Tippyverse Website or Guide? [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

Yukitsu

2013-12-26, 10:29 PM

I'd bet that the Tippyverse doesn't use summon-trap-training because that doesn't work too well I'm keeping with the idea of applying logic to the rules. Sure, it might count as further exploitation, but, with logic, it stops working. Fighting the same few creatures over and over should not continue to grant the same amount of experience. Also, summoning monsters for the explicit purpose of killing them (and summoning them continuously) would not sit well with the beings whose underlings are summoned. Even the Tippyverse might not be able to deal with invasion by a few angry archdemons.

Technically, the issue there is that the difficulty rating in any encounter in the macro is "inconsequential", but you are certainly supposed to get EXP for an encounter even if it's the same one over and over. Summoned creatures in D&D also aren't real creatures, so there's no consequence to summoning them.

The larger issue is one of two potential problems. One, you opt to provide a "0 risk" environment by guaranteeing that no one dies if they lose, or you lose a ton of people through the overall process who die in training. Trying to heavily moderate risk still tends to end in the 0 risk category, but any situation which poses absolutely no threat to you isn't supposed to follow normal EXP gains, no matter how "tough" the encounter is supposed to be to beat. By the rules strictly as written, that's a "consideration" rather than a rule, but one that by its very nature should always be followed when someone attempts something of this sort of nature.

Tyndmyr

2013-12-26, 10:34 PM

Meh, there's save game tricks, rezzes, and all manner of other magic. If mere death is a severe impediment to you, you're not going to make it far in the TV anyway.

Yukitsu

2013-12-26, 10:41 PM

Meh, there's save game tricks, rezzes, and all manner of other magic. If mere death is a severe impediment to you, you're not going to make it far in the TV anyway.

That's in essence the problem. If the stakes are nothing, and getting back up is free, it's a 0 risk fight. They'd level faster going out to grind goblins in a waste than doing a fight they literally can't lose anything from. By the "RAW" you can let your players get EXP for a fight that has 0 at risk if they lose, which is sort of an assumption the world relies on.

SowZ

2013-12-26, 11:02 PM

Technically, the issue there is that the difficulty rating in any encounter in the macro is "inconsequential", but you are certainly supposed to get EXP for an encounter even if it's the same one over and over. Summoned creatures in D&D also aren't real creatures, so there's no consequence to summoning them.

The larger issue is one of two potential problems. One, you opt to provide a "0 risk" environment by guaranteeing that no one dies if they lose, or you lose a ton of people through the overall process who die in training. Trying to heavily moderate risk still tends to end in the 0 risk category, but any situation which poses absolutely no threat to you isn't supposed to follow normal EXP gains, no matter how "tough" the encounter is supposed to be to beat. By the rules strictly as written, that's a "consideration" rather than a rule, but one that by its very nature should always be followed when someone attempts something of this sort of nature.

But one could put up a 5k price to enter the training ring. If you die, you get fezzes and lose the deposit. You're risk is now the same as any other adventurer entering battle with Rez contingencies.

Quite possibly! I'm not overly familiar with the Tippyverse, but from what I know of it, lots of logistics would seem very probable. I just don't think "No, it has lots of logic," is the correct answer to "It lacks logistics." :smallsmile:

Fair enough.

Yukitsu

2013-12-26, 11:08 PM

As much as I like those, I don't think losing a hat constitutes a risk.

Edit: I just now realized that that was a typo.

The issue there is that unless you are doing the "everyone has unlimited GP" nonsense, that still removes a great number of individuals at the first level from ever entering that program, as that means they are risking their entire life savings and a massive loan that would take 3 generations to pay off. When the system is running on infinite money sure, but at that point any "society" becomes a parody rather than anything interesting.

Hurnn

2013-12-26, 11:17 PM

Yukitsu

2013-12-26, 11:28 PM

After reading the TV post that was linked im not sure why most cities would actually have any population out side the rulers and their extended families. Commoners literally serve no purpose. No need for farmers with create food and water traps. No need for conscripts to fill your armies ranks all handles by constructs. No need for manual laborers, constructs, animated objects, magical creation, summoning, or. Really anyone who isn't at least an expert aristocrat or caster of some type is a drain on resources. I suppose cities with Good aligned rulership might keep them around for ethical reasons but neutrals and evils, not so much.

Also I'm curious about where they powerful intelligent monsters fit in in TV. For example every good dragon of wyrm or older is a 17th lvl sorcerer, as are blue and red. Do they have a place in the rulership cabals of the cities? The have access to the same levels of magic, can make them selves effectively immortal through the same means as the humanoid rulers, and in many cases may be older than the cities themselves.

Is everything a bizarre meritocracy where you must be atleast this magical to rule regardless of what you are?

The Tippyverse more than anything is a pure rules exercise. It discards for the most part, human behavior, sociology, economics, and in certain cases, direct recommendations of how the rules should be applied, or caveats that certain things can only work with direct DM approval (such as custom magic item creation.)

As a rules exercise, it is fairly interesting stretching optimization to that level of society (it's one of my favourite thought experiments), but if you were to try and apply any external considerations, such as the possibility of a DM that says "no, that's not a reasonable custom item." or if you question how society would react to such a situation, the scenario falls apart.

Xar Zarath

2013-12-26, 11:52 PM

I always thought of the Tippyverse as DND RAW:smalltongue:

SowZ

2013-12-27, 12:18 AM

Yukitsu

2013-12-27, 12:40 AM

I agree it fails with reasonable DM intervention, but disagree that it doesn't account for human nature. We as humans have come along way in understanding the laws of physics. If those laws of physics were the D&D rules? Those rules would be heavily manipulated and we would see things like the TVverse.

Yes, it would be hard to find out the systems of levels and hit dice and skill points and damage and trap creation systems. But given enough thousands of years? Discovering those rules would be no more complicated then discovering the mathematical laws of physics that rule our universe. And since we don't know what causes the laws of physics to exist or be consistent mathematically in RL, and we don't know if there are alternate realities with different laws of physics, the D&D rules that are their laws of physics may be no more arbitrary then the laws in our own world.

The biggest ways that I see it failing are that it seems to be a self defeating society when it is set up, and the road to it is more likely than not to result in an Orwellian dictatorship which he denies is the logical conclusion.

I don't disagree with people fundamentally knowing about the basic mechanics behind their world, especially when it's so broadly quantified, but I disagree with the implementation that would follow from that.

icefractal

2013-12-27, 01:31 AM

So, I was thinking about it, and I came to the conclusion that the Tippyverse actually works better when certain peaks of ultimate power are removed.

Basically, any method of "Wishes for free", or anything similar, means that any form of society is completely arbitrary. Once you get into that zone, then there are only two possibilities:
1) Unable to get access to even a single Wish.
2) Unlimited power.

And with Unlimited Power, the logical framework of the Tippyverse doesn't fit any more. Keep people in cities because they're easier to guard? Why do you care? You have unlimited armies of arbitrarily powerful creatures, unlimited items to set up defenses, and you don't actually need any of your citizens for anything anyway. And by "you", I mean anybody who can scrounge up a single Candle of Invocation.

Without that, the TV works fine. Maybe you can't have unlimited Shadesteel Golems, but you can still use them (and not having unlimited is good, because it means your enemies would have unlimited also). No self-reproducing Wish Traps, but infinite food sources are still viable. You even can build a Wish Trap that produces lesser magic items, it will just be hideously expensive and not able to make copies of itself.

Basically, just no perfect loops. Which does mean we are technically deviating from the RAW, but I'd say it's the smallest deviation that doesn't actually make the game unplayable when fully considered.

SowZ

2013-12-27, 01:42 AM

The biggest ways that I see it failing are that it seems to be a self defeating society when it is set up, and the road to it is more likely than not to result in an Orwellian dictatorship which he denies is the logical conclusion.

I don't disagree with people fundamentally knowing about the basic mechanics behind their world, especially when it's so broadly quantified, but I disagree with the implementation that would follow from that.

Survival of the fittest. A society where everyone is wealthy will outcompete and swallow those that have 'few wealthy monarchs v impoverished masses.' That even happens in RL.

And hey, maybe there would be an oligarchy with intense Orwellian power. The best way to secure that, and to make sure their citizens don't defect to other countries or grow resentful, is to make the populace unaware of who pulls the strings. When are people going to be the least likely to seek out who their rulers are? When are people less apt to risk their lives and gain levels for promises of wealth?

When they are fat, happy, and rich. In TV it would be far simpler to just make life so amiable that no one would bother revolting than it would to maintain a stable government with Dominate Person.

Yukitsu

2013-12-27, 03:05 AM

When they are fat, happy, and rich. In TV it would be far simpler to just make life so amiable that no one would bother revolting than it would to maintain a stable government with Dominate Person.

Yes, but that's self defeating, as the wizards have no reliance on them, their land, or the labour they no longer represent, and with autonomous, free everything relevant, the masses no longer need wizards, hence you'll enter a stagnated dark age where lazy fattoes will sit around their town chowing down on free nutri-paste that gets ejected into their gaping maw as they sit around the illusi-vid rather than getting an education to be a powerful wizard until some jerkwad goes in and takes over the means of production forming a new and bizarre oligarchy based on sole ownership of the food pumps.

Edit: Or a wizard skips the dark age and becomes and evil overlord of a huge Orwellian Oligarchy.

SowZ

2013-12-27, 03:31 AM

Yes, but that's self defeating, as the wizards have no reliance on them, their land, or the labour they no longer represent, and with autonomous, free everything relevant, the masses no longer need wizards, hence you'll enter a stagnated dark age where lazy fattoes will sit around their town chowing down on free nutri-paste that gets ejected into their gaping maw as they sit around the illusi-vid rather than getting an education to be a powerful wizard until some jerkwad goes in and takes over the means of production forming a new and bizarre oligarchy based on sole ownership of the food pumps.

Edit: Or a wizard skips the dark age and becomes and evil overlord of a huge Orwellian Oligarchy.

But when two or three of those societies exist, the one with the mustachio twirling villain on top of a pile of human suffering will lose out to the one with happy people that the rulers manage to make as productive as possible. Also, you are assuming that the highest level wizards will be Evil. There's no reason not to have just as many Good as Evil, but most will likely be Neutral.

A Neutral leader has no reason not to keep the masses happy and content as long as it doesn't interfere with his/her ambitions and comfort.

Shoot, magic in D&D is basically technology. In RL, the advancement of technology improves standard of living almost across the board. And as individuals have become less important and machines more important, and most people don't farm and the government has access to more and more powerful weapons than any civilian will ever see, we haven't seen the rich poor divide increase or liberty decrease. We've seen the opposite.

I'll try to stay in history and not delve into politics, so whether or not you believe that divide in wealth is still way too big or not isn't important. What is relevant is that the distribution of resources is more balanced now, on a global average, than in medieval or even Renascence times likely due to the industrial revolution. At the very least, comfort levels are higher.

Even evil dictators want more people to rule. They usually aren't going to kill off large swaths of their domain just because they don't need them, and aside from a few psychos aren't going to starve them or deny them amenities when that food and entertainment comes super cheap.

There's just no reason for an Orwellian Wizard King to keep food traps and teleportation circles out of his populaces hands other than sheer douchy-ness.

Yukitsu

2013-12-27, 03:38 AM

But when two or three of those societies exist, the one with the mustachio twirling villain on top of a pile of human suffering will lose out to the one with happy people that the rulers manage to make as productive as possible. Also, you are assuming that the highest level wizards will be Evil. There's no reason not to have just as many Good as Evil, but most will likely be Neutral.

A Neutral leader has no reason not to keep the masses happy and content as long as it doesn't interfere with his/her ambitions and comfort.

Actually, I'm assuming that the wizard will most likely end up being ambivalent, as there's no reason to interact with everyone else at all. The wizard gets nothing from them, and they don't really need to give them for anything after the Tippyverse is set up. A mass migration of wizards to personal demi planes is the most likely event, backed by perhaps a few that watch in on the fattoes as they vegetate on their couches. Theoretically, no leadership is needed at that point, save to fend off an outside threat, but even that has been automated against anything but the most powerful enemy. They basically stay this way until a destabilizing force takes away their food tubes. It'd either be an ad-hoc calamity to destroy their foundations, or a truly massive outside force, or a tyrant coming in from their own society. Or maybe they sit there on their couches eating nutri-paste for the rest of eternity peacefully and uselessly.

icefractal

2013-12-27, 04:35 AM

Various factors do suggest that the people actually running cities in a Tippyverse have rather strong personal reasons to do, beyond just wealth or comfort. Anyone with the resources to set up a city also has the resources to set up a private demiplane where they can kick back and amuse themselves with Succubus Ice Assassins all day, with whatever they need at their fingertips.

So presumably, if someone is instead housing a city of people, they either:
A) Feel some duty/loyalty/friendship to the people, and want to provide them with a good place to live.
B) Are a real bastard and want actual subjects around to mess with. Simulacra just aren't good enough.
C) Really care about appearances, and think having a city of loyal subjects looks a lot cooler than a pleasure-demiplane.
D) Have some kind of plan so big, it requires more than they can do alone.

So - the kind of cities you'd get would vary. Most would be good places to live, although C-types might put an emphasis on style over comfort, and may have harsh measures for those who cause too much trouble. It's really just B-type cities you wouldn't want to live in, and those could be anything from total hellholes to "seems very nice, but occasionally people get snatched by the secret police".

I don't know if you'd see many Orwellian type deals though. Paranoid types really have no need of a city. Even if they want to conquer the land, they can still do that from their demiplane, via a perfectly loyal army of constructed troops.

Yukitsu

2013-12-27, 04:49 AM

C and D are likely to wind up with Orwellian overtones. An orderly society of subjects will have plenty of dissenters of various sorts, no matter how much is provided, and if the point is appearances, disappearing or rehabbing dissent would likely be the go to methods of reform. I don't feel prestige of this particular nature is a likely desire though. In case D, I suspect that they would have to compel them to work by force, as there life is otherwise post scarcity, there would be very little that could compel them to do work that the wizard wants. The most humane way to get them up and at it is through mental trickery such as mind rape.

To be fair, being in 1984 and behaving yourself, life strictly speaking isn't all that bad. It's simply in cases where you want free will to act out against the government and what it proclaims that it gets bad. The case in C and D would definitely be Orwellian, but with the likely caveat that you are likely looking at a slightly wider range of things that won't ping on the thought police detectors.

Ultimately though, I suspect the only end result with indefinite fat and happy citizens would be case A, but everyone there would be absolutely useless. I suspect after they were done with them, case D would slide into a dark age, where case C would last until the wizard thought there was more social prestige from some other fad.

skyth

2013-12-27, 07:57 AM

The larger issue is one of two potential problems. One, you opt to provide a "0 risk" environment by guaranteeing that no one dies if they lose, or you lose a ton of people through the overall process who die in training. Trying to heavily moderate risk still tends to end in the 0 risk category, but any situation which poses absolutely no threat to you isn't supposed to follow normal EXP gains, no matter how "tough" the encounter is supposed to be to beat. By the rules strictly as written, that's a "consideration" rather than a rule, but one that by its very nature should always be followed when someone attempts something of this sort of nature.

A summon monster trap is not 0 risk. There is always the chance of getting dropped, etc. There is a good chance of taking damage as the monsters automatically go first. Just like your 3rd level party gets xp for defeating a 3 goblins (a CR 1 encounter). You might get hurt a little bit (Easily healable) and there is a extremely small chance of someone getting dropped. However, you still get full xp for the encounter. It doesn't matter if it was the only one in the day, or even if you ran into them 2 minutes before the clerics get their spells back so that any healing magic used is instantly replenished. You also risk your pride if you get dropped by them :)

The acid arrow trap with protection is a 0 risk encounter since you can not possibly take any damage from it.

Now, RAW defines a summon monster trap as a CR 1 higher than than the spell level, so a summon monster I trap is a CR 2 encounter, up to a CR 10 encounter for a summon monster IX trap.

Doing the training in groups will mitigate the danger so you likely won't lose all that many people. It will mean less XP per trap though (Since the XP is split). Anyone interested in adventuring would want to go through this sort of training. Especially if you vary the monster types in the training to expose them to a wide variety of foes. However, by RAW, you don't need to vary the monsters.

kalos72

2013-12-27, 10:16 AM

My group is looking at the TV options for a more limited approach.

We play a 3.5+ version of Forgotten Realms and are trying to rebuild Neverwinter.

They need to rebuild a city, its army, its navy, its population, its economy; everything.

Resources like stone for the new walls, the new harbour, the new castle they are building or even just repairs is going to be hard to come by in the speed which 10 Lyres playing can produce. In come Wall of Stone traps...

Next there is ways to attract the new population. Free food/water? Free houses? Free training into a profession or class? Free transport to the city with a signing bonus of a 3000GP diamond produced from diamond traps?

How do you recruit or train 5000 rangers and other required troops for a standing army? Then equip them with top end gear?

Out of necessity our group wants to limit the TV side of things to just the city government (themselves) to help rebuild as fast as possible.

We havent figured out if we want to do the free food thing or perhaps just free supplies. I am confused about how you use create food/water traps to feed a population? Give each house one? Have giant feast halls people must go to and eat there?

We had thought about just using fabricate traps to create the supplies (flour, sugar, base metals, etc) and still let people own and operate businesses.

Yukitsu

2013-12-27, 12:09 PM

A summon monster trap is not 0 risk. There is always the chance of getting dropped, etc. There is a good chance of taking damage as the monsters automatically go first. Just like your 3rd level party gets xp for defeating a 3 goblins (a CR 1 encounter). You might get hurt a little bit (Easily healable) and there is a extremely small chance of someone getting dropped. However, you still get full xp for the encounter. It doesn't matter if it was the only one in the day, or even if you ran into them 2 minutes before the clerics get their spells back so that any healing magic used is instantly replenished. You also risk your pride if you get dropped by them :)

The acid arrow trap with protection is a 0 risk encounter since you can not possibly take any damage from it.

Now, RAW defines a summon monster trap as a CR 1 higher than than the spell level, so a summon monster I trap is a CR 2 encounter, up to a CR 10 encounter for a summon monster IX trap.

Doing the training in groups will mitigate the danger so you likely won't lose all that many people. It will mean less XP per trap though (Since the XP is split). Anyone interested in adventuring would want to go through this sort of training. Especially if you vary the monster types in the training to expose them to a wide variety of foes. However, by RAW, you don't need to vary the monsters.

The problem isn't that the summoned monsters can't drop you, it's just that the way they set it up, the combatants are guaranteed to not lose anything no matter the outcome (even if they're killed). In the alternative, training is either too expensive, or causes too many casualties to result in any kind of advanced, powerful society.

skyth

2013-12-27, 01:16 PM

It doesn't mean it's not a challenge to overcome. As such it will be worth xp.

AlltheBooks

2013-12-27, 01:32 PM

I don't have time to get right into this discussion so I gotta half post and run sorry. To those saying what is the point of a Tippytown let alone 'verse, remember it's not just the pc races in this existence.

D&D has done so well at programming us into thinking all the genius, magically gifted beings out there just wait for a group to come around and kill/loot em. With only a few rearranged feats the otherworldy creatures of the realms can make items, craft contigents, y'know be tippy (using as a verb). Why wouldn't they?

As for the people of this setting and how they'd react, well that's a big topic and I don't have the time so good luck chaps! TV is interesting to think about.

kellbyb

2013-12-27, 01:43 PM

Any chance we could get a more thematically appropriate name? I want to use the Tippyverse in my campaign, but I fell like I'd need a name for it that sounds more realistic.

Yukitsu

2013-12-27, 02:20 PM

It doesn't mean it's not a challenge to overcome. As such it will be worth xp.

Well no. The game does state that you do get X experience for Y encounter, but the additional statements about trivial encounters without any risk being worth less is also a rule. The problem is some people completely discard any rule where they don't give you hard numbers, assuming that if the DM is meant to adjudicate, it's not the rules as written. That's where this sort of setting has fallen into theoretical optimization in that it works "in theory" but it can't be used in practice because the game includes checks against it.

More concretely, page 37 of the DMG states that you receive no experience for summoned monsters.

skyth

2013-12-27, 02:25 PM

Well no. The game does state that you do get X experience for Y encounter, but the additional statements about trivial encounters without any risk being worth less is also a rule. The problem is some people completely discard any rule where they don't give you hard numbers, assuming that if the DM is meant to adjudicate, it's not the rules as written. That's where this sort of setting has fallen into theoretical optimization in that it works "in theory" but it can't be used in practice because the game includes checks against it.

More concretely, page 37 of the DMG states that you receive no experience for summoned monsters.

It's not a trivial encounter. It does challenge them. It does injure the people and try to kill them (Unless they are lucky). And they aren't getting XP for the summoned monsters, but rather for surviving the trap itself.

kalos72

2013-12-27, 02:25 PM

Ignoring the fact no one has made any comment about my intent... :P

I think the problem with this argument is your trying to tie RAW style rules into a Universe that takes some things past a simple black or white RAW discussion.

I am sure most DM's who feel the Summoned Monster trap scenario doesnt deserve an XP award also feel alot of the things TV takes for granted are off as well.

Obviously if any DM would be ok with taking the TV approach in the first place, A LOT of latitude would be given for "creative" ways to help the process along such as these.

NOW...someone help me understand how to design one of these damn traps please? :)

skyth

2013-12-27, 02:32 PM

The easiest way is to cast (Or have someone cast) glyph of warding and put in a summon monster spell to go off when it's triggered.

Have the person (people) who you want to gain experience go and trigger the glyph.

Monsters appear and attack party (The monsters automatically gain initiative as they aren't there until they are summoned and act immediately when summoned), party defeats trap either by killing monsters or surviving until duration runs out.

Party gets XP for defeating an encounter of the spell level used +1 (Summon monster I is a CR 2, Summon monster II is a CR 3, etc)

Yukitsu

2013-12-27, 02:48 PM

It's not a trivial encounter. It does challenge them. It does injure the people and try to kill them (Unless they are lucky). And they aren't getting XP for the summoned monsters, but rather for surviving the trap itself.

The way it was set up was, the person couldn't actually be killed by the encounter. It doesn't matter if the encounter is trying to kill you if you can't at all be killed by it.

Ignoring the fact no one has made any comment about my intent... :P

Intent of the rules doesn't have to matter here so much, and arguing from the intent of the rules is typically not that useful, as everyone will have a different opinion on what that intent should have been. In this case though, my view of this is that there are RAW checks against a Tippyverse from forming that a DM is allowed to call upon, but I should caveat that by saying that a DM can also allow it without violating RAW, or without allowing RAW to be violated. That means you don't really need to argue intent, it's a situation where if it would bother you as a DM, you don't have to houserule away the Tippyverse.

Alent

2013-12-27, 03:02 PM

NOW...someone help me understand how to design one of these damn traps please? :)

I have to be overthinking this... are you asking about basic trap rules? automatic reset is +500gp to trap construction cost per the table here: http://www.d20srd.org/srd/traps.htm#designingATrap

Going by the Magic Device Trap cost table, if you wanted to feed commoners... Magic auto-reset trap that casts CL5 conjure food and water... every 6 seconds:

Alarm spell used as trigger with timed trigger: "one turn has passed".
Automatic Reset, spell: Create Food and Water, CL5: 7500g, 600 XP, no XP or material components
Automatic reset: +500g, "or 0g if trap has timed trigger".
Trap is not hidden, I think that's -10 search DC to find,: -1000g cost
Disable DC is entirely up to you, I'd assume lowest possible for CR reductions.
I didn't add up the trap CR adjustments, but with no damage, you're looking at a trap CR of the spell level adjusted down for ease of discovery, arriving at either a CR 1~2 trap, a DC 25 craft (trap) check.

And that should create a day's worth of food for 3 medium creatures or one large creature once every 6 seconds, at 6500g cost. Takes 13 days to craft. Get yourself some dedicated wrights and you can make 3 at a time per wright.

The same process applies to pretty much anything. I built a battlemech once with auto-reset traps, clockwork, alarm spells, dancing light spells, clairvoyance, arcane mark spells, and so on. (the resetting dancing light spell traps were binary logic triggers for resetting clairvoyance alarm traps that triggered clockwork mechanical parts.) With enough material and low level spells you can really build almost anything out of traps, no matter how

I apologize if I answered the wrong question/got something wrong.

skyth

2013-12-27, 03:03 PM

The way it was set up was, the person couldn't actually be killed by the encounter. It doesn't matter if the encounter is trying to kill you if you can't at all be killed by it.

A) I never said it wouldn't be possible to die, just unlikely.

B) That's the same of any other encounter. Encountering 3 goblins, the chance of anyone in a level 3 party dying is extremely low (Same as a summon monster trap) but the party still gets xp for it. The goblins might do damage though (Same as the trap).

An encounter doesn't have to be likely to be lethal to be challenging. Heck, there are several encounters that 100% won't kill the party that will give xp. (Yes, there ARE non-combat/non-damaging encounters)

An encounter that doesn't give XP is CR 8 less than the group. THAT is what a trivial encounter is.

Yukitsu

2013-12-27, 03:10 PM

A) I never said it wouldn't be possible to die, just unlikely.

Yes, but in the Tippyverse scenario, you literally can't die. There is a 0% with infinite 0 decimals following chance that you can be killed. You can beat the encounter by firing a magnum into your own head until the summon times out just as well as if you were actually fighting.

B) That's the same of any other encounter. Encountering 3 goblins, the chance of anyone in a level 3 party dying is extremely low (Same as a summon monster trap) but the party still gets xp for it. The goblins might do damage though (Same as the trap).

Yes, however you get very little, you are assumed to expend resources, and you have a chance of dying, unless you're doing so in the context of a Tippyverse world, in which case there is 0 risk involved anyway.

An encounter doesn't have to be likely to be lethal to be challenging. Heck, there are several encounters that 100% won't kill the party that will give xp. (Yes, there ARE non-combat/non-damaging encounters)

Yes, but those have to further a goal outlined by the DM. Fighting an encounter that cannot kill you, does not further your goals and which is set up to be entirely irrelevant doesn't fall under the cases which are up to DM judgment anyway.

An encounter that doesn't give XP is CR 8 less than the group. THAT is what a trivial encounter is.

Actually, going by that it is only 5 less, but my point was that the DMG grants caveats that circumstances can change the CR as represented in the book. A CR 1 orc in a pit that can't get out, and who only has a non-throwing weapon does not need to grant the EXP of a CR 1 encounter by the rules (but they can if you want them to).

Wait, you're right, it is 8.

skyth

2013-12-27, 03:33 PM

Yukitsu

2013-12-27, 03:54 PM

By your reasoning, no one would ever receive any XP at all in a Tippyverse as True Ressurection removes all risk.

Sorry, but the traps are potentially lethal. It's just that the chance is really low. Same as any other low CR encounter that is high enough to give you xp. And you have a goal...Don't screw up and look bad. Turn it into a spectator sport and have teams compete to be the first one to make it to a certain point.

If the Party was buffed by outside forces, that would increase their effective party level, and if it put the difference enough, it would turn it into a trivial encounter by virtue of CR/ECL difference.

This is not the same as a helpless captive.

Like I keep saying though, it is within the DM's capacity within the rules to alter the CR however much they want based on outside factors. A trap to your benefit is not a creature with an ECL fighting on your side, it's an environmental consideration that tilts the encounter to impossible to lose. That doesn't change your ECL, it states that the DM is then allowed to change the CR of the encounter as they see fit, though with the caveat that they should use discretion with this.

And no, there is no risk, and no potential for reward whatsoever within the Tippyverse. A DM can within the rules deny anyone any EXP gains within that Empire. That doesn't mean that people can't get EXP, or even that the DM should enact that, but saying that "it works because he will" is now hinging on an assumption, not the RAW.

angry_bear

2013-12-27, 04:28 PM

The biggest ways that I see it failing are that it seems to be a self defeating society when it is set up, and the road to it is more likely than not to result in an Orwellian dictatorship which he denies is the logical conclusion.

I don't disagree with people fundamentally knowing about the basic mechanics behind their world, especially when it's so broadly quantified, but I disagree with the implementation that would follow from that.

It isn't an Orwellian world though. It's more akin to Huxley's Brave New World where every person gets exactly what they want with no difficulty. There's no need for a secret police force because there's no need for crime or dissent to be committed by the populace.

The main thing that bugs me about the TV is that there is, logically no need for the cities to be in a cold war with one another. There is no need to fight over resources, since anything a city requires can just be fabricated, and there is no clash of ideology since, from what I can tell, every city shares the same belief system. You can't even maintain a blood feud since each city's army is comprised of metal men that are more or less easily replaced.

Maybe I'm missing a vital component, but from what I can tell Tippy has (With impressive skill mind you) essentially solved all of the game worlds problems. As such, the only problems that exist are manufactured ones for the sake of XP. The TippyVerse is an impressive, well designed setting, but it still feels like everyone has already won, so why play, ya know?

skyth

2013-12-27, 04:33 PM

Again, reverting to GM Fiat...That kind of undermines the whole argument.

And you ignore that the trap IS a challenge, IS potentially risky, and IS a non-negligible challenge to overcome. It is as impossible to lose as it is for a party of 3rd level characters to lose against 3 goblins, but still the party gets XP for that encounter. Not to mention, I've outlined a way for the party to lose...By having another team do it faster this time around so there is an incentive/goal and a failure possibility.

Heck, a 10' pit trap that does 1d6 damage is a trap that will NEVER kill someone, but you still get XP for overcoming it.

Sorry, but you set the bar incredibly high for a non-trivial challenge. By definition, the trap has a set CR. You can modify the trap for different conditions, but the summon monster trap exists in conditions that it would ALWAYS exist in. There is no difference between one in an abandoned ruin and one in an arena. Potentially receiving buffs from an outside force can modify your ECL, but no one is doing that. The challenge is EXACTLY the same as it would be under normal circumstances it would be encountered under. It has a defined CR. No circumstances exist that would modify that CR and no circumstances exist that would modify the ECL. Ergo, it would give XP.

Would I let this fly in my campaign? Heck no. Same as I wouldn't let the abuses that create the Tippyverse exist. But I do that with the realization that I am changing the rules and house ruling things as is my right as a DM.

Yukitsu

2013-12-27, 04:44 PM

Again, reverting to GM Fiat...That kind of undermines the whole argument.

Well that's the thing, it's not DM fiat. DM fiat defeating a situation is predicated on a DM's ability to completely subvert or ignore the rules. I'm saying that the RAW dictates the the DM can alter the CR of an encounter by taking environmental factors into account. That's RAW. It doesn't defeat a Tippyverse in the theoretical sense, as the Tippyverse is definitely possible RAW, but even in an RAW campaign world, it can be forbidden because by RAW, a significant portion of the tools used require, by RAW, DM approval.

It isn't an Orwellian world though. It's more akin to Huxley's Brave New World where every person gets exactly what they want with no difficulty. There's no need for a secret police force because there's no need for crime or dissent to be committed by the populace.

The main thing that bugs me about the TV is that there is, logically no need for the cities to be in a cold war with one another. There is no need to fight over resources, since anything a city requires can just be fabricated, and there is no clash of ideology since, from what I can tell, every city shares the same belief system. You can't even maintain a blood feud since each city's army is comprised of metal men that are more or less easily replaced.

Maybe I'm missing a vital component, but from what I can tell Tippy has (With impressive skill mind you) essentially solved all of the game worlds problems. As such, the only problems that exist are manufactured ones for the sake of XP. The TippyVerse is an impressive, well designed setting, but it still feels like everyone has already won, so why play, ya know?

Yes, I mention that if it resorts to that situation, rather than EXP farming for no reason, the citizens would be most likely to revert to a bunch of lazy blobs wherein the critical flaw of the setting is the utter irrelevance of everything.

Zarrgon

2013-12-27, 05:12 PM

skyth

2013-12-27, 05:34 PM

Well that's the thing, it's not DM fiat. DM fiat defeating a situation is predicated on a DM's ability to completely subvert or ignore the rules. I'm saying that the RAW dictates the the DM can alter the CR of an encounter by taking environmental factors into account. That's RAW.

DM doing things that aren't mechanically represented or changing things that are mechanically represented IS fiat. By RAW, the DM is allowed to use fiat. Having your argument that it is RAW, not fiat when by RAW fiat is allowed and encouraged...Not a very good argument. Especially when the premise of the Tippyverse is that the DM doesn't use fiat to screw with how the rules work mechanically.

Changing what is considered a trivial encounter because you don't like it IS using fiat.

And guess what, in the summon monster trap, there are NO environmental factors that differ from normal, so by your argument it should work as described.

Yukitsu

2013-12-27, 05:48 PM

And guess what, in the summon monster trap, there are NO environmental factors that differ from normal, so by your argument it should work as described.

There's the unlimited heal and true res traps that constantly cast both at you.

For obvious reasons I don't believe that a specific rule that states a DM is meant explicitly to adjust encounters based on outside factors that make it more or less difficult is fiat, or if it is that it's irrelevant in this particular instance. I mean, it's like how in the courts when the law states the judgment is up to the discretion of the judge, that does not make the decision an arbitrary one outside of the word of the law, that judgment is firmly within the law.

skyth

2013-12-27, 06:08 PM

There's the unlimited heal and true res traps that constantly cast both at you.

Nope, there isn't. I specifically said that no one is buffing the party.

And any adjusting of difficulty is using fiat. That the use of fiat is allowed by the rules doesn't make it not fiat.

Not to mention the fact that you ignore the fact that something CAN be challenging even if it won't cause death or even injure the party. Being constantly healed and ressed wouldn't prevent a party from gaining XP.

Yukitsu

2013-12-27, 06:14 PM

Calimehter

2013-12-27, 06:25 PM

I see it hard for a Tippyverse to ever be created. The thing comes from the idea that your taking a tone of magic and magic rules, and just spontaneously dumping them in a setting a lot like Old Earth. So everyone just wakes up one day and a ton of magic exists.

But if you have a more detailed setting, that would not happen. Magic would have been discovered on a set date, and slowly been developed from there. And that first wizard or two did not have a spellbook like the ''Players Handbook'' full of spells. They just had a couple of 1st level spells. Each spell, magic item, and other magical things would have been created slowly over time. Each year bringing new and more things. But all of magic was not created in a vacuum in a day.

And not every spellcaster would know everything. At one time, each spell was only known to one person. It would have taken time for the spell to spread around the world.

So your pre Tippy society would have to build up a lot of mundane power, before they could get to the magic stuff. And they would need to do the magic from the ground up. Slowly.

It was my understanding that this was already incorporated into the Tippyverse. That is to say, once upon a time there were a lot of mundane power sources/centers that existed in a fashion that more or less resembled a traditional pseudo-medieval fantasy setting. They existed precisely because either the power of magic or the understanding of magic (or at least the understanding of how to dramatically alter a setting with magic) didn't all happen at once. It evolved over time. The big 'tipping point' (pun intended) was just the development and discovery of Teleportation circles (or at least the discovery of how to get a network going through them) that resulted in the rearrangement and restructuring of all the economies and warfare that were the characteristics of the pre-Circle society.

It was also my interpretation of things that the existence of large quantities of mundane peoples and resources, and the gradual incremental development of magical mastery rather than it happening all at once, was the reason that you had these powerful cities at all.

As many people have already noted, a powerful wizard who has just adventured for all of the power and knowledge, and already knew what 'career path' choices he would need to take in order to 'graduate' to the ageless/invulnerable/etc. near-godhood associated with played-to-the-hilt Tier 1's really doesn't have any need for using any of that power to help generate and sustain cities. The cities were an organic development that resulted from the rearrangement of existing pre-Circle peoples and resources.

skyth

2013-12-27, 11:14 PM

You can say that, but that's not how the Tippyverse functions. If you are simply getting a summoning trap in isolation that you can get by through normal means, and have the normal risks that that could entail, where you're getting closer to an objective, are spending resources, are at risk of being weakened or killed, then you're not looking at a Tippyverse scenario, and I'm curious as to why you're bringing it up.

Because in the Tippyverse, they do whatever works. I would say a constant heal and res wouldn't be a challenge...However, knowing that they would design the training academy summoning traps to present an appropriate challenge to level people up quickly. Granted, if it was done as a competitive event for best time between teams, then even if it had a constant res and heal, it would still be a challenge and grant xp.

Saying the DM can modify things isn't a new rule, but an acknowledgement of DM fiat power. It's also a rule that the DM can't cheat and anything they do is within the rules. Does that mean that there is no such thing as DM fiat? No. Does a DM fiating things always make no sense? No. Doesn't mean it's not using fiat.

Yukitsu

2013-12-27, 11:20 PM

Because in the Tippyverse, they do whatever works. I would say a constant heal and res wouldn't be a challenge...However, knowing that they would design the training academy summoning traps to present an appropriate challenge to level people up quickly. Granted, if it was done as a competitive event for best time between teams, then even if it had a constant res and heal, it would still be a challenge and grant xp.

Saying the DM can modify things isn't a new rule, but an acknowledgement of DM fiat power. It's also a rule that the DM can't cheat and anything they do is within the rules. Does that mean that there is no such thing as DM fiat? No. Does a DM fiating things always make no sense? No. Doesn't mean it's not using fiat.

This again, isn't the DM modifying anything. I don't know where you're getting that misunderstanding from.

Of course, if there is actually some society where they aren't getting infinite res and heals, a lot of them either just die, or lose all of their money. It'd be largely the same as D&D society as is normally assumed anyway, as those institutions are already in place, it hasn't compelled commoners to become adventurers.

I don't get at all why you would even want to interpret the rules as you do. Those places where the DMG specifically recommends that the DM step in and change it are tacit acknowledgements that that part of the system as written is broken, and can't be fixed at a mechanical level without judgment that takes the context into account. The system doesn't work anywhere where the game requires DM arbitration, just look at the mess you make of everything when the RAW check against magic item creation isn't enforced.

skyth

2013-12-28, 08:22 AM

kalos72

2013-12-28, 09:06 AM

So trying to steer this thread away from a "TV good or bad" discussion...thank you for the trap explanation Norren.

My last questions:
We play a 3.5+ version of Forgotten Realms and are trying to rebuild Neverwinter.

They need to rebuild a city, its army, its navy, its population, its economy; everything.

Resources like stone for the new walls, the new harbor, the new castle they are building or even just repairs is going to be hard to come by in the speed which 10 Lyres playing can produce. In come Wall of Stone traps...

Next there is ways to attract the new population. Free food/water? Free houses? Free training into a profession or class? Free transport to the city with a signing bonus of a 3000GP diamond produced from diamond traps?

How do you recruit or train 5000 rangers and other required troops for a standing army? Then equip them with top end gear?

Out of necessity our group wants to limit the TV side of things to just the city government (themselves) to help rebuild as fast as possible.

We haven't figured out if we want to do the free food thing or perhaps just free supplies. I am confused about how you use create food/water traps to feed a population? Give each house one? Have giant feast halls people must go to and eat there?

We had thought about just using fabricate traps to create the supplies (flour, sugar, base metals, etc) and still let people own and operate businesses.

Yukitsu

2013-12-28, 01:08 PM

I didn't say that healing or resses weren't available. Just that they weren't automatically done during the encounter. What happens outside the encounter doesn't modify the encounter. However, there wouldn't be 'a lot' of them dying or losing all their money. Like most challenges, the fatality rate would be extremely low.

Sounds like you're arguing against something because you don't like it not because you have an actual argument. And yes, it IS the DM modifying things because of how he feels things should work. It is the very definition of modifying it. The DM is well within his rights to modify anything that he doesn't like/want. That is besides the point.

And this, like most optimization type things, is a thought exercise not something I'd try (or allow) in a real game.

Primarily I'm pointing out that there are specific contingencies in the rules that make a Tippyverse very dependant on DM judgment. Some of the mechanisms can't be used at all without specific DM approval, they're illegal without that approval. A lot of player take for granted either that if the rules are being followed they can accomplish this sort of thing, or that as a DM, they need to use houserules. That isn't true.

Alent

2013-12-28, 07:00 PM

So trying to steer this thread away from a "TV good or bad" discussion...thank you for the trap explanation Norren.

I'm glad it helped. Traps are really fun- they're one of the strangely unique ways that Kobold master trapsmiths can fit into a normal economy.

I'll see what I can do about the other questions, since a few of them are quite relevant to the campaign I'm working on for my group.

My last questions:
We play a 3.5+ version of Forgotten Realms and are trying to rebuild Neverwinter.

They need to rebuild a city, its army, its navy, its population, its economy; everything.

Resources like stone for the new walls, the new harbor, the new castle they are building or even just repairs is going to be hard to come by in the speed which 10 Lyres playing can produce. In come Wall of Stone traps...

You're overthinking this. You can get 100 ft + 10 ft per level of wall of stone per wall, out of a 5th level cleric/wizard spell. Wall of stone lets you shape the stone. The Lyre of Building is redundant, you actually just want people to cast wall of stone to build houses and docks and such with.

Also, trap mechanics are sort of vague on this, but the implication is that the trap has a predefined shape for the spell when it goes off that can't be altered once set. The ONLY place I can see a wall of stone trap being a good idea is for instantly constructing then auto-repairing an outer fortress wall of the city.

Additional thought. If backporting content from Pathfinder is on the table, you could automate this. Pathfinder has a Kobold Trapsmith rogue variant that can, as a full round action, assemble a trap from prebuilt components, and disassemble traps using craft(Traps and snares). You could realistically assemble a trap, deliberately trigger it, building an entire house, then disassemble it, move over to the next plot, and repeat. This would give you a Trap-economy based housing construction, rather than make you dependent on a level 9+ wizard or cleric's daily allotment of level 5 spells.

Additionally, ships are stupid easy. Grow a bamboo forest with an auto-reset plant growth trap that you have to manually trigger. Cut down the bamboo, take it down to a drydock, drop it in auto resetting Wood shape traps that autoshape it into ship parts that can then be melded together with additional woodshape trap focused on seams. Finalize it with a trap of Ironwood. You now have a machine that can automatically craft bamboo wood ships on a Liberty Ship (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liberty_ship) style assembly line and scale.

If for whatever reason you want to automate it further and reduce the amount of crew needed to pilot it... you can always awaken the boat as a treant- it's a single tree now.

Next there is ways to attract the new population. Free food/water? Free houses? Free training into a profession or class? Free transport to the city with a signing bonus of a 3000GP diamond produced from diamond traps?

Ignore the economy. The population will solve that question on their own. You're offering stability, protection, and adventurer class levels to anyone willing to swear fealty to you. You will require massive amounts of grunt labor to cut and transport Bamboo, mid level management to manage the infrastructure supply, groundskeepers to ensure that the ONLY thing in the plant growth traps are bamboo trees, etc.

How do you recruit or train 5000 rangers and other required troops for a standing army? Then equip them with top end gear?

This is a place where less is more: A training hall and Bear traps. Ignoring the argument about what constitutes an appropriate level challenge, etc... 12 bear traps is a CR1 encounter. You give them a trap that grants them temporary HP, a ten foot pole to trigger bear traps with, and have them disable bear traps until they acquire Ranger class levels. On an additional perk, they become so familiar with bear traps you can use them defensively.

When they're not setting traps, you just have instructors drilling them in the art of combat. This is a mandatory conscription program that begins when they're 12. They can go into whatever trade they'd like when the training is done, but they have to be trained to defend the city at a moment's notice.

As far as equipping them... you have a nigh infinite amount of bamboo, traps of woodshape and the ironwood spell. I'm pretty sure you can figure something out. This might actually be a great place for that lyre of building, since lamellar armor takes forever to assemble.

Out of necessity our group wants to limit the TV side of things to just the city government (themselves) to help rebuild as fast as possible.

We haven't figured out if we want to do the free food thing or perhaps just free supplies. I am confused about how you use create food/water traps to feed a population? Give each house one? Have giant feast halls people must go to and eat there?

We had thought about just using fabricate traps to create the supplies (flour, sugar, base metals, etc) and still let people own and operate businesses.

The easiest way to limit the TV of things to just the city government is to not use it at all. I don't see the Traps as a TV thing, but rather an industrialization thing. The game has no costs set or determined for industrialized hardware, but trap costs are actually comparable to real world industrial machine cost vs commoner income.

Industrialization as a mechanic is something that you can easily limit because by its own nature you can only get so many people with access to the industrialization process and technique. Building the devices requires specialization skills and exacting precisions, and it's not uncommon for there to only be so many people with those skills. It automatically limits the mechanics to your group.

Plant growth traps on crops is more or less an auto-win for plant derived foods. Still requires massive amounts of labor, doesn't invalidate the laborers, etc. Traps of create Water in a watertower would be plenty for providing water to every house, plumbing was a thing as far back as ancient Babylon.

As far as meats go... Nethack had a great solution for that. cast stone to flesh on a rock, get a meatball.

Again, the way you're drawing people here isn't with the promise of doing everything for them- it's with the promise of stability and protection against the evils of the region. (and adventurer class levels. Screw commoner, lil' joey wants to be a level 2 wizard when he grows up.)

kalos72

2013-12-29, 09:45 AM

I will have to check our that trapmaster from Pathfinder...thanks.

For the Wall of Stone line of thinking:
The traps would provide the materials but the Lyre would then take the material and transform it into the final product. This way you dont need someone that can cast lv 5 spells and just a construct/unseen servant playing the lyre to pre-drawn plans.

The Ships:
Great ideas there! Thanks!

For training:
The whole trap approach makes alot of sense to me, we had thought about gearing the trainees with Rods of XXXX (forgot the name) that will negate a creatures intelligence down past 0 and kill him. And then use that Last Breath spell from the Compendium for those that dont make it.

I guess just have rooms with higher level CL traps as they progress.

We had also thought about Simulacrums for the army or police force at least. We REALLY like the idea of using them alot...or even playing the Ice Assassin route for even better sims.

As for the Plant Growth, there is a horn from a D20 source book I think, which again I cant remember yet, that is like a super charged plant growth I think. Also want to do the same things with expanding the Neverwinter Forest to "enclose" the region. Also thought of demiplanes with groves of the super trees doing the same thing - Laenar Wood in Dragon Annual 5, Bronzewood in Eberron Campaign Setting, Darkwood in DMG, Serrenwood in Book of Exalted Deeds, Duskwood in Magic of Faerun, Wildwood in Races of the Wild, Livewood in Eberron Campaign Setting, Soarwood in Eberron Campaign Setting, Densewood in Eberron Campaign Setting, Coldwood in Dragon Magazine 357, Fey Cherry Wood in Dragon Magazine 357.

For the food/water, we would prefer to just supply the material and let the people create a product to sell but we are still unsure of the 1hr timer on "created" products will be an issue or if they need to be fabricate traps to get a product without the 1hr limit. If not, do you have a trap in each house or force people to get to know their neighbors and make it giant feast halls where everyone gets together? We like that idea honestly...

We also had a thought of a elven and dwarven area to the city. Maybe an Elven Heart from the Quintessential Elf book - not sure what to do for the dorfs. Suggestions there?

We are already going to build 3 more Temples of Moradin / Correlian / Mystra using the Wall of Stone / Lyre thinking as able and Greater Stone Shape spell.

Thanks for the help Norren!! :)

Darrin

2013-12-29, 10:25 AM

I should probably start a separate thread for this, but can you get Tippyverse to work in E6? (This older thread (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=130288) discusses it a little, but didn't really get that far with it.)

The create food traps work just fine. The teleportation circle spell isn't really available, but can we build something equivalent to that with teleport traps? The teleport spell itself isn't available, but there are a few creatures with teleport as an at-will SLA, such as a lantern archon. A 6th level spellcaster with Craft Wondrous Item and the cooperation of a lantern archon could create a teleport trap.

Hmm. If that's the only way to make teleport traps, then the creatures with teleport SLAs would probably dominate the population centers. Which means an E6 Tippyverse would mean a bunch of city-states run by Archons and Demons. That... could be very interesting.

kalos72

2013-12-29, 10:32 AM

I dont know much about E6 (?)...but teleport could be used in a much more limited manner I would think.

Just imagine people holding bags of holding moving cargo or people going one at a time through a teleport trap.

I see it working just a much more limited scale...hence effect of the overall game play.

Alent

2013-12-29, 10:49 AM

For the Wall of Stone line of thinking:
The traps would provide the materials but the Lyre would then take the material and transform it into the final product. This way you dont need someone that can cast lv 5 spells and just a construct/unseen servant playing the lyre to pre-drawn plans.

I haven't looked at the Lyre in a while, but depending on how your DM sees it working you could run into a problem with the way Wall of stone works. Wall of Stone is part of the ground, it's a definite terrain feature once cast. I would personally want the materials to be broken away from the ground to make them available for use, if I were DMing. If your DM doesn't think that's an issue, milk that for all it's worth!

We had also thought about Simulacrums for the army or police force at least. We REALLY like the idea of using them alot...or even playing the Ice Assassin route for even better sims.

Shadesteel golems. There's another thread titled "Why are shadesteel golems so good?" or something to that effect. What better way to police people with adventurer class levels than a construct immune to magic? Build your army around them while you're at it.

... Also want to do the same things with expanding the Neverwinter Forest to "enclose" the region.

This is an extremely bad idea. There's very little as dangerous defensively speaking as a forest around a city. You can't hide an army on a plain, but you can hide one pretty easily in a forest. Hostile Creepycrawlies like forests, too.

For the food/water, we would prefer to just supply the material and let the people create a product to sell but we are still unsure of the 1hr timer on "created" products will be an issue or if they need to be fabricate traps to get a product without the 1hr limit. If not, do you have a trap in each house or force people to get to know their neighbors and make it giant feast halls where everyone gets together? We like that idea honestly...

Reread the conjure food and water description, the food lasts 24 hours and is incredibly bland. I don't think you're going to feed a society with that, even with prestidigitation traps flavoring conjured food for you. Plant growth works for farming, so... why not create an actual product that has taste and can't be dispelled?

Added perk, if you're using the conjured water aqueduct system to water them, you can dispel fruits and veggies to flash dehydrate them for transport.

We also had a thought of a elven and dwarven area to the city. Maybe an Elven Heart from the Quintessential Elf book - not sure what to do for the dorfs. Suggestions there?

Segregated districts just sounds like a bad idea to me. Your people live as one big happy melting pot unless you enjoy exaggerated elf/dorf racism plots. I personally don't, they glorify a kind of behavior I don't enjoy in my gaming.

As far as making your city elf/dwarf friendly, I personally like integrating massive trees and parks into cities. That'll get you elven friendly. If your dwarves are stereotypical dwarves... Breweries and tunnels. And Magma piston powered contraptions.

Thanks for the help Norren!! :)

Glad to help.

kalos72

2013-12-29, 02:22 PM

I asked in that thread too, thanks. What are the top stats of the best of the Shadesteel Golem? Time to make and cost?

I was thinking of something like a pair of dire wolf constructs one with anti magic and the other with prot from evil or something paired with a ranger or something. Hadn't worked out the details.

When I say enclose, I dont mean come to the city walls...just enclose the area south and north of the city to the coast to help provide a "border" of sorts. Remember, we are closely allied with the Eldarin that are retaking the Neverwinter Woods so we would surely have advance notice of any intrusions.

Dispel fruit? Hadn't heard of that one yet...

I tend to agree on the segregated areas...just trying to think of things/ways to entice elves/dorfs to populate there. Perhaps just home styles for different tenants? Remember I will more then likely have to rebuild more then 75% pf the housing in the city anyways...why not do it to spec? :)

Thanks!

CIDE

2013-12-29, 09:22 PM

Since the other threads are too old I just wanted to add an additional method to the Tippyverse CAP (citizens advancement program).

1. Coat the entire room/castle/dungeon/whatever's drawers (185 of them) in contact poison as a CR 9 trap.
2. Task the level 1 character to search every drawer for the macGuffin that will not be found.
3. It's as simple as the level 1 character wearing gloves.

This operates under the assumption that it takes three 5 second rounds to open, search, and close each drawer and an additional 5 seconds to go to the next one making it just over 30 minutes to search 185 drawers. 185 drawers at a CR 9 is enough experience (according to the calculator on the SRD) to get a character from 0 XP at level 1 to level 20. This also operates under the assumption that the character won't receive the experience or officially level up until after the 'dungeon" and/or until the end of the day like most games I participate in.

If the character doesn't know about the poison there's still inherent risk involved. Especially if the gloves aren't a guarantee (though, it's easy to make it part of their uniform). Even with gloves on that's a considerable amount of poison and facial contact with the hands is a possibility, etc. So this isn't the same as a "no risk" scenario and should net the appropriate experience points for the encounter(s).

Libertad

2013-12-29, 10:03 PM

The above linked thread is probably your best bet for a general overview. I will eventually get around to making public the full campaign setting at some point but that is tied up with a few legal issues. It was supposed to be ready for Xmas this year but things interfered. Hopefully it will be taken care of by next year.

By "make public," do you mean release it in a GiantITP thread, or publish it as a book and sell it? Either way it sounds pretty cool!

TuggyNE

2013-12-29, 10:31 PM

Another CAP idea is to equip every member of a group of subjects with an at-will item of revivify or similar, then have them all go through some gauntlet with a small but non-zero chance of death per character. While it is possible for all of them to be killed without a chance of revivifying each other, or to flub usage, or whatever, the chance is very low overall*. As such, it's a reasonable encounter, and one that should award XP, same as if an ordinary PC had Crafted Contingent revivify or the like.

*And, of course, if they do all fail you resurrect them, taking the cost out of their life insurance. Actuarial tables for the win! ("By completing this course on the proper use of City of Xanthus Life Restoration Equipment, you will be eligible for a 15.9% discount on your Citizen Education Life Insurance through our firm.")

Emperor Tippy

2013-12-29, 10:38 PM

By "make public," do you mean release it in a GiantITP thread, or publish it as a book and sell it? Either way it sounds pretty cool!

Sell.

The only reasons that I give stuff away publicly for free are 1) as a marketing tool of one kind or another or 2) I have no method to potentially make money off of it and can benefit in some way from making it public.

kalos72

2013-12-30, 08:34 AM

For the CAP line, we were thinking of sending groups of trainees out with one/two higher level guides and a pack of the dire wolf constructs into the Sword Mountains to start clearing them out.

The trainees would have 'Ray of Stupidity' wands or something to really even the playing field.

Two birds one patrol... :P

Threadnaught

2013-12-30, 12:17 PM

Some of the mechanisms can't be used at all without specific DM approval, they're illegal without that approval..

Thank you for describing the game perfectly.

What are your thoughts on the Tippyverse?

Yukitsu

2013-12-30, 12:39 PM

Thank you for describing the game perfectly.

What are your thoughts on the Tippyverse?

I love it, the social implications of rule systems are one of my favourite parts of theory. I used some ideas from it to inform a society that I ended up leading in a very houseruled campaign a DM of mine ran, but avoided creating the possibility of a post scarcity society, and was willing to be a little more Orwellian to make sure it couldn't turn post scarcity.

Emperor Tippy

2013-12-30, 12:44 PM

Thank you for describing the game perfectly.
He is also totally incorrect. Nothing at all in the core "Tippyverse" requires any DM participation, adjudication, or input.

Permanent Teleportation Circles are explicitly listed as something that players and individuals can create in the PHB. These alone are everything required for the Tippyverse to exist, and absent a controlling power actively working against a Tippyverse coming into being they also mean that a Tippyverse *will* eventually exist.

Auto reset traps are not a required part of the Tippyverse and never have been. They also require no DM adjudication or input as unlike pretty much all other magic items in the game they list explicit costs to create and not just creation guidelines. The DM can prevent them using the same rules basis as he can prevent someone with say, Craft Wondrous Items, from crafting a Handy Haversack but a claim that that is something requiring DM input is mostly a farce.

Pretty much everything after that that is generally held to be part of the Tippyverse doesn't actually require any DM intervention, it just requires that the DM allow the PC's/NPC's to not change the written rules and use the capabilities that they are given in those written rules.

And even then, the vast majority of it was not developed with the idea that "this is a likely result of the RAW actually being the rules that the world operates under" but with the idea that "this is a possible result of the RAW actually being the rules that the world operates under and is the best means of creating a world where PC's can adventure and play in.".

The Tippyverse might be (and is actually) a basis for a campaign setting where the rules as they are written are not just tacked onto the setting but are a fully realized part of the setting that said setting is built around but equally important to RAW fidelity was making a setting where PC's could adventure from level 1 to level 20 at any optimization level or one any given quest/adventure without having to deal with most of the traditional setting flaws (i.e. PC's being able to totally shatter the setting with a bit of brains from a very low level).

---
As I have said numerous times, the entire idea grew out of the question "What would the world look like if permanent facilities that provide instantaneous movement between two fixed points existed?". Otherwise known as what is a world where permanently teleportation circles are actually used going to be like.

After developing a fairly reasonable, solid, and logical answer to that question the next one was "now how do I make a fun and playable setting where the previous question is answered.". Everything after this point is not necessarily the highest order probability, in point of fact a lot of the specifics are lower order probabilities (some being very low order probabilities) that met the two critical criteria: 1) RAW legal and not RAW contradicted and 2) helped to make the setting playable to as broad an audience as possible.

Yukitsu

2013-12-30, 12:48 PM

kalos72

2013-12-30, 01:08 PM

In my limited exposure to the TV...

Its not so much "requires DM input" but more so the lack thereof. Most DM's I know would not accept some of the implications made in TV outright. Purely out of fear for "destroying" the existing campaign. RAW or not.

Most DM's have this "intent" approach to things...TV requires that not come into play they go pure RAW.

For me, I like alot of the TV. But on a more limited scale that makes my city more powerful!!! :)

Irk

2013-12-30, 01:10 PM

Sell.

I would definitely buy that, no question.

Emperor Tippy

2013-12-30, 01:10 PM

To be fair, my observation of it is that the teleportation circles are largely irrelevant compared to the infinite resetting traps. The ability for highly mobile trade and warfare has sort of always been an issue with wizards, they don't in particular need an army to do so, and they don't really need an economy based on trade. At the very least, post scarcity seemed more socially revolutionary.

Traps are nice but they don't do all that much at normal population densities and are unlikely to be invested in (at least until and unless you allow them to be Wished into being, which is technically RAW legal). Create Food and Water traps along with traps of other low level, cheap, spells are one thing but they generally are only enough for force the world up to (maybe) something like the modern first world and even then they do nothing for several relevant issues.

Permanent Teleportation Circles totally rewrite society on pretty much every level. Especially when added into a middle age or lower society. Virtually every city and town developed because of one of three reasons: 1) the location was of military interest and the town got built up around the military presence until it was self sustaining, 2) the location had a good collection of natural resources and the town developed to exploit them, or 3) the town was on a trade route between multiple other important locations and grew up to service that trade.

Teleportation Circles totally eliminate trade routes. Small settlements aren't economically important enough for the high initial investment of a TC and thus won't end up visited by virtually any traders. All trade is point to point between major or important locations.

Teleportation Circles pretty much totally eliminate the idea of militarily relevant locations. The only territory that matters militarily is territory that 1) has some bit of rare/unique relevant "technology" or 2) is an important location for other reasons (such as a major city). Bridges, fords, passes, watch posts; they are all totally irrelevant in the face of TC's.

Teleportation Circles make commuting to any bit of natural resources no more effort than walking down the street to the relevant TC. Developing a town at the location becomes unlikely as the population effectively commutes from a major city to the location every day.

A side effect of the above is that everything on the TC network is incredibly close together and ideas will spread through the network incredibly rapidly. It's mostly one market and effectively one "city". This makes specialization much better and causes ideas to be developed and matured much more rapidly. Economics of scale also come into play. A Fabricate Trap, for example, that makes clothes is mostly worthless even for a planar metropolis with a population of a hundred thousand. Why? Because it produces 14,400 sets of clothes every day (or one set for every individual every 8 days or so). You end up running the trap one week a month (maybe), which makes it a far less useful investment. When you have a ready market of a hundred million individuals though, well all of the sudden the numbers are entirely different. This applies to pretty much everything to one degree or another.

---
The high level casters are mostly irrelevant. They are generally too rare to drastically reorder society in a permanent manner unless they explicitly set out to do so. Even Adventurers/those with PC classes as a whole are really too rare to reorder society as a whole. Think of them as the aristocrats or nobles, they might have ready access to objects from the other side of the world but the vast majority of the population doesn't.

Permanent Teleportation Circles change all of that. One high level caster makes a minor investment for whatever reason and suddenly everything changes, and does so in a manner that can't really be ignored.

A level 11 Warlock can make a permanent teleportation circle. Once the idea is known, it will be exploited.

Yukitsu

2013-12-30, 02:27 PM

Tyndmyr

2013-12-30, 03:04 PM

Sell.

The only reasons that I give stuff away publicly for free are 1) as a marketing tool of one kind or another or 2) I have no method to potentially make money off of it and can benefit in some way from making it public.

Should you do so, let me know. This is relevant to my interests, =)

There are a *lot* of sourcebooks out there for settings, but a lot of them are tiresome rehashes of the same old stuff with very little truly unique stuff.

Plus, there's a ridiculously low level of difficulty in many published settings and adventure paths. A decent subset of my customer base is at the stage where they enjoyed tomb of horrors, but wished it was harder, and anyway, they've memorized the place now, so it's no fun any more. Another round of "a few goblins try to stab you" isn't much of a challenge there.

Oscredwin

2013-12-30, 03:12 PM

The reason infinite resources is more socially revolutionary than teleportation circles is that a trade network is only worth investing in at all when the production is high enough to easily fuel trade. Having a very strong trade network will be far more efficient, but it's the production and consumption limits that have typically limited trade, not the efficiency that trade flows. In your example, you could compare the teleportation network to the fabricate's shirt's devices, but the comparison is more complex.

Trade still existed for things like cloth and clothes in the middle ages up to now and it did still reach markets of hundreds of thousands to millions of people. Without a means to produce that many shirts, having that much of an available market is irrelevant. Having the means to produce that many shirts however, is not irrelevant, as slower trade can still reach those millions, albeit at a higher cost, and with more lost product. Bit chicken and egg, as either scenario will see the comparative societies pressured into advancing trade or production as appropriate, but the one with unlimited food has more means to increase trade, while one with trade may not depending on how effectively they can trade to acquire food. If they rely on their own farms to produce their food, they won't have enough of an urban population to produce goods for trade, and they'd end up being limited to skimming profit off of trade between resources from other nations.

This is a question of whether economic growth is driven by supply or demand. I'm fairly sure the answer is "it depends."

Stimulating Demand will allow production to grow to capacity. Teleportation Circles allow the potential market for a good to increase by several orders of magnitude (from everyone in a major city, to everyone on the plane of existence). This makes it more reasonable to invest in additional capital to produce more goods.

Stimulating Supply won't result in the same market because eventually the cost of sending out caravans etc to sell your fabricated clothes is greater than the number of gold pieces that make it back to your hands.

To maximize growth you need to unblock supply and demand (eg there is more economic activity in the Tippyverse because both are arbitrarily high) but there are limits to how much unstopped supply can push up demand. There are much fewer limits on how much unstopped demand can boost supply.

Yukitsu

2013-12-30, 03:19 PM

This is a question of whether economic growth is driven by supply or demand. I'm fairly sure the answer is "it depends."

Stimulating Demand will allow production to grow to capacity. Teleportation Circles allow the potential market for a good to increase by several orders of magnitude (from everyone in a major city, to everyone on the plane of existence). This makes it more reasonable to invest in additional capital to produce more goods.

Stimulating Supply won't result in the same market because eventually the cost of sending out caravans etc to sell your fabricated clothes is greater than the number of gold pieces that make it back to your hands.

To maximize growth you need to unblock supply and demand (eg there is more economic activity in the Tippyverse because both are arbitrarily high) but there are limits to how much unstopped supply can push up demand. There are much fewer limits on how much unstopped demand can boost supply.

Demand limits the amount that supply can gain profit, but until supply catches up to demand, which took until like, the 1900s, supply was what limited trade. There are many times in history that demand far outweighed supply, but that wasn't capable of increasing production. By converse, heavy production that let a nation flood the market granted enough capital that those nations then invested far more in trade.

The market saturation you're talking about can happen in an extremely limited context, but it's very unfeasible to talk about it with cottage industry levels of production. It wasn't really considered a part of economics until fairly recently in history. The answer "it depends" is a very modern one, but the industrial revolution, even prior to the invention of the train was far more economically stimulating than the superior flow of trade, and during that time, industrialists worked under the assumption that the market could never be saturated.

NoldorForce

2013-12-30, 04:05 PM

Distance-to-market (or whatever anthropologists actually call this) historically has been a big deal. Overland shipping was historically slow and energy-intensive, which is how the Silk Road got to be so lucrative for anyone located on it. (Lots of people took their cut, and consequently the goods got to be expensive at the endpoints.) Know why the Keystone XL pipeline is in contention in the first place? (No politics, please.) Because it's the cheapest way to get that source of Canadian oil to refineries, and from there to markets. It can be shipped overland, but oil pipelines are still notably cheaper for such transport than rail.

Similarly, many major cities which have been around for a century or longer are situated on water. This is almost certainly not a coincidence - shipping by water is and has been far more efficient than by land. Even today merchant shipping still accounts for 90% of all international shipping, thanks in part to enormous container ships and the modern shipping container. (Before the latter was invented, loading/unloading break bulk cargo - loose stuff, basically - took enormous amounts of time and labor.) Clipper ships were a big deal in the 1800s because they were a lot faster than other merchant shipping options at the time, advertising record times like "105 Days to San Francisco!" from New York.

Sure, demand for specialized goods has only really taken off in the modern age, but in more ancient times shipping was still big business. Entire wars have been fought over the right to control various resources (like Aurelian's conquest of the Palmyrene Empire to gain back its grain, or the various Anglo-Dutch wars over the 17th/18th centuries), and several others would have been radically different if one side or another did/did not have access to key shipping channels. Athens only survived as long as it did in the Peloponnesian War because it had the Long Walls which connected it to the port of Piraeus, allowing it to import supplies from the sea without worrying about Sparta's army. (One of the terms of its eventual surrender was to tear down the Long Walls.) Inversely, Napoleon's invasion of Russia failed in large part because he didn't have all of the supplies he was used to, as the Russian army had practiced scorched-earth tactics in their retreat.

Oscredwin

2013-12-30, 04:58 PM

Demand limits the amount that supply can gain profit, but until supply catches up to demand, which took until like, the 1900s, supply was what limited trade. There are many times in history that demand far outweighed supply, but that wasn't capable of increasing production. By converse, heavy production that let a nation flood the market granted enough capital that those nations then invested far more in trade.

The market saturation you're talking about can happen in an extremely limited context, but it's very unfeasible to talk about it with cottage industry levels of production. It wasn't really considered a part of economics until fairly recently in history. The answer "it depends" is a very modern one, but the industrial revolution, even prior to the invention of the train was far more economically stimulating than the superior flow of trade, and during that time, industrialists worked under the assumption that the market could never be saturated.

The industrial revolution was a time when production caught up to demand. By the 19th century we had real shipping and trains. Frankly, in the real world, setting up industrial capital (machines that build things) is a lot harder than setting up shipping. In the TippyVerse they're about equivalent technology level (although increasing production, aka traps, is more expensive), but the feedback is more immediate. You make your money back right away. This would make it more likely for crafting traps happen very quickly after the Teleport Circles are set up.

I'm still not seeing how a fabricate trap build to make clothes makes sense in a world with horse pulled caravans being the trade routes. They just can't handle the marginal cost.

Yukitsu

2013-12-30, 05:21 PM

The industrial revolution was a time when production caught up to demand. By the 19th century we had real shipping and trains. Frankly, in the real world, setting up industrial capital (machines that build things) is a lot harder than setting up shipping. In the TippyVerse they're about equivalent technology level (although increasing production, aka traps, is more expensive), but the feedback is more immediate. You make your money back right away. This would make it more likely for crafting traps happen very quickly after the Teleport Circles are set up.

I'm still not seeing how a fabricate trap build to make clothes makes sense in a world with horse pulled caravans being the trade routes. They just can't handle the marginal cost.

Actually, the markets still hadn't been saturated during the industrial revolution, and the majority of markets weren't hooked up to trains for decades more. Even after they were, more trade moved over sea, which a typical D&D setting can accommodate with rather surprising competence for no good reason.

More telling however, the major spur that pushed the industrial revolution forward in the 17 and 1800s was the production of, essentially, shirts. The first and most important innovations were mostly technologies that let people weave cotton faster. Prior to innovations in the mid 1700s, cloth was sold little by little by whoever was making it to wherever, but when a glut of it became available, middlemen emerged to go ahead and make use of everything. The inverse wasn't true. Trade fleets were historically decommissioned when production couldn't match it, as it is harder to get any means of production established, not just factories.

Oscredwin

2013-12-30, 06:39 PM

Actually, the markets still hadn't been saturated during the industrial revolution, and the majority of markets weren't hooked up to trains for decades more. Even after they were, more trade moved over sea, which a typical D&D setting can accommodate with rather surprising competence for no good reason.

More telling however, the major spur that pushed the industrial revolution forward in the 17 and 1800s was the production of, essentially, shirts. The first and most important innovations were mostly technologies that let people weave cotton faster. Prior to innovations in the mid 1700s, cloth was sold little by little by whoever was making it to wherever, but when a glut of it became available, middlemen emerged to go ahead and make use of everything. The inverse wasn't true. Trade fleets were historically decommissioned when production couldn't match it, as it is harder to get any means of production established, not just factories.

I agree with what you're saying here, I just don't grant the implications. I think a world where Teleport Circle exists and resetting traps don't looks a lot more like the Tippyverse than a world with resetting traps and no easy teleportation of goods.

There are things to trade and travels to be had with teleportation. Armies will conquer and the militaries will behave much as Tippy says even if there aren't resetting traps. Defending territories creates the large cities, not a mass of production there. (Although both things create larger cities still).

Yukitsu

2013-12-30, 06:51 PM

I agree with what you're saying here, I just don't grant the implications. I think a world where Teleport Circle exists and resetting traps don't looks a lot more like the Tippyverse than a world with resetting traps and no easy teleportation of goods.

There are things to trade and travels to be had with teleportation. Armies will conquer and the militaries will behave much as Tippy says even if there aren't resetting traps. Defending territories creates the large cities, not a mass of production there. (Although both things create larger cities still).

Actually, the only thing that ever created large cities was the heavy urbanization caused by improvements in food yields, and improvements in production capabilities in those cities as a consequence. Some of the world's most important military sites remained very small for very long periods of time assuming other conditions didn't improve their growth potential.

Technically if you have the circles without the traps, you would need to resort to a near Feudal diaspora of smaller fortifications, as you have to have a garrison to protect a teleportation hot spot every few miles to cover the farmlands. Even worse if enemy raiders can get their own teleportation methods to go in, steal or pillage a few farms, then retreat before an alarm can be raised for the massive army of teleporting golems to come in. The need to spread out outposts and so forth only goes away assuming that you no longer need to cover the countryside in any capacity. Without a means to ignore the need to protect resources, (such as unlimited free resources coming from the city itself) the argument of large cities falls very flat.

Darrin

2013-12-30, 08:30 PM

Technically if you have the circles without the traps, you would need to resort to a near Feudal diaspora of smaller fortifications, as you have to have a garrison to protect a teleportation hot spot every few miles to cover the farmlands.

Feeding a large number of people is a trivial problem even without create food traps. A 1st level druid can feed himself and about 4 more people every day with only a 1st level spell, or up to 10 people per day if his Wis is at least 12. There are probably more efficient methods easily done with other lower level spells.

Yukitsu

2013-12-30, 09:27 PM

Feeding a large number of people is a trivial problem even without create food traps. A 1st level druid can feed himself and about 4 more people every day with only a 1st level spell, or up to 10 people per day if his Wis is at least 12. There are probably more efficient methods easily done with other lower level spells.

Lots of druids is for the most part the same principle though (though getting enough to feed a city requires really wonky abuse of the game's standard demographics tables). Instead of actually having an economy or need for trade, by whatever means you care to use, you just have unlimited resources. To consolidate into those cities you're still looking at subverting production, not trade or movement of goods.

Dalebert

2013-12-30, 09:52 PM

A 1st level druid can feed himself and about 4 more people every day with only a 1st level spell, or up to 10 people per day if his Wis is at least 12.

How? Are you referring to goodberry? 2d4 berries is at most 8 meals which won't quite feed 3 people for a day and on average it's 5 meals which won't quite feed 2 people for one day. Do you mean with multiple castings? You must mean if they use all their 1st level slots.

TuggyNE

2013-12-30, 11:04 PM

How? Are you referring to goodberry? 2d4 berries is at most 8 meals which won't quite feed 3 people for a day and on average it's 5 meals which won't quite feed 2 people for one day. Do you mean with multiple castings? You must mean if they use all their 1st level slots.

Presumably "one first-level spell [in all of their slots]", yes.

Pickford

2013-12-31, 12:38 PM

Kazyan

2013-12-31, 12:58 PM

There's also the issue of who is making these teleportation circle highways. It's a 9th level spell, so at least a 17th level wizard is required. According to the DMG, the highest level NPC wizard in a metropolis (largest city size) will still only be level 16.

I believe the concept is that, given the extremely long medieval stasis of generic D&D, it doesn't matter if permanent magical doohickies like Permanent Teleportation Circles are extremely rare. When they happen over the timeframe, they'll last. You can build this network over the course of a dozen millenia; the point is that it's going to happen eventually.

Pickford

2013-12-31, 01:16 PM

I believe the concept is that, given the extremely long medieval stasis of generic D&D, it doesn't matter if permanent magical doohickies like Permanent Teleportation Circles are extremely rare. When they happen over the timeframe, they'll last. You can build this network over the course of a dozen millenia; the point is that it's going to happen eventually.

I don't think that would work. Short of DM fiat, the DMG seems to be saying that NPC wizards capable of casting 9th level spells don't actually exist. Disjunction is also a factor and, assuming there are people capable of using 9th level magic, would be equally prevalent leading to an equivalent rate of destruction of circles. There's also physical degradation of whatever surface the circle is placed on. Simple breakdown over the course of time would destroy the circles (permanently) on a regular basis.

TuggyNE

2013-12-31, 07:18 PM

I don't think that would work. Short of DM fiat, the DMG seems to be saying that NPC wizards capable of casting 9th level spells don't actually exist.

Or that they do exist from time to time but are so rare they will not show up in random population tables. That's much more logical, and is consistent with spellcaster services:
Even a metropolis isn’t guaranteed to have a local spellcaster able to cast 9th-level spells.

Disjunction is also a factor and, assuming there are people capable of using 9th level magic, would be equally prevalent leading to an equivalent rate of destruction of circles. There's also physical degradation of whatever surface the circle is placed on. Simple breakdown over the course of time would destroy the circles (permanently) on a regular basis.

What rational purpose would disjoining a permanent magical asset serve, in the general case? Take it over and profit off of it!

And, of course, magic items have various ways to avoid or reverse damage, from make whole to hardening.

WhamBamSam

2013-12-31, 08:42 PM

Didn't Tippy say a few posts back that an 11th level Warlock could make a Teleport Circle?

Also, isn't his usual MO for making a Teleport Circle permanent to Gate in a Solar, Chaos Shuffle/PsyRef it so it has Tenacious Magic (Permanency) and have it use its Permanency SLA? Disjunction "ends the effect as Dispel Magic does," so even if a Wizard burns every 9th level spell slot he has Disjoining the thing, it won't stay gone for more than a few minutes.

Maintaining the surface is trivial even with relatively low level magic. Also, reading the Teleport Circle description, I'm not sure the degradation of the surface would actually disable it.

Calimehter

2013-12-31, 08:56 PM

I suspect the best defence that a permanent Teleportation Circle has in the Tippyverse is that it is part of a system that lots of high level folks would like to keep intact - at least one would presume so, if one assumes the Tippyverse has already formed and is still stable (i.e. maintained).

Start nuking them with whatever combo you find actually works, and you could find a rather powerful alliance who would just seek you out and destroy you rather than worry about over-investing in static protections for their circles.

Threadnaught

2013-12-31, 09:39 PM

He is also totally incorrect. Nothing at all in the core "Tippyverse" requires any DM participation, adjudication, or input.

Now, now Emperor Win, be nice.

He's completely correct in that, everything in the game needs permission from the DM. If the DM doesn't like certain rules, they can always houserule it, changing whatever they want.

He's completely wrong with what he's implying though.

Oh hi Pickford! Didn't see you there, well isn't there a badly build PrC that resets a Character to 1st level and can allow 9th level Spells at ECL9? Maybe that could help. :smallamused:

What about all the many ways to get 9th level Spells at ECL1?

Yukitsu

2013-12-31, 10:45 PM

Now, now Emperor Win, be nice.

He's completely correct in that, everything in the game needs permission from the DM. If the DM doesn't like certain rules, they can always houserule it, changing whatever they want.

It's more that any society is going to be more relevant with infinite everything than a society that can be anywhere at any time. The only reason people do any trade in the first place is for material goods, and an unlimited amount of it completely removes any need for trade. A military composed of an unlimited number of golems would similarly be immune from anything conventional, and also ignores logistics in that this nation wouldn't need to conquer anything, only defend which requires no transit, and doesn't need to extend beyond its own city limits.

The biggest point of dissension is that his opinion is that teleportation is what revolutionizes society, which is very much completely within the rules. I would contend that the traps are far more important to that society, and magic item creation by the rules very much requires the DM give specific permission above and beyond normal rule 0.

Emperor Tippy

2013-12-31, 10:53 PM

and magic item creation by the rules very much requires the DM give specific permission above and beyond normal rule 0.

For most items, yes. For traps, no. Probably bad editing and unintentional on the part of WotC but per the RAW that is the case.

NoldorForce

2013-12-31, 11:20 PM

It's more that any society is going to be more relevant with infinite everything than a society that can be anywhere at any time. The only reason people do any trade in the first place is for material goods, and an unlimited amount of it completely removes any need for trade. A military composed of an unlimited number of golems would similarly be immune from anything conventional, and also ignores logistics in that this nation wouldn't need to conquer anything, only defend which requires no transit, and doesn't need to extend beyond its own city limits.

The biggest point of dissension is that his opinion is that teleportation is what revolutionizes society, which is very much completely within the rules. I would contend that the traps are far more important to that society, and magic item creation by the rules very much requires the DM give specific permission above and beyond normal rule 0.Take another look at my post (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=16699588&postcount=94) above; unlimited transit (and therefore unlimited shipping) would be huge considering how often humanity has grappled with the issue of limited transit.

Yukitsu

2014-01-01, 12:55 AM

For most items, yes. For traps, no. Probably bad editing and unintentional on the part of WotC but per the RAW that is the case.

I've only read that it doesn't specify anything that could limit it, but similarly, I haven't ever read anything that exempts it, or otherwise distinguishes it from the general rule. Is there something that specifies that they don't require permissions to be created? I'm interpreting this as though the magic item compendium supersedes the DMG in this regard, which has a more general statement that prices for custom magic items are borked beyond repair. Of course, if you're going purely DMG in that regard, then yeah, the rules don't work when interpreted mechanically.

They have stated intent however, in both articles and the magic item compendium as I recall, so there's plenty of precedent stating that that isn't how they interpret the general rule.

Take another look at my post (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showpost.php?p=16699588&postcount=94) above; unlimited transit (and therefore unlimited shipping) would be huge considering how often humanity has grappled with the issue of limited transit.

The only reason we even use transit is that there is something we want at point B, and we're at point A. If for example, a famous trade nation had unlimited everything, why would they need to leave home?

NoldorForce

2014-01-01, 01:23 AM

The only reason we even use transit is that there is something we want at point B, and we're at point A. If for example, a famous trade nation had unlimited everything, why would they need to leave home?I don't believe "unlimited everything" would necessarily be most efficient even for a Tippyverse scenario. First off, permanencied teleportation circles only cost 4.5K GP + spell, whereas Fabricate traps (capable of producing nonmagical goods) cost 33K GP + some XP. Wish traps are even more expensive, costing over 2.5 million GP each. And those magical traps can't really make decisions of their own; they're only going to make a single type of item for each trap produced. (Fabricate traps also require raw materials, which have to come from somewhere.) To add insult to injury, traps can't transport people (like other casters...or invading armies) or information like a teleportation circle can.

Basically, goods-producing traps are helpful but not nearly so generalized, and at a massively inflated price.

Edit: Also keep in mind the concepts of division of labor (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Specialization_of_labor) and comparative advantage (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparative_advantage).

Eldest

2014-01-01, 04:18 AM

I've only read that it doesn't specify anything that could limit it, but similarly, I haven't ever read anything that exempts it, or otherwise distinguishes it from the general rule. Is there something that specifies that they don't require permissions to be created? I'm interpreting this as though the magic item compendium supersedes the DMG in this regard, which has a more general statement that prices for custom magic items are borked beyond repair. Of course, if you're going purely DMG in that regard, then yeah, the rules don't work when interpreted mechanically.

The general rule is that you do not need permission to craft items, in my understanding.

Threadnaught

2014-01-01, 12:29 PM

magic item creation by the rules very much requires the DM give specific permission above and beyond normal rule 0.

Creating Magic Items relies on rule 0, no more than rolling a d20 and it having an effect beyond the player rolling a number between 1 and 20.

Your point?

Pickford

2014-01-01, 01:52 PM

Or that they do exist from time to time but are so rare they will not show up in random population tables. That's much more logical, and is consistent with spellcaster services:

I was referencing this:

In addition to the residents you generate using the system described above, you might decide that a community has some sort of special resident, such as a single, out-of-place 15th-level sorcerer who lives just outside a thorp of fifty people, or the secret assassins' guild brimming with high-level characters hidden in a small town.

So yes, I agree that there could be characters beyond those from the population tables, but, according to the 3.5 DMG rules, this would be by DM fiat. (Which as I understand it is not supposed to happen in the Tippyverse).

What rational purpose would disjoining a permanent magical asset serve, in the general case? Take it over and profit off of it!

And, of course, magic items have various ways to avoid or reverse damage, from make whole to hardening.

The reason could be the caster doesn't want an unending magic trade war (i.e. they foresee the consequences of unchecked teleportation to some areas and don't like what it would lead to).

The TC isn't a wondrous item though, it's a spell.

Emperor Tippy

2014-01-01, 02:16 PM

So yes, I agree that there could be characters beyond those from the population tables, but, according to the 3.5 DMG rules, this would be by DM fiat. (Which as I understand it is not supposed to happen in the Tippyverse).
Epic Level Handbook, page 114. Planar Metropolis. Any city with over a hundred thousand people will have ECL 17+ wizards in it.

The TC isn't a wondrous item though, it's a spell.
Yes, and your point is?

Pickford

2014-01-01, 02:45 PM

Epic Level Handbook, page 114. Planar Metropolis. Any city with over a hundred thousand people will have ECL 17+ wizards in it.

TC doesn't work across planes, so it really doesn't matter if Sigil has wizards at higher ECLs. Of course, those cities also have economic traffic with an infinite trading space, so there's limitless demand (so why bother with a TC network?)

edit: and ECL doesn't actually mean capable of casting 9th level spells.

Yes, and your point is?

A TC can't be repaired as TuggyNE had suggested.

DizzyXI

2014-01-01, 05:45 PM

I'd be interested in seeing the build of warlock which can build a permanent teleport circle at level 11. Not because I doubt it could be done, but because I want to see the method!

Emperor Tippy

2014-01-01, 06:15 PM

I'd be interested in seeing the build of warlock which can build a permanent teleport circle at level 11. Not because I doubt it could be done, but because I want to see the method!

Sorry, 12th level. Imbue Item and pick up +5 CL.

If you want the simplest way you go 13th level and pickup one level of Magic Mantle Ardent who has Psiotheurgist and Praticed Manifester to get his ML (which magic mantle effectively makes the item creation CL) higher than 17.

You can actually do it earlier with an Artificer/Magic Mantle Ardent combo.

Pickford

2014-01-01, 09:34 PM

Imbue Item allows a Warlock to make magic items despite not knowing the spells required. TC is a spell, not a magic item.

Boots, or a helm, of teleportation are among the magic items a Warlock could make with Imbue item. Imbue Item doesn't specify that this also includes custom items, but I'd allow it as RAI.

I find this brings up the question: Why would the Warlock try and make these items more than once for themselves? (It seems alot of time/effort expended)

Kazyan

2014-01-01, 09:45 PM

Imbue Item allows a Warlock to make magic items despite not knowing the spells required. TC is a spell, not a magic item.

Scrolls are magic items, though.

Emperor Tippy

2014-01-01, 09:59 PM

Imbue Item allows a Warlock to make magic items despite not knowing the spells required. TC is a spell, not a magic item.[/'quote]
Scrolls.

[quote]Boots, or a helm, of teleportation are among the magic items a Warlock could make with Imbue item. Imbue Item doesn't specify that this also includes custom items, but I'd allow it as RAI.
Nothing I have mentioned is a custom magic item.

I find this brings up the question: Why would the Warlock try and make these items more than once for themselves? (It seems alot of time/effort expended)
Because it is about the best ROI that a Warlock of that level range can hope to get.

Take Eberron. Two permanent Teleportation Circles linking Sharn and Stormreach would pay for themselves in a day. Hell, any of the dragonmarked houses would just hand someone who could provide those two permanent circles several hundred thousand gold on the spot. And a level 12 Warlock could create two such circles that can pretty much never be destroyed with a minimal resource expenditure and less than an hours worth of time.

Threadnaught

2014-01-01, 10:02 PM

Imbue Item allows a Warlock to make magic items despite not knowing the spells required. TC is a spell, not a magic item.

You do realise that there are Items for casting Spells and effectively indestructable materials are a thing, right?

Pickford

2014-01-01, 10:18 PM

Ah, forgot about scrolls. Still, the UMD check is not certain, so the Warlock might find they can make one (or none) and be unable to make anymore until they gain a level.

Take Eberron. Two permanent Teleportation Circles linking Sharn and Stormreach would pay for themselves in a day. Hell, any of the dragonmarked houses would just hand someone who could provide those two permanent circles several hundred thousand gold on the spot. And a level 12 Warlock could create two such circles that can pretty much never be destroyed with a minimal resource expenditure and less than an hours worth of time.

Why would they pay someone instead of killing them and taking possession or destroying them if a competing house got it?

Anything can be destroyed.

Threadnaught: I'm aware of difficult to destroy materials, but I am unaware of any material that is impossible to destroy in D&D.

DizzyXI

2014-01-01, 10:25 PM

Why would they pay someone instead of killing them and taking possession or destroying them if a competing house got it?

Presumably because it is much easier to simply do business with them. Plus if you kill the person who made a teleportation circle for you, it becomes difficult to find another person to make one when you want another.

Pickford

2014-01-01, 10:27 PM

Presumably because it is much easier to simply do business with them. Plus if you kill the person who made a teleportation circle for you, it becomes difficult to find another person to make one when you want another.

I'm suggesting the competitors would do the killing. Though...whoever hired them might also kill them to ensure no competitor gains their advantage too.

edit: The alternative would seem to be going out of business...which doesn't seem acceptable to me.

DizzyXI

2014-01-01, 10:47 PM

I'm suggesting the competitors would do the killing. Though...whoever hired them might also kill them to ensure no competitor gains their advantage too.

edit: The alternative would seem to be going out of business...which doesn't seem acceptable to me.

Surely the alternative would be to hire him as well/someone else to do it? Him as well would be difficult as a smart company would put him on a retainer to prevent him from working for anyone else, but 12th level isn't THAT high that he'd be the only person who could do it around.

I have a question for the rules-aware, surely an Artificer can do it sooner than a Warlock? They can make any magic item without knowing the right spell, and so could make both permanency and teleportation circle from whenever they could make the appropriate DC, and then use-magic device to use the spell.

My confusion comes from the part that says: "For purposes of meeting item prerequisites, an artificer's effective caster level equals his artificer level +2. If the item duplicates a spell effect, however, it uses the artificer's actual level as its caster level. Costs are always determined using the item's minimum caster level or the artificer's actual level (if it is higher). Thus, a 3rd-level artificer can make a scroll of fireball, since the minimum caster level for fireball is 5th." I can't find anywhere in scribe scrolls when it requires a certain caster level, it just says that you need to know the spell, which is covered by: "An artificer can create a magic item even if he does not have access to the spells that are prerequisites for the item. The artificer must make a successful Use Magic Device check (DC 20 + caster level) to emulate each spell normally required to create the item."

There's something I'm missing. Help me out here?

Emperor Tippy

2014-01-01, 10:50 PM

Ah, forgot about scrolls. Still, the UMD check is not certain, so the Warlock might find they can make one (or none) and be unable to make anymore until they gain a level.
You won't fail the check. Ensuring you pass it is relatively trivial.

Why would they pay someone instead of killing them and taking possession or destroying them if a competing house got it?
Because a level 10+ anything is a real threat in Eberron (and most other settings) on its own. The Warlock is a significant power in his own right with allies, retainers, and interests of his own. He certainly can be killed but it isn't easy or cheap and doing so is of minimal benefit.

It's far cheaper, easier, and more cost effective to just buy him out. A Sharn-Stormreach TC path will be making its owners tens of thousands of GP every day.

Anything can be destroyed.
Except for the stuff that can't. That being said, the TC's can be destroyed or rendered inoperable but no one with the power to do so has the motivation to do so.

Threadnaught

2014-01-02, 10:23 AM

Threadnaught: I'm aware of difficult to destroy materials, but I am unaware of any material that is impossible to destroy in D&D.

Effectively/Virtually indestructible.

Something that people must put in actual effort to destroy. Maybe something like Adamantine or Obdurium. Even Force is a decent material to use for the purpose of effectively permanent TCs. Yeah sure, TCs will need to be recast, but they should last a very long time if nobody interferes with them. And seeing as they'll constantly be in use, the likelihood of anyone messing with them before they pay back the investment, revolves entirely around a hostile military force's meddling.

Take a dozen first level Human Warriors with the Elite Array, or to make it more entertaining a party (4) of 5th level Human Warriors, also with the Elite Array.
Now take a 10'x10'x1'' piece of Adamantine. With Teleportation Circle cast onto it. Take 1000gp to equip the Warriors with, no Magic Items allowed.

Your objective is to break the Adamantine. Oh and to make things interesting every round after the third, a Commoner appears to attack your party. Stats are 11 Strength, Dexterity and Constitution, 10 Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma. Every 5th Commoner comes armed with a Quarterstaff, every other uses Unarmed Strikes.

I wonder Pickford, will you be able to break the Adamantine, or will the party die first?

They'd fail, obviously. To destroy an Adamantine based Teleportation Circle, you'd need a larger investment. A much larger investment than you can justify.

Calimehter

2014-01-02, 12:30 PM

To get away from the 'can TCs be destroyed' bit . . .

I'm interested in running a version of the Tippyverse in an upcoming campaign. However, one of the things that I'm putting right up there with "drown healing" and infinite loops is using tricks (however legal or even RAI) to get around game costs for material creating and acquisition. For the most part, for my group, anyways, it will be easy enough to just tell the players that we won't be doing any of that. Jaron K posted some nice rules to keep it from 'accidentally' happening, which I've included below as an addendum, and I would probably adopt straight up as written.

So, my question would be, given the restrictions on magical material creation and XP cost avoidance via SLAs . . . what would the Tippyverse look like? I can see the TCs still be there and being quite profitable as far as generating the wealth needed to create lots of stuff, but without being able to mitigate the XP cost, would they be a lot rarer?

There's also the issue of what a city would do to acquire non-dispellable permanent materials, as it will want them for key structures and such.

I've got some ideas, but I'd be curious to hear what others thought.

Jaron K's house rules:

But as for spells... spells that create permanent benefits via spell slots tend to be broken. Even little things like "Cast Wall of Iron to get a bunch of Iron. Cast Magecraft for the +5 to Craft. Cast Fabricate to create suites of Masterwork Full Plate. Sell for profit." A solution I found to this was to say that no Conjuration (Creation) thing creates anything that's non magical forever. Thus, all spells like Wall of Stone, Wall of Iron, and so on have their duration changed to Permanent (meaning they can be dispelled). Furthermore, such materials can never be used as material components (which stops Fabricate from working on them) and every round in contact with Cold Iron lowers their caster level by 1 until they disappear.

Combine this with removing Wish from the Efreeti abilities and changing it to a new spell like ability called "Wealth" that just lets them create up to 25kgp in non magic, non special material wealth that's still a conjuration effect. This can be used for a variety of purposes, but summoned gold is of course counterfeit and any decent merchant's going to have a cold iron scale to check the money on (it'll disappear after a while, because it's Conjuration). Now you can play around with devils for money if you want but no merchant who's in the big time (and thus can sell you valuable stuff for that level) is going to take such money.

Also, make Sp abilities cost Xp normally. Many permanent bonus spells are balanced by their ex cost... remove that and they become silly. Spells like True Creation, Extract Gift, and Animate Dread Warrior can all be gotten as Sp abilities and are instantly game breaking.

Another random one: the Genesis spell should never be allowed to create non standard time traits. That's just too easy to break. Simply remove time traits from the list of things you can chose, explicitly (as it is they're implicitly included).

Polymorph needs a line saying it explicitly does not grant spell casting. I don't really want to get into that particular debate, but just do it.

Pickford

2014-01-02, 02:24 PM

Surely the alternative would be to hire him as well/someone else to do it? Him as well would be difficult as a smart company would put him on a retainer to prevent him from working for anyone else, but 12th level isn't THAT high that he'd be the only person who could do it around.

In a world where literally killing the competition is typical? No, the first move would be to neutralize the opposition. There's no reason at all to let the competition setup their own TC Highway or keep one maintained. More probably, I'd see someone sneaking in, removing the one in place and putting a new one there that teleports people to somewhere truly inhospitable (say, the middle of a desert). Losses would be tremendous before the competition figured out what was going on.

You won't fail the check. Ensuring you pass it is relatively trivial.

I agree, my PC Warlock can do that. But not NPC Warlocks who are created by the DM, they aren't ensuring anything.

Because a level 10+ anything is a real threat in Eberron (and most other settings) on its own. The Warlock is a significant power in his own right with allies, retainers, and interests of his own. He certainly can be killed but it isn't easy or cheap and doing so is of minimal benefit.

It's far cheaper, easier, and more cost effective to just buy him out. A Sharn-Stormreach TC path will be making its owners tens of thousands of GP every day.

Nobody said it would be cheap, but if someone in a D&D setting, anyone, is going around threatening the livelihood of a merchant coster (or many merchant guilds; Or entire trading cities that are at risk of being bypassed) then they are going to get killed, it really doesn't matter how famous they've become. The benefit would be stopping further TC production in its tracks. There really aren't enough level 12+ Warlocks running around that one can be replaced anytime soon.

Except for the stuff that can't. That being said, the TC's can be destroyed or rendered inoperable but no one with the power to do so has the motivation to do so.

Like I said, I'm unaware of any material with no means of destruction.

Effectively/Virtually indestructible.

Something that people must put in actual effort to destroy. Maybe something like Adamantine or Obdurium. Even Force is a decent material to use for the purpose of effectively permanent TCs. Yeah sure, TCs will need to be recast, but they should last a very long time if nobody interferes with them. And seeing as they'll constantly be in use, the likelihood of anyone messing with them before they pay back the investment, revolves entirely around a hostile military force's meddling.

Take a dozen first level Human Warriors with the Elite Array, or to make it more entertaining a party (4) of 5th level Human Warriors, also with the Elite Array.
Now take a 10'x10'x1'' piece of Adamantine. With Teleportation Circle cast onto it. Take 1000gp to equip the Warriors with, no Magic Items allowed.

Your objective is to break the Adamantine. Oh and to make things interesting every round after the third, a Commoner appears to attack your party. Stats are 11 Strength, Dexterity and Constitution, 10 Intelligence, Wisdom and Charisma. Every 5th Commoner comes armed with a Quarterstaff, every other uses Unarmed Strikes.

I wonder Pickford, will you be able to break the Adamantine, or will the party die first?

They'd fail, obviously. To destroy an Adamantine based Teleportation Circle, you'd need a larger investment. A much larger investment than you can justify.

Are you saying the Warriors are defending it or destroying it? One answer is simply to sap the platform such that it tilts, a tiny bit. That dispels the Teleportation Circle (it can't exist on anything but a horizontal surface.

Another option, is to purchase a single adamantine weapon, a dagger perhaps, and then sunder the platform, destroying the circle.

A third option would be to hire a ToB mercenary who uses mountain hammer attacks to destroy the platform.

A fourth option would be to hire a mage to cast enlarge person on each warrior, they then flip the platform, negating the TC. Or disintegrate it.

And the thing is, anyone who wants to destroy this thing would likely have hundreds of thousands of gold (if not millions) to throw at the problem.

If you really want to see just how cheaply it could be done, sap the building or bring in some powder kegs and just detonate the platform. Or bring vials of acid.

I was expecting someone to say Riverine, but that goes down to disintegrate or a rod of cancellation or Disjunction.

Talderas

2014-01-02, 03:25 PM

One answer is simply to sap the platform such that it tilts, a tiny bit. That dispels the Teleportation Circle (it can't exist on anything but a horizontal surface.

A fourth option would be to hire a mage to cast enlarge person on each warrior, they then flip the platform, negating the TC.

Teleportation circle only requires a horizontal surface to create it. After that a creature just needs to stand on it in order to activate it. Tipping it or putting it upright will not destroy it. Being tipped will permit it to still function as you can stand on it and with it upright it will function as soon as returned to a position in which it can be stood on. Neither of those options destroys the circle. They only disable it for a short time at best.

Another option, is to purchase a single adamantine weapon, a dagger perhaps, and then sunder the platform, destroying the circle.

A third option would be to hire a ToB mercenary who uses mountain hammer attacks to destroy the platform.

A 10x10x1 adamantine platform has 480 hitpoints. You also cannot sunder an object with a piercing weapon, so no dagger. It won't succeed because those that have a vested interest in keeping the TC will ensure that the TCs are guarded. Destroying it using this method is a significant investment. You need to first neutralize any guards which would be rather difficult. In the Tippyverse, assuming sane people, the entry and exits for TCs would be located close together. They would also, by necessity, be heavily guarded since they're an attack vector. You simply are unlikely to have any opportunity to sunder or physically destroy the TC.

Or disintegrate it.

This is about the only suggestion you made that would work but whoever attempted it would be committing a suicide mission due to the aforementioned guards, it is unlikely that the perpetrator would survive the attempt. This is also assuming that whoever built the TC network would not be cunning enough to have wizards or other casters on hand to help guard the TCs whose sole purpose is to dispel unauthorized casting.

--

Your suggestions are all made on erroneous understanding of the rules or erroneous understanding of just what happens in the Tippyverse.

kalos72

2014-01-02, 05:51 PM

Can TC's be moved? Ring Gates?

I want a gate like item that I can move to certain areas to direct materials while building the city. Say as my traps of Wall of Stone keep making more stone, they fall through the moving TC and I spread the walls out along the wall for the Lyre to use as its played?

Imagine what damage a trap like that can do if in the wrong hands? :(

I was thinking stone shape to make them all blocks that would fit more easily through a gate then a whole wall...

Brookshw

2014-01-02, 05:56 PM

Emperor Tippy

2014-01-02, 06:00 PM

Ring gates have a weight restriction. Maybe daern's instant fortress?

Until you stick a Portable hole partially through a ring gate and use it as a pass through.

Since the Portable Hole never fully passes through it never counts against the weight limit and the items inside the portable hole never pass through the ring gate.

Brookshw

2014-01-02, 06:18 PM

Until you stick a Portable hole partially through a ring gate and use it as a pass through.

Since the Portable Hole never fully passes through it never counts against the weight limit and the items inside the portable hole never pass through the ring gate.

Hmmm,.... Might work though a PH does specify "when spread on any surface" which I'm unsure could be done in this scenario. Of course a PH has no listed weight and I can't think of any RAW offhand that would count the weight in the extradimensional space as part of the object so you could just toss it freely through I suppose. Though why not just keep a 5 foot TC platform in it and save the gold on the ring gate is another question. But ring gates are fun so why not have one :smallbiggrin:

Alent

2014-01-02, 06:23 PM

In a world where literally killing the competition is typical? No, the first move would be to neutralize the opposition. There's no reason at all to let the competition setup their own TC Highway or keep one maintained. More probably, I'd see someone sneaking in, removing the one in place and putting a new one there that teleports people to somewhere truly inhospitable (say, the middle of a desert). Losses would be tremendous before the competition figured out what was going on.

You're talking about the Tippyverse. A world where using polymorph any object on a 30-something hit dice ice assassin of a red dragon to turn it into a soul stealing dagger with up to it's hit dice in contingent maximized blast spells on it, and teleporting it into the heart of your enemy is "just another wizard's contingency for someone who may potentially be a threat in the future".

Where armies of shadesteel golems with adventurer class levels guard anything of importance.

What on earth makes you think you're going to get to THINK about this before you die to a contingent scry and die?

I agree, my PC Warlock can do that. But not NPC Warlocks who are created by the DM, they aren't ensuring anything.

Are you seriously going to assume that a DM who wants TV style TCs in his world isn't going to optimize a warlock for just this purpose?

I was expecting someone to say Riverine, but that goes down to disintegrate or a rod of cancellation or Disjunction.

eh, what if the Teleport Circle is a Polymorph Any Object Shadesteel golem?

Talakeal

2014-01-02, 06:58 PM

Creating Magic Items relies on rule 0, no more than rolling a d20 and it having an effect beyond the player rolling a number between 1 and 20.

Your point?

Rule zero says that you CAN use house rules to modify the rules. The Magic item rules in the DMG says that you already need DM permission to create a new item. There is a big difference.

Traps are a little fuzzy, as they lack that line, but do say the player and the DM need to come to an agreement on the cost, which can certainly read as giving the DM the ability to veto (or assign ridiculous costs) to traps they do not believe are fair.

Note that some DM's do both. I have a DM who flat out refused to allow me to create spotless items or items with multiple powers, and required me to pay double the retail value of the item in materials to create bog standard items. It was kind of sucky, but it wasn't a balance issue, just a control issue, as he had no problem giving out epic level items to level 12 characters, just as long as they were the items HE handed out.

Edit: Actually, looking in the DMG I can't find the place where it says they need DM approval. It just says a player "may be able to" create a magic item, and then refers to the spell research section, which flat out says the DM needs to give the player permission to create a spell. So I guess you could twist RAW to say "I MAY create items, so I already have permission, and the rules just say it is LIKE creating a new spell, not identical to, so it doesn't necessarily mean I need DM permission." IMO this requires a very twisted reading of RAW and is clearly against RAI, but in either case the DM sets the XP / Gold cost of the new item and would be within their rights to set something you can never pay without cheese.

Grizzled Gryphon

2014-01-02, 08:48 PM

Are you seriously going to assume that a DM who wants TV style TCs in his world isn't going to optimize a warlock for just this purpose?Heck, from a reality point of view, in a Tippyverse setting, there would be plenty of Warlocks that would gear themselves to this just for the potential employment opportunity available to just such an individual. They would be hired to make new TC's and maintain them as well. Even if the TC was put on a wooden platform, the platform would eventually wear out, and a new TC would be needed on the replacement. Same would be true on a stone one; it would just take longer. But anyone relying on the TC's would certainly want people that can repair/replace them ASAP on hand, just in case. So, yeah, in the Tippyverse, these guys WOULD be very common.

Grizzled Gryphon

2014-01-02, 08:53 PM

Edit: Actually, looking in the DMG I can't find the place where it says they need DM approval. It just says a player "may be able to" create a magic item, and then refers to the spell research section, which flat out says the DM needs to give the player permission to create a spell.pretty sure the "may be able to create a magic item" applies to the player needing to meet the prereq's for making that item. If you don't have the right skills and feats, then you can't make them, but you may have the right feats and skills, and thus can make them.

Threadnaught

2014-01-02, 09:22 PM

Are you saying the Warriors are defending it or destroying it? One answer is simply to sap the platform such that it tilts, a tiny bit. That dispels the Teleportation Circle (it can't exist on anything but a horizontal surface.

Another option, is to purchase a single adamantine weapon, a dagger perhaps, and then sunder the platform, destroying the circle.

A third option would be to hire a ToB mercenary who uses mountain hammer attacks to destroy the platform.

A fourth option would be to hire a mage to cast enlarge person on each warrior, they then flip the platform, negating the TC. Or disintegrate it.

And the thing is, anyone who wants to destroy this thing would likely have hundreds of thousands of gold (if not millions) to throw at the problem.

If you really want to see just how cheaply it could be done, sap the building or bring in some powder kegs and just detonate the platform. Or bring vials of acid.

I was expecting someone to say Riverine, but that goes down to disintegrate or a rod of cancellation or Disjunction.

Warriors are trying to destroy it. The Commoners would be upstanding citizens.

Adamantine weapons are too costly for the purpose of this exercise. There are unlikely to be any readily available outside of the immediate area.

They'd have to pay the mercenary far more than they can afford to give in order for the merc to willingly put themselves in a position where they can be captured rather quickly and effortlessly slaughtered.

Using a Wizard to make all the Warriors bigger would cost a minimum of 280gp + travel expenses, they'd have at most 720gp left to spend between them. Disintegrate would cost 660gp + travel expenses, up to 340gp, if your plan fails they won't have much cash remaining to do the job with. I doubt the merchant who hired them is willing to pay more to support their future failure, 1000gp is a large expenditure for a single service/item.

In the Tippyverse, assuming sane people, the entry and exits for TCs would be located close together. They would also, by necessity, be heavily guarded since they're an attack vector. You simply are unlikely to have any opportunity to sunder or physically destroy the TC.

Well I never did mention any actual guards, but even without those, the odds of success on anything resembling a non Tippyverse merchant's reasonable expenses are astronomically low.

The only people who have the capability of taking out TCs and the motivation to back it up, are Tippyverse City states, already using TCs.

Rule zero says that you CAN use house rules to modify the rules. The Magic item rules in the DMG says that you already need DM permission to create a new item. There is a big difference.

There's a big difference between DM telling players when their rolls count for something and the DM telling them whether or not they can create Magic Items?

I don't see it. It's the DM making a decision. It's the same as a DM deciding how you get to build characters and what resources you're allowed to use.

Edit: Actually, looking in the DMG I can't find the place where it says they need DM approval. It just says a player "may be able to" create a magic item, and then refers to the spell research section, which flat out says the DM needs to give the player permission to create a spell. So I guess you could twist RAW to say "I MAY create items, so I already have permission, and the rules just say it is LIKE creating a new spell, not identical to, so it doesn't necessarily mean I need DM permission." IMO this requires a very twisted reading of RAW and is clearly against RAI, but in either case the DM sets the XP / Gold cost of the new item and would be within their rights to set something you can never pay without cheese.

Problem with comparing Magic Item Creation to Custom Spell Creation, is that the only hard rules for creating Spells, are how many Dice Blast Spells can deal. There's a few suggestions on what levels for the Spells to be, the closest one appears to being a rule is the fourth bullet, but it's still just a suggestion.

Magic Items however, they have their own fully detailed rules for creation. Which can be used to create Custom Items quite easily. It says nothing about needing additional DM approval beyond what the DM must make a decision on anyway.
The exact application of rule 0 I've been explaining to Pickford. Everything that happens, is a result of the DM allowing it.

Can someone explain better?

Talakeal

2014-01-02, 09:50 PM

pretty sure the "may be able to create a magic item" applies to the player needing to meet the prereq's for making that item. If you don't have the right skills and feats, then you can't make them, but you may have the right feats and skills, and thus can make them.

The rule is presented in a sidebar titled "Varient" implying it is an optional rule to begin with.

The text is:

"In the same way that you can invent new spells and monsters for your campaign, you can invent new magic items. In the same way that a PC spell caster can research a new spell*, a PC may be able to invent a new kind of magic item. And just as you have to be careful about new spells, you need to be careful with new magic items."

*The researching new spells section reads "If you decide to allow characters to develop original spells, you can use these guidelines to handle the situation... A viable spell is one you allow into your game... However feel free to work with the player before research begins and give him guidance on the parameters under which the original spell might be accepted into your game."

The magic item section very strongly implies that PCs need the DM's approval to make a new item, and say the process works exactly researching a new spell, which flat out states this to be the case.

I don't see it. It's the DM making a decision. It's the same as a DM deciding how you get to build characters and what resources you're allowed to use.

The difference is the rules tell the DM they must make a decision on whether or not to allow custom items. Rule zero merely states that a DM can change the rules if they have a very good reason for doing so.

Following the rules and making a decision based on them versus changing the rules is a huge difference.

If you don't think it is, then literally ANY result is equally RAW as any other, and my freeform game where we sit around and watch TV while writing My Little Pony fan fiction is every bit as much the "inevitable result of RAW" as the Tippyverse.

Yukitsu

2014-01-03, 01:54 AM

How was everyone sober enough to move this along this far?

Basically, Talakeal has the way the game developers wanted their rules to work. The weakest part of D&D rule-sets in terms of not falling over and puking on its own shirt are the ones around economics and custom creation tables. A lot of the most egregious examples of the game not functioning are when you ignore that you aren't supposed to simply stat up any item that you want without limitations, as money, time and EXP aren't really costly enough costs.

I don't believe "unlimited everything" would necessarily be most efficient even for a Tippyverse scenario. First off, permanencied teleportation circles only cost 4.5K GP + spell, whereas Fabricate traps (capable of producing nonmagical goods) cost 33K GP + some XP. Wish traps are even more expensive, costing over 2.5 million GP each. And those magical traps can't really make decisions of their own; they're only going to make a single type of item for each trap produced. (Fabricate traps also require raw materials, which have to come from somewhere.) To add insult to injury, traps can't transport people (like other casters...or invading armies) or information like a teleportation circle can.

Economic decisions is based on rate of return, not initial cost, unless you cannot at all pay the initial cost. The rate of return is literally infinitely higher on the trap, even accounting for cost.

NoldorForce

2014-01-03, 04:28 AM

A lot of the most egregious examples of the game not functioning are when you ignore that you aren't supposed to simply stat up any item that you want without limitations, as money, time and EXP aren't really costly enough costs.It would probably have helped for the financial parts of the game to not be written like My Little Accountant, but they were and them's the breaks.

Economic decisions is based on rate of return, not initial cost, unless you cannot at all pay the initial cost. The rate of return is literally infinitely higher on the trap, even accounting for cost.
Tell me, what's the rate of return on an expensive trap that can only produce one kind of good?

Emperor Tippy

2014-01-03, 04:51 AM

Tell me, what's the rate of return on an expensive trap that can only produce one kind of good?

Potentially very good. Especially for trivial goods.

Take a Fabricate trap that turns out socks. Since it is a trap and the creator only needs to make the Fabricate skill check once lets use Guidance of the Avatar and Surge of Fortune along with Psychic Reformation to push it up to 50 or so. These are pretty much the best made socks ever and again, since the cost is relatively trivial lets use the nicest of materials.

Now sell those socks for a copper piece per pair. Now in a city like Sharn you should easily be able to move your entire stock of 14,400 pairs per day. At a CP each that is 144 GP per day. Or 52,560 GP per year. Your sock trap has paid for its self inside of a year and its all pure profit from that point on.

Think of all of the goods and products that you go through and throw out on a daily or weekly basis without any real care.

Sell clothes for a copper each and for a large chunk of the population it is more cost effective to just throw out and buy new clothes every day or two instead of cleaning them.

Or how about a restaurant that makes a deal to buy in bulk high quality utensils and table ware because it is literally cheaper and more cost effective to toss it after every meal and replace it with new stuff than it is to wash it.

Or how about mass production of books? A fabricate trap can produce 14,400 copies of a book in a day. How would the dominate religion like to get their gospel out to every single individual around? Well now they can buy tossing out their religious texts like candy.

Or weapons. Adamantium Arrows for an SP each.

Yukitsu

2014-01-03, 05:36 AM

Tell me, what's the rate of return on an expensive trap that can only produce one kind of good?

A lot. If you're going to own a factory, usually you'll make more money making one product in that factory rather than doing swaps. Like I said, market saturation isn't usually a concern, it's vastly more important to drive as much product out the door as possible, and it also doesn't hurt that if you're ballsing up supply and demand, you can slash costs and potentially drive competitors out of business.

Pickford

2014-01-03, 12:27 PM

Teleportation circle only requires a horizontal surface to create it. After that a creature just needs to stand on it in order to activate it. Tipping it or putting it upright will not destroy it. Being tipped will permit it to still function as you can stand on it and with it upright it will function as soon as returned to a position in which it can be stood on. Neither of those options destroys the circle. They only disable it for a short time at best.

It's a circle on the floor. If there is no floor, there is no circle anymore.

A 10x10x1 adamantine platform has 480 hitpoints. You also cannot sunder an object with a piercing weapon, so no dagger. It won't succeed because those that have a vested interest in keeping the TC will ensure that the TCs are guarded. Destroying it using this method is a significant investment. You need to first neutralize any guards which would be rather difficult. In the Tippyverse, assuming sane people, the entry and exits for TCs would be located close together. They would also, by necessity, be heavily guarded since they're an attack vector. You simply are unlikely to have any opportunity to sunder or physically destroy the TC.

If they have ranged sunder (CW) they can sunder using a piercing weapon. Or we could make it an adamantine: Any slashing weapon.

There may or may not be guards. This would not prevent vandalism. If this TC is actually being used for trade numerous persons must transit through it. Bring a large package of acid, detonate at the TC, destroying the floor and the circle. Guards can be circumvented or overcome through guile. Defenders would be killed.

A world where using polymorph any object on a 30-something hit dice ice assassin

Ice Assassin is a 9th level spell. In the standard demographics there are no NPCs capable of casting 9th level spells.

Are you seriously going to assume that a DM who wants TV style TCs in his world isn't going to optimize a warlock for just this purpose?

The basic Tippyverse assumption is no DM intervention is required. So yes, I'm seriously assuming that.

eh, what if the Teleport Circle is a Polymorph Any Object Shadesteel golem?

TC is a spell, not an object. It isn't a valid target for that spell. If you mean the surface the TC is resting on, then the TC wouldn't be on a valid target and would fizzle out of existence.

Adamantine weapons are too costly for the purpose of this exercise. There are unlikely to be any readily available outside of the immediate area.

A single casting of TC from scroll made by a Warlock is valued at ~5000gp (this does not include the cost of casting permanancy). Adamantine weapons are well within the equivalent budget. An organization trying to sabotage the circle wouldn't send warriors anyway, and not only 5 of them. They would send high level characters who are well equipped for destroying magical things.

This wouldn't be done by only a single merchant, but an entire guild or coster. The resources available would be higher.

Talderas

2014-01-03, 01:47 PM

It's a circle on the floor. If there is no floor, there is no circle anymore.

You're ignoring the text of the spell. It only specifies that the surface must be horizontal to create it. Once it has been created it is affixed to that surface. The conditions for functioning are also stated within the spell and that simply states that you must stand on it to activate it. It does not state that the surface must still be horizontal or that it doesn't function at an incline or that if the surface is moved from its locations the spell ends.

If they have ranged sunder (CW) they can sunder using a piercing weapon. Or we could make it an adamantine: Any slashing weapon.

It's not the problem of bypassing the hardness, it's a problem of actually dealing enough damage to the adamantine block to destroy it, which is 480hp. You're, of course, ignoring the cost of this venture which is already 3,000gp per weapon per person. Considering the guards and the necessity for lower level dumb mooks to do this, you're probably looking at 1 attack per mook at most and you might average about 6.5 damage per mook. That's 74 individual mooks for over 222,000gp. That's also assuming that whoever operates the TC network has no way of repairing the damaged adamantine, which they would inevitably do after a couple of attemps.

If you go the ranged sunder route you're requiring Lv5 mooks to do this and they're not likely stupid enough to go on a suicide mission.

There may or may not be guards. This would not prevent vandalism.

Vandals aren't going to attempt to vandalize something under guard which these would be by shadesteel golems which never need to sleep. The TCs will be under guard and to assume otherwise is to attempt to paint a scenario which is both extremely unlikely and highly favorable to your argument. It's a strawman through and through because you discarding the basic underlying assumptions of the Tippyverse which lead to the creation of the TC network in the first place by assuming that the people who were smart enough to create the TC network are equally dumb enough to not adequately protect their investment.

If this TC is actually being used for trade numerous persons must transit through it. Bring a large package of acid, detonate at the TC, destroying the floor and the circle. Guards can be circumvented or overcome through guile. Defenders would be killed.

This runs under the assumption that an intelligent creature using the TC network is actually permitted to hold onto their belongings. It would be a rather prudent precaution to require all materials (beyond the clothes on your back [no shoes]) to pass through on pack animals. You then are permitted to retrieve your items once you have passed through. This basically solves most of your possible methods of destroying it.

Threadnaught

2014-01-03, 03:33 PM

It's not the problem of bypassing the hardness, it's a problem of actually dealing enough damage to the adamantine block to destroy it, which is 480hp.

Actually it's 40HP, the entire block may have 480HP or another number entirely, but Pickford only has to break an inch anywhere the TC is, to win.
The problem with this is getting the extra 2002gp to buy a single Adamantine Dagger with.

Using four 5th level Human Warriors, before the invention of Shadesteel Golems.

Without enough petty cash to bypass Hardness, Pickford's Warriors must deal at least 21 damage per hit.

A single casting of TC from scroll made by a Warlock is valued at ~5000gp (this does not include the cost of casting permanancy). Adamantine weapons are well within the equivalent budget. An organization trying to sabotage the circle wouldn't send warriors anyway, and not only 5 of them. They would send high level characters who are well equipped for destroying magical things.

This wouldn't be done by only a single merchant, but an entire guild or coster. The resources available would be higher.

Moving the goalposts does not make you right.

The challenge was 4, 5th level Human Warriors with 1000gp between them. Not an infinite number of Wizards with infinite gold.

You failed when you brought up Adamantine Weapons Pickford. Now you're not even attempting the challenge I've given you. Which was to break the TC using the resources available to a single Merchant, without cutting into profits.
Given that the economy is supposed to be measured in 1sp per day for the average worker, Merchants are unlikely to be swimming in gp. They'll have a few thousand cp to spare if they're in business long enough, and the odd adventurer will give them a few gp from time to time, but hardly enough to say. Buy their own country. Now if those merchants are based in some outpost settlement on a trade route, there's very little chance that they'll be able to afford the services of a Wizard high enough in level to be capable of destroying the TC in question, especially not after the potential economic power of a TC is fully realised. They're almost completely reliant on travelling merchants and trade caravans.

The rule is presented in a sidebar titled "Varient" implying it is an optional rule to begin with.

The text is:

"In the same way that you can invent new spells and monsters for your campaign, you can invent new magic items. In the same way that a PC spell caster can research a new spell*, a PC may be able to invent a new kind of magic item. And just as you have to be careful about new spells, you need to be careful with new magic items."

I'll give you that. It does have "Variant: New Magic Items" as the title of that little box, but unlike Spell creation there are actually rules for creating new Magic Items. Rules that simply don't exist for creating new Spells.
Thank you btw, for omitting this rather crucial point in our favour, because it kinda sorta hurts your point.

Use the magic item descriptions in this chapter as examples on which to base new magic items. A new magic item needs all the information that similar, existing magic items have, possibly including activation type, activation time, and caster level. You should also be ready to determine the market value of a new magic item, even one the PCs simply find, in case a character wants o sell it or duplicate it.

Now I don't know if you've noticed, but the Magic Items described in that chapter, are made using the Magic Item Creation tables.

The magic item section very strongly implies that PCs need the DM's approval to make a new item, and say the process works exactly researching a new spell, which flat out states this to be the case.

Here's an amusing story about a hypothetical player who expected their hypothetical DM to allow certain things. While the DM wasn't feeling especially generous.

Player: I go to sleep for the night.
DM: No you don't!
Player: Yes I do, [other player's golem] is standing watch and we need to replenish Spell Slots, Magic Item charges, HP, Turnings and our characters are exhausted.
DM: Yeah but, Golem turns on you, Encounter.
Player: It's a Shadesteel Golem.
DM: You're not sleeping.
Player: Fine, I'll roll initiative. Hey, natural 20 to everyone else's 10 and your 1. I get to go first.
DM: No because you were sleeping which makes you flat footed and helpless. You get hit for maximum critical damage.

Now my stance is that it's up to the DM to allow their players to do whatever their characters end up doing. Your stance is that the DM shouldn't be so permissive, okay, the above spoilered story is me trying to paint a picture from your point of view in order to explain that, anything that happens in any game with a DM, is because the DM allowed it.
The above DM just doesn't let their players do as much as most.

Following the rules and making a decision based on them versus changing the rules is a huge difference.

If you don't think it is, then literally ANY result is equally RAW as any other, and my freeform game where we sit around and watch TV while writing My Little Pony fan fiction is every bit as much the "inevitable result of RAW" as the Tippyverse.

Ahh great, you're casting Straw Assassin. Lovely, that really does make you better.
Repeating what I say in the most retarded way possible to make me look wrong, does not make you right.
What I think is irrelevant when I'm looking at the facts, and the fact is Magic Items are highly customizable (existing ones can be customized) as they are and come with their own table for how much they should cost. There's a price for every single Magic Item and a way to calculate the price for new ones.
Custom Items are already RAW, the variant is creating anything beyond the given examples.

But why don't we settle this once and for all by asking the obvious question?

Emperor Win, what Variant/House Rules are in effect across the Tippyverse that affect this discussion?

Talderas

2014-01-03, 03:47 PM

Actually it's 40HP, the entire block may have 480HP or another number entirely, but Pickford only has to break an inch anywhere the TC is, to win.

Incorrect. To break an object you take into account its entire thickness, not a portion of it. Anything else is a houserule assumption that is not present in the Tippyverse.

Hit Points
An object’s hit point total depends on what it is made of and how big it is. When an object’s hit points reach 0, it’s ruined.

The object is only ruined once its hp reaches 0. It's perfectly fine up until that point. Since the objects hit points are based on its size then it's thickness does account and all twelve inches, at 40hp apiece, count towards its full hp total.

The problem with this is getting the extra 2002gp to buy a single Adamantine Dagger with.

It's 3000gp to make a weapon from Adamantine. You need slashing or bludgeoning weapons to damage objects so no daggers. With ranged sunder (a +5 BAB feat) you can use piercing ranged weapons but they deal half damage so you can throw your adamantine daggers at it but the damage is halved before hardness. So thrown daggers are essentially 1d2+(0.5 * Str Modifier).

Talakeal

2014-01-03, 07:39 PM

Actually it's 40HP, the entire block may have 480HP or another number entirely, but Pickford only has to break an inch anywhere the TC is, to win.
The problem with this is getting the extra 2002gp to buy a single Adamantine Dagger with.

Using four 5th level Human Warriors, before the invention of Shadesteel Golems.

Without enough petty cash to bypass Hardness, Pickford's Warriors must deal at least 21 damage per hit.

Moving the goalposts does not make you right.

The challenge was 4, 5th level Human Warriors with 1000gp between them. Not an infinite number of Wizards with infinite gold.

You failed when you brought up Adamantine Weapons Pickford. Now you're not even attempting the challenge I've given you. Which was to break the TC using the resources available to a single Merchant, without cutting into profits.
Given that the economy is supposed to be measured in 1sp per day for the average worker, Merchants are unlikely to be swimming in gp. They'll have a few thousand cp to spare if they're in business long enough, and the odd adventurer will give them a few gp from time to time, but hardly enough to say. Buy their own country. Now if those merchants are based in some outpost settlement on a trade route, there's very little chance that they'll be able to afford the services of a Wizard high enough in level to be capable of destroying the TC in question, especially not after the potential economic power of a TC is fully realised. They're almost completely reliant on travelling merchants and trade caravans.

I'll give you that. It does have "Variant: New Magic Items" as the title of that little box, but unlike Spell creation there are actually rules for creating new Magic Items. Rules that simply don't exist for creating new Spells.
Thank you btw, for omitting this rather crucial point in our favour, because it kinda sorta hurts your point.

Now I don't know if you've noticed, but the Magic Items described in that chapter, are made using the Magic Item Creation tables.

Here's an amusing story about a hypothetical player who expected their hypothetical DM to allow certain things. While the DM wasn't feeling especially generous.

Player: I go to sleep for the night.
DM: No you don't!
Player: Yes I do, [other player's golem] is standing watch and we need to replenish Spell Slots, Magic Item charges, HP, Turnings and our characters are exhausted.
DM: Yeah but, Golem turns on you, Encounter.
Player: It's a Shadesteel Golem.
DM: You're not sleeping.
Player: Fine, I'll roll initiative. Hey, natural 20 to everyone else's 10 and your 1. I get to go first.
DM: No because you were sleeping which makes you flat footed and helpless. You get hit for maximum critical damage.

Now my stance is that it's up to the DM to allow their players to do whatever their characters end up doing. Your stance is that the DM shouldn't be so permissive, okay, the above spoilered story is me trying to paint a picture from your point of view in order to explain that, anything that happens in any game with a DM, is because the DM allowed it.
The above DM just doesn't let their players do as much as most.

Ahh great, you're casting Straw Assassin. Lovely, that really does make you better.
Repeating what I say in the most retarded way possible to make me look wrong, does not make you right.
What I think is irrelevant when I'm looking at the facts, and the fact is Magic Items are highly customizable (existing ones can be customized) as they are and come with their own table for how much they should cost. There's a price for every single Magic Item and a way to calculate the price for new ones.
Custom Items are already RAW, the variant is creating anything beyond the given examples.

But why don't we settle this once and for all by asking the obvious question?

Emperor Win, what Variant/House Rules are in effect across the Tippyverse that affect this discussion?

I wasnt trying to make a strawman, and i am honestly not following you. Creating new magic items is an optional rule that explicitly calls out that you need the gms approval because it has the possibility to wreck the game.

The difference is that all of the examples you describe or by default allowed by the rules unless the dm decides to change the rules.

Custom magic items, on the other hand, are by default disallowed by the rules unless the dm decides to use an optional rule and grant permission on a case by case basis.

To me there is a world of difference between the two.

A dm breaking the rules can easily ruin the game. A dm ruling their golems turn on them in their sleep is ruining the game, as is a dm who allows there pcs to make use activated swords of true strike and self resetting wish traps.

Edit: also, you keep talking about how i "left out" the fact that there are given costs. I also "left out" the part that says the given costs are only guidelines and wont work for many items because a judgement call is required, and they specifically say that many of the sample items in the book are not made using these formulas because they didn't look fair when made using the chart.

Pickford

2014-01-05, 02:55 PM

You're ignoring the text of the spell. It only specifies that the surface must be horizontal to create it. Once it has been created it is affixed to that surface. The conditions for functioning are also stated within the spell and that simply states that you must stand on it to activate it. It does not state that the surface must still be horizontal or that it doesn't function at an incline or that if the surface is moved from its locations the spell ends.

Nothing in TC provides for its continued existence after the surface it is on is damaged/destroyed. If you cut a line in a circle then it's not longer a circle. Therefore, damaging the surface the circle on the floor effectively destroys the circle.

It's not the problem of bypassing the hardness, it's a problem of actually dealing enough damage to the adamantine block to destroy it, which is 480hp. You're, of course, ignoring the cost of this venture which is already 3,000gp per weapon per person. Considering the guards and the necessity for lower level dumb mooks to do this, you're probably looking at 1 attack per mook at most and you might average about 6.5 damage per mook. That's 74 individual mooks for over 222,000gp. That's also assuming that whoever operates the TC network has no way of repairing the damaged adamantine, which they would inevitably do after a couple of attemps.

40 HP in an inch of thickness. Still, to do 40 points would be possible with 4 maenad warriors at 4th level, each using their energy ray ability. As a backup plan, 1 level 1 warrior with grenadier carrying 100 vials of acid and simply detonates himself on the circle dealing 200-1200 damage annihilating the platform (each glass vial has 1 hp and each acid vial will do 2 hp splash damage, detonating all the vials at once if the character smashes one against themselves).

If you go the ranged sunder route you're requiring Lv5 mooks to do this and they're not likely stupid enough to go on a suicide mission.

Quite right about the level requirement, however I believe it would be conceivable that a diplomancer could convince them to do it anyway. (Fanatical and all that)

Vandals aren't going to attempt to vandalize something under guard which these would be by shadesteel golems which never need to sleep. The TCs will be under guard and to assume otherwise is to attempt to paint a scenario which is both extremely unlikely and highly favorable to your argument. It's a strawman through and through because you discarding the basic underlying assumptions of the Tippyverse which lead to the creation of the TC network in the first place by assuming that the people who were smart enough to create the TC network are equally dumb enough to not adequately protect their investment.

Shadesteel Golems are 130k a pop. That exceeds the entire wealth of most places. In actual cities, it's so expensive that even if they converted the entire wealth of the city, they'd only have ~1000 golems which wouldn't be enough to patrol the city or fight in a war, let alone devote to guarding a single portal. Using shadesteel golems means not having the money to fight a war, which is a serious existential threat.

This runs under the assumption that an intelligent creature using the TC network is actually permitted to hold onto their belongings. It would be a rather prudent precaution to require all materials (beyond the clothes on your back [no shoes]) to pass through on pack animals. You then are permitted to retrieve your items once you have passed through. This basically solves most of your possible methods of destroying it.

So then it's vulnerable to detonation by a Delayed Blast Fireball. (Timed explosives to set off the acid destroying the circle). Cast with deceptive spell and invisible spell and with conceal spellcasting and false theurgy to avoid any detection magical or mundane.

Threadnaught: Fair enough, within the limitations provided, I suggest using warriors with the grenadier feat and loaded down with acid vials. If they happen to be maenads, even better. They load up a donkey with acid vials and then throw one vial on the mule, it detonates and deals 2 damage which bypass the hardness on the other vials, setting them all off. Total damage would range between 200-1200 with 200 splash for 100 vials (1000gp).

I disagree that a single merchant would be involved on either side. The costs of a TC on an adamantine block are well over the 2002gp for an Adamantine dagger. Who is paying for those things?

Threadnaught

2014-01-05, 07:38 PM

Threadnaught: Fair enough, within the limitations provided, I suggest using warriors with the grenadier feat and loaded down with acid vials. If they happen to be maenads, even better. They load up a donkey with acid vials and then throw one vial on the mule, it detonates and deals 2 damage which bypass the hardness on the other vials, setting them all off. Total damage would range between 200-1200 with 200 splash for 100 vials (1000gp).

99 Vials, one of which is thrown. 8gp for the Mule. Which leaves 2gp spare.
Congratulations, you may have found a cost effective way to destroy TCs in the early stages of the Tippyverse. As long as you're able to procure all the necessary Acid.

I disagree that a single merchant would be involved on either side. The costs of a TC on an adamantine block are well over the 2002gp for an Adamantine dagger. Who is paying for those things?

Adamantine adds 3000gp to the price of a Weapon, a Dagger costs 2gp, the actual price of an Adamantine Dagger is 3002gp. The reason I quoted 2002gp, is because that is how much above the limit you tried to spend.

As for who is paying for the TC, the 17th level Wizard in charge of the new trade enterprise. They're paying 1000gp and 1000xp to be exact.
Wall of Iron, cut out the base for the TC and maybe keep the rest as spare "Adamantine", Polymorph Any Object it into Adamantine +9 is permanent, congrats, free Adamantine. Cast Teleportation Circle (1000gp) on the Adamantine, Gate (1000xp) in a Solar, get it to make the TC Permanent using it's 3/day Permanency SLAs and use it's 1/day Wish SLA for a Scroll of Gate to avoid having to pay all that xp cost again.
And according to the Wall of Iron Spell, the wall would be 4'' thick. Of course you'd need to cut it down into 10'x5'x4'' chunks and forge two of them together to make a 10'x10'x4'' block, but hey, who said creating a permanent TC would be cheap?

Okay, maybe the 1000xp would be worth 5000gp if the Wizard were hired, but the Tippyverse came about because of an entrepreneurial Wizard, so the Wizard would be self employed and the 1000xp is assumed to be their own time and effort.

Incorrect. To break an object you take into account its entire thickness, not a portion of it. Anything else is a houserule assumption that is not present in the Tippyverse.

The object is only ruined once its hp reaches 0. It's perfectly fine up until that point. Since the objects hit points are based on its size then it's thickness does account and all twelve inches, at 40hp apiece, count towards its full hp total.

Alright, I made a mistake, I won't deny it. However it's a 10'x10'x1'' piece. So if we counted the Depth as the Thickness, it'd have 40HP, if we counted the Width or Length as the Thickness, it'd have 4800HP.
The improved version of the block as created by Wall of Iron, would have either 160HP or 4800HP.
What counts for Thickness? Does the block have 40/160HP or 4800?
Does it depend on where the object is being struck from?

It's 3000gp to make a weapon from Adamantine.

Incorrect, a Dagger is 2gp, the price modifier for Adamantine is +3000gp. An Adamantine Dagger is 3002gp. Pickford was limited to 1000gp, hence the 2002gp over budget.
Budget was the reason I didn't have an issue with the weapon being a Dagger.

Yukitsu

2014-01-05, 07:43 PM

Threadnaught

2014-01-05, 08:17 PM

Why does anyone at all care that a group of under wealthed by several thousand GP random bandits can't demolish a nation that apparantly throws gigantic blocks of wealth for the taking on the ground? Just cart the blasted thing away in a cart with a thousand GP of mules.

And then have a smith burn it down into hammers and pickaxes.

Not a nation, Wizard. One guy.

You have brought up a wonderful question though, how much would a 10'x10'x1'' block of Adamantine weigh and how much would it be worth?

Yukitsu

2014-01-05, 08:40 PM

Not a nation, Wizard. One guy.

You have brought up a wonderful question though, how much would a 10'x10'x1'' block of Adamantine weigh and how much would it be worth?

A single wizard doesn't care at all to make teleportation circles, they can teleport trivially at that level. The only reason it comes up is that they can make them for a nation.

And it costs 6000 gp for the block a foot thick. You can make a lot of knives that way.

Lord Raziere

2014-01-05, 08:44 PM

my opinion of tippyverse is that its boring.

if everyone is gathered into big cities where super-powerful mages rule everyone and have set up a powerful teleportation network between said cities with vast wilds in between, and that most of the population of the world is concentrated in these cities, protected by that magic....

whats the point of adventuring? you already have a utopian society where most people live well. and if teleportation networks are set up in between these cities, they are not likely to go to war with each other since they obviously trust each other enough to have those networks set up, since the establishment of such teleportation networks make it an obvious vulnerability if someone from another city wants to destroy another city, they can pull off any plan they want then just teleport right back to another city and the trail goes cold there.

while if the death world wilds are as bad as it says, then everyone out there is either tough badass already and doesn't need protecting, or already dead.

that and the cities obviously won't far, because if wizards are really that powerful, then they will take on anything and win with their batman wizard builds, either that, or the enemy kills them, goes through the teleportation network, and destroys all of the other cities, either there is no threat, or all the cities are already destroyed, and we go back to normal sword-and-sorcery. Or Athas, whichever you choose.

Edit: but then again on further thought: Tippyverse basically already IS Athas. just less interesting. not sold on it.

Hiro Protagonest

2014-01-05, 09:06 PM

Adventuring in Tippyverse is like playing Monster Hunter, except without those first few hours where all you do is try out your weapon's moveset on weak herbivores and gather materials to make a half-decent suit of armor for combat. :smalltongue:

But really, you adventure in Tippyverse because you want to. You're still at risk if you can't pay the resurrection fee. The casters would probably be a UN of sorts, having formed their cities or kingdoms under different ideas even as they spoke with one another.

It's easy to say there are no stakes in Tippyverse. It's also what makes such a thing boring.

Emperor Tippy

2014-01-05, 09:13 PM

...where does this idea that there are no stakes in the TV come from?

Live in the wilds? Well then the best return to life magic you are pretty much ever going to see is Raise Dead, and that is quite rare.

Live in the cities and adventure in the wilds at lower levels? Well I hope you had enough money to afford your death insurance, and that is very expensive most of the time.

Live in the cities and adventure in the cities at lower levels? Well everyone and everything that is going to kill you (and lots of the stuff has a significant level advantage on you) has methods of soul trapping or soul destruction. Thinaun weapons can be spit out by Fabricate traps and they are not just common but practically standard.

Live in the cities and adventure in the cities at higher levels? Well then death is the least of your concerns. High level casters and the like can do far worse things to you than simply kill you.

Lord Raziere

2014-01-05, 09:16 PM

Its still Dark Sun.

but y'know.

without everything that made Dark Sun great and interesting.

Threadnaught

2014-01-05, 09:26 PM

A single wizard doesn't care at all to make teleportation circles, they can teleport trivially at that level. The only reason it comes up is that they can make them for a nation.

Nah.

The Wizard is creating the TC to get rich.

He may be able to teleport himself to any point in the world for little to no cost, but that's unlikely to earn much money for him unless he does something. And to continue making as much money as a couple of TCs (and resetting Fabricate Traps) would make him, he'd have to do dangerous things. Quite often.

For the price of 51000gp and 1340xp, the Wizard can set up two way travel between the location of their premises and three other cities, and have a resetting Fabricate trap for churning out Noble's Outfits. They hire 3 or more people, to go between these cities and sell their stock for the low price of 1cp and let's say a construct or two to activate the trap every round of every day. That's 143gp and 7sp per day for no additional effort.
The other Wizard, isn't guaranteed a single cp, they might get 1sp for a day's work, or if they put their life at risk they may kill a dragon or something, sure they may get a couple of thousand gp in a single haul, but adventuring is dangerous. Not that Tippy ever noticed.

Eventually other merchants catch onto what the original Tippyverse Wizard is doing and want a cut of the action, the second Wizard is having non of it, so it's up to the first one. He creates the traps for creating goods, but charges 10gp per day for their use. The other two cities want in on his city's fast travel, so he sets up some TCs linking the other three cities to each other, while setting up a toll, travel to and from his city is free. Then the Wizard who couldn't see the economical potential of mass Teleportation realizes that he could be loaded if he throws his lot in with one of those three cities without a Wizard, or possibly a fourth. He starts making much more than 1sp a day and there's no danger attached. At least nothing more dangerous than walking a city's streets alone at night.

Yukitsu

2014-01-05, 09:44 PM

Nah.

The Wizard is creating the TC to get rich.

Yeah. For a nation. If they're trying to control it, some other wizard will just undercut the sod by selling a circle/trap at cost.

Threadnaught

2014-01-06, 08:45 AM

Yeah. For a nation. If they're trying to control it, some other wizard will just undercut the sod by selling a circle/trap at cost.

How does making the Wizard rich benefit the nation?

The TV Wizard doesn't create the TC and resetting traps for the benefit of their nation, they do it so that they may sell these services. Citizens may benefit from these services, but that's what makes it so much easier to get the Wizard some cash.

And really, another Wizard would just sell the trap for 46700gp? I assume then they'd sell the first TC for 6000gp and the other five for 1000gp?
So that's 94 days for no profit? Unless the aim is to cripple the other Wizard's wealth I see no point to this.

After 365 days of 14400cp per day, minus 3sp per day. The Wizard can expect 5245050cp in return, the equivalent of 52450.5gp, if we take the xp cost into account, they're still in the red by 5249.5gp but they'd make that in 37 days, 402 days (496 if you count making the trap and TCs) from start to profit. If you want to argue that 3 people can't sell 4600 outfits in a day, or want to claim I'm assuming they're working 24 hours shifts, then let's get 6 more to back them up. They'd slow the cash flow a little, delaying profit by a total of 2 days. Yes the Wizard can profit within two years of initial investment. Just over a year after they're up and running.

Yukitsu

2014-01-06, 10:56 AM

How does making the Wizard rich benefit the nation?

The TV Wizard doesn't create the TC and resetting traps for the benefit of their nation, they do it so that they may sell these services. Citizens may benefit from these services, but that's what makes it so much easier to get the Wizard some cash.

And really, another Wizard would just sell the trap for 46700gp? I assume then they'd sell the first TC for 6000gp and the other five for 1000gp?
So that's 94 days for no profit? Unless the aim is to cripple the other Wizard's wealth I see no point to this.

After 365 days of 14400cp per day, minus 3sp per day. The Wizard can expect 5245050cp in return, the equivalent of 52450.5gp, if we take the xp cost into account, they're still in the red by 5249.5gp but they'd make that in 37 days, 402 days (496 if you count making the trap and TCs) from start to profit. If you want to argue that 3 people can't sell 4600 outfits in a day, or want to claim I'm assuming they're working 24 hours shifts, then let's get 6 more to back them up. They'd slow the cash flow a little, delaying profit by a total of 2 days. Yes the Wizard can profit within two years of initial investment. Just over a year after they're up and running.

Because if I see you doing this, I can make more money by crashing the market by selling the circles at a few thousand to merchant guilds and the local government. I'll skim a thousand or two off of each city, and you'll make 0 gp. Your calculation is based on an unfettered monopoly without any competition.

eggynack

2014-01-06, 12:53 PM

Because if I see you doing this, I can make more money by crashing the market by selling the circles at a few thousand to merchant guilds and the local government. I'll skim a thousand or two off of each city, and you'll make 0 gp. Your calculation is based on an unfettered monopoly without any competition.
And your calculation is based on an economy motivated only by spite, where the competitor wizard has a low desire to actually make money. Why crash the market when you could adopt a similar business model, and in so doing make really good money? Your pricing model is unlikely to yield very good returns, and it ultimately means very little that the incumbent wizard makes a lot or a little, as long as you are also making a lot. Price wars do exist, but they too are motivated largely by economic self interest, and the path you're describing here doesn't seem motivated in that fashion at all.

Threadnaught

2014-01-06, 12:56 PM

Because if I see you doing this, I can make more money by crashing the market by selling the circles at a few thousand to merchant guilds and the local government. I'll skim a thousand or two off of each city, and you'll make 0 gp. Your calculation is based on an unfettered monopoly without any competition.

Nah, there is competition. They're just undercut by 74gp 9sp and 9cp per unit. If you decide to, as a Wizard yourself, build TCs and Fabricate Traps, you may make a grand or two per Trap, but nowhere near the potential gains from keeping the Trap yourself and carving a niche to make your own monopoly. There will also be more effort per gp earned.

Face it, either you're out to wreck the other Wizard's wealth, or you'll go for something/somewhere different and make a fortune.

You don't crash the market or prevent a monopoly by doing this, instead this supports the creation of a monopoly. To crash the market, you'd have to develop all of these services and give everything away, for free. Like some form of hyper communism.

Yukitsu

2014-01-06, 02:15 PM

And your calculation is based on an economy motivated only by spite, where the competitor wizard has a low desire to actually make money. Why crash the market when you could adopt a similar business model, and in so doing make really good money? Your pricing model is unlikely to yield very good returns, and it ultimately means very little that the incumbent wizard makes a lot or a little, as long as you are also making a lot. Price wars do exist, but they too are motivated largely by economic self interest, and the path you're describing here doesn't seem motivated in that fashion at all.

Same as companies in real life unfortunately. Short term guaranteed gains are better than trying to go for a long term strategy that relies on no one going for short term guaranteed gains, because someone will. Tragedy of the commons and what not, where the tragedy is that most scenarios see companies pillage and burn rather than maximize the returns from the commons.

The other consideration is that micromanaging those personally for a few hundred a day is wasted potential, as you could easily be making more money by moving on to other ventures rather than earning a couple hundred gold a day as a spell caster, but to a guild, that represents a lot of money. Sunk time is the biggest reason I'd pillage and burn this concept rather than spending a long time to net a return.

eggynack

2014-01-06, 02:29 PM

Same as companies in real life unfortunately. Short term guaranteed gains are better than trying to go for a long term strategy that relies on no one going for short term guaranteed gains, because someone will. Tragedy of the commons and what not, where the tragedy is that most scenarios see companies pillage and burn rather than maximize the returns from the commons.
Folks very often use long term strategies, especially when those gains are this much greater than those of short term strategies. And the gains are a lot greater. Also, there's a pretty big amount of ground to cover, with each teleportation circle only going between two specific places, and it's not like seizing control of a region for long term purposes takes much longer than seizing it for short term purposes, so I don't think the tragedy of the commons applies. It's more like standard business competition than some sort of resource expenditure, especially when creating and controlling a circle is far from costless. Hell, with the note you made below, the price you're setting possibly wouldn't even account for what you're spending.

The other consideration is that micromanaging those personally for a few hundred a day is wasted potential, as you could easily be making more money by moving on to other ventures rather than earning a couple hundred gold a day as a spell caster, but to a guild, that represents a lot of money. Sunk time is the biggest reason I'd pillage and burn this concept rather than spending a long time to net a return.

That's not really much of a consideration. Wizards can create things to micromanage these for them, like golems and ice assassins, and they could even contract management out for a cut of the profits. There's a reason companies aren't controlled by a single guy who can run really fast. The wizard could even act as the head of your guild, and subordinate

WhamBamSam

2014-01-06, 03:13 PM

Folks very often use long term strategies, especially when those gains are this much greater than those of short term strategies. And the gains are a lot greater. Also, there's a pretty big amount of ground to cover, with each teleportation circle only going between two specific places, and it's not like seizing control of a region for long term purposes takes much longer than seizing it for short term purposes, so I don't think the tragedy of the commons applies. It's more like standard business competition than some sort of resource expenditure, especially when creating and controlling a circle is far from costless. Hell, with the note you made below, the price you're setting possibly wouldn't even account for what you're spending. Pretty much this. The economic viability of a TC and/or Fabricate Trap strategy could probably be shown in gory detail with fairly basic Game Theory, but come on. I only have a few more days of vacation left and would just as soon not write an academic paper. I do remember enough from an Econ class I took a year or so back to say that you'll end up with roughly competitive pricing with a surprisingly small number of competitors. (3 or 4 would do, and you'll get that number easily. Remember, you don't need a 17th level Wizard for this. A 12th level Warlock, possibly with a party around him, will do just fine.) If you have a two competitor monopoly, you'll end up with a few different models of the economic game, depending on whether they act without knowing the other's strategy or act in turns.

That's not really much of a consideration. Wizards can create things to micromanage these for them, like golems and ice assassins, and they could even contract management out for a cut of the profits. There's a reason companies aren't controlled by a single guy who can run really fast. The wizard could even act as the head of your guild, and subordinateAlso this. A Teleport Circle has a cost comparable to that of a Galley. Apart from all the protection the Wizard can just make himself, he can easily hire protection, just as a shipping company might hire mercenaries to guard against pirate attacks and sea monsters. It's certainly a more attractive offer for the mercenaries. "You mean I can commute from home to guard the damned thing instead of spending months at a time away from my family on a filthy stinking boat and I only have to fight the pirates, not the sea monsters AND you're going to pay me more because the profit margins are better on TC trade? Sign me up!"

I just don't see why trade wars over TC trading would prevent the eventual construction of a TC network any more than trade wars over sea trade would prevent the establishment of a shipping network.

eggynack

2014-01-06, 03:32 PM

Pretty much this. The economic viability of a TC and/or Fabricate Trap strategy could probably be shown in gory detail with fairly basic Game Theory, but come on. I only have a few more days of vacation left and would just as soon not write an academic paper. I do remember enough from an Econ class I took a year or so back to say that you'll end up with roughly competitive pricing with a surprisingly small number of competitors. (3 or 4 would do, and you'll get that number easily. Remember, you don't need a 17th level Wizard for this. A 12th level Warlock, possibly with a party around him, will do just fine.) If you have a two competitor monopoly, you'll end up with a few different models of the economic game, depending on whether they act without knowing the other's strategy or act in turns.
Actually, it'd probably be the opposite of the way you're stating. When you have a small number of competitors in a market, that's when the market turns to a monopolistic pricing model, or something similar. You'd probably get some degree of price setting/cooperation, depending on factors, and that small number of competitors would lead to more economic profit for them. The competitive model you're citing would be just that: competitive. That'd make undercutting of the competition a thing with greater likelihood, and there'd probably be a return to equilibrium. However, that equilibrium would also represent the long term profit model, rather than the version where wizards are practically giving it away. So, in short, a bunch of competitors would work for this, but just two or three would likely lead to it working even better for the wizards.

WhamBamSam

2014-01-06, 03:38 PM

Actually, it'd probably be the opposite of the way you're stating. When you have a small number of competitors in a market, that's when the market turns to a monopolistic pricing model, or something similar. You'd probably get some degree of price setting/cooperation, depending on factors, and that small number of competitors would lead to more economic profit for them. The competitive model you're citing would be just that: competitive. That'd make undercutting of the competition a thing with greater likelihood, and there'd probably be a return to equilibrium. However, that equilibrium would also represent the long term profit model, rather than the version where wizards are practically giving it away. So, in short, a bunch of competitors would work for this, but just two or three would likely lead to it working even better for the wizards.That's more or less what I meant, though I probably phrased what I was saying about monopolistic models poorly.

Yes, the only way that the 2-3 person monopolistic model works out worse than competitive equilibrium for the wizards is if they play some sort of Grim Trigger strategy based around nuking the other side's TCs rather than doing anything that actually makes them money. If they put the same amount of resources toward building/protecting their own TC networks they'll make more money, though exactly how much depends on resources available and how much they know about their competitors.

eggynack

2014-01-06, 03:47 PM

That's more or less what I meant, though I probably phrased what I was saying about monopolistic models poorly.

Yes, the only way that the 2-3 person monopolistic model works out worse than competitive equilibrium for the wizards is if they play some sort of Grim Trigger strategy based around nuking the other side's TCs rather than doing anything that actually makes them money. If they put the same amount of resources toward building/protecting their own TC networks they'll make more money, though exactly how much depends on resources available and how much they know about their competitors.
Fair enough. The important thing is that I don't think there's a situation that leads to the crazy undercutting plan. If there is such a one time sale plan that can actually make viable earnings, then I would expect there to be a bunch of wizards using that strategy, and there would thus be a TC network anyway. A plan where you raze the market for little gain makes little sense.

Pickford

2014-01-06, 04:20 PM

99 Vials, one of which is thrown. 8gp for the Mule. Which leaves 2gp spare.
Congratulations, you may have found a cost effective way to destroy TCs in the early stages of the Tippyverse. As long as you're able to procure all the necessary Acid.

Why thank you :)

It occurs to me that Craft (Alchemy) allows creation of acid at 1/3 the price (minimum check result is 15 x 15 or 225, allowing for the creation of at least 2.25 vials of acid per week of work per craftsman) Thus 45 craftsmen could produce up to the hundred vials in a single week (assuming the minimum check needed, and no higher, was made by every person).

Adamantine adds 3000gp to the price of a Weapon, a Dagger costs 2gp, the actual price of an Adamantine Dagger is 3002gp. The reason I quoted 2002gp, is because that is how much above the limit you tried to spend.

As for who is paying for the TC, the 17th level Wizard in charge of the new trade enterprise. They're paying 1000gp and 1000xp to be exact.
Wall of Iron, cut out the base for the TC and maybe keep the rest as spare "Adamantine", Polymorph Any Object it into Adamantine +9 is permanent, congrats, free Adamantine. Cast Teleportation Circle (1000gp) on the Adamantine, Gate (1000xp) in a Solar, get it to make the TC Permanent using it's 3/day Permanency SLAs and use it's 1/day Wish SLA for a Scroll of Gate to avoid having to pay all that xp cost again.
And according to the Wall of Iron Spell, the wall would be 4'' thick. Of course you'd need to cut it down into 10'x5'x4'' chunks and forge two of them together to make a 10'x10'x4'' block, but hey, who said creating a permanent TC would be cheap?

Okay, maybe the 1000xp would be worth 5000gp if the Wizard were hired, but the Tippyverse came about because of an entrepreneurial Wizard, so the Wizard would be self employed and the 1000xp is assumed to be their own time and effort.

Ah, ok on the cast of the dagger.

I like the spirit of the Wizard, but then it's not even a full guild, but instead one person tangoing with a guild?

Also, gating in a Solar isn't guaranteed to work. 1) Deities (which Solars are the attendants of) can prevent the opening of a Gate in their presence/on their plane. 2) It's a complicated service imo (multi-step), which requires payment. What is the wizard offering? 3) Assuming 1 and 2 can be gotten around, what is stopping the Solar (and his kin) from seeking revenge on this Wizard who's going around kidnapping Solars?

Lastly on the Gate issue: How is a Wizard casting Gate? There's nobody above 17th level.

Then the Wizard who couldn't see the economical potential of mass Teleportation realizes that he could be loaded if he throws his lot in with one of those three cities without a Wizard, or possibly a fourth. He starts making much more than 1sp a day and there's no danger attached. At least nothing more dangerous than walking a city's streets alone at night.

Sure, until the Assassins start showing up to shut down the competition.

I do not recall where it is, but one of the books mentions that a Wizard can find employment for 500gp a month (or something like that) as a lord's advisor. That sounded pretty cushy.

Bogardan_Mage

2014-01-06, 04:20 PM

Yeah. For a nation. If they're trying to control it, some other wizard will just undercut the sod by selling a circle/trap at cost.
Doesn't that answer your own question? Wizard A makes circle, other wizards make their own circle to undercut Wizard A, soon there are many circles at minimum cost.

Assuming all wizards have perfect knowledge and are rational is not good enough when the balance is that easy to break. It only needs to happen eventually, and then the bell can't be unrung.

WhamBamSam

2014-01-06, 04:29 PM

Fair enough. The important thing is that I don't think there's a situation that leads to the crazy undercutting plan. If there is such a one time sale plan that can actually make viable earnings, then I would expect there to be a bunch of wizards using that strategy, and there would thus be a TC network anyway. A plan where you raze the market for little gain makes little sense.Yes. Putting resources into razing the market instead of competing in it or just not participating is almost certainly a strictly dominated strategy.

You can also prove that the crazy undercutting strategy doesn't happen, and determine exactly where it's most profitable for undercutting to stop for all parties involved. If you have a monopolistic model, it should be pricier than a competitive model.

That's more or less what I've been getting at, though I haven't been explaining myself well.

Endarire

2014-01-06, 06:28 PM

In my setting, I plan to use something akin to a Tippyverse, run by the ghostly Emperor Tiperius.

Emperor Tippy

2014-01-06, 07:33 PM

In my setting, I plan to use something akin to a Tippyverse, run by the ghostly Emperor Tiperius.

And in the end it turns out he was secretly just running persistent Ghost Form on his Astral Projection while hanging out in his private demiplane with all of the hookers and blow and only pretending to be dead. :smalltongue:

Brookshw

2014-01-06, 07:39 PM

And in the end it turns out he was secretly just running persistent Ghost Form on his Astral Projection while hanging out in his private demiplane with all of the hookers and blow and only pretending to be dead. :smalltongue:

Or preparing to lift the city up onto a spelljammer and fly off this backwater **** planet to go find a better place to live. Honestly I don't get why any civilization would stay here if they have (and they do) the means to leave. Staying doesn't fly if you're looking for internal consistency.

Yukitsu

2014-01-06, 07:43 PM

Folks very often use long term strategies, especially when those gains are this much greater than those of short term strategies. And the gains are a lot greater. Also, there's a pretty big amount of ground to cover, with each teleportation circle only going between two specific places, and it's not like seizing control of a region for long term purposes takes much longer than seizing it for short term purposes, so I don't think the tragedy of the commons applies. It's more like standard business competition than some sort of resource expenditure, especially when creating and controlling a circle is far from costless. Hell, with the note you made below, the price you're setting possibly wouldn't even account for what you're spending.

In this case, I'm not interested in controlling the TC, that falls in line with the responsibility of the consumer. However, by selling TCs rather than TC useage, the number of people who require a TC of either variety drops rather dramatically and rather quickly, whether you're selling to the government, private owners or guilds. It can essentially ruin the market for it.

The actual cost of setting this up isn't terribly high, simply taking the standard spell service fee as per normal is still over ten thousand in profit per day, assuming you can make 4 circles every day. After every city is set up in that manner, it is far more profitable working on other projects or other cities rather than trying to manage toll fees. What's more, that money can be invested (for example in fabricate traps if you wanted to), granting greater returns over the time span where you're trying to change the cost into a profit.

That's not really much of a consideration. Wizards can create things to micromanage these for them, like golems and ice assassins, and they could even contract management out for a cut of the profits. There's a reason companies aren't controlled by a single guy who can run really fast. The wizard could even act as the head of your guild, and subordinate

Ice assassins or golems add decades to the rate at which you see a return. Creating or owning a corporation would be an effective means, although with the money granted by instead selling more circles, you're going to end up likely not caring overmuch about the toll money by contrast.

Essentially, ironically, there is a Nash equilibrium in this case that more supports what I would do than what you're doing. If I were to sell circles at normal spell service costs to say, 5 big guilds in a large city, I could make about 10 thousand in a day, no problem. The other wizards, rather than making a hundred or so in a day spend their time doing something more valuable, and the guilds have the most economically sustainable means of using a TC which doesn't rely on a steady price for a service which will undoubtably see increases in price as demand and population density grow. A company unlike a wizard will probably make all of their money for the entire foreseeable future doing the exact some thing over and over, so anything that does provide steady gains and increases to that venture makes sense. For the wizard however, that assumption breaks down.

Threadnaught

2014-01-06, 08:49 PM

Why thank you :)

Credit where it's due.

Also, gating in a Solar isn't guaranteed to work. 1) Deities (which Solars are the attendants of) can prevent the opening of a Gate in their presence/on their plane. 2) It's a complicated service imo (multi-step), which requires payment. What is the wizard offering? 3) Assuming 1 and 2 can be gotten around, what is stopping the Solar (and his kin) from seeking revenge on this Wizard who's going around kidnapping Solars?

Deities? They don't exist in the Tippyverse and most settings they're not active due to a cold war between deities.

As for the Solars themselves, Gate is Calling for the purpose of getting a creature, for a Solar to go to the Wizard they answer an invitation. It's the same reason people who ignore surveyors and avoid them in the street, don't all mass together and attack them in revenge for the people who do stop. It's their choice to stop and answer questions.
Though there is the odd one who you want to punch in the face anyway.

Lastly on the Gate issue: How is a Wizard casting Gate? There's nobody above 17th level.

They hail from a Planar Metropolis.

Sure, until the Assassins start showing up to shut down the competition.

Irrelevant. Read Slipperychicken (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/member.php?u=55403)'s signature quote for all the nonspecific details I can't be bothered to give. For any additional, more specific information that I'm even less likely to give, ask Emperor Win.

I do not recall where it is, but one of the books mentions that a Wizard can find employment for 500gp a month (or something like that) as a lord's advisor. That sounded pretty cushy.

500gp a month? Nice, how does it compare to 3200gp per month?

Know what's not quite as useful as Magic, but useful for dealing with Assassins anyway? Money. Someone who is raking in the above amount is going to be well protected. They're going to be noticed, not just by competitors and their hired Assassins, but also by the governing body of whatever city they're in. An Intelligent Wizard making over 6x what a lord's advisor makes, would know it pays to get people of influence in their pocket.
A bung 100gp gift here, a favour there. In fact, forget doing favours, Temporal Stasis on the city's leadership and use one of the Scrolls of Gate to fetch in an Efreeti Wish for a Scroll of Gate, Wish and Ice Assassin (of individual members of the city's leadership) with it's 3/day Wish SLA. Probably use the Scrolls of Wish to get them somewhere they're unlikely to be found before trapping them.

Unsure how to get the Ice Assassins where they're needed without getting a second Wish scroll per person. At least not without you using resetting Dimensional Lock traps to shoot down the option of Teleportation.

Same as companies in real life unfortunately. Short term guaranteed gains are better than trying to go for a long term strategy that relies on no one going for short term guaranteed gains, because someone will. Tragedy of the commons and what not, where the tragedy is that most scenarios see companies pillage and burn rather than maximize the returns from the commons.

When it comes to business, you'll find that even with short term gains and long term losses, the heads of successful companies value long term gains enough to make a short term loss.
There have been a few businesses in some country that shift around any profits they make in some country so they go back into the business to pay for any expansion, wages and other expenses. So effectively any profits they make don't count as profit, which, due to the way some country's taxes work, means they don't have to pay tax. Of course the public were outraged by this and began boycotting these franchises, which lead to a portion of the profits being paid as tax, in order to appease the public and stop the boycott.

I don't remember what year this happened, what country it happened in or what companies were involved. I uh... A friend told me about it.

The other consideration is that micromanaging those personally for a few hundred a day is wasted potential, as you could easily be making more money by moving on to other ventures rather than earning a couple hundred gold a day as a spell caster, but to a guild, that represents a lot of money. Sunk time is the biggest reason I'd pillage and burn this concept rather than spending a long time to net a return.

90 days to create the Fabricate trap, 1 day per two TCs after the first and an additional day for the first. 94 days to invest in the enterprise, 402 days thereafter to turn a profit from the Fabricate trap, nine employees, the six TCs, Mind Raped Ice Assassins of yourself (so they no longer want to kill you, but can manage the company), the Temporal Stasis locked bodies of your city's leadership and the Mind Raped Ice Assassins of them.
I may have left out the premises where all this is based, buy somewhere cheap that would cost a maximum of 1000gp you make that investment back in a week. Once profit finally starts coming in, go buy a Galley and place it on the roof of the main governing structure, trick it out with all the cool stuff. Don't forget to turn it into Obdurium, harden it and keep a few outgoing TCs inside.
What's better than one Galley? Three Galleys, the upside down one in the middle is where production happens and where important staff stay. Of the upright Galleys, the top one is where the inbound TCs lead and where the money is stored, the bottom is where the outbound TCs are and where the product falls each time the Fabricate trap is activated. At 114000gp it's massively expensive but it looks so cool, and isn't that important?

Also consider that it's over a hundred gp per day. Commoners/average people get 1sp per day. Going by minimum wage in the UK, which is about £48 per day in a five day forty hour week.
143gp and 1sp per day works out at £69,088 per day in the UK in the real world. Why would anyone want to earn that amount each and every day of their lives in exchange for £2,880,000 and £432 per day thereafter?

In this case, I'm not interested in controlling the TC, that falls in line with the responsibility of the consumer. However, by selling TCs rather than TC useage, the number of people who require a TC of either variety drops rather dramatically and rather quickly, whether you're selling to the government, private owners or guilds. It can essentially ruin the market for it.

If the Wizard were to connect the cities they were selling to, to eachother, rather than just wherever they have operating facilities. Then yes, I'd charge for their use.
If they lead to cities where I do produce stock, I won't charge for their use. People who use these ones will probably end up paying me anyway, since I'd effectively control the economy.

Yukitsu

2014-01-06, 09:05 PM

When it comes to business, you'll find that even with short term gains and long term losses, the heads of successful companies value long term gains enough to make a short term loss.
There have been a few businesses in some country that shift around any profits they make in some country so they go back into the business to pay for any expansion, wages and other expenses. So effectively any profits they make don't count as profit, which, due to the way some country's taxes work, means they don't have to pay tax. Of course the public were outraged by this and began boycotting these franchises, which lead to a portion of the profits being paid as tax, in order to appease the public and stop the boycott.

I don't think this theoretical wizard is paying taxes, and I don't think that they are considering overhead, and they aren't making optimal returns by taking a steady income from tolls, so the main reasons to actually wait for long term returns kind of doesn't exist here.

90 days to create the Fabricate trap, 1 day per two TCs after the first and an additional day for the first. 94 days to invest in the enterprise, 402 days thereafter to turn a profit from the Fabricate trap, nine employees, the six TCs, Mind Raped Ice Assassins of yourself (so they no longer want to kill you, but can manage the company), the Temporal Stasis locked bodies of your city's leadership and the Mind Raped Ice Assassins of them.
I may have left out the premises where all this is based, buy somewhere cheap that would cost a maximum of 1000gp you make that investment back in a week. Once profit finally starts coming in, go buy a Galley and place it on the roof of the main governing structure, trick it out with all the cool stuff. Don't forget to turn it into Obdurium, harden it and keep a few outgoing TCs inside.
What's better than one Galley? Three Galleys, the upside down one in the middle is where production happens and where important staff stay. Of the upright Galleys, the top one is where the inbound TCs lead and where the money is stored, the bottom is where the outbound TCs are and where the product falls each time the Fabricate trap is activated. At 114000gp it's massively expensive but it looks so cool, and isn't that important?

I'll agree they should monopolize the fabricate traps as long as they can, but not the teleportation circles, which is what I'm criticizing. They won't be protecting the teleportation circle at all, that will be the city it's housed in.

Also consider that it's over a hundred gp per day. Commoners/average people get 1sp per day. Going by minimum wage in the UK, which is about £48 per day in a five day forty hour week.
143gp and 1sp per day works out at £69,088 per day in the UK in the real world. Why would anyone want to earn that amount each and every day of their lives in exchange for £2,880,000 and £432 per day thereafter?

For one, a serf got paid less than modern day minimum wage, a silver piece has the buying power of about 2-4 dollars. For another, wizards can make rather more than several thousand GP in a day. Why would they care at all that they could make the real world equivalent to several thousand when they could instead spend all of their time selling circles to make millions every day?

Threadnaught

2014-01-06, 09:39 PM

For another, wizards can make rather more than several thousand GP in a day. Why would they care at all that they could make the real world equivalent to several thousand when they could instead spend all of their time selling circles to make millions every day?

Okay, think about it this way. You can spend half a million to work for an hour and get £1,000,000, per day.

Or you can spend nearly £3 million, to work for 8 hours over the course of 90 days and a further 1 hour over the next four days, with an additional 10 minutes on the first and fourth, and an additional 20 minutes on the second and third. Then go fishing.

Assuming both put in the same amount of effort, over the course of five years the person making the TCs and just selling them has made £60,840,000 while the guy who created the TCs and built a business around a Fabricate Trap has made £123,205,600. This is accounting for listed expenses.
95 hours of effort have gone into either enterprise. One stops at the amount of profit earned when you stop working. The other just keeps on going.

WhamBamSam

2014-01-06, 09:48 PM

Does this actually matter? We're ending up with a TC network either way, are we not?

Tolls should be a viable business model for the Wizard though. Again, the TC cost is comparable to that of a galley, and it's vastly more efficient for trading and easier to defend than a ship at sea. The wizard doesn't need to be actively involved. He can behave as the investor class are wont to do; invest in the stock (the TC), hire people to manage it for him (the mercenaries defending it, whoever else), and let it grow over time while he does something else. He has the capital and personal power to make investment for a TC operation which is profitable without his personal involvement, so he should be willing to play the long game some of the time.

There's also more of a continuum than a dichotomy between selling the TC and making profit through tolls. The wizard might cut a deal with a guild wherein they manage the TC in exchange for some percentage of the profit. There might also or instead be a price for them to pay up front. It'll vary from case to case, and you could probably do little game theory problems to determine the exact deal for each TC in the network based on all its unique factors if you were so inclined, but the only effect it has on the PCs interacting with that network is what titles the various grunts and middle management types they interact with go by. They're still in a Tippyverse.

Yukitsu

2014-01-06, 10:11 PM

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^I didn't bring up this tangent to say that the network wouldn't be made, I argue that it's not indestructible, or defended personally by the wizard who has no stakes in maintaining it.

Okay, think about it this way. You can spend half a million to work for an hour and get £1,000,000, per day.

Or you can spend nearly £3 million, to work for 8 hours over the course of 90 days and a further 1 hour over the next four days, with an additional 10 minutes on the first and fourth, and an additional 20 minutes on the second and third. Then go fishing.

Assuming both put in the same amount of effort, over the course of five years the person making the TCs and just selling them has made £60,840,000 while the guy who created the TCs and built a business around a Fabricate Trap has made £123,205,600. This is accounting for listed expenses.
95 hours of effort have gone into either enterprise. One stops at the amount of profit earned when you stop working. The other just keeps on going.

You only have to work about an hour a day to make circles, make about 100 times the value per day, and only need to stop when you're completely out of cities. Personally finding 144,000 sock customers takes a little longer.

Edit: And if you really want to, you can then make a lot of money selling stuff from fabricate traps that you didn't sell.

WhamBamSam

2014-01-07, 12:54 AM

^^^^^^^^^^^^^^I didn't bring up this tangent to say that the network wouldn't be made, I argue that it's not indestructible, or defended personally by the wizard who has no stakes in maintaining it.Certainly. Tippyverse campaign settings are still campaign settings and adventurers with proper planning and execution could have enough effect on the trade network, either protecting or hampering it, to justify their pay grade. They just can't drastically alter the setting without a whole lot of power and exceptional cleverness.

Mass Teleportation is still a much easier and much safer investment than shipping. A TC network and hence a Tippyverse are pretty much unavoidable.

TuggyNE

2014-01-07, 02:26 AM

Mass Teleportation is still a much easier and much safer investment than shipping. A TC network and hence a Tippyverse are pretty much unavoidable.

In the long term, though given the history of most campaign settings it is difficult to understand why the TC network hasn't yet happened in them. A setting in which magic has only expanded to high-level spells comparatively recently (say, if the first 8th-level spell was researched and cast 493 years before) has an easier time of this, but FR, Greyhawk, and even Eberron can't get off quite so easily.

Yukitsu

2014-01-07, 02:40 AM

In the long term, though given the history of most campaign settings it is difficult to understand why the TC network hasn't yet happened in them. A setting in which magic has only expanded to high-level spells comparatively recently (say, if the first 8th-level spell was researched and cast 493 years before) has an easier time of this, but FR, Greyhawk, and even Eberron can't get off quite so easily.

Eberron, for the most part they have to use low level cheats to get the tech they have, but most effects can apparantly be made by large amounts of lower level characters. They also likely don't feel the need, since they have very safe airship traffic and the fast and comfortable lightning rail. In Faerun, the elves had one, but abandoned it when it all sort of exploded, plus last I recall, their deity of magic eradicated people who tried to use loopholes. Portals seem completely irrelevant in spelljammer, since the distances travelled require more than TCs, and Greyhawk is just kind of a silly setting. The nation I ended up founding had one, but it was irrelevant by contrast to a national system of education and the government mana pool, and it was cheaper to take the rail system.

Edit: Oh, and Planescape doesn't really need it, as if you really wanted to do something like that, you'd live near a hub connected to the city of doors.

So realistically, Greyhawk, which doesn't have it because I don't think it really aspires to internal consistency.

TuggyNE

2014-01-07, 03:10 AM

In Faerun, the elves had one, but abandoned it when it all sort of exploded, plus last I recall, their deity of magic eradicated people who tried to use loopholes.

Loopholes like … permanent TCs? :smallconfused: Also, that was thousands of years ago.

Edit: Oh, and Planescape doesn't really need it, as if you really wanted to do something like that, you'd live near a hub connected to the city of doors.

Sigil's portals, while they do reach essentially everywhere, can be annoying to navigate with substantial quantities of goods, so the market for TCs would not be completely non-existent. It might take longer to establish, though.

So realistically, Greyhawk, which doesn't have it because I don't think it really aspires to internal consistency.

Concession accepted.

Yukitsu

2014-01-07, 03:20 AM

Loopholes like … permanent TCs? :smallconfused: Also, that was thousands of years ago.

No, the rest that comes up from that mostly, like infinite wish traps etc. Other than that, most groups have become so paranoid about that sort of magic that they don't really trust that sort of thing last I recall.

Edit: And it may be seriously infeasible to rely on any sort of trade route that requires Mystra to be alive.

Sigil's portals, while they do reach essentially everywhere, can be annoying to navigate with substantial quantities of goods, so the market for TCs would not be completely non-existent. It might take longer to establish, though.

Arguably, it's still 90% what you could consider a teleportation circle network. It simply hasn't reached the same conclusion of what this would do for society. At any rate, the city is definitely connected to every major hub that you would want it to.

Concession accepted.

Another reason not to play Greyhawk. :smallyuk:

That and I always said the teleportation circles was logical, I just think their social implication is dramatically overstated.

Threadnaught

2014-01-07, 09:14 PM

You only have to work about an hour a day to make circles, make about 100 times the value per day, and only need to stop when you're completely out of cities. Personally finding 144,000 sock customers takes a little longer.

One hour to prepare the casting of Teleportation Circle, Ten Minute Casting time. You mustn't forget the Casting time. It adds up and if it counts as effort for the Wizard with the Fabricate trap, then it should count as effort for yours. It's only fair.
As for finding people to buy 14400 items per day, or 144000 per 10 days, Tippy has stated that it's less time consuming and quite cost effective for people to stop washing clothes and just buy new ones.

And if you really want to, you can then make a lot of money selling stuff from fabricate traps that you didn't sell.

No. Stop changing the parameters for the comparison.
Same amount of effort, 725 hours total work over 5 years. It takes 720 hours spread out over 90 days to make the Fabricate trap, there are cheaper options that don't take as much time, and more expensive options that take longer. The one we're using takes 90 days to make and the item it creates has a normal retail value of 75gp.

Two 9th level Spells per day, the one from just being a Wizard and the Bonus Spell. One such 9th level Spell is Gate on day 1 of casting TCs. After which they need not prepare it again. One hour and twenty minutes per day after the first, having already burned an hour and ten minutes. I won't count any subsequent Gates from the Scrolls you Wish for, I'm not counting the one minute and twelve seconds it takes for my Wizard who built the Fabricate trap, so in the spirit of fairness, I won't add up the 200 or so rounds of casting Gate, using the Solar's Permanency SLA and using the Solar's Wish SLA.
Which amounts to at least 20 minutes. We're just not counting it.

Also any money I decide to make off TCs that aren't directly linked to any of my strongholds, will be to encourage people to take the free travel to and from my strongholds. Because there, they're likely to spend their money on me anyway and that's what it's all about, making people pay me at every opportunity.

I could easily make a loss on TCs, the real money is in the traps. As long as I have at least a small network of TCs, it shouldn't matter how much I decide to charge for their use, I could charge nothing and the Fabricate traps would still rake in at least 144gp per day, subject to item price.
Yes, taxes, it's not like a business has any means of avoiding those, even one run by a Wizard capable of 9th level casting. There are ways around them, alternatively it takes a little longer for me to make a profit if I do end up paying them. I don't see your problem.
Now excuse me while I challenge Emperor Win to a duel, him with a 20th level Wizard build (pick one), me with a 1st level Commoner. And I find a way to Tippy. Something a little less stressful than having to repeat myself while being careful to reorder my words so it looks like I typed something completely different.

Yukitsu

2014-01-07, 10:37 PM

One hour to prepare the casting of Teleportation Circle, Ten Minute Casting time. You mustn't forget the Casting time. It adds up and if it counts as effort for the Wizard with the Fabricate trap, then it should count as effort for yours. It's only fair.
As for finding people to buy 14400 items per day, or 144000 per 10 days, Tippy has stated that it's less time consuming and quite cost effective for people to stop washing clothes and just buy new ones.

Not really, as a single person needs to have one circle per group they want to trade with. A teleportation circle leads to a place, they don't let you teleport to anywhere within a radius of that circle. That means a prominent guild or trade city would need to get several to have an established trade network.

A point where the idea that it becomes cheaper to buy new socks rather than wash them, that means that marginal returns become even smaller. That's fine, but it's still representing opportunity cost. A wizard could make money at a higher rate doing nearly everything else. A sock manufacturing company couldn't.

No. Stop changing the parameters for the comparison.

No, because I'm talking about who would own the teleportation circles. I don't care who owns the fabricate traps.

Two 9th level Spells per day, the one from just being a Wizard and the Bonus Spell. One such 9th level Spell is Gate on day 1 of casting TCs. After which they need not prepare it again. One hour and twenty minutes per day after the first, having already burned an hour and ten minutes. I won't count any subsequent Gates from the Scrolls you Wish for, I'm not counting the one minute and twelve seconds it takes for my Wizard who built the Fabricate trap, so in the spirit of fairness, I won't add up the 200 or so rounds of casting Gate, using the Solar's Permanency SLA and using the Solar's Wish SLA.
Which amounts to at least 20 minutes. We're just not counting it.

Gating a solar for that costs as much EXP as the permanency, just use a thought bottle and rod of rapid spell (or three). 4 castings could be done in 8 minutes.

Also any money I decide to make off TCs that aren't directly linked to any of my strongholds, will be to encourage people to take the free travel to and from my strongholds. Because there, they're likely to spend their money on me anyway and that's what it's all about, making people pay me at every opportunity.

I could easily make a loss on TCs, the real money is in the traps. As long as I have at least a small network of TCs, it shouldn't matter how much I decide to charge for their use, I could charge nothing and the Fabricate traps would still rake in at least 144gp per day, subject to item price.
Yes, taxes, it's not like a business has any means of avoiding those, even one run by a Wizard capable of 9th level casting. There are ways around them, alternatively it takes a little longer for me to make a profit if I do end up paying them. I don't see your problem.
Now excuse me while I challenge Emperor Win to a duel, him with a 20th level Wizard build (pick one), me with a 1st level Commoner. And I find a way to Tippy. Something a little less stressful than having to repeat myself while being careful to reorder my words so it looks like I typed something completely different.

I'm not at all sure what you're talking about here. The money is paying you at a rate of 144 gp every day according to you. That's with it going X amount of time, and you trading them for X amount of time. Instead of doing that, you can spend the same amount of time doing something else, such as just about anything else. Like sitting in some town and flooding it with cheap iron. That's more profitable for example.

And even if you absolutely, positively had to trade in the stuff yourself, you aren't even going to be using the teleportation trap network anyway, as you can simply teleport to wherever it is you're trying to trade.

Pickford

2014-01-07, 11:20 PM

Credit where it's due.

Deities? They don't exist in the Tippyverse and most settings they're not active due to a cold war between deities.

They do exist, Tippy said they just don't interfere. Keeping a Solar from getting involved in the affairs of Mortals would be in line with that noninterference.

As for the Solars themselves, Gate is Calling for the purpose of getting a creature, for a Solar to go to the Wizard they answer an invitation. It's the same reason people who ignore surveyors and avoid them in the street, don't all mass together and attack them in revenge for the people who do stop. It's their choice to stop and answer questions.
Though there is the odd one who you want to punch in the face anyway.

Gate doesn't provide a choice, except for creatures too powerful to be controlled.

They hail from a Planar Metropolis.

How many of those exist? If we're looking at, maybe 5 in the entire universe then it's more likely, than not, that no TC could ever get off the ground before the maker was killed and the TCs were dismantled.

Irrelevant. Read Slipperychicken (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/member.php?u=55403)'s signature quote for all the nonspecific details I can't be bothered to give. For any additional, more specific information that I'm even less likely to give, ask Emperor Win.

1 casting of Disjunction followed by a silence and arcane lock. The wizard has no defenses and no mode of escape. Once a grapple is established they are entirely helpless, regardless of level. Beyond that, assassins could use indirect methods (e.g. poison). The method could be tailored to whatever capabilities the wizard has.

Know what's not quite as useful as Magic, but useful for dealing with Assassins anyway? Money. Someone who is raking in the above amount is going to be well protected. They're going to be noticed, not just by competitors and their hired Assassins, but also by the governing body of whatever city they're in. An Intelligent Wizard making over 6x what a lord's advisor makes, would know it pays to get people of influence in their pocket.
A bung 100gp gift here, a favour there. In fact, forget doing favours, Temporal Stasis on the city's leadership and use one of the Scrolls of Gate to fetch in an Efreeti Wish for a Scroll of Gate, Wish and Ice Assassin (of individual members of the city's leadership) with it's 3/day Wish SLA. Probably use the Scrolls of Wish to get them somewhere they're unlikely to be found before trapping them.

Even if the 17th+ level wizard exists they're only in a planar metropolis. The Tippyverse takes place on the Material Plane, where they aren't. (This requires a plane shift to reach, which itself requires a unique focus). And even if they were, they'd be possibly the highest priority enemy of the state for anyone they weren't working for.

There are also level 18 clerics and level 20 rogues available in the metropolis, which are capable of taking out the Wizard. A Cleric of Fharlagn using a Miracle to banish the Wizard to another plane of existence, for example.

Gazzien

2014-01-08, 12:54 AM

1 casting of Disjunction followed by a silence and arcane lock. The wizard has no defenses and no mode of escape. Once a grapple is established they are entirely helpless, regardless of level. Beyond that, assassins could use indirect methods (e.g. poison). The method could be tailored to whatever capabilities the wizard has.

It's cute that you think you can /land/ a Disjunction on a high-level (optimized) Wizard. And if you're not immune to poison / disease / damn close to anything, you're doing it wrong. I believe the current method is fusing with an Ice Assassin Aleax of yourself, or something.

I don't personally know enough about the rest of the Tippyverse to comment.

Brookshw

2014-01-08, 06:41 AM

It's cute that you think you can /land/ a Disjunction on a high-level (optimized) Wizard. And if you're not immune to poison / disease / damn close to anything, you're doing it wrong. I believe the current method is fusing with an Ice Assassin Aleax of yourself, or something.

I don't personally know enough about the rest of the Tippyverse to comment.

You raise an interesting though unrelated question.

Tippy: with the gods being silent do you have Aleaxes (Aleaxi?) in your setting? Refluffed?

Threadnaught

2014-01-08, 07:30 AM

They do exist, Tippy said they just don't interfere. Keeping a Solar from getting involved in the affairs of Mortals would be in line with that noninterference.

Okay, it has been a while since I last read the thread in full. That doesn't stop what the deities themselves are doing, from being interference though.
If they're going to protect their Solars from Gate, what's to stop them from locking down dead adventurers by stopping any Raise Dead and Resurrection Spells?

Gate doesn't provide a choice, except for creatures too powerful to be controlled.

Nope, Gate provides a choice, you go through and give the Wizard what they want, or you let someone else do it. I didn't say it was much of a choice, but the choice is definitely there.

How many of those exist? If we're looking at, maybe 5 in the entire universe then it's more likely, than not, that no TC could ever get off the ground before the maker was killed and the TCs were dismantled.

Really? The Wizard is 17th level, capable of casting two 9th level Spells per day, which allows for one TC on the first day and two every day afterward.
Here's how I see it happening.

Wizard buys house with two or three spare rooms to put his materials into.
Wizard brings in any cool constructs he already has.
Wizard creates Fabricate Trap.
Wizard creates Permanent TC to other city.
Wizard creates Permanent TC to a third city and one from the second to the first. And connects all cities he plans to trade with, to and from his main city
Wizard creates Ice Assassins of self to run the organization. Being sure to Mind Rape them so they don't kill him in his sleep. If they have no cool constructs, they create more Ice Assassins to activate the trap and possibly to sell the merchandise.
Wizard creates Ice Assassins of any member of any governing body he has to deal with, Wishes their real versions into an area where they can be dealt with, Temporally Locks the real versions and Wishes the Ice Assassins to where the real versions were.
Wizard creates and sends a bunch of Ice Assassins to watch over each TC to make sure they don't lose their investment.

1 casting of Disjunction followed by a silence and arcane lock. The wizard has no defenses and no mode of escape. Once a grapple is established they are entirely helpless, regardless of level. Beyond that, assassins could use indirect methods (e.g. poison). The method could be tailored to whatever capabilities the wizard has.

No.

Three Spells, Arcane Lock (which is for doors) is on the Sorcerer/Wizard list. So is what I assume to be the Spell you meant, Dimensional Lock, 8th level. I can't find it on the Cleric's Spell list or in any Domain, on the SRD or in the SpC.
What you're doing here is having another 17th level Wizard use Disjunction, Dimensional Lock and Wish (Silence) against another Wizard of the same level. There are what, 5 of them in the universe?
So obviously the Wizard casting the three Spells and attempting to kill my Wizard is trying to kill everything that's a threat to him so he can rule the universe. Lemme, right after you hit me with Disjunction (because I get to do stuff too in the 24 seconds you need), Greater Teleport/Plane Shift to where a whole bunch of my Ice Assassins are, give them the news that one of the five is having "ideas" and the other three need to be warned. Send the Ice Assassins away with orders to protect the Wizards from any attack unless it's by me and watch your Wizard burn, or if you follow me using Replicate Casting, I'll have my Ice Assassins beat you down to 0HP in an AMF, Disjunction your Spells and Mind Rape you into being my servant forever.
Really, I'm just trying to make a bit of money and build my holiday home, and you're trying to kill me? That's just bad manners, you could at least call beforehand and leave a note carved into a dead Demon.

Even if the 17th+ level wizard exists they're only in a planar metropolis. The Tippyverse takes place on the Material Plane, where they aren't. (This requires a plane shift to reach, which itself requires a unique focus). And even if they were, they'd be possibly the highest priority enemy of the state for anyone they weren't working for.

I dunno, the Wizard heard of the Material Plane and tagged along with a group of lower level adventurers to make their fortune on the adventurers' home plane, the MP. There we go, TC network and a factory earning money for no effort on the Wizard's part. He can focus on conquering the universe while his organization can (slowly) pay for any trinkets he needs.

Sure, he'd be high priority. He'd be just like Osama, but with nukes and personal shields and cloaking technology and teleportation pads and cloning vats and holographic disguise and a space station and an army of zombies and an army of robots and an army of clones and an army of monsters and an army of aliens and a key that unlocks every door in the world (yes, even those) and worst of all, he's willing to do business with you as long as you give him all your money. Okay, so it's effectively combining Osama with Superman and Mr Krabs.

Not to mention the fact that he could be offering his services to a city you're allied with, so attacking him with anything resembling an effective show of force, is effectively nuking New York to assassinate Donald Trump. It can't be done without turning all your allies against you.
Then there's all the civilians who could be killed just for being caught in SuperOsamaKrabs' area.
Doesn't even have to be SuperOsamaKrabs who does the killing.

There are also level 18 clerics and level 20 rogues available in the metropolis, which are capable of taking out the Wizard. A Cleric of Fharlagn using a Miracle to banish the Wizard to another plane of existence, for example.

Ooh level 20 Rogues, I'm so afraid. :smallamused:
Fortitude Saves, Fortification, Blindsight, Damage Reduction oh my. Why was I afraid of the Rogue again?

The houserule that Deities prevent their Solars from going to other planes to keep up non-interference, is just so easily applicable to the Cleric's entire Spell list, but especially the Spell that you name above, Miracle. Miracle isn't a Spell, it's a request for the Deity to do something more direct for the Cleric than giving Spells.
Even if it worked, unless it sent SuperOsamaKrabs to a plane that consisted entirely of a DMZ, SOK would get out and be back to making money in 6 seconds.

Then he'd find the god of the Cleric who had attempted to kill him and take away the Cleric's powers for good. With a bit of good old fashioned deicide.

And even if you absolutely, positively had to trade in the stuff yourself, you aren't even going to be using the teleportation trap network anyway, as you can simply teleport to wherever it is you're trying to trade.

Why are you still arguing this?

Compared with having set up an automated system to do everything for them. How much effort does teleporting around everywhere and selling their wares at the normal price take?
Emperor Win's TV and SuperOsamaKrabs create a method for making money that requires no effort from the creator once production begins.

Over time Emperor Win's Wizard and SuperOsamaKrabs are going to make more money than you have for the same amount of time invested. In order to compete with their growing wealth, you'd have to work a little more than they have, then you'd have to work some more than they have. Then you'd have to work much more than they have.

strider24seven

2014-01-08, 01:46 PM

Nope, Gate provides a choice, you go through and give the Wizard what they want, or you let someone else do it. I didn't say it was much of a choice, but the choice is definitely there.

So long as you are calling a creature for an immediate task, such as the use of a Wish SLA or a cleric spell, the creature actually doesn't get a choice, assuming you possess the CL to control a Solar. Which, since you can cast Gate in the first place should not be a problem (CL 17 = up to 34 HD can be controlled).

A controlled creature can be commanded to perform a service for you. Such services fall into two categories: immediate tasks and contractual service. Fighting for you in a single battle or taking any other actions that can be accomplished within 1 round per caster level counts as an immediate task; you need not make any agreement or pay any reward for the creature’s help. The creature departs at the end of the spell.

Yukitsu

2014-01-08, 02:04 PM

Compared with having set up an automated system to do everything for them. How much effort does teleporting around everywhere and selling their wares at the normal price take?
Emperor Win's TV and SuperOsamaKrabs create a method for making money that requires no effort from the creator once production begins.

Over time Emperor Win's Wizard and SuperOsamaKrabs are going to make more money than you have for the same amount of time invested. In order to compete with their growing wealth, you'd have to work a little more than they have, then you'd have to work some more than they have. Then you'd have to work much more than they have.

I think you're slightly misunderstanding how those spells work. A fabricate trap is a 9-5 job, it isn't a fully automated system that does all the work for you, you still need someone operating it full time, be it loading in materials then setting it off or removing the finished product to a warehouse or to a dealer. A teleportation circle similarly still required a dealer to use the nodes to travel from place to place, the sale of goods is also not automated.

Also, again, the money value that you set as standard is 144 a day for a process that does require labour, it is not fully automated. While that is a lot of money for a commoner or an entire guild, that is not a large profit margin for someone who can cast 9th level spells, your example simply is not making more of a profit than any other caster is.

Threadnaught

2014-01-08, 03:36 PM

A fabricate trap is a 9-5 job, it isn't a fully automated system that does all the work for you, you still need someone operating it full time,

Mind Raped Ice Assassins of self. Replace any would be workers with those.
Completely automated. Traps reset without the necessity of reloading them, otherwise it would be far more costly and never have any potential profit.

I think what you still don't understand, is how the system can be completely automated once it's up and running.

Vanitas

2014-01-08, 07:16 PM

Tucker's Kobolds is just playing with intelligent strategy. Tippy's idea, as I understand it, was to make a setting that followed the rules and was internally consistent.
Now that is a joke for the ages!

Its still Dark Sun.

but y'know.

without everything that made Dark Sun great and interesting.

*slow clap*

Yukitsu

2014-01-08, 07:44 PM

Mind Raped Ice Assassins of self. Replace any would be workers with those.
Completely automated. Traps reset without the necessity of reloading them, otherwise it would be far more costly and never have any potential profit.

I think what you still don't understand, is how the system can be completely automated once it's up and running.

You don't need to mind rape it, it just follows your orders, and they cost thousands of gold pieces each. The process of automating it fully would cost significantly more than the cost of the trap itself, possibly up to the point that it could take several years operating before you were in the black. What's worse, you're now looking at a strategy that'll probably either crush the economy (because no one has jobs any more) or get you severely boycotted.

Hiro Protagonest

2014-01-08, 07:52 PM

Now that is a joke for the ages!

*slow clap*

But Tippyverse is internally consistent. It's just a framework, like saying someone in real life discovered that you can design a tiny case packed with explosives to propel a bullet when a button on the case is pushed on by a pin, and that made it possible to create firearms better than breech-loading blackpowder ones.

What you two don't get is that Tippyverse is not a setting. It's for a setting. That setting could be a dystopia ruled by tyrants, a realm where it is eternally safe from monsters but lets the wilderness flourish so that young warriors and wizards can test themselves, or it could be a world of widespread learning, easy travel, and the ever-present possibility of destructive war on a global scale.

Vanitas

2014-01-08, 08:12 PM

Lord Raziere

2014-01-08, 08:19 PM

But Tippyverse is internally consistent. It's just a framework, like saying someone in real life discovered that you can design a tiny case packed with explosives to propel a bullet when a button on the case is pushed on by a pin, and that made it possible to create firearms better than breech-loading blackpowder ones.

What you two don't get is that Tippyverse is not a setting. It's for a setting. That setting could be a dystopia ruled by tyrants, a realm where it is eternally safe from monsters but lets the wilderness flourish so that young warriors and wizards can test themselves, or it could be a world of widespread learning, easy travel, and the ever-present possibility of destructive war on a global scale.

Dude? Tippyverse is basically:

wizards rule cities

cities contain most people of the world.

rest of world is death trap

how is that not Dark Sun, but without the harsh desert flavor, exotic non-european fantasy, corrupt archmages in power you actually want to oppose, and general bleakness and grittiness that gives it bite and edge?

I mean sure, it was done by following internally consistent mechanical rules, but all this proves is that Dark Sun is the logical end conclusion of DnD arcane magic. which we already knew, and never needed any particular thing to prove it. If I want to play a world ruled by powerful wizards in cities amidst a wilderness that kills anyone and everyone who steps into it, I already have Dark Sun for that. and Eberron already addressed the destructive war on global scale fear with the Mournland. I don't see how this was needed, what it contributes that other settings, much better thought out and more flavorful, have already done.

so yeah, I don't see anything there that I don't already have, when what I have has better focus and better flavor.

Threadnaught

2014-01-08, 08:32 PM

You don't need to mind rape it, it just follows your orders,

Yes you kinda do have to Mind Rape them and order them to fail their saves. Otherwise they'll still have that there "all consuming desire to kill the original", aka you.
Sure they'll follow orders, but if you Mind Rape away their desire to kill you, you'll be a whole lot safer.

and they cost thousands of gold pieces each. The process of automating it fully would cost significantly more than the cost of the trap itself, possibly up to the point that it could take several years operating before you were in the black.

You really want to know why I wouldn't sill be typing if you read my posts?

I had posted the method to creating free Ice Assassins before making the suggestion to replace the entire workforce with Mind Raped Ice Assassins. Look it's just too long to type, MRIA from now on.

Wizard uses Gate Scroll to cast Gate and Call Efreeti.
Efreeti grants 3 Wishes.
Wish for Scroll of Gate.
Wish for Scroll of Ice Assassin.
Wish for Scroll of Mind Rape.
Repeat until Satisfied.

What's worse, you're now looking at a strategy that'll probably either crush the economy (because no one has jobs any more) or get you severely boycotted.

And I'm sure that even if I did come up with yet another perfect strategy for dealing with any potential problems, you'd be able to make up new issues just fine.
You want a freebie? I'll give you one anyway.

Let's say Pun Pun decides he doesn't want me to make money, what do I do now huh? I'm not so confidant now am I? Not such a big man now huh? Huh? What, am I gonna cry? Am I gonna cry because Pun Pun is better than me and I won't make a single penny and die at some arbitrary time? I'm such a ***** it's a mystery how I could think I'd have the ability to take one merchant, nevermind build a successful business.

How's that? :smallwink:

A MRIA can be completely dedicated to whatever position you give it. Give the job of carrying the merchandise to a bunch of MRIA or a Gargantuan Animated Object. Then when it comes to the actual selling of the product, get some good PR and hire some chumps for 1sp per day.
MRIAs of the leaders of whatever governments you deal with, to help you avoid paying tax. Call the company [Product Placement] if you want.
Once I'm in the black, I can think about giving my employees actual wages and incentives to stay. I just require them to work on wages they're accustomed to for a little over a year. I could probably justify the building of a second trap somewhere down the line.

Emperor Tippy

2014-01-08, 08:44 PM

Yukitsu

2014-01-08, 10:12 PM

You only ever make one Ice Assassin of yourself, and you make it in a situation where it is totally unable to do anything (i.e. when you have no spells memorized, done from a scroll, while Astral Projecting, and with a couple of big beefy things to hold it in place). And then you make an Ice Assassin of that before killing the initial Ice Assassin.

Proper lab safety is a must if you want to survive as a wizard. All of those stories about wizards dying to experiments that got loose are something that should be taken to heart.

Why don't you just make an ice assassin of someone you don't like? Seems like it would solve more problems than making one of yourself.

Wizard uses Gate Scroll to cast Gate and Call Efreeti.
Efreeti grants 3 Wishes.
Wish for Scroll of Gate.
Wish for Scroll of Ice Assassin.
Wish for Scroll of Mind Rape.
Repeat until Satisfied.

Wizard skips the entire thing and wishes for candles and wealth. Like I keep saying, you really don't need a job to make money as a wizard and you have better things to do with your time.

Eldest

2014-01-08, 11:55 PM

I would say this was being condescending, as you are simply saying "you don't get it" because I disagree with you. But while it is that, it's also just plain wrong. You see, Tippy said so himself. In this very thread, no less.

Mate, not two posts ago you stated that something I said was a joke. No reason why, no explanation. So... condescending? Further, you're making blanket statements without showing what you're saying. Show me where you think Tippy said that, because if he said that, I didn't notice.

Threadnaught

2014-01-09, 06:40 AM

Why don't you just make an ice assassin of someone you don't like? Seems like it would solve more problems than making one of yourself.

Because Ice Assassins have all the abilities and memories of the original creature they're based on. The creature they're designed to kill.
You want it to do things that you can do and to not have your allies mistake it for your enemy.

Wizard skips the entire thing and wishes for candles and wealth. Like I keep saying, you really don't need a job to make money as a wizard and you have better things to do with your time.

So Gate in an Efreeti, Wish for Scroll of Gate and two (non-magical) items worth up to 50000gp and repeat until you have an arbitrarily high amount, then sell for cash over several hours per item. Potentially being robbed/attacked by that 20th level Rogue we discussed, unless you can think of a way around it, any such attack could kill you.

You only ever make one Ice Assassin of yourself, and you make it in a situation where it is totally unable to do anything (i.e. when you have no spells memorized, done from a scroll, while Astral Projecting, and with a couple of big beefy things to hold it in place). And then you make an Ice Assassin of that before killing the initial Ice Assassin.

Proper lab safety is a must if you want to survive as a wizard. All of those stories about wizards dying to experiments that got loose are something that should be taken to heart.

What are your views on applying Death Throes to Ice Assassins should any die in combat?

Brookshw

2014-01-09, 06:53 AM

. Show me where you think Tippy said that, because if he said that, I didn't notice.

Page 1.

The above linked thread is probably your best bet for a general overview. I will eventually get around to making public the full campaign setting at some point but that is tied up with a few legal issues. It was supposed to be ready for Xmas this year but things interfered. Hopefully it will be taken care of by next year.

Emphasis mine. We only have a snippet of the setting as far as I can tell but it is indeed a setting.

Emperor Tippy

2014-01-09, 07:12 AM

Emphasis mine. We only have a snippet of the setting as far as I can tell but it is indeed a setting.

No. Points of Light is a setting, more precisely it is the first (and still one of the main) "Tippyverse" settings that I developed and is the one I drew examples from in my first post in the "Definitive Guide" thread, it's also mostly the setting that I have ready for publication and public release whenever the stupid legal issues involved get themselves sorted out.

The Tippyverse its self is not a setting. It is the classification for an entire category of settings.

Bogardan_Mage

2014-01-09, 07:14 AM

Page 1.

Emphasis mine. We only have a snippet of the setting as far as I can tell but it is indeed a setting.
He's making a setting with that as a premise, but the setting is rarely what people are referring to when they talk about it, largely because it hasn't been published yet. If, when it is published, it still carries the name "Tippyverse" then maybe we can start splitting hairs over the finer points and whether or not they're truly inevitable consequences of the RAW or merely plausible outcomes (which, if I understand the argument of members opposite, is tantamount to being completely impossible).

EDIT: Ninja'd by the man himself. Glorious.

Brookshw

2014-01-09, 07:17 AM

The Tippyverse its self is not a setting. It is the classification for an entire category of settings.

Well that certainly clears up any ambiguity. As you appear to have the playground market's attention care to make a pitch about what it'll offer over other campaigns? Sell me on it :smallbiggrin:

Emperor Tippy

2014-01-09, 07:57 AM

Well that certainly clears up any ambiguity. As you appear to have the playground market's attention care to make a pitch about what it'll offer over other campaigns? Sell me on it :smallbiggrin:

A D&D 3.5 setting that is built to allow and handle games of all types across the full level range that is internally consistent and takes into account the numerous rules legal activities that will break most societies and settings in ways that they can't really handle.

Want a setting where you can run everything from a high end political thriller in what is effectively a sci-fi world to a random murderhobo hack and slash dungeon crawl lacking in much of any real plot? Well this one can handle both of those, and most everything in between.

Incidentally it also has a dozen plus new base classes and about as many prestige classes that are all pretty balanced with one another and with most of the official 3.5 classes with them all feeling both different and unique. While they can (and indeed are) run along side the official classes, the source book also includes stat block variants for all NPC's using only the new classes.

Unfortunately, support for a number of later systems can't be officially provided. Tome of Battle, for example, is not covered under the OGL and thus no official NPC will have, say, Swordsage levels.

Brookshw

2014-01-09, 08:06 AM

New classes and prc's sound good.

How does the setting treat divine casters/paladins? I'm unclear on how they fit in. Same for the planes to some extent.

Emperor Tippy

2014-01-09, 08:19 AM

How does the setting treat divine casters/paladins? I'm unclear on how they fit in.
Sufficient belief in anything allows one to tap into the power of the soul and use it for their own ends.

In the case of deities and clerics of deities it varies. Some are individuals who "simply" gained control over enough souls to provide sufficient power to their believers and parcel it out in exchange for their soul later on. Others are entities that have formed out of collective belief. Others have used different (non soul based) sources of power to effectively ascend.

Same for the planes to some extent.
By and large you could slot in the great wheel without issue, unfortunately much of the relevant fluff is not OGL and thus couldn't be used. As such, while the planes are used and have some detail provided they don't have anywhere near the detail that I would really desire.

Brookshw

2014-01-09, 08:38 AM

Interesting. Thank you.

Yukitsu

2014-01-09, 11:51 AM

Because Ice Assassins have all the abilities and memories of the original creature they're based on. The creature they're designed to kill.

You want it to do things that you can do and to not have your allies mistake it for your enemy.

I don't optimize my wizards for darning socks, selling stuff or buying wool an ice assassin of myself is hardly optimal.

So Gate in an Efreeti, Wish for Scroll of Gate and two (non-magical) items worth up to 50000gp and repeat until you have an arbitrarily high amount, then sell for cash over several hours per item. Potentially being robbed/attacked by that 20th level Rogue we discussed, unless you can think of a way around it, any such attack could kill you.

Wish for wealth based items that don't need to be sold like gems, reducing time to sell at the market to 0.

Threadnaught

2014-01-09, 01:31 PM

I don't optimize my wizards for darning socks, selling stuff or buying wool an ice assassin of myself is hardly optimal.

It hardly needs any optimization either. Anyone can make traps, Fabricate has it's uses from when you first get it. Ice Assassin is an awesome Spell according to Emperor Win, whose Wizards can easily Tippy any encounter.
So yeah, those Ice Assassins can count all the cp I earn and demolish any opposition to my plans aren't seeing the most optimal use, but that's rather easy to change.

Wish for wealth based items that don't need to be sold like gems, reducing time to sell at the market to 0.

Nah, you'd have to either Wish for Gold or Platinum. And you remember the whole deal about my Wizard being a massive target just for creating a company that sells clothes?
Imagine how much of a target your Wizard will be when they're carrying around a ton of Platinum. Now without reading any of my above posts about how I'd react to, whatever. Please tell me how you'd avoid being killed by some Rogue 3 levels higher than you at 20th level, or an equal level Wizard who decided to open combat with Disjunction, or an 18th level Cleric who asked their deity to interfere directly/used Miracle to transport you somewhere. All in a single day please.

Yukitsu

2014-01-09, 01:37 PM

It hardly needs any optimization either. Anyone can make traps, Fabricate has it's uses from when you first get it. Ice Assassin is an awesome Spell according to Emperor Win, whose Wizards can easily Tippy any encounter.
So yeah, those Ice Assassins can count all the cp I earn and demolish any opposition to my plans aren't seeing the most optimal use, but that's rather easy to change.

They are awesome, but at the same time, you're trying to make one that is sock peddling. If you're making things to win encounters, I recall that the infinite shadesteel golems were for that, and the fact that wizards are invincible anyway. I'm not sure why I wouldn't want the thing peddling socks to be a really good sock peddler.

Nah, you'd have to either Wish for Gold or Platinum. And you remember the whole deal about my Wizard being a massive target just for creating a company that sells clothes?
Imagine how much of a target your Wizard will be when they're carrying around a ton of Platinum. Now without reading any of my above posts about how I'd react to, whatever. Please tell me how you'd avoid being killed by some Rogue 3 levels higher than you at 20th level, or an equal level Wizard who decided to open combat with Disjunction, or an 18th level Cleric who asked their deity to interfere directly/used Miracle to transport you somewhere. All in a single day please.

I'm pointing out that the one selling clothes is literally crushing employment by replacing everyone's jobs with a mass variation of himself which should make you pretty unpopular. I don't think that individual can realistically kill the wizard, I've never posited that. My position on that is that you'll never sell maximal amounts when everyone hates you and your products, and when no one has an income. Gems are also listed as legitimate for use as currency though other than that.

More relevantly, all wizards ever are always projected into the real world from their private locked down demi-plane with various contingencies to prevent their silver chord being cut which RAW doesn't seem to have very many ways to do, so a rogue ganks the ever loving heck out of an astral projection, and then goes home to find that his entire village has been torn to pieces by an army of snowmen and everyone that lives there attacks him on sight.

Threadnaught

2014-01-09, 03:05 PM

I'm pointing out that the one selling clothes is literally crushing employment by replacing everyone's jobs with a mass variation of himself which should make you pretty unpopular.

No, you're pointing out how you're ignoring my post just so you can win some argument.
Do you think there's a prize for whoever's right?

The system for creating the clothes is automated. The system for transporting the clothes is automated. The system for protecting the clothes is automated. The system for protecting the transportation system is automated. The system for protecting the factory is automated. The system for counting profits is automated. The system for paying wages and other minor expenses is automated. That just leaves the actual sales.
Pay a handful of chumps the wage they're used to until profits appear. Allow them to buy from automated services at the factory when off duty, then when profits start creeping in, pay them that little bit extra. Maybe 1gp/day?

Should I then hire someone to walk in circles next to the traps for three hours per day for 4sp/day?

I dunno, apparently I destroyed the economy by selling 75gp suits for 1cp for a year and a half. It's not like people still need food and other items.
What if someone crafted a Noble's Outfit (75gp suit) after seeing my mass produced version? According to Emperor Win (I bet he likes that) unique crafted items, are far more valuable and sought after in the Tippyverse. I may have the monopoly, but Nobles will pay the same old price, potentially more, to get the latest fashions. As opposed to last year's outfit that I'm selling for 1cp.
When I partner up with my Artificer and Cleric buddies I knew from my adventuring days, we make some Create Food and Water traps and some to create weapons. Maybe start researching some Construct that can patrol the streets and perform guard duty.

Would people stop buying food with actual flavour, texture, colour and scents?
Would weapon collectors no longer want to buy a rare Dwarven twin axe thing, because shortswords made of rareium are going for 1sp a piece?

Okay, so which parts of this post are you going to ignore?

Yukitsu

2014-01-09, 03:30 PM

The system for creating the clothes is automated. The system for transporting the clothes is automated. The system for protecting the clothes is automated. The system for protecting the transportation system is automated. The system for protecting the factory is automated. The system for counting profits is automated. The system for paying wages and other minor expenses is automated. That just leaves the actual sales.
Pay a handful of chumps the wage they're used to until profits appear. Allow them to buy from automated services at the factory when off duty, then when profits start creeping in, pay them that little bit extra. Maybe 1gp/day?

So how much does all of that automating cost? Why exactly is that beneficial compared to simply improving the local economy?

Should I then hire someone to walk in circles next to the traps for three hours per day for 4sp/day?

Minimum wage jobs in D&D are 1 sp per day. A simulacrum of that same person would take 13 years to be equivalent to the minimum wage job, an ice assassin automation of yourself is superior value to that commoner in 221 years. I could pay him 10 times that, and it'd still take decades for an ice assassin to be a profitable call. That's just one menial job. This venture has several.

Doing something that can take a while to be profitable is fine, but a gap of 221 years is a little bit optimistic.

I dunno, apparently I destroyed the economy by selling 75gp suits for 1cp for a year and a half.

No, you destroyed it because employment is now the one guy making 365 GP a year selling your clothes, and farmers who don't have anyone to trade with.

It's not like people still need food and other items.

All of those will likely be produced in the same sort of manner. Hopefully by guilds instead of jerk wizards.

What if someone crafted a Noble's Outfit (75gp suit) after seeing my mass produced version? According to Emperor Win (I bet he likes that) unique crafted items, are far more valuable and sought after in the Tippyverse. I may have the monopoly, but Nobles will pay the same old price, potentially more, to get the latest fashions. As opposed to last year's outfit that I'm selling for 1cp.

The absolute best few tailors around will get by in the short term, however your scheme is basically trying to make it so that money stops circulating, as you don't need to pay anyone. Nobles will eventually be making far less as you've cut out all but your 1 gp per day merchant for them to tax, they can't tax the guilds, and their landed peasants aren't going to be earning money, they'll be subsistence farming. During this periods where companies became more important than backward nobility, nobles went broke. Unless they could invest in their own factories, these guys won't be buying 75 gp suits for very many years. That and someone will set up something different to compete with 75 gp suits guy to sell them at the slim profit line of around 30 gp per suit, pay for alterations. If you're selling for a copper, you're making clothes with a normal value of about 2 and some copper (hence socks) otherwise you're producing at a material loss.

When I partner up with my Artificer and Cleric buddies I knew from my adventuring days, we make some Create Food and Water traps and some to create weapons. Maybe start researching some Construct that can patrol the streets and perform guard duty.

Would people stop buying food with actual flavour, texture, colour and scents?

Yes, because added flavour etc. can be attained for free with a cantrip trap that most nutrient past dispenser traps will be equipped with, unless your cleric deliberately wants the people using it to be miserable.

Would weapon collectors no longer want to buy a rare Dwarven twin axe thing, because shortswords made of rareium are going for 1sp a piece?

Yes, because they won't have any money to buy it with, and at any rate, they don't buy one being custom made to order, they buy an old one. Without any need to personally ever fight anything, you're simply not going to see those smiths staying in business, and certainly not enough of them to say that the economy is going well by.

What precisely do you suppose most people will be doing in this world where you've eliminated the need to work all jobs? If it's not a welfare state, you can't say that you need as many craftsmen when there is an institution that renders them all obsolete so long as people are willing to get there factory set up to run them into the ground.

Okay, so which parts of this post are you going to ignore?

You keep saying that over and over, but I don't think you've actually explained ever what exactly I'm not addressing, because I always explicitly do.

eggynack

2014-01-09, 03:39 PM

Yukitsu

2014-01-09, 03:46 PM

It feels like having a bunch of shadesteel golems or ice assassins doing the work, instead of using local folk, is a thing that could be intrinsically valuable. These are things you'd probably want to have around anyway, so that you have a tiny yet efficient army hanging around in every city in the world, reasonably easy to access at all times. These constructs are also superior when it comes to guarding your operation, if there is any sort of threat in this crazy wizard eat wizard world. There's likely room in the structure for normal employees, because you don't need every being on staff to be a super being that can crush your foes like bugs, but there's also room in the structure for super beings, because you don't need every being on staff to be a low paid rube. A high level wizard should sometimes make these creations, because they're crazy powerful on occasion, and when they're not using them to rule the world, having them run TC's or whatever sounds reasonable.

To a certain point though, getting a low paid rube for several jobs does a better job at actually working in this capacity than a shadesteel golem, or an ice assassin, and at any rate when you're talking about unlimited ice assassins, you're no longer looking at someone who actually needs to earn money because he clearly has unlimited funds. You're bombing the economy out of pure spite. And not just for a commodity that only screws over competition among 17th level wizards (apparantly 5, each in a different extraplanar metropolis), this actually hits all sectors of the economy even where you're looking at centuries to make profits.

Threadnaught

2014-01-09, 03:57 PM

Forget it, you somehow found a problem with every single part of that post, because... Congratulations you win. You have proven every single thing I claim to be able to do as a Wizard (including spellcasting) to be impossible without causing NI 15000000th level DMPCs to slaughter me for even trying.

Now that he's gone. Let me repeat the whole thing about spending 1000xp (Gate) to get a Scroll of Gate and using that Scroll to Gate in an Efreeti. Then using said Efreeti to create a Scroll of Ice Assassin a Scroll of Gate and a Scroll of whatever. Repeat for NI Ice Assassins.

Serious question, does everyone here only buy the absolute cheapest item for sale, or do some people have preferences that lead them to buy a more expensive option?

Yukitsu

2014-01-09, 03:59 PM

Forget it, you somehow found a problem with every single part of that post, because... Congratulations you win. You have proven every single thing I claim to be able to do as a Wizard (including spellcasting) to be impossible without causing NI 15000000th level DMPCs to slaughter me for even trying.

Now that he's gone. Let me repeat the whole thing about spending 1000xp (Gate) to get a Scroll of Gate and using that Scroll to Gate in an Efreeti. Then using said Efreeti to create a Scroll of Ice Assassin a Scroll of Gate and a Scroll of whatever. Repeat for NI Ice Assassins.

To ask again, why are you trying to argue that you should ruin the economy to earn 144 gp a day when you're wish chaining?

WhamBamSam

2014-01-09, 04:22 PM

No. Points of Light is a setting, more precisely it is the first (and still one of the main) "Tippyverse" settings that I developed and is the one I drew examples from in my first post in the "Definitive Guide" thread, it's also mostly the setting that I have ready for publication and public release whenever the stupid legal issues involved get themselves sorted out.

The Tippyverse its self is not a setting. It is the classification for an entire category of settings.Out of curiosity, how do your various Tippyverse settings differ from one another? I could see how two different DMs might construct two different Tippyverses, but I'm not sure I see the impetus for a new Tippyverse setting when you already have one which is suited to all manner of campaigns. Is it just for a change of scenery/a different main cast of NPCs, or is it something else?

A D&D 3.5 setting that is built to allow and handle games of all types across the full level range that is internally consistent and takes into account the numerous rules legal activities that will break most societies and settings in ways that they can't really handle.

Want a setting where you can run everything from a high end political thriller in what is effectively a sci-fi world to a random murderhobo hack and slash dungeon crawl lacking in much of any real plot? Well this one can handle both of those, and most everything in between.

Incidentally it also has a dozen plus new base classes and about as many prestige classes that are all pretty balanced with one another and with most of the official 3.5 classes with them all feeling both different and unique. While they can (and indeed are) run along side the official classes, the source book also includes stat block variants for all NPC's using only the new classes.

Unfortunately, support for a number of later systems can't be officially provided. Tome of Battle, for example, is not covered under the OGL and thus no official NPC will have, say, Swordsage levels.I'd buy it.

Any chance you'd be willing/able to post some notes on the NPCs and things that you would have used non-OGL content for given the choice on the forums after it's published?

The system for creating the clothes is automated. The system for transporting the clothes is automated. The system for protecting the clothes is automated. The system for protecting the transportation system is automated. The system for protecting the factory is automated. The system for counting profits is automated. The system for paying wages and other minor expenses is automated. That just leaves the actual sales.
Pay a handful of chumps the wage they're used to until profits appear. Allow them to buy from automated services at the factory when off duty, then when profits start creeping in, pay them that little bit extra. Maybe 1gp/day?

So how much does all of that automating cost? Why exactly is that beneficial compared to simply improving the local economy?

Minimum wage jobs in D&D are 1 sp per day. A simulacrum of that same person would take 13 years to be equivalent to the minimum wage job, an ice assassin automation of yourself is superior value to that commoner in 221 years. I could pay him 10 times that, and it'd still take decades for an ice assassin to be a profitable call. That's just one menial job. This venture has several.

Doing something that can take a while to be profitable is fine, but a gap of 221 years is a little bit optimistic.Ice Assassin or Simulacrum for your sock business is absolutely overkill. Animate Dread Warrior or possibly even regular old Animate Dead would do. If you use Animate Dead, you'll lose the ability to use it for other things, but you have much better minionmancy at your disposal anyway, so it's not a significant loss.

You can also go the employ random chumps route or the sell all rights route still turn a profit, though neither is as good an idea in the long run. I suspect it varies somewhat. And that it only has a small impact on how the PCs interact with the sock industry, if they do so at all.

What precisely do you suppose most people will be doing in this world where you've eliminated the need to work all jobs? If it's not a welfare state, you can't say that you need as many craftsmen when there is an institution that renders them all obsolete so long as people are willing to get there factory set up to run them into the ground.It might well be a wellfare state. If I were running a TV city, I'd have a social safety net in place.

I suspect the economy would make a similar transition to the one the economies of developed nations have undergone in the real world with factory work outsourced to produce cheaper food and goods. There would be some people who came out worse off. There might even be ghettos within the cities which show a darker contrast to the Utopian uptown. It'll vary from city to city and setting to setting.

There also might be more bards, artists, and the like. A rock star bard could do quite well for himself. Amusingly enough, music is one of the more difficult things to cheaply duplicate in D&D. More people might go into the equivalents of academia, perhaps eventually resulting in a higher population of people with class levels.

eggynack

2014-01-09, 04:44 PM

I suspect the economy would make a similar transition to the one the economies of developed nations have undergone in the real world with factory work outsourced to produce cheaper food and goods. There would be some people who came out worse off. There might even be ghettos within the cities which show a darker contrast to the Utopian uptown. It'll vary from city to city and setting to setting.
Agreed. We currently produce food and clothing at absolutely extraordinary rates of speed, at a very low cost, and have those goods constantly moving everywhere in the world in a manner which isn't that different from TC's when you get right down to it. We're not that different from the Tippyverse, in that respect. This is clearly a reasonable place for the economy to be. This system would definitely have a huge effect on the economy, because it changes everything, but it would survive.

Yukitsu

2014-01-09, 04:45 PM

Agreed. We currently produce food and clothing at absolutely extraordinary rates of speed, at a very low cost, and have those goods constantly moving everywhere in the world in a manner which isn't that different from TC's when you get right down to it. We're not that different from the Tippyverse, in that respect. This is clearly a reasonable place for the economy to be. This system would definitely have a huge effect on the economy, because it changes everything, but it would survive.

I agree with that, but we pay people instead of trying to completely replace all labour, we simply increase the amount of output per labourer. Getting rid of jobs in a city to make production cheaper doesn't translate to a surviving city.

eggynack

2014-01-09, 04:51 PM

I agree with that, but we pay people instead of trying to completely replace all labour, we simply increase the amount of output per labourer. Getting rid of jobs in a city to make production cheaper doesn't translate to a surviving city.
Perhaps, but that's not necessarily where it'll end up. We do have a hell of a lot of machinery at work in our factories. There's some mixture here, between the ice assassin and golem machinery, and the cheap labor, where there's some sort of ideal state. It's probably not going to be just one way or the other, and there's some room for this labor force in the new setting. Your idea of an economy completely destroyed by this innovation just doesn't seem like a logical outcome, especially when no such innovation in our world has had such permanently destructive impact.

Yukitsu

2014-01-09, 05:01 PM

Perhaps, but that's not necessarily where it'll end up. We do have a hell of a lot of machinery at work in our factories. There's some mixture here, between the ice assassin and golem machinery, and the cheap labor, where there's some sort of ideal state. It's probably not going to be just one way or the other, and there's some room for this labor force in the new setting. Your idea of an economy completely destroyed by this innovation just doesn't seem like a logical outcome, especially when no such innovation in our world has had such permanently destructive impact.

We haven't had that because companies employ more people now than we have ever employed, not less (except note what happens in manufacturing towns when we outsource). The way we work is we create automated devices that increase output and decrease skill requirements, but they only replace workers in the short term, and lead to a larger number of people for example, employed to make socks than there were prior.

Threadnaught

2014-01-09, 05:11 PM

To ask again, why are you trying to argue that you should ruin the economy to earn 144 gp a day when you're wish chaining?

I'm not even destroying the economy. Sometime in the second or third year, I'd either have multiple factories in each interconnected city, or I'd become a legitimate leader of a city. Maybe I could use one of the leadership Ice Assassins to give me a nice important position.

Then I'd take Emperor Win's advice and create resetting Wish traps, one to create the equivalent of 1gp, another to create the equivalent of 1sp and a third to create the equivalent of 1cp. Create each, eventually multiple "sp" and even more "cp" so "gp" traps don't lower the value of whatever counts for a "gp".

It'd almost completely phase out mineral currency in the cities, which due to being Small City-Metropolis sized have anywhere between 3,750,000-125,000,000gp worth of coins in circulation, for each city. I'm using four, so let's count that shall we? 15,000,000-500,000,000gp worth of coins floating around between these four cities. Oh boy, 51000gp over the course of 402 days, that's really going to wreck the economy. There's people with 100,000gp on hand, they may be the 1%, but they're not wrecking the economy, so how am I?

I just love how you keep asserting that every action I take is wrecking the economy. If I permanently take 51000gp out of circulation, there's still at least 14,949,000gp elsewhere, at most there'd be another 499,949,000gp. So tell me, how is 262,800gp (ignoring expenses) in five years, destroying the economy of four cities?

We do have a hell of a lot of machinery at work in our factories. There's some mixture here, between the ice assassin and golem machinery, and the cheap labor, where there's some sort of ideal state. It's probably not going to be just one way or the other, and there's some room for this labor force in the new setting. Your idea of an economy completely destroyed by this innovation just doesn't seem like a logical outcome, especially when no such innovation in our world has had such permanently destructive impact.

Exactly and as people get used to the new production of suits, they'll be willing to walk in circles for three hours to net a tasty 4sp per day. Ice Assassins and Shadesteel Golems may have more optimal uses than sitting around some clothing production factory, but if it gets attacked they'll destroy just about any threat to production. No need for squishy guards who can't explode the universe around would be saboteurs, waste of money really. They'll die in a round to anything that poses a threat to my profit margin and the danger money could well be 10gp a day.

Yukitsu

2014-01-09, 05:15 PM

Gemini476

2014-01-09, 06:16 PM

You are putting very nearly every person who makes a product for a living out of a job.

Why?

So you can make 144 gp a day.

When you could instead be wishing for whatever you want directly without buying it.
Yeah, no. How much clothing is he making? 1 Fabricate/Turn? Assuming that commoners work 8 hours/day for you, that's 78 sets/day. 234/day if you get people on it 24/7.

If he sends it out to each town equally, that's 58,5 suits per town per day.

Need I remind you that Metropoli have populations of 25,000+? If there's even one of those, it'll take him slightly over a year to have sold one to everyone in that metropolis. And since it's only one model of suit, it just becomes the new cheap thing. The people who were buying 75gp suits before - nobles and adventurers - won't buy the 1sp suits, since the entire reason with buying a 75gp suit is that it costs 75gp. So the people who would produce such clothes make new models.

The ones who will buy it are most likely the middle-class and then, once they have been saturated with it, the lower class. Less because of poorness and more because of social stigma.

You'll also get a bunch of people reselling your suits for a profit, since a bunch of people will miss the daily sale or whatever you have going. Not to mention entrepreneurial merchants who realize what profits they could make if they bought, say, a hundred for 10gp and then resold them for half price (that is, 37,5gp - or 3750gp total).
I'm not entirely sure who is going to lose jobs over this. Seamstresses? Fixing up clothes and modifying them are things you don't provide.

Actually, won't the transport of so many clothes cause even more jobs to appear, since honestly commoners with wagons are cheaper than golems? Even with a Teleportation Circle you won't cut down the distance to 0 unless you put a Circle next to the Trap and have it dump stuff in a store you have in the market.

Then again, I haven't studied economics. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Threadnaught

2014-01-09, 06:24 PM

You are putting very nearly every person who makes a product for a living out of a job.

Why?

So you can make 144 gp a day.

When you could instead be wishing for whatever you want directly without buying it.

No, I'm putting people who continue to make that product out of work.

Those who make something different can still make a profit.

And even those who I put out of business can survive. They'd probably end up working for the same person who put them out of business, but they're unlikely to be destitute. I'd just have to approach them with the offer and if they refuse, I'll just show them the design I'm using so they have a head start knowing what pattern to avoid. It's hardly my fault if people refuse to change their product just a little so those wearing it look completely different to a Commoner wearing their fancy new 1cp clothes. And Explorer's Outfit is likely to become high fashion compared to a Noble's Outfit, due to it's higher price.

Most people will still be in business, they'll just not see the returns they're used to. Oh no, the rich aren't making as much they're used to, this is so horrible. Let's put a 50% tax on the poor to subsidise the rich.

How many posters here only eat noodles and home grown vegetables? How many posters only wear items they knit themselves? How many posters only get books they borrow from a library and return them on time every time? How many posters go to the library to post here?
Surely nobody pays any more money for these kinds of things than the cheapest possible option, that's ridiculous.

Yes welfare state, I think Emperor Win did mention it as being part of PoL. Which I hope to have soon, it's so full of Tippy. :smallbiggrin:

Yukitsu

2014-01-09, 06:36 PM

Yeah, no. How much clothing is he making? 1 Fabricate/Turn? Assuming that commoners work 8 hours/day for you, that's 78 sets/day. 234/day if you get people on it 24/7.

If he sends it out to each town equally, that's 58,5 suits per town per day.

His argument stems from the sale of 14,400 sets a day sold at a profit margin of 1 cp per transaction. You can get 14,400 sets a day with a fabricate trap running at all hours.

Need I remind you that Metropoli have populations of 25,000+? If there's even one of those, it'll take him slightly over a year to have sold one to everyone in that metropolis. And since it's only one model of suit, it just becomes the new cheap thing. The people who were buying 75gp suits before - nobles and adventurers - won't buy the 1sp suits, since the entire reason with buying a 75gp suit is that it costs 75gp. So the people who would produce such clothes make new models.

The cheapest you can sell "nobles clothes" is 25 and a bit gp sans hiring a good merchant to barter for the components (which he's denying, arguing those jobs should go to things like simulacrums). That would simply be a different machine run by someone else (and ruining the tailors who make that clothes) The guy with the factory can still sell them for 75 gp if their targets are vain enough I guess, but at minimum it's still a comparatively massive 25.01 gp price tag.

You'll also get a bunch of people reselling your suits for a profit, since a bunch of people will miss the daily sale or whatever you have going. Not to mention entrepreneurial merchants who realize what profits they could make if they bought, say, a hundred for 10gp and then resold them for half price (that is, 37,5gp - or 3750gp total).
I'm not entirely sure who is going to lose jobs over this. Seamstresses? Fixing up clothes and modifying them are things you don't provide.

The 75 gp suits can't be sold for 1 cp each, that's for socks. A 75 gp suit has to be sold for at least 25.01 gp to make any profit at all. You end up having to resale them above the purchase price to earn anything there. Purchase and resale would be very difficult to earn a profit through in this scenario, as everyone has access to the largely saturated market place.

The people who lose out here, are everyone in production except maybe a few notables who can make customized things. However, as their clients represent a tiny minority, and the city just lost most of the employment in it, the buying power overall will have dropped, and as it drops, even more of the higher end tailors will fall to the wayside.

Actually, won't the transport of so many clothes cause even more jobs to appear, since honestly commoners with wagons are cheaper than golems? Even with a Teleportation Circle you won't cut down the distance to 0 unless you put a Circle next to the Trap and have it dump stuff in a store you have in the market.

The argument was they wouldn't use commoners because they don't want to have to pay wages, which turns a bigger profit months to hundreds of years after the fact.

Now, here's a thing to note. If this turns out to initially be a profitable venture, every facet of production will look similar to this. It's not feasible to state that only the sock creators will be put out of work, this will apply to all craftsmen within a few months.

Threadnaught

2014-01-09, 07:54 PM

Actually, won't the transport of so many clothes cause even more jobs to appear, since honestly commoners with wagons are cheaper than golems? Even with a Teleportation Circle you won't cut down the distance to 0 unless you put a Circle next to the Trap and have it dump stuff in a store you have in the market.

Then again, I haven't studied economics. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Gargantuan Animated Object, they can carry up to 700 pounds. I may need multiple people to unload and sell the goods on board, would these people be willing to work nonstop 8 hour days for 1gp a day? Where can I find anyone willing to work for these wages without further damaging the economy?

What happens if after making enough money to build new traps, I use that money to buy materials to build the new traps with? Does that mean the money goes back into circulation? Does it mean the economy won't crash and burn like Yukitsu has been claiming it will?

His argument stems from the sale of 14,400 sets a day sold at a profit margin of 1 cp per transaction. You can get 14,400 sets a day with a fabricate trap running at all hours.

So far so good.

The cheapest you can sell "nobles clothes" is 25 and a bit gp sans hiring a good merchant to barter for the components (which he's denying, arguing those jobs should go to things like simulacrums). That would simply be a different machine run by someone else (and ruining the tailors who make that clothes) The guy with the factory can still sell them for 75 gp if their targets are vain enough I guess, but at minimum it's still a comparatively massive 25.01 gp price tag.

Ice Assassins, which are more powerful than Simulacra.
Nope, a resetting Fabricate trap does not need to be reloaded every round, the price is 500gp x Caster Level x Spell Level (42500gp) + 1/3 Market Price of Item created x 100 (2500gp), 45000gp. You create it and it keeps creating the items. The cheapest I can sell each suit for, is 1cp, the only thing to actually worry about is how long I have to do this before I turn a profit.

The argument was they wouldn't use commoners because they don't want to have to pay wages, which turns a bigger profit months to hundreds of years after the fact.

The argument is, I don't need, to use Commoners. I don't, want or need, to pay wages. I do it because I believe seeing someone who doesn't look like the CEO would put customers at ease. And if after a certain amount of time, I decide to leave the operating of the sewing machine to a squishy little Commoner, I'd have a spare Ice Assassin to watch my territory with.

Now, here's a thing to note. If this turns out to initially be a profitable venture, every facet of production will look similar to this. It's not feasible to state that only the sock creators will be put out of work, this will apply to all craftsmen within a few months.

Yeah it's a shame isn't it? If this does turn out to be profitable, I'd have to work quickly to prevent any competition from moving in on my turf and taking a niche. Probably have to increase production at some point to supply more people and more cities.
How about, instead of dealing with a mere 15,000,000-500,000,000gp from four cities, I put myself in the market to mine from a pool of 37,500,000-1,250,000,000gp? Sure it costs another 14000gp to create the additional TCs I need, but that does put 1,400,000cp back into the four cities I'm already dealing with, making amazing amounts of money for the dealers of magical components. Making amazing money for everyone they have dealings with.
I'd have to work very quickly to make sure nobody else manages to get any niche markets in the other 7 cities before me, but if I am fast enough. If I am fast enough, I'd have a business capable of serving all ten cities, possibly with a production facility in each. With multiple products for sale.I should probably set up shop in all 7 additional cities before connecting them.
The whole problem you have with my creating traps to pull the economy somewhere favourable to me, doesn't make much sense when I'm paying a bunch of mooks to sell my stock just to give the customers a friendly face. It especially doesn't make any sense when, whenever I need to expand, I put massive amounts of coinage back into the economy. People who can create new TCs and traps would be able to make a nice chunk of money every so often, but you've never spared any thought to the people they pay to make it possible.

Ooh gladiatorial arena, I should build one of those with True Resurrection Traps for the losers, or whatever auto casts True Resurrection on a corpse. A 10000 seat stadium, 1sp for entry, with a 10gp prize for the winner. Loser gets bed, board and the chance to try again, maybe 1sp on top. Multiple bouts per day, gotta keep those customers coming.
Could make a bit more from special bouts, 1gp entry fee for grandstand events. Champion vs Hydra, Champion vs multiple gladiators, Champion vs Ice Assassin of Champion.

Keep in mind, that everything I have mentioned up to this point. Emperor Win thought of several years ago. This is because his sig is right.

Yukitsu

2014-01-09, 08:48 PM

Ice Assassins, which are more powerful than Simulacra.
Nope, a resetting Fabricate trap does not need to be reloaded every round, the price is 500gp x Caster Level x Spell Level (42500gp) + 1/3 Market Price of Item created x 100 (2500gp), 45000gp. You create it and it keeps creating the items. The cheapest I can sell each suit for, is 1cp, the only thing to actually worry about is how long I have to do this before I turn a profit.

What does that have anything to do with what I said? The cost of 75 gp noble clothes to make with 0 labour is 25 gp.

Yeah it's a shame isn't it? If this does turn out to be profitable, I'd have to work quickly to prevent any competition from moving in on my turf and taking a niche. Probably have to increase production at some point to supply more people and more cities.
How about, instead of dealing with a mere 15,000,000-500,000,000gp from four cities, I put myself in the market to mine from a pool of 37,500,000-1,250,000,000gp? Sure it costs another 14000gp to create the additional TCs I need, but that does put 1,400,000cp back into the four cities I'm already dealing with, making amazing amounts of money for the dealers of magical components. Making amazing money for everyone they have dealings with.
I'd have to work very quickly to make sure nobody else manages to get any niche markets in the other 7 cities before me, but if I am fast enough. If I am fast enough, I'd have a business capable of serving all ten cities, possibly with a production facility in each. With multiple products for sale.I should probably set up shop in all 7 additional cities before connecting them.
The whole problem you have with my creating traps to pull the economy somewhere favourable to me, doesn't make much sense when I'm paying a bunch of mooks to sell my stock just to give the customers a friendly face. It especially doesn't make any sense when, whenever I need to expand, I put massive amounts of coinage back into the economy. People who can create new TCs and traps would be able to make a nice chunk of money every so often, but you've never spared any thought to the people they pay to make it possible.

No, my problem is that you're literally putting everyone out of employment. And you aren't putting any money back into the economy whenever you expand, literally all of your equipment is free given you're already using wish chaining with solars.

Threadnaught

2014-01-09, 09:30 PM

What does that have anything to do with what I said? The cost of 75 gp noble clothes to make with 0 labour is 25 gp.

Easy, the cost of the trap doesn't have to be paid over and over again. The cost of the clothes is 25gp if you stitch them by hand or use the Spell once.
Creating the trap costs an equal amount to casting the Spell 1800 times. If you had to pay the materials every time it reset, profit would be impossible.

No, my problem is that you're literally putting everyone out of employment.

No, I'm employing people and paying large sums of money to control the development of a handful of cities.

And you aren't putting any money back into the economy whenever you expand, literally all of your equipment is free given you're already using wish chaining with solars.

No it isn't, the only things I'm using Wishes for, is to save on xp expenditure and Ice Assassin creation. Because I'd need about 100 of them sitting ready to wipe out some army somewhere. I'll build the TCs and even work on the traps (even the xp cost) myself thank you very much.
What's the point in doing this if I'm not allowed to make sure at least some of my money circulates?

Even if it didn't, it'd take years for me to rake in the highest total.

Really, why would I do this if I planned to never spend any of the money? If I don't need to spend money, there's really no point doing anything to get money. Which is why your own method is so strange. I'm building something to slowly earn me money over time, an investment and Wishing for something to protect that investment and to make a non-permanent part of it permanent.
You're just Wishing for money and have threatened to hand over a NI supply of whatever products I try to sell just to stop me and any current crafters from making a single cp. If anyone in this thread is a danger to the economy, it's you. You and your plot to create Hyper Communism.

Pickford

2014-01-09, 11:23 PM

Threadnaught: Is there anyone in this example who doesn't have a vested interested in the death of the wizard?

eggynack

2014-01-09, 11:31 PM

Threadnaught: Is there anyone in this example who doesn't have a vested interested in the death of the wizard?
Probably merchant traders of goods that can't be easily replicated with the basic fabricate trap system, at least in an efficient way. They'd benefit from the teleportation circles, but wouldn't be harmed by the traps. Alternatively, the wizard could always just run the teleportation half of the setup, accept money for travel, and earn the enmity of a relatively small number of people.

Threadnaught

2014-01-10, 07:39 AM

Threadnaught: Is there anyone in this example who doesn't have a vested interested in the death of the wizard?

Employees, customers, people who use the TCs, any governing bodies the Wizard interacts with (or replaces with Ice Assassins), competitors who are willing to change their design, gladiators, people who go to watch the arena bouts and the Wizard's Ice Assassins.

The majority of people who'd want the Wizard dead are the kind a Paladin played right would eventually bring to justice. The ones with the power to do so are BBEG material.
Like Yukitsu's Wizard, the one who plans to create Hyper Communism. I don't have anything against Communism, but Capitalism is a much easier way to take over the world... Damn I gave it away didn't I? :smallamused:

Pickford

2014-01-10, 12:09 PM

Employees, customers, people who use the TCs, any governing bodies the Wizard interacts with (or replaces with Ice Assassins), competitors who are willing to change their design, gladiators, people who go to watch the arena bouts and the Wizard's Ice Assassins.

The majority of people who'd want the Wizard dead are the kind a Paladin played right would eventually bring to justice. The ones with the power to do so are BBEG material.
Like Yukitsu's Wizard, the one who plans to create Hyper Communism. I don't have anything against Communism, but Capitalism is a much easier way to take over the world... Damn I gave it away didn't I? :smallamused:

I think any Paladin would be attempting to bring the Wizard to justice, he has kidnapped well over a dozen heads of state.

Threadnaught

2014-01-10, 12:32 PM

I think any Paladin would be attempting to bring the Wizard to justice, he has kidnapped well over a dozen heads of state.

But how would the Paladin find out?
Worse, what if the Paladin only discovered the plot once profits were reached and the leaders were restored on condition that non of them seek vengeance. And offered 1000gp/year in exchange for planning permission?

The Paladin could well wipe out all of them while under the impression that they're Ice Assassins under the Wizard's control. Amusingly I have no idea whether or not the Paladin should fall if they do this.

The only heads of state at risk are those who attempt to impose taxes on my use of my TCs. If anyone tries to make me pay for the right to use my property, of course I'll educate them on their mistake.

eggynack

2014-01-10, 12:55 PM

But how would the Paladin find out?
Worse, what if the Paladin only discovered the plot once profits were reached and the leaders were restored on condition that non of them seek vengeance. And offered 1000gp/year in exchange for planning permission?

The Paladin could well wipe out all of them while under the impression that they're Ice Assassins under the Wizard's control. Amusingly I have no idea whether or not the Paladin should fall if they do this.
Or, better yet, you can mindrape the leaders and forcibly make them not seek vengeance. Thus, there will be an extremely small window of time during which the leaders are kidnapped.

Yukitsu

2014-01-10, 07:10 PM

Easy, the cost of the trap doesn't have to be paid over and over again. The cost of the clothes is 25gp if you stitch them by hand or use the Spell once.
Creating the trap costs an equal amount to casting the Spell 1800 times. If you had to pay the materials every time it reset, profit would be impossible.

Fabricate when cast doesn't turn nothing into a sock, it turns a third the cost of the item into a sock. A fabricate trap that isn't being fed material is casting the spell on nothing and produces nothing, as eschew materials isn't a metamagic that has a clear RAW way to incorporate into traps. The spell description requires that it be cast on a target, the spell effect is not simply the finished product.

No, I'm employing people and paying large sums of money to control the development of a handful of cities.

Which I should point out is transitioning very far from what was generally considered of direct consequence by Tippy. Also, this doesn't explain what any of these supposed employees are actually doing.

No it isn't, the only things I'm using Wishes for, is to save on xp expenditure and Ice Assassin creation. Because I'd need about 100 of them sitting ready to wipe out some army somewhere. I'll build the TCs and even work on the traps (even the xp cost) myself thank you very much.
What's the point in doing this if I'm not allowed to make sure at least some of my money circulates?

Even if it didn't, it'd take years for me to rake in the highest total.

Really, why would I do this if I planned to never spend any of the money? If I don't need to spend money, there's really no point doing anything to get money. Which is why your own method is so strange. I'm building something to slowly earn me money over time, an investment and Wishing for something to protect that investment and to make a non-permanent part of it permanent.

That's something I pointed out, the logical conclusion of the techniques that you are attempting to justify are ones that would more rationally lead to a post monetary lifestyle for the wizard. Remember, the point of this exercise is to look at it in an internally consistent manner. Saying a wizard would just not use the tool for more than the 1 thing when it can apply to everything isn't internally consistent.

You're just Wishing for money and have threatened to hand over a NI supply of whatever products I try to sell just to stop me and any current crafters from making a single cp. If anyone in this thread is a danger to the economy, it's you. You and your plot to create Hyper Communism.

I should point out that the default Tippyverse is a hyper communism welfare state. I don't think that's a realistic outcome, but that is what is described.

Or, better yet, you can mindrape the leaders and forcibly make them not seek vengeance. Thus, there will be an extremely small window of time during which the leaders are kidnapped.

I've claimed that this sort of strange dystopia was a distinct but likely outcome depending on the wizard, but it got mostly handwaved away under the justification that no one would need to if 100% of their needs were being met for free. A bit contrary to what Thread's vision of the Tippyverse is.