Tippyverse question [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

Dr. Yes

2012-06-24, 01:55 AM

You could certainly have a single supreme mage ruling over the world under D&D rules. With the exponential growth of wizards' power, it's totally plausible that one or a few ruthless individuals would sieze control and stamp out any potential competition.

Tippyverse is based on several deeply flawed assumptions, including, but not limited to:

The systematic problems with traps that aren't traps. (E.g. well outside of RAI or RACSD)
A failure to understand basic economics*
A gross overestimation of the quantities of level 20 wizards
A gross overestimation of those wizards being eager and willing to blow large chunks of xp on teleportation circles
A gross overestimation of the return on investment from building said teleportation circles*

*Not that you can blame Tippy for this, when the very game designers also suffer from this same flaw. Essentially, if you want to run a fantasy game where magic is a logical and inherent part of the economic system, D&D makes a terrible starting point. Consider Eberron for instance, there is a nation (Darguun?) which has I think less than a million inhabitants. If you assume that peasants make coppers per day, and skilled craftsmen make silvers per day, then the GDP of a nation that size is going to be comparable to what a high level party is going to consider their working gear. The returns on adventuring are such as to render traditional economics irrelevant.

RAI is just code for "pretty common house rules", and the quantity of level 20 wizards depends entirely on the details of your campaign world. As far as being willing to make teleportation circles, any wizard-king worth his salt would jump at the chance to invest a little bit of XP in exchange for making his capital city into the continental trading hub.

Slipperychicken

2012-06-24, 11:01 AM

As far as being willing to make teleportation circles, any wizard-king worth his salt would jump at the chance to invest a little bit of XP in exchange for making his capital city into the continental trading hub.

Or, you know, pass a Thought Bottle around, so it's not even a tradeoff, then build all the teleporters!

The Random NPC

2012-06-24, 12:53 PM

Tippyverse is based on several deeply flawed assumptions, including, but not limited to:

The systematic problems with traps that aren't traps. (E.g. well outside of RAI or RACSD)

This works as shown in Dungeonscape. Unless you mean Wish traps and the like (i.e. ones that don't target a creature), but beneficial traps do work.

A failure to understand basic economics*
While this may be true, peasants make more like a gold a day by taking ten, and skilled craftsmen make more. Let us assume a level one commoner with four ranks in profession farming, and ten in wisdom. By taking ten he gets a result of fourteen, divided in half for the amount of gold per week of dedicated work, resulting in exactly one gold a day. If the farmer has any help (aid other) or uses his feat on skill focus, the amount goes up.

A gross overestimation of the quantities of level 20 wizards
This is entirely dependent on the setting in question.

A gross overestimation of those wizards being eager and willing to blow large chunks of xp on teleportation circles
Also dependent on setting, and the society at large. All it takes is one greedy wizard realizing that for a minimal cost, he can get a toll road that everyone will want to use.

A gross overestimation of the return on investment from building said teleportation circles*
I wouldn't know the exact return on investment, but they should be consistent with the return from toll roads, only more as they require no upkeep.

*Not that you can blame Tippy for this, when the very game designers also suffer from this same flaw. Essentially, if you want to run a fantasy game where magic is a logical and inherent part of the economic system, D&D makes a terrible starting point. Consider Eberron for instance, there is a nation (Darguun?) which has I think less than a million inhabitants. If you assume that peasants make coppers per day, and skilled craftsmen make silvers per day, then the GDP of a nation that size is going to be comparable to what a high level party is going to consider their working gear. The returns on adventuring are such as to render traditional economics irrelevant.

kabreras

2012-06-24, 02:28 PM

I think it is hard to run a complete TV world but a nation in a normal world could be using the TV rules quite easylly and require few adjustements.

Tyger

2012-06-24, 02:34 PM

Actually Kabreras, that is exactly what I am envisioning - a single nation, or rather an empire, where magic has elevated almost to science levels. The other nations keep trying, but the wizard / god figure in charge of the TV nation keeps them in check, slowly expanding the empire and bringing those other realms under his thumb.

Tavar

2012-06-24, 02:38 PM

I have to agree with the above posters - I am thinking of trying to make a TV game - and yeah, it will be one hell of a lot of work to get it to work right. Which is the source of the above question. :smallbiggrin:

Well, let's be clear for a second. What exactly are you assuming as a Tippyverse? Because you know what works as one? The standard module of city states surrounded by untamed wilds. This is, in fact, what the Tippyverse is.

Yes, you can make it high end and using increasing amounts of optimization, but it actually doesn't require it. The key is Teleportation Circle. That alone allows for the basics, and making a couple simple beneficial traps makes it even easier. That's not exactly a lot of optimization.

ahenobarbi

2012-06-24, 03:30 PM

I think there was an attempt to establish a Tippyverse-like kingdom and it ended in the Fall of Netheril (chapter 6 in Lost Empires of Faerun, also an abbreviation (http://forgottenrealms.wikia.com/wiki/Netheril)).

kabreras

2012-06-24, 03:44 PM

Well, let's be clear for a second. What exactly are you assuming as a Tippyverse? Because you know what works as one? The standard module of city states surrounded by untamed wilds. This is, in fact, what the Tippyverse is.

Yes, you can make it high end and using increasing amounts of optimization, but it actually doesn't require it. The key is Teleportation Circle. That alone allows for the basics, and making a couple simple beneficial traps makes it even easier. That's not exactly a lot of optimization.

True.

And actually a Magocratie with TP circle connecting all the towns in the empire is not that hard to come by.
Same with food and drink traps.
Hell even undeads working as laborers is easy to make.

ThiagoMartell

2012-06-24, 03:46 PM

My answer might not cover all cases (since there are many variants of the Tippyverse), but the way I see it, a single mage wouldn't profit that much from creating it. Basically, he'll work his *** off for the well-being of a bunch of commoners. If he's powerful enough, he should just Genesis his own demiplane and leave the world with all its problems to itself.
The Tippyverse will only start working once you get a largish group of mages that are either obsessed with world domination or with building an utopia (or possibly both).

That's the way I see it as well.

Tavar

2012-06-24, 04:10 PM

How about a group of wizards who are part of a kingdom, and want to improve the kingdom? They make the circles to create a stable trade system.

Or use it offensively, showing the military aspects.

I'd suggest reading some of the info in this thread. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=222007)

Kazyan

2012-06-24, 05:53 PM

Would one possible answer to that objection simply be that there is ONE supreme magi, a wizard of level X, where X is whatever is necessary to sustain the Tippyverse, and that this magi uses various divinations to ensure that anyone who could challenge his/her reign is dealt with prior to becoming a threat?

Would that work, and if so, what level would that magi be, and what level mage / other caster would constitute a reasonable threat to them?

The necessary level of that mage is (15 - CL boosters), with the Assume Supernatural Ability feat. The wizard polymorphs into an Air Weird, and assumes the Prescience ability, which allows him to use all sorts of powerful divinations as free actions. Play 20 questions with the universe to find future threats, and then kill them before they become so.

Togo

2012-06-24, 07:30 PM

Oscredwin

2012-06-24, 07:59 PM

Tippyverse assumes a very high number of high level mages, and an even higher number of mid-level mages, who are willing to devote their lives and talent to keeping the economy and infrastrcture going.Those mages have to be a large number over historical time periods. Also, they're making a lot of money on this whole project, it's likely more lucrative than adventuring.

People have said here that the Tippyverse is high op, I say that instead it just has a few hi-op characters and some more copycats.

Alienist

2012-06-24, 08:02 PM

Different assumptions leads to different campaign worlds. Tippyverse assumes a very high number of high level mages, and an even higher number of mid-level mages, who are willing to devote their lives and talent to keeping the economy and infrastrcture going. Most campaigns don't have that, and most campaigns don't share Tippy's assumptions about how the world would go.

Any campaign world has to make assumptions about how things work, and the result is that campaign worlds are very different from eachother. That's as it should be.

The assumptions that are made should be reasonable, if you bring economics into it (as TV tries to) then you need to show that the actors are behaving in a rational fashion (nb: this is economics rational, which is not always the same as the common english usage of that word).

I find it deeply implausible that you would have all these high level wizards devote their lives to public service works, especially ones with such little payoff.

Other people also find it difficult to explain the motivations of these super-sorcerers, as you can see even in this thread where the questions such as 'well, why don't they kill each other off then?'. In TV there is a gross inconsistency, these supersorcs run around setting up all the infrastructure in a spirit of peace love and mung beans, and then once everything is set up they start trying to brutally murder everyone else and/or all the city states start invading each other.

The behavior is defined in TV to serve the coolness of the setting, not the setting flowing logically from rational behaviours (despite being presented as such). I have seen campaign settings which have attempted be be grown out of a given set of rational economics for a particular system of magic, and TV is severely lacking in that regard. It is far more plausible that TV simply arose from a 'hey, wouldn't it be cool if...' moment, and the pseudo-economics was bolted on afterwards.

NB: to the chap who posted that peasants earn a gold per day, you weren't taking that from the crafting section were you? Because the numbers are out of whack by a factor of ten (and crafting uses silver as the base calculation of progress, not gold) - not that it would be terribly surprising to discover that there were two different systems for calculating how much money commoners make that were giving significantly different results... but it would be disappointing.

TuggyNE

2012-06-24, 08:21 PM

NB: to the chap who posted that peasants earn a gold per day, you weren't taking that from the crafting section were you? Because the numbers are out of whack by a factor of ten (and crafting uses silver as the base calculation of progress, not gold) - not that it would be terribly surprising to discover that there were two different systems for calculating how much money commoners make that were giving significantly different results... but it would be disappointing.

No, that's literally what the Profession skill says.
You can practice your trade and make a decent living, earning about half your Profession check result in gold pieces per week of dedicated work. You know how to use the tools of your trade, how to perform the profession’s daily tasks, how to supervise helpers, and how to handle common problems.

I suppose the writers didn't expect Farmer to be a valid profession...? :smallsigh::smallconfused:

Douglas

2012-06-24, 08:50 PM

The assumptions that are made should be reasonable, if you bring economics into it (as TV tries to) then you need to show that the actors are behaving in a rational fashion (nb: this is economics rational, which is not always the same as the common english usage of that word).

I find it deeply implausible that you would have all these high level wizards devote their lives to public service works, especially ones with such little payoff.
As framed by Tippy, they are doing it for profit - and the profit is very high.

Base assumptions:
Mercantile trade over long distances exists.
This trade is profitable enough to justify long travel times and occasionally dangerous routes.

Consider the magnitude of resources it would take to keep a caravan both safe and fed through a multi-hundred mile, or even thousand plus mile, trip in a D&D world while carrying large quantities of valuable cargo (and thus being a prime target for bandits, in addition to any monsters around). The wizard who sets up the teleportation circle can charge any fee up to that amount, and merchants will pay it. By any reasonable measure, that is an enormous payoff.

Other people also find it difficult to explain the motivations of these super-sorcerers, as you can see even in this thread where the questions such as 'well, why don't they kill each other off then?'. In TV there is a gross inconsistency, these supersorcs run around setting up all the infrastructure in a spirit of peace love and mung beans, and then once everything is set up they start trying to brutally murder everyone else and/or all the city states start invading each other.
A super-caster is only needed for the Teleportation Circles. Pretty much all the other major world-and-economy-altering things are traps of low or mid level spells. And, again, the payoff for being the one to set such a thing up is huge. Take what people pay for food, for example, and show up in the market with a nigh-infinite supply that you have a monopoly on. You can charge half the going rate and still have so much to sell that you make back your investment in very little time, and from then on it's pure profit.

The brutal murdering of other cities is just what happens when someone able to make Teleportation Circles and more inclined to warlike methods decides he wants some profit. It's one more way of making enormous profits. Some super-wizards will decide to make profit via charging fees from merchants. Some will decide to make a profit by stealing from everyone else by force, using teleportation of whole armies to create a major military advantage.

Once the first teleportation conquest happens, everyone else will start devising defenses against it out of pure self interest to safeguard their own stuff.

The entire development of the Tippyverse, from start to finish, is motivated - as originally envisioned by Tippy - by profit and self interest.

NB: to the chap who posted that peasants earn a gold per day, you weren't taking that from the crafting section were you? Because the numbers are out of whack by a factor of ten (and crafting uses silver as the base calculation of progress, not gold) - not that it would be terribly surprising to discover that there were two different systems for calculating how much money commoners make that were giving significantly different results... but it would be disappointing.
Nope, Profession (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/profession.htm).

Alienist

2012-06-25, 06:08 AM

(nb: heavily edited)

I cut down trees, I skip and jump, I like to press wild flow'rs... I put on women's clothing and hang around in bars.

Dear Sir, I wish to complain in the strongest possible terms about the song you have just broadcast about the lumberjack who wears women's clothes. Many of my best friends are lumberjacks, and only a few of them are transvestites. Yours faithfully, Brigadier Sir Charles Arthur Strong, Mrs. P.S. I have never kissed the editor of the Radio Times.

ThiagoMartell

2012-06-25, 06:17 AM

Profit simply makes no sense to justify the Tippyverse.
Any wizard gets infinite money if you consider everything RAW (which the TV does).
Summon Monster (or Mount) + Flesh to Salt. Sell that salt. Salt is expensive (check Arms & Equipment Guide). It requires a lot less effort than crafting lots of traps - you simply need to cast two spells and spend no XP whatsoever.
That's just one of the methods. There are plenty others (Fabricate, chained Wishes, the list goes on and on). Wizards don't need money.

Also, do you guys know how TV started? People would come to the forums with any question, Tippy would come in and throw high op that wouldn't fly in most games at them, people would get confused. Eventually someone said "that only flies in Tippyverse". He didn't create the setting as much as other people created it for him. The justifications came out a lot later. Some people liked it. Long story short, someone making fun of Tippy basically created the thing he is most well known for. :smalltongue:

The Random NPC

2012-06-25, 06:54 AM

It is one of the simpler methods of gather money, you just set it up and hire someone to man the circle for you. The only upkeep it would need is an occasional teleport to collect the money, and maybe a method to make sure you aren't being robbed.

@Alienist, you kind of can't do something your entire life without becoming skilled at it. Even if you could, that increases the GDP of your nation by a factor of ten.

EDIT: I took a look at the Commoner class, he gets 2 + INT modifier skills, and there are only about three useful skills for a farmer. Craft(farm tools), Handle Animals, and Profession(Farming). It would be unlikely he would learn to ride, but the other seven skills may be learned.

Dr. Yes

2012-06-25, 07:57 AM

Profit simply makes no sense to justify the Tippyverse.
Any wizard gets infinite money if you consider everything RAW (which the TV does).

Profit isn't the only motive, although Tippytech would certainly be profitable. When you have infinite money and near infinite personal power, though, what's left? That's right: having your subjects worship you. A better economy means more subjects, and having the best trade routes means having a great economy. Eliminating scarcity for basic resources in your country means that YOU are the guy who has personally, directly made everyone's life better. If that doesn't make Johnny Wizard feel good about himself, it at least cuts down significantly on the amount of scry-and-die he needs to do to keep his enemies in check.

Yahzi

2012-06-25, 08:08 AM

Long story short, someone making fun of Tippy basically created the thing he is most well known for. :smalltongue:
But isn't that the best possible victory? :smallbiggrin:

I think Tippy is on to something: magic items, unlike everything else in the universe, don't wear out. The world would slowly become cluttered with the things until everybody and his uncle had a teleportation circle.

Still, few people want to play in that world - and those that do are probably playing Traveller or some science fiction game.

The way I prevent the TP in my world is that everything costs XP, including "free" wishes and shadows spawning new shadows, and that the xp required per level doubles. Even then I have to throw in a race of super-secret ultra bad guys who kill anybody who gets too big.

ThiagoMartell

2012-06-25, 08:28 AM

Profit isn't the only motive, although Tippytech would certainly be profitable. When you have infinite money and near infinite personal power, though, what's left? That's right: having your subjects worship you. A better economy means more subjects, and having the best trade routes means having a great economy. Eliminating scarcity for basic resources in your country means that YOU are the guy who has personally, directly made everyone's life better. If that doesn't make Johnny Wizard feel good about himself, it at least cuts down significantly on the amount of scry-and-die he needs to do to keep his enemies in check.

Still makes no sense. If an optimized wizard wants to be worshipped, he can either
a) create life to worship him
b) Mindrape others into worshipping him
c) bring people to his personal demiplane, where planar traits alone could make life better than in the material plane, and hope people worship him for it
d) spend years crafting autoresetting spell traps and constructs to guard them in acity in the material plane, hoping it will make people worship him
I can't see how "d" is not the worst possible solution for this scenario. It is not guaranteed, it requires a lot of time and effort and it is the only option with actual possibility of absolute failure (someone invading and destroying everything).

Togo

2012-06-25, 08:44 AM

Also, do you guys know how TV started? People would come to the forums with any question, Tippy would come in and throw high op that wouldn't fly in most games at them, people would get confused. Eventually someone said "that only flies in Tippyverse".

This is why more games aren't Tippyverse games. For example, he's relying on infinite wish machines to make coinage. That's somthing that wouldn't fly in most games, and even if it did, you really think the guy with infinite wishes (ok 14,000 a day) would waste time setting up a currency system?

The last time I gave my players a scenario for infinite power in AD&D, they came back with a plan to give every citizen his or her own starship. (A near-invulnerable teleporting spelljamming flying, swimming, planehopping construct with free food, fabricate on demand, constant healing at a comfortable 1hp/round, prismatic beam lasers powered by gates to the positive material plane, and yeah, why not, it's own wish engine.) Go off and make your own darned planet.

In summary

1) Tippyverse rules are not universally accepted
2) Given the rules, Tippyverse assumptions are not universally accepted
3) Given the rules and assumptions, Tippyverse outcomes are not universally accepted.

Basically Tippy has done what many decent sci-fi authors do, which is take an idea for a changed universe and run with it. His idea was to use teleport circles. Phillip Jose' Farmer did something similar with Dayworld, using an equivalent of flesh to stone. Even with the same assumptions, rules and set up, not all teleport circles worlds will end up as a Tippyverse, just like not all worlds where you can freeze people will end up as global communist dictatorships.

Dr. Yes

2012-06-25, 10:09 AM

Still makes no sense. If an optimized wizard wants to be worshipped, he can either
a) create life to worship him
b) Mindrape others into worshipping him
c) bring people to his personal demiplane, where planar traits alone could make life better than in the material plane, and hope people worship him for it
d) spend years crafting autoresetting spell traps and constructs to guard them in acity in the material plane, hoping it will make people worship him
I can't see how "d" is not the worst possible solution for this scenario. It is not guaranteed, it requires a lot of time and effort and it is the only option with actual possibility of absolute failure (someone invading and destroying everything).

All three of the alternatives you presented are small-scale, and at least the demiplane option is more XP-expensive than setting up a Tippy economy. Running a kingdom is risky, yeah, but you're a wizard! There is no one better equipped to anticipate national security threats, and few people as capable of dealing with them.

Construct armies and the like are a later stage of the magical arms race—they're absolutely overkill except against gods and other high level casters.

ThiagoMartell

2012-06-25, 10:17 AM

All three of the alternatives you presented are small-scale, and at least the demiplane option is more XP-expensive than setting up a Tippy economy. Running a kingdom is risky, yeah, but you're a wizard! There is no one else better equipped to anticipate national security threats, and few people as capable of dealing with them.

Why is creating life small-scale? With Animate Object, you can create a lot of worshippers, very fast.
The demiplane option needs more XP, but an optimized wizard has no need for XP as well, due to all sorts of thought bottle shenanigans. It's also higher scale. Get a city, you're a king. Get a demiplane, you're a god.
The only situation a wizard might do that is because he wants to. That's fine as a reason for one wizard (I even have a Netheril-like empire like that in my homebrew setting) but not good enough a reason for all high level wizards, like the TV does.

Togo

2012-06-25, 10:20 AM

Relevent concept to consider:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-scarcity_economy

Menteith

2012-06-25, 10:29 AM

In summary

1) Tippyverse rules are not universally accepted
2) Given the rules, Tippyverse assumptions are not universally accepted
3) Given the rules and assumptions, Tippyverse outcomes are not universally accepted.

Basically Tippy has done what many decent sci-fi authors do, which is take an idea for a changed universe and run with it. His idea was to use teleport circles. Phillip Jose' Farmer did something similar with Dayworld, using an equivalent of flesh to stone. Even with the same assumptions, rules and set up, not all teleport circles worlds will end up as a Tippyverse, just like not all worlds where you can freeze people will end up as global communist dictatorships.

This is exactly how I feel. While I agree that the standard D&D world (as presented in Greyhawk or other "traditional" settings) doesn't take magic into account, TV isn't inherently more likely than anything else. It's a proposed solution if certain technologies are on the table, but a world like that could very easily end up at different points.

ThiagoMartell

2012-06-25, 10:32 AM

This is exactly how I feel. While I agree that the standard D&D world (as presented in Greyhawk or other "traditional" settings) doesn't take magic into account, TV isn't inherently more likely than anything else. It's a proposed solution if certain technologies are on the table, but a world like that could very easily end up at different points.

I agree completely.
That's what I like about Eberron. Low level magic is quite common, but high level magic is rare both because there are very few high level NPCs and becaus ethey are not usually willing to share their magic with anyone else.

Dr. Yes

2012-06-25, 12:18 PM

Why is creating life small-scale? With Animate Object, you can create a lot of worshippers, very fast.

Yeah, but then all of your worshippers are objects. :P Whether a self-styled benevolent dictator or raging sociopath, I don't think anyone is going to call that the pinnacle of his political career.

This is exactly how I feel. While I agree that the standard D&D world (as presented in Greyhawk or other "traditional" settings) doesn't take magic into account, TV isn't inherently more likely than anything else. It's a proposed solution if certain technologies are on the table, but a world like that could very easily end up at different points.

This I would agree with. TV is by no means inevitable; it's just one logical and internally consistent version of a world run by D&D rules.

ThiagoMartell

2012-06-25, 12:24 PM

Yeah, but then all of your worshippers are objects. :P Whether a self-styled benevolent dictator or raging sociopath, I don't think anyone is going to call that the pinnacle of his political career.
Retreat to your demiplane, cast polymorph any object in a few stones, create a few humans. Presto, lots and lots of human followers.
Oh, don't want to spend spell slots? Mindrape a Warlock into doing it for you.
Easier, better and faster than the TV cities.

This I would agree with. TV is by no means inevitable; it's just one logical and internally consistent version of a world run by D&D rules.
Don't think it's logical at all.

Menteith

2012-06-25, 12:32 PM

TV makes the assumption that low level, sentient life is valuable to those in charge for reasons that can't be expressed in game terms. Those in power do not derive their authority from the wills of the masses, nor are they valuable in a commodity sense. Inherently, those that set up the core aspects of a city are displaying significant amounts of altruism, as they are intentionally weakening themselves or using up their own resources (Experience costs/Time) to benefit individuals who will be unable to repay them.

The other way to go is to make human life valuable for a game mechanic. But then you start developing human farms and raiding other cities to steal the people in them and get to a very different setting (although it's also interesting).

ThiagoMartell

2012-06-25, 12:49 PM

Togo

2012-06-25, 12:53 PM

TV makes the assumption that low level, sentient life is valuable to those in charge for reasons that can't be expressed in game terms.

TV makes the assumption that infinite wishes would be used to make individual coins. Rather than set everyone up in their own mobile demi-plane paradise.

While it's a logically neat way to make a unforgeable currency so that people can live out their economist utopia, and is a nice concept, it really doesn't make sense.

And that's cool, you know. It doesn't have to make sense to be an interesting setting.

Dr. Yes

2012-06-25, 01:04 PM

Retreat to your demiplane, cast polymorph any object in a few stones, create a few humans. Presto, lots and lots of human followers.
Oh, don't want to spend spell slots? Mindrape a Warlock into doing it for you.
Easier, better and faster than the TV cities.

You're still talking about an 8th level spell for every single person you create, and there's no guarantee that they'll bow before you (without further expenditure of spells) just because you made them. Wild peasants, on the other hand, are (almost literally) a dime a dozen, and can be easily cowed with hard or soft power.

By the way, just so we're clear, I'm not trying to imply that every 17th level wizard ever will want political power. I'm just saying that for those who do—and many will, for all kinds of reasons—setting up Tippytech in an existing kingdom is a viable option, and a strong one; the only real competitor you've fielded is the demiplane, where it would take at least months, and probably years, to grow your realm to a decent size and set up a self-sustaining colony on the scale of even a small city. The only real advantage to doing it that way is that you're absolutely safe, instead of mostly safe, from invaders.

Menteith

2012-06-25, 01:12 PM

Demiplane still makes more sense than cities.

Absolutely. To me, the term "City" with regard to Tippyverse just meant one of the populated clusters. Since the traditional environmental factors that draw people together (Easy trade routes like rivers, natural barriers for protection, ideal weather and soil for agriculture) are entirely obsolete, the only thing that really draws groups of low level people together is the technology made by those more important. Cities could exist on different demiplanes, far reaching fortresses out in space, in the center of the world, and would have very little actual resemblance to a traditional city.

And yeah, the economy always rubs me the wrong way. I can understand high level casters working together on a favor system (having a level 20 Wizard owe you favors is far more valuable than money), and lower level people who still find valuable in certain material goods having their own currency, but not the way it's set up. It's functional, but weird.

ThiagoMartell

2012-06-25, 01:15 PM

By the way, just so we're clear, I'm not trying to imply that every 17th level wizard ever will want political power. I'm just saying that for those who do—and many will, for all kinds of reasons—setting up Tippytech in an existing kingdom is a viable option, and a strong one; the only real competitor you've fielded is the demiplane, where it would take at least months, and probably years, to grow your realm to a decent size and set up a self-sustaining colony on the scale of even a small city. The only real advantage to doing it that way is that you're absolutely safe, instead of mostly safe, from invaders.

However long the demiplane takes, it's still faster than anything in the material plance, since you control the time traits of your plane.
Not only is it safer, if you are going to be bringing people from the material plane to live there, it's faster.

Airanath

2012-06-25, 04:34 PM

only real advantage to doing it that way is that you're absolutely safe, instead of mostly safe, from invaders.
-nitpick- You are still only mostly safe on a demiplane.
Wish traps allows you to teleport yourself and your army into the demiplane, where you can rampage, destroy the other wizard land and move out with loot.
If you plan to go Demiplane Wizard on a tippyverse, first you make the plane, then an all mighty army, then you might as well kidnap people into the plane. Might as well make your plane a place where magic doesn't work. Sure your enemies can go in, but they won't be going out, might as well let those people there, since without magic they aren't a threat anyway. Said plane probably evolved to be like our world =p

Togo

2012-06-25, 04:47 PM

You're still talking about an 8th level spell for every single person you create, and there's no guarantee that they'll bow before you (without further expenditure of spells) just because you made them.

AS opposed to Tippyverse, where you're talking about a 9th level spell (wish) for every coin in circulation, and there's no guarentee that they'll cooperate just because you pay them.

TV invovles spamming infinite wishes, and then using that ultimate power to help create... a more efficient transport network. :smallconfused: It's an interesting setting, but neither it's efficient nor optimised, nor is it clear why anyone would import or export anything at all ever, or even care about money, when they have access to infinite wishes.

TuggyNE

2012-06-25, 05:08 PM

AS opposed to Tippyverse, where you're talking about a 9th level spell (wish) for every coin in circulation

... what? This I've never heard before. Where did you get the idea that TV coins currency with wish-traps?

Augmental

2012-06-25, 05:09 PM

While a wizard could easily Mind Rape people into worshipping him, it would be artificial. Remember, just because you're all-powerful doesn't necessarily mean you're emotionless - the wizards could want people to worship them, but feel like using Mind Rape, Animate Object, etc. would be pointless and empty, since his/her worshippers won't be worshipping the wizard because they want to - they'll worship the wizard because the wizard mentally programmed them to.

Toliudar

2012-06-25, 05:37 PM

If only Tippy had created a thread that helped clarify what he actually meant.

Oh, wait. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=222007)

There are a hundred ways to extrapolate the ways that the use of magic could alter social structures. Tippy has synthesized some fun ones, and I'd argue that they allow for both low-level, low-op play - ordinary citizens venturing out into the wilds, etc - and high level intrigue.

I don't really see the point of arguing why one set of assumptions about how magic might be used by high level casters is more reasonable or sensible than another. Who cares? Pick the assumptions you like, and run with them. Want to play in a barren world where savage monsters roam unchecked and all intelligent humanoids have retreated into demi-planes? Go for it. Like the idea of linked web of invasion-resistant city-states? Want to create transportation systems based on railguns of side-by-skeletons passing people back and forth? Fill your boots.

Togo

2012-06-25, 06:08 PM

... what? This I've never heard before. Where did you get the idea that TV coins currency with wish-traps?

From Tippy's thread on the Tippyverse, under 'Coinage'.

As I said, there's nothing wrong with the setting, but it's no more or less optimal, sensible or inevitable than any other setting. Go with what's fun.

Eldest

2012-06-25, 09:54 PM

AS opposed to Tippyverse, where you're talking about a 9th level spell (wish) for every coin in circulation, and there's no guarentee that they'll cooperate just because you pay them.

TV invovles spamming infinite wishes, and then using that ultimate power to help create... a more efficient transport network. :smallconfused: It's an interesting setting, but neither it's efficient nor optimised, nor is it clear why anyone would import or export anything at all ever, or even care about money, when they have access to infinite wishes.

The infinite wishes aren't for the transport. The teleportation circles are the basis, everything else follows from it. The reason behind the wish traps is to make a counterfeit-proof form of currency, well into the development of the TV.

Tvtyrant

2012-06-25, 11:21 PM

TV makes the assumption that infinite wishes would be used to make individual coins. Rather than set everyone up in their own mobile demi-plane paradise.

I do not. It's not an assumption, it is a fact.

But I do agree that anyone living in the Tippyverse could simply create their own perfect demi-plane. After a certain point there is no reason for people to live in a civilization together.

Toliudar

2012-06-25, 11:25 PM

I do not. It's not an assumption, it is a fact.

But I do agree that anyone living in the Tippyverse could simply create their own perfect demi-plane. After a certain point there is no reason for people to live in a civilization together.

I think that 'TV' in that instance referred to Tippyverse.

And, as pointed out earlier, I think that this world, like most, assumes the presence of some human feeling. Such as a desire for community, friendship, and family.

Tvtyrant

2012-06-25, 11:28 PM

I think that 'TV' in that instance referred to Tippyverse.

And, as pointed out earlier, I think that this world, like most, assumes the presence of some human feeling. Such as a desire for community, friendship, and family.

I know, I was being facetious.

But in your own demi-plane you could have all those things, they would just treat you like a god!

Occasional Sage

2012-06-26, 12:29 AM

The "Coinage" section mentions resetting wish traps for coins, but also a rarer method which is "the same as the creation of any other magic item".

Why are all coins magic items themselves? What do they do?

Douglas

2012-06-26, 12:54 AM

Why are all coins magic items themselves? What do they do?
They are magic items because anything else can be counterfeited too easily with Fabricate and other spells. They don't do anything in particular, at least not in Tippy's default version of TV I think, they just can't be created by magical means of producing mundane items.

ThiagoMartell

2012-06-26, 05:04 AM

If only Tippy had created a thread that helped clarify what he actually meant.

Oh, wait. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=222007)
People are discussing how stuff in that thread doesn't really make a lot of sense.
TV was not created as a 'hey it's cool' setting. Tippy created it under the banner of 'everything here makes sense'. Since it does not, people point it out.

ahenobarbi

2012-06-26, 06:14 AM

TV was not created as a 'hey it's cool' setting. Tippy created it under the banner of 'everything here makes sense'. Since it does not, people point it out.

Real world makes little sense too so I'd take it as strong argument in favor of TV :smallbiggrin:

Togo

2012-06-26, 06:55 AM

They are magic items because anything else can be counterfeited too easily with Fabricate and other spells. They don't do anything in particular, at least not in Tippy's default version of TV I think, they just can't be created by magical means of producing mundane items.

Tippyverse relies on magical infrastructure to dominate the economy, switching from a traditional economy and social structure to one dominated by magic and magicians.

In doing so, it assumes an amount of magical power that might reasonably make the entire concept of an economy irrelevent.

The unforgeable currency is necessary to ensure that magicians don't just create coinage and bypass the elabourate society he's set up.

ThiagoMartell

2012-06-26, 08:12 AM

Real world makes little sense too so I'd take it as strong argument in favor of TV :smallbiggrin:

If someone tried to tell me real world was a setting 'that made sense', I'd punch them in the face.

Alienist

2012-06-26, 10:45 AM

Well, whatever anyone says, you have to acknowledge that EmperorTippy does have a point with respect to the Boon Traps. Which is to say that for practically any problem the answer is Boon Traps. If your problem isn't solved by Boon Traps, you're just not using enough of them.

That said, I think if applied to a logical extreme it wouldn't be recognisably D&D anymore. As someone else pointed out, you certainly wouldn't get a tippyverse though, because once you have your pressure-activated footstool trap of nigh-infinite money then the whole messy business of trade and teleport circles ceases to be a good motivator.

So let's re-examine the motives of those high level wizards. I posit Barney the Burninator, whose parents were killed by Orcs. Having achieved ~ultimate power Barney goes forth and destroys all the orcs. Repeat until anything that could orphan an aspiring archmage is no longer present.

Then you have the archmages who want more gold to fuel their trap-making. Where is the easiest source of that? That's right, your level 20+ wizards are going to seek and destroy any mid-low dungeons and hoover every last rusty copper out of them. Then they will move onto the mid-high and high end dungeons. Having sucked all the treasure out of all the dungeons, they are going to make footstools of detect nearest dragon hoard, and nuke anything sitting on it. Scry and die.

Ergo, no more dungeons, and no more dragons. You might make a truce with some of the dragons if you were so inclined, who knows, maybe they will be handy to have around one day?

However, once those resources are completely depleted, the next biggest source of easy cash/xp is to wipe out any mid-range parties.... then you get to work on the high end, say... anything over level 16?

Yes, that's right. I can now reveal EmperorTippy's secret identity. He is, in fact, the Immortal Lich Queen of the Githyanki, and he knows all these things because he's already done/doing them.

Menteith

2012-06-26, 10:56 AM

Yes, that's right. I can now reveal EmperorTippy's secret identity. He is, in fact, the Immortal Lich Queen of the Githyanki, and he knows all these things because he's already done/doing them.

Nah, because that precludes him from Ithilid Savant, which he certainly has taken. He's the ultimate lord of the Mind Flayers, who waits for us at the end of time. He knows these things because he's eaten the brains (both real and Ice Assassin-ed) of everything that has existed, or ever shall exist.

And his power is glorious!

Toliudar

2012-06-26, 11:27 AM

But in your own demi-plane you could have all those things, they would just treat you like a god!

I don't think we have the same understanding of what family and friends are like. :smallwink:

People are discussing how stuff in that thread doesn't really make a lot of sense.
TV was not created as a 'hey it's cool' setting. Tippy created it under the banner of 'everything here makes sense'. Since it does not, people point it out.

Assumes facts not in evidence. Source?

From my reading, Tippy was explaining the set of assumptions underlying his specific Points of Light setting. I think it's completely fine to point out quirks in the underlying assumptions, and to suggest other ways that settings might evolve, but to pretend that he's somehow set this up as the only sensible way that high-level casters would act is to set up a straw man.

Suddo

2012-06-26, 11:47 AM

Plenty of people do a high fantasy universe when they do their world. Though I personally try and reduce the usage of Tier1/2 characters (players don't get them and npc of that type tend to be busy being crazy) this leads to a world that is basically post scarcity, at least for essentials, and quite fun to walk around in.

And to the point about it not being profitable:
One of the main points is that in the Tippyverse some wizard figured out how to do each trick first and was successful with it and then other copied. Teleportation Circle is the biggest in crafting the world but I'll take another basic principle and show how it is profitable, this being the resetting create food and water (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/createFoodAndWater.htm) traps. For this exercise I'll assume that God's can't DM fiat away the ability to do this. So you make a create food and water trap (rules here (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/traps.htm#designingATrap)) the cost is:
Trigger Timed (1k gp)
Automatic Reset (0 gp due to trigger type)
19 Search DC (-100 gp)
19 Disable DC (-100 gp)
Cost for spells: 7500gp (500 gp × 5 (CL) × 3 (Spell Level))
8300 gp

XP cost:
600 XP (40 × 5 (caster level) × 3 (spell level))

This means that a 5th level Archivist can do this within the wealth by level (by selling off all his gear) and/or doing it as a project while casting Plant Growth (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/plantGrowth.htm) at his personal farm. I think it could also be easily cut by including the Legendary & Extraordinary Artisan if you consider the trap an item or if this is being done by a Artificer.

Now let see. If you consider that it creates 3 poor meals every 6 seconds this means that it produces 3cp every 6 seconds so if you run it 24 hours a day you make 432gp a day. So in 20 days you make your money back. You can also undercut everyone by charging 2cp for 3 poor meals you'll make your money back in 29 days. Of course this assumes you can leave the trap running and the product will be stored easily after being produced or that you are selling the stuff over night or have someone at the trap 24/7. So in under a month you make your money back on 1 trap. You can also keep creating traps to produce more and more money. Though I would personally suggest making a prestidigitation trap to make them taste great and charge more.

Will someone eventually come by and figure out what you are doing and copy you, yes, but at that point you can either do something mob like (threaten/kill them), just know that you can feed the demand better sense you've been there longer or come to an agreement on an amount and both of you win.

The same principle can be applied to a Teleporation Circle though the numbers are more abstract sense you don't know exactly how much a trader will pay you for same passage.

Edit: And repeating magic traps are well within RAI, although well under priced. See Spell Clocks (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/cw/20070312a) as another form.
Also please correct anything I did wrong, I somehow thing I'm forgetting something.

ThiagoMartell

2012-06-26, 11:58 AM

Assumes facts not in evidence. Source?

Do a google search for Tippyverse. You will see when it first surfaced, instead of a month old thread. Dunno if thread purge got rid of it, though.

Toliudar

2012-06-26, 12:10 PM

Do a google search for Tippyverse. You will see when it first surfaced, instead of a month old thread. Dunno if thread purge got rid of it, though.

I think that that leads to my point. A bunch of other people commenting on what he wrote built up so many assumptions about his world that Tippy posted that thread to clarify what he was in fact talking about. Hence, me linking to that thread instead of piecing together a bunch of old posts on a variety of topics.

It's my sense that, over time, a broader and not always internally consistent version of "Tippyverse" has lead to a lot of us imprinting our own impressions of what he intended.

ThiagoMartell

2012-06-26, 12:15 PM

I think that that leads to my point. A bunch of other people commenting on what he wrote built up so many assumptions about his world that Tippy posted that thread to clarify what he was in fact talking about. Hence, me linking to that thread instead of piecing together a bunch of old posts on a variety of topics.
It's not about assumptions, it's about what he said. Anyway, if you disagree, fine.

MukkTB

2012-06-26, 01:36 PM

Aegis013

2012-06-26, 02:23 PM

It's not about assumptions, it's about what he said. Anyway, if you disagree, fine.

Or is it about what he meant? It reminds of me this Alan Greenspan quote:
"I know you think you understand what you thought I said but I'm not sure you realize that what you heard is not what I meant.”

I closely followed Tippy's thread about his verse, and have googled up for other information as you suggested. Though the setting does include particular assumptions and a pre-written history that may or may not have come into being, I still think it's an interesting and flavorful setting. I haven't located any glaring internal inconsistencies.

ThiagoMartell

2012-06-26, 02:49 PM

I closely followed Tippy's thread about his verse, and have googled up for other information as you suggested. Though the setting does include particular assumptions and a pre-written history that may or may not have come into being, I still think it's an interesting and flavorful setting. I haven't located any glaring internal inconsistencies.

I've pointed out many.

Aegis013

2012-06-26, 03:06 PM

I've pointed out many.

I suppose you're referring to the profit not justifying the tippyverse and demiplanes > cities arguments? If you're referring to something else, please inform me.

If we assume that there are sufficient high leveled wizards to cause something like a Tippyverse, we can assume that probably some of them are good aligned and won't resort to mind-rape and other such unethical tactics unless under particularly extreme circumstances. They may have a sense of nationalism which leads them to use their abilities benevolently for the benefit of many. Possibly without any desire for reward other than appreciation. People become sentimentally attached to their homelands; it would be reasonable for some wizards to go the demiplane route and others not to.

I know this is based on assumptions, but so is any setting.

ThiagoMartell

2012-06-26, 04:02 PM

I suppose you're referring to the profit not justifying the tippyverse and demiplanes > cities arguments? If you're referring to something else, please inform me.
And also the fact that the economics don't make sense, yes.

If we assume that there are sufficient high leveled wizards to cause something like a Tippyverse, we can assume that probably some of them are good aligned and won't resort to mind-rape and other such unethical tactics unless under particularly extreme circumstances. They may have a sense of nationalism which leads them to use their abilities benevolently for the benefit of many. Possibly without any desire for reward other than appreciation. People become sentimentally attached to their homelands; it would be reasonable for some wizards to go the demiplane route and others not to.

I know this is based on assumptions, but so is any setting.
Well, you would have to assume most wizards are good aligned. Which is fine, though it's not one of Tippy's assumptions. He specifically says it's for profit, and that simply does not make sense. You can come up with any justification you one, but then it's Aegis013verse, inspired by Tippyverse, and not TV.
Tippy mentions in that thread, justifying his scenario, that "it's not a Mindrape setting". He did that because previously he would jump into any thread even remotely connected with wizards and say "Mindrape solves that" or some variation of that. People say it is "a Mindrape setting" because Tippy said so.

Aegis013

2012-06-26, 04:24 PM

He specifically says it's for profit, and that simply does not make sense.

He does? Can you show me where this is? He mentions the teleportation circle having business and economic implications but I haven't seen anything that explicitly says it is by profit as incentive. I do see how you might interpret it that way, but that does not necessarily mean it is what he meant.

I never said to assume most, I simply said to assume some. I think it would only take a few. Depending on circumstance it may only take one. I'm sorry if I'm insufficiently clear in my points, but please do not summarize my points to suggest I made a claim which I did not.

Tippy explicitly says the setting is not, traditionally, one in which one person mind rapes all opposition.

Dr. Yes

2012-06-26, 04:39 PM

Well, you would have to assume most wizards are good aligned. Which is fine, though it's not one of Tippy's assumptions. He specifically says it's for profit, and that simply does not make sense. You can come up with any justification you one, but then it's Aegis013verse, inspired by Tippyverse, and not TV.

Why would you have to assume that most wizards are good aligned? You don't have to be a good person to be averse to mind rape; you just have to not be terrible.

I'm still not sure why you think it would be unprofitable to set up a teleportation- and trap-based economy. Are there any better options available to a wizard to make money? Yes, probably. Flesh to Salt is often mentioned. There are also better ways for an entrepreneur to make money than opening a game store or a grocery, but I think you'll find that those are fairly common.

Togo

2012-06-26, 07:35 PM

The core TV idea is that magic is used optimally. Or at least as intelligently as a player who had really thought about it would be able to. Optimal magic use doesn't always mean teleportation circles in every town. But it does mean high op. High op is hard to DM for. By the very definition High Op isn't something most people are capable of on their own in the time scales of playing the game. Players ask a question, DM should probably have an answer in the first 10 seconds or so if he wants to keep the pace of the game. If everyone could do high op it would be average op. Middle Op if you will.

So TV doesn't happen for the same reason all high op games aren't the norm. The DM must be skilled. The players must be able to survive the challenge. Everyone has to work hard.

I personally play in the middle of a low-mid op group. We aren't qualified to handle high op.

'Optimal' means so many different things. The terms optimal and optimise are literally meaningless unless you have an idea of what you are optimising for, and what you are assuming is the target outcome.

TV uses magic in a particular way. It's not inherently more intelligent than other uses, as ThiagoMartell points out. It depends on what you want the outcome to be. The Tippyverse might be the outcome if the Tippyverse was seen as the ideal, but then that's true of any attempt to build a society, utopian or otherwise.

Also, high op is actually pretty easy to DM for. You just say yes to everything the players do and throw no significant obstacles in their path. Part of the point of high op is that the players want as much flexibility as possible in their ability to bend the rules. That's part of the fun. As soon as the DM starts saying no, or applying the dreaded DM fiat (ie a ruling or limitation the player disagrees with) you're no longer running at 'optimal' power. The point of high op is that the DM is not putting breaks on what they can do.

In the same vein it can be much easier to survive a high op game than a low op one. Danger in a game doesn't come from what you are facing, it comes from what you are facing compared with what you can do. If you have infinite wishes and personal demi-planes as standard, then you're not really facing much in the way of risk.

The joy of high op play is that it's an intellectual exercise on what you can get away with if there are no obstacles or limitations. You use your imagination and your doubtless encyclopedic knowledge of the game rules to try and outhink everyone else. It's hard work, sure, but that's not the reason why everyone doesn't play high op. They don't play high op because they don't want to - it's very different kind of game.

Different people enjoy different kinds of games, different settings and different play styles. Can't we just enjoy the diversity without trying to argue that any one setting or style is somehow better, or more skilled, or more inevitable in some way?

Tvtyrant

2012-06-26, 08:12 PM

Why would you have to assume that most wizards are good aligned? You don't have to be a good person to be averse to mind rape; you just have to not be terrible.
I can't really go into this without going into the political range, but I would say that it's actually quite easy to believe you are doing it for "their own good."

I'm still not sure why you think it would be unprofitable to set up a teleportation- and trap-based economy. Are there any better options available to a wizard to make money? Yes, probably. Flesh to Salt is often mentioned. There are also better ways for an entrepreneur to make money than opening a game store or a grocery, but I think you'll find that those are fairly common.
Also the teleportation and traps increase trade, while Flesh to Salt simply increases supply. While RAW is being treated as iron-bound here, logic still dictates that the cost of salt would plummet fairly soon.

ThiagoMartell

2012-06-27, 08:07 AM

Also the teleportation and traps increase trade, while Flesh to Salt simply increases supply. While RAW is being treated as iron-bound here, logic still dictates that the cost of salt would plummet fairly soon.
There is no trade necessary at all if you use magic. This is even a Tippyverse point.

Douglas

2012-06-27, 09:39 AM

There is no trade necessary at all if you use magic. This is even a Tippyverse point.
Eventually, in the end result, when considering only goods that are produced by spell traps, yes. When Tippyverse is first starting to develop, not so much, and even in a fully developed TV there are still goods that aren't suitable for trap-based production.

As I understand it, when TV's teleportation circles are first being set up, people in general haven't yet figured out the economic potential of magic-based manufacturing. Thus, at that point there is plenty of trade in every kind of good.

Later on, when full bore trap production has transformed the economy, trade continues just with other products. Part of Tippy's interpretation of such things is that you can't make a Fabricate trap to produce "shoes". Your Fabricate trap produces "size 8 cushioned narrow shoes with green stripes and a crescent moon logo". Every item produced by any single trap is absolutely identical down to the last detail, and there are many items where the demand for any individual one is too low to justify making a trap for it - or enough combined over several cities to justify a single trap total. Goods where one trap in one city can match demand in several cities at once, or where individual customization is important, will continue to fuel trade even in a highly developed trap-based economy. Also, magic items are beyond the ability of anything short of Wish traps to make, so those would mostly continue to be made the old fashioned way and would also contribute to trade.

ThiagoMartell

2012-06-27, 10:02 AM

Part of Tippy's interpretation of such things is that you can't make a Fabricate trap to produce "shoes".
Use wish traps instead.

Douglas

2012-06-27, 12:02 PM

Use wish traps instead.
Same problem. It's not a "trap of Wish", it's a "trap of Wish for X" where every last detail of X is already filled in. Unless X is something like a Ring of Three Wishes, which can then be used on its own to produce a customizable effect, you're still stuck with a trap that can only make one exact thing.

Traps of "Wish for a Ring of Three Wishes" do exist in TV, but they take over a century to make and very few people have the patience and foresight to put in that kind of long term investment.

dascarletm

2012-06-27, 12:22 PM

Suddo

2012-06-27, 12:34 PM

@ThiagoMartell: I'm going to use a kind of crap argument sense it requires you to look past RAW for creation of setting purpose. This isn't that bad sense Faerun, Eberron and every other WotC setting does this.
You assume that upon the creation of the universe, or multiverse, that the Tippyverse is set in started out with all spells regularly at the disposal of all wizards and that level is as it is by RAW sense the beginning of time. Neither has to be true for the setting to exist. As I showed above a Archivist/Artificier/Cleric of level 5 who knows Create Food and Water can break a large portion of basic economics, that being the creation of food. And as I pointed out above the character to make this first will make a profit and the economy will adjust around it.
Basically an idea on could have for Tippyverse-like setting is that magic evolved over time, as science did, this allows for people to first abuse Create Food and Water and then later Wish and Teleportation Circles.

Like I said in my first post, I tend to find True-Tippyverse to be a bit much for me (namely due to the fact that I don't like my game getting broken over on itself) but I do like the concept of high magic which I think is what the original post was bringing up.

Gavinfoxx

2012-06-27, 12:46 PM

I think there are ways other than being a level 17 Wizard to get access to Teleportation Circle. I think Tippy even mentions a few that can be done at mid levels??

ThiagoMartell

2012-06-27, 01:33 PM

@ThiagoMartell: I'm going to use a kind of crap argument sense it requires you to look past RAW for creation of setting purpose. This isn't that bad sense Faerun, Eberron and every other WotC setting does this.
None of those settings claim to be based on 'logical uses of RAW 3.5 magic' like Tippyverse does.

That's why the 'it's a specific wish trap' argument does not hold water. Tippyverse claims to be ruled by 3.5 RAW. The whole point of the setting was that it's creator said he used 3.5 RAW (and no one else did, at leats not in the way he did, so that's way they started mocking him and coined the Tippyverse term).

Yes, if you change some of his assumptions it makes sense. The point is that as stated it does not.

Suddo

2012-06-27, 01:54 PM

Yes, if you change some of his assumptions it makes sense. The point is that as stated it does not.

I'm on your side then.
But as far as the Wish Trap I think it says somewhere that you can't have a Wish Trap (or repeating something) that does different things I could be completely wrong though.

Tyndmyr

2012-06-27, 02:15 PM

I think there are ways other than being a level 17 Wizard to get access to Teleportation Circle. I think Tippy even mentions a few that can be done at mid levels??

There are ways. They tend to be fairly high cheese, but are legit. Still, the Tippyverse begins with the assumption that high level casters exist somewhere some of the time. This is fairly reasonable, as even random city generation per the DMG will get you pretty high level folks, and published settings routinely have at least a few of them.

Getting at least one person who has a teleportation circle and a desire to make money/get power from it isn't especially hard. And if they have teleporation circle, they can easily cast permanency, and it's explicitly on the list in core.

Tavar

2012-06-27, 02:28 PM

It's not about assumptions, it's about what he said. Anyway, if you disagree, fine.
No, it's not. He clarified the point, but people prefer to argue against something else entirely because it's easier, and thus misrepresent what he said.

ThiagoMartell

2012-06-27, 02:34 PM

No, it's not. He clarified the point, but people prefer to argue against something else entirely because it's easier, and thus misrepresent what he said.

Before you make broad blanket statements, please do some research.
All Tippy said was that "it's not a Mindrape setting". He previously used Mindrape to justify plenty of stuff in his playstyle and setting. He never presented any other justification (or at least any other justification that comes near to making sense).

Tyndmyr

2012-06-27, 02:49 PM

Before you make broad blanket statements, please do some research.
All Tippy said was that "it's not a Mindrape setting". He previously used Mindrape to justify plenty of stuff in his playstyle and setting. He never presented any other justification (or at least any other justification that comes near to making sense).

Mindrape exists in his setting, IIRC, but it's not particularly central, because a *lot* of stuff is immune, particularly high level casters. It's useful, but the kind of people who have access to it(high level casters) are mostly worried about the sorts of people who can't be mindraped anyway.

It lives in more of a supporting role, say for removing information from the mind of someone who could be captured.

Hirax

2012-06-27, 05:33 PM

Togo

2012-06-27, 06:12 PM

People trash TV like it's some sort of unplayable nightmare, but it really isn't any more difficult to run or play in than any other setting.

Really? Who does that?

I think everyone here has bent over backwards to emphasise that Tippyverse is a fun, playable setting. However, the OP was based on the idea that it was somehow a more reasonable outcome than other settings, and that simply isn't true.

I don't understand why this idea, that Tippyverse is no more inevitable or reasonable than any other setting, is provoking such hostility.

We could start poking holes in logical coherance of other settings if you wanted, but that wouldn't do anything to prove or disprove the OP.

ThiagoMartell

2012-06-28, 09:45 AM

Douglas

2012-06-28, 10:04 AM

Exactly. If TV is considered just another setting, it's fine. As long as it is advertised as considered as 'the one true outcome of 3.5 RAW', it's ridiculous.
I don't think Tippy ever claimed it is "the one true outcome of 3.5 RAW", just that it is consistent with 3.5 RAW and most other published settings are not. It is possible to construct a setting that is different from Tippyverse and is consistent with 3.5 RAW, but most published settings do not have that qualification - in most settings a moderately optimized caster played by an ambitious player could, by RAW, overturn most of the established setting with little effort and there is no solid reason provided for why similar NPCs have not already done so in the setting's history.

ThiagoMartell

2012-06-28, 12:56 PM

Douglas

2012-06-28, 01:47 PM

"They didn't want to" is a plausible reason to me only if it is applied exclusively on small scales. In a setting consisting of an entire world with many thousands of years of history, it stretches credibility that not even a single person anywhere at any point in time ever did want to, and a single person with the right capability and desire is enough to break it. The scale of a typical major campaign setting demands a better explanation.

As for the holes in Tippyverse, I have yet to see one of these assumptions pointed out that I did not think was reasonable. A few people have asserted that the profit motive doesn't work, but no one has provided a reason for why it doesn't work that satisfies me. Assume a typical naive "Earth middle/dark ages, plus magic" to start with. In such a world, why would the applications of magic described by TV not be ridiculously profitable? The level of profit will change as the world and its economy adjust to their existence, of course, but only an initial burst of profit is needed to provide a motive for their development.

Menteith

2012-06-28, 02:05 PM

Just with regard to other settings, it depends on whether or not a Watsonian or Doylist (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WatsonianVersusDoylist) viewpoint is taken. Generally speaking, in order to force internal consistency, our group makes the assumption that RAW legal technologies (Such as Spell Clocks/Trap Economy) that aren't in use aren't functional for some reason. It doesn't solve every problem something like Greyhawk faces as a reasonable setting, but it does fix that aspect, at least.

Togo

2012-06-28, 07:31 PM

I don't think Tippy ever claimed it is "the one true outcome of 3.5 RAW", just that it is consistent with 3.5 RAW and most other published settings are not. It is possible to construct a setting that is different from Tippyverse and is consistent with 3.5 RAW, but most published settings do not have that qualification - in most settings a moderately optimized caster played by an ambitious player could, by RAW, overturn most of the established setting with little effort and there is no solid reason provided for why similar NPCs have not already done so in the setting's history.

Ok... I've not been a member of these particular boards for very long, so you'll have to unpack the assumptions a little for me.

When you save 'consistent with 3.5 RAW', you mean what you feel a character would be theoretically capable of with no limitations except the rules, right? But a character in a setting is not being run under 3.5 RAW. He's being run under 3.5 in a campaign setting run by a particular author, just like most actual games. Noone plays 3.5 RAW, not even Tippy. It's a theoretical construct.

If you feel a moderately optimised caster could take, a particular setting, for example, Greyhawk, then the problem is not in the setting. The problem is either that what you feel is moderately optimised is not allowed or is not practical under the setting, or that a moderately optimised character is supposed to do just that.

But lauding one setting and condemning another on the basis of adherence to what you beleive should be the style, tone and interpretation of the game rules should be would be incredibly close-minded. I'm keen that we avoid that. Sure, everyone has their favourites, but different people like different things, run different games. Whether a setting's assumptions and interpretations are or are not close to a rules set you regard with favour doesn't make it a better or worse setting.

Some people are going to like Tippyverse-style settings like Points of Light. They'll like the assumptions and what they've done with the rules. Other people aren't going to like the setting, and will regard the asumptions as false, silly or mishandled. The same is true of any setting. You need to understand that not everyone agrees with everyone else, not everyone should agree, and it's a better game for everyone not agreeing.

Why the special pleading for this setting above all others?

LordBlades

2012-06-29, 12:21 AM

Ok... I've not been a member of these particular boards for very long, so you'll have to unpack the assumptions a little for me.

When you save 'consistent with 3.5 RAW', you mean what you feel a character would be theoretically capable of with no limitations except the rules, right? But a character in a setting is not being run under 3.5 RAW. He's being run under 3.5 in a campaign setting run by a particular author, just like most actual games. Noone plays 3.5 RAW, not even Tippy. It's a theoretical construct.

If you feel a moderately optimised caster could take, a particular setting, for example, Greyhawk, then the problem is not in the setting. The problem is either that what you feel is moderately optimised is not allowed or is not practical under the setting, or that a moderately optimised character is supposed to do just that.

But lauding one setting and condemning another on the basis of adherence to what you beleive should be the style, tone and interpretation of the game rules should be would be incredibly close-minded. I'm keen that we avoid that. Sure, everyone has their favourites, but different people like different things, run different games. Whether a setting's assumptions and interpretations are or are not close to a rules set you regard with favour doesn't make it a better or worse setting.

Some people are going to like Tippyverse-style settings like Points of Light. They'll like the assumptions and what they've done with the rules. Other people aren't going to like the setting, and will regard the asumptions as false, silly or mishandled. The same is true of any setting. You need to understand that not everyone agrees with everyone else, not everyone should agree, and it's a better game for everyone not agreeing.

Why the special pleading for this setting above all others?

TV, while not being perfect or the only possible interpretation, it's at least trying to provide a setting that, unlike most published ones, doesn't break when the power of magic is taken at face value.

Breaking a setting by magic is not even all about RAW. Some stuff, like Wish loops or traps of beneficial spells is most likely not RAI, but it's hard to argue that spells like Genesis or Mind Rape don't do precisely what their author intended.

In order for most published settings to make sense(especially in regard to non-casters still being relevant and/or holding a position of power), you need, as you said, for most mid and high level magic tricks to be either impossible or impractical. Trouble is most (if not all) authors rarely put any effort in describing why these things don't work.

Togo

2012-06-29, 05:23 AM

TV, while not being perfect or the only possible interpretation, it's at least trying to provide a setting that, unlike most published ones, doesn't break when the power of magic is taken at face value.

Breaking a setting by magic is not even all about RAW. Some stuff, like Wish loops or traps of beneficial spells is most likely not RAI, but it's hard to argue that spells like Genesis or Mind Rape don't do precisely what their author intended.

In order for most published settings to make sense(especially in regard to non-casters still being relevant and/or holding a position of power), you need, as you said, for most mid and high level magic tricks to be either impossible or impractical. Trouble is most (if not all) authors rarely put any effort in describing why these things don't work.

But this is a result of a selection of 'tricks' which you're assuming are working, practical, and available. Rather than each setting explaining why all the tricks everyone ever thought of wouldn't work, sure it's more efficient, in each case, for the person who reckons such tricks should work to justify their use in a particular setting, and then for DM to decide whether or not that's practical. Isn't that how this game is supposed to work?

Meanwhile the Tippyverse has the same holes as any other setting. Given a trick that involves infinite wishes, I would build a fleet of starships and end resource scarcity. Tippy doubtless has good reasons why in Points of Light, infinite wishes is instead used to make coins to buy things from distant countries, and powerful wizards are working nights stopping drunks from trashing the local bar. But I don't feel the need to accompany every setting with a thick volume entitled 'Dubious internet rules exploits and why they don't work here'. It would be a different book, with different wording, for every group of players that came through.

In the same way, the fact that dragons sleep on big piles of gold rather than investing them in the stock exchange, that adventurers don't deal in real estate speculation despite being the single biggest factor in real estate prices wherever they go, and the sheer economic impossibility of running a retail outlet for magic items, aren't huge problems for settings that feature them.

Why not just relax and enjoy all the settings in all their wonderous diversity, rather than trying to pick out one or two for special status?

LordBlades

2012-06-29, 05:53 AM

But this is a result of a selection of 'tricks' which you're assuming are working, practical, and available. Rather than each setting explaining why all the tricks everyone ever thought of wouldn't work, sure it's more efficient, in each case, for the person who reckons such tricks should work to justify their use in a particular setting, and then for DM to decide whether or not that's practical. Isn't that how this game is supposed to work?

It's not about specific tricks I'm talking about, but rather broader outlines of the power of magic. Questions like:

Magic can make a person the caster's puppet. Only defense against it is another caster. How come there are still non-casters in positions of power?

Magic can provide arbitrary amounts of non-magical products. How come non-caster crafters still make a living?

Magic allows you to know the future. How come people who have such power haven't seized all available positions of power/authority from those who don't?

I would like a setting to have answers to that kind of stuff. If king X has ruled his kingdom for 50 years without any immunity to mind affecting spells, and my 9th level wizard can just walk in, Dominate him and make himself heir to the throne, I want to see a good reason while nobody has done it in the past 50 years.

In the same way, the fact that dragons sleep on big piles of gold rather than investing them in the stock exchange, that adventurers don't deal in real estate speculation despite being the single biggest factor in real estate prices wherever they go, and the sheer economic impossibility of running a retail outlet for magic items, aren't huge problems for settings that feature them.

Why not just relax and enjoy all the settings in all their wonderous diversity, rather than trying to pick out one or two for special status?

They might not be huge problems, but for me at least they are problems. I'd prefer to be able to play into a setting that feels more like a simulated world, rather than a simple game(that was my main reason for disliking 4e).

Togo

2012-06-29, 06:44 AM

It's not about specific tricks I'm talking about, but rather broader outlines of the power of magic. Questions like:

<snip>

I would like a setting to have answers to that kind of stuff.

Ok, so that's your priority when it comes to setting design.

If king X has ruled his kingdom for 50 years without any immunity to mind affecting spells, and my 9th level wizard can just walk in, Dominate him and make himself heir to the throne, I want to see a good reason while nobody has done it in the past 50 years.

I can think of a great many reasons why that wouldn't work, just as I could for all your other objections. Doubtless we could have a long and entertaining discusion as to whether it would or it wouldn't. Just as we have about the Tippyverse. My guess is that it would end up by us agreeing to disagree.

They might not be huge problems, but for me at least they are problems. I'd prefer to be able to play into a setting that feels more like a simulated world,

And that's fine. You believe that magic must necessarily dominate the setting, thus settings where magic doesn't dominate hurts your sense of immersion. That's fine. I have a similar view when it comes to magi-marts, modern economics in a medieval setting, and other such matters. Everyone has their own priorities in a game, and you're happy to acknowledge that our priorities might be different. So everyone can enjoy the settings they enjoy...

I'd prefer to be able to play into a setting that feels more like a simulated world rather than a simple game(that was my main reason for disliking 4e).

... oh no, wait, we can't. Because the settings you enjoy are a simulated world, and the settings I enjoy are simple games (like 4e).

What the heck?

This is the bit I don't get. We're all on the same page, right down to the bit where your setting is a detailed simulation, and my favoured setting is badwrongfun. You understand that we disagree on what's realistic, so why are you still pushing this idea that there is some qualitative difference that isn't entirely a matter of opinion?

Or to put it more bluntly, why do you feel the need to not only enjoy your favoured setting, but to badmouth all others?

ThiagoMartell

2012-06-29, 06:53 AM

Magic can make a person the caster's puppet. Only defense against it is another caster. How come there are still non-casters in positions of power?
Because they have loyal caster underlings. You will find 'royal wizards' in all settings.

Magic can provide arbitrary amounts of non-magical products. How come non-caster crafters still make a living?
Wizards are worried about more important things (such as studying magic). They don't want to break economy.

Magic allows you to know the future. How come people who have such power haven't seized all available positions of power/authority from those who don't?
Knowing the future doesn't mean you can can do that. Read any sci-fi book on time travel.

If king X has ruled his kingdom for 50 years without any immunity to mind affecting spells, and my 9th level wizard can just walk in, Dominate him and make himself heir to the throne, I want to see a good reason while nobody has done it in the past 50 years.
This is so ridiculously wrong I simply have to go deeper into it. I'm sure this was bait for something, but anyway....
- Why do you think he has no protection against mind affecting? He could have a magic item.
- He most certainly has a wizard working under him, probably higher level than you. Some people don't want to rule, after all.
- There is huge gap between dominating a king and becoming king. Maybe you could be the power behind the throne, until someone figured out and shoved a sword through your belly. Or until the king's wizard dominated you in turn.

They might not be huge problems, but for me at least they are problems. I'd prefer to be able to play into a setting that feels more like a simulated world, rather than a simple game(that was my main reason for disliking 4e).
Considering how much you have to handwave away in TV (why are they making coin, why is there any trade, why aren't they all in their separate impenetrable demiplanes, why haven't gods interfered when their portfolios just died, why are there epic magic items but no epic spells, why are the magic item creation guidelins suddenly hard rules, the list goes on) to have a simulation feel, I really don't see that as much of an argument.

LordBlades

2012-06-29, 07:35 AM

Because they have loyal caster underlings. You will find 'royal wizards' in all settings.

Not all settings feature that. This also assumes the whole line of court wizards have been loyal and happy to serve a man less powerful than themselves in the majority of courts. All it takes is one disloyal wizard and voila! caster dynasty. It also assumes the average court wizard is stronger than the average wizard that is interested in taking over a kingdom.

Wizards are worried about more important things (such as studying magic). They don't want to break economy.

Even if wizards in general being preoccupied by more important matters is a reasonable assumption, ALL wizards being preoccupied by more important matters is not. And it only takes a few to wreck the economy.

Knowing the future doesn't mean you can can do that. Read any sci-fi book on time travel.

But knowing your rival's next move does give you an overwhelming advantage in the long run.

This is so ridiculously wrong I simply have to go deeper into it. I'm sure this was bait for something, but anyway....
- Why do you think he has no protection against mind affecting? He could have a magic item.
- He most certainly has a wizard working under him, probably higher level than you. Some people don't want to rule, after all.
- There is huge gap between dominating a king and becoming king. Maybe you could be the power behind the throne, until someone figured out and shoved a sword through your belly. Or until the king's wizard dominated you in turn.

You missed my point. I meant that IF the setting includes such a king, there shoudl be a damn good explanation for it.

Yahzi

2012-06-29, 07:39 AM

Still waiting for someone to point out a setting with a reasonable economy and built on reasonable assumptions. I'm just as interested in definitions of reasonable as I am what setting people come up with. People trash TV like it's some sort of unplayable nightmare, but it really isn't any more difficult to run or play in than any other setting.
You could check out World of Prime (http://rpg.drivethrustuff.com/product/64422/World-of-Prime%3A-Worldbook). I managed to make most of D&D's economics fit pretty closely. My two assumptions: 1) XP is a tangible resource, harvested from populations of peasants, 2) the XP table doubles at every step.

You believe that magic must necessarily dominate the setting, thus settings where magic doesn't dominate hurts your sense of immersion.
The point is that the RAW makes that necessarily true. In every edition of D&D, magic is so overwhelmingly powerful, inexpensive, and reliable that it completely wrecks any pretense of a medieval world. You have to either a) create house rules that prevent that, or b) ignore the RAW, which is really just a form of a).

Nobody is saying that you should play in a TV. What we are saying is that if you turn your players loose with the RAW, you will wind up playing in a TV, because that's the logical endpoint.

Forewarned is forearmed; change the rules (even just a few) and you won't find yourself dragged into TV by your players just doing their jobs.

ThiagoMartell

2012-06-29, 07:57 AM

Not all settings feature that.
But all official D&D 3.5 settings do.

This also assumes the whole line of court wizards have been loyal and happy to serve a man less powerful than themselves in the majority of courts. All it takes is one disloyal wizard and voila! caster dynasty. It also assumes the average court wizard is stronger than the average wizard that is interested in taking over a kingdom.
It's funny how those settigns also feature caster dynasties (Thay and Halruaa spring to mind, the drow society also counts) and storylines focused on stopping other wizards from taking over kingdoms (like during Year of Rogue Dragons, the whole subplot with the return of the lich king). My, it's almost like they've taken that into account!
Also, personal power is different from wanting to rule and being fit to rule. Wizards, being usually intelligent, should probably notice that pretty quick.
Any soccer player has more personal power than their coach. They still work under them.
Any jet pilot wields more personal firepower than a general sitting in a room. They still work under them.

Even if wizards in general being preoccupied by more important matters is a reasonable assumption, ALL wizards being preoccupied by more important matters is not. And it only takes a few to wreck the economy.
No, if a few wizards want to break the economy, other wizards step in and stop them. Thay is officially stated to do so in FR and the dragonmarked houses are officially stated to do so in Eberron.

But knowing your rival's next move does give you an overwhelming advantage in the long run.
Except your rivals can do this as well.

You missed my point. I meant that IF the setting includes such a king, there shoudl be a damn good explanation for it.
Then it's a good thing they didn't include that king without good explanations.

LordBlades

2012-06-29, 08:04 AM

... oh no, wait, we can't. Because the settings you enjoy are a simulated world, and the settings I enjoy are simple games (like 4e).

What the heck?

This is the bit I don't get. We're all on the same page, right down to the bit where your setting is a detailed simulation, and my favoured setting is badwrongfun. You understand that we disagree on what's realistic, so why are you still pushing this idea that there is some qualitative difference that isn't entirely a matter of opinion?

Or to put it more bluntly, why do you feel the need to not only enjoy your favoured setting, but to badmouth all others?

Where did you get that idea?

All I'm saying is that settings that don't work the way I think the D&D world should work are, completely unsurprisingly, less simulationist than those that do, in my opinion.

I have never said that enjoying anything else than what I enjoy is wrong.

And yes, unless heavily reigned in via houserules magic will dominate a setting.

LordBlades

2012-06-29, 08:31 AM

But all official D&D 3.5 settings do.

Counterexample: please open Eberron and find the court wizard of Karranth that could oppose Lady Vol from taking over the kingdom if she wanted to.

Also, personal power is different from wanting to rule and being fit to rule. Wizards, being usually intelligent, should probably notice that pretty quick.
Any soccer player has more personal power than their coach. They still work under them.
Any jet pilot wields more personal firepower than a general sitting in a room. They still work under them.

Because the average coach is smarter than most players. Same goes for general vs. fighter pilot. Most wizards are smarter than most kings.

No, if a few wizards want to break the economy, other wizards step in and stop them. Thay is officially stated to do so in FR and the dragonmarked houses are officially stated to do so in Eberron.

So wizards are too important to care about the economy until one of them does? That makes a ton of sense.

Except your rivals can do this as well.

Whole point was gaining an advantage vs rivals that can't do that.

ThiagoMartell

2012-06-29, 08:47 AM

Counterexample: please open Eberron and find the court wizard of Karranth that could oppose Lady Vol from taking over the kingdom if she wanted to.
Count Vedim ir'Omik, Minister of the Dead.
House Denith and House Jorasco.
Also, very few high level characters in Eberron.
Also, King Kaius could have everyone under his very own mind control so... uh?
And in a way the Blood of Vol already rules Karrnath so... double uh?

Because the average coach is smarter than most players. Same goes for general vs. fighter pilot. Most wizards are smarter than most kings.
Says you. Leading does not mean having a high Intelligence score - it's about all scores. Wisdom and Charisma are common dump stats for wizards.

So wizards are too important to care about the economy until one of them does? That makes a ton of sense.
You would be surprised how much that reflects actual economy.
Oil companies care nothing about palm oil... until they do.

Whole point was gaining an advantage vs rivals that can't do that.
Which makes no sense, because everyone in a position of power either can do that or has an underling that can do that.

Togo

2012-06-29, 09:21 AM

You believe that magic must necessarily dominate the setting, thus settings where magic doesn't dominate hurts your sense of immersion.

The point is that the RAW makes that necessarily true.

I disagree.

Were you to simply decide it was true, that means simply that we disagree on which settings we prefer. Fair enough.

But you seem to be going one step beyond that, and saying that because it is necessarily true, then your preference is somehow right, and mine somehow wrong, over and above simple preference.

That's the bit I'm not getting.

I see no reason why your belief that magic must necessarily dominate should be a standard extended to my games, any more than my beliefs about settings should be extended to your games.

In every edition of D&D, magic is so overwhelmingly powerful, inexpensive, and reliable that it completely wrecks any pretense of a medieval world. You have to either a) create house rules that prevent that, or b) ignore the RAW, which is really just a form of a).

I disagree, not that most settings work like a medieval world in any case.

Nobody is saying that you should play in a TV. What we are saying is that if you turn your players loose with the RAW, you will wind up playing in a TV, because that's the logical endpoint.

No, the logical endpoint of only RAW is that you have no gameworld, no setting, no NPCs, no storyline and no game. Because none of those are RAW. They all rely on the DM making decisions. When you say RAW only, you don't mean a game with no DM, because generally there is no game without a DM. What you mean is a game that doesn't deviate from the game you believe would arise if the DM made decisions that are somehow base-lined or 'normal' or 'standard' or default. TV doesn't arise from RAW, it arises from your set of assumptions about what a normal game is.

Forewarned is forearmed; change the rules (even just a few) and you won't find yourself dragged into TV by your players just doing their jobs.

Warning people about biases you have found in the system is one thing, but even that depends heavily on what you believe are a set of reasonable assumptions.

This hobby is way more diverse than you're making it out to be. For example:

"whoa, you guys are using, what, are those minatures? I've never played on a map with like squares and stuff."

"Ok, so my character is a ballarina duck..."

"Search a corpse? Ew.. my character's not doing that."

"Hold on.. are you guys saying what your character would be saying? That sounds kinda weird..."

"By RAW, prettty much every character has improved initiative. It's the best core feat by miles, so every character and monster will have it. Yes, you can choose something else, but... I prefer to play a realistic game. That's ok, though, you don't have to be realistic if you don't want to. I don't hold everyone else to my own high standards."

"You mean you choose your classes and feats and stuff based on what you know about the system, rather than who your character has met and what they do? Isn't that... cheating?"

Seriously, if you believe that following the Rules as Written leads to single standard coherant game across all tables, you need to get out more.

Togo

2012-06-29, 09:42 AM

And yes, unless heavily reigned in via houserules magic will dominate a setting.

Try these settings.

1) No Magicians. A setting that happens to contain noone who can use magic. Will magic dominate the setting?

2) Magic is Rare A setting with only a very few people who can use magic, who only have limited access to additional spells. Will magic dominate the setting?

3) Magic Guild A setting in which powerful vested interests have outlawed the use of magic except in very limited circumstances, or otherwise control it's use.

4) Other Powers A setting in which rulership and control is already dominated by beings descended from gods, and ordinary people are simply unable to rule, lacking the requisite special ability. Will magic dominate the setting?

I'd note that none of these (with the arguable exception of the last, which features no houserules to do with magic available to the PCs), involves any changes or alteration to existing RAW. They're all also quite common tropes in world design.

Oscredwin

2012-06-29, 10:37 AM

Try these settings.

1) No Magicians. A setting that happens to contain noone who can use magic. Will magic dominate the setting?

2) Magic is Rare A setting with only a very few people who can use magic, who only have limited access to additional spells. Will magic dominate the setting?

3) Magic Guild A setting in which powerful vested interests have outlawed the use of magic except in very limited circumstances, or otherwise control it's use.

4) Other Powers A setting in which rulership and control is already dominated by beings descended from gods, and ordinary people are simply unable to rule, lacking the requisite special ability. Will magic dominate the setting?

I'd note that none of these (with the arguable exception of the last, which features no houserules to do with magic available to the PCs), involves any changes or alteration to existing RAW. They're all also quite common tropes in world design.
In option 1 magic won't dominate the setting because it doesn't exist.

In option 2 magic may dominate the setting depending on where you draw that line. If I have a core only wizard that only gets his level up spells and I manage to get to level 10 I can crush an explicitly low magic setting.

In options 3 and 4 magic is dominating the setting but the power you chose to set at the top of the heap says no for some seemingly arbitrary reason. You can use your phenomenal cosmic power to kill things, but not make people's lives better.

Togo

2012-06-29, 10:45 AM

In option 1 magic won't dominate the setting because it doesn't exist.

In option 2 magic may dominate the setting depending on where you draw that line. ...

Ok, so we agree that, without any recourse to house rules, magic doesn't necessarily dominate the setting. That the setting, in fact, may be more important.

ThiagoMartell

2012-06-29, 10:48 AM

Ok, so we agree that, without any recourse to house rules, magic doesn't necessarily dominate the setting. That the setting, in fact, may be more important.
I can't see how anyone can't see that.
Every setting depends on assumptions.
TV does depend on several.
TV is not better, more logical and more internally consistant than any official D&D 3.5 setting. In fact, since so much of it is not described, it is considerably less so.
It's perfectly OK to like TV. It's nowhere near OK claiming it is more logical or more internally consistant than any official D&D 3.5 setting.

Douglas

2012-06-29, 10:52 AM

Ok, so we agree that, without any recourse to house rules, magic doesn't necessarily dominate the setting. That the setting, in fact, may be more important.
I don't think it really counts if the means of the setting preventing it is essentially a declaration that magic doesn't exist in meaningful quantities. Of course magic doesn't dominate the setting in that situation - nothing can dominate a setting without existing.

Oscredwin

2012-06-29, 11:16 AM

Ok, so we agree that, without any recourse to house rules, magic doesn't necessarily dominate the setting. That the setting, in fact, may be more important.

If I show up to your game on setting 1 and say I want to play a wizard, you'll say "no wizards in this setting". I think that counts as a house rule. In setting 2 you're likely banning some spells and maybe not giving me my 2 spells per level. You can't allow a by the book core wizard into setting 2, he'd crush it.

(Although I wouldn't consider banning books to be house rules, if you ban the PhB and just allow Complete Warrior, scoundrel and the like in the game, could you avoid magic dominating? I don't know)

ThiagoMartell

2012-06-29, 12:00 PM

If I show up to your game on setting 1 and say I want to play a wizard, you'll say "no wizards in this setting". I think that counts as a house rule. In setting 2 you're likely banning some spells and maybe not giving me my 2 spells per level. You can't allow a by the book core wizard into setting 2, he'd crush it.
If you consider that to be a houserule, then Tippyverse is heavily houseruled as well.
For example, there is no epic magic or influence from deities, while both are RAW.

Tyndmyr

2012-06-29, 12:03 PM

Really? Who does that?

I think everyone here has bent over backwards to emphasise that Tippyverse is a fun, playable setting. However, the OP was based on the idea that it was somehow a more reasonable outcome than other settings, and that simply isn't true.

I don't understand why this idea, that Tippyverse is no more inevitable or reasonable than any other setting, is provoking such hostility.

We could start poking holes in logical coherance of other settings if you wanted, but that wouldn't do anything to prove or disprove the OP.

Certain aspects of it are reasonable outcomes of the rules.

For instance, consider the spell Continual Flame. For a one time expenditure of 50gp, you have a light that lasts forever. You could destroy this, certainly, but it would be a strange instance in which breaking a magical torch is desirable. However, having a light source is nearly always desirable.

So, people will seek to make them.

Can they afford them? Certainly. They take only very low level casters, which basically have to be available, and even a commoner 1 with 4 ranks in Profession(Dirt Farming), earns 1 gold per day. It's an expensive purchase for one, but reachable. Anyone higher in the food chain? Easy.

So, magical proliferation of permanent items is to be expected. A wish trap has a vastly higher barrier of entry, but lower level items are extremely reasonable.

Oscredwin

2012-06-29, 12:10 PM

If you consider that to be a houserule, then Tippyverse is heavily houseruled as well.
For example, there is no epic magic or influence from deities, while both are RAW.

It removes those because with them playing an active part there isn't any sort of stable equilibrium. One wizard with epic spellcasting and the world is whatever he wants. Active deities shaping the world and 15th level characters can't make an impact at all. The TV is a stable world where the rules are applied. Both parts are needed. That was a judgement call, but most criticisms aren't that "Where are the gods?" or "What happened to epic?"

The TV claims to be consistant within its stated bounds. The claim is that other settings don't do that.

Tyndmyr

2012-06-29, 12:20 PM

It removes those because with them playing an active part there isn't any sort of stable equilibrium. One wizard with epic spellcasting and the world is whatever he wants. Active deities shaping the world and 15th level characters can't make an impact at all. The TV is a stable world where the rules are applied. Both parts are needed. That was a judgement call, but most criticisms aren't that "Where are the gods?" or "What happened to epic?"

The TV claims to be consistant within its stated bounds. The claim is that other settings don't do that.

Well, with the exception of micromanaging dieties like Llolth, most settings also invent reasons why the dieties don't interfere constantly. After all, if the gods solved all the problems, what would adventurers do?

Togo

2012-06-29, 12:36 PM

Certain aspects of it are reasonable outcomes of the rules.

In other words, as I said, you take the rule, assume what you feel is a reasonable outcome based on that rule, and then... try and hold everyone else to reach the same assumption you do?

Why would you even want to do that?

We're looking at Rules PLUS your assumptions. You own assumptions are not universal, so your idea of a reasonable outcome is not universal. I'm not saying your ideas are wrong. You seem to be saying rival ideas are wrong, and that's the problem here. Your own ideas are not some kind of baseline to which other people have to adhere.

For instance, consider the spell Continual Flame. For a one time expenditure of 50gp, ...<snip>...
Can they afford them? Certainly. They take only very low level casters, which basically have to be available,

Sorry, what? Low level casters have to be available? I just listed three types of setting where they aren't available.

and even a commoner 1 with 4 ranks in Profession(Dirt Farming), earns 1 gold per day.

No, a PC, being unusually driven, resourceful and competant, can earn a gold piece a day doing spot farming work when such work is available. You assume that all peasants earn a 1gp a day, potentially every day, and that doesn't need to be the case.

Same RAW, different interpretation. I'm guessing my interpretation is closer to RAI too, since back in 3.0 the default setting was Greyhawk, and that doesn't feature a bronze statue in every hut. (bronze statues - full size, also cost 50gp)

It's not that your interpretation is bad or wrong. It's just that other settings and ideas are equally valid, and I don't agree that yours has special status.

I still don't understand why you would want to grant your own ideas such status. It seems mystifying.

Togo

2012-06-29, 12:38 PM

Well, with the exception of micromanaging dieties like Llolth, most settings also invent reasons why the dieties don't interfere constantly. After all, if the gods solved all the problems, what would adventurers do?

If kings weren't under any danger from evil spellcasters, what plans and intrigues would PCs thwart?

ThiagoMartell

2012-06-29, 12:41 PM

The TV claims to be consistant within its stated bounds. The claim is that other settings don't do that.
The claim is completely wrong, then.

Oscredwin

2012-06-29, 12:44 PM

3.X Is simulationist in game design. Everything is supposed to be able to spring from the same set of rules. They forgot this when they wrote the settings, having people be a lot poorer than their stats dictate.

Peasant has profession farming. Takes 10 on a check, makes 1GP. Saves half and after 4 months can buy a torch so as to be able to keep his home lit at night (you ever want more hours in a day?). This is a very lo-op peasant, what one would naively expect. This is what people mean when they say the setting doesn't follow the rules.

I don't think you're arguing with that, you just want your setting to look like XYZ. There's nothing wrong with that. There is a problem if you're playing 3.5 and if a player ever wants to stat out his farmer parents and wonders why they're making a fraction of what they could be making, or if a level 10 wizard wants to spend downtime creatively, or if any of half a dozen spells get picked for a spell know. You either need to house rule "no", deus ex machina something, or explain why no one has ever done this thing before. The TV advocates here find those solutions inelegant.

Tyndmyr

2012-06-29, 01:10 PM

In other words, as I said, you take the rule, assume what you feel is a reasonable outcome based on that rule, and then... try and hold everyone else to reach the same assumption you do?

Why would you even want to do that?

We're looking at Rules PLUS your assumptions. You own assumptions are not universal, so your idea of a reasonable outcome is not universal. I'm not saying your ideas are wrong. You seem to be saying rival ideas are wrong, and that's the problem here. Your own ideas are not some kind of baseline to which other people have to adhere.

No, everything in my given example was sourced in a rule.

Sorry, what? Low level casters have to be available? I just listed three types of setting where they aren't available.

Name a published setting, sir.

No, a PC, being unusually driven, resourceful and competant, can earn a gold piece a day doing spot farming work when such work is available. You assume that all peasants earn a 1gp a day, potentially every day, and that doesn't need to be the case.

Assuming a 10 stat and 4 ranks, the commoner has only a +4 profession check. Average roll is a 10.5, but lets just use taking ten. Bam, 14 result, granting half the result per week in gold pieces.

Not an assumption, strict use of RAW. People who are better off than the peasant(better stats, feats put into generating wealth, more levels, whatever) will do better, and be proportionately more capable of purchasing magical items.

Same RAW, different interpretation. I'm guessing my interpretation is closer to RAI too, since back in 3.0 the default setting was Greyhawk, and that doesn't feature a bronze statue in every hut. (bronze statues - full size, also cost 50gp)

Bronze statues do not fulfill a need. Light is immensely helpful.

And if greyhawk does not mesh with RAW, that means only that this aspect of greyhawk is inconsistent.

It's not that your interpretation is bad or wrong. It's just that other settings and ideas are equally valid, and I don't agree that yours has special status.

I still don't understand why you would want to grant your own ideas such status. It seems mystifying.

I didn't invent tippyverse, sir. This isn't about "my ideas". It's about use of the rules as printed.

Cruiser1

2012-06-29, 01:44 PM

I just read about Tippyverse, and well he says that the world is built using DnD straight up rules. However, to have a TP circles you need lvl 17 wizards, and for making NPCs in towns you need to roll to see how high of a level there is. For the largest (a metropolis) its 1d4 +12 for the level. This gives you as a max a level 16 wizard. So really he isn't just using the straight up rules... is this a fail?

I think there are ways other than being a level 17 Wizard to get access to Teleportation Circle. I think Tippy even mentions a few that can be done at mid levels??
Teleportation Circle (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/teleportationCircle.htm) is a level 9 Sor/Wiz spell, and not part of any Cleric domains or alternate classes. Hence you need to be Wiz 17 or Sor 18 to cast it. According to DMG pg 139, the highest level Wizard (and the highest level Sorcerer) in a Metropolis is indeed level 1d4+12 or 16. This is also supported by the text when hiring spellcasters (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/goodsAndServices.htm) that, "even a metropolis isn’t guaranteed to have a local spellcaster able to cast 9th-level spells."

Hence we can assume that no generic NPC's (other than setting specific ones like Elminster) are that high level, and therefore NPC's haven't already created the Tippyverse. Of course, that's only NPC's, where once PC's are created, they are free to level up, learn Teleportation Circle, and start coverting whatever classic Medieval setting into a full Tippyverse, which might be a fun campaign. :smallsmile:

Tyndmyr

2012-06-29, 02:25 PM

Teleportation Circle (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/teleportationCircle.htm) is a level 9 Sor/Wiz spell, and not part of any Cleric domains or alternate classes. Hence you need to be Wiz 17 or Sor 18 to cast it. According to DMG pg 139, the highest level Wizard (and the highest level Sorcerer) in a Metropolis is indeed level 1d4+12 or 16. This is also supported by the text when hiring spellcasters (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/goodsAndServices.htm) that, "even a metropolis isn’t guaranteed to have a local spellcaster able to cast 9th-level spells."

Hence we can assume that no generic NPC's (other than setting specific ones like Elminster) are that high level, and therefore NPC's haven't already created the Tippyverse. Of course, that's only NPC's, where once PC's are created, they are free to level up, learn Teleportation Circle, and start coverting whatever classic Medieval setting into a full Tippyverse, which might be a fun campaign. :smallsmile:

Ways exist. Extra Spell is an obvious one. Any other class that gets access to the sorc/wizard list is also an option.

Now, it's true that not *every* world may have a high level wizard...but you only need one. TC can be permanencied, and can entirely safeguard trade routes. If any one wizard, ever, decides that "gee, giant piles of wealth, power, and safety WOULD be nice", he immediately gains massive temporal power.

This can be countered, but only really by other wizards using similar tactics. Either countering or not countering leads you to the tippyverse.

Togo

2012-06-29, 03:00 PM

3.X Is simulationist in game design. Everything is supposed to be able to spring from the same set of rules. They forgot this when they wrote the settings, having people be a lot poorer than their stats dictate.

No, I don't agree. 3.x is strongly simulationist, yes, but the rules simulate adventuring parties, and the entire style is specific rule X for specific application X. As soon as you get into setting, or indeed into the DMG, narrativist elements pop up all over the shop.

(You could even argue that the rules for PCs are simulationist, the rules for everything else are relatively more narrativist, and that's one reason why the game as a whole is so successful. )

What you're effectively doing is complaining that if you apply rules for adventuring PCs to the game world as a whole, you get inconsistencies. Well sure. If you applied the rules for shipbuilding to the game world as a whole, you'd also get inconsistencies. What of it?

What you're trying to claim is that if a game world doesn't base it's economic system around profession skill checks, it's somehow at fault. I don't believe that's a proper reading of rules.

(Incidently, I believe that what happens when you do try and make all rules universalisable, is that you end up with something much more like 4e)

Peasant has profession farming. Takes 10 on a check, makes 1GP. Saves half and after 4 months can buy a torch so as to be able to keep his home lit at night (you ever want more hours in a day?). This is a very lo-op peasant, what one would naively expect. This is what people mean when they say the setting doesn't follow the rules.

Yes, they mean that they take a rule intended for adventuring PCs who are moonlighting, assume that it applies to every person on the planet every day, ignore practical considerations such as lack of available work, land investment and tax in service, and then claim the fault is in the system.

You could equally take the RAW commodities prices, substract the transport costs, work backwards from that what the production cost is, and then allocate that to the peasant on a daily basis. Equally RAW, different answer.

Now if you can take different areas of the rules, and work out a different answer, you can't possibly claim that the cost of labour is set by RAW. What it is based on RAW, but set by your assumptions in working out the figure.

This what I mean when I say that TV isn't RAW, but is rather a set of assumptions based on RAW. Assumptions that are not universal, and which there is no obligation to treat as any different to any other setting.

I don't think you're arguing with that, ...

I think I might well be. I'm arguing that different people interpret the rules in different ways to reach different settings, and that all of these ways are valid.

There's nothing wrong with that. There is a problem if you're playing 3.5 and if a player ever wants to stat out his farmer parents and wonders why they're making a fraction of what they could be making, or if a level 10 wizard wants to spend downtime creatively, or if any of half a dozen spells get picked for a spell know. You either need to house rule "no", deus ex machina something, or explain why no one has ever done this thing before.

Or just explain to him that he's misinterpreting the rules.

This is the point you're reluctant to accept, I think. Any interpretation of the rules, however reasonable you may personally feel it is, is still just an interpretation, one that other people are free to argue with. TV is not a result of RAW, it's a result of a particular interpretation of RAW. You may feel it's the most reasonable interpretation. But factually speaking, it isn't the only out there.

------

In other words, as I said, you take the rule, assume what you feel is a reasonable outcome based on that rule, and then... try and hold everyone else to reach the same assumption you do?
No, everything in my given example was sourced in a rule.

So are most rules interpretations. That doesn't give yours special status.

Name a published setting, sir.

Why? Why would it matter? Is TV published? I don't see what you're getting at.

No, a PC, being unusually driven, resourceful and competant, can earn a gold piece a day doing spot farming work when such work is available. You assume that all peasants earn a 1gp a day, potentially every day, and that doesn't need to be the case.
Assuming a 10 stat and 4 ranks, the commoner has only a +4 profession check. Average roll is a 10.5, but lets just use taking ten. Bam, 14 result, granting half the result per week in gold pieces.

Not an assumption, strict use of RAW. People who are better off than the peasant(better stats, feats put into generating wealth, more levels, whatever) will do better, and be proportionately more capable of purchasing magical items.

You're assuming that peasants use the same skills roles as PCs, earn the same amount from them, and that work is always available. Moreover you're taking a rule for adventurers moonlighting and applying it as a standard wage. That's not RAW. It's strictly your own assumption and extrapolation from RAW. Feel free to run a world where that is how things work, but realise that it's your own interpretation, and those of other people may differ.

And if greyhawk does not mesh with RAW, that means only that this aspect of greyhawk is inconsistent.

Or that your assumptions and extrapolations don't apply in Greyhawk. I'm quite happy with the idea that different settings interpret the same rules in different ways. Ultimately, every table is a different setting, since the DM is where the rules interpretation takes place. That diversity is one of the joys of the game.

You appear to be setting up your own interpretation as holy writ and condemning as in error anyone who disagrees with you. That's what I'm disagreeing with.

I didn't invent tippyverse, sir. This isn't about "my ideas". It's about use of the rules as printed.

No, it's about one particular interpretation of the rules as printed, and whether the people who cling to that interpretation are entitled to claim that everyone else is in error, without being called on it.

Lord of Blades has made it quite clear that he likes the TV because, in his opinion, it's closer to what he'd expect from his reading of the rules. You appear more reluctant to offer that qualification, and it's principally this idea that there is one true interpretation of the RAW that will dictate your setting, that I'm disagreeing with here.

Oscredwin

2012-06-29, 03:05 PM

No, I don't agree. 3.x is strongly simulationist, yes, but the rules simulate adventuring parties, and the entire style is specific rule X for specific application X. As soon as you get into setting, or indeed into the DMG, narrativist elements pop up all over the shop.

(You could even argue that the rules for PCs are simulationist, the rules for everything else are relatively more narrativist, and that's one reason why the game as a whole is so successful. ) If this is true, why is there a commoner class (with profession as a class skill)?

strider24seven

2012-06-29, 03:07 PM

You could equally take the RAW commodities prices, substract the transport costs, work backwards from that what the production cost is, and then allocate that to the peasant on a daily basis. Equally RAW, different answer.

I think that's his point.

Edit: lol ninja'd

Cruiser1

2012-06-29, 03:12 PM

Ways exist. Extra Spell is an obvious one.
The Extra Spell (CA) feat only allows you to learn a spell up to one level below the highest level you can already cast (same with extra spells obtained through PrC's like Recaster). Since Teleportation Circle is a 9th level spell, you can't learn it until you can cast 10th level spells, and that assumes epic characters exist, you're epic, and the DM rules that Extra Spell allows you to select spells not on your class list.

Any other class that gets access to the sorc/wizard list is also an option.
Any class that accesses the Sor/Wiz spell list (such as a non-core class, or by selecting a Sor/Wiz spell through a PrC like Wyrm Wizard) will still cast it as a 9th level spell, and still won't have access to it until 17th or 18th level. Non-core classes are rarer than PHB classes, so high level non-core classes should be even rarer than high level Wizards.

strider24seven

2012-06-29, 03:15 PM

The Extra Spell (CA) feat only allows you to learn a spell up to one level below the highest level you can already cast (same with extra spells obtained through PrC's like Recaster). Since Teleportation Circle is a 9th level spell, you can't learn it until you can cast 10th level spells, and that assumes epic characters exist, you're epic, and the DM rules that Extra Spell allows you to select spells not on your class list.

See Red Wizard. See Eldritch Corruption. See Sanctum Spell. See Earth Spell. See any of the 10k ways to cast 10th level spells.

ThiagoMartell

2012-06-29, 03:24 PM

If this is true, why is there a commoner class (with profession as a class skill)?
Because Commoner is not the same as farmer.
From reading other books (specially Arms & Equipment Guide and the DMG), you discover non-skilled labor (and farming is specifically considered this) pays 1 sp/day. The Profession skill is meant to be used when people in the Commoner class are not performing as farmers, but as skilled workers.

Of course, Tyndmyr's example ignores basic economy (so more people want to buy continual flame torches, but the price stats the same...?) and the fact that TV does not have farmers anyway.

Yes, if you look at the Profession skill in a vacuum it looks inconsistant. If you actually take your time to read the source material, it makes a lot of sense.
You're supposed to apply common sense to the rules when it seems fit. It's stated as such throughout the DMG. If you purposefully decide to avoid doing that, of course things spiral out of hand.

Heck, if you go full RAWtard, Profession makes money spring into existence after you perform your skill check. Not even Tippyverse builds anything out of that stupid assumption. If you want to play in a world with drown healing and Profession (money for nothing), be my guest, knock yourself out. But the moment you claim this 'makes more sense' or it's more 'internally consistant' than applying common sense to the rules, you're offending everyone else and trying to impose your narrow view on them.

dascarletm

2012-06-29, 03:28 PM

Heck, if you go full RAWtard, Profession makes money spring into existence after you perform your skill check. Not even Tippyverse builds anything out of that stupid assumption. If you want to play in a world with drown healing and Profession (money for nothing), be my guest, knock yourself out. But the moment you claim this 'makes more sense' or it's more 'internally consistant' than applying common sense to the rules, you're offending everyone else and trying to impose your narrow view on them.

^^This^^

Thank you.

Almost want to sig it....

Douglas

2012-06-29, 03:45 PM

ThiagoMartell

2012-06-29, 03:50 PM

The whole point of Tippyverse is to take the capabilities clearly available to PCs, assume they are also available to NPCs and have been for the setting's entire history, and attempt to work out what might logically happen given that.
Funny how it fails as that, since according to the demographic guidelines there are no NPC wizards above 16th level.

NoldorForce

2012-06-29, 04:21 PM

Because Commoner is not the same as farmer.
From reading other books (specially Arms & Equipment Guide and the DMG), you discover non-skilled labor (and farming is specifically considered this) pays 1 sp/day. The Profession skill is meant to be used when people in the Commoner class are not performing as farmers, but as skilled workers.Where I come from (my parents are latter-day hippies), farming is a skilled profession. Just as a rundown of useful but non-obvious farming distinctions/innovations:
Growing regular potatoes (highlands) vs. sweet potatoes (lowlands).
The three-field system.
Irrigation in all its forms.
The frigging plow.
Caring for cows vs. sheep vs. goats.
Acid-loving crops vs. base-loving crops.
The factory farm (CAFO) system. ("Innovation" is questionable.)
When to pick various crops: okra vs. leafy greens vs. tomatoes, say.

The bottom line of 3E is that if you're trying to apply common sense (a bogus term anyway due to being highly subjective) and coherence to the rules when considering a setting, you've got your work cut out for you because many of the designers didn't think that far. As you've noted, D&D economics has numerous contradictions if you look at things hard; this is not something you can just wish away without actually correcting the rules. But the designers didn't care because D&D has always been about killing monsters and taking their stuff; everything else is just a facilitating sideshow.

Teleportation circles and food-producing traps are just the tip of the iceberg when considering all the world-altering things (many of them spells) that the rules provide. Blue ice allows you to construct a permanent refrigerator (or freezer) without any power requirements. Quintessence goes one step further and allows anything to be put in storage at any condition. (If you line a box in it then you can even transport the stuff - sure beats the modern transportation industry if you've got enough supply.) Several instances of Wall of X are all instantaneous, allowing you to create building materials on a whim. Plant Growth boosts all productivity within a half-mile for a year; try Extending/Widening it for more efficiency. And Zceryll-based binders can have summoned monsters around all day long for various purposes, like superhuman labor or unlimited SLAs.

The bottom line is that anything that is or can be made to last indefinitely is a potential setting-breaker. Myself, I'd probably deal with things via gentleman's agreement, but the flaws remain even if the group has to paper them over.

Gavinfoxx

2012-06-29, 04:23 PM

I think Tippy mentioned a way for Level 12 or 14 characters to get that spell? Something about Warlocks, I think??

EDIT: Found it. He mentions that level 11 Warlock can make a Teleportation Circle.

The Random NPC

2012-06-29, 04:53 PM

Because Commoner is not the same as farmer.
From reading other books (specially Arms & Equipment Guide and the DMG), you discover non-skilled labor (and farming is specifically considered this) pays 1 sp/day.

I got rid of the rest of you post because I only care to address this part.

COMMONER
The common folk farm the fields, staff the shops, build the homes, and produce the goods in the world around the adventurers
Sounds to me like Commoner is the same as farmer

EDIT: The farming tools located in the Arms and Equipment Guide are at the cheapest a rake for 1 gold and the most expensive is a billhook for 5 gold. And it doesn't even mention farming otherwise.

Douglas

2012-06-29, 05:17 PM

Funny how it fails as that, since according to the demographic guidelines there are no NPC wizards above 16th level.
Those "guidelines" are at least one of A) just that - guidelines, not rules; B) setting specific, and therefore ignorable when creating a new setting; or C) blatantly contradictory with the rules for character advancement. Tippyverse ignores them for all of those reasons, along with the "no PC/NPC distinction" principle - if PCs can be above 16th level, and they obviously can, then so can NPCs.

Tvtyrant

2012-06-29, 05:46 PM

I'm not entirely sure what the argument here is about, but it seems to me from a few years on this board and my own gaming that the rules are blatantly contradictory at worst, and vague and exploitable at best.

The rules for NPC demographics seem the perfect point for this, because they contradict the rules for WBL (which is also a guideline), and so they cannot be used together. Even if a setting is designed to match RAW, it cannot, because RAW is contradictory.

Togo

2012-06-29, 06:01 PM

There is an unstated assumption that appears to be the main point of contention here: that the rules do not, and properly should not, distinguish in any way between PCs and NPCs with regard to how their capabilities work, how they affect the world, and how the world affects them, to the greatest extent possible. Distinctions based on race, class, level, and absolutely anything else about a character are fine, but whether a character's actions are chosen by a player or a DM should have no impact on the rules.

Most advocates of the Tippyverse accept this as so implicitly obvious that it's not even worth mentioning. For them, unless it's brought to their attention by someone else, it's so basic and fundamental that there never even was any debate about it's validity - it's just there. I'm not excluding myself from this - it took Togo's repeated posts to make me realize anyone here was even considering otherwise.

That's an interesting point. I do consider otherwise. I'm not sure it's central or necesary to my point though. The rules for what most people are paid per day are laid down in the DMG (p139), the rules for what hirelings are paid are also specified (DMG p.105). Both contradict a rate calculated on continuous skill profession checks. Even in specifics, the rate paid to an entertainer, versus the rate paid for perform checks, don't match. There are numerous explanations you can come up with for this, from the PCs somehow being special through to the profession checks being a contract rate paid for rare talent suddenly available, and not being representative of what you'd get if you do the job every day for a living. (I personally could almost double my pay as a contractor, but I wouldn't get work every, or even every other day).

But whatever explanation you come up with, the point I made remains the same. There are alternative valid ways of interpreting the same RAW, and claiming RAW specifies a particular setting is simply not true.

Togo appears to be arguing that this assumption is wrong. While this is a valid viewpoint, it is so basic to the entire rules system and so fundamentally at odds with the entire philosophy behind Tippyverse that there is little point in even thinking about Tippyverse without first accepting this assumption. The whole point of Tippyverse is to take the capabilities clearly available to PCs, assume they are also available to NPCs and have been for the setting's entire history, and attempt to work out what might logically happen given that.

Which is laudable, but working out your economy on the basis of multiplying up from a single skill check is not the only way to interpret the rules, or even the only sensible way. Particularly since doing so involves setting up your economy on a basis that directly contradicts the rules provided under 'Economy'.

Rules in D&D are highly specific. Your move per round does not translate neatly into your move per day. The rules are given for adventures, and things that are likely to concern adventurers. There are not rules for specifying what assumptions you must hold in order to build your setting, and doing is not RAW. That doesn't mean it's wrong, or bad, but there is nothing to support the qualitative distinction that people appear to want to drawn between their games and other peoples.

Simulationism and housecats
A slight tangent, but to my mind this explains why housecats are statted to be quite so dangerous. Not because cats in real life are potentialy lethal creatures who could off you if they chose. But because in any game where you actually run a combat involving a cat, where you actually care about the stats, you want the cat to have a chance of hurting people.

This might happen in a horror game, if you're dealing with a familiar. The reason why housecats are dangerous is because the stats are balanced for the situations in which you might fight a moggy. And in that sense, they're pretty accurate. They produce the result set you would want to see in that kind of situation. They could kill poor old Mr McGregor, pose a danger but not a lethal one to a competant hero, and in general do everything you might expect a cat to do in a horror film, and no more.

The reason why the stats look ridiculous when compared to other animal is that, well, they are ridiculous when compared to other animals. This is where the simulationists go wrong. The stats are there to simulate a horror film type situation, because that's what they'd be used for. They aren't for simulating cat vs horse. D&D rules are highly simulationist in each specific area, but the fact that all the rules are highly simulationist doesn't mean that put together they comprise a world simulation.

That's why housecats are overpowered, that's why round by round movement doesn't add up to day by day movement, and that's why you can't work out a national economy based on individual skill checks. Because the rules are specific, and not general. And that's why there are multiple valid interpretations about how put together all these many and various individual rules to form a setting.

Togo

2012-06-29, 06:08 PM

I'm not entirely sure what the argument here is about, but it seems to me from a few years on this board and my own gaming that the rules are blatantly contradictory at worst, and vague and exploitable at best.

The arguement is about whether the Tippyverse is a setting like any other, with it's own preferences, assumptions, etc., or whether it somehow represents a uniquely pure form of the game to which other settings, with their house rules and arbitrary limits, can only aspire.

Contradictory rules would suggest to me that a setting based on the one true RAW is not actually possible, and that decisions need to be made, decisions which might well vary from setting to setting and from table to table.

Tvtyrant

2012-06-29, 06:12 PM

The arguement is about whether the Tippyverse is a setting like any other, with it's own preferences, assumptions, etc., or whether it somehow represents a uniquely pure form of the game to which other settings, with their house rules and arbitrary limits, can only aspire.

Contradictory rules would suggest to me that a setting based on the one true RAW is not actually possible, and that decisions need to be made, decisions which might well vary from setting to setting and from table to table.

In that case I am in agreement with you I believe.

Togo

2012-06-29, 06:12 PM

Sounds to me like Commoner is the same as farmer

Despite our common view of 'farming peasants', they might well be amongst the richest and highly skilled of commoners. That would reconcile the amount you can get from profession farmer, with the amount paid to common labourers.

Or you could argue that peasants have feudal obligations to the land, and thus get paid very little, while wandering adventurers get full whack.

Different interpretations of the same rules could be used in different settings. That's the point.

Douglas

2012-06-29, 07:38 PM

Rules in D&D are highly specific. Your move per round does not translate neatly into your move per day.
Actually, it does. Movement over long distances is calculated as "walk" = 1 move action per round, "hustle" = double move each round, and faster than that can't be maintained for long time periods. Calculating with 30' per round and 6 seconds per round, 1 hour of moving at that speed comes out to 3.4 miles. The writers rounded that down to 3 miles per hour and then based all the other numbers on that, but rounding error is fairly minor. One day of movement is explicitly assumed to be 8 hours of actual movement by default, with more requiring checks for a forced march, and sure enough one day of movement for a 30' speed creature is 3 mph * 8 hours = 24 miles.

I agree there are several conflicting ways to calculate daily income of the general peasantry, but I don't think that really affects the core elements of Tippyverse.

georgie_leech

2012-06-29, 08:33 PM

Actually, it does. Movement over long distances is calculated as "walk" = 1 move action per round, "hustle" = double move each round, and faster than that can't be maintained for long time periods. Calculating with 30' per round and 6 seconds per round, 1 hour of moving at that speed comes out to 3.4 miles. The writers rounded that down to 3 miles per hour and then based all the other numbers on that, but rounding error is fairly minor. One day of movement is explicitly assumed to be 8 hours of actual movement by default, with more requiring checks for a forced march, and sure enough one day of movement for a 30' speed creature is 3 mph * 8 hours = 24 miles.

I agree there are several conflicting ways to calculate daily income of the general peasantry, but I don't think that really affects the core elements of Tippyverse.

Further, the delay could be explained by a number of travelling factors usually ignored for expediency. Muddy roads, brief stops to eat or drink, heck, bathroom breaks are all delays the original PC races could expect to encounter during long periods of travel. Doesn't hold up as well with races like Warforged or other unusual humanoids, but most D&D rules tend to have wierd results as more and more content is added.

Yahzi

2012-06-29, 11:00 PM

But you seem to be going one step beyond that, and saying that because it is necessarily true,
it is necessarily true that, given RAW, magic will dominate everything after 9th level or so.

You can make this not true by: limiting magic, limiting high-levels, banning spells, banning classes, or any other number of house rules; but those are house rules.

The standard setting (as indicated by the population tables for cities in the DMG) makes no sense; the amount of wizard levels generated by the provided tables does not produce the quasi-medieval world described by the rest of the books.

That is my point. I don't understand what bit you are not getting here. Nobody is telling you what kind of world to run; they are telling you that if you do X, the result will be Y.

I see no reason why your belief that magic must necessarily dominate should be a standard extended to my games, any more than my beliefs about settings should be extended to your games.
Because my belief is a claim about what the game rules entail?

Given the existing game rules, magic must necessarily dominate. This is simply the logical result of examining the game rules.

How many fighters in your games use clubs? How many use longswords? Would you agree that, by RAW, longswords dominate clubs, rocks, and random bits of string as weapons?

That's the same thing I am saying. Characters (and NPCs) in the world have problems, they look for efficient solutions, and magic as presented is always the most efficient solution after level 9 or so.

Unless people in your world don't use magic, because... oh look! A house rule! Which is fine! Changing the rules to create the setting you want is fine! It's the whole point!

"You mean you choose your classes and feats and stuff based on what you know about the system, rather than who your character has met and what they do? Isn't that... cheating?"
But somebody chooses those classes. And those people (even if they are NPCs) will wreck your world and turn it into something like TV just by trying to do their jobs to the best of their abilities with the tools they have.

Seriously, if you believe that following the Rules as Written leads to single standard coherant game across all tables, you need to get out more.
Every game that isn't the standard game is advertised in advance, by the DM stating his house rules or his setting rules. And in settings that don't turn into TV, some of those rules are things like "no candles of invocation" or "no 20th level wizards exist" or whatever.

As for coherent, I thought my point was that the game was not coherent by RAW. Which is the entire problem!

The Random NPC

2012-06-29, 11:11 PM

Despite our common view of 'farming peasants', they might well be amongst the richest and highly skilled of commoners. That would reconcile the amount you can get from profession farmer, with the amount paid to common labourers.

I can see your point, it is a valid point, but I can't really see how you got there. I don't believe I will ever be able to, due to my own preconceptions.

Or you could argue that peasants have feudal obligations to the land, and thus get paid very little, while wandering adventurers get full whack.

Different interpretations of the same rules could be used in different settings. That's the point.
Now this I can understand without difficulty. Just because a peasant can make 1g a day, it doesn't mean he gets to keep it.

Augmental

2012-06-30, 12:56 AM

Tia! Ph'mgclui mglw'zard Ti'ppii op'fio Li'ryla Po'ilnt Brak'ka!

If this doesn't call Tippy to this topic, nothing will.:smalltongue:

dascarletm

2012-06-30, 02:54 AM

Given the existing game rules, magic must necessarily dominate. This is simply the logical result of examining the game rules.

Since when in history has the most powerful people dominated a region?

Let me take that back. It's not always nor the majority of the time has the most powerful person been the ruler in a society.

Also if there is nobility, and they control the wizards, through whatever means, they would probably not make magic widespread, and horde it to themselves.

It's all interpretation though

LordBlades

2012-06-30, 04:03 AM

Since when in history has the most powerful people dominated a region?

Let me take that back. It's not always nor the majority of the time has the most powerful person been the ruler in a society.

Also if there is nobility, and they control the wizards, through whatever means, they would probably not make magic widespread, and horde it to themselves.

It's all interpretation though

On the contrary, for most of the recorded history, the powerful (where power was measured in the effectiveness of one's army )have dominated.

Also, without setting fiat or houserules the only way to control a caster is to be a more powerful caster. The nobility can only control the wizards reliably only if they are higher level casters themselves.

ThiagoMartell

2012-06-30, 04:52 AM

The standard setting (as indicated by the population tables for cities in the DMG) makes no sense; the amount of wizard levels generated by the provided tables does not produce the quasi-medieval world described by the rest of the books.
The best result from a metropolis in the DMG will give you 2 level 16 wizards, 4 level 8 wizards, 8 level 4 wizards, 16 level 2 wizards and 32 level 1 wizards.
Please tell me how that is anything like the Tippyverse, specially considering how few metropolises there are in most settings.

That is my point. I don't understand what bit you are not getting here. Nobody is telling you what kind of world to run; they are telling you that if you do X, the result will be Y.
That is not right and even if it was, Y would not be Tippyverse.

Given the existing game rules, magic must necessarily dominate. This is simply the logical result of examining the game rules.
By your logic, countries with more oil reserves would rule they world. They don't.

That's the same thing I am saying. Characters (and NPCs) in the world have problems, they look for efficient solutions, and magic as presented is always the most efficient solution after level 9 or so.
"Always" is wrong. Magic is the most efficient solution for some problems, but for many problems, it is not a cost efficient solution.

Unless people in your world don't use magic, because... oh look! A house rule! Which is fine! Changing the rules to create the setting you want is fine! It's the whole point!
I really don't think the internal assumptions of a setting should be called houserules, sinc ethey are not limited to a single game.

But somebody chooses those classes. And those people (even if they are NPCs) will wreck your world and turn it into something like TV just by trying to do their jobs to the best of their abilities with the tools they have.
You do know that's not how people function, right?
You see how many people do ineffectual stuff in RL? You see people browsing with IE because they're too lazy to download anything better. You see people driving a car for two blocks qhen walking would suffice, be more healthy and more cost-efficient. Many people cling to outdated beliefs because they want to. Plenty of people actualy think the world is going to end because of a misunderstanding regarding an ancient calendar.
Humans don't "try to do their jobs to the best of their abilities" as a rule.

Every game that isn't the standard game is advertised in advance, by the DM stating his house rules or his setting rules. And in settings that don't turn into TV, some of those rules are things like "no candles of invocation" or "no 20th level wizards exist" or whatever.
Again, TV is not the logical outcome. I've pointed out the many inconsistencies time and time again.

On the contrary, for most of the recorded history, the powerful (where power was measured in the effectiveness of one's army )have dominated.

This is wrong and simplistic. Please do more research. "Army?" Please.

Ways exist. Extra Spell is an obvious one. Any other class that gets access to the sorc/wizard list is also an option.
I have no idea how Extra Spell gets you access to a spell a level higher. Also notice that multiclassing and prestige classing are for special NPCs. Run of the mill community generated NPCs are single classed.

Now, it's true that not *every* world may have a high level wizard...but you only need one. TC can be permanencied, and can entirely safeguard trade routes. If any one wizard, ever, decides that "gee, giant piles of wealth, power, and safety WOULD be nice", he immediately gains massive temporal power.
Funny how that wizards is an impossible NPC by RAW.

This can be countered, but only really by other wizards using similar tactics. Either countering or not countering leads you to the tippyverse.
Zerg rush + dispel magic, no high level wizards were harmed in this exercise.

Where I come from (my parents are latter-day hippies), farming is a skilled profession. Just as a rundown of useful but non-obvious farming distinctions/innovations
Do you really think that applies to D&D pseudo-medieval baseline? :smallconfused:

The bottom line of 3E is that if you're trying to apply common sense (a bogus term anyway due to being highly subjective) and coherence to the rules when considering a setting, you've got your work cut out for you because many of the designers didn't think that far. As you've noted, D&D economics has numerous contradictions if you look at things hard; this is not something you can just wish away without actually correcting the rules. But the designers didn't care because D&D has always been about killing monsters and taking their stuff; everything else is just a facilitating sideshow.
You're just making TV make less and less sense: "OK, so I'll take this part of the rules no one really cared about, use a lot of assumptions to ensure the outcome I want, and claim this is the one true RAW world!"

Teleportation circles and food-producing traps are just the tip of the iceberg when considering all the world-altering things (many of them spells) that the rules provide. Blue ice allows you to construct a permanent refrigerator (or freezer) without any power requirements. Quintessence goes one step further and allows anything to be put in storage at any condition. (If you line a box in it then you can even transport the stuff - sure beats the modern transportation industry if you've got enough supply.) Several instances of Wall of X are all instantaneous, allowing you to create building materials on a whim. Plant Growth boosts all productivity within a half-mile for a year; try Extending/Widening it for more efficiency. And Zceryll-based binders can have summoned monsters around all day long for various purposes, like superhuman labor or unlimited SLAs.
This sounds a lot more reasonable than TV.

The bottom line is that anything that is or can be made to last indefinitely is a potential setting-breaker. Myself, I'd probably deal with things via gentleman's agreement, but the flaws remain even if the group has to paper them over.
It doesn't have to be a setting breaker. Again, turn to the real world. Why don't we have more electric cars, since they make more noise and deal less damage to the environment? Because those that control the power in the first place are not letting go.
Suppose you start binding Zceryll and selling superhuman labor. Every now and then churches attack you, becaus ethey hate Binders, but you're optimized so you manage to hold out. Eventually a king shows up and says "dude, work for me, the church won't touch you, you'll get more money and a cool hat".

I think Tippy mentioned a way for Level 12 or 14 characters to get that spell? Something about Warlocks, I think??

EDIT: Found it. He mentions that level 11 Warlock can make a Teleportation Circle.
I don't know how that would be possible (I'm guessing custom magic item abuse - not RAW) and there are no Warlock NPCs by RAW anyway.

I got rid of the rest of you post because I only care to address this part.

Your very quote shows why you're wrong. :smallconfused: Commoners are not only farmers.

Those "guidelines" are at least one of A) just that - guidelines, not rules;
TV uses trap creation and custom magic item creation guidelines as hard rules. Why does it get to pick and choose?

B) setting specific, and therefore ignorable when creating a new setting;
Please show me where does it say it's setting specific.

or C) blatantly contradictory with the rules for character advancement. Tippyverse ignores them for all of those reasons, along with the "no PC/NPC distinction" principle - if PCs can be above 16th level, and they obviously can, then so can NPCs.
Still not RAW.

Togo

2012-06-30, 08:14 AM

it is necessarily true that, given RAW, magic will dominate everything after 9th level or so.

No, it isn't. If you believe it is necessarily true, you must have an unassailable chain of logic stretching from something we both agree on to your conclusion. You have no such chain. You just believe it is true very strongly.

The standard setting (as indicated by the population tables for cities in the DMG) makes no sense;

Population table <> setting.

the amount of wizard levels generated by the provided tables does not produce the quasi-medieval world described by the rest of the books.

An amount of wizard levels can't produce a world in any case. You need a whole lot of extra stuff that isn't in the books. What you're saying is that a population thus described can't feature in an even slightly quasi-medieval world, which is a much stronger claim.

And.. you're not considering those totals to be RAW, in any case, are you? RAW seems a very flexible concept here, roughly equivalent to 'rules I like, interpreted in the way I choose'. Wouldn't it be easier to just agree that TV is not, and never has been, RAW?

That is my point. I don't understand what bit you are not getting here. Nobody is telling you what kind of world to run; they are telling you that if you do X, the result will be Y.

And I'm saying that the result will be Y, or Z, or A or B, or maybe something else.

I see no reason why your belief that magic must necessarily dominate should be a standard extended to my games, any more than my beliefs about settings should be extended to your games.

Because my belief is a claim about what the game rules entail?

A belief I disagree with.

Given the existing game rules, magic must necessarily dominate. This is simply the logical result of examining the game rules.

Nonsense. I've gave four examples of game settings that violate this assumption most strongly. Three of them are compatible with population levels you're quoting as RAW but not using yourself, and in none of them do spellcasters change the face of the gameworld.

How many fighters in your games use clubs? How many use longswords? Would you agree that, by RAW, longswords dominate clubs, rocks, and random bits of string as weapons?

No, clubs have been more popular than longswords, as weapons for fighters, in my games. Note I'm talking PCs here. Other people do not share your assumptions, or behave in the way you think they should.

You seem to be working under the assumption that all people will inevitably drfit towards maximum immediate mechancal advantage. That isn't true, amongst PCs or amongst anyone else. Sure there are tugs in that direction, but there are more important considerations.

That's the same thing I am saying. Characters (and NPCs) in the world have problems, they look for efficient solutions, and magic as presented is always the most efficient solution after level 9 or so.

This isn't always true, and even when it is true, efficiency is one consideration amongst many.

But somebody chooses those classes. And those people (even if they are NPCs) will wreck your world and turn it into something like TV just by trying to do their jobs to the best of their abilities with the tools they have.

They might. Or they might turn it into setting Z, or setting A, or setting B. Or just about any other setting you care to name.

Every game that isn't the standard game is advertised in advance, by the DM stating his house rules or his setting rules.

There is no such thing as a standard game. I note also that Tippyverse games are advertised as such.

As for coherent, I thought my point was that the game was not coherent by RAW. Which is the entire problem!

A problem that is solved in different ways, by different people, creating many different games, many of which are equally RAW. Which is the entire point. It is a logical contradiction to state that the rules are incoherant while at the same time stating that the rules inevitably lead to a single setting. You have to interpret to get a useable set of rules. Different interpretation, different setting.

ThiagoMartell

2012-06-30, 08:49 AM

And.. you're not considering those totals to be RAW, in any case, are you? RAW seems a very flexible concept here, roughly equivalent to 'rules I like, interpreted in the way I choose'. Wouldn't it be easier to just agree that TV is not, and never has been, RAW?

This, so much this.
You're now my favorite person in the playground forever.

dascarletm

2012-06-30, 02:25 PM

Given the existing game rules, magic must necessarily dominate. This is simply the logical result of examining the game rules.

How many fighters in your games use clubs? How many use longswords? Would you agree that, by RAW, longswords dominate clubs, rocks, and random bits of string as weapons?

I disagree that would be the most logical outcome.

I'm not saying that the people in power would have magic and use a lot of magic. I'm sure the aristocrats, royalty, and players would have it "widespread" in much of their lives.

The thing is, the most powerful force in the world does not necessarily mean it will be widespread, or can be widespread.

Creating food/water. How many casters would be required in a population to make enough food for it? How many level three spells are available?

lets make an order-of-magnitude calculation on this ridiculousness.

lets say a large city of about 20,000 people need food every day
I'll even give a generous amount of 3rd level cleric spells available: 500
that is a buttload way more than there should be, but that's fine
that is 1500 people fed via magic casting.

and don't tell me magic items will feed the other 18,500 people because the town doesn't have that much wealth not even close.

lets take your longsword example. (the longsword representing magic and clubs representing mundane)
You say that because longswords are superior to clubs they would be more widespread, and I'm sure they would be. Every knight or important warrior would use one, and would know how to use one.
BUT
This doesn't mean every peasant would have one. Historically rulers kept their populace unarmed to prevent uprising.
Logically
rulers would keep magic out of the populaces hand, and keep wizards under their control as to consolidate their power.

I'm not saying it can't be this way in a campaign, but don't say it's more logical via the rules.

Tippyverse has failed to think of all the aspects of what it claims, but that's fine people make mistakes

EDIT: to respond to you sir :smallbiggrin:

On the contrary, for most of the recorded history, the powerful (where power was measured in the effectiveness of one's army )have dominated.

Also, without setting fiat or houserules the only way to control a caster is to be a more powerful caster. The nobility can only control the wizards reliably only if they are higher level casters themselves.

I think you misunderstand my point. Nationally, yes. If a country has lots of wizards in its employ then it would dominate nationally. The ruler may or may not be a wizard.

which brings me to my second point.

Control is not based on power usually. In a barbarian kingdom, sure, the strongest would be the ruler.
BUT
Was the king of England the strongest warrior?

To quote from A Game of Thrones
“In a room sit three great men, a king, a priest, and a rich man with his gold. Between them stands a sellsword, a little man of common birth and no great mind. Each of the great ones bids him slay the other two. ‘Do it,’ says the king, ‘for I am your lawful ruler.’ ‘Do it,’ says the priest, ‘for I command you in the names of the gods.’ ‘Do it,’ says the rich man, ‘and all this gold shall be yours.’ So tell me—who lives and who dies?”

The point is wizards are people too. (or dwarves or elves...) They can be controlled without "BRUTE FORCE."

If there is a rogue wizard (and I don't mean an arcane trickster:smallwink:) there should be more wizards under a king's employ to stop him/her. Or well anti-magic field or something.

Also Occult slayers, other PCs can take wizards maybe not one-on-one with equal wealth, but as a king I'd spend the coin to deck out my personal fighter bodyguard spec'd to kill rogue mages with just the right equipment for the job.
The last four men on the earth are in a room

2xMachina

2012-06-30, 03:01 PM

To quote from A Game of Thrones
“In a room sit three great men, a king, a priest, and a rich man with his gold. Between them stands a sellsword, a little man of common birth and no great mind. Each of the great ones bids him slay the other two. ‘Do it,’ says the king, ‘for I am your lawful ruler.’ ‘Do it,’ says the priest, ‘for I command you in the names of the gods.’ ‘Do it,’ says the rich man, ‘and all this gold shall be yours.’ So tell me—who lives and who dies?”

Is the priest a Cleric? Cause the king and rich man is dead then.

If not, the sellsword kills them all, and installs himself as Godking, sitting on his throne of gold.

ThiagoMartell

2012-06-30, 03:39 PM

Is the priest a Cleric? Cause the king and rich man is dead then.

If not, the sellsword kills them all, and installs himself as Godking, sitting on his throne of gold.

Did you fail at sarcasm or did you fail at reading comprehension? :smallconfused:
Maybe you just failed a logic. If you kill a king, you don't become the king... that's simply not how it works. It depends on who people recognize as king, who people will support as king and who people think should be king.
I'm guessing you skipped a few History classes, but just read A Song of Ice and Fire and you'll probably understand the point.

LordBlades

2012-06-30, 03:47 PM

The king of england didn't need to be the strongest warrior because a random nobody couldn't walk in and challenge him to a duel for the throne (if that was a possibility he would need to be better than all his challengers or he'd stop being king).

He needed however to be the strongest or at least very strong in areas that matter for gaining and keeping a throne, like:
-Divine right to rule. It requires quite exceptional circumstances for someone without any connection to the royal family to ascend to the throne. Also, the closer one is to the normal succession (from parent to eldest child), the more legitimate (and less likely to be challenged) is.

-Support from the nobility. If a king is supported by most of his nobles, an uprising is less likely to occur and succeed. On the other hand, if the majority of the nobility lends it's suppirt to a particular contender, he stands a pretty good chance of displacing the current king.

ThiagoMartell

2012-06-30, 03:59 PM

The king of england didn't need to be the strongest warrior because a random nobody couldn't walk in and challenge him to a duel for the throne (if that was a possibility he would need to be better than all his challengers or he'd stop being king).

He needed however to be the strongest or at least very strong in areas that matter for gaining and keeping a throne, like:
-Divine right to rule. It requires quite exceptional circumstances for someone without any connection to the royal family to ascend to the throne. Also, the closer one is to the normal succession (from parent to eldest child), the more legitimate (and less likely to be challenged) is.

-Support from the nobility. If a king is supported by most of his nobles, an uprising is less likely to occur and succeed. On the other hand, if the majority of the nobility lends it's suppirt to a particular contender, he stands a pretty good chance of displacing the current king.

Why do you consider anyone can challenge a D&D king to a duel, then?

dascarletm

2012-06-30, 04:10 PM

The king of england didn't need to be the strongest warrior because a random nobody couldn't walk in and challenge him to a duel for the throne (if that was a possibility he would need to be better than all his challengers or he'd stop being king).

If you are attempting to argue my point I don't see it. You're right as I said the king doesn't need to be the strongest warrior, mage, cleric, etc.
A wizard can't walk in and challenge a king as much as a high level fighter can.

Thrones don't work the way you are implying they work.
I can't challenge the president for a duel.
You COULD set it up like that in a campaign, but it isn't the logical choice nor is it RAW

He needed however to be the strongest or at least very strong in areas that matter for gaining and keeping a throne, like:
-Divine right to rule. It requires quite exceptional circumstances for someone without any connection to the royal family to ascend to the throne. Also, the closer one is to the normal succession (from parent to eldest child), the more legitimate (and less likely to be challenged) is.

hey, my point exactly.

-Support from the nobility. If a king is supported by most of his nobles, an uprising is less likely to occur and succeed. On the other hand, if the majority of the nobility lends it's suppirt to a particular contender, he stands a pretty good chance of displacing the current king.

So wait, are you arguing against me or arguing for me? I don't quite see.
:smallconfused:

Oscredwin

2012-06-30, 04:26 PM

dascarletm

2012-06-30, 04:48 PM

Oscredwin

2012-06-30, 04:52 PM

So your kingdoms are ruled by a GW Force dragon? Or a level 20 Wizard? Cool.

TuggyNE

2012-06-30, 04:53 PM

If you are attempting to argue my point I don't see it. You're right as I said the king doesn't need to be the strongest warrior, mage, cleric, etc.
A wizard can't walk in and challenge a king as much as a high level fighter can.

As I see it, a wizard does not take control of a nation by brute force, or even by challenging the current ruler to a wizard's duel (what a silly idea!). Rather, the wizard uses magic subtly to, if possible, dominate the king, or failing that, enhance his own influence and downplay others until he can eventually use the king as a puppet.

Many wizards are practical enough to realize the value of a figurehead. What did you really think all those court wizards were doing? :smalltongue:

Now, if you're lucky, you can get a bunch of low-power wizards clustered around you to mostly play each other off against you, but without some sort of magical power that you actually control (either native talent, or a genuinely loyal caster), you'll always be at a steep disadvantage, and things will be much less stable than in your typical European, Chinese, or Babylonian court.

Tippyverse takes the unusual tack of simply stating that all the wizards and other casters have managed to take full actual leadership, by way of economic and magical power, and dispensed with hereditary monarchies. Most other D&D settings take varying levels of precautions in order to preserve the faux-medieval status quo; your basic "the DM homebrewed this in a couple of months" setting will have the least, and chances are Eberron has some of the most (not to mention more lower-level casters and fewer higher-level).

So it's not entirely fair to say that TV is the only possible setting that is vaguely consistent with RAW/immediate RAI; it is however reasonable to conclude that it pays much closer attention to the rules as the foundation for the world, making only a few exceptions (NPC occurrence tables? really? next you'll be saying Elminster don't exist :smalltongue:), as opposed to the majority of settings using different systems of government and economy for reasons of aesthetics, and making considerably more intricate provisions to attempt to mesh with the rules.

It can win against anything mundane.

Can a hi-op level 10 wizard win against a great wyrm force dragon?

Howabout a hi-op lvl 20 wizard?

Oh no no no, please don't bring that kind of stuff in. Yes, a high-op wizard can win against nearly anything (even other high-op wizards, perhaps) with enough (borderline) cheesy tricks and preparation, but let's not get distracted.

dascarletm

2012-06-30, 05:27 PM

So your kingdoms are ruled by a GW Force dragon? Or a level 20 Wizard? Cool.

Yes that is what I said. I wasn't just proving your statement wrong.

Ok, seriously though. Wasn't my whole argument that it isn't the strongest thing that will always rule?

All I'm saying is that there is always something stronger.

that is mostly getting off topic though...

As I see it, a wizard does not take control of a nation by brute force, or even by challenging the current ruler to a wizard's duel (what a silly idea!). Rather, the wizard uses magic subtly to, if possible, dominate the king, or failing that, enhance his own influence and downplay others until he can eventually use the king as a puppet.

Many wizards are practical enough to realize the value of a figurehead. What did you really think all those court wizards were doing? :smalltongue:

Now, if you're lucky, you can get a bunch of low-power wizards clustered around you to mostly play each other off against you, but without some sort of magical power that you actually control (either native talent, or a genuinely loyal caster), you'll always be at a steep disadvantage, and things will be much less stable than in your typical European, Chinese, or Babylonian court.

Tippyverse takes the unusual tack of simply stating that all the wizards and other casters have managed to take full actual leadership, by way of economic and magical power, and dispensed with hereditary monarchies. Most other D&D settings take varying levels of precautions in order to preserve the faux-medieval status quo; your basic "the DM homebrewed this in a couple of months" setting will have the least, and chances are Eberron has some of the most (not to mention more lower-level casters and fewer higher-level).

So it's not entirely fair to say that TV is the only possible setting that is vaguely consistent with RAW/immediate RAI; it is however reasonable to conclude that it pays much closer attention to the rules as the foundation for the world, making only a few exceptions (NPC occurrence tables? really? next you'll be saying Elminster don't exist :smalltongue:), as opposed to the majority of settings using different systems of government and economy for reasons of aesthetics, and making considerably more intricate provisions to attempt to mesh with the rules.

Oh no no no, please don't bring that kind of stuff in. Yes, a high-op wizard can win against nearly anything (even other high-op wizards, perhaps) with enough (borderline) cheesy tricks and preparation, but let's not get distracted.

I agree that yes TV makes some good points about magic and economics, all I'm saying with the tables and all (I never said you can't have high level NPCs in a game, just randomly in a city they wouldn't exist. However the DM can put whatever he/she wants whenever he/she wants. I could make a town of all level 5 clerics.)

What I was saying is that by standard posted rules the amount of non-magical people vs the magical people is very large. So large as to I don't think it could be used on such an industrial scale, but that is just my opinion.

A campaign could change this, and that's totally cool. A campaign world can have whatever it wants, but I don't think it is RAW. That's my point really.

All I'm saying is that it isn't the only logical conclusion of the power of magic.

I guess the way I see it conventional fantasy political and economic systems could be kept, but I imagine powerful magic not being used all over the place. I just base that off the example class distributions I've seen in the DMG.

But really I think we have the same point, lol. It can be either way, and I think we both agree it isn't always one way or the other logically. :smallbiggrin:

The Random NPC

2012-06-30, 07:55 PM

Your very quote shows why you're wrong. :smallconfused: Commoners are not only farmers.

I would say this is a case of all X are Y, but not all Y are X.
Here, all farmers are Commoners, but not all Commoners are Farmers. You know, in response to your claim that farmers aren't the same thing as Commoners.

LordBlades

2012-07-01, 01:43 AM

If you are attempting to argue my point I don't see it. You're right as I said the king doesn't need to be the strongest warrior, mage, cleric, etc.
A wizard can't walk in and challenge a king as much as a high level fighter can.

Thrones don't work the way you are implying they work.
I can't challenge the president for a duel.
You COULD set it up like that in a campaign, but it isn't the logical choice nor is it RAW

hey, my point exactly.

So wait, are you arguing against me or arguing for me? I don't quite see.
:smallconfused:

Against you. It's hardly impossible for a wizard to prove strong in what it takes to be a king.

Divine right to rule: fabricate a fake genealogy that places him as part of the royal family, replace a known member with himself/a simulacrum/ice assassin, make a known member his puppet etc.

Support from the nobility: buy/threaten/charm/dominate/replace them.

Wizards don't win thrones by disintegrating the current king in broad daylight, they do it bysubterfuge, which is next to impossible to detect/prevent without caster help. And if mist kings have a court wizards defending against that, it raises two questions IMO:

-All it takes is a single disloyal wizard in the chain thinking 'why should I serve this guy when he can serve me?'. Given enough time, why hasn't it happened in most kingdoms in the setting?

- What if a stronger wizard (including the court wizard of a rival king) start their plot to take over by targeting the court wizard first?

dascarletm

2012-07-01, 03:56 AM

Against you. It's hardly impossible for a wizard to prove strong in what it takes to be a king.

Divine right to rule: fabricate a fake genealogy that places him as part of the royal family, replace a known member with himself/a simulacrum/ice assassin, make a known member his puppet etc.

Support from the nobility: buy/threaten/charm/dominate/replace them.

Wizards don't win thrones by disintegrating the current king in broad daylight, they do it bysubterfuge, which is next to impossible to detect/prevent without caster help. And if mist kings have a court wizards defending against that, it raises two questions IMO:

-All it takes is a single disloyal wizard in the chain thinking 'why should I serve this guy when he can serve me?'. Given enough time, why hasn't it happened in most kingdoms in the setting?

- What if a stronger wizard (including the court wizard of a rival king) start their plot to take over by targeting the court wizard first?

To be clear I'm not saying this couldn't happen.

However, there are plenty of ways powerful wizards wouldn't rule everything.

Not everyone is power hungry.
nor is every wizard.

A high level wizard isn't unstoppable in his/her goals, and if there are ways to stop them then the current rulers are going to utilize them.

Maybe there are enough LG characters to keep the nobility safe, or LN.

Maybe all these plans get found out by players during their journeys, and thwarted.

To say it has to always end that way is just silly; because one the world is defined and shaped by the almighty DM, and he/she dictates how everything goes. Second, the way it should logically go is the way that would be most fun for the players.

Even ignoring the fact that it is a game, and assuming it is a "real" world.
There are so many facets to consider, so many possibilities that for anyone to say, "It must always be like X no matter what," is asinine.

ThiagoMartell

2012-07-01, 04:37 AM

You're totally allowed to challenge a king (or the president) to a duel for leadership of the nation. The rub is that in both cases armies (and just bodyguards) are allowed. It usually gets referred to as conquering.

In the real world, no matter how much of a badass you are alone, the secret service can take you down. In D&D however, a hi-op level 10 wizard can just win against just about anything.
What makes you thing the wizards in the kingdom are not in the king's employ?

As I see it, a wizard does not take control of a nation by brute force, or even by challenging the current ruler to a wizard's duel (what a silly idea!). Rather, the wizard uses magic subtly to, if possible, dominate the king, or failing that, enhance his own influence and downplay others until he can eventually use the king as a puppet.
That makes more sense but it's not a given. You can notice when someone is under the effect of Domination spells, after all.

Many wizards are practical enough to realize the value of a figurehead. What did you really think all those court wizards were doing? :smalltongue:
This was sarcasm, right? Because many of them are simply loyal.

Now, if you're lucky, you can get a bunch of low-power wizards clustered around you to mostly play each other off against you, but without some sort of magical power that you actually control (either native talent, or a genuinely loyal caster), you'll always be at a steep disadvantage, and things will be much less stable than in your typical European, Chinese, or Babylonian court.
Why?
Just because wizards have more personal power, they can't be loyal?

So it's not entirely fair to say that TV is the only possible setting that is vaguely consistent with RAW/immediate RAI; it is however reasonable to conclude that it pays much closer attention to the rules as the foundation for the world, making only a few exceptions (NPC occurrence tables? really? next you'll be saying Elminster don't exist :smalltongue:), as opposed to the majority of settings using different systems of government and economy for reasons of aesthetics, and making considerably more intricate provisions to attempt to mesh with the rules.
The point of the demographics and it's interactions to TV is just to prove it is not 100% RAW consistent. No settings are, not even TV, yet TV fans keep claiming it is.
Like I said before, TV does not answer all the questions and has a bunch of inconsistencies of it's own. It chooses to use some guidelines as RAW (like custom magic item creation and trap creation) and ignores others (like demographics). It bans epic magic, but it includes epic magical items. It supposedly uses consistent economy, but that comes from houseruling fabricate and wish. It depends on wizards wanting to take over cities and remaining there, instead of going to demiplanes (which are faster and safer). It depends on people wanting to live under wizard rule, ignoring patriotism and phobia. Like all settings, TV just reaches the outcome it did because that's the outcome it's creator wanted it to reach. Of course he put some thought into it - that's the truth for all settings.
Like I saide before - TV is not the 'one true RAW setting'. It's just a setting, with lots of headscratchers, like most settings.

-All it takes is a single disloyal wizard in the chain thinking 'why should I serve this guy when he can serve me?'. Given enough time, why hasn't it happened in most kingdoms in the setting?
Some people are loyal. Some people are not douches. Some people want the best for their kingdoms, not for themselves. Some people don't want power.
You're assuming 'non-wizard kings are incompetent' and that's nowhere near true.

Even ignoring the fact that it is a game, and assuming it is a "real" world.
There are so many facets to consider, so many possibilities that for anyone to say, "It must always be like X no matter what," is asinine.
Exactly.

2xMachina

2012-07-01, 09:50 AM

Did you fail at sarcasm or did you fail at reading comprehension? :smallconfused:
Maybe you just failed a logic. If you kill a king, you don't become the king... that's simply not how it works. It depends on who people recognize as king, who people will support as king and who people think should be king.
I'm guessing you skipped a few History classes, but just read A Song of Ice and Fire and you'll probably understand the point.

What? No Klingon Promotion (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/KlingonPromotion)?

Togo

2012-07-01, 11:07 AM

Against you. It's hardly impossible for a wizard to prove strong in what it takes to be a king.

Noone is arguing that it's impossible. If nothing else, thwarting such plots is a popular adventure trope. What they're arguing against is the idea that it's so inevitable that any setting where it hasn't happen isn't realistic. They're arguing against the idea that you CAN'T have a game revolving around a wizard taking over from a king without changing the rules of the game, because the rules won't allow there to be a king who hasn't been taken over already.

Divine right to rule: fabricate a fake genealogy that places him as part of the royal family,

Every noble in this kingdom, every relative of those nobles, and a fair proportion of people in neighbouring kingdoms, know the relative geneology down to the last detail. Coming up with a document that says otherwise will get you nowhere. It's like trying to fake enough documents to be a member of the senate. Documents don't get you there.

replace a known member with himself/a simulacrum/ice assassin, make a known member his puppet etc.

But these people are known already. You replace one with a magical look-alike, a ravening psychopath that needs constant attention, or just dominate them to act as you wish, and people are going to notice. A lot of them. In uncontrollable numbers.

Support from the nobility: buy/threaten/charm/dominate/replace them.

And when that doesn't work? You're suggesting suborning every single member of the arististocratic classes simultaneously. Your wizard isn't powerful enough to do that.

Wizards don't win thrones by disintegrating the current king in broad daylight, they do it bysubterfuge, which is next to impossible to detect/prevent without caster help.

It takes a sense motive check to detect. It takes publicity to defeat. Neither of these require magic.

And if mist kings have a court wizards defending against that, it raises two questions IMO:

-All it takes is a single disloyal wizard in the chain thinking 'why should I serve this guy when he can serve me?'. Given enough time, why hasn't it happened in most kingdoms in the setting?.

The same reason it hasn't happened in the Tippyverse, where the same wizards are working the night shift clearing drunks out of bars.

- What if a stronger wizard (including the court wizard of a rival king) start their plot to take over by targeting the court wizard first?

Tippyverse doesn't suffer from this problem any less than any other setting.

I'd note also that kingdoms are supposed to vulnerable to attack. From dragons, from evil wziards, from armies of the dead, from intrigue, etc. A typical fantasy kingdom is the equivalent of the Hollywood cheerleader heroine. They're job is to get into trouble and get rescued, with all the implications of great rewards for the hero. Kingdoms need saving. All that's necessary for them to still be around is that they have always in the past been saved.

One last question. If being king is so without recourse or resource, why would a wizard want to take on this time-consuming job? Wouldn't it be better to, for example, learn more about magic.

Maybe all the wizards who try and take over kingdoms use up so much of their time doing so that they fall behind their peers and rivals, and get murdered by them before they can do any lasting harm?

The Random NPC

2012-07-01, 11:18 AM

-All it takes is a single disloyal wizard in the chain thinking 'why should I serve this guy when he can serve me?'. Given enough time, why hasn't it happened in most kingdoms in the setting?

- What if a stronger wizard (including the court wizard of a rival king) start their plot to take over by targeting the court wizard first?

This happens all the time, but then some street rat comes into the picture and ruins everything.

LordBlades

2012-07-01, 12:47 PM

Every noble in this kingdom, every relative of those nobles, and a fair proportion of people in neighbouring kingdoms, know the relative geneology down to the last detail. Coming up with a document that says otherwise will get you nowhere. It's like trying to fake enough documents to be a member of the senate. Documents don't get you there.

Because I'm sure all the illegitimate sons of all the ancestors of the previous king are public knowledge for example.

But these people are known already. You replace one with a magical look-alike, a ravening psychopath that needs constant attention, or just dominate them to act as you wish, and people are going to notice. A lot of them. In uncontrollable numbers.

Because studying your target beforehand, picking somebody without any hard to reproduce behavior quirks, or somebody who's been away for some time (like an ambassador or a general returning home) is too hard?

And when that doesn't work? You're suggesting suborning every single member of the arististocratic classes simultaneously. Your wizard isn't powerful enough to do that.

I'm actually suggesting going for the top level of aristocracy, which probably won't be more than a few dozen maximum (you only need the family heads).

One last question. If being king is so without recourse or resource, why would a wizard want to take on this time-consuming job? Wouldn't it be better to, for example, learn more about magic.

That's a quite valid point, and one I haven't considered so far. What does a wizard gain from being king? The answer is next to nothing:

-wealth: in a setting with unrestricted magic, there are so many ways for a wizard to get all the wealth he wants without rising up from his chair is not even funny.

-subjects: between Leadership, Animate Dead, spawn chains and Planar Binding, there are much easier ways to get subjects.

-ego: this is probably the only reason a wizard would try to take over a kingdom. Getting to say 'I'm the king' or 'I soo had you fools, I've dominated/replaced/etc. your king and you all were too dumb to notice' might be worth for some wizard, but I feel it's hardly enough to trigger a worldwide kingdom takeover spree.

Still, I feel that most settings didn't put much thought in how the magic that's explicitly put in there interacts with the world. I doubt the average setting writer, who thought 'hey, it would be cool to have NPC X be a n-th level wizard' then went and did a thorough search of all the spells available to a n-th level wizard and how each could affect the world. And in the end who can blame them? The guys that wrote mid and high level magic didn't put much thought on how it affected the world either.

ThiagoMartell

2012-07-01, 01:14 PM

Because I'm sure all the illegitimate sons of all the ancestors of the previous king are public knowledge for example.
Illegimate sons are behind everyone else in the succession line, so I don't think that helps much.
And it might not be public knowledge, but someone would surely know about it.

Because studying your target beforehand, picking somebody without any hard to reproduce behavior quirks, or somebody who's been away for some time (like an ambassador or a general returning home) is too hard?
It is hard. Specially if you're trying to do it all via magic. Studying your target beforehand is mostly a mundane activity. I don't any spell that reproduces behovior quirks, identifies them in a person or such. Even then, you would need the perfect time window.
Gee. It almost looks like a standard D&D plot! Wizard tries to replace Baron X, the party has to stop him and protect the king from his treachery! Doesn't it seem like the game was supposed to have stuff like this?

I'm actually suggesting going for the top level of aristocracy, which probably won't be more than a few dozen maximum (you only need the family heads).
And that is going to be very hard anyway. No one is saying it's impossible. All we're saying is you can't say succeeding in this is a given and you sure as hell can't say it is the onlyu possible outcome by RAW.

That's a quite valid point, and one I haven't considered so far. What does a wizard gain from being king? The answer is next to nothing
...I've been saying that since page one or something. :smallsigh:
That's one of the main points in TV that makes little to no sense: a wizard invests a lot of his time and power for very little return.

Still, I feel that most settings didn't put much thought in how the magic that's explicitly put in there interacts with the world. I doubt the average setting writer, who thought 'hey, it would be cool to have NPC X be a n-th level wizard' then went and did a thorough search of all the spells available to a n-th level wizard and how each could affect the world. And in the end who can blame them? The guys that wrote mid and high level magic didn't put much thought on how it affected the world either.
Yeah, it's not we have an explicitly magitech official setting (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eberron) for 3.5 or anything. :smallsigh:

Togo

2012-07-01, 01:33 PM

Because I'm sure all the illegitimate sons of all the ancestors of the previous king are public knowledge for example.

Pretty much, yes. They get identified, they get kept track of, you offer large financial inducements not to keep them secret. Being an illegitiamte child has, historically, been a lucrative occupation, and falsly claimants have been uncovered on a regular basis. Sure, some may slip through the net, but if you're trying to claim any kind of wealth power or access on the back of your supposed royal bloodyou're going need a heck of a lot more than a paper you supposedly found in your attic.

Because studying your target beforehand, picking somebody without any hard to reproduce behavior quirks, or somebody who's been away for some time (like an ambassador or a general returning home) is too hard?

Yes. Such people are not given access unless they are very well known, which is why ambassadors are often well-known lifetime companions of someone at court, and general are often treated quite so badly. Both have a distressing tendency to transfer their loyalty to the army, or to their host country, rather than their own ruler.

I'm actually suggesting going for the top level of aristocracy, which probably won't be more than a few dozen maximum (you only need the family heads).

And the rest of the family will keep quiet and say nothing when daddy suddenly changes his personality completely?

-ego: this is probably the only reason a wizard would try to take over a kingdom. Getting to say 'I'm the king' or 'I soo had you fools, I've dominated/replaced/etc. your king and you all were too dumb to notice' might be worth for some wizard, but I feel it's hardly enough to trigger a worldwide kingdom takeover spree.

That is the reason so often used in those settings that can't possibly ever happen because of overwhelming power of magic, yes. There's also petty rivalry, jealously, and desire to complete a ritual or gain an artefact that typically only royality can allow/gain access to.

Still, I feel that most settings didn't put much thought in how the magic that's explicitly put in there interacts with the world. I doubt the average setting writer, who thought 'hey, it would be cool to have NPC X be a n-th level wizard' then went and did a thorough search of all the spells available to a n-th level wizard and how each could affect the world. And in the end who can blame them? The guys that wrote mid and high level magic didn't put much thought on how it affected the world either.

Possibly. I don't know what you mean by 'most settings' or the 'average writer'. The settings I most enjoy have fairly detailed power structures, and are certainly more carefully thought through (if only because they're more detailed) than anything I've seen in a Tippyverse setting. The most glaring counterexample I can think of is the Forgotten Realms, which I have quite a strong antipathy towards as a result. Here, yes, I'd say that your complain about identi-kit kingdoms without much power balance is probably justified, although even the Realms has it's good points.

The simplest and most robust solution I've seen is from Planescape. Here, there is a simple principle "there is someone around who is more powerful than you." It applies to (almost) everyone, and is the reason why a great many personally powerful people can live in the same city without scaring the horses, burning the place down, or trying to take over. Taking over the city is still something that people try, and there are a number of factions who make it their full time business to try and take over, neatly keeping eachother in check.

I will point out that the points you claim would make royalty vulnerable were mostly practiced historically. People did fake geneologies, bribe or blackmail family heads, impersonate people who had been away a long time, and so on. None of these need magic, and in many cases a mage wouldn't be a particularly good choice. About the only one that would find a mage useful is the dominate/replace plan, and even that isn't something you couldn't do without a length of stout rope, a handy dungeon, and some high skill checks. Replacing the ruler with a phoney and causing chaos is a fairly solid fantasy staple, but it hardly needs magic to work.

dascarletm

2012-07-01, 01:42 PM

This happens all the time, but then some street rat comes into the picture and ruins everything.

Lets not be too hasty...
:smallbiggrin:

Augmental

2012-07-01, 02:09 PM

It is hard. Specially if you're trying to do it all via magic.

There's this little spell called Scrying that says otherwise. Let's say the king is a 10th level Aristocrat with 14 wisdom. He'd get a +7 will save from his Aristocrat levels and +2 from Wisdom, for a total of +9. Now let's say there's a 13th level wizard who wants to take over the throne. He has 18 Intelligence. He obtains a picture of the king from somewhere, then casts Greater Scrying. Since it's a 7th level spell, the base DC is 17. Since the wizard has 18 Int, add +4 for a total DC of 21. You have secondhand knowledge of the king (+5 will save modifier) as well as a picture of him (-2 will save modifier), for a total modifier of +3. That means the king has a will save of +12 for the purposes of Greater Scrying - he needs to roll a 9 or higher. That means there's a 40% chance the wizard will be able to scry the king for 13 hours - that should be long enough to learn his personality rather well. And if the king succeeds on his saving throw... well, it doesn't say he realized someone tried to scry him. The wizard can just wait 24 hours and try again.

ThiagoMartell

2012-07-01, 02:17 PM

There's this little spell called Scrying that says otherwise. Let's say the king is a 10th level Aristocrat with 14 wisdom. He'd get a +7 will save from his Aristocrat levels and +2 from Wisdom, for a total of +9. Now let's say there's a 13th level wizard who wants to take over the throne. He has 18 Intelligence. He obtains a picture of the king from somewhere, then casts Greater Scrying. Since it's a 7th level spell, the base DC is 17. Since the wizard has 18 Int, add +4 for a total DC of 21. You have secondhand knowledge of the king (+5 will save modifier) as well as a picture of him (-2 will save modifier), for a total modifier of +3. That means the king has a will save of +12 for the purposes of Greater Scrying - he needs to roll a 9 or higher. That means there's a 40% chance the wizard will be able to scry the king for 13 hours - that should be long enough to learn his personality rather well. And if the king succeeds on his saving throw... well, it doesn't say he realized someone tried to scry him. The wizard can just wait 24 hours and try again.
Or the king has a nondetection item, because he sure as hell has enough money to buy it, and is immune to this. Or the king has his castle warded from divinations. Or the king has a cloak of resistance +5, a periapt of wisdom +6 and a luck feat to reroll Will saves. He could even have inherent bonuses to wisdom.
And no, you don't 'learn someone's personality' in 13 hours. You barely get to know someone after a few hours. After you live with someone for years, there is still stuff about that person you don't know.
No one is saying this is impossible. It's possible, it's just hard. And you're completely missing the point - all I'm saying is that this is not the one true possible outcome due to RAW.

Togo

2012-07-01, 04:27 PM

There's this little spell called Scrying that says otherwise.

That scrying sensor is an invisible object, which means it's DC 40 spot check to notice it if it still, or DC 20 if it is moving. If the king enters a busy room with 19 people in it, the chances are that someone will notice the scrying sensor instantly. Or one watchful 2nd level aristocrat with max spot (5 ranks) who is vaguely sensible (wisdom 12) and has the quick reconnoitre feat, will notice the scrying on a roll of 14 or more, which means he'll pick up on any scrying attempt within about 12 seconds.

TuggyNE

2012-07-01, 07:45 PM

That makes more sense but it's not a given. You can notice when someone is under the effect of Domination spells, after all.

Indeed. Heightened Extended charm person does not, of course, suffer quite as many problems, and is probably adequate (assuming terrible or non-existent magical protection).

This was sarcasm, right? Because many of them are simply loyal.

Why?
Just because wizards have more personal power, they can't be loyal?

It was only partly sarcasm, actually. Historically, you have to expect nearly all courtiers to be at least partly disloyal, to scheme, and so on; the main difference is how effective they can be at it. Magic gives a number of ways to become much more effective at it, though it still requires a good bit of planning to work if your target takes some precautions. So yeah, courtiers that happen to be casters aren't going to be any more loyal than any others. Not even Clerics.

Some people are loyal. Some people are not douches. Some people want the best for their kingdoms, not for themselves. Some people don't want power.

Some, yes. How many? I submit that human nature suggests "not more than about a quarter". Though obviously there's a lot of variation. In any case, as long as there's a significant fraction of disloyal casters, you're going to have significant challenges; sufficient planning by loyal casters will prevent most disasters, of course, but how do you know who's loyal?

In particular, it's quite difficult to make a system in which those who don't want power are convinced to put enough effort in to ensure that those who do are safeguarded against. But this is no place for political philosophy, so I'll stop droning on now. :smallwink:

It depends on people wanting to live under wizard rule, ignoring patriotism and phobia.

The rest of your list is more or less fine, but this is ... not so much. The point of TV is that the people have no real choice in their rulership; the only ones that can challenge the casters that rule are other casters, and those are carefully controlled to avoid trouble in the first place, and if they took over, would likely retain much the same policies anyway. Sometimes, modern attitudes of "consent of the governed" are out of place.

dascarletm

2012-07-01, 08:06 PM

No one is saying this is impossible. It's possible, it's just hard. And you're completely missing the point - all I'm saying is that this is not the one true possible outcome due to RAW.

We might-as-well just stop. We've both said this and our opponents just decide to ignore it and continue to argue assuming we are making the point that TV can't exist.:smallsigh:

It's quite annoying really.:smallannoyed:

Here is the argument in a nutshell.

Them: TV is the only logical outcome!

Us: not necessarily because of X.

Them: I counter X with Y!

Us: Yeah it can be countered, but it's not the only possible scenario other things can happen, like Z for example.

Them: Z can be countered by A, B, and C!

Us: you miss our point.

Them: A, B, and C!

Tis pointless. :smalltongue:

That's just how I see it.

Aegis013

2012-07-02, 12:48 AM

*snip*
Them: TV is the only logical outcome!
*snip*
That's just how I see it.

I'm inclined to believe that everybody here has only good will for the other side, so I say this hoping you will think I have goodwill for you (I think I do).

I think both sides are missing some of the point of each others' arguments, and I think your example is a fair representation of your perception of the events. Here is what I'm seeing:

Pro-TV side: "We think this setting is well thought out and seems, to us, to be more founded in the rules."
Not pro-TV side: "We think the rules support other settings equally well, and they are also well thought out."

These are both simply a matter of opinion. I don't believe either is right or wrong, better or worse. They are simply different. Although I am inclined to side with the pro-TV side, that is simply my personal preference/interpretation of the rules, and I respect the opposing side's arguments as well.

dascarletm

2012-07-02, 01:29 AM

I'm inclined to believe that everybody here has only good will for the other side, so I say this hoping you will think I have goodwill for you (I think I do).

I think both sides are missing some of the point of each others' arguments, and I think your example is a fair representation of your perception of the events. Here is what I'm seeing:

Pro-TV side: "We think this setting is well thought out and seems, to us, to be more founded in the rules."
Not pro-TV side: "We think the rules support other settings equally well, and they are also well thought out."

These are both simply a matter of opinion. I don't believe either is right or wrong, better or worse. They are simply different. Although I am inclined to side with the pro-TV side, that is simply my personal preference/interpretation of the rules, and I respect the opposing side's arguments as well.

Oh I'm not upset really.
I was just oversimplifying, and probably wasn't being truly fair.

But anyway, I think that TV has the characters in the world know the worlds rules like a player does.
Since they usually optimize their characters, and most "real" characters arn't optimized.
There really is not point in me arguing anymore, I'm kind of over it. Spose I was just on a rant.

Anyway, its like when I had my high level fighter jump off a 1000ft cliff-face onto rocky ground. I knew that with his hitpoints he wouldn't die from the fall 20d6's max damage being 120, and I having that and then some. I mean I the player knew it was no danger, but would the character? As a DM I'd never play an NPC that way. It's funny and in circumstances it's cool, but you know...

I get players wanting to optimize their characters (well kinda it's not really my thing), but should every character in the setting be optimized?

It's less fun seeming for me, and I think that's the main rule in the DMG make the setting fun.

Some people might like TV and find it fun, and more power to yah.

It's just not for me.:smallcool:

Aegis013

2012-07-02, 01:47 AM

*snip*
I get players wanting to optimize their characters (well kinda it's not really my thing), but should every character in the setting be optimized?

It's less fun seeming for me, and I think that's the main rule in the DMG make the setting fun.

Some people might like TV and find it fun, and more power to yah.

It's just not for me.:smallcool:

Hmm... you make an interesting and valid point about people in the game setting knowing about the rules, I always viewed the rules as almost the science of the game world. In that you or I might have a basic grasp of physics (like understanding that if we throw a ball it moves in a parabolic arc in the direction thrown and down), a person in the game world would have a basic understanding of principles of the game world (rules).

It reminds me of an argument I once had with another player, in which I said it would not be meta-gaming, or player knowledge, for a Wizard to say, basically "I need more rest so I can focus my mind to prepare necessary magics/spells"; my logic being that if the Wizard had realized that when he was not sufficiently rested, he could not recover his magic, he would be able to say such and it would be character knowledge, although it would be alluding to his understanding of the rules of the game. My character, having no knowledge of magic, was trying to rouse his character earlier than the necessary time, by about 2 hours.

Also, as far as the claim that TV has nothing but optimized people, I'm not sure that is what is supposed to be implied. I understood it to say that those who did happen to be optimized (akin to those who achieve great things in real life) would achieve great things in the game world. Because of their access to magic, and what it can do, Tippy thought it would make sense if those figures were substantially more influential. So it's not that everybody is optimized, I think, it's that the people who get to the top are optimized due to their power and ability to influence the direction of history.

As I said before though, this is only my opinions and interpretation of things.

dascarletm

2012-07-02, 02:25 AM

Hmm... you make an interesting and valid point about people in the game setting knowing about the rules, I always viewed the rules as almost the science of the game world. In that you or I might have a basic grasp of physics (like understanding that if we throw a ball it moves in a parabolic arc in the direction thrown and down), a person in the game world would have a basic understanding of principles of the game world (rules).

It reminds me of an argument I once had with another player, in which I said it would not be meta-gaming, or player knowledge, for a Wizard to say, basically "I need more rest so I can focus on my mind to prepare necessary magics/spells"; my logic being that if the Wizard had realized that when he was not sufficiently rested, he could not recover his magic, he would be able to say such and it would be character knowledge, although it would be alluding to his understanding of the rules of the game. My character, having no knowledge of magic, was trying to rouse his character earlier than the necessary time, by about 2 hours.

Also, as far as the claim that TV has nothing but optimized people, I'm not sure that is what is supposed to be implied. I understood it to say that those who did happen to optimized (akin to those who achieve great things in real life) would achieve great things in the game world. Because of their access to magic, and what it can do, Tippy thought it would make sense if those figures were substantially more influential. So it's not that everybody is optimized, I think, it's that the people who get to the top are optimized due to their power and ability to influence the direction of history.

As I said before though, this is only my opinions and interpretation of things.

You sir, as well, have some good points.

I agree with you with the wizard rest thing. I guess when I say they know how the game world works, it's not stuff like that. More stuff like, "well he's a level one commoner with 2 HP and I have +0 to my str score, so to make sure this hit knocks him out better use a falchion since its min damage is 2, and not a bastard sword since its min damage is one." Dumb example but you know.

I've always seen it as the world has the same laws of reality as ours go, and in-game rules just help play it in a "fair" way. I mean we could all just role-play combat by describing what we do in detail kind of like some role-playing deals without a game system. This way, we just have a structured way to determine who wins and by how much, or how well you talked that guy into something etc etc. In non-important things I've just role-played them with my characters.

example:
The level 10 party confronts a lvl one commoner "bully" or something as trivial of a challenge. If they were to fight him/her I wouldn't roll initiative and play it out; I'd just have them say what they do, then I say what the NPC does.
Let's say the PC punches him a few times, really he'd be knocked out from one punch of the fighter who has like +4, or 5 str mod or something. Unless he wanted to do the one-and-done knockout punch I'd let the NPC take a few, even though by RAW the fighter would always knock him out in one hit.

I suppose I might be off topic a bit, or maybe not, but I suppose that's just my take. I don't really know what I'm trying to accomplish anymore...

Also idk if everyone is optimized in TV, I spose that was just conjecture.

I suppose we agree and disagree :smallbiggrin:

Aegis013

2012-07-02, 02:53 AM

You sir, as well, have some good points.
snip

Thank you, you too.
For your (I didn't think it was a dumb example) Falchion vs. Bastard sword example, a character with sufficient intelligence, or knowledge of weapons might say instead of referring to its minimum damage "I think a Falchion would be more effective for this, because the force of my attack will be concentrated on the point of the sword where I connect my slash, unlike a the Bastard sword's straight edge, which may spread out the force." Of course, it doesn't make sense for your character to know that unless your character has some intelligence or something like "knowledge(weaponry)", along with proficiency with both weapons, which despite not being a real skill, might be something you want to effectively have playing a high Int Fighter with a wealth of knowledge about different weapons and their uses.

As far as narrative-style approach of mechanically one-sided combats, I can certainly appreciate that. I have an anecdote, but it's fairly long and I decided to leave it out, because I agree with you in that I'm also not entirely sure it's relevant to the topic.

ThiagoMartell

2012-07-02, 04:48 AM

Indeed. Heightened Extended charm person does not, of course, suffer quite as many problems, and is probably adequate (assuming terrible or non-existent magical protection).
Sense Motive can still detect charm person, it's only harder. As you mentioned yourself, it's easier to protect against.

It was only partly sarcasm, actually. Historically, you have to expect nearly all courtiers to be at least partly disloyal, to scheme, and so on; the main difference is how effective they can be at it.
That just isn't true. Scheming is not the same as not being loyal. Courtiers want whoever is in power to stay in power so they can keep their position.

Magic gives a number of ways to become much more effective at it, though it still requires a good bit of planning to work if your target takes some precautions. So yeah, courtiers that happen to be casters aren't going to be any more loyal than any others. Not even Clerics.
Agree completely. Just don't agree that people are disloyal as a rule.

Some, yes. How many? I submit that human nature suggests "not more than about a quarter". Though obviously there's a lot of variation. In any case, as long as there's a significant fraction of disloyal casters, you're going to have significant challenges; sufficient planning by loyal casters will prevent most disasters, of course, but how do you know who's loyal?
This is more about your bias on human nature than anything else. Guess I just have more faith in humanity than you do. People keep saying brazilian people are nice, maybe there's something to it.

The rest of your list is more or less fine, but this is ... not so much. The point of TV is that the people have no real choice in their rulership; the only ones that can challenge the casters that rule are other casters, and those are carefully controlled to avoid trouble in the first place, and if they took over, would likely retain much the same policies anyway. Sometimes, modern attitudes of "consent of the governed" are out of place.
But that is considering the TV begins at some point. Yeah, once it is stablished it mcould remain as such. My point is that TV is not the only logical or possible outcome and that it does not even follow RAW as much as it claims to do.

LordBlades

2012-07-02, 04:55 AM

But anyway, I think that TV has the characters in the world know the worlds rules like a player does.
Since they usually optimize their characters, and most "real" characters arn't optimized.

I personally believe that's a bit too general.

The average craftsman, or the city guard who needs to put down a tavern brawl once a week make do with what they feel like, and don't worry too much about how they could increase their work performance beyond what they consider adequate.

The elite on the other hand, like adventurers or top notch military units, who mess with dangerous situations on a daily basis, and for whom the margin between getting sent home in a body bag and sending the other bastard home in a body bag is rather small, I'd expect optimizing their gear and tactics for maximum effectiveness is rather high on their priority list.

To use a real life analogy: I can totally see the average week-end hunter using his grandpa's rifle or a gun he thinks he looks cool, but I'd expect a special forces trooper (or an elite mercenary) to use whatever gun provides the best mechanical performance.

Zale

2012-07-02, 05:30 AM

Divine boredom is an excuse for anything entertaining.

You're a demi-god. Why not redesign the world's economic system to amuse yourself?

ThiagoMartell

2012-07-02, 05:36 AM

I personally believe that's a bit too general.

The average craftsman, or the city guard who needs to put down a tavern brawl once a week make do with what they feel like, and don't worry too much about how they could increase their work performance beyond what they consider adequate.

The elite on the other hand, like adventurers or top notch military units, who mess with dangerous situations on a daily basis, and for whom the margin between getting sent home in a body bag and sending the other bastard home in a body bag is rather small, I'd expect optimizing their gear and tactics for maximum effectiveness is rather high on their priority list.

To use a real life analogy: I can totally see the average week-end hunter using his grandpa's rifle or a gun he thinks he looks cool, but I'd expect a special forces trooper (or an elite mercenary) to use whatever gun provides the best mechanical performance.
I don't think you notice, but all you said does nothign to hurt his point in the slightest. Most people are still not adventurers or top notch military units.
Also, Jack Churchill (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Churchill).

LordBlades

2012-07-02, 07:28 AM

I don't think you notice, but all you said does nothign to hurt his point in the slightest. Most people are still not adventurers or top notch military units.
Also, Jack Churchill (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jack_Churchill).

Had an urgent work call and needed to cut post half-way, didn't realize what a mess it was until now.

I meant to add some more stuff to it, along the lines of even if most people don't optimize because they don't really need to, they usually try to at least be adequate at their jobs(amateur hunter will carry a rifle, even if not the best, not a sharpened candy bar). The average dude in the TV might not be optimizing, but the bar of what's 'adequate' in the TV might simply be set higher.

Also, for every Jack Churchill I bet there's at least a dozen of average Joes who spend hours comparing specs on various products because they want the best, not just good enough:smallsmile:

Clistenes

2012-11-01, 06:30 PM

Because no one wants to run games in the Tippyverse. Same reason that Pun Pun isn't King of Everything, and the world hasn't been Wightpocalypsed or Hurled into the sun.

I would love to participate in a Tippyverse game. You would have big magical cities for urban adventures side by side with large wilderness expases and monstrously big ruins full of monsters and magical items. And you could sell the loot and buy virtually everything in the shops of the big cities.

Twilightwyrm

2012-11-02, 11:50 PM

I think it would be more accurate to say that not every DM is willing to put in the considerable investment in NPC optimization required to make Tippyverse consistent. TV is a high-op setting by its nature; a DM who doesn't like high-op games is not likely to want to adjust to it.

(Note: I personally would be interested in playing a TV game, but would be even more intimidated than usual by the prospect of DMing for one.)

See, I'm not convinced this is the case. A "Tippyverse" campaign setting is just another way of describing any high-magic setting where magic has become a partial substitute, or augment, to technology, meaning it really isn't that special. It isn't about putting more or less investment into NPC optimization, its about instituting a very specific set of demographic, social, economic, and political circumstances into a campaign setting, the kind that would justify such a setting. Same goes for a "Dragon Kings" campaign setting (See: Dragon Magic). Hell, if we were to approach the Tippyverse logically, it might well be old dragons creating and ruling such societies, given they are all sorcerers, and barring disease or fatality, many will automatically develop both 9th level spells, high Int scores, and will have been around long enough to observe the technological, social, and political circumstances of their home area (especially if they are the more sociable metallic dragons). Thing is, many DMs and players alike simply do not wish to play in such a campaign setting. It isn't about it being a high or low optimization setting, it is simply the specifics of that setting.

TuggyNE

2012-11-03, 12:26 AM

See, I'm not convinced this is the case. A "Tippyverse" campaign setting is just another way of describing any high-magic setting where magic has become a partial substitute, or augment, to technology, meaning it really isn't that special. It isn't about putting more or less investment into NPC optimization, its about instituting a very specific set of demographic, social, economic, and political circumstances into a campaign setting, the kind that would justify such a setting. Same goes for a "Dragon Kings" campaign setting (See: Dragon Magic). Hell, if we were to approach the Tippyverse logically, it might well be old dragons creating and ruling such societies, given they are all sorcerers, and barring disease or fatality, many will automatically develop both 9th level spells, high Int scores, and will have been around long enough to observe the technological, social, and political circumstances of their home area (especially if they are the more sociable metallic dragons). Thing is, many DMs and players alike simply do not wish to play in such a campaign setting. It isn't about it being a high or low optimization setting, it is simply the specifics of that setting.

That's kind of disingenuous, because "Tippyverse" refers to the setting Emperor Tippy created with high-op assumptions. You can, presumably, adapt some of its ideas into other settings at lower op, but the original Tippyverse is and remains a fairly high-op setting by its nature and definition, although you don't have to go full-on Team Solars to use it.

For example, any interaction with the city states will inevitably mean interacting with high-op, combat-ready NPCs, and it is fairly difficult to guarantee avoiding all cities for the duration of a campaign. (Presumably the sparse wilderness dwellers and large populations of wandering monsters are not particularly high-op, with a few exceptions for dragons and the like.)

On the other hand, "it's too high-op" is by no means the only objection (rational or emotional) one might have to the Tippyverse.

Twilightwyrm

2012-11-03, 03:53 AM

That's kind of disingenuous, because "Tippyverse" refers to the setting Emperor Tippy created with high-op assumptions. You can, presumably, adapt some of its ideas into other settings at lower op, but the original Tippyverse is and remains a fairly high-op setting by its nature and definition, although you don't have to go full-on Team Solars to use it.

For example, any interaction with the city states will inevitably mean interacting with high-op, combat-ready NPCs, and it is fairly difficult to guarantee avoiding all cities for the duration of a campaign. (Presumably the sparse wilderness dwellers and large populations of wandering monsters are not particularly high-op, with a few exceptions for dragons and the like.)

On the other hand, "it's too high-op" is by no means the only objection (rational or emotional) one might have to the Tippyverse.

I'll concede you have a point, in that Tippy likely originally conceived of the Tippyverse with all the NPCs being high-op. The the cause (high-op NPCs), does not seem to be the only way of arriving at the effect (the details of the "Tippyverse" as Tippy describes is), and you could almost as easily get the conditions of a Tippyverse from 20th level, optimized wizards, archivists and clerics, as you could from a group of scroll and UMD committed, but otherwise unoptimized Warlocks. Or hell, a bunch of committed high level, but unoptimized, Healers and Warmages could theoretically do the trick. Hence why I don't really find it necessary to assume that much more in terms of optimization level for the conditions of a Tippyverse to arise, as I would for any other high-magic setting, except (admittedly) perhaps in keeping with the spirit of its original architect.

TuggyNE

2012-11-03, 04:30 AM

I'll concede you have a point, in that Tippy likely originally conceived of the Tippyverse with all the NPCs being high-op. The the cause (high-op NPCs), does not seem to be the only way of arriving at the effect (the details of the "Tippyverse" as Tippy describes is), and you could almost as easily get the conditions of a Tippyverse from 20th level, optimized wizards, archivists and clerics, as you could from a group of scroll and UMD committed, but otherwise unoptimized Warlocks. Or hell, a bunch of committed high level, but unoptimized, Healers and Warmages could theoretically do the trick. Hence why I don't really find it necessary to assume that much more in terms of optimization level for the conditions of a Tippyverse to arise, as I would for any other high-magic setting, except (admittedly) perhaps in keeping with the spirit of its original architect.

You could, certainly, arrive at a sort of proto-Tippyverse (permancency'd teleport circles, and not much else) without any very significant op. However, the later developments that are equally characteristic of and define the Tippyverse, such as dense cities with thorough magical protections and significant standing armies composed chiefly of casters and magic-immune creatures, heavy use of traps to support the rigors of increased population density, and so on and so forth: all these are in themselves an increasing level of optimization. So even if you start with unoptimized Wizard 20s, you'll end up with some relatively optimal casters of various sorts, and the arms race tends to continue (assuming a certain critical mass, perhaps). That is, high-op NPCs lead to the Tippyverse, but the Tippyverse also leads to high-op NPCs in a cycle.