Reasons why Tippyverse wouldn't work [3.5/PF]

[JadePhoenix]

Hello, folks.
I'm DMing a game in a world where magic is used as a tool consistently. A MagiTech world, if you will. I'm trying to stick to RAW as close as possible, but I'm not trying to be silly. Basically, what I want is advice on how to avoid a MagiTech world becoming the Tippyverse.
My first shot is at Create Food traps. I can't see why they wouldn't be possible, but I can see lots of reasons why they shouldn't be used. First of all, they are expensive. Also, they could ruin the economy (and I'm not thinking RAW here, of course, because D&D/Pathfinder has no economic system built into it), because they would change the price of food everywhere. Peasants wouldn't be able to get any money at all. They could be trained to do something else, but in the meantime, many would riot. The civil unrest alone is a big reason not to do it. That aside, Create Food does not taste very good. Since people who have enough money to buy Create Food traps wouldn't eat the food from those same traps, I can only see them being used under controlled environments (say, a dungeon).

Anyone has any thoughts on this?

[The Glyphstone]

Yeah, you forgot the Prestidigitation traps that come standard with every Create Food trap. It still looks like bland gruel, but now it tastes like whatever you want, every time you eat it.

[druid91]

And no matter how many level one commoners riot... well if you have a wizard capable of making the thing, you have a wizard capable of killing them all.

[The Glyphstone]

For that matter, what are they rioting over? Paying for food is basically the only thing a commoner needs money for, since they're all going to be serfs/peasants anyways. The danger is the entire peasant population becoming fat and useless because they have nothing to do except eat unlimited delicious food.

[HunterOfJello]

A surplus of food and a decrease in the price of food as a result is something that has happened in the real world some time ago. The after affects of this are that people will be able to support larger families and the individuals who formerly worked as farmers will lose their livelihood. Farmers would likely move into cities which would create larger populations and a surplus of unemployed workers like we saw in the US during the depression. Things would, however, improve over time. Since people are paying less on food, they would have more money for other commodities which would in turn create new markets for other goods.

Economies eventually adjust to changes and can be significantly improved when a rare resource becomes more available. It can have negative effects on the population in the short term, but is highly unlikely to harm it in the long term.

This exact situation has occurred many, many times during human history due to the advancement of farming technology and has not harmed us as a species over the long term.

[gkathellar]

The peasantry would probably transition closer to subsistence agriculture and more "tribal" lifestyles as towns and cities became independent from them. Rural feudal lords would probably still assert themselves, but their control would be less extensive due to losing a lot of their connections with the urban world.

EDIT: Don't forget that "peasant" is different from "commoner."

[Hirax]

And no matter how many level one commoners riot... well if you have a wizard capable of making the thing, you have a wizard capable of killing them all.

A more restrained wizard would simply use a wand of calm emotions, or have a few cleric minions do it.

I also agree that your assertions regarding what would happen to the economy are overblown.

[JadePhoenix]

And no matter how many level one commoners riot... well if you have a wizard capable of making the thing, you have a wizard capable of killing them all.

And now you rule over... no one. That's not something a lord would want.


The peasantry would probably transition closer to subsistence agriculture and more "tribal" lifestyles as towns and cities became independent from them. Rural feudal lords would probably still assert themselves, but their control would be less extensive due to losing a lot of their connections with the urban world.
The thing is, a shaman or such could still do this, with the same effects.

Basically, my point is that Create Food traps would make many people leave wherever the trap was, for they would have no place. With less people, you have a smaller army. With a smaller army, you become more vulnerable. I'm wondering, who would take that risk? Outside of a controlled environment, it's asking for trouble.
I'm not trying to say it can't work, I'm just trying to come up with reasons for why it's not the rule.

[Talakeal]

I think you would be hard pressed to find a social or economic solution to such a situation. The only one that might work would be a big evil overlord or conspiracy who is trying to keep everyone else down for various nefarious reasons, but eventually the truth would come out.

You are better off simply inventing your own metaphysical reason (magic is finite in some way and so many self replenishing magical effects are screwing with the nature of reality itself) or simply going RAI and saying "It's not a trap!" and limiting magical traps to things that hurt and destroy rather than healing or creating.

[Tyndmyr]

Hello, folks.
I'm DMing a game in a world where magic is used as a tool consistently. A MagiTech world, if you will. I'm trying to stick to RAW as close as possible, but I'm not trying to be silly. Basically, what I want is advice on how to avoid a MagiTech world becoming the Tippyverse.
My first shot is at Create Food traps. I can't see why they wouldn't be possible, but I can see lots of reasons why they shouldn't be used. First of all, they are expensive. Also, they could ruin the economy (and I'm not thinking RAW here, of course, because D&D/Pathfinder has no economic system built into it), because they would change the price of food everywhere. Peasants wouldn't be able to get any money at all. They could be trained to do something else, but in the meantime, many would riot. The civil unrest alone is a big reason not to do it. That aside, Create Food does not taste very good. Since people who have enough money to buy Create Food traps wouldn't eat the food from those same traps, I can only see them being used under controlled environments (say, a dungeon).

Anyone has any thoughts on this?

First, you'll want to research the actual Tippyverse. The central focus is not the magical traps, though they do figure in heavily. The critical bit is teleportation, which breaks trade. Specifically, teleportation circle.

Now, let's look into the actual effects of a Create Food and Water trap in the real world.

It basically provides three humans' food for free every round. This is at least the equivalent of a poor meal, three of which can be had for a silver piece. If used at full capacity, that's...1440 gold per day. If you can afford a trap and have a market for cheap food(any urban area), you can make back the investment relatively quickly. If you need to feed many people for any reason(say, army), it is equally as effective for reducing your costs.

And all that food is good for 24 hours, meaning a constant production always has plenty around at mealtimes...or whenever. We won't bother to count in the water, but that's handy. Cost is what, 12000 gp, and some xp? You'll make that back in about nine days. Even if efficiency isn't perfect, making back the investment is fairly easy. Combining it with prestidigitation is nice, but not actually necessary to replicate the poor meals available to the underclass. In any case, doing so is inexpensive.

As more and more get created, you can expect less people to engage in farming, and for farmed food to be more of a delicacy, reserved for unusual or special meals, probably for the higher class. Note that I haven't put any effort into making this actually more cost efficient...but you certainly can!

You'd expect the social outcome of such a thing for people to gravitate towards urban life and other trades less easily replicated by magic than agriculture...we have a parallel for this in the green revolution in modern times.



You are better off simply... simply going RAI and saying "It's not a trap!" and limiting magical traps to things that hurt and destroy rather than healing or creating.

That's not RAI. SBG has the detailed magical trap rules, and includes an example of a Gentle Repose automatic trap in one of it's strongholds for keeping corpses fresh and happy.

So, clearly, RAI includes beneficial magical traps.

[Hirax]

And now you rule over... no one. That's not something a lord would want.


The thing is, a shaman or such could still do this, with the same effects.

Basically, my point is that Create Food traps would make many people leave wherever the trap was, for they would have no place.

I have no idea how the tippyverse works, so I'm not sure why I'm even in here, but I find this assertion utterly absurd.

[gkathellar]

Basically, my point is that Create Food traps would make many people leave wherever the trap was, for they would have no place. With less people, you have a smaller army. With a smaller army, you become more vulnerable. I'm wondering, who would take that risk? Outside of a controlled environment, it's asking for trouble.

Here's the thing: the proportion of a society that devotes itself to food production is in almost all cases equal to the proportion of a society necessary to ensure sufficient food production. If that proportion drops from 95% to 0%, sure, there'll be some immediate upheaval as people transition to new roles and skills, but that upheaval will be eased noticeably by the fact that food is now free.

You're assuming that pre-scarcity economics will continue to be a driving motivation in a post-scarcity environment. This seems unlikely. In any environment with available Create Food and Water Traps are available, productivity will soar as people find other forms of scarcity to meet demands on and devote themselves to other pursuits. And as productivity soars, towns and cities develop — because historically, the definition of "city" has been: "a place where people whose lives aren't devoted to food production live."

Of course, a sufficiently strong central government might regulate food distribution to ensure a controlled, scarcity-based economy ... but even then, the economic model will have changed.

EDIT: Also, this.


And now you rule over... no one. That's not something a lord would want.

Feudal lords typically didn't control urban life, nor was urban life centered around peasantry. Skilled, free laborers lie at the center of the urban lifestyle even in the modern day — artisans, artists, craftsmen, intellectuals and scientists.

[Talakeal]

That's not RAI. SBG has the detailed magical trap rules, and includes an example of a Gentle Repose automatic trap in one of it's strongholds for keeping corpses fresh and happy.

So, clearly, RAI includes beneficial magical traps.

SBG is a 3.0 book, written by different people than the DMG* where the trap rules appear. In the DMG none of the sample traps do anything but harm or inconvenience, and it is implicit, at least to me, that the DM should follow the same guidelines as well as their judgment when creating traps, although unlike magic items this is never explicitly states.


If you actually think the designers intended for people to use a trap to turn a couple hundred or thousand gold and xp into infinite resources, and that traps are far better at doing so than actual magic items, then I think our points of view are simply too different to have a meaningful discussion.

*Dave Noonan, while not the author of either book, did some supplemental material for both books. I suppose it is possible he wrote both trap sections while in two very different states of mind, but I don't think it likely or see any evidence of it.

[gkathellar]

SBG is a 3.0 book, written by different people than the DMG where the trap rules appear. In the DMG none of the sample traps do anything but harm or inconvenience, and it is implicit, at least to me, that the DM should follow the same guidelines as well as their judgment when creating traps, although unlike magic items this is never explicitly states.


If you actually think the designers intended for people to use a trap to turn a couple hundred or thousand gold and xp into infinite resources, and that traps are far better at doing so than actual magic items, then I think our points of view are simply too different to have a meaningful discussion.

Tippyverse is explicitly stated to be based on RAW, however, rendering the point moot.

[DeAnno]

As stated above, the best way to avoid a Tippyverse is to strike at Teleportation Circles in specific and Teleportation in general. Breaking Trade is only the half of it: the more dangerous aspect is actually instantaneous movement of hostile armies, which makes it impossible for societies not adapted to Tippyverse conditions to even really exist in a Tippyverse.

Cheap and easy Dimensional Lock variant spells and effects can help in the small scale, and on the large scale destroying strategic range teleportation altogether is an option.

[Talakeal]

Tippyverse is explicitly stated to be based on RAW, however, rendering the point moot.

Yes it is, that was exactly my point, by RAW you won't find a good argument against it, and if you want to stop it you need to look to RAI or "rule 0".

[Hirax]

Energy transformation field is a RAW alternative to traps for generating a spell effect an infinite number of times, one field with immoveable rods powering it might even be cheaper than a wish trap for currency production. So if you want to nuke beneficial traps you're going to need to nuke beneficial fields too. edit: oops, forgot it can't be used on spells with an exp cost, though it still works for things like making food.

[Myou]

This thread sets out how I deal with it.
http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=128346

[Tyndmyr]

SBG is a 3.0 book, written by different people than the DMG* where the trap rules appear. In the DMG none of the sample traps do anything but harm or inconvenience, and it is implicit, at least to me, that the DM should follow the same guidelines as well as their judgment when creating traps, although unlike magic items this is never explicitly states.

SBG has, again, more detailed rules for magical traps. That would make it the primary source for them, would it not? And 3.0 material is allowed in 3.5.

And nothing in the DMG says that beneficial traps may not be created...but if that's not good enough for you, the Races of the Dragon web enhancement (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/we/20060127a), which is 3.5, and newer than the DMG, has examples of normally beneficial buff spells being used in traps. Granted, mass reduce person and gust of wind are being used together to create a negative outcome...but this is not at all required in any way. In addition, this provides RAW support for the very logical combination of magical traps with each other.


If you actually think the designers intended for people to use a trap to turn a couple hundred or thousand gold and xp into infinite resources, and that traps are far better at doing so than actual magic items, then I think our points of view are simply too different to have a meaningful discussion

I take it you've never read about Spell Clocks (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/cw/20070312a), then? Also RAW. They are stated to be usually used to cast relatively non-violent spell, and some of the examples given, such as Repel Vermin, are almost certainly not intended for use as a proper trap. And it's explicitly made to produce the same magical effect over and over again.

Traps are merely a more generalized set of rules for covering the same things.

Hell, if you want a pure core only method, permanency is explicitly said to work with wall of fire. Both spells are core. If you can't think of a non-destructive use for fire, like keeping you(and hundreds of your closest friends) warm, you're not really trying. My guess is that they considered that, and were not at all bothered by it.

[Chronos]

Here's the thing: the proportion of a society that devotes itself to food production is in almost all cases equal to the proportion of a society necessary to ensure sufficient food production. If that proportion drops from 95% to 0%, sure, there'll be some immediate upheaval as people transition to new roles and skills, but that upheaval will be eased noticeably by the fact that food is now free.But the problem isn't so much in the post-scarcity world itself (after all, modern Western society has a very small proportion of the population producing food, and we're doing pretty well), but in the sudden transition. If the free food is in the cities, then people are going to move from the farms to the cities en masse... But can the city hold that many people? Sure, eventually, all those folks freed from the labor of farming will use their newfound time to build more housing, but that takes a while. In the mean time, you're going to have a lot of folks living in shanty-towns, and the very existence of the shanty-towns is an obstacle to proper development. You'd have to phase the free food in gradually... But that still doesn't solve the problem. If some people have access to the free food but others don't, the ones who don't will resent those who do, which will cause unrest.

[gkathellar]

But the problem isn't so much in the post-scarcity world itself (after all, modern Western society has a very small proportion of the population producing food, and we're doing pretty well), but in the sudden transition. If the free food is in the cities, then people are going to move from the farms to the cities en masse... But can the city hold that many people? Sure, eventually, all those folks freed from the labor of farming will use their newfound time to build more housing, but that takes a while. In the mean time, you're going to have a lot of folks living in shanty-towns, and the very existence of the shanty-towns is an obstacle to proper development. You'd have to phase the free food in gradually... But that still doesn't solve the problem. If some people have access to the free food but others don't, the ones who don't will resent those who do, which will cause unrest.

Actual limitless food and water supply changes things so much that it's hard to calibrate for in this fashion. If you charge for it, the transition will occur as you explain — but if it's genuinely free, then suddenly you've phased out one of the basic reasons for performing work, and very likely emphasized others. People's priorities will change in unexpected ways.

[Talakeal]

SBG has, again, more detailed rules for magical traps. That would make it the primary source for them, would it not? And 3.0 material is allowed in 3.5.

And nothing in the DMG says that beneficial traps may not be created...but if that's not good enough for you, the Races of the Dragon web enhancement (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/we/20060127a), which is 3.5, and newer than the DMG, has examples of normally beneficial buff spells being used in traps. Granted, mass reduce person and gust of wind are being used together to create a negative outcome...but this is not at all required in any way. In addition, this provides RAW support for the very logical combination of magical traps with each other.



I take it you've never read about Spell Clocks (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/cw/20070312a), then? Also RAW. They are stated to be usually used to cast relatively non-violent spell, and some of the examples given, such as Repel Vermin, are almost certainly not intended for use as a proper trap. And it's explicitly made to produce the same magical effect over and over again.

Traps are merely a more generalized set of rules for covering the same things.

Hell, if you want a pure core only method, permanency is explicitly said to work with wall of fire. Both spells are core. If you can't think of a non-destructive use for fire, like keeping you(and hundreds of your closest friends) warm, you're not really trying. My guess is that they considered that, and were not at all bothered by it.

I'm sorry, but you are arguing apples to oranges here. A permanent area spell with a minor benefit for 2000 xp is different than paying a few hundred xp for a resource which can be taken out of an area, as is paying five thousand XP + tens of thousands of gold for a stationary buff machine.
The people who wrote the trap rules in the DMG clearly, in my mind, meant for them to be harmful traps, and if they had intended them to be limitless resource creators they would have mentioned it, or at the very least put a note in the magic item section saying that many of these magic items are pointless as a far simpler trap can do their job, in most cases much better.

IMO, the rules are left vague to allow the players and the DM creativity in creating imaginative traps and wondrous locales. As with most RAW infinite loopholes, they forgot to put in a note about DMs having the final say, like they did the creating magic items section in the DMG or the customizing your character section or alternate uses for permanency in the PHB. Many of the biggest loopholes in the game result from a similar lack of foresight in writing fuzzy and open ended rules but not leaving a clause about the DM granting approval, for example the Sarrukh(sp?)'s power to grant other creature's abilities.

As I said before, if you honestly believe the RAI for traps is to allow players to cheaply create infinite resources then our views of the game are too different to have a meaningful discussion.


On a side note, by RAW, is there anything to stop you from creating a summoning trap and simply sitting outside the dungeon while an endless wave of summoned minions clears the adventure for you?

[Hirax]

So all we need to do to make it legit is figure out a way to weaponize the food? Got it (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0432.html). :smallbiggrin:

[OracleofWuffing]

And now you rule over... no one.
Well, temporarily. With a little bit of elbow grease, you're ruling over 100% loyal Zombies, Skeletons, Ghosts...


On a side note, by RAW, is there anything to stop you from creating a summoning trap and simply sitting outside the dungeon while an endless wave of summoned minions clears the adventure for you?
It's usually done with a Decanter of Endless Water, just in case whatever's inside can kill your summoned monsters faster than you can trap them.

[Glimbur]

Actual limitless food and water supply changes things so much that it's hard to calibrate for in this fashion. If you charge for it, the transition will occur as you explain — but if it's genuinely free, then suddenly you've phased out one of the basic reasons for performing work, and very likely emphasized others. People's priorities will change in unexpected ways.

If it helps, Star Trek is said to be a post-scarcity society. We could look at how that shakes out in their universe and critique how incredibly unrealistic it is. We could instead agree, but I think the odds are higher that we won't.

[Venger]

On a side note, by RAW, is there anything to stop you from creating a summoning trap and simply sitting outside the dungeon while an endless wave of summoned minions clears the adventure for you?

RAW, no, of course not. you are making a good example of the difference between RAW and RAI. in this specific instance, something that comes up a lot, mechanics are put in for enemies to use against PCs, and since they now exist, PCs can use them as well.

trapsmith never looked so good :smallbiggrin:

[Doug Lampert]

So all we need to do to make it legit is figure out a way to weaponize the food? Got it (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0432.html). :smallbiggrin:

Healing is even easier. I am PANICKED, simply horrified, by the thought that someday an undead might steal and use my component pouch. So naturally I put a reseting CLW trap on it which is activated by anyone reaching into the pouch! That will show those undead monsters, they'll take damage if they try to use MY pouch.

And, as a handly incidental, totally unrelated to the primary purpose of the trap, I heal 1d8+1 damage every time I do something that's clearly a free action....

Oh: BtW, create food and water traps at the minimum CL create enough for 15 medium sized creatures per activation, I believe the repay time is 1/5th what's been being listed. The shear mass of food one of these can create is a real danger of death by crushing to any small creature that enters the activating area.

[Namfuak]

I think a lot of people are ignoring the fact that the food created by create food and water is not very good (it's described as bland). So, people won't be going hungry, but there will still be a huge demand for food not created by this. Keep in mind that prestidigitation is a 0th level spell, which means that regardless of stats and level, sorcerers can cast it a maximum of 6 times per day and wizards only 4. Each cast only enchants a pound of food, which is enough for maybe two adult people a meal (possibly more if you figure that smaller races need proportionately less food). And we are even assuming that sorcerers and wizards are going to want to waste their time flavoring food for those who can't afford food made non-magically. I guess there could be traps of prestidigitation, but even the description of the spell is vague about how much it is flavored. It could make it taste like a steak, or it could make it taste like bland bread with a bit of olive oil on top. So, the main thing this would do is make hunger obsolete, but it would not make food-making obsolete.

However, what about traps of mend? Put those in every town, or have caravans that go around and magically mend farmers' tools for a nominal fee. No more need for blacksmiths to fix tools and weapons anymore.

[gkathellar]

If it helps, Star Trek is said to be a post-scarcity society. We could look at how that shakes out in their universe and critique how incredibly unrealistic it is. We could instead agree, but I think the odds are higher that we won't.

I'll probably agree with you. Star Trek's approach to post-scarcity is ridiculous, but to be fair the show was making a philosophical point about utopian futurism.

Eclipse Phase has a pretty good examination of post-scarcity economics though, since it's explicitly devoted to getting these things right.

[Keld Denar]

Other than the relatively low rounds/level duration and the fact that low level summons, even in masses, are hardly worth much in a given encounter. Any foe who might be eventually overwhelmed by them would probably retreat a ways, and once it moves past x * y feet from you, where x is the CL of the trap and y is the distance that summon can move in a round, the summons just disappear. Sure, the occupants of the dungeon would be relatively inconvenienced, but life in the dungeon goes on.

What Tyndmyr was getting at is that infinite resources aren't unattainable, even without traps. A Permanent Wall Of Fire + large hardened container + Decanter of Endless Water = infinite steam power. Use one of those to turn a turbine connected to everything from a windmill to a factory to a vehicle. That would dynamically change 90% of a D&D setting from the pseudo-dark age society most settings imply to a steam punk metropolis in just a couple of years. Infinite food production is small beans next to infinite mechanical power.

My question is...if you eat summoned food near the end of its duration...would you still have to poop? Cause that would go a long way toward makingsanitation in cities that much more appealing. Much lower cost than an elaborate system of tunnels populated by dominated Gelatinous Cubes...

[OracleofWuffing]

Bah, forget that, that's what I get for skimming and missing that part where you mentioned it.

[gkathellar]

What Tyndmyr was getting at is that infinite resources aren't unattainable, even without traps. A Permanent Wall Of Fire + large hardened container + Decanter of Endless Water = infinite steam power. Use one of those to turn a turbine connected to everything from a windmill to a factory to a vehicle. That would dynamically change 90% of a D&D setting from the pseudo-dark age society most settings imply to a steam punk metropolis in just a couple of years.

[nosarcasmatall]Wow. That's inspired.[/noneofit]


Infinite food production is small beans next to infinite mechanical power.

Disagree. Infinite food production means suddenly instead of 90% of a society working on food production you have 0%. Suddenly, your contributing urban population has multiplied by 10 simply because the only remaining social roles are skilled labor, administration and intellectual work.

[Chronos]

My question is...if you eat summoned food near the end of its duration...would you still have to poop? Cause that would go a long way toward makingsanitation in cities that much more appealing. Much lower cost than an elaborate system of tunnels populated by dominated Gelatinous Cubes...The created food doesn't go POOF and disappear at the end of its duration; it becomes unwholesome (hence why it can be extended by Purify Food and Drink). Becoming unwholesome is a pretty standard part of the digestive process. So you'll still need your otyughs and cubes in the sewers.

[Keld Denar]

[nosarcasmatall]Wow. That's inspired.[/noneofit]

I don't even know what this means...


Disagree. Infinite food production means suddenly instead of 90% of a society working on food production you have 0%. Suddenly, your contributing urban population has multiplied by 10 simply because the only remaining social roles are skilled labor, administration and intellectual work.

And I disagree with you. We, in the modern 21st century world, have the ability to produce more than enough food to feed the entire existing population of the world. Sure, its not 0% of the population feeding 100% of the population, but its less than 10%, I'd wager. You know what we DON'T have? Infinite energy. Heck, the main reason there is still hunger in the world isn't because food is expensive, its because transportation of that food is expensive. In a teleport based society, or even a society with mass transit powered by infinite steam engines or other such perpetual energy machines, you wouldn't even really need Create Food + Water traps, since you could get away with less than 10% of the population producing food since food could magically travel great distances instantly and with nearly no cost.

Don't get me wrong...both would have a TREMENDOUS change on society, especially a pseudo-dark ages setting like 90% of D&D. I just think that in the long run, infinite energy is a bigger advancement than infinite food.

Still the whole point of this entire discussion is that D&D society should not exist as stated in most campaign settings, given the magi-tec available. Any number of applications of magic on a permanent or repeated basis have the ability to dynamically change the quality of life and the socio-economic structure of the entire setting over the course of only a few years. The Tippyverse is simply that, taken to its logical conclusion of magic based society, economy, industry, and warfare. Eberron is the setting that gets closest to the endgame that is the Tippyverse, and even it is only in the infancy stage with things like elemental airships, the lightning rail, and guild based control of various associated industries.

[JadePhoenix]

We, in the modern 21st century world, have the ability to produce more than enough food to feed the entire existing population of the world. Sure, its not 0% of the population feeding 100% of the population, but its less than 10%, I'd wager.
And still, we have no utopia because of it. That's it. Thanks, Keld.
Tippyverse would never work because people are bastards, that's why.

[Douglas]

And still, we have no utopia because of it. That's it. Thanks, Keld.
Tippyverse would never work because people are bastards, that's why.
That doesn't address the real core of Tippyverse - Teleportation Circle. Instantaneous mass travel to anywhere in the world is the foundational element that Tippy based most of his world-changing logic on, not unlimited free food. The food "traps" are a part of the whole picture, but they are not an essential part.

[gkathellar]

And still, we have no utopia because of it. That's it. Thanks, Keld.
Tippyverse would never work because people are bastards, that's why.

... what? Tippyverse isn't a utopia setting, just as it's not a 1984 setting. It's a compounding of several factors: ease of teleport-based warfare, food and water traps, and mass urbanization.

[druid91]

And still, we have no utopia because of it. That's it. Thanks, Keld.
Tippyverse would never work because people are bastards, that's why.

Except that's one of the base assumptions of the tippyverse.

That's why everyone lives in magically sheilded cities, to keep other people from teleporting into their midst, killing everyone and teleporting back out.

It's the teleportation, the free food is the fix for not being able to defend acres of farmland from teleportation circled armies.

[nyarlathotep]

And still, we have no utopia because of it. That's it. Thanks, Keld.
Tippyverse would never work because people are bastards, that's why.

Nope tippyverse is pretty much modern earth. You have huge urban areas where nearly everyone works as skilled labor or is unemployed while food is take care of by a very small group of people (industrial farms/people making create food traps), trade is handled by massively expensive but at the same time massively useful machines (planes/teleport circles), and the top civilizations have massive armies that non-industrialized empires cannot hope to match.

[Coidzor]

Basically, my point is that Create Food traps would make many people leave wherever the trap was, for they would have no place. With less people, you have a smaller army. With a smaller army, you become more vulnerable. I'm wondering, who would take that risk? Outside of a controlled environment, it's asking for trouble.
I'm not trying to say it can't work, I'm just trying to come up with reasons for why it's not the rule.

Well, one alternative would be that the people forced off of the farms would end up in the soldiery, sort of like how the Marian reforms (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marian_reforms) took the indigent urban poor who were largely descendants of the free citizen farmers who had lost their land to the Patricians and Senators because they'd fought for Rome.

So you'd have a contraction of the commoner population and some level of expansion in the classes suited to professional soldiers who had got to drill and train when not on guard duty. And because there would be a larger corps to draw from, either A. more area could be guarded or B. there'd be more downtime from guard duty due to rotational shifts for the quality of the soldiers to be improved via more training. Or even both.

I believe this is one of the things posited in the Tippyverse. You have a large soldiery in order to protect against rivals' large population of mooks getting in somewhere and causing disruption of production.

[JadePhoenix]

My point is that those changes would never happen ina world where it got dropped like a bomb onto them. Magic is not steady progress - it's snap your fingers and it happens. In a mostly feudal world, if you have a means to get teleportation circles and free food, you are more likely to prevent anyone else from figuring it out. The controlled environments I mentioned before.
Well, that's good enough for my campaign. I won't allow for beneficial traps, since I was convinced they were not RAI, and any magical advancement is so costly whoever can pay for it will mostly keep it for themselves.
Thanks everyone.

[Coidzor]

any magical advancement is so costly whoever can pay for it will mostly keep it for themselves.
:smallconfused:

Well, that's one way to nerf wizards, I suppose, banning scrolls and wizards selling spells to other wizards.

Still, they're going to be able to research spells for themselves for free at level up and for a cost during downtime unless you get rid of both of those, so they'll eventually be capable of getting their tricks off, especially if they ever get an opportunity to take out a wizard opponent.

[bloodtide]

My point is that those changes would never happen ina world where it got dropped like a bomb onto them. Magic is not steady progress - it's snap your fingers and it happens. In a mostly feudal world, if you have a means to get teleportation circles and free food, you are more likely to prevent anyone else from figuring it out.


Magic is a steady progress though. At one time people only knew o level spells, then first level and so on. And at one time all the common spells did not exist. They were created, slowly over great amounts of time.

So one day a spellcaster creates teleport. For the first couple years it does not have much effect as few know the spell. It would take years, if not decides for a spell to be 'commonly' known. And even then it would take years and years to get to the teleport circle. That alone is tons of time for people to make defenses and anti- teleport things.

Even if teleport circle gets to the insane part, it won't last long. For example say the Evil Empire has a teleporting army. So in an instant they can teleport an army anywhere. And they take over the world. But nothing lasts forever. An empire can fall from any number of things. And then the teleport circle army mass movement will be lost and forgotten. And it will need to be rediscovered.

And on top of that, while the Evil Empire could control the use and access of teleport, many of the others are not so good at it. It would be very common for others to 'nova' themselves out.

And that would be on top of the people that would be fighting back vs teleport and trying to keep that knowledge from the masses.

Basically, things are either controlled or you simply get Armageddon and have to rebuild.

[Saintheart]

About the only semi-serious look at a post-scarcity society I've heard of is actually in Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke. (Let's leave aside the ending.) His world basically comes down to "aliens show up and fix everything" such that there's no wants or drive to survive, because the aliens more or less eliminate it via their technology (and also eliminate war pretty much in its entirety).

Admittedly, they also are in complete overwatch of human society such that virtually nothing can happen on the planet's surface without them knowing about it, but in essence they create a Utopia without want for humanity.

Clarke posits an interesting theorem that once all needs are met, the utopia that results eventually has to meet the one enemy completely efficient supply cannot stop: boredom. So that's one aspect to consider.

The points made about instant transformation of a society are well-made, though. If you have anything less than instant Create Food/Water traps everywhere on the planet, there will be most likely a conflict between those who have said traps and those who don't, or indeed a conflict over the magical research required to create them. That suggests conflict on a massive and desperate scale since the society with such a technology now no longer has to worry about food and water. For feudal societies, this massively increases the prospective range of such an army, especially across formely-inhospitable environments -- half the problem for the Crusaders in holding Palestine, for example, was the lack of water. It's also a major reason they lost the pivotal battles there, too.

Additionally, that society which has the Create Food trap now has vastly more capacity for war. Feudal societies historically had problems keeping levied armies together for more than six months or so because the peasants that force was drawn from had to return home in time to tend their lands in preparation for winter. All of a sudden you can now generate and hold a standing army of a size restricted only by the population rate for an indefinite period.

In theory, then, you could argue that if the society that creates the Create Food trap holds onto that secret for only a couple of years or so, it will have a very strong advantage in the field against anyone it chooses to conquer. And since each conquered territory then comes under the first society's hegemony and its farming lands are made more or less redundant, its military becomes proportionally more powerful -- it's a virtuous cycle (so to speak). You could easily have a large scale empire in a short period, which then breaks up since a point of equilibrium is reached -- everyone has the Create Food technology, but the empire has to be garrisoned efficiently, which unless you have teleportation effects everywhere can't be done. The empire breaks up into territories which are most likely closely balanced since this technology on its own does not allow one society to gain the advantage except by sheer population size.

Rationally, were Create Food traps built, you would still have the basics of shelter and security that rural farmers would want. They no longer have any service they can render to a local lord except their own military service, since they can't generate food. Therefore rationally you either see a shift to the merchant or industrialised classes, and thus to the cities, or a massive increase and localisation of the military, since a society with this technology (until it hits the equilibrium point I mentioned) has to be policed everywhere -- if one Create Food trap goes missing, the society's advantage is lost.

[jindra34]

Nope tippyverse is pretty much modern earth. You have huge urban areas where nearly everyone works as skilled labor or is unemployed while food is take care of by a very small group of people (industrial farms/people making create food traps), trade is handled by massively expensive but at the same time massively useful machines (planes/teleport circles), and the top civilizations have massive armies that non-industrialized empires cannot hope to match.

I'd say Tippy-verse would be closer to late 1800's industrial cities with large armies than modern times with large armies.

[JaronK]

It seems to me that create food and water traps wouldn't remove farming, because in the D&D world there are many non food items you can grow that are very valuable. It would just mean that instead of farmers raising wheat and such, they'd raise Bronzewood and Earthsilk. Excess labor would go into quarries and mines for the various extremely valuable materials found there. Cities would be found near resources, not open plains, so we'd expect more mountain cities and the like. And cities would become more packed, since there's no need for farming to support the cities.

JaronK

[lunar2]

@beneficial traps. dungeonscape (iirc) made mention in the dungeon design of something similar to a create food trap to justify living creatures in artificial dungeons. it's been a long time since i read it, so i could be wrong, but i remember reading a mention of something like that in a book before.

[bloodtide]

It seems to me that create food and water traps wouldn't remove farming.......

And no matter how much food you could create, you could never feed everyone anyway.

To use the real world example:
The world of today, using fertilizers and such creates thousands of times more food then the world of yesterday. Yet the world is still full of hungry people.

And you'd have the trick that someone would have to make all the items that make the food. So it's not like free food, as someone has to work to make it...

[Lysander]

Interesting fact.

RAW does not say that excessive use of magic rips holes in the space time continuum. But more importantly, it doesn't say that excessive use of magic doesn't rip holes in the space time continuum.

It also doesn't say that create food traps and teleportation circles, when used non-stop, don't eventually unleash lovecraftian horrors that devour civilizations, leaving only treasure filled dungeons and undead victims.

[Hirax]

And no matter how much food you could create, you could never feed everyone anyway.

To use the real world example:
The world of today, using fertilizers and such creates thousands of times more food then the world of yesterday. Yet the world is still full of hungry people.

And you'd have the trick that someone would have to make all the items that make the food. So it's not like free food, as someone has to work to make it...

As pointed out earlier in the thread, the problem isn't that there isn't enough food in the real world, the problem is distributing it in the real world. Magic removes the distribution problem. And in fact, using energy transformation field and immovable rods, you could effectively create vending machines! Just press the button for food.

[Alienist]

The central focus is not the magical traps, though they do figure in heavily. The critical bit is teleportation, which breaks trade. Specifically, teleportation circle.


Note: mass production of teleportation circles requires
(1) large quantities of high level wizards
(2) 1000gp
(3) 4500xp to make it permanent

Of those, the middle one is the only one that is vaguely plausible, as 1000gp for faster trade is a reasonable investment.

Finding a high level wizard willing to cough up that much xp... not so much.


What Tyndmyr was getting at is that infinite resources aren't unattainable, even without traps. A Permanent Wall Of Fire + large hardened container + Decanter of Endless Water = infinite steam power. Use one of those to turn a turbine connected to everything from a windmill to a factory to a vehicle. That would dynamically change 90% of a D&D setting from the pseudo-dark age society most settings imply to a steam punk metropolis in just a couple of years. Infinite food production is small beans next to infinite mechanical power.


It is an interesting scenario. The arguments in this thread parallel to a remarkable extent exactly the same kinds of arguments that people in England made about the ablition of slavery.

It is worth noting that the industrial revolution kicked off in England ~2 years after the abolition of slavery. Coincidence? I think not.

Even if we take as an axiom the presence of large numbers of high level wizards, since they represent an alternative source of power to that of machines, it is likely that they would have to be removed in order to have a steam punk style industrial revolution.

[SirFredgar]

Note: mass production of teleportation circles requires
(1) large quantities of high level wizards
(2) 1000gp
(3) 4500xp to make it permanent

Of those, the middle one is the only one that is vaguely plausible, as 1000gp for faster trade is a reasonable investment.

Finding a high level wizard willing to cough up that much xp... not so much.


Aren't there rules for XP sharing? I was pretty sure there was, something along the lines of 5gp per xp is the standard rate that is charged for 'buying' XP. Not sure where this is, but if it is legit, that would effectively end any shortage problem bu buying up the XP from various soruces to fuel one permanent circle.

There is also the aritificer who could craft a scroll of permancy from his reserve without incurring the increased costs. I think the 4500xp (or 22,500gp) is a small price to pay for unlimited secure passage from point A to point B anywhere on the material plane.

[Douglas]

Note: mass production of teleportation circles requires
(1) large quantities of high level wizards
(2) 1000gp
(3) 4500xp to make it permanent

Of those, the middle one is the only one that is vaguely plausible, as 1000gp for faster trade is a reasonable investment.

Finding a high level wizard willing to cough up that much xp... not so much.
It might not happen very often, but it will happen occasionally and it doesn't need to be often to have a world-altering effect. If just one new Teleportation Circle gets made every 10 years, in a few centuries there will be enough for a fully developed Tippyverse.

[Coidzor]

And no matter how much food you could create, you could never feed everyone anyway.

To use the real world example:
The world of today, using fertilizers and such creates thousands of times more food then the world of yesterday. Yet the world is still full of hungry people.

Last I checked there was a certain amount of contention as to the reason for that. To flatly state that we cannot produce enough food is probably an over-simplification though.

Tippyverse, however, human reproducion has not become magically sped up as the norm, so that generations and gestational periods have basically vanished in some kind of hyper Malthusian Babysplosion. At least, last I recall.

It takes about 15 days to make the basic create food and water traps, more for versions that feed more people. At a rate of about 21K people per 15 days, the traps should be able to outstrip human reproduction, especially at the high end of tippyverse where fast time demiplanes and wishloops are brought to bear. 500 is definitely underneath the limit for wish for prestidigitation traps. I believe 7500 gp is as well.

Best I can figure is a net increase of somewhere between 208,400 (http://www.wholesomewords.org/missions/greatc.html#birdatrate) and 217,212 (http://wiki.answers.com/Q/How_many_babies_are_born_every_day_in_the_world) people a day or 3,126,000 to 3,258,180 every half month (15 days).

3,258,180/21,600 = 150.84, or 151 wizards with steady day jobs working to make traps in order to support the entire world. And that's assuming that as soon as people are born they join the population using the traps rather than being nursed, which is a fair assumption for, say, kobolds, but not for creatures like humans, dwarves, or elves.

Let's say, 600 wizards of at least 5th level with the requisite feats world wide. Compared to a population of about 6.8 billion to stay consistent with that birth/death rate. So, 1/4 of .000000088% can, without reliance on wish or high level magic, feed the rest of the population and keep up with its population growth.

However, in most Tippyverses, the people outside the cities can go hang and the cities are isolated from one another for the most part, so the world is divided up into several smaller chunks of the population that are cared about for these purposes and then lots of even smaller bits and pieces here and there which are considered irrelevant. I can only assume that each individual city is likely to have less birth rate than the entire planet taken as a whole.

I'll admit though, I haven't actually checked out which is the most effective compromise between time to create and amount of food produced per use of the trap....


And you'd have the trick that someone would have to make all the items that make the food. So it's not like free food, as someone has to work to make it...

For a one time investment each and they never break except from deliberate sabotage. After they're created, they create food for a minimum of 3 (people per CL) times 5 (Minimum CL for 3rd level spells) times 1,440(number of uses possible in 24 hours)* medium sized humanoids. 21,600 people. A day. Even if you instead charge a pittance of 1 cp for a day's worth of food, that's still the equivalent of 216 gp for its first day of operation. 7,500 gp is the price for a minimum CL Create Food and Water trap. It takes 15 days to make one as it takes a day per 500 gp of a trap to make it. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/traps.htm#magicDeviceTrapCost) A trap pays for itself in 35 days if used with maximum efficiency. Let's say that most metropoli are more around 100,000 people. So that's instead the equivalent of 100 gp a day, so 75 days to recoup the cost of producing a single one, but the population is not going to grow appreciably in the 15 days it takes to create a new trap.

Five traps total to cover the population and some change (108,000), will take about 75 days(so in the 2 and a half months it takes to cover the minimum for the city's population, the first trap would have paid itself off by about the time one finished with the last of the set) and be paid off in about 375 days, a little over a year. Double that to have a paranoid safety net of backups and it takes 2 years and most of a month to pay off the food traps themselves. A significant long term for the investment to pay off, sure, if one were motivated purely by the profit of feeding the masses. 75,000 gp. Which translates into the arms and armor of about 450** midgrade troops.

Prestidigitation traps for each will of course drive the total cost up, but they're either 250 or 500 gp each, depending upon whether cantrips count as 1st level spells or 1/2 level in the price calculaion. Even at 500 gp a pop, they each take 1 day to make, and their all together cost of 5000 adds about 50 days to recouping their price total, which is not all that much compared to the initial 2 year period from just the food. 2 years and 2 & 1/3 months versus 2 years and 2/3 of a month are not all that different. So that's actually about 80,000 gp all told, for one metropolis sized city to support itself with backups and room for population growth. So almost 31 more troops that could be outfitted.

Much less than the number of soldiers that would need to be garrisoned in order to defend a city of 100,000 people from attack, or likely even the number of guardsmen to provide adequate policing of such a city.

And considering this is an investment both in terms of security against sieges, frees up population to join the armed forces or help to generate wealth through more skilled laborers, it's quite possible to get the city to finance it. Especially to any city states with a mind for returning to past glories via conquest, which is something that logistics has always hampered, and one of the biggest logistical difficulties is food, as has been mentioned...

*1 round = 6 seconds. So, 10 rounds to a minute. 60 minutes to an hour. 60* 10 = 600 rounds per hour. 24 hours per day. 24*600 = 14,400 or the number of rounds in a 24 hour period.

10 minute casting time and 10 rounds to the minute mean that there's a cycle of either 100 or 101 rounds. For simplicity's sake we'll go with 100 round cycle per use. So 14,400/100 = 1,440 uses of the trap

** 150 (chainmail) + 10 (halberd) + 2 (dagger) + 3 (3 javelins) = 165 gp a head.

75,000/165 = 454.54 or 454.

80,000/165 = 484.84 or 484.


Interesting fact.

RAW does not say that excessive use of magic rips holes in the space time continuum. But more importantly, it doesn't say that excessive use of magic doesn't rip holes in the space time continuum.

It also doesn't say that create food traps and teleportation circles, when used non-stop, don't eventually unleash lovecraftian horrors that devour civilizations, leaving only treasure filled dungeons and undead victims.

[COLOR="Blue"]DM Fiat is so cliche though. :smalltongue:[/COLOR

And rather out of place considering the subject at hand.

[Keld Denar]

Its not that it doesn't work. In fact, it makes more sense for it to work, than to be stuck in a quasi-dark age society for the duration of the campaign. Some have timelines of thousands of years. If one person in that thousand years had figured out some of the mechanics for this, the present day in most D&D settings would be 100x Eberron in terms of magi-tec.

The only reason its not, is because a DM says it isn't, because that's not what he wants. But by logical extrapolation, it should. Most campaign settings should be dramatically different, and it actually makes more sense for them to be more Star Trek and less Conan, simply because the rules allow for it.

[SirFredgar]

Its not that it doesn't work. In fact, it makes more sense for it to work, than to be stuck in a quasi-dark age society for the duration of the campaign. Some have timelines of thousands of years. If one person in that thousand years had figured out some of the mechanics for this, the present day in most D&D settings would be 100x Eberron in terms of magi-tec.

The only reason its not, is because a DM says it isn't, because that's not what he wants. But by logical extrapolation, it should. Most campaign settings should be dramatically different, and it actually makes more sense for them to be more Star Trek and less Conan, simply because the rules allow for it.

I agree with this to an extent.

First: Start Trek is just plain awesome (pew pew) in that much of their "tech" seems to have magical properties.

Second and on topic: Every Tippyverse didn't start that way. It's quite possible that there are no NPCs above level 5 or 10 that are capable of setting up the infrastucture need for a tippy verse. After all... even though eberron has tons of low-level magic tech, it assumes that there aren't going to be tons of high level characters running around, iirc. It could be in the dark-age setting that seems to come standard with most GMs is simply pre-tippy. As a GM, that's generally what I assume is going on, and I leave it to the PC to start the underpinnings of a tippyverse. This means most of the epilouge for my games ends up with me decribing the tippytopia they created.

[Keld Denar]

Blah blah ancient elven empire blah blah ruled for 10,000 years blah blah blah magical enlightenment blah blah blah declined society blah blah blah.

Sound familiar? Thats like, background in several popular published settings. Tell me that in 10,000 years, not a single one of those magically enlightened elves come up with something as simple as a resetting trap of Create Food & Water? Or Wall of Stone/Iron/Salt? Not even the Netherese? The elves of Myth Dranor? The Dahkini? The Ancient Suel?

Just sayin...the groundwork is there. The Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Eberron, heck, even Dark Sun, would all be different if they weren't stuck in what is essentially a setting imposed status quo. There's probably a TVTropes to fully describe it, but I don't feel like looking for it right now.

[SirFredgar]

Blah blah ancient elven empire blah blah ruled for 10,000 years blah blah blah magical enlightenment blah blah blah declined society blah blah blah.

Sound familiar? Thats like, background in several popular published settings. Tell me that in 10,000 years, not a single one of those magically enlightened elves come up with something as simple as a resetting trap of Create Food & Water? Or Wall of Stone/Iron/Salt? Not even the Netherese? The elves of Myth Dranor? The Dahkini? The Ancient Suel?

Just sayin...the groundwork is there. The Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Eberron, heck, even Dark Sun, would all be different if they weren't stuck in what is essentially a setting imposed status quo. There's probably a TVTropes to fully describe it, but I don't feel like looking for it right now.

That's why I agree/disagree to a point. I agree that many of the pre-established settings really overlooked the scope of the magic system in D&D. But this doesn't nessicarily mean that it is an oversight in every setting ever created by anyone. Just because the Tippyverse can exist, doesn't mean that is does exist. Simply because time is the limiting factor. If the game takes place before point T, then a world could look very much like Conan

However, yes, I'm well aware that, given enough time, probability would lead D&D to something the very much looks like Star Trek.

[Heatwizard]

The flaw in the Tippyverse Teleportation Circle setup is that you can lock out teleporters with Weirdstones. In theory, Wish can get a strike squad into a Weirdstone's radius, perhaps to break the Weirdstone and clear the way for the main force, but that presumes that you can keep a source of Wish around that won't get scry-n-died in the exact same fashion, and that your guys will win the subsequent fight with the local defense.

So a nation would lock down its turf with Weirdstones to prevent an instant army from cropping up on its doorstep, and as a side effect instant travel is severely hampered. Traders will have to get out and walk, or sail. If you've got a lot of untamed wilderness that wouldn't have Weirdstones shutting out fast travel, Teleportation Circles can still shortcut people across those, but that's about it.

[Coidzor]

That's why I agree/disagree to a point. I agree that many of the pre-established settings really overlooked the scope of the magic system in D&D. But this doesn't nessicarily mean that it is an oversight in every setting ever created by anyone. Just because the Tippyverse can exist, doesn't mean that is does exist. Simply because time is the limiting factor. If the game takes place before point T, then a world could look very much like Conan

Well, the problem with most settings is that sufficient time has taken place. If a setting is brand spanking new enough that sufficient time has not occurred, then you also run into the problem of where all the spells that the players can learn came from.... or the problem of having next to no spells in the game.

[Tyndmyr]

And I disagree with you. We, in the modern 21st century world, have the ability to produce more than enough food to feed the entire existing population of the world. Sure, its not 0% of the population feeding 100% of the population, but its less than 10%, I'd wager.

The US has less than half a percent of it's population in farming/food production, and produces more than enough food to feed itself, it's also a huge food exporter. It is safe to say that we could easily feed the entire world on less than 10% of our population, let alone the entire worlds.


You know what we DON'T have? Infinite energy. Heck, the main reason there is still hunger in the world isn't because food is expensive, its because transportation of that food is expensive. In a teleport based society, or even a society with mass transit powered by infinite steam engines or other such perpetual energy machines, you wouldn't even really need Create Food + Water traps, since you could get away with less than 10% of the population producing food since food could magically travel great distances instantly and with nearly no cost.

Don't get me wrong...both would have a TREMENDOUS change on society, especially a pseudo-dark ages setting like 90% of D&D. I just think that in the long run, infinite energy is a bigger advancement than infinite food.

It is. After all, with automation and infinite energy, you can eventually automate food production AND do other things. Therefore, it's strictly superior.


Still the whole point of this entire discussion is that D&D society should not exist as stated in most campaign settings, given the magi-tec available. Any number of applications of magic on a permanent or repeated basis have the ability to dynamically change the quality of life and the socio-economic structure of the entire setting over the course of only a few years. The Tippyverse is simply that, taken to its logical conclusion of magic based society, economy, industry, and warfare. Eberron is the setting that gets closest to the endgame that is the Tippyverse, and even it is only in the infancy stage with things like elemental airships, the lightning rail, and guild based control of various associated industries.

Oddly enough, a tippyverse like setting works pretty fantastically for D&D. I utilize it in part...high civilization in my setting utilizes beneficial traps, teleport circles, etc...getting such things are the mark of a city having made it to the big leagues. The wilds are...mostly ignored, save for adventurers. Cities invariably have differences with each other...the plot hooks are endless.


And still, we have no utopia because of it. That's it. Thanks, Keld.
Tippyverse would never work because people are bastards, that's why.

Tippyverse(or rather, Tippy's campaign setting, a thousand points of light), is not a utopia at all. Food and the like are not an issue, sure...but that's insufficient to make someplace a utopia.


My point is that those changes would never happen ina world where it got dropped like a bomb onto them. Magic is not steady progress - it's snap your fingers and it happens. In a mostly feudal world, if you have a means to get teleportation circles and free food, you are more likely to prevent anyone else from figuring it out. The controlled environments I mentioned before.
Well, that's good enough for my campaign. I won't allow for beneficial traps, since I was convinced they were not RAI, and any magical advancement is so costly whoever can pay for it will mostly keep it for themselves.
Thanks everyone.

You realize churches, organizations, and gods dedicated to spreading the idea of magic is RAW, right?

Wizards also need gold(unless you allow infinite gold shenanigans, which seems even more difficult), so if you have the ability to solve the problems of a leader for giant piles of cash, why wouldn't you?


About the only semi-serious look at a post-scarcity society I've heard of is actually in Childhood's End by Arthur C. Clarke. (Let's leave aside the ending.) His world basically comes down to "aliens show up and fix everything" such that there's no wants or drive to survive, because the aliens more or less eliminate it via their technology (and also eliminate war pretty much in its entirety).

I suggest looking at the Culture novels. That said, a magic trap world is not entirely post scarcity.


It seems to me that create food and water traps wouldn't remove farming, because in the D&D world there are many non food items you can grow that are very valuable. It would just mean that instead of farmers raising wheat and such, they'd raise Bronzewood and Earthsilk. Excess labor would go into quarries and mines for the various extremely valuable materials found there. Cities would be found near resources, not open plains, so we'd expect more mountain cities and the like. And cities would become more packed, since there's no need for farming to support the cities.

JaronK

Indeed. Farms still exist, but for luxuries, not bare survival.


Note: mass production of teleportation circles requires
(1) large quantities of high level wizards
(2) 1000gp
(3) 4500xp to make it permanent

Of those, the middle one is the only one that is vaguely plausible, as 1000gp for faster trade is a reasonable investment.

Finding a high level wizard willing to cough up that much xp... not so much.

Large quantities of high level wizards? Nah. One that knows the correct spell and wants giant piles of wealth and power is sufficient. The throughput of a teleportation circle is immense, having just a single link between two cities means they are, from the standpoint of trade, essentially one continuous city. Better, actually. It vastly lowers the cost of trade.

Also, the person permanencying it need not be the same person. Even if it is, ways to transfer xp for the purpose of crafting exist in RAW. There is a cost for doing this, yes, but the details of how that cost is paid is somewhat flexible.


The flaw in the Tippyverse Teleportation Circle setup is that you can lock out teleporters with Weirdstones. In theory, Wish can get a strike squad into a Weirdstone's radius, perhaps to break the Weirdstone and clear the way for the main force, but that presumes that you can keep a source of Wish around that won't get scry-n-died in the exact same fashion, and that your guys will win the subsequent fight with the local defense.

Anyone who can cast wish can probably protect himself from scry and die.

Also, weirdstones are quite expensive. Locking down a significant area with them is a huge expense. Possible, and some wealthy cities may use them for this, but you're looking at a huge cost that ONLY affects security, while other options improve both your military capabilities and general economic outlook. As such, weirdstones are a lot lower on the priority list.

[Narren]

You would probably see a dramatic increase in art, literature, city population, clergy, and magic-users. When people no longer HAVE to produce to survive, they move on to what they're passionate about. Kids today decide what they want to be when they grow up. Kids in the 1800's often had a pretty good idea of what they had to do when they grew up (and this effect was even more pronounced the further back you go, before innovations in farming techniques and technology).

[gkathellar]

You would probably see a dramatic increase in art, literature, city population, clergy, and magic-users. When people no longer HAVE to produce to survive, they move on to what they're passionate about. Kids today decide what they want to be when they grow up. Kids in the 1800's often had a pretty good idea of what they had to do when they grew up (and this effect was even more pronounced the further back you go, before innovations in farming techniques and technology).

Kind of a magical steampunk Renaissance? Wizard-Venice sounds pretty cool, actually.

[Tyndmyr]

Kind of a magical steampunk Renaissance? Wizard-Venice sounds pretty cool, actually.

Exactly. Think 7th Sea, but with even more magic, and more steampunk(yeah, I know, they already have steamtanks...keep going). The result is awesome.

I suspect much of the reason people dislike the tippyverse is because they've often only been exposed to bits and pieces of it.

[gkathellar]

Exactly. Think 7th Sea, but with even more magic, and more steampunk(yeah, I know, they already have steamtanks...keep going). The result is awesome.

I suspect much of the reason people dislike the tippyverse is because they've often only been exposed to bits and pieces of it.

How do you generally handle the social dynamics of caster vs. non-caster in such a setting? I know the default assumption of Tippyverse is that casters run the show, but we never get a clear picture of how non-casters fit in. What's your approach to that? And what about casters who aren't part of government.

I've got this awesome mental image of a chasm-city where they decided building down was easier and more defensible, like a massive fusion of Venice, Victorian London, Machu Pichu and the Hanging Gardens. And everyone gets around on levitating liquid walkways and bubble elevators.

[Heatwizard]

Also, weirdstones are quite expensive. Locking down a significant area with them is a huge expense. Possible, and some wealthy cities may use them for this, but you're looking at a huge cost that ONLY affects security, while other options improve both your military capabilities and general economic outlook. As such, weirdstones are a lot lower on the priority list.
A million Teleport Circles are expensive too. So are Wish traps and all the other nonsense that the setting is already stated to have. With all the tricks to get unlimited money, cost is not that big an issue. If a military opponent neglects to use Weirdstones themselves, you can just put your Circles down outside your Weirdstones and teleport your army from there; and if they do, Circles won't help.

[Tyndmyr]

How do you generally handle the social dynamics of caster vs. non-caster in such a setting? I know the default assumption of Tippyverse is that casters run the show, but we never get a clear picture of how non-casters fit in. What's your approach to that? And what about casters who aren't part of government.

Being a caster is a popular career choice, but there's a wild variety of them, and non-casters are definitely needed too. Things like Everburning torches and other low level magic items are remarkably common, many middle class people carry a potion of CLW in case of accident. Not all of the casters are wealthy, or in leadership, for the same reasons that smart, capable people are not always the ones in these positions in modern society. IE...it's complicated.


I've got this awesome mental image of a chasm-city where they decided building down was easier and more defensible, like a massive fusion of Venice, Victorian London, Machu Pichu and the Hanging Gardens. And everyone gets around on levitating liquid walkways and bubble elevators.

Oddly enough, my setting has such a place. The walkways aren't liquid, but the city is built up a chasm, with the wealthier having a view of the sky, and the poorest living near the bottom in the trash of the richer folks.

[olentu]

A million Teleport Circles are expensive too. So are Wish traps and all the other nonsense that the setting is already stated to have. With all the tricks to get unlimited money, cost is not that big an issue. If a military opponent neglects to use Weirdstones themselves, you can just put your Circles down outside your Weirdstones and teleport your army from there; and if they do, Circles won't help.

It is not like locking down your stuff with wierdstones is really that big a deal. You simply stick a recieving area just outside of the radius and then move travelers around from there using whatever transport system you have in place for your citizens.

[Frozen_Feet]

It also doesn't say that create food traps and teleportation circles, when used non-stop, don't eventually unleash lovecraftian horrors that devour civilizations, leaving only treasure filled dungeons and undead victims.

There is a Finnish comic book and RPG setting based on exactly this premise. It's called Jaconia, for the game Praedor. (http://www.burgergames.com/Praedor/)

[Suddo]

Did I miss something isn't create food and water a cleric only spell? Here (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/createFoodAndWater.htm) is my reference. I'm away from my books right now.

If it is then one might argue that it depends on how you deal with Divine Magic. If you make Positive and Negative Energy like elements that divines tame then Tippyverse is totally how you describe it.
If you instead go more by RAW on how divine works, you channel the energy of a god, then you create a god fearing society due to the fact that at any moment all your food machines could stop working and immediate riots would start happening. They did a study with pigeons where they put two in a box and had a pellet come out on one side of the box ever x amount of time. One pigeon was tied to the wall and another was free to wander. The free pigeon would get the food every time but when they stopped the food he quickly began to attack the chained up pigeon. Imagine this with over 100,000 people all beginning to starve.

[Hand_of_Vecna]

Seriously, everybody arguing against tippyverse needs to actually read the origional post/repost by tippy. I didn't understand tippyverse from references in different threads, but it really is a very logical thought out thesis. Infinite wealth shenanigans are not necessary (well they kind of are for true post scarcity but they come in at the very end.)

Step one teleportion circle is invented and somebody realizes it's commercial possibilities for a one time investment it makes a whole trade route obsolete. A single wizard or cadre of wizards that have the spell get monstously rich using profits to make more teleportation circles.

Step two somebody realizes the military applications of teleportation circle allowing a force to be transported straight to an enemy stronghold with no warning. This sends shockwave throughout the world and everyone starts centralizing their military to withstand concentrated attacks with no warning.

Step three vast territories are now undefended including farmland peasants flock to cities for safety necessitating create food and water traps.

Step four now that nobody works on a subsistence level everybody trains to become some kind of skilled labor. This should actually happen because taking on apprentices is now basically free since their already fed.

[nyarlathotep]

Did I miss something isn't create food and water a cleric only spell? Here (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/createFoodAndWater.htm) is my reference. I'm away from my books right now.

If it is then one might argue that it depends on how you deal with Divine Magic. If you make Positive and Negative Energy like elements that divines tame then Tippyverse is totally how you describe it.
If you instead go more by RAW on how divine works, you channel the energy of a god, then you create a god fearing society due to the fact that at any moment all your food machines could stop working and immediate riots would start happening. They did a study with pigeons where they put two in a box and had a pellet come out on one side of the box ever x amount of time. One pigeon was tied to the wall and another was free to wander. The free pigeon would get the food every time but when they stopped the food he quickly began to attack the chained up pigeon. Imagine this with over 100,000 people all beginning to starve.

Or it can be done by a cleric of an ideal which exist by RAW. Additionally there is nothing that states when a divine spell is put into a magic item that the god has anymore control over it, it is possible that the god's divine energy is cut off from it, and on top of that there are no rules for a god pulling power from a magic item.

As for the riots yes those would happen if the magic stopped working. On the other hand the same thing happens with a regular famine, and to make matters worse a famine usually means that food will be short for a full year or so after a bad harvest and that may make later years also low due to low seed count. Furthermore making a food trap takes a few days if one goes done. Even more to the point create food traps can only be destroyed by outside influence (disjunction and the like) by RAW, whereas regular crops can be destroyed by significantly more common outside influences(animals, disease, bandits) or just not receiving enough of the good kind of outside influences (rain, soil nutrients) they count on.

It's like saying that industrial farms are riskier than subsistence local farms because and EMP could fry all their advanced equipment. While that is technically true many more would die due to the normal shortages cause by subsistence farming.

[gkathellar]

Did I miss something isn't create food and water a cleric only spell? Here (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/createFoodAndWater.htm) is my reference. I'm away from my books right now.

If it is then one might argue that it depends on how you deal with Divine Magic. If you make Positive and Negative Energy like elements that divines tame then Tippyverse is totally how you describe it.
If you instead go more by RAW on how divine works, you channel the energy of a god, then you create a god fearing society due to the fact that at any moment all your food machines could stop working and immediate riots would start happening.

Clerics of an ideal. Rainbow Servants. Artificers. Warlocks. Point being — it's very doable without the permission of a god.

[Coidzor]

Clerics of an ideal. Rainbow Servants. Artificers. Warlocks. Point being — it's very doable without the permission of a god.

And even if only limited to gods, it's rather irrelevant as a limitation, given the usual plethora of deities to choose from and the resulting cred and custom for being such a benefactor.

[Hirax]

I've only just started reading about the Tippyverse, but some people seem to be working under the assumption that it's only run by one wizard who has no other spellcasters available to them. It says right there in the guide (the first result when Googling Tippyverse), that cities are generally ruled by a council of multiple high level casters. It's probable that means some of them are divine casters in at least some of the cities. Either way, rulers probably aren't the ones making the food traps, that's what minions are for. Even in the real world not many world leaders make their own food.

Even if you don't want to use traps, there are so many ways to make infinite food, such as everlasting rations from Heroes of Battle, or energy transformation field vending machines. Further, the blandness of created food is another trivial issue. If you don't want to use prestidigitation to flavor food, just use seasoning. Black pepper, cayenne, paprika, garlic, tarragon, etc. can all be produced in any apartment easily, and one harvest makes enough dry seasoning to last much longer than it takes to grow more. Presumably food traps can create milk or coconuts (both are bland, simple, highly nutritious), or other things with which you can then make butter. In a world with rampant teleportation, access to seawater for salt is presumably trivial.

You could make plenty of delicious things out of basic fruits, vegetables, and meat created by the spell by supplementing it with some additional preparation and seasoning. People who are too lazy to make their own seasonings and condiments could just buy them, and people that want a nice night out or something could still go to restaurants. There would definitely be a market for premium items that couldn't be produced in your house easily, notably sweets such as honey, sugar, cocoa, and their products, but that's a non-issue, frankly. Both because it would be an easy need to fulfill, and the ramifications of not fulfilling it are non-existent.

Also, fighting over the food issue is pointless because it's not particularly important to the Tippyverse. The only ramification of 'regular' food production in a Tippyverse is defending it. The only complication this introduces is incorporating food production into city design to minimize its vulnerability. Emperor Tippy's post seems to imply that food production generally takes place outside a city's defensible perimeter, but I don't see why that needs to be the case. Good design could prevent it from being any more vulnerable than anything else in the city, including things that could be considered more attractive targets, such as housing, markets, etc.

[Coidzor]

One fairly interesting example of urban agriculture within the defended part of a city that I recall is that of Hollowfaust from a d20 setting whose name escapes me. It's detailed in the book Hollowfaust: City of Necromancers, and is basically necromancers ruling over a city of refugees that recolonized a city that experienced a miniature version of Pompeii, and the outside of the city is near to very hostile forces and not very well defended for agriculture, so they rely on using still unsettled areas within the defended portion of the city, and crops that can be terraced, grown on rooftops, or are vine-based, so that the roots are up on a roof and then the vines grown down and around the building.

Of course, there's also some modern, real world ideas about urban agriculture that would probably google up real nice as well.

The food traps are mostly just an example of how the magic can free up a huge portion of the population from subsistence measures to focus on other things.

[MukkTB]

Post Scarcity is a fairy dust idea.

I can have free food? Cool.
Can I have a mansion?
Can I have a castle?
Can I have a continent?
Can I have a planet?
Can I have a solar system?
Can I have a Galaxy?
Can I have a universe?
How many universes can I have?

Eventually the answer will be no. There will be some limit on what one individual can have.

The Tippyverse isn't infinite free food. At very least you have to stand in line to get one serving. Paying in time in other words.

[bloodtide]

Step one teleportion circle is invented and somebody realizes it's commercial possibilities for a one time investment it makes a whole trade route obsolete. A single wizard or cadre of wizards that have the spell get monstously rich using profits to make more teleportation circles.

This has some flaws. First Tel-Mart would have to get the needed trade items. And teleport does not do that. Worse, the reason why an item is expensive is that it's rare and/or hard to get. If tons and tons of an item can be teleported with a snap of the fingers, then the value you drop to almost nothing. Diamonds are a good example(and a creepy real world one too). Diamonds are of value as they are rare and only a couple companies can sell them. But if a Tel-Mart fills a whole warehouse full of diamonds in a couple minutes, the rareness drops...at lot.

It gets worse with competition. When Tel-Mart sells it's warehouse full of diamonds at half price, then Telget and Best Tel must also lower there prices or they will have shelf's full of diamonds and make no money.




Step two somebody realizes the military applications of teleportation circle allowing a force to be transported straight to an enemy stronghold with no warning. This sends shockwave throughout the world and everyone starts centralizing their military to withstand concentrated attacks with no warning.

Plenty of countries and such would go 'nova' like this and destroy each other, but not all of them. This type of weapon would be too good to pass up for most. Though you'd still have the classic problem of 'you could teleport your army to attack group A, but if you do group B or C could then teleport in and attack you(and you would have no army). Unless you could maintain two armies at the same time. The end result would be the near total destruction of most of the worlds armies.

Though teleport is easy to stop, and there are things even in just the core rules to do that. Plus in a 'real' world there would be tons more spells and items and such.

Many types of fiction show defenses vs teleportation(Star Trek is an easy example).



Step three vast territories are now undefended including farmland peasants flock to cities for safety necessitating create food and water traps.

They would not be 'undefended' as you could teleport your army there as needed.



Step four now that nobody works on a subsistence level everybody trains to become some kind of skilled labor. This should actually happen because taking on apprentices is now basically free since their already fed.

Except people don't exactly work that way. Say a person does not need to work for basic subsistence, free food is everywhere. Even more so, all common stuff is free or very, very cheap. Would people with all this free time sit down and train hard to become skilled labor? (again you may dare to look at our real world example) How many people would do no work what so ever? 50%, 75%, more?

If people did not need food, it would be quite hard to even fill any type of labor job. Why would someone want to work at a job all day when they did not need too? Food makes up a large part of what a person spends money on, so with out that, people need very little.

And it only gets worse as you can create more stuff for free. Very, very quickly no one will work. After all why take the time to craft anything when it can be made in a second by magic? And again, you get the flood the market effect. Once you start with a magic item that can create wooden spoons, then you'd make wooden spoons almost valueless. And even more you'd stop the trade of lumber in it's tracks. After all who needs wood when they can just say a command word and make a wooden spoon?

And the final nail in the coffin is the loss of creativity, ambition, drive, and so forth. You'd have very little except people that just sat around all day and night. (and if you don't want to think about the real life example, take the movie Wall-E).

In short, the Tippyverse is sure to fall and implode on itself.

[Douglas]

This has some flaws. First Tel-Mart would have to get the needed trade items. And teleport does not do that.
No, no, the wizards don't do the trading themselves, they charge merchants for the privilege of using their Teleportation Circles. Given the choice of a 1000 mile journey over land with potential monster attacks or a quick hop through a magic circle, many merchants will gladly pay enormous sums of money for the latter option.


Worse, the reason why an item is expensive is that it's rare and/or hard to get. If tons and tons of an item can be teleported with a snap of the fingers, then the value you drop to almost nothing. Diamonds are a good example(and a creepy real world one too). Diamonds are of value as they are rare and only a couple companies can sell them. But if a Tel-Mart fills a whole warehouse full of diamonds in a couple minutes, the rareness drops...at lot.
For the goods where this would matter, the goods are rare in one place only because of the cost of transporting them. The wizards are providing an alternative means of transport. All they need to do to keep things reasonably stable while still making tons of money is set the price of teleportation high enough that it's comparable to the overland route.


The end result would be the near total destruction of most of the worlds armies.
As I recall, the official Tippyverse history includes a period where this is exactly what happened. Total chaos, teleporting armies everywhere, nations destroyed overnight, etc., until some combination of Mutually Assured Destruction and the development of anti-teleport defenses stabilized things.


Except people don't exactly work that way. Say a person does not need to work for basic subsistence, free food is everywhere. Even more so, all common stuff is free or very, very cheap. Would people with all this free time sit down and train hard to become skilled labor? (again you may dare to look at our real world example) How many people would do no work what so ever? 50%, 75%, more?

If people did not need food, it would be quite hard to even fill any type of labor job. Why would someone want to work at a job all day when they did not need too? Food makes up a large part of what a person spends money on, so with out that, people need very little.

And it only gets worse as you can create more stuff for free. Very, very quickly no one will work. After all why take the time to craft anything when it can be made in a second by magic? And again, you get the flood the market effect. Once you start with a magic item that can create wooden spoons, then you'd make wooden spoons almost valueless. And even more you'd stop the trade of lumber in it's tracks. After all who needs wood when they can just say a command word and make a wooden spoon?

And the final nail in the coffin is the loss of creativity, ambition, drive, and so forth. You'd have very little except people that just sat around all day and night. (and if you don't want to think about the real life example, take the movie Wall-E).

In short, the Tippyverse is sure to fall and implode on itself.
Quite a number of people would get bored with such an existence.

Very. Very. Bored.

Work then becomes an alternative to boredom, and a lot of people would take up occupations that interested them. What percentage of the population would do this in reality is highly speculative, but it would be significant.

Also, while the manufacturing traps make most basic material goods valueless, there is still plenty of room for custom goods and other things that people might value and be willing to work for.

[Suddo]

Clerics of an ideal. Rainbow Servants. Artificers. Warlocks. Point being — it's very doable without the permission of a god.

I would assume all of them follow the same basic principle of divine casters. They channel the energy of a god to do something. The Artificers fake it but do the same basic thing. And at any point the god could say "Nope no more infinite food people need to stand on their own." or "That's too good of an act." (depending on you Good/Evil alignment). The cleric of a cause still needs a god backing them just like a paladin last time I checked. Rainbow servants are like wizards that learned how to channel Coatl divine power, the coatls can turn it off in theory at any moment. The Artificer fakes this makes it less likely for a god to notice but still its important to note that what ever god he is channeling, via watching another cleric do it, could still shut him down. I don't know how warlocks fake it but I'll assume its similar to one of the above.

This all assumes that all divine power is by opening up a channel with a god. I mean if you hooked up a Resurrection spell to a trap that triggered once a day on the mark and left a chuck of yourself there. And then pissed your god off I'd assume he could just choose not to revive you. This is right there on the grey line of RAW and RAI because as written divine spells are used via channeling a god's power but magic traps and items don't reference whether their creation and use still does such. So it could be interpreted either way.

Edits:
@Saying that people would do nothing. This is both true and false. Some people may literally do nothing. Literally just rot away doing nothing more than walk around and stare at things but this is a small minority. Now the people that will do stuff that wouldn't be considered useful before, plenty. Think of how many people will randomly become artists or comedians. Now that food is free you can learn to do some random trade even if you only do it to make random trinkets. Plus housing is never really free especially when everything is made to where you need to compact everything.

@Saying that products would lose value, I think diamonds are a prime example. Assuming Wish and other game breaking spells don't exist then things like diamonds have a money value not because of how rare they are but because of how useful they are. Diamonds are used in Resurrection spells. It doesn't happen too often but when someone really wants to be Ressed then they are willing to pay for them. The only thing that the Tippyverse has removed is the looking for 10k worth of diamonds. Same thing goes for other things that are useful as magic components. Rubies I think are part of everburning torches. Clovers I think have a purpose. Unlike the real world diamonds are a resource to be spent not strictly a vanity item or a light weight form of money.

[Coidzor]

I would assume all of them follow the same basic principle of divine casters. They channel the energy of a god to do something. The Artificers fake it but do the same basic thing. And at any point the god could say "Nope no more infinite food people need to stand on their own." or "That's too good of an act." (depending on you Good/Evil alignment). The cleric of a cause still needs a god backing them just like a paladin last time I checked.

Nope. Clerics of a cause are just fine as is. Paladins don't need gods backing them. The only place where that's the case is specific settings, most notably, The Forgotten Realms.

Artificers just channel the raw principles of magic though by making magic items. No god necessary. Unless we're talking FR with artificers where artificers have been houseruled to depend upon gods for anything related to divine magic.

And if you really, really want to get pedantic, certain Ur-Priests would have a vested interest in doing it if it cheesed off the gods or destroyed faith in them.

I believe Ur-Priest 3 can be achieved by 11th level.

[Vauron]

Suddo, a simpler way to keep Tippyverse from happening is simply to say it doesn't. Remember, Tippyverse assumes things work by RAW, so of course it falls about when you start throwing random homebrew restrictions in.

[absolmorph]

Blah blah ancient elven empire blah blah ruled for 10,000 years blah blah blah magical enlightenment blah blah blah declined society blah blah blah.

Sound familiar? Thats like, background in several popular published settings. Tell me that in 10,000 years, not a single one of those magically enlightened elves come up with something as simple as a resetting trap of Create Food & Water? Or Wall of Stone/Iron/Salt? Not even the Netherese? The elves of Myth Dranor? The Dahkini? The Ancient Suel?

Just sayin...the groundwork is there. The Forgotten Realms, Greyhawk, Eberron, heck, even Dark Sun, would all be different if they weren't stuck in what is essentially a setting imposed status quo. There's probably a TVTropes to fully describe it, but I don't feel like looking for it right now.
... You're honestly asking why elves didn't think of it?
They're elves!
:smalltongue:

[Reluctance]

This all assumes that all divine power is by opening up a channel with a god. I mean if you hooked up a Resurrection spell to a trap that triggered once a day on the mark and left a chuck of yourself there. And then pissed your god off I'd assume he could just choose not to revive you. This is right there on the grey line of RAW and RAI because as written divine spells are used via channeling a god's power but magic traps and items don't reference whether their creation and use still does such. So it could be interpreted either way.

And in what setting would you not find a good church interested in feeding the hungry. That's one of the things good churches do.

"Tippyverse fails" topics are like "Pun Pun fails" topics. RAW, they do exactly what's said on the tin. Anti-Tippyverse especially confuses me; it's basically a super high tech, sci-fi setting. It only works because D&D magic is so predictable as to become technology-like. Undermining magic as high tech requires a complete rewrite of D&D magic, which anti-tippsters seem loath to do.

[gkathellar]

I would assume all of them follow the same basic principle of divine casters. They channel the energy of a god to do something.

Only in FR. It's well-established in most other settings that divine magic does not necessarily come from a deity or even a divine being.


The cleric of a cause still needs a god backing them just like a paladin last time I checked.

If you can produce a page citation for that, by all means, do so. Otherwise: only in FR.


Rainbow servants are like wizards that learned how to channel Coatl divine power, the coatls can turn it off in theory at any moment.

Nope, not by default fluff and not by RAW. The Couatls teach you how to access the class, but there's not even a Code of Conduct on that thing. As long as you remain non-chaotic and non-evil, you're not losing any class abilities just because some feathered snakes decide they don't like you.


The Artificer fakes this makes it less likely for a god to notice but still its important to note that what ever god he is channeling, via watching another cleric do it, could still shut him down. I don't know how warlocks fake it but I'll assume its similar to one of the above.

By RAW the only way a god can tamper with your magic items is directly, and by fluff Artificers and Warlocks draw on their supreme crafting expertise, not any kind of divine power.


This is right there on the grey line of RAW and RAI because as written divine spells are used via channeling a god's power

This is absolutely untrue in any setting but FR. We have base classes to prove it: clerics and paladins without a deity are right there in the PHB. Druids don't necessarily channel a god's power. Nor are archivists actually required to. Ooh! Archivists! Forgot to mention those. They can also do this.

[Tyndmyr]

Or it can be done by a cleric of an ideal which exist by RAW. Additionally there is nothing that states when a divine spell is put into a magic item that the god has anymore control over it, it is possible that the god's divine energy is cut off from it, and on top of that there are no rules for a god pulling power from a magic item.

As for the riots yes those would happen if the magic stopped working. On the other hand the same thing happens with a regular famine, and to make matters worse a famine usually means that food will be short for a full year or so after a bad harvest and that may make later years also low due to low seed count. Furthermore making a food trap takes a few days if one goes done. Even more to the point create food traps can only be destroyed by outside influence (disjunction and the like) by RAW, whereas regular crops can be destroyed by significantly more common outside influences(animals, disease, bandits) or just not receiving enough of the good kind of outside influences (rain, soil nutrients) they count on.

It's like saying that industrial farms are riskier than subsistence local farms because and EMP could fry all their advanced equipment. While that is technically true many more would die due to the normal shortages cause by subsistence farming.

Oh yeah, things like "destroy their food traps to cause shortages" would be a pretty reasonable tactic in a tippyverse world. No different from burning the fields.

Tech solves some problems, but it doesn't really get rid of conflict...expect magitech to be the same.


Even if you don't want to use traps, there are so many ways to make infinite food, such as everlasting rations from Heroes of Battle, or energy transformation field vending machines. Further, the blandness of created food is another trivial issue. If you don't want to use prestidigitation to flavor food, just use seasoning. Black pepper, cayenne, paprika, garlic, tarragon, etc. can all be produced in any apartment easily, and one harvest makes enough dry seasoning to last much longer than it takes to grow more. Presumably food traps can create milk or coconuts (both are bland, simple, highly nutritious), or other things with which you can then make butter. In a world with rampant teleportation, access to seawater for salt is presumably trivial.

There's an everlasting spice jar in Magic of Faerun that entirely handles seasoning by RAW, inexpensively, if that's your thing.


Post Scarcity is a fairy dust idea.

I can have free food? Cool.
Can I have a mansion?
Can I have a castle?
Can I have a continent?
Can I have a planet?
Can I have a solar system?
Can I have a Galaxy?
Can I have a universe?
How many universes can I have?

Eventually the answer will be no. There will be some limit on what one individual can have.

The Tippyverse isn't infinite free food. At very least you have to stand in line to get one serving. Paying in time in other words.

You can never entirely get post-scarcity. For instance, imagine that you can have anything you want...do you want to live next to say, Vin Diesel, and perhaps play D&D with him? How many people want to do that? How many people can practically do that?

People are always a scarce resource.

However, you can decrease scarcity for certain things. Tippyverse isn't entirely post scarcity...but it will be good enough that people will not normally die of hunger. That's enough to make it preferable to the old ways.


This has some flaws. First Tel-Mart would have to get the needed trade items. And teleport does not do that. Worse, the reason why an item is expensive is that it's rare and/or hard to get. If tons and tons of an item can be teleported with a snap of the fingers, then the value you drop to almost nothing. Diamonds are a good example(and a creepy real world one too). Diamonds are of value as they are rare and only a couple companies can sell them. But if a Tel-Mart fills a whole warehouse full of diamonds in a couple minutes, the rareness drops...at lot.

It gets worse with competition. When Tel-Mart sells it's warehouse full of diamonds at half price, then Telget and Best Tel must also lower there prices or they will have shelf's full of diamonds and make no money.

Nah. There's also the toll road model. Running trade caravans in D&D is likely expensive, at least for some distant instances. Setting up a single link, and charging a toll for everyone going through is a great way to save them a lot of trouble and risk, while making a lot of money for yourself.

Yeah, the price of those trade goods will eventually drop as that form of trade becomes standard. Why would that bother you at all? You have a nice, reliably large income, and if some goods are more available and inexpensive, that is only a bonus.


Except people don't exactly work that way. Say a person does not need to work for basic subsistence, free food is everywhere. Even more so, all common stuff is free or very, very cheap. Would people with all this free time sit down and train hard to become skilled labor? (again you may dare to look at our real world example) How many people would do no work what so ever? 50%, 75%, more?

Unemployment is far less than that in the US, and you can easily live your entire life without working if merely avoiding starvation is all you want. As a trivial example, you could go to prison and be fed for life. But in practice, people value a lot of other things in addition to not starving, so the vast majority of us do in fact work.

Sure, you'd have the occasional bums, but the common man wants his family housed well, clothed, and with at least minimal freedoms to do things they enjoy.


Only in FR. It's well-established in most other settings that divine magic does not necessarily come from a deity or even a divine being.

Even Faerun has examples of people drawing divine magical power while the god of their portfolio is dead. In addition, Ur Priests can quite clearly take a gods power even if that god is unwilling. It's kind of their thing.

So, any setting has the potential to become a tippyverse. My particular setting has elements of tippyverse, though it's not quite so far along the process as thousand points of light. More of in the early transition phase to it, as I felt that would be a wonderful period to play in.

[bloodtide]

Nah. There's also the toll road model. Running trade caravans in D&D is likely expensive, at least for some distant instances. Setting up a single link, and charging a toll for everyone going through is a great way to save them a lot of trouble and risk, while making a lot of money for yourself.

Yeah, the price of those trade goods will eventually drop as that form of trade becomes standard. Why would that bother you at all? You have a nice, reliably large income, and if some goods are more available and inexpensive, that is only a bonus.

Most merchants would not even bother. With the ease of life with free food and free items, why would a merchant even want to bother to drag a wagon over to a teleport circle? He can't even charge high prices for items as all items are now common. Anything rare from being far away is now common. There would only be a small market for crafted special items, no where near enough to run a business.

Worse, if a merchant can only charge the normal price for everything, why would they even bother to go get things from far, far away by teleport.

Real World Example:
As a Dr. Who fan, it's hard to buy the DVDs at stores in the USA. Very few stores even carry the DVDs, and the ones that do are notoriously known for marking up there prices(such as dear departed Borders). And this is on top of the extra money your paying because the DVD has to come from 'so far away'. In short Dr. Who DVDs are expensive in the USA, but in the UK they are the normal price of all the other DVDs. But say you had a transporter can could beam the DVDs in a second. Well, then you could not add in the 'far away cost'(though you can still add in the ''we have high prices'' cost). Though basically you'd make the DVDs the normal price, that is the same price as the rest of the USA DVDs. So why bother even beaming them over, as you will make so little profit?




Unemployment is far less than that in the US, and you can easily live your entire life without working if merely avoiding starvation is all you want. As a trivial example, you could go to prison and be fed for life. But in practice, people value a lot of other things in addition to not starving, so the vast majority of us do in fact work.

Sure, you'd have the occasional bums, but the common man wants his family housed well, clothed, and with at least minimal freedoms to do things they enjoy.

The US is a bad example. For each non-worker, we have five to ten workers keeping that person alive. So you'd need workers...but just look how a city would change with just free food:

You would have no more restaurants, taverns, eateries, bars, night clubs and such social hang outs. The owner would not be able to make any money off of food or drink. Why would people pay for something they could get for free. You can't even charge for the cooking and preparation as magic does that too.

But then how do you even find people to run your social place? Without the need for food and such, how many people would choose lowly jobs like dishwasher or such. Very few. And even if you use magic, someone needs to be in charge of that. Sure some people might still need or want money, but who would pick a 'dirty job' unless they needed to?

[gkathellar]

Sure some people might still need or want money, but who would pick a 'dirty job' unless they needed to?

"Need" extends far beyond just food — housing, clothing, and other basic needs exist. People will still want to show off for prospective mates, and will still want to ensure a good lifestyle for their children. Once people are used to satisfying their basic needs with work (which they'll already be), they'll likewise being amenable to using work to procure luxuries.

[Coidzor]

Worse, if a merchant can only charge the normal price for everything, why would they even bother to go get things from far, far away by teleport.

If they wouldn't, and they stop, then either A. the price goes up again because the people who didn't stop have less competition and control over the supply which encourages different people or older players in the game to get back into the game or B. they all stop and supplies run out and people who enjoyed it or needed it demand it back and given sufficient demand someone will step up to fill that void.

I'm frankly kind of confused as to why your argument hinges upon that of all things.


You would have no more restaurants, taverns, eateries, bars, night clubs and such social hang outs. The owner would not be able to make any money off of food or drink. Why would people pay for something they could get for free. You can't even charge for the cooking and preparation as magic does that too.

Create food and water does not create booze. So there's certainly room for entertainment venues that do provide some manner of refreshment rather than charging cover for the entertainment or making book off of gambling proceeds.


But then how do you even find people to run your social place? Without the need for food and such, how many people would choose lowly jobs like dishwasher or such. Very few. And even if you use magic, someone needs to be in charge of that. Sure some people might still need or want money, but who would pick a 'dirty job' unless they needed to?

What do aspiring actors do while they're trying to get noticed?

[Suddo]

Only in FR. It's well-established in most other settings that divine magic does not necessarily come from a deity or even a divine being.
If you can produce a page citation for that, by all means, do so. Otherwise: only in FR.

Huh... I learned something new and now suddenly am okay with being a divine class. I thought that clerics of a cause were like paladins where they channel the power of all gods that agree with him. I'll do some reading on the subject.


...just look how a city would change with just free food:

You would have no more restaurants, taverns, eateries, bars, night clubs and such social hang outs. The owner would not be able to make any money off of food or drink. Why would people pay for something they could get for free. You can't even charge for the cooking and preparation as magic does that too.

But then how do you even find people to run your social place? Without the need for food and such, how many people would choose lowly jobs like dishwasher or such. Very few. And even if you use magic, someone needs to be in charge of that. Sure some people might still need or want money, but who would pick a 'dirty job' unless they needed to?
First: There is no Create Booze spell. And Create Food is nutritional food that is kind of between oatmeal and bread. In order to make booze you would have to have wheat, which is stupidly inexpensive but lets not talk about how RAW economy is broken.
Second: Lets assume that there are magical vending machines that hook up them up to a repeating food maker. There are also water fountains every where with the same system. Socially one might just carry a bowl around and collect oatmeal in it and then wash it out when its done. No need for dishes sense all food comes from the same place.
Third: Social places may only be created based on the ability to charge at the door. Unless you can charge for booze.

[Heliomance]

Huh... I learned something new and now suddenly am okay with being a divine class. I thought that clerics of a cause were like paladins where they channel the power of all gods that agree with him. I'll do some reading on the subject.

Paladins have no RAW connection to the gods either :smallconfused:

[NNescio]

Most merchants would not even bother. With the ease of life with free food and free items, why would a merchant even want to bother to drag a wagon over to a teleport circle? He can't even charge high prices for items as all items are now common. Anything rare from being far away is now common. There would only be a small market for crafted special items, no where near enough to run a business.

Worse, if a merchant can only charge the normal price for everything, why would they even bother to go get things from far, far away by teleport.

Real World Example:
As a Dr. Who fan, it's hard to buy the DVDs at stores in the USA. Very few stores even carry the DVDs, and the ones that do are notoriously known for marking up there prices(such as dear departed Borders). And this is on top of the extra money your paying because the DVD has to come from 'so far away'. In short Dr. Who DVDs are expensive in the USA, but in the UK they are the normal price of all the other DVDs. But say you had a transporter can could beam the DVDs in a second. Well, then you could not add in the 'far away cost'(though you can still add in the ''we have high prices'' cost). Though basically you'd make the DVDs the normal price, that is the same price as the rest of the USA DVDs. So why bother even beaming them over, as you will make so little profit?

Economics, Law of One Price:

"In an efficient market, all identical goods must have only one price."

Now, let me ask you, why do people still trade in stocks and commodities again?

[gkathellar]

Now, let me ask you, why do people still trade in stocks and commodities again?

Because most of the developed world has an extremely complicated system of money in play that abstracts wealth from resources (both human and natural), and needs a mechanism to reestablish the dominance of resources (even basically fictitious ones like stocks) so that this separation doesn't become unmanageable?

In a Tippyverse, the most important resources are undoubtedly human beings and crafted goods, since many other resources are easily produced or procured via magic. That means the most likely economic system is one based on the exchange of labor or of favors. There are various ways this could manifest, but I think the most interesting courses for a Tippyverse's economics to take would be:
A gift-based economy, where individuals ensure social status through reciprocal generosity.
A guild or clan-based economy, where groups barter based on collective social power.
A highly abstract monetary system not unlike our own, where the relationship between wealth and money is held in place by the social power of one or more states.
An authoritarian status-based economy, where social and economic power are identical in a concrete sense.
Two or more of the above (note that 2 basically demands either 1 or 4 on an internal level, and none of these really exclude any of the others).

[OracleofWuffing]

First: There is no Create Booze spell. And Create Food is nutritional food that is kind of between oatmeal and bread. In order to make booze you would have to have wheat,
If I attempt to Fabricate that food into booze, do I get a book to the head?:smallbiggrin:

[Hirax]

Well, the spell says highly nutritious, which in my mind means it should include some kind of fruits or veggies, or else people living off of it might get scurvy. Very much up for interpretation though. If it did produce fruit, then yeah, ferment away, whether through fabricate, a still, etc.

[OracleofWuffing]

I was mainly aiming for the bread made of wheat, wheat needed for booze angle, but hey, Bloody Maries for everyone.

[JKTrickster]

I'm kind of confused on the direction on this thread. Wasn't the OP (who left) asking why the Tippyverse wouldn't happen EVERY SINGLE TIME in a DnD setting?

And I think that's the real beauty about the Tippyverse. You can argue all about the logistics, the economics, hell even the social and psychological effects of the Tippyverse but you have to admit that the Tippyverse should be the real logical conclusion of any DnD setting.

In fact, in any setting with more than a few thousand of years of history that involved multiple high level wizards, Tippyverse should have been achieved already.

We're just arguing about how it should look like.

[Talakeal]

I'm kind of confused on the direction on this thread. Wasn't the OP (who left) asking why the Tippyverse wouldn't happen EVERY SINGLE TIME in a DnD setting?

And I think that's the real beauty about the Tippyverse. You can argue all about the logistics, the economics, hell even the social and psychological effects of the Tippyverse but you have to admit that the Tippyverse should be the real logical conclusion of any DnD setting.

In fact, in any setting with more than a few thousand of years of history that involved multiple high level wizards, Tippyverse should have been achieved already.

We're just arguing about how it should look like.

There are things in the setting a lot older and more powerful than humans, and many of them might have personal reasons (or a completely alien mindset) so that a "tippyverse" scenario is not to their liking. When you have gods, aberrations, outsiders, and dragons with both magical and physical resources far beyond those of low level humans, I would imagine you would have trouble getting it started in the first place.

[Douglas]

There are things in the setting a lot older and more powerful than humans, and many of them might have personal reasons (or a completely alien mindset) so that a "tippyverse" scenario is not to their liking. When you have gods, aberrations, outsiders, and dragons with both magical and physical resources far beyond those of low level humans, I would imagine you would have trouble getting it started in the first place.
Considering that the beginning of Tippyverse requires a ninth level spell (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/teleportationCircle.htm), your menagerie of monsters would be contending with quite high level characters unless they're acting with extreme foresight, not low level ones. These high level characters are tier 1, too, so they're among the toughest non-pushovers humanoid races can produce short of epic levels.

[Talakeal]

Considering that the beginning of Tippyverse requires a ninth level spell (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/teleportationCircle.htm), your menagerie of monsters would be contending with quite high level characters unless they're acting with extreme foresight, not low level ones. These high level characters are tier 1, too, so they're among the toughest non-pushovers humanoid races can produce short of epic levels.

Don't most high CR outsiders and dragons have tier 1 casting abilities simply as a measure of their HD? And gods, in addition to having ~40 character levels, can see weeks into the future.
Upsetting the status quo is a lot harder than it looks, unless you simply exploit loopholes in RAW, but that requires you to be the first one who ever thought about said loopholes, which seems unlikely given there are numerous tier 1 monsters / gods with super human intelligence and in many cases the ability to see the future.

[Coidzor]

1. right above the post in the edit window is the pair of radio buttons that confirm one wants to delete the post in addition to the delete post button.

2. once you bring in pre-emptive divine intervention, that whole can of worms eventually ends in either A. deity-fueled cluster apocalypse or B. the status quo of a mostly cold war between the gods, barring very specific pantheons, with mostly their mortal servitors and proxies trying to intervene in different ways, some helping, some hindering, and some mostly just trying to subvert the result to fall within their power.

[Talakeal]

1. right above the post in the edit window is the pair of radio buttons that confirm one wants to delete the post in addition to the delete post button.

2. once you bring in pre-emptive divine intervention, that whole can of worms eventually ends in either A. deity-fueled cluster apocalypse or B. the status quo of a mostly cold war between the gods, barring very specific pantheons, with mostly their mortal servitors and proxies trying to intervene in different ways, some helping, some hindering, and some mostly just trying to subvert the result to fall within their power.

Didn't realize you could do that, thanks for the tip.

If a majority of the gods decide they don't want an industrialized world, it isn't going to happen. The world adhering to the gods vision, and the gods wanting to preserve their own place in the cosmos, are pretty universal themes among fantasy pantheons. For example in Forgotten Realms gunpowder doesn't work because the gods don't believe the world is ready for it.

That goes double for infinite power exploits like Pun-Pun, if it was possible to do, which it is if you are playing by strict RAW, then it is incredibly unlikely a god has not already done so, even if only to prevent others from achieving such levels of power.

[Hirax]

It says right there at the top of the guide that the Tippyverse assume deities are mostly silent silent, and stupidly ridiculous things don't work (safe to say Pun-Pun is in that category). Taking away the assumptions it's built with to say that it doesn't work seems pretty silly.

[nyarlathotep]

Didn't realize you could do that, thanks for the tip.

If a majority of the gods decide they don't want an industrialized world, it isn't going to happen. The world adhering to the gods vision, and the gods wanting to preserve their own place in the cosmos, are pretty universal themes among fantasy pantheons. For example in Forgotten Realms gunpowder doesn't work because the gods don't believe the world is ready for it.

That goes double for infinite power exploits like Pun-Pun, if it was possible to do, which it is if you are playing by strict RAW, then it is incredibly unlikely a god has not already done so, even if only to prevent others from achieving such levels of power.

This is assuming a very specific implementation of deities. In Greyhawk the gods do not have such intervention, in Eberron they don't either, Dark Sun has no gods period, Dragonlance had a very long period with no gods but it gets mucked up with their return.

In short Forgotten Realms is the exception not the rule. Also Forgotten Realms really has a problem in which the implications of such magic and divine intervention are never fully explored. People for the most part still act like normal medieval peasants even though god walk among them all the time and epic level wizards exist. The battles with Thayan raising legions armies of dread warriors because the spell has no HitDice cap should be the rule rather than the exception in such a world.

You assumption also requires the deities to be evil or neutral. Why would you prevent a post scarcity society as a good deity? The only counter argument I could see is that good gods already make the lands of their followers and evil gods like suffering in the first place. In which case you still aren't running a regular D&D game. You are running a game with stark contrast between Utopias of good and Dystopia of evil. An exploration of which could be interesting (sort of like what Ultima 8 was supposed to be before it just sucked at everything) but it is not a standard D&D campaign.

[Talakeal]

This is assuming a very specific implementation of deities. In Greyhawk the gods do not have such intervention, in Eberron they don't either, Dark Sun has no gods period, Dragonlance had a very long period with no gods but it gets mucked up with their return.

In short Forgotten Realms is the exception not the rule. Also Forgotten Realms really has a problem in which the implications of such magic and divine intervention are never fully explored. People for the most part still act like normal medieval peasants even though god walk among them all the time and epic level wizards exist. The battles with Thayan raising legions armies of dread warriors because the spell has no HitDice cap should be the rule rather than the exception in such a world.

You assumption also requires the deities to be evil or neutral. Why would you prevent a post scarcity society as a good deity? The only counter argument I could see is that good gods already make the lands of their followers and evil gods like suffering in the first place. In which case you still aren't running a regular D&D game. You are running a game with stark contrast between Utopias of good and Dystopia of evil. An exploration of which could be interesting (sort of like what Ultima 8 was supposed to be before it just sucked at everything) but it is not a standard D&D campaign.

I don't know much about Greyhawk, so you will have to forgive me. The only time Dragonlance lacked gods was during the age of mortals, when there was hardly any magic to go around, let alone enough to create a magical utopia. People stopped worshipping the gods after the Cataclysm, which was brought about because the gods smote mortals who were attempting to upset the balance by making a utopia (albeit a theocracy where evil and chaos were outlawed rather than a post scarcity society). In Dark Sun there are no gods, but there are dragon kings, epic level tier one characters who for the most part, seem to be pretty opposed to upstarts who can challenge their power.

And if good gods really wanted people to have unlimited resources, the gods could simply provide it themselves. Correct me if I am wrong, but can't a god with alter reality do far more to alleviate suffering than all the magical resetting traps in the world? The only reason they don't, I imagine, is because they are following some vision of the world, are out voted by evil and neutral deities, or have some sort of ethical system which wants people to provide for themselves.

I am not arguing that the tippyverse isn't a possibility, I am merely disagreeing with JKtrickster that it is the logical conclusion of every D&D setting.

[Arcane_Snowman]

More than likely good gods don't create an utopia through their powers because they're too busy keeping the evil gods from achieving whatever schemes they're trying to implement, and vice versa. That being said, the Tippyverse is not a utopia, it's a post scarcity society as has been mentioned a few times now, so there could be a lot of good arguments as to why an evil god would allow such a thing to come to pass as well.

But yes, there are likely campaign settings where the Tippyverse would not have come to pass, but most campaign settings haven't really thought about it, and therefore it becomes the glaring oversight that it is.

[Heliomance]

Well, the spell says highly nutritious, which in my mind means it should include some kind of fruits or veggies, or else people living off of it might get scurvy. Very much up for interpretation though. If it did produce fruit, then yeah, ferment away, whether through fabricate, a still, etc.

I always assumed the food you got from Create Food and Water was essentially the same stuff you got from Murlynd's Spoon - gruel with all the taste and texture of warm, soggy carboard, that magically contains all the nutrients you need. In a society fed on that stuff, farming would certainly have a place - producing food that actually tastes good as opposed to just keeping you alive.

[Hecuba]

So, any setting has the potential to become a tippyverse.

I'd have to disagree with that. While I do agree with the idea that Divine interference can be bypassed, there are other significant barriers for some settings:

Epic Magic: Epic magic is, by it's broad nature, significantly powerful to prevent the kind of stabalization effects that the Tippyverse sees. Instead of seeing a dominant strategy emerge (large armies, concentrated cities, etc.), escalation would likely continue.

Population and demographics: I cannot stress this enough. You need a minimum population, and in particular a minimum population of higher-level casters, for the Tippyverse to stabilize. High-level spellcasters need to be at least common enough to be replaceable.
While I doubt Haley concern about 17th level clerics existing (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0579.html) is valid for Stickworld, there are settings where it would be a reasonable question. Settings like Krynn or Birthright, where it would be reasonable to know every single person on the continent (or even world) capable of casting 9s, would almost certainly not end in a Tippyverse. Because you have a short manageable list of people you need to kill.

[gkathellar]

I always assumed the food you got from Create Food and Water was essentially the same stuff you got from Murlynd's Spoon - gruel with all the taste and texture of warm, soggy carboard, that magically contains all the nutrients you need. In a society fed on that stuff, farming would certainly have a place - producing food that actually tastes good as opposed to just keeping you alive.

Nope. Prestidigitation can reflavor food.

[Heliomance]

Nope. Prestidigitation can reflavor food.

So you're eating delicious roast beef flavoured soggy cardboard. Personally, I'd still rather have the real thing.

[gkathellar]

So you're eating delicious roast beef flavoured soggy cardboard. Personally, I'd still rather have the real thing.

a) Why? The fake thing is healthier and tastes better than any roast beef you've ever had in your life. Magic is cool like that. And that's without even getting into the inevitable Heroes' Feast traps.

b) Part of the issue is that food and water traps are a solution. Non-urban life is untenable in a Tippyverse due to the potential for teleport-based invasion, so you need some way of supplying food without the need for farmland. It just so happens that the new method of supply is better than the old one.

[absolmorph]

a) Why? The fake thing is healthier and tastes better than any roast beef you've ever had in your life. Magic is cool like that. And that's without even getting into the inevitable Heroes' Feast traps.

b) Part of the issue is that food and water traps are a solution. Non-urban life is untenable in a Tippyverse due to the potential for teleport-based invasion, so you need some way of supplying food without the need for farmland. It just so happens that the new method of supply is better than the old one.
a) Texture, for one thing. Texture is a very important part of food, though it's hard to notice. For example, eating a bacon sundae from Denny's was an experience I can only describe as "weird" because there were times when I tasted vanilla ice cream with the texture of bacon, and tasted bacon with the texture of vanilla ice cream. I like both things, but the result wasn't as appealing as they are separately. Also, some people (i.e. myself) enjoy something that gives more sensory feedback when it's chewed than slop.

b) Farming would, thus, become a luxury rather than a necessity, as other has stated in this thread.

[Heliomance]

a) Why? The fake thing is healthier and tastes better than any roast beef you've ever had in your life. Magic is cool like that. And that's without even getting into the inevitable Heroes' Feast traps.


Because as delicious and roast beef flavoured as it may taste, it still feels like warm soggy cardboard.

[Hirax]

You want the real thing? Well, ok, we'll just put heroes feast into energy transformation fields instead of create food and water. Opulence. You has it. :smallbiggrin:

[2xMachina]

Eh, luxury is about rarity.

It wouldn't be long before some rich guy thinks: "I'll eat non-magical delicious food as a symbol of my richness. I'm special above the rest of the peasants."

When all needs are met, we can then work on our wants. And desires are unlimited.

Post scarcity society would focus a lot of culture, literature, etc.
Want to watch the latest movie, etc? Work to get money to pay for the tickets.

What work to do? Produce literature, etc. Or be a caster, and support the production. Research new spells.

[sonofzeal]

I still don't understand how centralizing helps in a post-TC society the way Tippy described them.

First, decentralization doesn't increase your vulnerability. A central tenet of the Tippyverse is that Post-TC societies can mobilize large numbers of troops rapidly over huge distances. But that cuts both ways - if they can dump a full legion into your thorp within a few minutes, you can mobilize just as rapidly to respond. That's assuming you've got sufficient forces primed and ready, but that's an assumption you'll have to make under either scenario. If you can repel the invaders in your city, you can probably repel them in your thorps too.

Second, centralization actually increases your vulnerability - "all your eggs in one basket" as it were. There's going to be a non-zero response time no matter what, and centralization means a determined enemy (read: any enemy who'd try anything in the first place) could do vast amounts of damage in that time. Raiding parties are quite possible under either scenario, but their potential effectiveness goes up rapidly the more centralized things are.

Also, in a full-on takeover attempt, what they'd want to do above all is reduce your effective fighting force. A rapid strike at the heart of a city, and key infrastructure points, could easily force the defenders to split their forces and be consumed piecemeal. In a decentralized scenario, the defending force could be held in reserve until it's fully ready to crush the intruders.

[2xMachina]

I could see that food traps being created for commercialization instead, and forcing centralization to minimize cost anyway.

(Really, food traps has a insane Return on Investment. I'd make 1 just to sell the food. And to minimize local transportation costs, nearby villages consolidate into a city.)

[Tyndmyr]

Most merchants would not even bother. With the ease of life with free food and free items, why would a merchant even want to bother to drag a wagon over to a teleport circle? He can't even charge high prices for items as all items are now common. Anything rare from being far away is now common. There would only be a small market for crafted special items, no where near enough to run a business.

Worse, if a merchant can only charge the normal price for everything, why would they even bother to go get things from far, far away by teleport.

Look, this doesn't all happen instantly. The first wagons through still get to gleefully sell at full price, while taking much less risk. The sheer popularity of doing this will eventually cut prices, yes...but only because the teleport circle is now the de facto standard instead of long trade routes. This is still fine for the teleport circle owner.

And teleport circle does not rely on having free food traps. Even if both exist, food is hardly the only thing people want or need.


The US is a bad example. For each non-worker, we have five to ten workers keeping that person alive. So you'd need workers...but just look how a city would change with just free food:

You would have no more restaurants, taverns, eateries, bars, night clubs and such social hang outs. The owner would not be able to make any money off of food or drink. Why would people pay for something they could get for free. You can't even charge for the cooking and preparation as magic does that too.

Yes, because I really want to go line up at the free food repository three times a day. Some will. Some won't. And people want variety. Traps crank out the same effect every time. Even with prestidigitation, you're only getting one specific effect. The amount of money necessary to replicate every existing food would be prohibitive.

Also, I like to drink other things than water from time to time.

I mean, I theoretically could eat every meal at inexpensive restaurants now, but I don't.


If I attempt to Fabricate that food into booze, do I get a book to the head?:smallbiggrin:

Fabricate seems dubious and expensive. Invest in an Everfull Mug instead.


[QUOTE=Hecuba;12687686]I'd have to disagree with that. While I do agree with the idea that Divine interference can be bypassed, there are other significant barriers for some settings:

Epic Magic: Epic magic is, by it's broad nature, significantly powerful to prevent the kind of stabalization effects that the Tippyverse sees. Instead of seeing a dominant strategy emerge (large armies, concentrated cities, etc.), escalation would likely continue.

Epic spellcasting, by RAW, is wildly broken. That said, it's existence only makes the world devolve further into magitech, and makes it further unlikely that dirt farming peasants exist in the same world with people who can, say, create life on a whim.



Population and demographics: I cannot stress this enough. You need a minimum population, and in particular a minimum population of higher-level casters, for the Tippyverse to stabilize. High-level spellcasters need to be at least common enough to be replaceable.

Negative. Tippyverse does not kill off high level casters, and relies on a permanent effect. Therefore, a single caster capable of pulling out Teleportation Circle can create a tippyverse. Furthermore, if no other high level casters exist in this setting, who is gonna stop him?


Settings like Krynn or Birthright, where it would be reasonable to know every single person on the continent (or even world) capable of casting 9s, would almost certainly not end in a Tippyverse. Because you have a short manageable list of people you need to kill.

So...tell me how someone who isn't a high level caster is going to plausibly kill every high level caster in the setting?

And why would he? That evil bastard, creating cheaper trade and free food? That doesn't seem like the kind of thing that attracts endless enemies.


You want the real thing? Well, ok, we'll just put heroes feast into energy transformation fields instead of create food and water. Opulence. You has it. :smallbiggrin:

An option, but a more expensive one. Classes and such will still exist.

[Hirax]

An option, but a more expensive one. Classes and such will still exist.

I have no idea why classes are relevant, but it's not more expensive, energy transformation field is cheaper than traps as a source of food. The spell put into it doesn't affect the cost, so it simply has a flat cost of 5,000GP and 250XP, plus the cost of any magic item that can be used an unlimited number of times. Talisman of the disk is 500GP, perhaps there's something out there cheaper. A food trap costs +500 gp × caster level × spell level, +40 XP × caster level × spell level, so unless you can get it as a second level spell somehow, energy transformation field wins.

[Tyndmyr]

I have no idea why classes are relevant, but it's not more expensive, energy transformation field is cheaper than traps as a source of food. The spell put into it doesn't affect the cost, so it simply has a flat cost of 5,000GP and 250XP, plus the cost of any magic item that can be used an unlimited number of times. Talisman of the disk is 500GP, perhaps there's something out there cheaper. A food trap costs +500 gp × caster level × spell level, +40 XP × caster level × spell level, so unless you can get it as a second level spell somehow, energy transformation field wins.

I mean, social classes.

It's not about traps vs transformation fields...it's about more rare stuff requiring higher level spells, and thus, more money to create...you still have an economy in a tippyverse, it just works a bit differently than a normal D&D economy is frequently expected to.

[Hirax]

Ah, I agree social classes would definitely still exist, though I'm unclear where you're going with everything else. It's hard to envision traditional methods of food production being cheaper than ETF hero feasts, taking into account a comparison of the infrastructure required to support each.

[Zaranthan]

It's hard to envision traditional methods of food production being cheaper than ETF hero feasts

They're NOT. That's the POINT. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Veblen_good)

[bloodtide]

Yes, because I really want to go line up at the free food repository three times a day. Some will. Some won't. And people want variety. Traps crank out the same effect every time. Even with prestidigitation, you're only getting one specific effect. The amount of money necessary to replicate every existing food would be prohibitive.

Also, I like to drink other things than water from time to time.

I mean, I theoretically could eat every meal at inexpensive restaurants now, but I don't.

This is a good argument as to why create food will not work. By RAW, you can only create bland food and drinks like tasty rain water. And while this will keep you alive, it's not very good food. Most people like a little change in their diet, few people would want to eat the same thing day after day. So most people would not even want to use the create food way.

Unless you go for custom homebrew spells to fix this(but you can't as then you could use custom homebrew spells to fix everything).

[OracleofWuffing]

Most people like a little change in their diet, few people would want to eat the same thing day after day.
Most commoners live off of a diet of bread, baked turnips, onions, and water, day in and day out, and they're typically most of the population. Unless you go by the RAW which inevitably allows them to become millionaires, they haven't even had a varied diet in their dreams.

Sure, you'll still have the far-spread and sparce rich-yuppie-butterfly-snowflake-aristocrat doing otherwise, but they typically do not compose most of the population.

[Keld Denar]

The Tippyverse isn't a utopia. It's not. People need to stop thinking this. It is not classless. There are still very rich and very powerful people, and there are very poor people who have little to no say in what they do. The only change would be what goods and services are produced and consumed. Having a centralized population and unlimited nuitrition only gilts what is being produced and consumed. Things that can't readily be produced by magic would be the new luxury items, and only the rich would possess them. A carrot might be the new diamond, because there will be few to no carrot farmer since farming requires land, people to work the land, and a sizeable army and magic to defend it from monsters, neighboring armies, and carrot thieves. A single carrot might cost 1000 gold to produce, and might retail for 3000+ gold each. Nobles would invite each other over for carrot cake or carrot stew as a way to flaunt their wealth in the same way modern people wear $20,000 dresses and drive $250,000 cars.

It's not utopia. Nobody who knows what it is has said that. It would still function under a lot of the same socio, economic, and political drivers that any other world would operate at. The only difference is that the paradygm would be shifted and different things would have different value. A poor person would only eat magically created food because that's all they could afford. Middle class people would mostly eat magically created food, but sometime spring for natural foods, depending on their desires. Rich people would consume mostly natural foods, and would fly around on $250,000 flying carpets.

I'm pretty middle class. I have enough money to surivive, and to do some fun stuff. If I choose to eat nicer food, I won't have as much money to buy a bigger house. If I buy a really nice car, I probably won't be able to go out partying with my friends very often. Same thing with the Tippyverse. It's the same, just with a shift in WHAT is desired. If a person doesn't want to eat soggy cardboard, they better be able to afford natural food, which won't be cheap at all.

[Tyndmyr]

This is a good argument as to why create food will not work. By RAW, you can only create bland food and drinks like tasty rain water. And while this will keep you alive, it's not very good food. Most people like a little change in their diet, few people would want to eat the same thing day after day. So most people would not even want to use the create food way.

Unless you go for custom homebrew spells to fix this(but you can't as then you could use custom homebrew spells to fix everything).

There is a huge gap between "Does not work ever" and "does not work all the time".

If the food trap is basically free, and makes the most delicious stew ever, I'll probably eat there whenever I feel like stew, and not eat there when I feel like eating something else.

The poorer the person, the more likely they are to eat there frequently, as the saved money matters more than the repetition.

[NinjaStylerobot]

Thing is though:

Daimonds are rare. Carrots even a commoner could easily grow.

[Tyndmyr]

This is a good argument as to why create food will not work. By RAW, you can only create bland food and drinks like tasty rain water. And while this will keep you alive, it's not very good food. Most people like a little change in their diet, few people would want to eat the same thing day after day. So most people would not even want to use the create food way.

Unless you go for custom homebrew spells to fix this(but you can't as then you could use custom homebrew spells to fix everything).

There is a huge gap between "Does not work ever" and "works every single time".

If the food trap is basically free, and makes the most delicious stew ever, I'll probably eat there whenever I feel like stew, and not eat there when I feel like eating something else.

The poorer the person, the more likely they are to eat there frequently, as the saved money matters more than the repetition.

[Gavinfoxx]

Just FYI guys, there are several possible ways a particular Tippyverse could be an infinite wealth / infinite labor done without people having to do it / post scarcity society!

First, here is a list of ways to get spells into items to cast said spells:

1.) Eternal Wands, from Magic Item Compendium. They have a little bit of an extra surcharge on them from the DMG formula, but gives 2/day casting of spells levels 1-3.

2.) Magical traps using the DMG rules for recharge and stuff. Note that if you want precedent for magical traps that are beneficial, look at the Boon traps in Dungeonscape.

3.) Drow House Insignia sorts of items, explained in the book Races of Faerun, pg 175. They were updated to be more pricey in Drow of the Underdark. This gives a specific form, 1/day limitation, and certain spell levels, I think 1-3.

4.) Minor Schema, from the book Magic of Eberron (A way to cast spells lvl 1-6, once a day. Further, these work better for Artificers, who can apply their class features to this. If An Artificer makes a Schema of Wall of Iron, and he has a Lesser Rod of Invisible Spell, he could -- for example -- make Invisible Iron...)

5.) Generic wondrous items that cast spells, per the DMG rules for custom magic items. ESPECIALLY go for infinite use, use activated ones once you have the money.

6.) Spell Turrets, from Dungeon Master's Guide II

7.) Spell Clocks, from here: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/cw/20070312a&dcmp=ILC-RSSDND

Of course use as many of the Cost Reduction techniques as is viable, especially from the Cost Reduction Technique Handbook (online).

An Artificer could, of course, use techniques to get spells more cheaply, perhaps using the Bargain bin list (online), perhaps.

Of course, a traditional Wizard or Cleric or Archivist or whatever could simply use scrying techniques to seek these sorts of people out, and pay them to help cast their cheaper spells into the devices (or the prayerbook, for the Archivist). Remember, people can work together to craft!

Here are some of the spells you use to put in things, or to just cast yourself, depending on how you use it. They all are multipliers of the sort of work that can be done in society, or relieve various constraints on production of goods. Several of these can create infinite amounts of work or help with skills or infinite raw materials of the appropriate type or infinite finished goods:

Wall of Iron
Wall of Stone
Wall of Salt
Stone Metamorphosis
Greater Stone Metamorphosis
Clearstone
Permanency
Plant Growth
Ironwood
Transmute Rock to Mud
Transmute Mud to Rock
Transmute Metal to Wood
Transmute Stone to Sand
Transmute Sand to Stone
Transmute Sand to Glass
Transmute Metal to Wood
Soften Earth and Stone
Move Earth
Unseen Servant
Hardening
Unseen Crafter
Shape Metal
Metal Melt
Stone Shape
Greater Stone Shape
Fabricate
Nature's Rampart
Magecraft
Planar Ally
Planar Binding
Lesser Planar Ally
Lesser Planar Binding

Also use Decanter of Endless Water, Decanter of Endless Sand, Lyre of Building, planar bind or planar ally things all the way from Lantern Archons for infinite continual flame to Djinn for infinite of ANY plant based items (soarwood, serrenwood, darkwood, densewood, fey cherry wood, duskwood, livewood, bronzewood, other plant based things things like (plant based) lacquer, deisel (it also comes from a tree, you know), rubber, resin, glue, paper, cardboard, cumin, silphium, coffee, saffron, tobacco, pepper, oil, chilies, paprika, cacao, anise, poppy, marijuana, etc. etc.), to Efreeti or Noble Djinn for full Wishes (which get 25k worth of mundane stuff or 15k worth of magic stuff a pop; check the 3.0 vs 3.5e srd rules on Wishes). Of course you will want to Simulacrum some of them, especially the 'Ha ha you're screwed' Efreetis and Noble Djinn's that you will be wanting to get Wishes from.

Of course if you don't want to do the full Wish Economy, then you might want to research custom spells to do work, using the rules in the DMG to do so. Unseen Laborer (a Profession variant of Unseen Crafter; profession: Miner, perhaps? Profession: Lumberjack?) would be useful. Also a few more 'Transmute' spells perhaps, to get better metal than low quality Iron. I would suggest trying to research a Transmute Iron to Greensteel (fiendish codex 2), the closest thing D&D has to a very high quality modern steel that is actually functionally different than Iron. This is something that could conceivably be used on, say, breech loading cannon and firearms (it's strong enough for it). And once you get your truly modern machine shop (see later parts of this post) set up, it would be FANTASTICALLY easy to make firearms that are at least as good as the Winchester Rifle. Remember that lots of spells can be stacked to improve knowledge checks, should you need an epic knowledge check in order to bypass several hundred years of real world firearms design in a few days worth of design and writing down ideas with alchemy, mechanics, etc. You also might want to invent elevators, bicycles, steam engines, batteries and capacitors, etc. Remember that if you need ideas for summoning different materials or transmuting metals to different metals, the spells that the transmute and wall of X spells were based off of ARE in 2nd edition, and there ARE rules for getting more obscure sorts of 'walls of x' and transmuting from that. Talk to your DM!

Remember, D&D material science is potentially better than the material science in our real life world, so take advantage of that fact (check out the Crafting Handbook for lots of ideas for mundane crafting). Glassteel, from its D&D stats, basically combines the best aspects of Glass, Aluminum, the strongest steels, etc. Its basically a perfect construction material for anything.

Create several perpetual motion machines, make advanced machine shops (I have a design for one that uses a simple repeating trap of a blockade spell, a LEVEL 1 SPELL, that looks like a Ferris wheel, and is about as powerful as a V6 engine at high RPM; use that for mechanical force, for flywheels, or to generate electricity. Whatever!). Get repeating traps of things that help quality of life and productivity, like:

Endure Elements
Prestidigitation
Create Food and Water
Purify Food and Drink
Good Hope
Make Whole
Lesser Restoration
Panacea
Low Light Vision
Superior Darkvision
Mount

Also for cheap and easy birth control, set up a trap device of 'Bestow Curse - Infertility' and one of 'Remove Curse', if your population boom from all the free food and items threatens to overwhelm your infrastructure creation.

Use an Elation / Good Hope / Distilled Joy (make sure to get someone like a Factotum to cast the Distilled Joy into the trap as a SLA, negating the long casting time) to extract infinite amounts of Ambrosia for crafting. Alternately, an Artificer who gets access to a 1/day item of Ironwood or a Boon trap of Ironwood could simply create magical Ironwood breastplates and drain those for crafting XP. Or you could just get the Wood Shape / Wall of Iron / Transmute Metal to Wood / Ironwood combo going for unlimited +1 Ironwood weapons and armor for your entire civilization -- that's always nice and useful. And remember, before you have all of this stuff set up, there ARE rules (mostly in web articles) about sharing the XP cost for crafting things.

Of course if you are gong to be doing the crafting YOURSELF, you will need Craft Construct or Craft Homunculus to make hosts and hosts and hosts of mass Dedicated Wrights to do all of this work,what with your unlimited wealth and supplies and infinite XP. This opens up constructs to be a large part of the area you are uplifting as well. Use the ideas from the Mechonomocon handbook (online) to figure out how to do Construct crafting most effectively!

Generally, Effigies work really well, even if you don't go insane with the Mr. Roboto (online) trick. Also, Homunculus can have customized skills, so you could make one which could perpetually play your Lyre of Building and just get huge massive amounts of labor done wherever that creature goes. Of course, there are several ways of giving constructs intelligence; my favorite is simply to embed an intelligent item into the construct, and tell the construct to do what the item says.

There is also another trick, with the spell 'Fabricate' and magical traps. When you build a repeating magic device trap, you put in 100 * the cost of the material component of the spell... after that, the trap can cast the spell. This would work fantastically well with Fabricate traps made to make only one specific standard item, over and over and over again.

Thus, a Auto Reset trap of Fabricate designed to make a diamond worth 30 gp costs raw diamonds requiring 100 * 1/3rd of 30 gp, or 1,000 gp of diamonds. Then, it spits out a 30 gp diamond every time it it works... and it works 14,000 times a day, forever... As a 5th level spell at caster level 9, the other bits of this trap costs 22,500 gp and 180 xp and 47 days of time to craft. In one day, it will make 14,400 30 gp diamonds, or 432,000 gp worth of diamonds.

A version with 3,000 gp diamonds costs raw diamonds requiring 100 * 1/3rd of 3,000 gp, or 100,000 gp in materials. Then, it spits out a 3,000 gp cut diamond every time it goes off. This one takes 245, 122,500 gp and 180 xp, to give you a 3,000 gp diamond every round forever. After one day (14,400 rounds), you have 14,400 3,000 gp diamonds, or 43,200,000 gp worth of diamonds.

Now, with regards to getting things moving everywhere, You can nest Bags of Holding. This means that with Ring Gates, you can get near any amount of item you can put in a bag of holding to the other end of the Ring Gate (you can nest bags of holding, remember that). Also, Teleportation Circles, which can move a ridiculous amount of supply (or soldiers, or whatever) fantastically far, so that very very dense urban centers start to become the only viable means of guarding against attack... because it is very, very, very hard (even with these sorts of things available) to guard against attacks via teleport or Teleportation Circle, especially when an enemy empire can dump their entire army on your doorstep at a moment's notice via a single Teleportation Circle... Even if a version of the Lair Wards from Draconomicon is developed that prevents or shunts a teleport somewhere, that still only reduces, not eliminates the issue... Also note, that a properly designed level 11 Warlock is capable of getting access to Teleportation Circle, so you don't precisely need a level 18 Wizard or whatever.

Basically, what you have with all of this set up is the ingredients for basically no one to ever need to do manual labor, and an economy where no actual 'things' are scarce, except for things that are unique and hand made by hand the old fashioned way, and everyone has lots of built things and magic items and stuff, and there is no disease or illness and no one needs to sleep if they don't want to, etc. etc. AND people can materialize in the streets from far away, and as long as they don't start killing people, no one bats an eye.. -- you know, a civilization that has more in common with Star Trek than the Middle Ages...


Now, the question is, with all of these tricks possible -- why DO D&D worlds look like medieval stasis worlds??

[jindra34]

Now, the question is, with all of these tricks possible -- why DO D&D worlds look like medieval stasis worlds??

Carry over from base works (aka stories) that were the foundation for DnD, and prior editions where magic was less of a science and more of a very risky art. Or maybe there is a secret cabal of Uber-mages preventing this like in GURPS Banestorm, which has magocracy enforced no-science.

[Sonza]

Heya, newbie here.

My first reaction to this thread was "What's a Tippyverse?"

I scrolled down, and I gather from context that it's a campaign setting invented by a person called Tippy (I think).

Sorry if I've missed it, but I couldn't find any reference to where the original post by Tippy can be found. Can someone link me, please?

Thanks,

S
XXX

[jindra34]

Heya, newbie here.

My first reaction to this thread was "What's a Tippyverse?"

I scrolled down, and I gather from context that it's a campaign setting invented by a person called Tippy (I think).

Sorry if I've missed it, but I couldn't find any reference to where the original post by Tippy can be found. Can someone link me, please?

Thanks,

S
XXX

Link To Tippy's discussion on what it is. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=222007&highlight=tippyverse)

[Kansaschaser]

Now, the question is, with all of these tricks possible -- why DO D&D worlds look like medieval stasis worlds??

Good question. Here are a few possible answers.

1. The spellcasters that work for the royalty/kingdom don't have the required magic item creation feats.

2. The spellcasters that work for the city/society don't have the required magic item creation feats.

3. If the spellcasters do have the required magic item creation feats, it's possible they don't have access to the spells necessary.

4. Even if the spellcasters do have the required magic item creation feats and the spells necessary, they are selfish and have no desire to help their society.

5. If the spellcasters have created the necessary items for a "tippyverse", maybe they only let a select few use them.

Lastly, and possibly even less likely...

6. The spellcasters have the spells and feats necessary to create a "tippyverse", but have not thought of them as possible. For instance, most people that think of traps don't think of putting beneficial spells into them.

These are the only ones I can think of.

[Coidzor]

Ah, I agree social classes would definitely still exist, though I'm unclear where you're going with everything else. It's hard to envision traditional methods of food production being cheaper than ETF hero feasts, taking into account a comparison of the infrastructure required to support each.

Sorry, but what does ETF stand for again?

[OracleofWuffing]

Don't forget that if Magic Item Compendium is on the table, items like Horn of Plenty and Cornucopia of the Needful are also on the table.


Sorry, but what does ETF stand for again?
Energy Transformation Field, I presume.

[Hecuba]

Epic spellcasting, by RAW, is wildly broken. That said, it's existence only makes the world devolve further into magitech, and makes it further unlikely that dirt farming peasants exist in the same world with people who can, say, create life on a whim.
I agree. That's actually my point, at least relative to epic magic. The presence of epic magic (or, to a lesser extent, broadly allowed spell research, circle casting, or city casting) vastly diminishes the strong case for the pure-strategy result that stabalizes the Tippyverse as described. I'm not saying that it wouldn't be over the top and magi-tech like, merely that the strong case for it playing out remotely close to the way it's described is far less strong if epic spells are introduced.


Negative. Tippyverse does not kill off high level casters, and relies on a permanent effect. Therefore, a single caster capable of pulling out Teleportation Circle can create a tippyverse. Furthermore, if no other high level casters exist in this setting, who is gonna stop him?
Permanent is only permanent until dispelled. As such, you don't merely need access to Teleportation circle, you need reliable access to teleportation circle. Moreover, to have the military climate as described, you need reliable access to teleportation circle for multiple powers.



So...tell me how someone who isn't a high level caster is going to plausibly kill every high level caster in the setting?

And why would he? That evil bastard, creating cheaper trade and free food? That doesn't seem like the kind of thing that attracts endless enemies.

NOt every high level caster can cast TC. Moreover, while a solo character would have little chance of beating a wizard if not T1 or 2, you could accomplish it with enough well chosen lower tier characters.

As to why? TC as used in the tippyverse is much like nuklear physics: if you reasonably believe that you can keep all the enemy's nuklear phycisists dead, you might well do so even if they are only designing power plants and not bombs.

[2xMachina]

A T1 class with access to lvl 9 spells is very unlikely to be killed by anything other than something similar to itself.

[Coidzor]

A T1 class with access to lvl 9 spells is very unlikely to be killed by anything other than something similar to itself.

If they're paranoid loners, you're not getting a shot at them.

If they have friends and allies, those friends and allies are also going to be powerful players, and unless one enacts some kind of ludicrously complicated Ocean's Eleven plot to kill all of them simultaneously, well, it ain't going to be pretty.

And if one is doing Ocean's Eleven plots, one might as well be a bunch of T1s and TO builds and be trying to steal all the copies of the Pact Primeval.

[Hecuba]

A T1 class with access to lvl 9 spells is very unlikely to be killed by anything other than something similar to itself.

That depends on how much resources you are willing to throw at it and how much you can tailor those resources. What is the difference in population between casters with 9s and casters with 5s? The greater the difference here, the greater the possibility divination can be moved to your advantage and against the Wizard17's advantage. And with enough information, contingencies can be planned for.

You'll also need a large number of Gatecrashers, silver keys, etc. to throw at them.

There are T3 solutions for T1 tools. There are even pre-9 solutions for 9 tools. The issue is that it generally involves a much higher chance of mortality and needs a far greater variety of resources than, say, 6 to 8 people can provide. It's well outside the resources of an adventuring party, but it can be within the reach of a nation... if they're willing to accept a high enough body count.

Moreover, this might be a desirable goal even if you have more than one T1 with 9s: if my country has a cleric, yours has a Wizard, and country C's has a Druid, both country C and I might well want to send our T1s to kill off yours.

[jpreem]

I have a thought of a wordl that fights with rising sea levels caused by all those machines powered by decanters of endless water. (A device frequently mentioned in this thread).
i guess theyd have to use spheres of annihilation or somesuch.

[panaikhan]

I have a thought of a wordl that fights with rising sea levels caused by all those machines powered by decanters of endless water. (A device frequently mentioned in this thread).
i guess theyd have to use spheres of annihilation or somesuch.

The world is flat, and all the excess water simply pours over the edge...

[Tyndmyr]

I agree. That's actually my point, at least relative to epic magic. The presence of epic magic (or, to a lesser extent, broadly allowed spell research, circle casting, or city casting) vastly diminishes the strong case for the pure-strategy result that stabalizes the Tippyverse as described. I'm not saying that it wouldn't be over the top and magi-tech like, merely that the strong case for it playing out remotely close to the way it's described is far less strong if epic spells are introduced.

Granted, but epic spellcasting tends to lead to a dead end regardless, if allowed in it's entirety. Limiting mitigation is at least a minimal step on the way, and assumption that, at least at first, no epic casters exist is not unreasonable.


Permanent is only permanent until dispelled. As such, you don't merely need access to Teleportation circle, you need reliable access to teleportation circle. Moreover, to have the military climate as described, you need reliable access to teleportation circle for multiple powers.

If there is a lack of high level casters, then there is a lack of people who can dispel something cast by the kind of person who can cast TC(normally level 17+). There will be some, but the list will not be extremely large.


NOt every high level caster can cast TC. Moreover, while a solo character would have little chance of beating a wizard if not T1 or 2, you could accomplish it with enough well chosen lower tier characters.

Lower tier and lower level? And why wouldn't the wizard have similar allies? Certainly the people benefiting from the TC would at least wish for him to live, generally speaking?


As to why? TC as used in the tippyverse is much like nuklear physics: if you reasonably believe that you can keep all the enemy's nuklear phycisists dead, you might well do so even if they are only designing power plants and not bombs.

Nuclear physicists are not like unto a god in a fight. If they were, I suspect this tactic would not be as viable.


If they're paranoid loners, you're not getting a shot at them.

If they have friends and allies, those friends and allies are also going to be powerful players, and unless one enacts some kind of ludicrously complicated Ocean's Eleven plot to kill all of them simultaneously, well, it ain't going to be pretty.

And if one is doing Ocean's Eleven plots, one might as well be a bunch of T1s and TO builds and be trying to steal all the copies of the Pact Primeval.

Even better, if we're into that manner of complexity, we've got the setting for a great campaign.

[Doug Lampert]

This is a good argument as to why create food will not work. By RAW, you can only create bland food and drinks like tasty rain water. And while this will keep you alive, it's not very good food. Most people like a little change in their diet, few people would want to eat the same thing day after day. So most people would not even want to use the create food way.

Unless you go for custom homebrew spells to fix this(but you can't as then you could use custom homebrew spells to fix everything).

Do people not understand the REPEATED mention, throughout this thread, of prestidigitation traps?

NO ONE is eating bland food! It's all flavored, and each trap produces a different flavor at that, so in a large city with many traps you can easily have varied and good flavors, all the time.

[Tyndmyr]

Do people not understand the REPEATED mention, throughout this thread, of prestidigitation traps?

NO ONE is eating bland food! It's all flavored, and each trap produces a different flavor at that, so in a large city with many traps you can easily have varied and good flavors, all the time.

Granted, but food tastes change, there are fads, not everyone like the same thing.

Yes, 90%+ will be made by these traps, and purely tasteless food will be eaten only by the poorest of the poor, but there'll always be room for change, and a bit of naturally grown stuff for experimentation, prestige and the like.

[Gavinfoxx]

Um, you do know that a prestidigitation trap could work as if the person cast prestidigitation (or extended prestidigitation) on themselves, giving themselves the use of the spell for an hour or two? Thus, people could flavor their food however they want, and even between bites, for two hours!

[Zaranthan]

Prestidigitation doesn't do texture. Bacon-flavored gruel still FEELS like you're eating boogers, no matter how much you magic it up.

[bloodtide]

What about spell casting though. A world would not have that many spell casters....and even more so would not have that many good and skillful spellcasters.

By Raw, the average ability score is 10. So by 'average' that means that something like half the world would have 10's for stats. So there would be tons and tons of spellcasters with low scores in their primary casting ability. And the end result would be weak spellcasters.

[Coidzor]

Prestidigitation doesn't do texture. Bacon-flavored gruel still FEELS like you're eating boogers, no matter how much you magic it up.

Now, childhood is a very, very distant thing for me, but I would not describe gruel as having the texture of boogers.

And obviously you go with flavors that actually synergize with the texture rather than being silly about it.


By Raw, the average ability score is 10. So by 'average' that means that something like half the world would have 10's for stats. So there would be tons and tons of spellcasters with low scores in their primary casting ability. And the end result would be weak spellcasters.

...Which is more than made up for by the people who are naturally higher than 10.

Your assertion basically flies in the face of the assumptions of every setting I know of, which has there being exceptional individuals amongst PCs and NPCs alike.

This is a rather anemic argument you're making.

[Keld Denar]

Prestidigitation doesn't do texture. Bacon-flavored gruel still FEELS like you're eating boogers, no matter how much you magic it up.

Yea, but after a couple of generations, people, especially poor people, won't really know that food "feels" any different than warm soggy cardboard. Its like trying to explain colors to a person who has been blind since birth...they just have no comprehension because they have no basis of comparison.

[Douglas]

What about spell casting though. A world would not have that many spell casters....and even more so would not have that many good and skillful spellcasters.

By Raw, the average ability score is 10. So by 'average' that means that something like half the world would have 10's for stats. So there would be tons and tons of spellcasters with low scores in their primary casting ability. And the end result would be weak spellcasters.
That's not what "average" means. It means that if you add up all the ability scores and divide the total by how many of them there are, the result is 10.

The typical assumption is that the general population has ability scores that follow the 3d6 distribution. This produces an average of 10.5 (the often quoted 10 is just rounding to an even number), but only 12.5% of the population actually has a 10 for any given ability score. For any one ability score, on average for every 216 people there will be 1 person with a 3, 3 people with a 4, 6 with a 5, and so on following this table:
{table=head]Score|People|Percent
3|1|.46%
4|3|1.39%
5|6|2.78%
6|10|4.63%
7|15|6.94%
8|21|9.72%
9|25|11.57%
10|27|12.5%
11|27|12.5%
12|25|11.57%
13|21|9.72%
14|15|6.94%
15|10|4.63%
16|6|2.78%
17|3|1.39%
18|1|.46%[/table]

In a city of 10,000 people, somewhere around 46 of them will have an 18 base intelligence score. Take a mega-city with population in the millions, and you get thousands or even tens of thousands of people with 18 int and ten times that many with at least 16.

[Hirax]

I say we switch to energy transformation fields and heroes' feast for the baseline of food, due to it being cheaper than create food and water traps anyway. Not that all the 'but gruel...' arguments had any weight anyway, but it's a simple way to douse them.

[Talakeal]

Is the assumption that most people use the 3d6 method? I though arrays were used for the "common folk" and rolling was only for notable NPCs. 3d6 doesn't produce anything resembling a real world curve, which makes for a very weird dynamic.
If you assume that an 18 intelligence is human maximum, 200+ IQ, then that means there are as many 200+ IQ people in a D&D city as there are 140 IQ people in the real world.
If you go the other way, and assume a 18 IQ equals about 140 IQ (i.e. .46% of the population) then you get a situation where people with a 200+ IQ, a very small but still notable portion of the population, would have to have IQs in the low to mid 20s, something which is impossible for low level humans to achieve, and thus your D&D society has no supra geniuses who are not also high level wizards.

[Doug Lampert]

Is the assumption that most people use the 3d6 method? I though arrays were used for the "common folk" and rolling was only for notable NPCs. 3d6 doesn't produce anything resembling a real world curve, which makes for a very weird dynamic.
If you assume that an 18 intelligence is human maximum, 200+ IQ, then that means there are as many 200+ IQ people in a D&D city as there are 140 IQ people in the real world.
If you go the other way, and assume a 18 IQ equals about 140 IQ (i.e. .46% of the population) then you get a situation where people with a 200+ IQ, a very small but still notable portion of the population, would have to have IQs in the low to mid 20s, something which is impossible for low level humans to achieve, and thus your D&D society has no supra geniuses who are not also high level wizards.

3d6 and 4d6 drop 1 produce the NPC and elite arrays respectively if you take the median result for the best of 6 rolls, second best of 6 rolls, ext....

Thus the arrays point to the traditional 3d6 for NPCs, and the NPC array, explicitely there for NPC classed characters like ordinary commoners still gives one score of 13, more than good enough to be a wizard.

[Jack_Simth]

Anyone has any thoughts on this?
The biggest reasons why a Tippyverse wouldn't happen:

1) House rules of various natures (Which are DM's prerogative, and may or may not apply): Toxic magic (think carbon monoxide smoke; a little and you'll barely notice; get seeped in it constantly, and your blood gets gummed up and you die from lack of oxygen sooner or later... or possibly horribly mutate, whatever), magic is in limited supply (regenerates, but if you try to use it to feed a nation, you'll run out and it'll stop working in the area), beneficial traps just don't work, Permanent Teleportation circles and self-resetting traps only work around 10,000 times, or some such.
2) Cultural/Social issues (Which are also DM's prerogative, and may or may not apply). In order for most of these things to have the effects people extrapolate, there has to be no strenuous objection to them in the early stages, and people mostly need to operate in mostly unified groups. If all those innkeepers along the trade routes are going under due to that Permanent Teleportation Circle trade route, how sure are you that they won't hire a rogue to dress up as a merchant and make that DC 34 Disable Device check to turn the circle into a waste of 4,500 xp and end the trade route? If you can't prevent that kind of thing from happening during the formative stages (or at least keep it down to an affordable level), then the TC's (and any other such item, such as the Create Food and Water trap) don't have the lifespan to have the effect needed.

OK, yes, you can bypass 2 with various forms of Wish abuse... but then you're engaging in Wish abuse, which very, very few DMs will tolerate, and will produce a very odd society anyway.

If you're the DM, and you specifically do not want your society turning into a tippyverse, well, pick one.

[MukkTB]

Well the obvious answer is that the gods would step in to stop it. Or demons. Or monsters from the great beyond.

That answer totally fails to satisfy me.



There is also the possibility that Wizards haven't developed the idea that you can automate magic. Its pretty obvious to us. It might not be obvious to them in the same way that the wheel wasn't obvious to prehistoric humans. It took them along time to invent that thing.

However that doesn't explain the stasis. If you use our world for a guideline then a medieval world probably needs 500-1000 years of development to figure industrial things out. Then some outside force needs to intervene. Gods, Demons, or a cataclysm. Regularly.

This answer also fails to satisfy me. That 500-1000 years represents the time required to get the physical implements needed to use that kind of mindset. By RAW the tools required to go Tippyverse already exist. The books indicate by having the spells in their exist, that at least one person has already developed the things in the world.


So why does't Tippyverse happen? The basis is just 'Characters use magic in the most advantageous ways.' And yet, if you walk into a random D&D town the chance of finding anyone trying to use the magic they have to systematically improve life is remote. They'll have Dong's Rod of Infinite Fiery Balls which they try to fry you with. They'll have the Cursed Always Sopping Wet Cloak in corner waiting for some unlucky PC to try on. They'll never put the two together to make a steam engine.


The only real reason is because of the narrative. A Star Trek Magitek world isn't what the narrative is trying to create. Then to enforce the narrative you just have to ignore the problem or select some stupid explanation to cover it up as best you can. "Wizards go insane when they get access to powerful magic and so they never think how to use it rationally."


May I refer you to TVtropes?
http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/CutLexLuthorACheck
It happens all the time. Some guy has an awesome idea for a phlebotinum device. But he doesn't think through the consequences of its existence.


The problem is two things.

#1 Magic has no fundamental cost.
Imagine I handed you a monkey's paw and told you it was powerful magic. It could grant wishes. Would you use it to make your life better if it worked every time you wished?
No you wouldn't. If you had any clue at all you would bury the thing. The fundamental costs of using it are so awful that its just not worth messing with.

#2 Magic is 100% reliable.
If magic had weird random effects every time that it was used it would be impossible to create magi tech. I'm not going to eat from the food dispenser trap if there is a random chance the food will come out poisoned or cursed.

An ideal magic system for a traditional D&D setting would fix these two things. It would have a cost that was quadratic. Paying for a little bit of magic is cheap. Paying for a lot is crushingly expensive. It would randomize the effects enough so that you couldn't industrialize a bit of magic.



That said, I like the Tippyverse and plan on setting some adventures there soon.

[Hecuba]

Granted, but epic spellcasting tends to lead to a dead end regardless, if allowed in it's entirety. Limiting mitigation is at least a minimal step on the way, and assumption that, at least at first, no epic casters exist is not unreasonable.

We don't seem to disagree on this at all. My point is that it's outcome is notably different from the world Tippy describes.


If there is a lack of high level casters, then there is a lack of people who can dispel something cast by the kind of person who can cast TC(normally level 17+). There will be some, but the list will not be extremely large.
Keep in mind that is is a trap as well, so you can also toss in people with sufficient Disable Device. It will still be a small number, but that's fine.

There doesn't need to be a huge number: there nearly need to be enough that a military strategy revolving around dispelling and/or disarming could be reasonably implemented. And I'm not saying that this would cause TC to have no effect, but rather that it would likely result in a world with a significantly different geopolitical face than the one Tippy describes.


Lower tier and lower level?
And why wouldn't the wizard have similar allies? Certainly the people benefiting from the TC would at least wish for him to live, generally speaking?
I was thinking more "or". But "and" could work too: it would just take more resources.

Setting aside his/her personal power for a moment, a level 17+ caster has some truly significant resources, but that does not mean that there are not countries or organizations with more.

As to the allies, it is always defending is always harder in an absolute sense. 3.5 makes it more so, particularly if there is disparate access to divination.

Moreover, even if the wizard does manage to become truly immortal and un-killable, this still does not result in the Tippyverse as described. Such a wizard could well choose to kill any other casters approaching the ability to cast TC: this in turn limits access to TC to a single power. Alternately, they could consolidate power and create a single global nation. In either example, we have a radically different world than the Tippyverse.

I think a more general statement of my point would be useful here. To my understanding, one of the basic points of the Tippyverse is Tippy's argument that it is the natural outcome, and arguably the expected outcome, of access to TC.
His argument for this is strong, and (on the whole) I agree. But I think it needs to be reliable* access to TC. And while 1 person or 2 people can represent reliable, it is far from a forgone conclusion. At most they would represent edge cases, given the correct 1 or two people.

*Specifically, reliable enough that disrupting your enemy's access to TCs is not a viable long-term strategy. It may well remain a good short-term tactic, though.


Nuclear physicists are not like unto a god in a fight. If they were, I suspect this tactic would not be as viable.

Really? For example, if you were racing an otherwise militarily superior country to TC, and you knew from past experience that they would like to wipe your country off the map, you wouldn't be willing to accept astronomical losses to kill the caster? TC is plenty powerful enough to facilitate genocide: in the face of that, I would be willing to accept some very high troop depletion levels to try and kill the caster.