When Tippyverse Fails

[ThermalSlapShot]

So I'm creating a world with a couple friends and we decided to go with the aftermath of a Tippyverse if the Wizard overlord(s) were suddenly taken away. How long can a resetting trap of create food last? What about everything else?

Let's say the gods took out the wizards.

Or a man in a blue box showed up and got rid of them...

Whatever the reason, what would happen when Tippyverse fails?

Some back ground, completely optional of course.


There are 5 wizard overlords that each run/oversee a city. Originally they were all in an adventuring group together but after a while they grew distant and when they hit epic... The arms race started. The gods allowed them to take care of the world since their followers were very happy and healthy.

Eventually the Epic Wizards learned a way to hide completely from the gods and didn't have to worry about anything from them.

That is when the human experiments started...

And that is when XXX (doctor, over-over-over deity, or whatever) came and stopped the Wizard, leaving the Tippyverse Cities without leaders.

My pal has been talking about different D&D cities and what I figured is each Epic Wizard could have brought a city across space and time to their present to be their personal city. But if that is to crazy then perhaps not.

[Kuulvheysoon]

I imagine that there'd be a series of small but vicious skirmishes between the underwizards until a new pecking order was established, with a new Wizard Overlord sitting on the throne, and very little would change in the long run.

The Tippyverse is pretty stable.

Of course, I'd defer to Tippy in this case, as it is, ultimately, his setting.

[Arcanist]

Of course, I'd defer to Tippy in this case, as it is, ultimately, his setting.

Ironically enough, Tippy has stated before that the Tippyverse is not the campaign setting that he and his table use and several of the traits that would be necessary for the Tippyverse to function are removed (I recall him saying something about XP for magical items being replaced with something else that can kill it's creator if they aren't careful). Just something I find quite funny :smalltongue:

But yeah, the Tippyverse is quite stable as it's hierarchy is set in stone. No matter who it is there will always be a Wizard-In-The-Sky. There will be anarchy for a while, but ultimately everything will stabilize and there will be peace...

[eggynack]

If you really want a Tippysplosion, why not set the game during the teleportation wars prior to the verse's current state? Cities would constantly rise and fall under waves of shadesteel golems, and the only place that's safe from the war is the wild between cities, and that's not nearly so habitable. The Tippyverse, after things begin to stabilize, isn't going to fall too easily. However, the setting has crazy chaos as a fundamental part of its backstory, so just use that.

[Crasical]

Disclaimer: Not a tippyverse, but an 'advanced magitech-based society' and it's disappearance was the central conceit of a 4e setting I ran up until recently, when I lost a lot of the files for the game in a computer failure.

In that particular instance the civilization had experienced a mysterious cataclysm, their cities dragged under the earth and buried in the underdark by Torog, the god of jailors and dungeons, sealed away for their hubris. This had set off a whole 'dungeon economy' where 'Ruin Diver' was a pretty common profession, trekking down into the ruins of the civilization to loot magitek, power sources, and records, some of it busted vendor trash or treasure, some of it still functional, some of it malfunctioning in deadly and entertaining ways. It also helped that I left plenty of corners of the map sketched in in rough details, if someone didn't want to be in on the whole magitek aesthetic they could certainly hail from somewhere exotic.

[Jack_Simth]

So I'm creating a world with a couple friends and we decided to go with the aftermath of a Tippyverse if the Wizard overlord(s) were suddenly taken away. How long can a resetting trap of create food last? What about everything else?By RAW? They last until something destroys them (be that a Disjunction, simple damage, or a rogue with disable device). Ditto for ... well, basically everything else, too. D&D doesn't model any sort of time decay.

Social ramifications of the sudden loss of the overlords are... not entirely predictable. If we assume that for some reason, nobody can replace the Wizard overlords with more high level T-1 overlords (a Cleric can make pretty much as good of an overlord as a Wizard, with a little optimization, for instance, and let's not touch what an Artificer can do)... you can expect the same sort of stuff that happens most times that there is a sudden power vacuum. While not everyone tries it, a large number of people make a power play... which gets rather messy, very often violently so.

[mabriss lethe]

A good number of basic survival functions, like resetting traps to feed the people, are very low level investments that are easily within reach of low level casters. Create Food and Water traps require a 5th level cleric with and a feat that comes online at CL 3. Remove disease and cure light wounds is even lower level coming online as soon as a 3rd level cleric grabs Craft Wondrous Item.

That's the thing about the tippyverse: Yes, there are some incredible things being accomplished by higher level casters, but the basic infrastructure needed to create/maintain it is dominated by very cost effective low level effects.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

I actually ran a setting similar to this. As time goes on, the great cities will gradually fall to some sort of catastrophy one by one. Those that remained were few and far between, about one per continent, and each was such a great distance from the others that there was almost no realistic way to reach any without using teleportation.

The game started near the ruins of one of the cities which had been wiped out by a Fell Drain Flash Frost Snowcast Locate City Wightpocolypse. The city was in the process of decaying, and the few survivors had built a town somewhat nearby. The city itself was still overrun with wights, plus the ever watchful construct constabulary which still recognized the wights as legitimate citizens and any outsiders as visitors and potential criminals. Needless to say, the wights used this to their advantage whenever a foolish adventurer showed up. There were plenty more powerful undead, necromancers, cultists, etc. making their homes in those ruins. The Teleportation Circles from this ruin to the other cities had deathtraps constructed around their destinations, though anyone traveling through would be initially caught and scrutinized before a decision was made to destroy them. Needless to say, the PCs never even attempted to venture into that ruin.

Create Food and Water traps will last until destroyed, either intentionally or accidentally. They don't ever run out, so anyone who happens to find that area of a ruin will have an unlimited supply of food. A few dozen orcs or lizardmen exploring a mostly abandoned and unrecognizably decayed ruin of a great city who found just one such trap would definitely construct a permanent settlement there. They would grow quickly, becoming one of the largest and strongest clans on the entire continent, capable of conquering an empire with a strong enough chief. For this reason, such devices would be sought out and destroyed if any such city were to fall. Keep in mind, there are also automatic reset Wish traps in each city for the creation of currency, which would of course be a top priority for either procurement or destruction depending on one's motivations.

[ThermalSlapShot]

Then perhaps something like Mystra banning arcane magic to all T2 and T1 classes but fluffed to make sense.

There was an episode of Star Trek (perhaps pilot) where a civilization on scale with a tippyverse got so advance that the people forgot how to repair and create what they were dependent on. It ended with what could be considered commoners trying to rebuild level 20 magic items...

[Crasical]

I actually ran a setting similar to this. As time goes on, the great cities will gradually fall to some sort of catastrophy one by one. Those that remained were few and far between, about one per continent, and each was such a great distance from the others that there was almost no realistic way to reach any without using teleportation.

The game started near the ruins of one of the cities which had been wiped out by a Fell Drain Flash Frost Snowcast Locate City Wightpocolypse. The city was in the process of decaying, and the few survivors had built a town somewhat nearby. The city itself was still overrun with wights, plus the ever watchful construct constabulary which still recognized the wights as legitimate citizens and any outsiders as visitors and potential criminals. Needless to say, the wights used this to their advantage whenever a foolish adventurer showed up. There were plenty more powerful undead, necromancers, cultists, etc. making their homes in those ruins. The Teleportation Circles from this ruin to the other cities had deathtraps constructed around their destinations, though anyone traveling through would be initially caught and scrutinized before a decision was made to destroy them. Needless to say, the PCs never even attempted to venture into that ruin.

Create Food and Water traps will last until destroyed, either intentionally or accidentally. They don't ever run out, so anyone who happens to find that area of a ruin will have an unlimited supply of food. A few dozen orcs or lizardmen exploring a mostly abandoned and unrecognizably decayed ruin of a great city who found just one such trap would definitely construct a permanent settlement there. They would grow quickly, becoming one of the largest and strongest clans on the entire continent, capable of conquering an empire with a strong enough chief. For this reason, such devices would be sought out and destroyed if any such city were to fall. Keep in mind, there are also automatic reset Wish traps in each city for the creation of currency, which would of course be a top priority for either procurement or destruction depending on one's motivations.

Wow. That's a hell of a setting. Sounds like being in one of those cities would be a cross between Dawn of the Dead and an Orwellian police state. Definitely way different than the fairly lighthearted 'Adventure!' setting I constructed, starting from the same premise.

[Phelix-Mu]

Simply allow permanent dweomer that are used often to mutate in interesting and unpredictable ways. Maybe the problem starts all at once, maybe gradually, maybe almost unnoticeable. The big problems start when resetting traps of x or y gain sentience. The trap wonders why it does what it does, who created it, and why it's helping all these goddamn leeches.

So, who knows why stuff suddenly became less predictable...could be anything.

1.) A la Time of Troubles instigation, someone screwed with a god-level artifact that somehow warps probability (Heart of Gold, anyone?). Stuff that is extremely unlikely suddenly is every Tuesday.

2.) It's a disease spread by Nurgl...I mean the god of death and decay or whatever, who is kind of upset at how Tippyverse has increased general prosperity over time. The disease infects magical auras, and twists their effects.

3.) A la Doctor Who, the stability of the universe is threatened by interlopers from beyond. Cracks in time spread, skewing the fabric of space and the flow of magic in their wake. Connect it to the Far Realm. Or alternate dimensions, a la Phanes (ELH). Or daleks.

In any case, this instability and its weirdness muck with the system in ways that the OverWizard is not able to deal with, because he deals with RAW, and this plot is landing right in the middle of RAW with a thousand megatons of whoopass.

Anyway, good luck. The power vacuum and repercussions of societal breakdown should be epic. Cults rise up amid the general panic, as people are driven to nigh insanity as the coolness of Tippyverse turns into the kind of nightmare that makes Dal'Quor wonder if it has been taking too much Ambien.

*grabs notebook*

[ThermalSlapShot]

I actually ran a setting similar to this. As time goes on, the great cities will gradually fall to some sort of catastrophy one by one. Those that remained were few and far between, about one per continent, and each was such a great distance from the others that there was almost no realistic way to reach any without using teleportation.

The game started near the ruins of one of the cities which had been wiped out by a Fell Drain Flash Frost Snowcast Locate City Wightpocolypse. The city was in the process of decaying, and the few survivors had built a town somewhat nearby. The city itself was still overrun with wights, plus the ever watchful construct constabulary which still recognized the wights as legitimate citizens and any outsiders as visitors and potential criminals. Needless to say, the wights used this to their advantage whenever a foolish adventurer showed up. There were plenty more powerful undead, necromancers, cultists, etc. making their homes in those ruins. The Teleportation Circles from this ruin to the other cities had deathtraps constructed around their destinations, though anyone traveling through would be initially caught and scrutinized before a decision was made to destroy them. Needless to say, the PCs never even attempted to venture into that ruin.

Create Food and Water traps will last until destroyed, either intentionally or accidentally. They don't ever run out, so anyone who happens to find that area of a ruin will have an unlimited supply of food. A few dozen orcs or lizardmen exploring a mostly abandoned and unrecognizably decayed ruin of a great city who found just one such trap would definitely construct a permanent settlement there. They would grow quickly, becoming one of the largest and strongest clans on the entire continent, capable of conquering an empire with a strong enough chief. For this reason, such devices would be sought out and destroyed if any such city were to fall. Keep in mind, there are also automatic reset Wish traps in each city for the creation of currency, which would of course be a top priority for either procurement or destruction depending on one's motivations.

That. is. fantastic.

[Mando Knight]

Ironically enough, Tippy has stated before that the Tippyverse is not the campaign setting that he and his table use and several of the traits that would be necessary for the Tippyverse to function are removed (I recall him saying something about XP for magical items being replaced with something else that can kill it's creator if they aren't careful). Just something I find quite funny :smalltongue:

But yeah, the Tippyverse is quite stable as it's hierarchy is set in stone. No matter who it is there will always be a Wizard-In-The-Sky. There will be anarchy for a while, but ultimately everything will stabilize and there will be peace...
Tippyverse is less a campaign setting than it is a thought experiment anyway. It's more "this is what happens if the full capabilities of magical technology as presented by 3.5 RAW is realized" and less "this is a high-tech magic-based setting I came up with using 3.5 magic items." Note that Tippyverse is rather dystopian in nature, what with all the absolutely terrible (as in the "completely evil" sense) and effective spells used to brainwash the subjects into utter loyalty.

As an extreme counter to the "there will always be another Wizard-in-the-Sky" argument: Anti-WitS catastrophe eliminates all spellcasters in the hierarchy, as well as all of their personal failsafes, including any means of swiftly imparting the knowledge needed for sustaining the Tippyverse scheme to wandering scholars or the like (i.e. all scrolls, spellbooks, and Eternal Wands, etc. immediately disintegrate along with their owners).

[Gildedragon]

If all the wizards are destroyed (a magic virus?) but the traps are untouched: Life, and the basics of it continue as normal for some time; meanwhile some sort of leader would rise to the top, either by military, physical, or charismatic means. Divine magic, if unaffected, is now the supreme contender. Otherwise warlocks, binders or artificers; whichever are unaffected, might be the head honchos.

The sort of society that follows is a function of the means by which leadership is established. it might range from an authoritarian police state to a communal absolute democracy. Though the leaders may resent the fact that they cannot have the same levels of luxury as the wizards could. Trade with other cities for impermanent magic luxuries (scrolls, wands, potions, rings of wishes) may spread the magic virus. Which is, of course, resistant to divinations.

If, eventually, the traps begin to fail, or become scarce, expect society to become more barbarous, and the lower classes to move out into the surrounding areas. Panic, chaos, and destruction are optional; likelier with a catastrophic failure rather than a waning. Say the food traps slowly produce less and less food; then an orderly desertion of the cities is likely. On the other hand, should a neighboring city's flying wards fail, or a whole district find its food traps non-functional, panic is all but inevitable.

Death and starvation are likely until farming is re-invented. Probably with the aid of some outposts. Metalwork and crafting are likely in need for development.

Overall catastrophic societal collapse is mostly unlikely; panic may occur in some places, but overall the collapse of civilizations and societies is more of a gentle melting and reforming into something else.

[ThermalSlapShot]

Tippyverse is less a campaign setting than it is a thought experiment anyway. It's more "this is what happens if the full capabilities of magical technology as presented by 3.5 RAW is realized" and less "this is a high-tech magic-based setting I came up with using 3.5 magic items." Note that Tippyverse is rather dystopian in nature, what with all the absolutely terrible (as in the "completely evil" sense) and effective spells used to brainwash the subjects into utter loyalty.

As an extreme counter to the "there will always be another Wizard-in-the-Sky" argument: Anti-WitS catastrophe eliminates all spellcasters in the hierarchy, as well as all of their personal failsafes, including any means of swiftly imparting the knowledge needed for sustaining the Tippyverse scheme to wandering scholars or the like (i.e. all scrolls, spellbooks, and Eternal Wands, etc. immediately disintegrate along with their owners).

First off... My hotel internet is sucking so I'm missing some post and haven't been able to comment on stuff.

Secondly about the stuff above... Yup! I was thinking that whatever happens it wouldn't just be the ones in charge but whatever was keeping system alive and working.

Without a reason to grow the humanoids won't grow, learn, and become so much more than what they currently are. Thus whatever it is, takes the complete system away but leaves some base stuff around.

[Lapak]

With the background you propose... probably everyday life would not change much. The societies are pretty stable once established, since much of the meat of a Tippyverse lies in automatically-operating good-forever magical devices. Once the wizards have created those devices they are superfluous anyway. So what happened in any given city would mostly depend on what actions they'd actually performed on the population - if one wizard had everybody under permanent Dominations it would play out differently than if one had set himself up as a Vivec-style god-king and that would play out differently than the wizard who liked to play 'first among equals' with a (largely for show) senate or something.

With other backgrounds, it plays out differently. I dodge the Tippyverse in my own setting by houseruling a rationale for why magic items require an XP investment: it's because they're powered by the same energy that sustains life, of which there is only so much in any given area. Tie too much XP up in magic items, and your population will decline. Tie up WAY too much, your crops will start to fail as there's not even enough life for plants to prosper. Tippyverse-style civilizations hit a tipping point, go into a rapid decline, and become the center of vast wastelands that can stick around for centuries until accidents and/or looters remove enough of the magical geegaws and free up the life energy they're constantly draining from their surroundings. It's the same reason elven civilizations have such low reproductive rates - they accumulate more energy in a single long life and don't release it back into the pool until they die - why and humanoids are so fecund. It's why high-level wizards who seek immortality end up turning into liches, as they pump magic into their own flesh and replace the natural energy of life that would normally be there. And so on.

[unseenmage]

What actual in-game forces are there that can actually undermine some of the Tippyverse mechanics? Other than just-more-wizards?

Ghosts can inhabit traps, potentially corrupting their purpose.
Magical virus or spellplague can undo the wizards, again potentially.
The death of the god (goddess) of magic could undo the enchantments and magical effects that bind such a world together.

Maybe applying a limiter to the magical forces of the universe and doing some simple math to see just how many infinitely resetting traps of creation it takes to drain a deity of all their power.

Infinite magically created objects could have a detrimental effect on the environment over a very long timescale. Too much of any material will poison any ecosystem given enough time.


I kinda like the idea of a far far far flung future Tippyverse where the people no longer know how to maintain their environments. The world becomes a warped combination of the aforementioned Star Trek episode and the tongue-in-cheek movie Idiocracy.

A world poisoned by gold, buried in created diningware trash, peopled by Ambrosia and Liquid Pain junkies who battle constantly over haunted resetting traps while the Wizard in the Sky sits and stares at his creation, perfectly content in his own Ambrosia-haze and immortality.

The post post-scarcity society sounds just awful. I'd love to adventure there. :smallamused:

[Mando Knight]

Idea:

Armor starts getting made out of lashed-together colanders and tires. Wandering sorcerers transfer power between partially consumed wands to preserve charges. Giant vermin freely roam a land scorched long ago by arcane fire.

The players are forced out of their ancient underground citadel in search for a new Create Water trap, as theirs is failing, and home has only enough water for 400 days...

Magic, magic never changes.

[unseenmage]

Idea:

Armor starts getting made out of lashed-together colanders and tires. Wandering sorcerers transfer power between partially consumed wands to preserve charges. Giant vermin freely roam a land scorched long ago by arcane fire.

The players are forced out of their ancient underground citadel in search for a new Create Water trap, as theirs is failing, and home has only enough water for 400 days...

Magic, magic never changes.

Dead-magic zones intensify and begin spawning a very special kind of undead which gives off an aura poisonous to spellcasters.

These zones are invisible to the naked eye so wrist mounted devices powered by the lifeforce of the wearer give off little pining noises to indicate how dead the magic in a given area is.

One city springs up around a Locate City Bomb that sits in the middle of town in a frozen time field. Never quite completed and never quite disarmed.

One wealthy mage claims a tower in the waste and hires adventurers to clear the tunnels beneath of un-deadmagic-zone creatures. While he and his live in relative luxury the wasteland teems with bandits.

[Phelix-Mu]

Idea:

Armor starts getting made out of lashed-together colanders and tires. Wandering sorcerers transfer power between partially consumed wands to preserve charges. Giant vermin freely roam a land scorched long ago by arcane fire.

The players are forced out of their ancient underground citadel in search for a new Create Water trap, as theirs is failing, and home has only enough water for 400 days...

Magic, magic never changes.

Or create water traps went berserk. The world is now covered in water. An aging actor has evolved gills and has cobbled together parts of several boats to help him survi...wait....:smallamused:

The point is that lots of things can go wrong. Now that something has gone wrong, what's next?

It really depends on how something went wrong. If the only thing that went wrong is that the OverWizard went away, then I agree that not much changes, as control just moves to the next wizard in the series of n wizards waiting for this kind of opportunity.

[ryu]

Naturally all adventurers are equipped with at will time stop devices.

[QuintonBeck]

Idea:

Armor starts getting made out of lashed-together colanders and tires. Wandering sorcerers transfer power between partially consumed wands to preserve charges. Giant vermin freely roam a land scorched long ago by arcane fire.

The players are forced out of their ancient underground citadel in search for a new Create Water trap, as theirs is failing, and home has only enough water for 400 days...

Magic, magic never changes.

A small cabal off the coast led by the last remaining wizard seeks to reestablish dominion over the land but the anti magic taint of the populations that have grown up in the absence need to be cleansed and thus the wizard and his cronies are preparing to unleash another hellish destruction to clear the area for reclamation. And only a group of tribals can stop him.

[Rubik]

Naturally all adventurers are equipped with at will time stop devices.Don't forget cloaks of invisibility and Nimbus 2000s broomsticks of flying.

[Arcanist]

Idea:

Armor starts getting made out of lashed-together colanders and tires. Wandering sorcerers transfer power between partially consumed wands to preserve charges. Giant vermin freely roam a land scorched long ago by arcane fire.

The players are forced out of their ancient underground citadel in search for a new Create Water trap, as theirs is failing, and home has only enough water for 400 days...

Magic, magic never changes.

Pip Boy 3000

Pip Boy 3000
Price: 9,500gp
Body Slot: Arms
Caster level: 1st
Aura: Faint Divination, Abjuration and Evocation (DC 15)
Activation: -, Standard (Mental), Standard (Manipulation)
Weight: -

“The Pip-Boy 3000 is a safe, secure piece of Pre-War technology. It guarantees privacy, safety, and guidance in times of need.”
-The Grifter

A commonly used device by explorers for its unique abilities to aid in survival. The Pip Boy 3000 was developed by a Pre-War Extreme Explorer known as the Grifter who, upon completing his career as an Advanturer, sold the design for his wondrous tool. Although due to the difficult of developing the device its abilities aren't fully known, however considering the number of ungrades available for it, the items full abilities might never be known; The basic package abilities are well known though.

While worn on the users left arm, the wearer is constantly aware of all magical effects surrounding them and of the presence of poisons surrounding them. It also creates a mental alarm for the user and alerts them to all Tiny or Larger creatures regardless; This alarm automatically awakens the wearer if such a creature is within 20ft of them. Ethereal creatures and creatures the user has designated as Alies do not trigger this alarm.

As a Standard action, the user can activate a light spell that can be turned on and off at the users leasure. Alternative the user can automatically gain basic information relevant to major landmarks, such as rivers, lakes, and settlements (population 80 or more) surrounding them up to 50 miles. It indicates the direction, distance and terrain to and from your current location.

The most notable feature of any Pip Boy is that it can be modified to suit it's wearers needs. At any point during construction, the Pip Boy can be upgraded to include the features of another magical trait. The features listed here can be removed or improved upon by including additional features, simply add the cost of the new trait to the cost of creating a Pip-Boy.

Prerequisites: Craft Wondrous Items; Detect Magic, Lay of the Land, Light, Detect Magic, Alarm.

Cost to Create: 4,750gp; 10 days; 380xp

How lucky can one guy be? I kissed her and she kissed me... :smalltongue:

[Phelix-Mu]

Lesson: Have more stuff go wrong.

Really, I'd pull out the stops. After all, Tippyverse is a real "no stops" kind of place.

So, for instance:
- After millennia of creatures teleporting everywhere all of the time, creatures native to the astral begin to be attracted to high teleport traffic areas. These creatures might:

a.) Snag people mid-teleport.
b.) Switch bodies with people mid-teleport, like invasion of the body snatchers.
c.) Subtly infect the minds of those mid-teleport. Basically, they have an aura that does some kind of psychic imprint or mind seed on the traveler. The traveler goes about their life, and slowly is warped by the astral creature into some hideous, deformed critter that goes around and does whatever x, y, or z fits into the tenor of the campaign.

Now, if teleportation is warping lifeforms or disappearing people, eventually people catch on. Is it too late? Well, I'd say it's somewhere close to too late, as the eggs of these astral creatures have been implanted in the minds of hundreds of thousands, who will all spontaneously morph into hideous...well, you get the idea.

- Created water exists in the normal range of anatomical H20. Certain amounts of it constitute heavy water, or deuterium oxide. This water, normally it's such a small amount of water, it's not a big deal. But, if you add enough water to the world, well, now there's a fairly substantial amount of deuterium out there. Distribution of deuterium containing water may be affected by various forces, some passive, some malicious, some purely plot-driven.

Regardless, high levels of deuterium in water are bad. How bad? Eventually lethal, but the real fun is when variations in water density and molecular interactions start causing mutations within creatures, affecting the environment in subtle/spectacular ways, or otherwise generally screwing around with lifeforms. Seen "The Waters of Mars" episode of Dr. Who?

- Many people in Tippyverse aren't immortal. Some day, they die. What happens to a corpse of a creature that has been fed magically created food since the day of it's conception? Well, I'll let you decide. Since Tippyverse was established, we still need some triggering event. I'm guessing some multinational corporation developed a virus that prevents aging and....

Right, so there are lots of dystopian things you can just drop on Tippyverse. How badly do you want it to go? There is lots magic in Tippyverse, so it has to go pretty bad to overcome safeguards.

[TuggyNE]

The most notable feature of any Pip Boy is that it can be modified to suit it's wearers needs. At any point during construction, the Pip Boy can be upgraded to include the features of another magical trait. The features listed here can be removed or improved upon by including additional features, simply add the cost of the new trait to the cost of creating a Pip-Boy.

That's um… kind of the default for all magic items ever as it is. So its most notable feature is that it doesn't break the rules for adding new effects? :smallconfused:

[Arcanist]

That's um… kind of the default for all magic items ever as it is. So its most notable feature is that it doesn't break the rules for adding new effects? :smallconfused:

I know you can do that with any magic item, I just want to make it more blatantly obvious that you can actually do that with the Pip Boy and that should be your main focus if you seek to improve it. Oddly enough the first person I showed that item to said that it was too weak reflect an actual Pip Boy so I just added that little line of text to make it even more idiotproof :smalltongue:

I had two thoughts when making that item: Make it as cheap as possible and make it usable by anyone with an INT 3 or higher and hands.

[Phelix-Mu]

I had two thoughts when making that item: Make it as cheap as possible and make it usable by anyone with an INT 3 or higher and hands.

*Fistless McGee shakes his non-hands in anger*

This seems to unnecessarily be biased against the handless. I suggest one that goes around your neck and has a holographic AI that operates it for you, following voice commands or other gestures. We'll call it Siri...wait...wait, my lawyer just called. Must be important.:smalltongue:

[Karoht]

I'm working this concept (failed Tippyverse) as a plothook for my next campaign.

Basically, the mages of the world overstep their bounds, the gods put a halt to magic. No magic, not even Divine, for 1000 years. After the 1000 years, no spell level higher than 5 is accessable/functional.
(In game, the player party will unlock the higher spell levels by fixing things, no this is not a 'nerf spellcasters' campaign)

I've been exploring the ramifications very very slowly. By my estimation, these people got to a semi-tippyverse level and then had it all shut down.
I'm equating it to post WWII USA/Russia suddenly being taken back to the Feudalism era tech, and extrapolating from that. It's been interesting, it even gave me reasons to involve some of the Book of Nine Swords lore/origins.

No where near ready to play yet.

[mystic1110]

I'm working this concept (failed Tippyverse) as a plothook for my next campaign.

Basically, the mages of the world overstep their bounds, the gods put a halt to magic. No magic, not even Divine, for 1000 years. After the 1000 years, no spell level higher than 5 is accessable/functional.
(In game, the player party will unlock the higher spell levels by fixing things, no this is not a 'nerf spellcasters' campaign)

I've been exploring the ramifications very very slowly. By my estimation, these people got to a semi-tippyverse level and then had it all shut down.
I'm equating it to post WWII USA/Russia suddenly being taken back to the Feudalism era tech, and extrapolating from that. It's been interesting, it even gave me reasons to involve some of the Book of Nine Swords lore/origins.

No where near ready to play yet.

Why semi-tippy level?

[Karoht]

Why semi-tippy level?
Great question!
Long reply is long. Spoilered for readability:

I chose semi-tippy because I figured full blown Tippy would make the concept sound like too much DM fiat handwaving cheese. Also, I found I was able to world build up to the point of semi-tippy and have a good historical balance I could borrow from the real world. Better frame of reference and all that.

It doesn't take very long to reach full blown Tippy. It can happen in a single generation, once someone gets the idea to do it. Magic is still very young in this world, 9th level spells were JUST coming into play before magic was shut off for 1000 years, and most of that knowledge lost with the resulting fall of most of the Mage Colleges So the idea that nearly an entire planets worth of Mages were right on the fringe of such a volatile paradigm shift (while in the middle of a major war amongst themselves for who would control the brave new world), only to have their efforts ruined and stalled for 1000 years? Sounded like good story material to me.

Now, the modern mage war going on is because the mages all know that sooner or later the power will come back, so right now in the story, they are fighting over who will be the ones to push the world into Tippy, and then own it all from there. They aren't evil, they aren't exactly doing good either, and they know that such a paradigm shift is dangerous, it has to be controlled carefully or they can be supplanted, or it can all be ruined.

Lastly, they know full well that they can be supplanted. The fighting schools of the Book of Nine Swords rose and spread during the 1000 years of no magic. They know that these guys are force to be reckoned with, especially if magic is shut off again.


So perhaps a bit less relevant, as what I'm describing is (in my mind anyway) not a truly implimented Tippy before the fall, but hopefully provides some helpful insight none the less.

EDIT:
Easy analysis for all this is, take a good look at what makes Tippyverse tippy in the first place. Then start taking all that away from the world and see what sorts of reactions it causes.

[mystic1110]

In my mind what makes the tippy world tippy is you have these huge centers of magic and population and the rest of the world has been given over back to the wilderness / towns.

Then if you want it all to fail. You just take away magic. All magic.

Some of the cities would litteraly collapse - being held together by magic alone, yet some would simply stop. Now you have these people in huge population centers with suddenly no resources and the people in charge suddenly have no power.

I think that gangs and city civil wars would develop. Many would not survive, and even if they did, they would starve or die in the wilderness.

The world after tippy in my mind would just be a magicless world - where there are great ruins where these formal cities used to be, the towns would become more powerful as people gravitate towards them, and population would be heavily reduced.

Aka a classic - No magic, Ruins of the Ancients setting.