

Possibly. It'd likely require a significant amount of cheddar, though. Granted, it doesn't in any way disprove the original issue that power would end up with the casters, but it'd likely be a more entertaining fight.

Granted, they could lock down the higher caster if they cornered him, but the party starts with surprise, which is pretty huge. Plus, you've got the rest of the party. Level 1-3 melee types are mostly useless against a level 9 melee char. I presume they'd only be hitting on nat 20s, and if DR is involved(as it likely will be), even those would be a minor impediment at best.

taltamir
2009-12-16, 12:49 AM
Wizard preps Cloudkill. PCs share a bottle of air.

No more surrounding army.

actually...

This spell generates a bank of fog, similar to a fog cloud, except that its vapors are yellowish green and poisonous. These vapors automatically kill any living creature with 3 or fewer HD (no save). A living creature with 4 to 6 HD is slain unless it succeeds on a Fortitude save (in which case it takes 1d4 points of Constitution damage on your turn each round while in the cloud).

A living creature with 6 or more HD takes 1d4 points of Constitution damage on your turn each round while in the cloud (a successful Fortitude save halves this damage). Holding one’s breath doesn’t help, but creatures immune to poison are unaffected by the spell.

So the army of kingsmen which are level 3 and lower automatically all die with no save!
The party of level 9 characters only take con damage in the cloud... Only if the cleric chose not to buff them with poison immunity ahead of time.

taltamir
2009-12-16, 01:06 AM
Important figure alert!
I'd peg him at 9th level or higher, and King Henry probably around 5th or higher, strictly in terms of martial skill.

just a nitpick, but real humans don't have levels, period.
A first level warrior has 10hp + con bonus. A knife does 1d4 damage, double that on a crit, which is explicitly a hit to the vital organs.
You cannot do enough damage to DOWN a fighter. Much less kill one (-10 HP).

A level 9 fighter has enough HP that it would take dozens of stabs with a knife to the vitals to kill one.

Real humans don't have levels, they have skill, but not levels.

Dervag
2009-12-16, 01:53 AM
As for establishing it. I opposed the notion but that is what the other side is saying, that somehow no magic economy and no magic items at all will hamper the wizard more than the poor beatstick.Taltamir, I question the proposition that this debate is worthwhile; it seems like there are too many fundamental differences in axioms. One side is going "9th level characters are badasses! They can hypothetically kill 100 people in about a minute!" and the other is going "I can counter their improbable badassery by..."

That lends itself to an endless loop, because the "9th level characters are badass" side can always come up with a counter to the counter to the counter to the counter to the... you get the idea. So can the "I'm building and planning defenses" side.


The one ring isn't really an artifact. It's a cursed ring of invisibility.

LOTR did not have high magic. Gandalf was doing tricks with Prestidigitation. He could also apparently cast fireball. We don't see him casting often at all, or using anything comparable to high level spells. Teleportation apparently does not exist. And Gandalf is one of the absolute top tier magic users in this world.Tyndmyr, this is an illusion based on the fact that the writers of D&D felt compelled to make first level magic miraculous... then top that with even bigger miracles at each succeeding level.

Therefore, it doesn't take many spell levels before stuff which would seem obviously miraculous in a world where people are not accustomed to magic (turning water into wine, making bread from nothing, healing the sick) isn't all that impressive. But that doesn't mean that it isn't impressive, or that a setting where it happens is "low magic" by any standards except that of D&D.

It's also important to distinguish between "low" as in weak and "low" as in rare. Rare magic that is powerful where it exists has a very different impact from weak magic, even if that weak magic is quite common.


It makes sense that a +1 sword will be treated as an item of great rarity and value in a low magic world. It does not make sense that +5 swords are ridiculously common compared to +1 swords.The problem with that is that a +1 sword doesn't actually increase your combat capability all that much. It doesn't pay to risk death or pay forty pounds of gold for a sword that gives you the functional equivalent of +2 Strength, not when it's cheaper and safer to just hire a slightly stronger guy to follow you around and hit things for you.

+1 swords are nice, but unless they have sentimental value it's not worth going on a quest for. They're just loot, something you pick up en route to some other objective that is actually important, and that makes it marginally easier for you to achieve that objective.

But a +5 sword... in melee combat, that makes you the equal of an enemy well above your normal fighting weight. Especially combined with similarly magic armor. That is worth going on a quest for in its own right, because it's the kind of weapon that makes the difference between killing the giant monster and not killing it.


Leadership isn't available until 6th level. The minion issue isn't relevant.

Exp is based on encounters, not mere membership in an organization. Sure, the prince can get encounters by going to war(and look, aristocrats have more starting gold, so better gear), but he has to actually take part in encounters to get xp.Medieval monarchs customarily participated in combat, so this is not a problem. If adventuring parties (where the availability of funds for Raise Dead is questionable) can reliably work their way up to mid-to-high levels by fighting enemies strong enough to be worth XP but weak enough to kill reliably, so can crown princes.


just a nitpick, but real humans don't have levels, period.
A first level warrior has 10hp + con bonus. A knife does 1d4 damage, double that on a crit, which is explicitly a hit to the vital organs.
You cannot do enough damage to DOWN a fighter. Much less kill one (-10 HP).

A level 9 fighter has enough HP that it would take dozens of stabs with a knife to the vitals to kill one.

Real humans don't have levels, they have skill, but not levels.Every version of D&D since the beginning has covered this issue: HP do not model only the physical ability to withstand enormous amounts of damage. The fact that a level one fighter in his skivvies can have an arrow lodged in his side and live does not mean that a level twenty fighter in his skivvies can have twenty arrows lodged in his side and live... as demonstrated by the fact that high level opponents can still be killed by a coup de grace, where they could never be killed by equivalent strikes in combat.

X HP of "damage" does not always involve the same physical injury as X HP from a different attack. So you can still have a high level character with human anatomy; the key is that when you damage them their skill at avoiding injury makes it harder to deal a devastating wound. That 14-point critical hit from a dagger would have gone right into the heart of a first level fighter and killed him in seconds; the tenth level fighter has such a great 'sixth sense' about combat that he dives out of the way even as you start moving and all you manage to do is cut a gash along the outside of his ribs.

He's just that good.

taltamir
2009-12-16, 02:14 AM
Every version of D&D since the beginning has covered this issue: HP do not model only the physical ability to withstand enormous amounts of damage. The fact that a level one fighter in his skivvies can have an arrow lodged in his side and live does not mean that a level twenty fighter in his skivvies can have twenty arrows lodged in his side and live... as demonstrated by the fact that high level opponents can still be killed by a coup de grace, where they could never be killed by equivalent strikes in combat.

I said in combat, unless you use magic to make someone helpless during combat, you cannot coup de grace them... So they can have 20 arrows stuck in them, UNLESS they are unconscious / bound / etc. Even grappling one is not enough to make the coup de gracable.

A crit is explicitly an injury to the vitals, and an HP damage dealing blow is explicitly a blow that physically connected.
Yes, they are just that good, no, real people are not.

A real knight will not take 20 blows that draw blood, and 3 that actually injure their vital organs, and keep on fighting with no ill effects.

mmm... although, now I think back to some of the crazy feats of endurance some people have done during war... like the guy who took out a machine gun encampment by charging it with a grenade, took a lot of hits on the way, proceeded to take out a second one, then the third one by killing the two men inside with his bare hands (he was out of grenades), he had 49 bullets in him at that point...

Shademan
2009-12-16, 05:19 AM
except that HP does not represent how much damage you can take. Remember that HP is ALOT more ambigious than that.


also: sending out the useless (women and children) mouths during a siege was not uncommon. I recall one fun story where the defenders did just this and the besiegers refused to let them pass, and the defenders wouldnt take them back. so they died horribly between the two forces.

Tyndmyr
2009-12-16, 09:35 AM
Taltamir, I question the proposition that this debate is worthwhile; it seems like there are too many fundamental differences in axioms. One side is going "9th level characters are badasses! They can hypothetically kill 100 people in about a minute!" and the other is going "I can counter their improbable badassery by..."

That lends itself to an endless loop, because the "9th level characters are badass" side can always come up with a counter to the counter to the counter to the counter to the... you get the idea. So can the "I'm building and planning defenses" side.

Thus the idea of actually playing it out. Which the "magic isn't important" side routinely refuses to do.

When playtests are held, such as the level 13 wizard vs level 20 fighter duels, the casters routinely win, despite much of the fighters power coming from trying to emulate a caster via items.


Tyndmyr, this is an illusion based on the fact that the writers of D&D felt compelled to make first level magic miraculous... then top that with even bigger miracles at each succeeding level.

Therefore, it doesn't take many spell levels before stuff which would seem obviously miraculous in a world where people are not accustomed to magic (turning water into wine, making bread from nothing, healing the sick) isn't all that impressive. But that doesn't mean that it isn't impressive, or that a setting where it happens is "low magic" by any standards except that of D&D.

Read any fantasy books? Magic routinely changes the course of the world in some. Sword of truth series, for example. Mountains get leveled, the world gets routinely changed. Sure, it has it's own rules, and isn't exactly the same as D&D magic rules, but it's undeniably high magic on at least as large of a scale.

See also, Exalted.


It's also important to distinguish between "low" as in weak and "low" as in rare. Rare magic that is powerful where it exists has a very different impact from weak magic, even if that weak magic is quite common.

LOTR is low as in weak. As for rare...well, there are a *lot* of magical effects described in the books. Getting rare, though, in the age the LOTR series takes place in.

It is not a good example of "Magic is infrequent in general, but artifacts are everywhere", which is what it was initially brought up as.


Medieval monarchs customarily participated in combat, so this is not a problem. If adventuring parties (where the availability of funds for Raise Dead is questionable) can reliably work their way up to mid-to-high levels by fighting enemies strong enough to be worth XP but weak enough to kill reliably, so can crown princes.

As already mentioned, this is not a particular problem. The problem comes in explaining the many monarchs without combat experience. The proposed idea that they gained xp merely from watching others fight is a bit ludicrous.

Oslecamo
2009-12-16, 09:50 AM
As already mentioned, this is not a particular problem. The problem comes in explaining the many monarchs without combat experience. The proposed idea that they gained xp merely from watching others fight is a bit ludicrous.

So you're telling that the bard who sits in the backlines singing and buffing his allies doesn't get exp? The wizard who summons batlefield obstacles to trap the enemies and then sits back watching while Fighter Mc fighter and Mr.Sneack attack can safely hack them to death doesn't gain experience? Dr.Healbot who buffs and heals and never deals any damage will also lag in experience?

With such strict requirements to gaining experience, how the hell did the party leveled up? Because I'm pretty sure the wizard didn't charge unbufed at the enemy waving a dagger, and bathed on their blood. Tough it's the only way you claim he could gain experience.

People gain experience from surpassing life threatening situations. But that doesn't mean you have to go out there and start a stabing contest with said threatening situation.

Doesn't a king who took a series of drastic economic measures to stop famine surpass a life threatening situation, by preventing revolts or just runing out of subdits?

Doesn't a king who reaches a diplomatic solution with the not so friendly neighbour warlord surpass a life threatening situation, by not risking a gruesome war?

Doesn't a king who researches a cure for the plague that ravages the kingdom doesn't surpass a life threatening situation?

Etc etc. People with pointy sticks are just one of the many great dangers you'll face during your life.

Adventurers know them as "quests". They also give out exp by RAW.

Tyndmyr
2009-12-16, 09:59 AM
So you're telling that the bard who sits in the backlines singing and buffing his allies doesn't get exp? The wizard who summons batlefield obstacles to trap the enemies and then sits back watching while Fighter Mc fighter and Mr.Sneack attack can safely hack them to death doesn't gain experience? Dr.Healbot who buffs and heals and never deals any damage will also lag in experience?

With such strict requirements to gaining experience, how the hell did the party leveled up? Because I'm pretty sure the wizard didn't charge unbufed at the enemy waving a dagger, and bathed on their blood. Tough it's the only way you claim he could gain experience.

People gain experience from surpassing life threatening situations. But that doesn't mean you have to go out there and start a stabing contest with said threatening situation.

Go back and read the original situation. He was claiming that the leader could gain xp merely by virtue of being in the army, without risk, or actually taking part in the encounters.

Mr. Healbot and bufffer who only heals and buffs in town gains no xp. Mr healbot and buffer who takes part in the encounter gains xp. This is not hard.


Doesn't a king who took a series of drastic economic measures to stop famine surpass a life threatening situation, by preventing revolts or just runing out of subdits?

Was his life threatened? Heroes don't gain encounter xp by donating gold to starving people, yknow.

If he puts down a revolt that is threatening him, then yes, he could gain xp. But it has to be something involving danger to him personally.


Doesn't a king who reaches a diplomatic solution with the not so friendly neighbour warlord surpass a life threatening situation, by not risking a gruesome war?

Possibly. See above.


Doesn't a king who researches a cure for the plague that ravages the kingdom doesn't surpass a life threatening situation?

Huh? Research a cure? What RAW are you basing this off of?

This is a "call in the clerics" moment.


Etc etc. People with pointy sticks are just one of the many great dangers you'll face during your life.

Adventurers know them as "quests". They also give out exp by RAW.

Congrats on not reading everything before responding?

Oslecamo
2009-12-16, 10:15 AM
Go back and read the original situation. He was claiming that the leader could gain xp merely by virtue of being in the army, without risk, or actually taking part in the encounters.

Depends. If there's the risk that a lucky arrow hits the young prince in the eye, he's at risk. What if the enemy army has a wizard? The simple fact of showing his face may endager him. Heck, just the fact that word spreads out that there's a prince on the army will make oponents dedicate more efforts to take it down.



Was his life threatened? Heroes don't gain encounter xp by donating gold to starving people, yknow.

But wizards aparently get exp for flying and shooting enemies who can't shoot back.




Huh? Research a cure? What RAW are you basing this off of?

Knowledge checks. They aparently tell you everything, since wizard fans are always claiming "single knowledge check told me everything that there's to know about that of course rofl!"




Congrats on not reading everything before responding?
See above.

jseah
2009-12-16, 10:31 AM
I think you're both getting out of topic.

The proposition Tyndmyr was arguing against was that you didn't need high level guards to keep a country safe from high level PCs.

The postulate is that we do not have high level aristocrats. For whatever reason that might be, from simple laziness to being a young and freshly crowned king.

Doesn't matter, the situation here is that we have a 3rd or 4th level King with his 3rd or 4th level knights and lots and lots of 1st or 2nd men at arms. To say that those can defend against a 9th level party is quite a claim.

If you're saying that Kings have more than 4 levels, then I must add that how XP is gained is part of the setting. I've never been in any two games where the method to gain XP and the amount gained is identical.

EDIT: A setting where XP is gained by sitting around researching books or governing a kingdom or even simply existing will have higher level NPCs.

A setting where you must adventure in immediately life-threatening situations to get XP means everyone is low level with a few notable exceptions.

Tyndmyr
2009-12-16, 10:31 AM
Depends. If there's the risk that a lucky arrow hits the young prince in the eye, he's at risk. What if the enemy army has a wizard? The simple fact of showing his face may endager him. Heck, just the fact that word spreads out that there's a prince on the army will make oponents dedicate more efforts to take it down.

Danger alone does not an encounter make. Yes, that kobold could theoretically crit every single round while that level 9 fighter rolls 1 after 1 after 1. The odds of doing this are not significant, and the danger involved is pretty minimal. ECL reflects this(or at least, it tries to). You gain xp for level appropriate encounters, by RAW.

The fact that you *could* be attacked, but neither you nor the enemy actually does so.....yeah, thats not an encounter. It does not grant xp. If an arrow actually is fired at the prince, then you've got at encounter that may or may not be level appropriate.


But wizards aparently get exp for flying and shooting enemies who can't shoot back.

See the shooting bit in there? That's actual participation and expenditure of resources to overcome a challenge.

Those who watch the wizard fly and shoot, but do not participate in any way, will gain nothing.


Knowledge checks. They aparently tell you everything, since wizard fans are always claiming "single knowledge check told me everything that there's to know about that of course rofl!"

Knowledge checks do not grant abilities. Knowing about the disease and/or cures does not automatically give you the cure. A successful knowledge check generally doesn't result in massive amounts of xp.

The wizard bashing seems like somewhat of a tangent unrelated to the discussion.

Slayn82
2009-12-16, 10:39 AM
Wealth by Level should not apply to a King, because one of his privileges is applying taxes to people, including the wealthy merchants. Or confiscate the goods of someone who is found guilty of a crime. The good, not homicidal maniac adventurers recognize the rules because they are needed to keep the kingdom working. Of couse, that doesnt mean the always abyde to them .

Well, remembering 2nd edition Faerun, we had the Shadowdale, a small comunity ruled by a mid level adventurer. Even if Elminster was away, killing that guy would be a pain, with the few low level guards, the adventurers in the city around the keep, the griphons in the top of the tower, the large bells that rang giving alert of the attack, the secret messengers outside the keep to rally reinforcements once trouble is detected, the teleportation preventing sigils, the emergency secret doors, the king and his companions and his magic items, the traps along the secret corridors, the teleportation circle in the basement, The Iron Golem in the treasure room.... And that was because since they had Elminster around, and felt pretty secure that they would not be attacked by something worse than your average Zhentarim or Drow army and decided to be lazy.

Now, the paranoid ones, like Lord Chess, a chaotic neutral lvl 3 thief character that ruled Zenthil keep by obfuscating stupidy, and getting all those bribes from the Zhentarim and the Church of Cyric, were really hard to kill. But Minotaurs bodyguards, undead bodyguards, brainwashed bodyguards, a palace full of normal and arcane traps, body doubles and lots of magical items (amulets of resist and delay poison, detect thoughts anyone?), and ways to call powerfull allies or getting away (like a BRACELET OF FRIENDS, for only 19,000GP) could turn him very hard to kill.

So, either a low level ruler is WAY overprotected, or he is replaced by somebody who is. And being a King, you get a lot of conections, a lot of people that owes favors to you. And in most cases, in a medieval scenary, the word of the King is justice, and the royal line is the Nation.

jseah
2009-12-16, 10:43 AM
Right. I forgot to mention in my summary that this was a low magic setting.

Ormur
2009-12-16, 10:52 AM
I really wouldn't let kings ever be 2nd level aristocrats without some specials reason like them being mere puppets or teenagers with (high level) reagents, advisers and body guards in a kingdom with an stable and established line of succession. Even in a low level campaign I'd have the rulers of countries high level, at least high level enough for the PC's being once in a century superheroes when they'll be high level enough to overthrow him by themselves. Kings and emperors should be approaching level 20. I don't really care how, I'll handwave it as a DM. Either kings are all awesome people that got where they are through rigorous training and battle (it's fantasy maybe being awesome is just in their blood) or being a king automatically gives you a portion of the XP of your armies, subjects etc. Even if you'll have to gain XP the conventional way by taking part in battles or hunts being a prince gives you advantages that make it easier for you than the average person. Hirelings, being able to choose your battlefield and enemies, better equipment and magic items than others of the same level etc. If King Awesome care about his line of succession he'll make the crown prince work pretty hard at gaining levels and XP or disinherit him in favour of someone better.

It's fine to let your PC's have the chance of overthrowing kings but then they should either be influencing events that lead to a large scale revolt/war or they should be among the highest level characters in your setting. If that's level 9 in a low magic setting and the king's 2nd level with 3rd level bodyguards then so be it but then I'm with Tyndmyr, my money would be on the PC's. Low magic would mean that despite his enormous wealth (I'll go with the others WBL doesn't apply) the king couldn't buy many of the powerful magic items that could help a low level king in a high magic setting survive. He'll only have castles, luxuries and redshirts to spend it on, easy things for a 9th level wizard to overcome with proper planning.

Edit: Although there's always the possibility of very powerful magic items made by long dead high level wizards being in the possession of the king.

taltamir
2009-12-16, 11:14 AM
a single 9th level prime character (err, sorry, caster) will be able to take out a thousand level 3 beatsticks if he played smart (look at this, he has super human intellect). A 9th level beatstick, built well, will still be able to do quite a lot.

a balanced party of a 9th level wizard, 9th level cleric, 9th level beatstick, and 9th level rogue will annihilate 3rd level mooks. Not only that, they will level from the experience.

Why in the world would they want to STOP word getting out and stop reinforcements? I can just see it now... a messenger bursts through the door into the reception room gasping for air... the king tells him to catch his breath and tell him what his happening... and then his response... 4 men are assaulting the castle, slaying everyone single handedly, need help! Sent your armies!
Riggggght... And even if for some reason they did send their army... well, more delicious and EASY XP for the level 9 party... If they are smart, they will kill the king within a minute, use magic to impersonate him, and keep on sending low level mooks to the slaughter until they stop coming.
Since you gain XP up to 10 level apart, the highest they will go is level 14 from a horde of level 3 enemies

Tyndmyr
2009-12-16, 11:16 AM
All viable methods of protecting a king thus far relied on magic items. Magical calling of reinforcement, forbiddance cast....everywhere. Piles of artifacts These are helpful, yes.

Swarms of mundane, low level guards? Not so much. These are incidental, and are only minorly useful for clogging up areas of travel. They wont hit, save on a natural 20, will die by the bucketload, and wont have any significant effect when they do hit.

You can only justify a low level person keeping power with rather significant magical aid. Otherwise, not really, no.

Slayn82
2009-12-16, 11:21 AM
Well, in low magic settings a lvl 9 caster is really a GiantSpaceFleaFromNowhere (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/GiantSpaceFleaFromNowhere).

And even then, in the legends and myths, they usually have a valiant champion, or the Gods protection. Or they are really screwed and die horribly. Of course, their killers end up getting a certain reputation, when some oracle tells their names to other parties.

But, in a low magic setting, you usually will have in your party a lvl 9 adept, or Bard, instead of a wizard or a cleric. And way fewer magic items, maybe even the crafting feats removed or with higher requisites for acquiring. So yeah..

Dervag
2009-12-16, 12:18 PM
I said in combat, unless you use magic to make someone helpless during combat, you cannot coup de grace them... So they can have 20 arrows stuck in them, UNLESS they are unconscious / bound / etc. Even grappling one is not enough to make the coup de gracable.I think you missed my point. You cannot coup de grace someone who is actively fighting you, yes; that's the point. In D&D, actually cutting someone's throat is a coup de grace attack. Normal dagger attacks merely try to cut someone's throat, and may or may not succeed, even if they do HP damage.

If I am a 1st level wizard with 4 HP, and someone does 14 points of damage to me with a dagger critical hit, I'm killed instantly and it's a safe bet that I got my throat cut (or some similar, equally devastating wound).

If I am a high level fighter with 140 HP, and someone does 9*14 = 126 HP of damage to me with nine dagger critical hits, that does not mean I survived having my throat cut nine times, even though I took the same damage from those nine attacks that failed to kill me that the wizard took from one that killed him. Instead, those 126 HP of damage represent nine (credible) attempts to cut my throat with a dagger, none of which actually succeeded.

Likewise, if a commoner is badly wounded and reduced to negative hit points by having one arrow shot into them, it's a safe bet that it lodged somewhere important. But that does not mean that if the high level fighter takes 20d6 damage from 20 arrows, that all those arrows lodged somewhere important. It may be certain that they all touched his body at some point, and inflicted some degree of harm... but none of that requires that they inflict the same degree of harm they would have on a first level commoner.


A crit is explicitly an injury to the vitals, and an HP damage dealing blow is explicitly a blow that physically connected.
Yes, they are just that good, no, real people are not.There's a difference between "that good" and "that tough." "That good" means that you can limit the effect of an attack that would kill a lesser person; "that tough" means you can just shrug it off with no ill effects... like a fighter could (eventually) shrug off those nine dagger critical hits by resting for a while.
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Thus the idea of actually playing it out. Which the "magic isn't important" side routinely refuses to do.

When playtests are held, such as the level 13 wizard vs level 20 fighter duels, the casters routinely win, despite much of the fighters power coming from trying to emulate a caster via items.OK. Fine. I accept this.

Now, speaking to one who has already accepted that the 9th level party beats the mass of low-level palace guards, would you care to explain your underlying point? Is it that the 3.5 Edition system is heavily biased in favor of casters? Granted. Anything else?
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Read any fantasy books? Magic routinely changes the course of the world in some. Sword of truth series, for example. Mountains get leveled, the world gets routinely changed. Sure, it has it's own rules, and isn't exactly the same as D&D magic rules, but it's undeniably high magic on at least as large of a scale.

See also, Exalted.Exalted is an RPG system, and thus falls prey to the same problem of needing ever-bigger magic to trump the already-miraculous lesser magic they gave you last adventure.

Now, the Sword of Truth series is a more viable objection. Tolkein is more an example of low-common magic, though even "minor" magic is impressive as hell in context. The main characters get dragged lengthwise through most of the magical locations and cultures on the continent, so they see disproportionately more of the magic.

But it's not D&D magic, because it isn't spellcaster-oriented; it's crafting-oriented. Magic exists in the form of items made with supernatural skill by supernatural beings, not in the form of individual violations of physics created at will by individuals. Focusing on the "spellcasting" of someone like Gandalf misses the point, compared to focusing on the in-story effects of an item like the One Ring (which is stated to have power sufficient to threaten entire countries, if the wielder claims it and has the will to use it).


It is not a good example of "Magic is infrequent in general, but artifacts are everywhere", which is what it was initially brought up as.Possibly so, though I think you've slightly missed the point of "low magic." "Low, rare magic" settings have powerful artifacts be rare (and therefore mysterious and awesome). Finding one changes the world, because there were never all that many of the things to begin with.


As already mentioned, this is not a particular problem. The problem comes in explaining the many monarchs without combat experience. The proposed idea that they gained xp merely from watching others fight is a bit ludicrous.OK, fine. So monarchs participate more in combat in their youth, because empirical experience shows that if you don't participate in combat when you're young, you wind up growing up to be much weaker than the successful heroes who did, and are easy prey for those heroes in almost every way that can be imagined. Any sane ruler would encourage their children to adventure if that's what the history books show.


EDIT: A setting where XP is gained by sitting around researching books or governing a kingdom or even simply existing will have higher level NPCs.

A setting where you must adventure in immediately life-threatening situations to get XP means everyone is low level with a few notable exceptions.Yes; this and crown princes will usually be among them. If I am king, and I want my son to be a strong ruler, I need to make sure he gets out and has exciting adventures. This happened in real life to some extent ("Let the boy win his spurs,"), and would be a much stronger force in D&D.

If I can't somehow collect XP and give them to him, or have someone with the right feats teach him class levels, the next best thing is to hand him some of the kingdom's best magic items, give him a sage mentor or two to advise him, offer him the support of the kingdom's intelligence services and logistics, and have him go on adventures. He kills monsters, going into situations of real danger... but he's got good support and even if the worst happens, I'm likely to be able to hire a cleric to bring him back from the dead.

Royal adventurers like that will face danger, but will still have a much better survival rate than ordinary adventurers, because they have more support to rely on (less risk of being murdered or robbed at an inn, better access to NPC casters and specially crafted magic items, that sort of thing).

Tyndmyr
2009-12-16, 12:34 PM
OK. Fine. I accept this.

Now, speaking to one who has already accepted that the 9th level party beats the mass of low-level palace guards, would you care to explain your underlying point? Is it that the 3.5 Edition system is heavily biased in favor of casters? Granted. Anything else?

It's that even "low magic" doesn't change this bias, as was proposed elsewhere. Unless there is no magic whatsoever, it only makes the occasional caster MORE dangerous since you have less magical assets to stop them.

This was in response to claims to the contrary.



Now, the Sword of Truth series is a more viable objection. Tolkein is more an example of low-common magic, though even "minor" magic is impressive as hell in context. The main characters get dragged lengthwise through most of the magical locations and cultures on the continent, so they see disproportionately more of the magic.

But it's not D&D magic, because it isn't spellcaster-oriented; it's crafting-oriented. Magic exists in the form of items made with supernatural skill by supernatural beings, not in the form of individual violations of physics created at will by individuals. Focusing on the "spellcasting" of someone like Gandalf misses the point, compared to focusing on the in-story effects of an item like the One Ring (which is stated to have power sufficient to threaten entire countries, if the wielder claims it and has the will to use it).

That's because LOTR is set in an age with low magic, following an age with high magic. That's the only realistic example for how an artifact heavy world could exist, and even in LOTR, there is very little explanation as to *why* magic is draining from the world. It just sorta "is".

Still, even there, the artifacts are not terribly useful in the hands of just anyone. The one ring would merely corrupt and destroy a mundane person. Those who could use it were invariably casters. Both Sauron and Sauromon were demonstratably casters. Gandalf probably could use it, given his reaction to it.


Possibly so, though I think you've slightly missed the point of "low magic." "Low, rare magic" settings have powerful artifacts be rare (and therefore mysterious and awesome). Finding one changes the world, because there were never all that many of the things to begin with.

What is such a world? It's not consistent with D&D. Hell, it's not even consistent with low magic systems just as 7th Sea.


Royal adventurers like that will face danger, but will still have a much better survival rate than ordinary adventurers, because they have more support to rely on (less risk of being murdered or robbed at an inn, better access to NPC casters and specially crafted magic items, that sort of thing).

Yeah. Starting life as a commoner is rough. Starting life as an aristocrat is better. LOTS more starting gold. More than PC classes by a wide margin. I have absolutely no problem with that, or with leaders having a history of adventuring. That makes sense to me.

RobotPerfomance
2009-12-16, 03:32 PM
While a 9th level party will most likely win due to D&D 3.5 heavily favoring magic users as they level up, I do have one question about this 9th level party.

How did they get to be 9th level without anyone noticing?

In a heroic setting like D&D powerful heroes are an important part of any kingdom’s power. So gaining their loyalty is an important job. If the king isn't high level and his bodyguard is 3rd level and even the royal champion is maybe 6th level or so, the second this party reached even 3rd level they would be offered jobs with the royal guard. The recruiting efforts only get stronger as the party increases in power: Noble titles, marriage to the royal line, military command, wealth, you name it is going to be offered to these people long before they get close to 9th level. So knowing who these people are and what they want is something the king would have been thinking about for a long time before they even reached this point. If they were the types to kill kings they would have been hunted down and killed back when they were on the power scale that made this possible.

Also as a side note if people in world will not have the metagame knowledge we do in this thread which means most wizards will have very un-optimized spell lists.

As for a reason that the setting has very few high level anythings if the setting is low level finding level appropriate encounters with out the aid of the DM is pretty hard so people tend not to gain much XP.

Surgo
2009-12-16, 03:36 PM
In a heroic setting like D&D powerful heroes are an important part of any kingdom’s power. So gaining their loyalty is an important job.
Yeah, long-lasting kingdoms are going to need pretty good PR departments. That doesn't mean "If they were the types to kill kings they would have been hunted down and killed back when..." is a given, though. There is always, somewhere, a place that is in a state of flux, a place that doesn't have a good PR department, or a place where the king is a hardcore dude but there aren't any more hardcore dudes around. Mid+ level parties can easily come from those places. Even ones with murderous intent.

Your PR department hopefully should have evolved to deal with those people too, but they can do all sorts of damage and take over. I'm sure this is the basis for many an evil campaign.

Karoht
2009-12-16, 03:54 PM
just a nitpick, but real humans don't have levels, period.
A first level warrior has 10hp + con bonus. A knife does 1d4 damage, double that on a crit, which is explicitly a hit to the vital organs.
You cannot do enough damage to DOWN a fighter. Much less kill one (-10 HP).

A level 9 fighter has enough HP that it would take dozens of stabs with a knife to the vitals to kill one.

Real humans don't have levels, they have skill, but not levels.

I dunno, did you wiki the guy's biography? At worst he took a level in badass or two.

Sorry, the topic is Army Logistics, which implies realism just due to the word Logistics being involved.

I see you point, and concede it, but then why if 'real' people don't have levels, please explain how it is even moderately 'realistic' or even a reasonable assumption that in a world WITH levels, the king is some 3rd level loser, while level 20 characters are possible? Or level 10? Or level 4 (one higher than the king)? Why is the king only a 3rd level aristocrat with what seems like minimal combat training and experience, when it is reasonable to suggest that the king would have knightly training, and did indeed lead men into battle? And even then, all the king got out of that experience was 3 levels of aristocrat? Sorry, that is a very unreasonable position, whether realism is involved are not.

LoTR example: Aragorn and King Theodin. Yes, Aragorn is 80 years old, Theodin is in his late 60's or 70's. Theodin however has probably seen about half the combat that Aragorn has seen. Aragorn has had training by the elves, but only one level of aristocrat at most, in order to not piss off the elves at rivendell. Theodin might argueably might have more levels of aristocrat, but why would Theodin be level 3 while Aragorn is level 9? That is not even remotely close in there case. And to Tolkiens credit, Theodin is actually a remarkably realistic portrayal of a King of a small piece of country in medieval times, albeit with a heavier horse culture than any medieval nation on record.

taltamir
2009-12-16, 04:05 PM
I see you point, and concede it, but then why if 'real' people don't have levels, please explain how it is even moderately 'realistic' or even a reasonable assumption that in a world WITH levels, the king is some 3rd level loser, while level 20 characters are possible? Or level 10? Or level 4 (one higher than the king)? Why is the king only a 3rd level aristocrat with what seems like minimal combat training and experience, when it is reasonable to suggest that the king would have knightly training, and did indeed lead men into battle? And even then, all the king got out of that experience was 3 levels of aristocrat? Sorry, that is a very unreasonable position, whether realism is involved are not.

Aha, and you hit the crux of the matter... it isn't realism, it is consistency. The game has a set of rules and those conclusions are drawn from said rules.

Training does NOTHING for you, adventuring in a small party does. Now, kings could be retired adventurers who took over kingdoms, that is in fact our entire point. The argument that a king who was never an adventurer and didn't gain any PC levels is a level 3 aristocrat and easy pray in a low magic magic world where magic is highly rare.

Nobody here argued that realism is the issue, all our arguments are within the laws of D&D.

Je dit Viola
2009-12-16, 04:12 PM
I don't see why any king would even want to not get stronger, especially in a game with levels.

So, it's only logical that he would go on millitary campaigns, hunting boars and deer in the wilderness, and street brawling as a young prince. And then leading warriors into battle in wars. Or take long vacations searching for mystical artifacts with his elite guard with him. So, I just find it illogical that any king would be only a level 3 aristocrat, unless he he was extremely lazy and unproductive, which he then deserves to be overthrown by a more helpful king.

taltamir
2009-12-16, 04:21 PM
I don't see why any king would even want to not get stronger, especially in a game with levels.

So, it's only logical that he would go on millitary campaigns, hunting boars and deer in the wilderness, and street brawling as a young prince. And then leading warriors into battle in wars. Or take long vacations searching for mystical artifacts with his elite guard with him. So, I just find it illogical that any king would be only a level 3 aristocrat, unless he he was extremely lazy and unproductive, which he then deserves to be overthrown by a more helpful king.

survival rate is under 10% for adventurers, at best... Although... if you have the MONEY for it, you can resurrect a level 1 character even... So in typical DnD verse this is what is expected... all king's are adventurer kings, they gain levels and have a dedicated level 20 cleric ready to res them or bail them out of a tough situation. (in which case they gain no XP)

But this is not what people are arguing... The claim is that in a super low magic world, a wizard's inability to buy spell scrolls (to learn more new spells) will make him weaker (while others inability to buy ANY magic items at all will not make them as weak), that an army of level 1 commoners is useful at war at either low or high magic (not police and militia, but in actual war against other kingdoms), and that you could have a low level aristocrat 3 king who would not just fold over as soon as a level 10 PC decides he wants to be king instead.