Debunking the Tippyverse [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

jedipotter

2014-01-27, 09:16 PM

And here is where we have fun debunking the Tippyverse. It gets brought up all the time, and most see it as cannon. But most of the time you just get ''oh do this or that'' or even worse the ''oh there are tons of ways to do that'' and then leave them unsaid.

Lots of the things require interpretations of the rules, at best. Lots of abilities, spells, items, feats and so forth don't list or not list everything, so there is often lots to interpret and say ''oh, they meant to say or mean that''.

Starting with the Bird of Prey:

Full build broken down level by level

Attributes (32 PB):
Str: 10
Dex: 18 (14 base, +4 Were)
Con: 14 (12 base, +2 Were)
Int: 12
Wis: 34 (18 base, +2 Were, +4 HD, +4 Inherent, +6 Enhancement)
Cha: 8

ECL 1: Eagle Racial HD
HP: 1d8
BAB: 3/4th (+0)
Fort: +2
Ref: +2
Will: +0
Were Abilities (+4 Dex, +2 Con, +2 Wis)
Feats: Alertness (Eagle), Weapon Finesse (Eagle), Able Learner (1 HD)

ECL 2: Were LA
ECL 3: Were LA
ECL 4: Were LA

ECL 5: Druid 1 (this variant (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/variant/classes/variantCharacterClasses.htm#druid))
HP: 2d8
BAB: 3/4th (+1)
Fort: +4
Ref: +2
Will: +2
Feats: Track (Bonus feat)
Abilities:
Monk AC Bonus, Monk Fast Movement, Favored Enemy (as ranger), Swift Tracker (as ranger), Nature Sense, Wild Empathy, Animal Companion
Spells: level 0 - 3, level 1 - 1

ECL 6: Soulknife 1(this variant (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20070214a))
HP: 3d8
BAB: 3/4th (+2)
Fort: +4
Ref: +4
Will: +4
Feats: Hidden Talent (Bonus feat), Weapon Focus: Mindblade (Bonus feat)
Abilities: Mindblade

ECL 7: Soulknife 2
HP: 4d8
BAB: 3/4th (+3)
Fort: +4
Ref: +5
Will: +5
Feats: Pointblank Shot (4 HD)
Abilities: Throw Mindblade

ECL 8: Psion 1
HP: 4d8+1d4
BAB: 2/4th (+3)
Fort: +4
Ref: +5
Will: +7
Feats: Extend Power
Powers: level 1 - 3, PP/day 4 (2 psion, 2 Hidden Talent)

ECL 9: Soulbow 1
HP: 4d8+1d4+1d10
BAB: 3/4th (+3)
Fort: +4
Ref: +7
Will: +9
Feats: Far Shot (Bonus feat)
Abilities: Mind Arrow

ECL 10: Soulbow 2
HP: 4d8+1d4+2d10
BAB: 3/4th (+4)
Fort: +4
Ref: +8
Will: +10
Feats: Iron Will (Hole)
Abilities: Mind Arrow Enhancement (+1 equivalent ability)

ECL 11: Soulbow 3
HP: 4d8+1d4+3d10
BAB: 3/4th (+5)
Fort: +5
Ref: +8
Will: +10
Feats: Precise Shot (Bonus feat), Combat Expertise (8 HD)
Abilities: +1 Mind Arrow

ECL 12: Shiba Protector 1
HP: 4d8+1d4+4d10
BAB: 3/4 (+6/+1)
Fort: +7
Ref: +8
Will: +12
Feats: None
Abilities: No Thought (Wis to attack and damage)

ECL 13: Druid 2
HP: 5d8+1d4+4d10
BAB: 3/4 (+6/+1)
Fort: +8
Ref: +8
Will: +13
Feats: Embrace the Dark Chaos/Shun the Dark Chaos: Weapon Finesse to Dodge, Track to Mobility, Weapon Focus to Zen Archery, Alertness to Combat Reflexes
Abilities: Woodland Stride
Spells: level 0 - 4, level 1 - 2

ECL 14: Shadowdancer 1
HP: 6d8+1d4+4d10
BAB: 3/4 (+7/+2)
Fort: +8
Ref: +10
Will: +13
Feats: None
Abilities: Hide in Plain Sight (Su)

ECL 15: Druid 3
HP: 7d8+1d4+4d10
BAB: 3/4 (+8/+3)
Fort: +8
Ref: +11
Will: +13
Feats: Improved Flight (12 HD)
Abilities: Trackless Step
Spells: level 0 -4, level 1 - 2, level 2 - 1

ECL 16: Druid 4
HP: 8d8+1d4+4d10
BAB: 3/4 (+9/+4)
Fort: +9
Ref: +11
Will: +14
Feats: None
Abilities: Resist Natures Lure
Spells: level 0 - 5, level 1 - 3, level 2 - 2

ECL 17: Druid 5
HP: 9d8+1d4+4d10
BAB: 3/4 (+9/+4)
Fort: +9
Ref: +11
Will: +14
Feats: None
Abilities: None
Spells: level 0 - 5, level 1 - 3, level 2 - 2, level 3 - 1

ECL 18: Druid 6
HP: 10d8+1d4+4d10
BAB: 3/4 (+10/+5)
Fort: +10
Ref: +12
Will: +15
Feats: None
Abilities: None
Spells: level 0 - 5, level 1 - 3, level 2 - 3, level 3 - 2

ECL 19: Druid 7
HP: 11d8+1d4+4d10
BAB: 3/4 (+11/+6/+1)
Fort: +10
Ref: +12
Will: +15
Feats: Improved Flight (16 HD)
Abilities: None
Spells: level 0 - 6, level 1 - 4, level 2 - 3, level 3 - 2, level 4 - 1

ECL 20: Druid 8
HP: 12d8+1d4+4d10
BAB: 3/4 (+12/+7/+6)
Fort: +11
Ref: +12
Will: +16
Feats: None
Abilities: None
Spells: level 0 - 6, level 1 - 4, level 2 - 3, level 3 - 3, level 4 - 2

Condensed version of build

Final Build:
Were-Eagle (1 HD/3 LA)/Druid 1/Soulknife 2/Psion 1/Soulbow 3/Shiba Protector 1/Druid +1 (2 total)/Shadowdancer 1/ Druid +6 (8 total)
HD: 4d10+12d8+1d4
BAB: +12/+7/+6
Fort: +11
Reflex: +12
Will: +12

Unarmored AC Bonus: Wis to AC +1
Unarmored Speed Bonus: +20
Favored Enemy (2)
Swift Tracker
Nature Sense
Wild Empathy
Woodland Stride
Trackless Step
Resist Nature's Lure
Mindblade
Throw Mindblade
+1 Mind Arrow
Mind Arrow Enhancement (+1)
No Thought
Hide In Plain Sight

Powers Known: Four 1st level (1 from any list), 4 PP
Spells: level 0 - 6, level 1 - 4, level 2 - 3, level 3 - 3, level 4 - 2

Feats: Alertness (Eagle), Weapon Finesse (Eagle), Track (Bonus feat), Able Learner (1 HD), Hidden Talent (Bonus feat), Weapon Focus: Mindblade (Bonus feat), Pointblank Shot (4 HD), Extend Power (bonus feat), Far Shot (Bonus feat), Iron Will (Hole), Precise Shot (Bonus feat), Combat Expertise (8 HD), Dodge (CS Weapon Finesse), Mobility (CS Track), Zen Archery (CS Weapon Focus), Improved Flight (12 HD), Improved Flight (16 HD), Combat Reflexes (CS Alertness), Practiced Manifester: Psion (CS Combat Expertise), Metamorphic Transfer (CS Dodge), Mindsight (CS Mobility), Persistent Power (CS Iron Will)

Feats on final build: Hidden Talent, Pointblank Shot, Extend Power, Far Shot, Precise Shot, Zen Archery, Improved Flight, Improved Flight, Practiced Manifester, Metamorphic Transfer, Mindsight, Able Learner, Persistent Power, Metapower: Persistent Guided Shot, Earth Sense (grab from location and shuffle), Earth Power (grab from location and shuffle)

Type: Human (Shapechange)
HD: 4d10+12d8+1d4+34
Initiative: +4
Speed: 50 ft., fly 100 ft. (perfect)
Armor Class: 35 (10+13 (Monk AC)+8 Bracers of Armor+4 Dex), touch 27, flat-footed 31
Ranged Attack Bonus: +36/+31/+28 [+12 (Wis from Zen Archery)+12 (Wis from No thought)+12 (BAB)]
Special Attacks: Distance Mind Arrow +37 AB, 1d8+25 Damage (range increment 330)
Special Qualities: Lots
...
Screw it, I might type up the rest of the stat block later. Check out the two Spoilers if you want all the details.

Now onto the fun stuff.

This build would probably suck pretty badly to play up until it hits the late game although it can work around ECL 12-13.

Basic idea is that you spend virtually all your time in your Were form as an Eagle. Before this however, you go and buy a Skin of Proteus at ML 10 and turn into a Spellweaver (MM2 page 187) and use Metamorphic Transfer to get its 1,000 mile telepathy which is combined with Mindsight to let you find all minds within said area. You then use your Were Alternate Form ability (which thanks to how the Skin and AF interact is RAW legal) which carries over the telepathy into Eagle form (and thus the Mindsight).

Use your Soulbow ability for Seeking which negates Concealment. Combined with Mindsight you need never make a Spot check.

Now go and pay a level 17 Spell to Power Erudite (can get any spell from a Wyrm Wizard) with the spell Guided Shot to transfer it to you with Psychic Chiguery, it only costs 1,530 GP and a thousand XP from you. This spell is a swift action and while it is in effect your ranged attacks ignore everything less than total cover and don't take a penalty from Distance. A 5 point cognizance crystal is enough when combined with Earth Power, a Torc of Power Preservation, and Metapower to manifest the Persistent Guided Shot.

So what does all of this mean? That you are an Eagle with a 100 ft. perfect fly speed who can pinpoint the location of any creature within a thousand miles with one Int or greater and that you can then shoot anyone of them within 3,300 feet at no penalty and with a full attack at +36/+31/+28 for 1d8+25 damage.

If your DM rules that Guided Shot doesn't negate concealment then halve the range and use a Seeking enhancement instead. If your DM will let an Amulet of Natural Attacks work with a Mindblade then put Collision (+5 damage), Seeking, and Splitting on it.

Future feats should go to a few iterations of Psionic Talent (and later the epic version) so that you can actually have enough PP to do much of anything. Drop a chunk of money on getting all relevant first or zero level spells and powers for much greater versatility.

Make sure to get permanent See Invisible, Invisible Arcane Sight, Tongues, Telepathic Bond (with each party member and your animal companion), Cloudwings (+30 ft. fly speed, Savage Species), and Improved Blindsight (60 ft. blindsight, Savage Species) along with Incarnate Detect Teleportation (augmented and at ML 20 for 300 ft. range), Danger Sense (augmented for Improved Uncanny Dodge), and Know Direction and Location.

A Wilding Clasped Third Eye Conceal is also a good choice.

Skill wise, max out the relevant ones.

----
So to summarize, you have the AB of a Solar, fly as well as a Primal Air Elemental (better with cloud wings), the AC of a Solar, and consistently out damage a Solar while being able to detect every mind in a thousand miles and shoot anyone within a bit over half a mile of you. All while you get to play as a small little eagle; and you still have 4th level Druid spells.

Incidentally, I think that I could actually make this significantly better with Vow of Poverty (but who wants to play as an exalted :smalltongue: and I don't feel like putting in the work or coming up with the extra 11 feats I would Chaos Shuffle - leave the vow though).

So let's be honest, how many of your groups would be able to realistically deal with this threat at level 20. Especially when Charles has a belt of battle and the ability to use Metapower Linked Synchronicity Synchronicity and Craft Contingent: Favor of the Martyr plus Craft Contingent: Greater Celerity.

Sure they would probably survive (what high level party doesn't have automated get out of danger contingencies?) but that's about all.

So here you go, Charles the Bird of Prey. Not the theoretical best but still very nasty.

I really should write up the level 20 sheet for a VoP Chaos Shuffle Gestalt version with Factotum 8/Fighter or Feat Rogue 12 on it that has maxed Font of Inspiration and got all those nice but not able to fit feats as well.

Incidentally, I originally started this with a Wildshape Ranger/Monk.

So you start off as a WereEagle. So first up is the Alternate Form ability. And we have our fist interpretation. Alternate form/polymorph does not mention Class Features. So it's anyone's call if when you assume an alternate form weather or not you keep your Class Features. The rules don't say. Tippy would say you do, with no basis other then that is what he wants. Now note Alternate form/polymorph does say that ''The creature retains the spell-like abilities and supernatural attacks of its old form'', but say a supernatural attack from a class feature is not from a ''form'' is an interpretation. The rule only mentions spell-like abilities and supernatural attacks of its old form. Also note you get the physical ability scores of the small little eagle. So your Dexterity of 20 or more becomes 15.

Somehow the WereEagle gets a +4 Inherent, +6 Enhancement to Wisdom at 1st level. That makes no sense in a by the rules game.

Then we get to Soulbow. Now the throw mind blade/mind arrow is a Supernatural Class Feature. It is Not a supernatural attack of your from of whatever humanoid your base creature is. So it is wishful thinking and an interpretation to say a wereeagle in eagle animal form can use mind arrows. Note also that the Mind Arrow ability says ''You must have one hand free to create and project a mind arrow.'' And another interpretation. Does that mean ''you can't hold something in both hands and use this ability, so an eagle with no hands qualifies'' OR ''you must be a humanoid with a free hand to use this ability''.

We have barley scratched the surface, but that is enough for now. After all, without the above interpretations the whole build won't work.

So I don't expect an answer direct from Tippy, but anyone else care to put in a few coppers?

gooddragon1

2014-01-27, 09:24 PM

My 2 cents: I figure that he'll provide things that are RAW but you or other posters will claim they're too cheesy and no DM would allow them. Or you'll get into a semantic debate. Won't change that it's RAW and completely stupid but still RAW. Seen it enough times and so many emphasis mine (which is really usually just a subtle way of showing disrespect to the other poster from the feeling I get when reading it) comments that it's gotten old.

eggynack

2014-01-27, 09:25 PM

That build isn't the Tippyverse. It's just a cool thing he put together. I'm also not entirely sure what you're talking about with alternate form. Anything you originally had is part of your old form, and you keep that if it says you keep that. No interpretation required. You seem to be claiming that a lot of things are "interpretations" without any real proof. About something that's not the Tippyverse. You might want to retitle your thread, "Random speculation about the RAW nature of stuff Tippy's done".

avr

2014-01-27, 09:33 PM

The Tippyverse, if it depends on anything, depends on beneficial spelltraps and cheap labour from bound magical beings or created magical constructs. You haven't touched these with your analysis of one character build.

Story

2014-01-27, 09:36 PM

The Tippyverse is a setting. You can't really debunk a setting. And D&D is not a story with "canon".

Also, everyone plays the game differently.

Seerow

2014-01-27, 09:38 PM

So you start off as a WereEagle. So first up is the Alternate Form ability. And we have our fist interpretation. Alternate form/polymorph does not mention Class Features. So it's anyone's call if when you assume an alternate form weather or not you keep your Class Features. The rules don't say. Tippy would say you do, with no basis other then that is what he wants. Now note Alternate form/polymorph does say that ''The creature retains the spell-like abilities and supernatural attacks of its old form'', but say a supernatural attack from a class feature is not from a ''form'' is an interpretation. The rule only mentions spell-like abilities and supernatural attacks of its old form.

This is a dumb argument. You explicitly get special attacks of your old form, as you note. But if class features aren't tied to a form, then assuming an alternate form doesn't make those class features go away.

Basically, if they're tied to a form, you keep them because Alternate Form says so.
If they're not tied to a form, you keep them because they don't care that you changed your form.

In either case, you still have those abilities.

Honestly the real disappointment with that build is that it was advertised in Piggy's thread as being able to hit people "miles" away, but as far as I can tell it has a max range of like half a mile. Very sub-par.

Karnith

2014-01-27, 09:38 PM

For reference: The Tippyverse (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=222007) is a campaign setting/game world based on extrapolating what 3.5-style magic would actually do to a world. It relies on fairly strict RAW (with a few exceptions) being the laws of the universe, and the game world is most drastically shaped by Teleportation Circles (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/teleportationCircle.htm), of all things.

The Bird of Prey is just a build Tippy made once. It's not really related to the Tippyverse at all.

So you start off as a WereEagle. So first up is the Alternate Form ability. And we have our fist interpretation. Alternate form/polymorph does not mention Class Features. So it's anyone's call if when you assume an alternate form weather or not you keep your Class Features. The rules don't say. Tippy would say you do, with no basis other then that is what he wants. Now note Alternate form/polymorph does say that ''The creature retains the spell-like abilities and supernatural attacks of its old form'', but say a supernatural attack from a class feature is not from a ''form'' is an interpretation.
Polymorph and Alternate Form have always had rules about what you do and do not retain (Polymorph functions as Alter Self except where otherwise noted, recall). You may find this interesting, as it pretty well covers what abilities Alternate Form lets you retain and what ones it doesn't: (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/specialAbilities.htm#alternateForm)

Assuming an alternate form results in the following changes to the creature:

The creature retains the type and subtype of its original form. It gains the size of its new form. If the new form has the aquatic subtype, the creature gains that subtype as well.
The creature loses the natural weapons, natural armor, and movement modes of its original form, as well as any extraordinary special attacks of its original form not derived from class levels (such as the barbarian’s rage class feature).
The creature gains the natural weapons, natural armor, movement modes, and extraordinary special attacks of its new form.
The creature retains the special qualities of its original form. It does not gain any special qualities of its new form.
The creature retains the spell-like abilities and supernatural attacks of its old form (except for breath weapons and gaze attacks). It does not gain the spell-like abilities or attacks of its new form.
The creature gains the physical ability scores (Str, Dex, Con) of its new form. It retains the mental ability scores (Int, Wis, Cha) of its original form. Apply any changed physical ability score modifiers in all appropriate areas with one exception: the creature retains the hit points of its original form despite any change to its Constitution.
The creature retains its hit points and save bonuses, although its save modifiers may change due to a change in ability scores.
Except as described elsewhere, the creature retains all other game statistics of its original form, including (but not necessarily limited to) HD, hit points, skill ranks, feats, base attack bonus, and base save bonuses.
The creature retains any spellcasting ability it had in its original form, although it must be able to speak intelligibly to cast spells with verbal components and it must have humanlike hands to cast spells with somatic components.
The creature is effectively camouflaged as a creature of its new form, and it gains a +10 bonus on Disguise checks if it uses this ability to create a disguise.
Any gear worn or carried by the creature that can’t be worn or carried in its new form instead falls to the ground in its space. If the creature changes size, any gear it wears or carries that can be worn or carried in its new form changes size to match the new size. (Nonhumanoid-shaped creatures can’t wear armor designed for humanoid-shaped creatures, and vice versa.) Gear returns to normal size if dropped.(Emphasis mine)

Based on the bolded passages, it's quite clear you retain any Extraordinary Special Attacks from your class levels, as well as all Supernatural and Spell-Like abilities, and all Special Qualities of your original form. Save for breath weapons and gaze attacks, of course, but those aren't really relevant here. Additionally, you retain anything not mentioned by Alternate Form. It's clear, based on the underlined passage above, that class features are included as part of your original form (and hence you'd explicitly keep them all), but even if they weren't, you'd retain them because Alternate Form doesn't say that you lose them

Also note you get the physical ability scores of the small little eagle. So your Dexterity of 20 or more becomes 15.A lycanthrope in animal or hybrid form does not have its physical ability scores set to those of the base animal. It has them increased by an amount corresponding to the base animal's ability score adjustments. This is an exception to the normal rules regarding Alternate Form. Per the SRD (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monsters/lycanthrope.htm#creatingALycanthrope):

All lycanthropes gain +2 to Wisdom. In addition, when in animal form, a lycanthrope’s physical ability scores improve according to its kind, as set out in the table below. These adjustments are equal to the animal’s normal ability scores -10 or -11. A lycanthrope in hybrid form modifies its physical ability scores by the same amount.

Phelix-Mu

2014-01-27, 09:43 PM

I sense a weird "art imitates life" dynamic going on, where the fictional Tippyverse setting has inspired its own fiction about Tippy and his -verse.

It's nice to see the fiction getting up, pointing to itself and saying "WAIT A MINUTE!":smalltongue:

Invader

2014-01-27, 09:43 PM

Debunking the Debunking the tippyverse thread?

Irk

2014-01-27, 09:43 PM

Actually alternate form says it keeps the special qualities of the original form. In addition, the lycanthrope template explicitly says stat boosts are granted to the base creature by taking the stat of the were creature and subtracting 10 or 11. I have never seen a creature with an ability labeled as 'supernatural attack'. Since the Soulbow's ability is supernatural and an attack, it is a supernatural attack and not subject to such scrutiny that you presented. You just had to look, really, no conflict.
Furthermore, as eggynack said, this has nothing to do with the TV. Why go after this out of all of his ideas? This build has the least to do with the TV out of almost anything else he has done.

Phelix-Mu

2014-01-27, 09:48 PM

I have never seen a creature with an ability labeled as 'supernatural attack'. Since the Soulbow's ability is supernatural and an attack, it is a supernatural attack and not subject to such scrutiny that you presented.

Indeed, it seems silly to suggest that, if there were an MM entry for a Soulbow, that it's eponymous ability wouldn't be under Special Attacks and have the Su tag in the full description.

There is a lot of vagueness in language when it comes to overlapping abilities that were originally conceived of in respect to monsters with the class abilities of characters. Class descriptions don't follow the same conventions as the MM in terms of precise language, but it's not much of a stretch, frankly.

Tippy's reading seems perfectly in line with what most people assume Lycanthrope does, anyway.

Zweisteine

2014-01-27, 09:48 PM

One: According to the Wizards articles on polymorphing,
the subject also retains all class features, as well as all skill ranks and feats derived from class levels. There you go.

It also helps that Baleful Polymorph specifies that class features are lost, where polymorph does not.

Also, keeping something "from its base form" means that the polymorphed creature keeps anything that it had before being polymorphed. If a creature had SLAs naturally, like a pixie, it would retain them when polymorphed,beause it had them in its natural form. The same would go for a pixie warlock's invocations, for the very same reason.

Also, it seems that you have mistaken the Tippyverse to mean "things Tippy has done." It is not. In fact, the Tippyverse is a campaign setting designed by the Ineffably Amazing and Mighty High Optimizer, Emperor Tippy.

Also, don't forget that it is an interpretation that Monks have proficiency with unarmed striked. And it is but an interpretation that characters are allowed to buy the items they want. And, if you can forgive my wording, it is only an interpretation that RAW should be strictly followed, as opposed to both forms of RAI (intended and interpreted).
I seriously can't tell if you're being serious about this. The entirety of theoretical optimization, and enormous parts of the game as a whole rely on interpretation. Without it, you have nothing, and no fun.
So, yeah. Go on about "interpretation" all you want; if you think you've seen a mistake, consider that you probably aren't the first critic, and think about how long an incorrect build would last on these boards. (Hint: they get torn down pretty quickly.)

Emperor Tippy

2014-01-27, 09:53 PM

And here is where we have fun debunking the Tippyverse.
That build has nothing at all to do with the "Tippyverse". It's something I whipped up when I was bored one day and I felt like making a build that killed things with its mind from an absurd distance.

So you start off as a WereEagle. So first up is the Alternate Form ability. And we have our fist interpretation. Alternate form/polymorph does not mention Class Features. So it's anyone's call if when you assume an alternate form weather or not you keep your Class Features. The rules don't say.
...
The rules do say.
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/specialAbilities.htm#alternateForm
See the fourth, fifth, eighth, and ninth bullet points.

Tippy would say you do, with no basis other then that is what he wants. Now note Alternate form/polymorph does say that ''The creature retains the spell-like abilities and supernatural attacks of its old form'', but say a supernatural attack from a class feature is not from a ''form'' is an interpretation. The rule only mentions spell-like abilities and supernatural attacks of its old form.
...
There is no rules "interpretation" that stands up to any analysis that results in the outcome you seem to desire.

Also note you get the physical ability scores of the small little eagle. So your Dexterity of 20 or more becomes 15.
...

In addition, when in animal form, a lycanthrope’s physical ability scores improve according to its kind, as set out in the table below. These adjustments are equal to the animal’s normal ability scores -10 or -11. A lycanthrope in hybrid form modifies its physical ability scores by the same amount.

Somehow the WereEagle gets a +4 Inherent, +6 Enhancement to Wisdom at 1st level. That makes no sense in a by the rules game.
...Where did you get the idea that those stats were gained at level 1? So long as stats are gained before the feats that have stat prerequisites then the only time stat order matters is with Int as that effects skill gain on level up (it's why you should push your Int to whatever end level you want it at as early as you can do so viably in a given build).

Then we get to Soulbow. Now the throw mind blade/mind arrow is a Supernatural Class Feature. It is Not a supernatural attack of your from of whatever humanoid your base creature is. So it is wishful thinking and an interpretation to say a wereeagle in eagle animal form can use mind arrows. Note also that the Mind Arrow ability says ''You must have one hand free to create and project a mind arrow.'' And another interpretation. Does that mean ''you can't hold something in both hands and use this ability, so an eagle with no hands qualifies'' OR ''you must be a humanoid with a free hand to use this ability''.
Supernatural abilities don't go away in Alternate Form per multiple bullet points.

We have barley scratched the surface, but that is enough for now. After all, without the above interpretations the whole build won't work.
Seeing as all of the "interpreting" (read, houseruling and ignoring the RAW in multiple points) is being done by you, the build does continue to work.

Hamste

2014-01-27, 09:55 PM

Just about everything requires interpretation in d&d. What happens when I die? I gain the dead condition...then the condition doesn't explain anything.

What counts as a death effect under the rules? The definition is surprisingly light with very little definitions other than it slays instantly. Many things can be fit that definition and it is up to interpretation to decide what is and isn't.

What do the semicolons, parentheses and periods do to the meaning of the text? Every time you see one you have to interpret the meaning of them for the sentence.

Optimizations are just ways of interpreting the way the rules are written. To argue against these interpretations you have to prove your interpretation is more correct than the other person's. You can't just say, you interpreted something therefore your argument is invalid. Otherwise, no build will work as everything must be interpreted. You have to explain why the interpretation is invalid and then they will make counter arguments most of the time and you will counter and so on and in the end the neutral parties reading the thread will be the ones deciding whether they were swayed by the arguments or not.

Zweisteine

2014-01-27, 09:57 PM

Tippy would say you do, with no basis other then that is what he wants. Now note Alternate form/polymorph does say that ''The creature retains the spell-like abilities and supernatural attacks of its old form'', but say a supernatural attack from a class feature is not from a ''form'' is an interpretation. The rule only mentions spell-like abilities and supernatural attacks of its old form.
Pssssst, Supreme Optimizer, you missed a .

TuggyNE

2014-01-27, 10:06 PM

Debunking the Debunking the tippyverse thread?

Apparently that's what we're doing all right.

I find these threads kind of funny and also kind of sad, because they're obviously attempting to discredit something they do not actually understand in any substantial way. Kind of like someone attacking the tier system by posting an optimized level 20 Fighterish sort of build that can defeat Wizards, or something.

prufock

2014-01-27, 10:08 PM

Emperor Tippy

2014-01-27, 10:11 PM

Pssssst, Supreme Optimizer, you missed a [/quote].

*needs a shifty eyes emote*
No I didn't. The great and powerful Tippy sees no such thing. :smallwink:

thanks for letting me know to use my reality editing powers to fix that tiny little issue.

Karnith

2014-01-27, 10:17 PM

*needs a shifty eyes emote*
No I didn't. The great and powerful Tippy sees no such thing. :smallwink:
While we're at it, you've got one of jedipotter's quotes ("Somehow the WereEagle gets a +4 Inherent, +6 Enhancement to Wisdom at 1st level. That makes no sense in a by the rules game") out of a quotebox, and with no response, in your post.
please don't mindrape/kill/harm me, o merciful Tippy
One might presume that you intended to do something with that, but I don't pretend to know the mind of an emperor.

Emperor Tippy

2014-01-27, 10:22 PM

While we're at it, you've got one of jedipotter's quotes ("Somehow the WereEagle gets a +4 Inherent, +6 Enhancement to Wisdom at 1st level. That makes no sense in a by the rules game") out of a quotebox, and with no response, in your post.
Please don't kill me, o merciful Tippy
One might presume that you intended to do something with that, but I don't pretend to know the mind of an emperor.

More that I am currently doing about seven different things and am also working under a bit of a time limit as I have some other stuff I need to do in a bit.

Ionbound

2014-01-27, 10:37 PM

HaikenEdge

2014-01-27, 10:41 PM

Surely I can't be the only person who read "fist interpretation" and thought, "That's Improved Unarmed Strike. Not really sure what there's to interpret"

Alent

2014-01-27, 10:48 PM

Surely I can't be the only person who read "fist interpretation" and thought, "That's Improved Unarmed Strike. Not really sure what there's to interpret"

Nah, right there with you. I'm in the middle of some homebrew monk revamping, unarmed attack proficiency was literally right in front of my face.

Deophaun

2014-01-27, 10:51 PM

Surely I can't be the only person who read "fist interpretation" and thought, "That's Improved Unarmed Strike. Not really sure what there's to interpret"
Suddenly I'm wondering if there's any way to replace Diplomacy checks with attack rolls...

Lord_Gareth

2014-01-27, 10:53 PM

EugeneVoid

2014-01-27, 10:57 PM

Surely I can't be the only person who read "fist interpretation" and thought, "That's Improved Unarmed Strike. Not really sure what there's to interpret"

Fist Interpretation (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7RosIoQisA)

Karnith

2014-01-27, 11:00 PM

Suddenly I'm wondering if there's any way to replace Diplomacy checks with attack rolls...
It's not quite an attack roll (so no punching people to make them like you), but Perform (Weapon Drill) can explicitly be used unarmed, and Exemplar can make it replace Diplomacy.

ZamielVanWeber

2014-01-27, 11:04 PM

Jedipotter, I'm afraid to say that you have no power here. The reason Tippy's stuff stays around is because the man does his research and backs all of his stuff up with direct rules citations, often helpfully bolded to point out the relevant bits. If you want to take down the God Emperor, you need a better game face than this one.

That and, honestly, the Tippyverse is one of the most.balanced/non-ridiculous settings out there. (Especially since it always seems to end up being far more mundane friendly than anything else.)

Melcar

2014-01-28, 02:28 AM

I personally find this distasteful.

It does not matter how we play the game, as long as people have fun. I enjoy reading Tippy's builds. WOuld I use them... not likely, but that does not mean I go calling out everywhere that he's A) Cheesy B) Wrong.

If someone does not like what he doing so what... most people I know that dont like football... does not play and does not watch.

Hytheter

2014-01-28, 02:43 AM

Suddenly I'm wondering if there's any way to replace Diplomacy checks with attack rolls...

This sounds kind of like Sleuth Diplomacy (http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=4&p=000877).

I find these threads kind of funny and also kind of sad

The threads in which you're dying are the best you've ever had?

...ahem.

It's quite possible I don't have anything meaningful to contribute.

BeerMug Paladin

2014-01-28, 03:31 AM

Most things I see in Tippy's posts makes use of material I've never looked at and have little interest in checking to make sure he built things 'right'. Based on what I've seen that I am familiar with, I'm inclined to believe he's interpreting the rules as they are written, but not necessarily as they are intended. (I doubt people meant Ice Assassin to combine with other spells to do what it can apparently do. Its intent seems straightforward and completely different than what it's so often used for by optimizers.)

If you don't like optimization in your games, it won't exist in your game world, though, and you shouldn't have to worry about it. I never do, apart from when I find people who want to make really crazy character builds. When it comes to optimizing characters, either nobody does it or everyone does it, or the game will be worse for it.

It seems to me largely that you could get around most Tippyverse consequences and Tippy optimization by doing two things as a DM. Disallow things that aren't core. And state that NPCs in the setting have simply never reached 17th level or higher. (Or, whatever level an optimizer requires to access the world-breaking magic shenanigans.)

Also, I suppose the world could be resource-poor. As in, multiple millions of gold pieces of diamonds, rubies, sapphires or whatever gemstones are required to do all the best magic en-masse simply don't exist, or are all tied up in magic items or spells previously cast.

Although for that, it's a shame that the laws of supply and demand exist, because Rules as Written, you're only looking for a quantity that is worth a certain amount, and the rarer a thing is, the more valuable it is for less of it. You'll always be able to get 10,000 gp of crushed rubies as long as any rubies exist anywhere in the setting. By Rules as Written, no world could be resource poor, unless the gems just don't exist (and the spell is uncastable by everyone).

Rules as Intended, though, the cost for the gemstones probably are meant to be indicative of a certain quantity that is unstated. They just list the value as a shorthand for the quantity. A pound of ruby dust is quite a lot and would cost a lot of money! In this case, unless you have access to a full pound of the stuff, you simply won't be able to cast the spell. Most of the time, this distinction just doesn't matter, so the rules were written as they were in order to simplify the game.

Or, maybe magic is supposed to work on the whims of economic supply and demand? This is the sort of thing that is up to the individual DM to hash out, and there's really no wrong answer. Just one answer is a lot sillier.

Alent

2014-01-28, 04:11 AM

...

It seems to me largely that you could get around most Tippyverse consequences and Tippy optimization by doing two things as a DM. Disallow things that aren't core. And state that NPCs in the setting have simply never reached 17th level or higher. (Or, whatever level an optimizer requires to access the world-breaking magic shenanigans.)

...

Teleport Circles and Wish are core, one is the seed concept for the Tippyverse, the other is made into a resetting trap using core trapmaking rules for infinite wishes. Are you sure prohibiting non-core things circumvents the tippyverse?

My personal solution would be to just ban the wish/miracle line of spells (and any SLA version) and ice assassin. It isn't an end all, be all answer to the TO, but it moves the goal posts farther away.

Rules as Intended, though, the cost for the gemstones probably are meant to be indicative of a certain quantity that is unstated. They just list the value as a shorthand for the quantity. A pound of ruby dust is quite a lot and would cost a lot of money! In this case, unless you have access to a full pound of the stuff, you simply won't be able to cast the spell. Most of the time, this distinction just doesn't matter, so the rules were written as they were in order to simplify the game.

Or, maybe magic is supposed to work on the whims of economic supply and demand? This is the sort of thing that is up to the individual DM to hash out, and there's really no wrong answer.

It probably should be in another thread, but I would love to see some thinktank work on this. I've always wanted to build a campaign where the economy actually made sense as a single whole and item crafting was more than half price off magemart, rather than having the NPC economy vs the Adventurer economy. I started on it, but the enormity of the project overwhelmed me.

Kelb_Panthera

2014-01-28, 05:05 AM

Togo

2014-01-28, 05:46 AM

Ah...I am reminded why I hate both sides of the optimization debate...Alright, let's start. *Note: For those interested, I am not going to touch the actual build. That's Tippy's domain, and I dare not intrude*

Ok. Your arguement is based one main assumption (this weakens it already, but that's already a tangential point): All DMs are going to interpret the RAW the same way you are, which is blatantly untrue. Obviously Tippy interpreted the rules in X way, and you did so in Y way. This is what makes D&D work.

This is an extremely sensible position and I agree entirely.

I would note, however, that the reason why we get threads like this is in part because it is a position that is explicitly rejected by, amongst others, Tippy himself. The Tippyverse is not intended or presented as one interpretation amongst many, but rather an inevitable result of applying RAW to a gameworld. This is why Tippy claims that all other gameworlds (including yours) are based on DM fiat or rules variation, whereas his is not.

That's why we have a thread that's trying to argue that Tippyverse is based on rules interpretation. Because although it seems like an entirely obvious point, Tippy claims otherwise.

You can have so many varying power levels, and really any attempt to mess with that is going to ruin it, and this is built into the very game's code, ever since 1e, penned by Gygax himself. The rules, while they might be dysfunctional, and not take into account TO people like Tippy, for the most part work. They work because they allow people to make characters of differing PL, not despite it. And because of this, D&D as a basic idea has continued for what is now 40 years, even with the pothole that is 4e along the way. So, if you want characters that are all equal, go play that. The rest of us will enjoy the madness and inanity that 1-3.5 have inherent, and revel in it.

Exactly! Why have a ruleset that can only produce characters that are well balanced with each other? What possible use is such a restriction?

Kelb_Panthera

2014-01-28, 05:55 AM

This is an extremely sensible position and I agree entirely.

I would note, however, that the reason why we get threads like this is in part because it is a position that is explicitly rejected by, amongst others, Tippy himself. The Tippyverse is not intended or presented as one interpretation amongst many, but rather an inevitable result of applying RAW to a gameworld. This is why Tippy claims that all other gameworlds (including yours) are based on DM fiat or rules variation, whereas his is not.

That's why we have a thread that's trying to argue that Tippyverse is based on rules interpretation. Because although it seems like an entirely obvious point, Tippy claims otherwise.

Exactly! Why have a ruleset that can only produce characters that are well balanced with each other? What possible use is such a restriction?

Not to speak for the man himself, but Tippy has said, explicitly, that what we call the tippyverse is -not- the only logical conclusion that could be derived from RAW and that even as it exists it assumes that the gods, a major part of most settings, do not interfere in the world if they exist at all.

We get threads like this because people make the same mistake you just did and because people who like a lower powered game or simply don't understand or want to acknowledge just how borked the rules actually are try to tear down what they don't like or understand.

SiuiS

2014-01-28, 06:00 AM

"Could your level 20 party fight this?" Yes, but oh god would they be pissed. XD

Honestly the real disappointment with that build is that it was advertised in Piggy's thread as being able to hit people "miles" away, but as far as I can tell it has a max range of like half a mile. Very sub-par.

It's an epic character. There's an ability that lets you shoot at anything within line of sight. Figure out how to slap that on!

georgie_leech

2014-01-28, 06:03 AM

Vanitas

2014-01-28, 06:10 AM

Zweisteine

2014-01-28, 06:40 AM

Exactly! Why have a ruleset that can only produce characters that are well balanced with each other? What possible use is such a restriction?

I'd sig this if I had space left.

But seriously, that's what they did with 4e. If you want enforced balance, gp there. (Mind you, I don't actually know that Is true, but t
So the use of such a restriction is to make fighters playable in high-power games.

Emperor Tippy

2014-01-28, 06:40 AM

The Tippyverse is not intended or presented as one interpretation amongst many, but rather an inevitable result of applying RAW to a gameworld. This is why Tippy claims that all other gameworlds (including yours) are based on DM fiat or rules variation, whereas his is not.

That's why we have a thread that's trying to argue that Tippyverse is based on rules interpretation. Because although it seems like an entirely obvious point, Tippy claims otherwise.

...The "Tippyverse" is a category within which a whole spectrum of settings can and do fall. I claim, and am willing to (and have repeatedly) prove, that said category is the inevitable result of the 3.5 rules as written.

That being said, I make no such claim for the various settings in that category (including the ones that I run and the example setting that I have posted part of on these boards).

In point of fact I have explicitly and repeatedly stated that Points of Light chooses to assume a number of low order probabilities precisely because I desired for it to be a useful and playable setting. At full optimization across the board there are whole swathes of ideas and stories that the setting simply can not tell.

Points of Light was created by taking the rules, figuring out the likely results of those rules, and then picking whichever possible result best fit with the goals of the setting (being playable at pretty much all levels, for all classes, and able to tell virtually all types of stories while remaining internally consistent and resistant to the PC's breaking the world).

I agree. I only get bothered when people say TV is the "only logical outcome" of the 3.5 ruleset, while it is anything but.

The basic Tippyverse category is. So long as permanent Teleporation Circles exist as they do under the rules as written in 3.5 you will, given time, inevitably end up with a Tippyverse unless it is being explicitly prevented by a great power (such as a deity). If not being actively prevented and such magic exists then it will eventually be used and the basic Tippyverse will eventually form.

I will maintain that claim until someone can make a strong case for said claim being incorrect without relying on fiat, houserules, or divine intervention (which amounts to fiat).

Togo

2014-01-28, 07:50 AM

Not to speak for the man himself, but Tippy has said, explicitly, that what we call the tippyverse is -not- the only logical conclusion that could be derived from RAW and that even as it exists it assumes that the gods, a major part of most settings, do not interfere in the world if they exist at all.

No, of course not. He also allows for other variations on Tippyverse, and other worlds that share the same essential characteristics of Tippyverse, and assumes no outside intervention, divine or otherwise.

But to be fair, he does explicitly call out other settings as being wrong, and necessarily involving DM fiat or rules changes to achieve anything other than a Tippyverse or a Tippyverse-like world.

We get threads like this because people make the same mistake you just did

Subject to the clarification above, do you now agree that I didn't make a mistake? If not, can you point to what mistake I have made?

I think we get threads like this one, which was specifically aimed at demonstrating that Tippyverse involves assumptions and rules interpretations, precisely because Tippy claims that his setting doesn't use the kinds of rules interpretations that any other gameworld concept does.

Your view may well be a better representation of his actual opinions or design philosophy, but we get threads like this in part because of what is explicitly said.

eggynack

2014-01-28, 07:59 AM

Subject to the clarification above, do you now agree that I didn't make a mistake? If not, can you point to what mistake I have made?
I think the error you're making is that you assume that Tippy is calling any setting you construct "wrong" if it doesn't match up to this specific points of light setting. Theoretically, depending on how broad the Tippyverse category is, any sufficiently advanced setting you produce could fall under that umbrella. I think Tippy's claims of fiat only apply to the settings that are a part of the game, because he can actively see that those settings don't fall under the category, and as long as you extrapolate from magic to a sufficient degree, things should be fine. I mean, you could always ask, maybe presenting the general aspects of your setting and seeing whether it's judged as within the Tippyverse category, relying on fiat, or as your goal, outside of either group.

BeerMug Paladin

2014-01-28, 08:04 AM

Yeah, you clearly don't understand the inherent flaws in this game. Most of the most ridiculously overpowered options for casters are right there in the player's handbook. You'd do a lot better for improving the game's balance by banning nothing but core except for core feats.

As for the level at which things break, that's about level 7. Fourth level spells are world-changing effects. The only reason that a pseudo-medieval setting is even a little plausible is because casters are such a tiny portion of the default population (see the tables on DMG pg 139) and, apparently, none of them has thought to use beneficial magical traps to smash competitors (figuratively) in business instead of using them for some other, less productive option as of yet.
If you want to get really pedantic for no reason, the true breakage happens even sooner. Level 5. Craft Wondrous item + Create Food and Water. Food traps. Farms and wells disappear. And wizards have nothing to do with it at all. They're less broken than clerics because at least the setting breakage happens later for wizards.

At level 3 a druid could use Craft Wondrous Item + heat metal to create a cheap portable stove. Of course those don't usually exist in settings either. The same druid could magnify the food production output of an entire farm by a ridiculous margin with the spell goodberry as a trap. Bye-bye 99% of farms. The future is in food pills that taste like delicious berries! Forget that stupid, bland cleric food. Druids are even more broken!

I'll go on record that the point where the game gets broken is when players get the ability to create magic traps. That happens at level 3 for primary casters. A single level 3 druid could change the standard fantasy world if they tried. It only gets worse the higher you go.

But I've never had a single player try to break a game setting at level 3. Doing this changes a setting, but it alone is not a Tippyverse. It may have some similarities, but without the teleportation circles and wish-traps generating a post-scarcity economy, it's not a Tippyverse.

I once made a character whose motivation for adventuring was to get access to stone shape and fabricate, and then spend the rest of his life living a luxurious life as a fine art sculptor. Honestly, I can't imagine why casters of much higher level would do anything but retire and live a life of extreme luxury in cities.

At some point, it kind of becomes senseless to keep adventuring as a spellcaster when you can retire for the rest of your life, work a few minutes a day, and be richer than most kings. And since adventuring is incredibly risky, why do spellcasters ever go beyond 10th level?

The answer is obvious. It's a game, it's not meant to really reflect reality in that great of detail. Druids of 3rd level don't become mega-wealthy, mega-corporate farmers because druids, like all classes, are meant to go adventuring and fight monsters. Sure, the rules mean that any 3rd level druid could economically conquer the world, but just because there's no way to avoid it by the rules doesn't mean much. It's not what you're here for.

And in regards to disallowing non-core books I was mostly talking about the builds I see now and then like those posted in the original post. Most of the utterly ridiculous craziness is allowed by stuff that is outside of core. Like that Ice Assassin spell.

Very few of the most powerful or useful spells have material components with any significant GP costs. Rarifying gems just cuts down on the creation of undead and the imprisoning of souls to some degree but that's about it. Oh, and it makes reviving the dead a bit tougher but some people are into that.
The rules for magic item creation says that it takes x amount of gp of 'stuff' to craft magic items. It's so nebulous a thing that it basically amounts to the DM saying that 'stuff' is available. Maybe 'stuff' is not available.

Anyway, I've pretty much always read that 'stuff' as a random assortment of gems, herbs, minerals, doo-dads, chemicals and so forth in order to create said arbitrary item. What do you think that 'stuff' is? I am aware it doesn't say 'stuff' exactly, but my point stands.

prufock

2014-01-28, 08:14 AM

Kelb_Panthera

2014-01-28, 08:19 AM

The Tippyverse is -not- an inevitable conclusion of the 3.5 rules set. It presumes mostly silent gods and that is, itself, going outside the bounds of the rules set, thanks to the existence of Deities and Demigods.

Gods can, and do, act to protect and further the influence of their portfolios in whatever setting they exist in either directly, when they must, or through proxies (clerics and outsiders), when they can.

Ignoring this is no different from ignoring any other section of the rules set and logic dictates that gods can, and will, interfere in the affairs of mortals including, especially, something so gamechanging as the incorporation of teleport circles in regular trade and warfare.

Further, when you consider that the rule set only allows for divine casters capable of casting ninth level spells to be generated without DM fiat, but not arcane, and that the only gods that grant access to TC are deities of travel whose portfolio would be severely impacted by its use as Tippy suggests, it not only becomes uncertain that a Tippyverse-esque setting would develop in the first place but perhaps even unlikely.

@Togo:

I stand corrected, and mildly disturbed, in light of Tippy's previous post.

CRtwenty

2014-01-28, 08:28 AM

Emperor Tippy

2014-01-28, 08:48 AM

The Tippyverse is -not- an inevitable conclusion of the 3.5 rules set. It presumes mostly silent gods and that is, itself, going outside the bounds of the rules set, thanks to the existence of Deities and Demigods.

Gods can, and do, act to protect and further the influence of their portfolios in whatever setting they exist in either directly, when they must, or through proxies (clerics and outsiders), when they can.

Ignoring this is no different from ignoring any other section of the rules set and logic dictates that gods can, and will, interfere in the affairs of mortals including, especially, something so gamechanging as the incorporation of teleport circles in regular trade and warfare.
Please point to any explicit stated rules laying out divine intervention. 3.5 doesn't have any.

And for every deity opposed to a TV, there is another who would support it. In FR, for example, Mystra would back one fully (as would a number of other deities actually) based on her fluff and previous actions.

Further, when you consider that the rule set only allows for divine casters capable of casting ninth level spells to be generated without DM fiat, but not arcane, and that the only gods that grant access to TC are deities of travel whose portfolio would be severely impacted by its use as Tippy suggests, it not only becomes uncertain that a Tippyverse-esque setting would develop in the first place but perhaps even unlikely.
This isn't true at all. See the Epic Level Handbook page 114.

Kelb_Panthera

2014-01-28, 08:53 AM

-Stuff-

...... If you knew all this, why on earth would you suggest that non-core material was the problem?

More of the build in the OP is core than not and it's not a particularly impressive character anyway. A straight evoker can get similar range and damage, buff himself just as well or better, and, if he picks up craft staff at 8, "ammo" is nearly as much of non-issue. It's not broken, just good at what it does and that's an extremely limited thing.

The problem's not, and never has been, non-core material. It's people having a lower tolerance for "cheese" and placing the bar too low for "broken" when examining complex non-caster or partial caster builds. If that same were-eagle were a straight druid using only core material, instead of fluffing about with psionics, he'd be much more all around capable.

As for the "stuff" that's used in item creation, I'd always presumed it was mostly odd but not necessarily stunningly rare materials. Maybe -some- rare gems and herbs but also a number of more common chemicals and alchemical substances that aren't at all difficult to come by.

One -could- adjust the setting such that those things are relatively rare but there are implications to doing so that also have to be considered. Does that make magic items rare as well? If it does, that harms the game balance by putting non-casters even further behind casters in terms of power and ability. If items aren't rare, why? Have those resources only recently become rare? Could the players do something about the shortage, if so?

Some players insist on a modicum of internal consistency and are likely to ask these questions.

All of this is beside the original point, though. While placing them in items or traps does make certain exceedingly low-level effects into world-changers, a number of 4th level and higher spells don't need such treatment to rock a campaign.

bekeleven

2014-01-28, 09:01 AM

One thing I DO wonder about the Tippyverse, though, as far as teleportation circle abuse goes:

Don't spells like Anticipate Teleport, Greater Anticipate Teleport, and Dimensional Lock in conjunction with many divination spells sort of negate this? I'm picturing a moderate-sized town where the town guards, outriders, patrols, scouts, etc are all under the effect of (Greater) Anticipate Teleport spells, and have the ability to create a Dimensional Lock when they detect incoming teleportation.

Granted they can't cover all ground, but nor can teleportation circles. Divinations should give the higher-ups enough knowledge to know where to send the outriders. Could this not necessitate more conventional warfare? The invading army could be forced to teleport in a fair distance away, giving conventional scouts their job back, and requiring actual travel time to invade.

First off, both sides would have to be high magic. You're outfitting your town guard with hourglasses that cost 1500GP each.

Also, it's got a 55-100 foot radius (CL dependent) and is an emenation, meaning if you want it in buildings you basically have to build a self-resetting hourglass trap, a self-resetting animate objects trap, then send them out to blanket your town inside and out.

You also only get 3 rounds of warning, meaning you need a force on-hand that can be teleported anywhere in your town within 3 rounds to respond to invaders. And even this would be stymied by things like appearing in small buildings where only their force would fit. Finally, your responders would hit the anticipate field too, so no matter what, 3 rounds is your fastest response time - you can't arrive earlier than the invader.

I am of the opinion that the spell delays teleportation due to Wish, but I feel Tippy may disagree. Even if he does not, you could always burrow under the city, make a cavern, tele your troops then break street level, or other such nonsense.

Small note: What if someone with that field up moves into a space about to be occupied by an invader? RAW the spell fails, but that seems a bit abusive.

SillySymphonies

2014-01-28, 09:15 AM

I will maintain that claim until someone can make a strong case for said claim being incorrect without relying on fiat, houserules, or divine intervention (which amounts to fiat).

I would like to question the very premise of this claim. This claim ('So long as permanent Teleporation Circles exist as they do under the rules as written in 3.5 you will, given time, inevitably end up with a Tippyverse [...].') is only true from a certain point of view: namely, that of the simulationist.

(And even then, a case can be made for the rules providing only a model for simulating a heroic fantasy world, rather than the rules being the natural and economic laws of the world. I.e.: don't confuse the model (D&D) for the 'actual' thing it simulates (a heroic fantasy world).)

From the narrativist point of view you will end up with what ammounts to a 'Pratchettverse' (i.e. a world that runs on the theory of narrative causality). (Note though that the Tippyverse and this 'Pratchettverse' aren't mutually exclusive! A given world could simultaneously run on both premises just fine.)

To Emperor Tippy's credit, he actually acknowledges the inherent simulationist view of the Tippyverse: 'At it’s most basic the Tippyverse is nothing more than a setting where the D&D 3.5 rules as written are largely taken at face value and as the basic rules for a world. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=222007)'

I don't think it's the claim per se that rubs people the wrong way, rather how forcibly it's presented:
'So long as permanent Teleporation Circles exist [...] you will, given time, inevitably end up with a Tippyverse [...].' [emphasis mine];
'"Wrong" in the sense that their settings are deeply flawed and only exist (and continue to exist) via DM fiat and/or significant house-rules? Yes. (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?p=16706464#post16706464)'

Kelb_Panthera

2014-01-28, 09:20 AM

Please point to any explicit stated rules laying out divine intervention. 3.5 doesn't have any.

Of course there's no such explicit line stating that gods will interfere in mortal affairs to protect and further their portfolios. There doesn't need to be. Simple logic dictates that this would be so unless there was an explicit rule to the contrary or some compelling reason for them not to. It's the same kind of logic that you used to say that TC circles usefulness in trade means that it will inevitably be used to that end.

And for every deity opposed to a TV, there is another who would support it. In FR, for example, Mystra would back one fully (as would a number of other deities actually) based on her fluff and previous actions.

That's a spurious conclusion. Whether it's true or not depends on a number of factors, not the least of which is the nature of divine politics within the setting. Sure, Mystra is all too happy about such developments but what of Chauntea, Umberlee, Malar, and several others besides. FR's divine politics are complex enough that a snap judgement seems like a bad idea.

This isn't true at all. See the Epic Level Handbook page 114.

That's explicitly a variant. It replaces the table on DMG 139 in the campaigns that use it. Since it's not a rule that's in use by default, you can't presume that it will always be the case that it is.

I will admit that my statement isn't universally true either but it will be accurate fairly often. Given the relatively low popularity of the ELH, I'd hazard that it's true more often than not.

eggynack

2014-01-28, 09:31 AM

FR's divine politics are complex enough that a snap judgement seems like a bad idea.

Wouldn't that also be true in the other direction then, such that a God seeking to undermine the circles would have to negotiate the endlessly complex world of divine politics as well? Seems like the two factors would balance each other out, and the pro-circle crowd would get their opinions worked out at around the same time as the anti-circle crowd.

Kelb_Panthera

2014-01-28, 09:41 AM

Wouldn't that also be true in the other direction then, such that a God seeking to undermine the circles would have to negotiate the endlessly complex world of divine politics as well? Seems like the two factors would balance each other out, and the pro-circle crowd would get their opinions worked out at around the same time as the anti-circle crowd.

To a certain extent. However, sometimes politics precedes action, sometimes it follows. The gods that oppose may act first and then deal with the fallout or they may manage to come to an agreement in their favor or the earliest incarnation of the Tippyverse may well occur. If it does there becomes the question of how long will it remain. Maybe it will fail within a few years or maybe it will last for eons.

My whole point was that it not necessarily the only possible outcome, not that it wasn't possible. If the demographic table from ELH isn't in use then it's fairly unlikely in any setting because of the simple fact that gods of travel, who are very likely to oppose, have a tremendously greater influence over the outcome than do any other gods.

eggynack

2014-01-28, 09:45 AM

Ah, fair enough then. It's an assertion that relies on gods both taking an active interest, and that negative interest occurring in a certain way, but it's a plausible outcome of things work out in that manner.

Psyren

2014-01-28, 09:46 AM

The Tippyverse is -not- an inevitable conclusion of the 3.5 rules set. It presumes mostly silent gods and that is, itself, going outside the bounds of the rules set, thanks to the existence of Deities and Demigods.

DaD repeatedly tells you that gods rarely interfere with anything though. Remember that tying their power to worshipers or advancement of their portfolio is a FR thing; in the core setting, the gods keep their powers no matter how crappy or indifferent of a job they're doing. They thus have no real motivations other than basic self-preservation, and since nothing that happens in TV would threaten them directly they have no reason to step in.

Rhynn

2014-01-28, 09:50 AM

All the god-wrangling seems completely irrelevant, given that...

The basic Tippyverse category is. So long as permanent Teleporation Circles exist as they do under the rules as written in 3.5 you will, given time, inevitably end up with a Tippyverse unless it is being explicitly prevented by a great power (such as a deity).

Emperor Tippy has already stated that the whole concept is predicated on gods not interfering. Whether they do or not is obviously a matter of setting and up to the GM, and has nothing to do with the rules. Whether gods even exist is a matter of setting.

Emperor Tippy

2014-01-28, 09:51 AM

Except it 1) presupposes that there are active gods, 2) presupposes that those gods decide to oppose teleportation circles, and 3) presupposes that those gods have the power to oppose high level mortals.

None of those suppositions is actually particularly well RAW supported.

To be more precise, none of those things exist as official rules and thus would fall under the category of DM fiat. As in the DM is actively building the setting to prevent a Tippyverse from forming.

Kelb_Panthera

2014-01-28, 09:53 AM

DaD repeatedly tells you that gods rarely interfere with anything though. Remember that tying their power to worshipers or advancement of their portfolio is a FR thing; in the core setting, the gods keep their powers no matter how crappy or indifferent of a job they're doing. They thus have no real motivations other than basic self-preservation, and since nothing that happens in TV would threaten them directly they have no reason to step in.

This isn't true. While their divinity isn't tied directly to worship, that is; a complete lack of worshipers doesn't make them stop being gods, they -do- derive some power from worship. Sidebar on page 13 of D&DG.

The degree of change that the TV represents in the balance of power amongst the gods is too great for any deity that would be affected to ignore. It -does- change the motivations, or at least the weight of the motivations, of the gods in that setting.

Lord Raziere

2014-01-28, 09:55 AM

Jedipotter, I'm afraid to say that you have no power here. The reason Tippy's stuff stays around is because the man does his research and backs all of his stuff up with direct rules citations, often helpfully bolded to point out the relevant bits. If you want to take down the God Emperor, you need a better game face than this one.

Ya. s'why I keep myself to my battleground of fluff, and just keep saying that Tippyverse is Dark Sun But Less Interesting. I don't see what is so great about it when I already have a much more flavorful setting that is basically the same thing, and while keeping people from being Wizard Sue's.

Rhynn

2014-01-28, 10:01 AM

I don't see what is so great about it when I already have a much more flavorful setting

I don't see what's so great about Eberron/Ravenloft/Forgotten Realms/Dark Sun/Mystara/whatever, when I have [setting I like].

That's a silly non-argument. Nobody's going to like all settings. You're just stating a preference, which isn't any kind of battleground.

Tippyverse is Dark Sun But Less Interesting

Can you elaborate? As an Athas fan, I don't see this at all. For one thing, Athas has some fundamentally different assumptions, like the fact that using arcane magic actually uses up energy (that ultimately comes from the sun)... and it doesn't involve teleport circles at all.

Psyren

2014-01-28, 10:03 AM

This isn't true. While their divinity isn't tied directly to worship, that is; a complete lack of worshipers doesn't make them stop being gods, they -do- derive some power from worship. Sidebar on page 13 of D&DG.

Yes, it is true. You realize that sidebar supports me right? "The deities of the D&D pantheon are independent of mortals for their power." It then points out that the racial deities care about their followers' welfare, but nowhere does it say they need them - quite the opposite.

And the part before that - "You may build an elaborate system" etc. - is a suggested variant rule.

charcoalninja

2014-01-28, 10:04 AM

Yeesh what is it, pick a fight with Tippy month? You're infamy grows Tippy!

The more of these threads I read the more I wish I had collected everything 3.5 ever printed because lordy the combinations allow for so many different shenanigens that the caster / mundane gap doesn't seem that important.

Hell he made an eagle that snipes people 1k miles away. No Ice Assassins and gates and things, it uses a soulknife for crying out loud which is about the weakest class you can get outside of monk.

Tippy knows his stuff, and has such a knowledge of the system that I personally find it humbling, and considering the nuttiness that is a tier 1 caster given prep time, most of it isn't bad at all. Charles is a wicked character concept and an incredible setting element for a story. An orbital machinegun eagle... love it.

In terms of Divine Intervention messing with the Tippyverse:

Well as written miracle has the power to instantly erase and destroy every teleportation circle in at least a country so an angry cleric could just go from city to city taking out their grids with a standard action if he has the backing of his god.

Similarly a greater miracle can make it impossible for an army to teleport in or hell enter the city at all. The rules for Divine Intervention are in Miracle. Gods can grant miracles to their clerics if they so choose, and miracles can do literally anything the DM wants it to.

Wish actually has limits, miracle doesn't.

I mean the examples of greater miracles involves True Resurrection on an entire army of thousands as a standard action, or essentially resillient sphering an entire city instantly to guard it against a volcano. A city wide Disjunction is certainly in line with those effects.

But it's no fun ending every thought experiment with "gods grant miracle the end". So we get actual non miracle intricacies instead.

Lord Raziere

2014-01-28, 10:06 AM

I don't see what's so great about Eberron/Ravenloft/Forgotten Realms/Dark Sun/Mystara/whatever, when I have [setting I like].

That's a silly non-argument. Nobody's going to like all settings. You're just stating a preference, which isn't any kind of battleground.

Can you elaborate? As an Athas fan, I don't see this at all. For one thing, Athas has some fundamentally different assumptions, like the fact that using arcane magic actually uses up energy (that ultimately comes from the sun)... and it doesn't involve teleport circles at all.

powerful Wizards rule from cities they have made themselves in a death world where everyone outside the cities struggles to survive daily in a world where the gods are silent. Am I talking about Dark Sun or Tippyverse?

Rhynn

2014-01-28, 10:10 AM

powerful Wizards rule from cities they have made themselves in a death world where everyone outside the cities struggles to survive daily in a world where the gods are silent. Am I talking about Dark Sun or Tippyverse?

"The world is the battleground of mighty mortals and deities. Savage wildernesses contrast with glittering cities."

What setting is that, again?

If that's what you reduce Athas to, cool, but that's a top-level description on the level of "X is a four-legged mammal with hair and teeth" - which one am I talking about again?

Dusk Eclipse

2014-01-28, 10:12 AM

Psyren

2014-01-28, 10:12 AM

powerful Wizards rule from cities they have made themselves in a death world where everyone outside the cities struggles to survive daily in a world where the gods are silent. Am I talking about Dark Sun or Tippyverse?

In Points of Light, the wilderness isn't barren like Dark Sun's, just uncivilized and dangerous. It's lush and there are plenty of resources to be found, they just aren't needed due to all the conjuration/transmutation traps in the cities.

Kelb_Panthera

2014-01-28, 10:14 AM

Except it 1) presupposes that there are active gods,

In some settings the gods will be active. By default they are -moderately- active. They neither walk the material plane (for the most part) nor do they completely distance themselves from it. In FR they're fairly active, in Eberron they're so inactive as to have their existence questioned. The presumption that they're inactive is no more valid than the assumption that they're active.

2) presupposes that those gods decide to oppose teleportation circles,

Not that they do, that they may. Some will, with certainty, while others will approve and still others will be indifferent. How much influence they have will, necessarily, vary with setting.

and 3) presupposes that those gods have the power to oppose high level mortals.

Now this one is curious. Except for divine rank and its associated benefits, there's no difference between gods and high-level mortals. Since all other things are equal, the gods have an edge, a serious one, in their divine abilities. Why wouldn't they have the power to oppose high-level mortals? Especially given that any mortal that even approaches deity level power exists by DM fiat; the highest level of randomly generated NPC that's not an NPC class being 28?

None of those suppositions is actually particularly well RAW supported.

To be more precise, none of those things exist as official rules and thus would fall under the category of DM fiat. As in the DM is actively building the setting to prevent a Tippyverse from forming.

The activity of gods varies with setting but the published settings -do- give guidelines for how active they are, as I noted above. It's no more DM fiat than the existence of any NPC with a PC class above level 20.

The second supposition was inaccurate. The corrected supposition is based in logic. If the Tippyverse is built on logic then it's only natural that logic be considered in opposition to it as well.

The third is very much RAW supported. Gods -are- high level characters with an extra suite of abilities that no mortal can access without becoming a god himself.

Psyren

2014-01-28, 10:22 AM

In some settings the gods will be active. By default they are -moderately- active. They neither walk the material plane (for the most part) nor do they completely distance themselves from it. In FR they're fairly active, in Eberron they're so inactive as to have their existence questioned.

You have to define what "moderate" means, and explain how they will intervene in the world and what effect that will have on the setting. As far as I can see, absolutely nothing in TV will merit divine interruption. If you disagree, say what they will mess with and why so we can have an actual discussion.

danzibr

2014-01-28, 10:24 AM

And here is where we have fun debunking the Tippyverse. It gets brought up all the time, and most see it as cannon. [...]
BOOM!
http://static3.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20110407233132/finalfantasy/images/5/51/Sister_Ray-Crisis_Core.jpg
I stopped reading shortly thereafter.

I personally find this distasteful.
As do I. Throwing out slanderous stuff about a fellow forum-goer?

I echo what others have said: the reason it sticks around is because it's sound by RAW (in my years reading Tippy's stuff, there's only thing I disagreed with him on, something to do with deflecting incoming attacks or something).

Kelb_Panthera

2014-01-28, 10:24 AM

Yes, it is true. You realize that sidebar supports me right? "The deities of the D&D pantheon are independent of mortals for their power." It then points out that the racial deities care about their followers' welfare, but nowhere does it say they need them - quite the opposite.

And the part before that - "You may build an elaborate system" etc. - is a suggested variant rule.

....It's clear that many use worshipers to augment their power.....

They don't stop being gods for lack of worshipers and their divine rank is unaffected by their number of worshipers but how much power they actually have very much is affected by the overall strength of their portfolio and the number of worshipers they have. These factors influence the reach of their knowledge and ability to act by proxy. To presume that they are -all- completely disinterested in changes to the world, especially such drastic changes as the Tippyverse represents, is absurd.

StrangeLooper

2014-01-28, 10:29 AM

A possible interpretation of god intervention in the Tippyverse (I'm not sure if this is original or not):
The methods beings of such high levels such as gods could use to do massive damage and effectively destroy the world are relatively simple. A Locate City Nuke is simple and easy for even relatively low level characters. Gods would be able to do so much more. All you would need is one insane or completely evil god of which we already have several. Assuming that their is not one good god who has the power to control the others, aka no DM fiat. This is of course avoided by saying that the gods police themselves and have a kind of truce. In this truce they do no go completely crazy destroying things and any that do so are stopped. In this case gods would most likely have to agree to do any major interventions that it would take to stop the tippy verse. I find it unlikely that with their diverse sets of intentions and goals they would be able to agree on doing this as it would not be worth it too them.

Lord Raziere

2014-01-28, 10:31 AM

"The world is the battleground of mighty mortals and deities. Savage wildernesses contrast with glittering cities."

What setting is that, again?

God of War.

@ other people: and the lush wilderness and most people not struggling is the Less Interesting part I was talking about. conflict drives the setting. less conflict, means less interesting, your basically throwing away good sources of conflict and plots for the PC's to participate in.

The Glyphstone

2014-01-28, 10:34 AM

“Destiny guides our fortunes more favorably than we could have expected. Look there, Sancho Playground, my friend, and see those thirty or so wild giantsTippyverses, with whom I intend to do battle and killdebunk each and all of them, so with their stolen booty we can begin to enrich ourselves. This is nobel, righteous warfare, for it is wonderfully useful to God to have such an evil race campaign setting wiped from the face of the earth."
"What giantsTippyverses?" Asked Sancho Playground.
"The ones you can see over there," answered his master, "with the huge armsTeleportation Circles and resetting traps, some of which are very nearly two leagues long."
"Now look, your grace," said Sancho, "what you see over there aren't giants interpretations, but windmills strictly applied RAW, and what seems to be arms errors are just their sails loopholes, that go around in the wind and turn the millstone."
"Obviously," replied Don Fiate, "you don't know much about adventures D&D.”
― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote Fiate

eggynack

2014-01-28, 10:39 AM

― Miguel de Cervantes Saavedra, Don Quixote Fiate
And just as in Don Quixote, a wizard did it.

Psyren

2014-01-28, 10:43 AM

They don't stop being gods for lack of worshipers and their divine rank is unaffected by their number of worshipers

So in other words, none of the things that truly matter are affected by indifference, which is what I said.

To presume that they are -all- completely disinterested in changes to the world, especially such drastic changes as the Tippyverse represents, is absurd.

Again, you are making the positive claim - you need to show what aspects of TV would provoke a response and why. You can't simply say "well, they might be affected, so they will definitely throw the whole thing out" and leave it at that - that's intellectually lazy at best.

Kelb_Panthera

2014-01-28, 10:47 AM

You have to define what "moderate" means, and explain how they will intervene in the world and what effect that will have on the setting. As far as I can see, absolutely nothing in TV will merit divine interruption. If you disagree, say what they will mess with and why so we can have an actual discussion.

The core point of the TV is teleport circle. Let's start there. This almost completely negates the need for travel and exploration. I imagine that Farlanghn might take umbrage with something that would so drastically cut into his worship. The complete elimination of trading by sea vessel certainly won't sit well with whichever god is revered by sailors seeking safe passage, though their influence will only really be felt in former port cities.

Then there's the create food and water traps. How do you think gods of agriculture will feel about their worship being sliced to a tiny fraction?

Between just these two points you all but eliminate small settlements in fairly short order and, given a long enough period, eventually altogether. I don't imagine gods of home and hearth, for whom the family unit that's no longer as strictly necessary for survival in a city environment makes up the core of their worship, would be too pleased with this development though they'll certainly be less affected than the previous examples. This isn't as likely as the first two to be readily apparent to the gods most affected.

The weirdest point comes from the eventual post-scarcity scenario that can occur going directly against the same gods of commerce that first supported the system in the beginning. Though, of course, this one's not likely to come up before-hand unless the gods of commerce happen to be particularly imaginative. This part's kinda funny, though.

Though of course, on those last two, I'm a mortal of less than genius level intelligence or wisdom and I can see them coming. It wouldn't be all that surprising that creatures with intelligence and wisdom scores in the upper 30's and lower 40's could foresee them too.

Kelb_Panthera

2014-01-28, 10:50 AM

So in other words, none of the things that truly matter are affected by indifference, which is what I said.

:smallconfused: You and I have -very- different views on what matters.

Again, you are making the positive claim - you need to show what aspects of TV would provoke a response and why. You can't simply say "well, they might be affected, so they will definitely throw the whole thing out" and leave it at that - that's intellectually lazy at best.

I'm not saying they might be affected. I'm saying that there are deities that -will- be affected, drastically so.

I'm also not throwing out anything. Merely rejecting the idea that this one conclusion is the only possible conclusion when it isn't.

Dusk Eclipse

2014-01-28, 10:58 AM

God of War.

@ other people: and the lush wilderness and most people not struggling is the Less Interesting part I was talking about. conflict drives the setting. less conflict, means less interesting, your basically throwing away good sources of conflict and plots for the PC's to participate in.

There are tons of conflict seeds in the Tippyverse, both inside the cities and outside them. Inside you have political intrigue, assassination plots, spying, etc.

Outside is pretty much the same as any other setting, there are ruins of ancient empires who fell before the rise of these new cities. A powerful monster is raising an army to go against he wizard empires and since they don't really pay attention to the wilderness this monster has already amassed a huge amount of power.

There is a potential adventure in everything! If you can't think of one because the "campaign setting" (which I think Tippy has expressed desired to actually publish) doesn't give one, well that reeks of laziness.

comicshorse

2014-01-28, 10:59 AM

Lord Raziere

2014-01-28, 11:01 AM

There are tons of conflict seeds in the Tippyverse, both inside the cities and outside them. Inside you have political intrigue, assassination plots, spying, etc.

Outside is pretty much the same as any other setting, there are ruins of ancient empires who fell before the rise of these new cities. A powerful monster is raising an army to go against he wizard empires and since they don't really pay attention to the wilderness this monster has already amassed a huge amount of power.

There is a potential adventure in everything! If you can't think of one because the "campaign setting" (which I think Tippy has expressed desired to actually publish) doesn't give one, well that reeks of laziness.

1. you also have that in Dark Sun, but much more believably.

2. yes, same as any other setting, as in less flavorful than a post-apocalyptic blasted wasteland of a desert that is living proof that magic doesn't solve everything.

3. I can think of some, I just don't see why they can't be better done in Dark Sun.

Psyren

2014-01-28, 11:08 AM

I imagine that Farlanghn might take umbrage with something that would so drastically cut into his worship.

You mean the guy who gives his clerics the ability to teleport would be against teleportation? Did you think this through? :smallconfused:

Also, his Dogma: "Farlanghn is the patron of all who travel long distances, no matter what path they follow or how they're getting there."

Then there's the create food and water traps. How do you think gods of agriculture will feel about their worship being sliced to a tiny fraction?

Just because people don't need to till the soil anymore doesn't mean they won't. Multi-flavored gruel is great and all but people crave variety; nothing will stop any citizen from having their own garden beyond space concerns. So I don't see these deities getting upset either. And that eliminates the rest of your post.

:smallconfused: You and I have -very- different views on what matters.

Right - mine relies on the definition of the word "independent."

I'm not saying they might be affected. I'm saying that there are deities that -will- be affected, drastically so.

The ones you put forward have been debunked - any others?

SiuiS

2014-01-28, 11:14 AM

It seems to me largely that you could get around most Tippyverse consequences and Tippy optimization by doing two things as a DM. Disallow things that aren't core. And state that NPCs in the setting have simply never reached 17th level or higher. (Or, whatever level an optimizer requires to access the world-breaking magic shenanigans.)

Fifth? So we're playing e4 now? :smalltongue:

Points of Light

Huh? Is this the setting you said you posted snippets of on the forum here?

The basic Tippyverse category is. So long as permanent Teleporation Circles exist as they do under the rules as written in 3.5 you will, given time, inevitably end up with a Tippyverse unless it is being explicitly prevented by a great power (such as a deity). If not being actively prevented and such magic exists then it will eventually be used and the basic Tippyverse will eventually form.

I dunno. D&D is inherently a post apocalyptic setting, with empires rising and falling in the distant and not so distant past who all had the exact same magic. I feel the idea behind it tends to discount the massive hubris inherent to even lowest grade wizardry. The surest truth of mankind is as soon as you get something nice other people try to break it, and it's easier to tear apart permanent teleportation circles than to build them.

At level 3 a druid could use Craft Wondrous Item + heat metal to create a cheap portable stove.

Stove nothing! You make a perpetual steam driven engine by putting the heat metal on a jigger cup inside a long tube with a cap at one end, filled with fluid and a piston on the other connected to a wheel to turn the motion into work energy. With the rigt setup you get the heated metal forcing fluid expansion to push the piston, allowing the now spread-thin fluid to cool and and contract back onto the heated metal jigger cup (which also moves – I don't remember why). You've successfully created an industrial engine! Now quick, go power the inner workings of some strange dwarven war engine!

But I've never had a single player try to break a game setting at level 3. Doing this changes a setting, but it alone is not a Tippyverse. It may have some similarities, but without the teleportation circles and wish-traps generating a post-scarcity economy, it's not a Tippyverse.

<_<

>_>

<_<

... Also, post scarcity economy? That's silly. Literally nothing gets done in such an economy.

There is no crunch for determining divine intervention however, merely fluff, which is irrelevant to the type of setting the Tippyverse represents. It's a setting where the only true gospel is RAW.

I think this makes an overdone distinction between fluff and crunch in a situation where it isn't exactly warranted.

Please point to any explicit stated rules laying out divine intervention. 3.5 doesn't have any.

Aren't there explicit rules for divine intervention in compete champion? I know they also exist in, what, blood and... Faith? The old softcover book?

And for every deity opposed to a TV, there is another who would support it. In FR, for example, Mystra would back one fully (as would a number of other deities actually) based on her fluff and previous actions.

This simply means a tippy verse in full swing would remain in full swing, but a tippy verse in potentia would remain unachieved. The pun-pun dilemma.

Wouldn't that also be true in the other direction then, such that a God seeking to undermine the circles would have to negotiate the endlessly complex world of divine politics as well? Seems like the two factors would balance each other out, and the pro-circle crowd would get their opinions worked out at around the same time as the anti-circle crowd.

See above; it's much harder to disassemble a working and functional society supported by your enemies than it is to pimp-slap some upstart wizard who is making too muc progress removing peril from the world.

Except it 1) presupposes that there are active gods, 2) presupposes that those gods decide to oppose teleportation circles, and 3) presupposes that those gods have the power to oppose high level mortals.

Uh, #3... Those gods have the exact same powers as high level mortals. How would a wizard 20 god be lesser than a wizard 20 elf?

To be more precise, none of those things exist as official rules and thus would fall under the category of DM fiat. As in the DM is actively building the setting to prevent a Tippyverse from forming.

So, gods which exist and have class levels in casting classes aren't actual rules and are just DMs making things up? And if they did exist they wouldn't have the same capacity to use their power to achieve their goals as mortals with the same spells? And they don't have goals, emotions, personalities and believable reasons to work against other casters, unlike mortal casters who have all these things?

You... You have read D&Dg, right?

Draken

2014-01-28, 11:41 AM

Fifth? So we're playing e4 now? :smalltongue:

I want to comment on this. Wizards of the Coast all but acknowledged the Tippyverse as the default state of things with Fourth Edition with the Linked Portal ritual.

For those who don't know.

Most major temples, important wizards’ guilds, and large cities have permanent teleportation circles, each of which has a unique set of magic sigils etched or inlaid into the ground. The exact sequence of sigils matters, because you’ve got to match it if you want to open a portal leading there. The sigils aren’t any more complex than remembering a string of letters and numbers. You can use Linked Portal to any permanent teleportation circle whose sequence of sigils you know.

For the record, this is magic available at 8th level in that edition. And any person can buy the particular ritual for 680 gp to add to their feat-granted spellbooks.

Kelb_Panthera

2014-01-28, 11:44 AM

You mean the guy who gives his clerics the ability to teleport would be against teleportation? Did you think this through? :smallconfused:

Also, his Dogma: "Farlanghn is the patron of all who travel long distances, no matter what path they follow or how they're getting there."

There's a difference between granting a lone traveler, who also happens to be one of your proxies, the ability to travel quickly when necessary and giving large sections of the populace no reason to ever travel outside the bounds of a city ever again. TC's as mass transit -eliminate- travel for most, weakening the portfolio rather than strengthening it.

It's a classic too much of a good thing scenario.

Just because people don't need to till the soil anymore doesn't mean they won't. Multi-flavored gruel is great and all but people crave variety; nothing will stop any citizen from having their own garden beyond space concerns. So I don't see these deities getting upset either. And that eliminates the rest of your post.

You honestly don't see the difference between small gardens for those who have the time and money to tend them as a hobby and large-scale farming necessary to feed an entire populace? Those gods portfolio will have been utterly crippled. Fewer people will offer worship and with less fervor over a hobby. You're also forgetting about the fact that food and water traps are the -cheapest- form of food production. There are also things like the SBG's everful larder allowing merchants to sell fancy foods without resort to any kind of agriculture or ranching.

Right - mine relies on the definition of the word "independent."

And completely ignores the fact that portfolio sense relies on worshipers and relics to give the deity any ability to detect things not directly related to his portfolio and that acting by proxy requires.... wait for it..... proxies; clerics, non-caster clergy, and people that will listen to them. It's -very- difficult to affect how people will behave, that is; to wield temporal power, when no one gives a crap what you think. This is as true of the gods as of anyone else.

The ones you put forward have been debunked - any others?

Try a little harder on these first.

SiuiS

2014-01-28, 11:50 AM

Oh, oops. I presumed permanent circles. The issue seems to be postulated from arising from temporary TCs cast when needed, which is a much different beast because "I cast teleportation circle when I need to haul freight" is what TC is for.

I don't quite get the premise, though; Attacks Will Happen so everyone forms a perfect society out of paranoia? This doesn't prevent attacks. It makes them more likely; primates in close proximity with literally nothing to do who have megacities are more likely to war internally than exist in peace.

The basic idea that everyone will factionalize and then never have problems with their own faction ever utterly fails to take into account the perspective of 80+% of the world population. And even if the response to that is "well, the high level wizards kill them all" you don't get TV because you've for nothing but bored wizards and desolation and no population to speak of.
It strikes me as far more likely that, instead of doing things to make a TV, any given high level caster will retreat to their private demiplane to become a super computer running endless calculations about reality – basically, living inside the Matrix, only it's a paradise and inside their own head / private reality.

WhamBamSam

2014-01-28, 11:52 AM

Ya. s'why I keep myself to my battleground of fluff, and just keep saying that Tippyverse is Dark Sun But Less Interesting. I don't see what is so great about it when I already have a much more flavorful setting that is basically the same thing, and while keeping people from being Wizard Sue's.There are many different possible Tippyverses which can be fluffed in a number of different ways. It's pretty absurd to say that all Tippyverse settings can be wrapped up under the the umbrella of "Dark Sun but less interesting." If Tippy ever manages to get through the legal stuff and Points of Light gets published, you might be able to make that argument about Points of Light, or you might be forced to retract the argument, but it will never be true about Tippyverses at large, since the Tippyverse is just mechanical crunch that you build the fluff up from. One could probably port everything you like about Dark Sun into a Tippyverse setting without really losing anything.

Basically what you're saying is that a published setting has more interesting fluff than a game mechanics framework which could apply to any number of different settings with diverging fluff. It's nonsensical.

As do I. Throwing out slanderous stuff about a fellow forum-goer?

I echo what others have said: the reason it sticks around is because it's sound by RAW (in my years reading Tippy's stuff, there's only thing I disagreed with him on, something to do with deflecting incoming attacks or something).Ayup, thirded. I really enjoy Tippy's posts, and I find it strange how many people are so eager to lash out at him for basically no reason. I wouldn't necessarily want every game I play in to operate at his level of crazy, but I'd certainly like to give it a try every now and again.

If I don't want a Tippyverse, I introduce DM fiat/houserules into the setting to prevent it. There's nothing necessarily wrong with such things. Hell, the people who like attacking the Tippyverse seem to like them fine in a lot of other situations. Hell, I've seen a lot of posts by jedipotter about various half-baked houserules and bits of fiat he introduces into games to prevent what he sees as powergaming. He, and many others of a similar anti-Tippy bent, don't seem to set much store by strict RAW anyway, so it's weird that they so hate the idea of someone who does care about the rules being right about them.

You may be thinking of the argument over whether Martial Monks can take Infinite Deflection and Exceptional Deflection, based on whether they are Epic feats on the Fighter Bonus Feats list, or on a special list of Epic Fighter Bonus Feats. Essentially, whether they're [Epic] [Fighter Bonus Feat]s or [Epic Fighter Bonus Feat]s. The way the SRD presents the material seems to suggest the latter interpretation, but I'm not sure about the ELH itself.

Hamste

2014-01-28, 11:57 AM

I want to comment on this. Wizards of the Coast all but acknowledged the Tippyverse as the default state of things with Fourth Edition with the Linked Portal ritual.

For those who don't know.

For the record, this is magic available at 8th level in that edition. And any person can buy the particular ritual for 680 gp to add to their feat-granted spellbooks.

They were making a reference to E6 a version of the game where you never go above 6th level (E4 would be never above 4th level). That being said it is really interesting to see that more has been done with teleportation in settings in 4e.

SiuiS

2014-01-28, 12:28 PM

There are many different possible Tippyverses which can be fluffed in a number of different ways. It's pretty absurd to say that all Tippyverse settings can be wrapped up under the the umbrella of "Dark Sun but less interesting." If Tippy ever manages to get through the legal stuff and Points of Light gets published, you might be able to make that argument about Points of Light, or you might be forced to retract the argument, but it will never be true about Tippyverses at large, since the Tippyverse is just mechanical crunch that you build the fluff up from. One could probably port everything you like about Dark Sun into a Tippyverse setting without really losing anything.

Basically what you're saying is that a published setting has more interesting fluff than a game mechanics framework which could apply to any number of different settings with diverging fluff. It's nonsensical.

Ayup, thirded. I really enjoy Tippy's posts, and I find it strange how many people are so eager to lash out at him for basically no reason. I wouldn't necessarily want every game I play in to operate at his level of crazy, but I'd certainly like to give it a try every now and again.

If I don't want a Tippyverse, I introduce DM fiat/houserules into the setting to prevent it. There's nothing necessarily wrong with such things. Hell, the people who like attacking the Tippyverse seem to like them fine in a lot of other situations. Hell, I've seen a lot of posts by jedipotter about various half-baked houserules and bits of fiat he introduces into games to prevent what he sees as powergaming. He, and many others of a similar anti-Tippy bent, don't seem to set much store by strict RAW anyway, so it's weird that they so hate the idea of someone who does care about the rules being right about them.

You may be thinking of the argument over whether Martial Monks can take Infinite Deflection and Exceptional Deflection, based on whether they are Epic feats on the Fighter Bonus Feats list, or on a special list of Epic Fighter Bonus Feats. Essentially, whether they're [Epic] [Fighter Bonus Feat]s or [Epic Fighter Bonus Feat]s. The way the SRD presents the material seems to suggest the latter interpretation, but I'm not sure about the ELH itself.

The problem is because, as Tippy has said several times in this thread alone, "you're doin it wrong".

People are fine with TV being a result. They are less fine with it being the result which can only be stymied by plebeians who don't have the encyclopedic mental dexterity to compile the 3.5 ruleset into a perfectly functioning society as it was meant to be, rendering their games as lesser version held back by frail humanity.

I personally love the stuff Tippy gets up to, but I dislike monotony.

Asteron

2014-01-28, 12:43 PM

There's a difference between granting a lone traveler, who also happens to be one of your proxies, the ability to travel quickly when necessary and giving large sections of the populace no reason to ever travel outside the bounds of a city ever again. TC's as mass transit -eliminate- travel for most, weakening the portfolio rather than strengthening it.

It's a classic too much of a good thing scenario.

You honestly don't see the difference between small gardens for those who have the time and money to tend them as a hobby and large-scale farming necessary to feed an entire populace? Those gods portfolio will have been utterly crippled. Fewer people will offer worship and with less fervor over a hobby. You're also forgetting about the fact that food and water traps are the -cheapest- form of food production. There are also things like the SBG's everful larder allowing merchants to sell fancy foods without resort to any kind of agriculture or ranching.

And completely ignores the fact that portfolio sense relies on worshipers and relics to give the deity any ability to detect things not directly related to his portfolio and that acting by proxy requires.... wait for it..... proxies; clerics, non-caster clergy, and people that will listen to them. It's -very- difficult to affect how people will behave, that is; to wield temporal power, when no one gives a crap what you think. This is as true of the gods as of anyone else.

Except that the entirety of the Tippyverse doesn't take place inside the Cities... From the Tippyverse:

"The Wilds
The Wilds are the area between cities. Here is where you will find everything from dungeons to Orc armies to small farming towns. The Wilds are a Death World by most standards and most individuals will have a hard time eking out an existence. Magic is rare and largely limited to Sorcerers, Warlocks, Druids, and similar classes. Most individuals are low level and it’s rare to find a PC class.
The Wilds are where you will find most of the more traditional D&D quests occurring (dungeon crawling in the ruins of fallen cities, clearing out various monsters, rescuing the mayors daughter, etc.). You will also find a few “barbarian” kingdoms out here (more traditional D&D kingdoms) where the very lack of high level magic (as those capable of casting it migrate to the cities) keeps the kingdom from reaching that singularity point."

Emphasis mine.

Normal kingdoms still exist, as does traveling by foot/horse/ship and agriculture... None of these things are rendered extinct by a Tippyverse.

WhamBamSam

2014-01-28, 01:01 PM

The problem is because, as Tippy has said several times in this thread alone, "you're doin it wrong".

People are fine with TV being a result. They are less fine with it being the result which can only be stymied by plebeians who don't have the encyclopedic mental dexterity to compile the 3.5 ruleset into a perfectly functioning society as it was meant to be, rendering their games as lesser version held back by frail humanity.

I personally love the stuff Tippy gets up to, but I dislike monotony.He's said that non-Tippyverse settings require houserules or DM fiat. That's essentially all he means by "wrong." I pretty much agree, which is why, as I said in that post, if I don't want a Tippyverse, I introduce DM fiat. A fiat-reliant setting is only as "wrong" as the fiat in question is. If said fiat makes the game in question more fun, then it's good fiat for that game.

A reasonably determined and properly built 12th level T3 party could turn Eberron into a Tippyverse without significant difficulty. The setting is flawed in that respect if you're trying to play by RAW, since it makes it too easy for PCs to break the setting. That doesn't mean that people who like Eberron are wrong, it just means that the notion that the setting holds up entirely to RAW is wrong, and that you might need a houserule or some fiat (like not allowing TCs to be permanent or if you're more ham-handed, sending in the Light of Siberys to break the PCs TC network) to stabilize it.

Kelb_Panthera

2014-01-28, 01:02 PM

Except that the entirety of the Tippyverse doesn't take place inside the Cities... From the Tippyverse:

"The Wilds
The Wilds are the area between cities. Here is where you will find everything from dungeons to Orc armies to small farming towns. The Wilds are a Death World by most standards and most individuals will have a hard time eking out an existence. Magic is rare and largely limited to Sorcerers, Warlocks, Druids, and similar classes. Most individuals are low level and it’s rare to find a PC class.
The Wilds are where you will find most of the more traditional D&D quests occurring (dungeon crawling in the ruins of fallen cities, clearing out various monsters, rescuing the mayors daughter, etc.). You will also find a few “barbarian” kingdoms out here (more traditional D&D kingdoms) where the very lack of high level magic (as those capable of casting it migrate to the cities) keeps the kingdom from reaching that singularity point."

Emphasis mine.

Normal kingdoms still exist, as does traveling by foot/horse/ship and agriculture... None of these things are rendered extinct by a Tippyverse.

I've read the thread in which Tippy described the setting. I'm aware of the wilderness between the cities.

Here's the thing. The "kingodms" in the wilds are -nothing- next to the cities. They're minor city-states whose populations are -tiny- by comparison. They can't even exist during the middle portion of the Tippyverse ascension process.

Before the cities develop into post-scarcity stage, which can take a -long- time, they're consuming resources at an ever increasing rate from a wider and wider range, leaving very little for the "kingdoms' in between to subsist on, necessarily limiting the size of those "kingdoms." This isn't even considering the kingdoms that were smashed by the cities during their rise from pre-existing rivalries.

The Tippyverse can't come into being without a period of significant upheaval and a shifting of the balance of power in the outer planes.

It's not that those things become extinct. It's that their importance in the world is shattered. During certain periods they may even become completely unpracticed for a time.

Take trans-oceanic shipping for example. Most non-TC cities and kingdoms simply won't have the economic wherewithal to make such shipping useful and even if they do, odds are there's a TC city that's closer and just as capable of meeting their needs.

Togo

2014-01-28, 01:04 PM

I think the error you're making is that you assume that Tippy is calling any setting you construct "wrong" if it doesn't match up to this specific points of light setting.

I'm not assuming anything like that. I make no reference to points of light, and explcitly discuss the variety of what comprises a tippyverse-like setting. Claims of 'wrong' are simply taken from Tippy's previous posts.

Theoretically, depending on how broad the Tippyverse category is, any sufficiently advanced setting you produce could fall under that umbrella. I think Tippy's claims of fiat only apply to the settings that are a part of the game, because he can actively see that those settings don't fall under the category,

Again, that would be a much more reasonable claim. It would follow logically from existence of the Tippyverse and be relatively uncontroversial. It is not, however, the one that Tippy makes.

Hence:

I agree. I only get bothered when people say TV is the "only logical outcome" of the 3.5 ruleset, while it is anything but.

The basic Tippyverse category is. So long as permanent Teleporation Circles exist as they do under the rules as written in 3.5 you will, given time, inevitably end up with a Tippyverse unless it is being explicitly prevented by a great power (such as a deity). If not being actively prevented and such magic exists then it will eventually be used and the basic Tippyverse will eventually form.

See how the claim is nothing to do with published settings?

I will maintain that claim until someone can make a strong case for said claim being incorrect without relying on fiat, houserules, or divine intervention (which amounts to fiat).

Well, I'm not sure what 'a strong case' would consist of. You've not done anything to actually argue your own case except for simply asserting it as fact.

Extrapolating from earlier comments (so you'll need to correct me if this is incorrect), the basic idea seems to be that since the campaign world contains teleportation circles, it will use teleportation circles. Because they are very useful, they will be used and their use will change the campaign world.

Simplified, this argument is of the structure that X exists, X is a powerful and useful effect, therefore X will come to dominate the campaign. X is Teleportation Circles.

What I don't understand, perhaps because I missed the thread where you explain, is why the same argument can't be applied to any other design element of a campaign world. Wish and spellcasting traps, present in the points of light instance of Tippyverse, are an obvious candidate, but the same arguments apply to dragons, gods, polymorph effects, wights, adventurer's guilds, gunpowder, portable artillery, cheap steam engines, craft skill checks, wall spells, and so on. Why can't any of these be X? Why does the world not revolve around these effects as much as it does around teleportation circle?

As it stands, Tippy's claim is simply faulty logic. Taking a classic genre idea, unlimited teleportation for all, and running with it is fine. Telling everyone else they're doing it wrong if they don't do the same is simply impossible to justify.

Togo

2014-01-28, 01:11 PM

As a clarification, I'm not convinced that the Tippyverse is actually a post-scarcity system, in the classic sense. Certainly the points of light setting still has trade, currency, poverty, and severe limits on access to the most valuable resources.

If it was a post-scarcity system, there wouldn't be all that pesky darkness in between the cities. Or any particular need to congregate at all.

Kelb_Panthera

2014-01-28, 01:24 PM

Well, I'm not sure what 'a strong case' would consist of. You've not done anything to actually argue your own case except for simply asserting it as fact.

Extrapolating from earlier comments (so you'll need to correct me if this is incorrect), the basic idea seems to be that since the campaign world contains teleportation circles, it will use teleportation circles. Because they are very useful, they will be used and their use will change the campaign world.

Simplified, this argument is of the structure that X exists, X is a powerful and useful effect, therefore X will come to dominate the campaign. X is Teleportation Circles.

What I don't understand, perhaps because I missed the thread where you explain, is why the same argument can't be applied to any other design element of a campaign world. Wish and spellcasting traps, present in the points of light instance of Tippyverse, are an obvious candidate, but the same arguments apply to dragons, gods, polymorph effects, wights, adventurer's guilds, gunpowder, portable artillery, cheap steam engines, craft skill checks, wall spells, and so on. Why can't any of these be X? Why does the world not revolve around these effects as much as it does around teleportation circle?

As it stands, Tippy's claim is simply faulty logic. Taking a classic genre idea, unlimited teleportation for all, and running with it is fine. Telling everyone else they're doing it wrong if they don't do the same is simply impossible to justify.

As strongly as I disagree with the premise that TV is the only possible outcome of the rules, he does have a fairly solid point on permanent TC's.

There's very little else in the rules that can cause such dramatic and, from an economic standpoint, positive changes. It quite literally makes the world a smaller place for those with access. The implications this has on trade are staggering. It's a benefit that anyone economically minded, pretty much everyone in the trade industry, would pounce on without a second thought.

It's such a no-brainer that, given enough time, it -will- happen. Divine intervention and the scarcity of people capable of coming up with the idea really -are- the major reasons that such an outcome becomes uncertain. Such sources of opposition make it probable that the world will end (hi Leviathan) before TV happens.

If the gods are inactive and a Travel cleric of 17th level who happens to have a wizard with permanency as a business partner comes up with the idea, that's all it takes. It only takes the wizard if the epic demographic table is in play.

As a clarification, I'm not convinced that the Tippyverse is actually a post-scarcity system, in the classic sense. Certainly the points of light setting still has trade, currency, poverty, and severe limits on access to the most valuable resources.

If it was a post-scarcity system, there wouldn't be all that pesky darkness in between the cities. Or any particular need to congregate at all.

That comes later. The dramatically increased rate of the exchange of information allows magic to develop much faster and -eventually- someone's going to come up with the "traps" that can produce all the needs of the people. Then its just a matter of abolishing commerce as an unnecessary and archaic system that no longer has value.

Deophaun

2014-01-28, 01:33 PM

So long as permanent Teleporation Circles exist as they do under the rules as written in 3.5 you will, given time, inevitably end up with a Tippyverse unless it is being explicitly prevented by a great power (such as a deity). If not being actively prevented and such magic exists then it will eventually be used and the basic Tippyverse will eventually form.
And this is the problem with the "inevitability" claim. It's basically the infinite monkey theorem, if the infinite monkey theorem postulated that only the complete works of Shakespeare would be the outcome, and not, say, the entire library of Harlequin romance novels. We can replace "Tippyverse" with other aspects of 3.5 and reach the same conclusion: "Given the infinite hordes of the Abysss as written in 3.5 you will, given time, inevitably end up with all of reality being devoured by chaos unless it is being explicitly prevented by a great power." The problem here is that you can have multiple "inevitable" outcomes that are also mutually exclusive, because infinity is more broken and logic-defying than 3.5 RAW (Fact: 100% of all integers contain the number "3").

Draken

2014-01-28, 01:53 PM

And this is the problem with the "inevitability" claim. It's basically the infinite monkey theorem, if the infinite monkey theorem postulated that only the complete works of Shakespeare would be the outcome, and not, say, the entire library of Harlequin romance novels. We can replace "Tippyverse" with other aspects of 3.5 and reach the same conclusion: "Given the infinite hordes of the Abysss as written in 3.5 you will, given time, inevitably end up with all of reality being devoured by chaos unless it is being explicitly prevented by a great power." The problem here is that you can have multiple "inevitable" outcomes that are also mutually exclusive, because infinity is more broken and logic-defying than 3.5 RAW (Fact: 100% of all integers contain the number "3").

The thing is, the Tippyverse isn't a setting.

It is a kind of setting. Tippy's Points of Light are his flagship for the denomination of a Tippyverse in its most advanced stage. But take for instance Eberron.

The only reason Eberron isn't crawling with permanent teleportation circles is because the default assumption of the setting is that the most powerful people in Khorvaire are around 11th level. The moment someone shows up who can create CL 17 magic effects (probably a PC), the dragonmarked houses (namely, Cannith and Orien) would pounce on him to use such a person to advance to the next step, the permanent teleportation circle.

This is based on the probability that humans with the right mindset exist in that world. Said mindset is by no means outlandish or unlikely. It is the mindset that spawned business magnates in the beginning of the 20th century. People who see an opportunity and have the vision to know what can be done with it.

WhamBamSam

2014-01-28, 01:54 PM

Extrapolating from earlier comments (so you'll need to correct me if this is incorrect), the basic idea seems to be that since the campaign world contains teleportation circles, it will use teleportation circles. Because they are very useful, they will be used and their use will change the campaign world.

Simplified, this argument is of the structure that X exists, X is a powerful and useful effect, therefore X will come to dominate the campaign. X is Teleportation Circles.

What I don't understand, perhaps because I missed the thread where you explain, is why the same argument can't be applied to any other design element of a campaign world. Wish and spellcasting traps, present in the points of light instance of Tippyverse, are an obvious candidate, but the same arguments apply to dragons, gods, polymorph effects, wights, adventurer's guilds, gunpowder, portable artillery, cheap steam engines, craft skill checks, wall spells, and so on. Why can't any of these be X? Why does the world not revolve around these effects as much as it does around teleportation circle?

As it stands, Tippy's claim is simply faulty logic. Taking a classic genre idea, unlimited teleportation for all, and running with it is fine. Telling everyone else they're doing it wrong if they don't do the same is simply impossible to justify.Spell traps do have a significant impact on the setting in Points of Light, but they don't restructure society entirely around them in absence of the TC network. Tippy has said as much, and probably more on this point in the past.

All the material on Dragons points to most varieties being pretty solitary by nature, and hence less likely to cause major restructuring of society. There are also, to my knowledge, no real rules for how many dragons of what ages exist in a standard setting. Either way, a dragon being a dominant power in a setting is really no different from any other high level spellcaster being a dominant power in the setting. Whether the king is a human wizard or an Ancient Steel Dragon in disguise only matters if the PCs try to kill him or when determining the exact flavor of the political plots in which he's involved.

Active gods are going to influence the setting in multiple different ways simultaneously, in ways that are difficult to predict.

Tippy uses Polymorph effects a lot. I'd wager he knows how they can be abused both on an individual and societal scale better than you or I ever will. If he doesn't think they restructure society the same way mass teleportation does, I'm inclined to believe him.

The Wightocalypse isn't a serious enough threat to a relatively advanced society. If your world has the potential for large numbers of Wights to exist, then it has the defenses to prevent them from destroying everything.

Adventurer's Guilds are the same as dragons, in that they really only impact the exact flavor of the setting's politics. They don't alter society on the same fundamental level that a TC network does.

Gunpowder, portable artillery, and cheap steam engines can't hold a candle to magic. They probably aren't even good enough to make decently optimized melee obsolete.

Craft skill checks do influence the setting, because they determine how everything gets made, but I'm not sure how you expect being able to make mundane and alchemical things really, really well to alter a setting the same way mass teleportation does.

Go to any thread where Tippy talks about building something, and he'll be using wall spells, Stone Shape, and the like, as well as Simulacra of Beholders and all manner of other cheese to aid in the building process. As with Polymorph, I'm inclined to think he knows what they're capable of better than you or I do. He also frequently says that a wall is worth 6 seconds on a good day in D&D.

Deophaun

2014-01-28, 01:55 PM

This is based on the probability that humans with the right mindset exist in that world. Said mindset is by no means outlandish or unlikely. It is the mindset that spawned business magnates in the beginning of the 20th century. People who see an opportunity and have the vision to know what can be done with it.
None of which was inevitable.

Psyren

2014-01-28, 02:02 PM

There's a difference between granting a lone traveler, who also happens to be one of your proxies, the ability to travel quickly when necessary and giving large sections of the populace no reason to ever travel outside the bounds of a city ever again. TC's as mass transit -eliminate- travel for most, weakening the portfolio rather than strengthening it.

It's a classic too much of a good thing scenario.

There's plenty of incentive to venture out on foot; can't gain XP in the cities, that's the whole point of the wilderness in PoL.

The fact that the nonadventuring populace don't have to is not a big issue for them. They are still traveling vast distances - and as I pointed out in his dogma, all he cares about is that you go from point A to point B, not how you do it.

You honestly don't see the difference between small gardens for those who have the time and money to tend them as a hobby and large-scale farming necessary to feed an entire populace? Those gods portfolio will have been utterly crippled.

For starters, which gods do you mean? Chauntea is a farming goddess, but she is only in FR. Pelor is worshiped by farmers, but that is perhaps the most minor/incidental aspect of his portfolio there is.

Secondly, everyone has the time and money. Beyond magic item creation, there's no need to work on anything thanks to Fabricate. The only jobs left would probably be education.

The difference is that it will no longer be subsistence farming - everyone will have all the nutrition they need from flavored gruel and flavored water.

And completely ignores the fact that portfolio sense relies on worshipers and relics to give the deity any ability to detect things not directly related to his portfolio

You've left out a reason why they would care about anything outside of their portfolio. And even if they do for some reason, "proxies" don't have to be humanoid. Outsiders, animals, plants, even inanimate objects like rocks can be windows to the world.

Try a little harder on these first.

Backatcha.

Draken

2014-01-28, 02:06 PM

None of which was inevitable.

Yes, I suppose they could have failed. And then we would either be talking about different magnates now or not at all because the world would be stuck in the 19th century. With other potential magnates trying their damn best to get to where we are now.

Zombulian

2014-01-28, 02:08 PM

Oh boy another misinformed "Tippyverse" thread. (http://www.reactiongifs.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/05/THISGONBGUD.gif)

*grabs popcorn*

Urpriest

2014-01-28, 02:10 PM

If the gods are inactive and a Travel cleric of 17th level who happens to have a wizard with permanency as a business partner comes up with the idea, that's all it takes. It only takes the wizard if the epic demographic table is in play.

A bit of pedantry here: that doesn't work, Permanency can only be applied to spells that you cast.

Draken

2014-01-28, 02:18 PM

A bit of pedantry here: that doesn't work, Permanency can only be applied to spells that you cast.

That only refers to the spells cast on oneself, actually.

Or that cleric could UMD a scroll.

Or cast Miracle.

Togo

2014-01-28, 02:24 PM

As strongly as I disagree with the premise that TV is the only possible outcome of the rules, he does have a fairly solid point on permanent TC's.

There's very little else in the rules that can cause such dramatic and, from an economic standpoint, positive changes.

A wish trap seems a solid candidate.

That comes later. The dramatically increased rate of the exchange of information allows magic to develop much faster and -eventually- someone's going to come up with the "traps" that can produce all the needs of the people. Then its just a matter of abolishing commerce as an unnecessary and archaic system that no longer has value.

Along with the TCs. But why does it come later? What happens if the traps come first? They're easier to produce, and far more useful.

and if TC-based worlds eventually give way to trap-based worlds, surely a game setting based on self-resetting trap magic is what's inevitable, and Tippyverse is just a passing phase it goes through to get there.

That Tippyverse could work, or even that it might be likely to occur, is not the issue. The issue is why it is inevitable, why other similar worlds couldn't happen even though they use exactly the same logic and argument that he's presented, and why even pre-and post-Tippyverse worlds are not equally valid.

Deophaun

2014-01-28, 02:53 PM

Yes, I suppose they could have failed. And then we would either be talking about different magnates now or not at all because the world would be stuck in the 19th century. With other potential magnates trying their damn best to get to where we are now.
Or there could be no potential magnates.

I'm wondering if you even know what you're arguing against, because absolutely nothing you've posted has been on point to what you're supposedly responding to.

Kelb_Panthera

2014-01-28, 03:05 PM

There's plenty of incentive to venture out on foot; can't gain XP in the cities, that's the whole point of the wilderness in PoL.

I -know- that you know better than that. I refuse to believe you don't.

The fact that the nonadventuring populace don't have to is not a big issue for them. They are still traveling vast distances - and as I pointed out in his dogma, all he cares about is that you go from point A to point B, not how you do it.

That's a grossly over-literal reading of that text. Farlanghn's dogma is talking about travel in the sense of the journey being important, not the destination. Never leaving what is essentially the same environment is anathema to this.

For starters, which gods do you mean? Chauntea is a farming goddess, but she is only in FR. Pelor is worshiped by farmers, but that is perhaps the most minor/incidental aspect of his portfolio there is.

Chauntea's as good an example as any, but Demeter, Osiris, Frey, they're not an uncommon breed. While agriculture is not a major portion of Pelor's portfolio (not on there at all, actually) farmers -do- make up the majority of his worshipers. The loss of large portions of this major base of worship shouldn't be ignored so flippantly.

Secondly, everyone has the time and money. Beyond magic item creation, there's no need to work on anything thanks to Fabricate. The only jobs left would probably be education.

Nonsense. People will still have to do -something- for a living. If money's a thing then people are spending their whole day earning it, just like IRL.

The difference is that it will no longer be subsistence farming - everyone will have all the nutrition they need from flavored gruel and flavored water.

Why are you assuming that the flavored gruel and water is just being given away? It's a good that can be traded and once the city reaches a certain size it'll be the -only- source of food for low-income, inner-city people. Can you say seller's market?

You've left out a reason why they would care about anything outside of their portfolio. And even if they do for some reason, "proxies" don't have to be humanoid. Outsiders, animals, plants, even inanimate objects like rocks can be windows to the world.

Seriously? The importance of information in conflict, and the gods are virtually always in conflict with each other, is enormous and humanoids are the most numerous and capable of available proxies.

Most gods can't just choose random objects and creatures to center their portfolio sense on or otherwise manipulate them in any way short of actually appearing before them, either in person or in avatar form, and acting directly.

Outsiders are an option but a limited one. They're not exactly subtle for one thing, They're relatively easily overcome by mortals for another. They're just not reliable for working in the material.

The Insanity

2014-01-28, 03:07 PM

Elysium Tippyverse. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aGxTah9zp6I)

Draken

2014-01-28, 03:13 PM

Or there could be no potential magnates.

I'm wondering if you even know what you're arguing against, because absolutely nothing you've posted has been on point to what you're supposedly responding to.

I believe that I am arguing for the clearly outlandish proposition that in any given world with a species that could be vaguely and recognizably be referred to as Homo Sapiens, colloquially known as Humans, a number of them would be ambitious, innovators and leaders who would drive society forward, towards growth and progress, for personal benefit or otherwise, by using whatever methods and mechanisms that presented themselves, be them technological or magical.

A world classified as a Tippyverse is inevitable to the extent that if people are people, magic works that way and ever becomes available, someone will try it, in fact a great many instances of 'someone' will try it, some will fail, one might eventually succeed. And then we have a Tippyverse at its beginning stages (Eberron), apex (Points of Light) or post-decadence (Forgotten Realms).

I am really wondering what my comments fail to convey, in your reading, I am mostly using analogy after all.

Kelb_Panthera

2014-01-28, 03:19 PM

A wish trap seems a solid candidate.

Yeah. Meant to put the clause, "for its cost" at the end of that sentence. Oops.

Along with the TCs. But why does it come later? What happens if the traps come first? They're easier to produce, and far more useful.

and if TC-based worlds eventually give way to trap-based worlds, surely a game setting based on self-resetting trap magic is what's inevitable, and Tippyverse is just a passing phase it goes through to get there.

That Tippyverse could work, or even that it might be likely to occur, is not the issue. The issue is why it is inevitable, why other similar worlds couldn't happen even though they use exactly the same logic and argument that he's presented, and why even pre-and post-Tippyverse worlds are not equally valid.

You have a point.

However, I would presume that researching the making of a magical device is a more difficult process than researching a spell.

There's also the much more limited nature of a fabricate or create food and water trap compared to a TC. They just don't have the same economic impact. They could be created and destroyed numerous times before their creation and use ever took hold as wide spread practice. A wish trap is -much- more expensive on every count. The TC has just a -bit- more inherent traction when it comes into being.

Deophaun

2014-01-28, 03:23 PM

A world classified as a Tippyverse is inevitable to the extent that if people are people, magic works that way and ever becomes available, someone will try it, in fact a great many instances of 'someone' will try it, some will fail, one might eventually succeed. And then we have a Tippyverse at its beginning stages (Eberron), apex (Points of Light) or post-decadence (Forgotten Realms).
And this is the infinite monkey theorem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem).

The Tippyverse is inevitable only because it is possible, and when you deal with infinity, everything that's possible, is. Just as Tippyverse is inevitable, so to is a world where Tippyverse never happens, because that is also a possibility, and thus a certainty.

As I said, you haven't actually argued anything or added anything relevant. You've simply restated the problematic assertion.

Yukitsu

2014-01-28, 03:27 PM

I believe that I am arguing for the clearly outlandish the proposition that in any given world with a species that could be vaguely and recognizably be referred to as Homo Sapiens, colloquially known as Humans, a number of them would be ambitious, innovators and leaders who would drive society forward, towards growth and progress, for personal benefit or otherwise, by using whatever methods and mechanisms that presented themselves, be them technological or magical.

A world classified as a Tippyverse is inevitable to the extent that if people are people, magic works that way and ever becomes available, someone will try it, in fact a great many instances of 'someone' will try it, some will fail, one might eventually succeed. And then we have a Tippyverse at its beginning stages (Eberron), apex (Points of Light) or post-decadence (Forgotten Realms).

I am really wondering what my comments fail to convey, in your reading, I am mostly using analogy after all.

I'm curious, but what precisely makes that the only possible answer to the political reality?

Honestly, in the Tippyverse, the TC and cities shouldn't ever matter. Any medium town which becomes populous enough to get a level 9 wizard by his interpretation of fabricate (which doesn't follow strict RAW anyway) become completely post scarcity. As in trade will collapse as every town becomes 100% self sustaining, including having every luxury good they could ever want.

Draken

2014-01-28, 03:32 PM

And this is the infinite monkey theorem (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_monkey_theorem).

The Tippyverse is inevitable only because it is possible, and when you deal with infinity, everything that's possible, is. Just as Tippyverse is inevitable, so to is a world where Tippyverse never happens, because that is also a possibility, and thus a certainty.

As I said, you haven't actually argued anything or added anything relevant. You've simply restated the problematic assertion.

Hmm... That's not what that theorem says at all. It says that everything that is possible, will be. There is a huge difference.

Just because a world isn't a Tippyverse doesn't mean that the seeds for its existence aren't there. This is what inevitable means, that eventually it will come to pass.

I wish I knew enough about Dark Sun to just flat out state "Tippyverse happens in every setting WotC has published" (Eberron is marching towards it, Forgotten Realms had Netheril and Grayhawk has the Mind Flayer Cosmic Empire at the End of Time, as their examples), to drive this point home.

----

Honestly, in the Tippyverse, the TC and cities shouldn't ever matter. Any medium town which becomes populous enough to get a level 9 wizard by his interpretation of fabricate (which doesn't follow strict RAW anyway) become completely post scarcity. As in trade will collapse as every town becomes 100% self sustaining, including having every luxury good they could ever want

A wizard with fabricate is a factory. It doesn't do what you said at all.

Deophaun

2014-01-28, 03:41 PM

Hmm... That's not what that theorem says at all. It says that everything that is possible, will be. There is a huge difference.
I'm talking about the infinite stretch of time as a whole, so there is no "will be," because everything already is.

Really, it's not that hard to grasp.

Just because a world isn't a Tippyverse doesn't mean that the seeds for its existence aren't there.
It does if the wightocoplyse hits, or the Abyss swallows the rest of existence, or the Far Realm annihilates reality, or a civilization of magic-hating mundanes succeeds in razeing anything and everything that could ever be magical so magic is lost forever. There is absolutely nothing that makes the Tippyverse outcome inevitable in a finite universe. In an infinite universe, there is absolutely nothing that makes Tippyverse more inevitable than any other. In short, the phrase "given enough time" means whatever follows isn't statistically significant.

Psyren

2014-01-28, 03:45 PM

Chauntea's as good an example as any, but Demeter, Osiris, Frey, they're not an uncommon breed. While agriculture is not a major portion of Pelor's portfolio (not on there at all, actually) farmers -do- make up the majority of his worshipers. The loss of large portions of this major base of worship shouldn't be ignored so flippantly.

No - commoners do, and they do many things besides farm. Also, even if nobody is farming, they're pretty thankful for the sun. When was the last time you farmed? Are you not happy the sun is a thing?

None of the gods you mentioned are in core, and therefore are not present in the TV. You may as well say Mystra can prevent it by denying wizards Weave access - it might be true, but is completely irrelevant outside of FR and amounts to fiat.

At best, you can make a case for the ones in the PHB, and even they are not a given to exist, never mind care enough to interfere with it.

Nonsense. People will still have to do -something- for a living. If money's a thing then people are spending their whole day earning it, just like IRL.

Remember we're talking about a post-scarcity society here. Consider for instance the universe of Wall-E - who is working there? For that matter, what possible work could these people doing that adds more value than self-resetting magical traps?

Why are you assuming that the flavored gruel and water is just being given away?

That whole "post-scarcity" thing comes to mind again.

Seriously? The importance of information in conflict, and the gods are virtually always in conflict with each other, is enormous and humanoids are the most numerous and capable of available proxies.

This too is setting-dependent. The gods are at each other's throats in FR but couldn't give two craps about each other in Eberron. Once you get into defining the setting you are basically handing the keys to Tippy since it's his setting.

Most gods can't just choose random objects and creatures to center their portfolio sense on or otherwise manipulate them in any way short of actually appearing before them, either in person or in avatar form, and acting directly.

They can if it's related to their portfolio - they can even center their senses on points in space if a portfolio-related event occurs there. You have yet to make a case for why they would care about things outside their portfolio.

Outsiders are an option but a limited one. They're not exactly subtle for one thing, They're relatively easily overcome by mortals for another. They're just not reliable for working in the material.

Not subtle? Both angels and fiends possess substantial shapeshifting or disguise abilities, and we haven't even gotten into possession/channeling. For two, you haven't made a case for why they need to "work in the material" to begin with. Remember, the default is that they cannot lose their powers or be judged on how well they perform related to their portfolio.

Kelb_Panthera

2014-01-28, 03:47 PM

Any medium town which becomes populous enough to get a level 9 wizard by his interpretation of fabricate (which doesn't follow strict RAW anyway) become completely post scarcity.

The underlined isn't true. It's a result of what is likely an error in RAW. The fabricate spell lists the raw materials for the whatever you're fabricating as its material component. It almost certainly should've listed those raw materials as a -focus-, instead.

A trap can produce the effect of a spell indefinitely after it's completed and creating such a trap requires expending 100 units of its material components only once. Consequently, once completed, a fabricate trap can produce the completed item that it was designed for indefinitely. After 34 uses it will have payed for itself and then it's pure profit.

You don't get post-scarcity until you've got fabricate traps for -everything- necessary for living and -that- is expensive as hell. Between that and the fact that competitors and those who are philosophically opposed to the loss of commerce as a practice trying to capture or destroy these devices it takes a -loooong- time for post-scarcity to manifest.

Heliomance

2014-01-28, 03:54 PM

I'm talking about the infinite stretch of time as a whole, so there is no "will be," because everything already is.

Really, it's not that hard to grasp.

It does if the wightocoplyse hits, or the Abyss swallows the rest of existence, or the Far Realm annihilates reality, or a civilization of magic-hating mundanes succeeds in razeing anything and everything that could ever be magical so magic is lost forever. There is absolutely nothing that makes the Tippyverse outcome inevitable in a finite universe. In an infinite universe, there is absolutely nothing that makes Tippyverse more inevitable than any other. In short, the phrase "given enough time" means whatever follows isn't statistically significant.

But the Tippyverse doesn't assume "enough time", the only assumption it makes is "characters act as intelligently as their INT scores would suggest". Because if one man, who almost certainly has no more than 18 INT, can come up with this idea in, what, maybe 10 years? then a wizard with 30+ INT will come up with it in so much less time it's not even funny. Realistically, it should take well under 5 years from the spell Teleportation Circle being invented to someone seeing the potential economic ramifications. And from there, you're on the road.

My problem with the Tippyverse is quite simple. Despite Tippy repeatedly claiming that PoL is designed to be playable by all levels and all classes, I really don't see what there is to do at low levels or with non-mages. Especially in the cities. A post-scarcity society where the police are thoroughly Better Than You? You have no agency at low levels.

Draken

2014-01-28, 04:00 PM

I'm talking about the infinite stretch of time as a whole, so there is no "will be," because everything already is.

Really, it's not that hard to grasp.

I think it is, because you aren't grasping. "Will be" and "is" are not contradictory. Today is Tuesday and tomorrow will be Wednesday. Wednesday is inevitable, is Wednesday the wholeness of existence across infinite time and space? It is not.

It does if the wightocoplyse hits, or the Abyss swallows the rest of existence, or the Far Realm annihilates reality, or a civilization of magic-hating mundanes succeeds in razeing anything and everything that could ever be magical so magic is lost forever. There is absolutely nothing that makes the Tippyverse outcome inevitable in a finite universe. In an infinite universe, there is absolutely nothing that makes Tippyverse more inevitable than any other. In short, the phrase "given enough time" means whatever follows isn't statistically significant.

Ok. You are literally saying that the only thing preventing a Tippyverse from coming to pass is calamity on a cosmic scale. One depends on a few people being ambitious, the other depends on the universe being basically destroyed. One of these is more likely than the other.

Deophaun

2014-01-28, 04:03 PM

But the Tippyverse doesn't assume "enough time"
Then you want to argue with Tippy, because I just quoted him saying so.

the only assumption it makes is "characters act as intelligently as their INT scores would suggest".
What is the DC to know a particular magic item exist? What is the DC to know a PrC exists?

See, Int scores do not tell you a darn thing about optimization. Optimization is a metagame concept. In game, people can't choose to be born a half-dragon, or stumble upon a tome of lost knowledge that influences how they see the world. A warlock makes a pact for power; do you really thing that when the player chooses what the warlock gets, that it's the warlock picking the power, or the patron? Tippyverse requires that the people living in the world know that they exist in a game, have read the books, and have full agency for their choices; the basis is basically OOTS.

WhamBamSam

2014-01-28, 04:08 PM

It does if the wightocoplyse hits, or the Abyss swallows the rest of existence, or the Far Realm annihilates reality, or a civilization of magic-hating mundanes succeeds in razeing anything and everything that could ever be magical so magic is lost forever. There is absolutely nothing that makes the Tippyverse outcome inevitable in a finite universe. In an infinite universe, there is absolutely nothing that makes Tippyverse more inevitable than any other. In short, the phrase "given enough time" means whatever follows isn't statistically significant.If there's sufficiently high power magic floating around to cause a Wightocalypse, there's sufficiently high power magic floating around to prevent one.

The Abyss or Far Realms annihilating the setting does just that, it makes the setting no longer exist. Any setting where such things happen is no longer a setting, and does not factor in to arguments about non-Tippyverse settings.

Mundanes wiping out all magic? In 3.5? We are discussing possible outcomes, are we not?

I guess you could have settings which are not yet Tippyverses which might perhaps be annihilated per option 2 before the Tippyverse arises, but most settings already have the ingredients for a Tippyverse in NPC form, and/or are expected to withstand 12th level T3-T4 parties adventuring in them without drastic warping of the world. A Warlock 12 could establish a permanent TC network and with a party around him has the muscle to back up the venture well enough that it's better business to buy in than to fight back.

Khosan

2014-01-28, 04:10 PM

And for every deity opposed to a TV, there is another who would support it. In FR, for example, Mystra would back one fully (as would a number of other deities actually) based on her fluff and previous actions.

Mystra's gotta watch her soaps! :smalltongue:

Story

2014-01-28, 04:10 PM

Note that you don't even need TCs or spell traps to break the existing settings. The Lyre of Building, a single item in the DMG, used as intended, is still enough to basically make the medieval economy obsolete.

Deophaun

2014-01-28, 04:13 PM

I think it is, because you aren't grasping. "Will be" and "is" are not contradictory.
I'm not the one who said they were. It was you who said "there is a huge difference." So, which is it? Is there a difference, or isn't there?

Today is Tuesday and tomorrow will be Wednesday. Wednesday is inevitable, is Wednesday the wholeness of existence across infinite time and space? It is not.
Maybe not, but 100% of all numbers contain the number 3.

Ok. You are literally saying that the only thing preventing a Tippyverse from coming to pass is calamity on a cosmic scale.
No. If I was literally saying that, you could quote me saying "The only thing preventing a Tippyverse from coming to pass is calamity on a cosmic scale." You are inferring that from my examples.

It's also likely that no one ever creates a wish trap. Or a fabricate trap. Why? Because. Or they do, but keep it secret. Or what few get built get destroyed because craftsmen don't react well to being put out of work. Or you wind up with perverse incentives that collapse the entire society even before Tippyverse gets off the ground. Or any number of a million things that life throws up because life is unpredictable and people don't follow scripts.

Heliomance

2014-01-28, 04:15 PM

Then you want to argue with Tippy, because I just quoted him saying so.

What is the DC to know a particular magic item exist? What is the DC to know a PrC exists?

Extrapolating from those PrCs that do list DCs to know about them, a DC 30 Knowledge check will get you basically all useful knowledge there is about a PrC.

Note: This is not much of an extrapolation, as I'm pretty sure that every PrC that they printed knowledge DCs to know about has 30 as the top level.

That, however, is completely irrelevant. What I said was that it shouldn't take more than 5 years between TC being invented and someone figuring out the economic implications. That doesn't require a knowledge check. TC is core, it's not an obscure spell. Every single 17th level Cleric with the Travel domain can do it. It will be known. All that's missing is for someone to think logically about what it can do - and if Tippy can do that, someone with 30+ INT can CERTAINLY do that.

Deophaun

2014-01-28, 04:19 PM

If there's sufficiently high power magic floating around to cause a Wightocalypse, there's sufficiently high power magic floating around to prevent one.
First, wightocalypse doesn't require all that much magic power. Second, just because power exists to counter it, does not mean that power will be successful. We aren't talking a single attempt of the wightocalypse. We're talking an infinite number of stabs, because we're "given enough time."

The Abyss or Far Realms annihilating the setting does just that, it makes the setting no longer exist. Any setting where such things happen is no longer a setting, and does not factor in to arguments about non-Tippyverse settings.
We're talking inevitability; how does Greyhawk end: Tippyverse, Abyss, Far Realm, other? To say that Tippyverse is inevitable means that Greyhawk must achieve the Tippyverse before the Far Realm succeeds. Show me where that is in RAW.

Mundanes wiping out all magic? In 3.5? We are discussing possible outcomes, are we not?
Mundanes always roll 20s. Magic users always roll 1s, never have right spells prepared. Statistically possible, and will happen, given infinite time.

Deophaun

2014-01-28, 04:21 PM

All that's missing is for someone to think logically about what it can do - and if Tippy can do that, someone with 30+ INT can CERTAINLY do that.
And someone with 30+ INT can CERTAINLY think of why that's a bad thing they don't want their rivals doing. You're thinking of all this stuff in a vacuum, as if A neatly leads to B to C to D, and nothing ever will have an interest in intervening. That's all well and good, but if you do that, we can say it's inevitable that a commoner will take over the world, provided that nothing tries to stop the commoner from taking over the world.

Hiro Protagonest

2014-01-28, 04:25 PM

Mundanes always roll 20s. Magic users always roll 1s, never have right spells prepared. Statistically possible, and will happen, given infinite time.

Not gonna happen. This is a controlled variable, not an uncontrolled one.

Kelb_Panthera

2014-01-28, 04:26 PM

No - commoners do, and they do many things besides farm. Also, even if nobody is farming, they're pretty thankful for the sun. When was the last time you farmed? Are you not happy the sun is a thing?

Not happy enough to offer up prayers of thanks to a sun god or that it'll be sunny instead of cloudy or rainy on any given day.

None of the gods you mentioned are in core, and therefore are not present in the TV. You may as well say Mystra can prevent it by denying wizards Weave access - it might be true, but is completely irrelevant outside of FR and amounts to fiat.

Points of Light is only one incarnation of the Tippyverse. It's not the only one and it's certainly not the only setting. Tippy's claim is that TC based commerce and fabricate and wish traps leading to post-scarcity is an inevitability in -all- settings as a consequence of the game's rules set being structured the way it is. This is what I'm saying isn't accurate. If PoL even -has- gods they're mostly or entirely silent in that setting and -that- makes the rise of such things much more likely than it is in -many- other settings, enough so that it did, canonically, in that setting.

Remember we're talking about a post-scarcity society here. Consider for instance the universe of Wall-E - who is working there? For that matter, what possible work could these people doing that adds more value than self-resetting magical traps?

At the same time, how many of them are farming or even gardening?

Post scarcity is canonically assumed to happen -after- Tippification, not before. I've addressed in other posts the issues with that. In fact, TC based economy giving rise to megacities is a major factor in food and water traps actually taking hold since, otherwise, they wouldn't be able to out-compete manually grown food.

That whole "post-scarcity" thing comes to mind again.

Like I said, or at least have been heavily implying, the tippyverse is a timeline. Post-scarcity will probably happen -eventually- but it's not even a thing in PoL, IIRC. I'm pretty sure Tippy's references to post-scarcity society are from his own campaign with his play-group where he plays the character that is his forum handle's namesake.

This too is setting-dependent. The gods are at each other's throats in FR but couldn't give two craps about each other in Eberron. Once you get into defining the setting you are basically handing the keys to Tippy since it's his setting.

Eberron's gods' minimal activity is unusual. In most other settings they're in near constant conflict. PoL uses a similar model, if there are gods they're very passive, but that's only one Tippyverse setting.

They can if it's related to their portfolio - they can even center their senses on points in space if a portfolio-related event occurs there. You have yet to make a case for why they would care about things outside their portfolio.

Unless your portfolio includes some aspect of nature, you can't just center your remote viewing on some random tree branch or rock. There -must- be some event related to their portfolio for a deity to center his remote viewing on a point in space and he must otherwise have a worshiper, a relic, or have had his name or one of his titles spoken in that place in the recent past.

Not subtle? Both angels and fiends possess substantial shapeshifting or disguise abilities, and we haven't even gotten into possession/channeling. For two, you haven't made a case for why they need to "work in the material" to begin with. Remember, the default is that they cannot lose their powers or be judged on how well they perform related to their portfolio.

Yes, not subtle. There are -some- outsiders that have limited shapechanging ability but the majority don't. They also give off a much stronger alignment auras than do mortals, making them much easier to spot in that regard. There's also their tendency for extreme behaviors that's likely to give them away. Possession and channeling amount to simply using mortals as indirect proxies; proxies to proxies if you will.

If nothing else, there's alliances with racial gods, whose portfolios -are- mortals, and opposition to or support of the Baatezu and Tanar'ri. There's also simply acting in opposition to the deities that they oppose who are working in the mortal realm. Heironeous isn't just going to ignore Hextor's clergy in the mortal realm taking over towns and cities all willy-nilly.

The reason that they'd be concerned with remote-viewing things outside their portfolios is because of those very foes. You can't just ignore what your enemies are doing and you can't block all of your own followers from their remote-viewing.

Deophaun

2014-01-28, 04:26 PM

Not gonna happen. This is not a random statistic, this is something controllable.
Yes, it's something controllable, and it will be controlled poorly, because infinity.

Draken

2014-01-28, 04:29 PM

I'm not the one who said they were. It was you who said "there is a huge difference." So, which is it? Is there a difference, or isn't there?

Maybe not, but 100% of all numbers contain the number 3.

I am honestly at a loss of words here. Apparently two things being very different must mean that they are irreconcilable and cannot exist at the same time or else they are not so different at all.

Wait, what the hell am I saying. They are very different, irreconcilable and cannot exist at the same time. Is doesn't happen at the same time as Will Be just like the Present is not the Future and Two isn't Three.

No. If I was literally saying that, you could quote me saying "The only thing preventing a Tippyverse from coming to pass is calamity on a cosmic scale." You are inferring that from my examples.

Very well. I will admit that that was extreme and perhaps a bit impolite of my part.

But don't cut out the last line from that paragraph, it was pretty important. Ambitious people are more likely to happen than the end of the world. Otherwise magic doesn't get discovered and humans never get past the stage of being naked apes.

It's also likely that no one ever creates a wish trap. Or a fabricate trap. Why? Because. Or they do, but keep it secret. Or what few get built get destroyed because craftsmen don't react well to being put out of work. Or you wind up with perverse incentives that collapse the entire society even before Tippyverse gets off the ground. Or any number of a million things that life throws up because life is unpredictable and people don't follow scripts.

Traps are an advanced step, roughly equal to nowaday's automation of the fabrication process. Actually, lets go a step up and compare to our world. Workers did fear machinery and try to destroy them. It did not work. Perverse incentives collapsed entire societies. It did not destroy them. Life threw a million things in the way of humanity before we got to where we are today. And we still got here, exactly where we are.

Could we be elsewhere? Probably at a much more advanced point if not for the convolutions of the past. Or a meteor could have fallen on our heads and destroyed us all, I guess.

---

Edit: By the way, Grayhawk DOES end in Tippyverse. A mind-flayer ruled Tippyverse, but a tippyverse nonetheless.

WhamBamSam

2014-01-28, 04:38 PM

Kelb_Panthera

2014-01-28, 04:40 PM

@Deophaun:

Small issue; infinity doesn't mean that 100% of all integers contain the number 3.

There are an infinite number of integers and there are an infinite number of integers that contain the number 3. The latter is a smaller infinity than the former.

Given an infinite amount of time all things that are possible will happen. However, one of the things that's possible in any given setting, at least when you consider all of RAW, is that the world will end in fiery death for all creatures. Given this possibility there is not, in fact, an infinite span of time for Tippification to occur and it is, therefore, not inevitable.

I had completely overlooked that particular point that -also- makes the Tippyverse less than certain.

Heliomance

2014-01-28, 04:44 PM

There are an infinite number of integers and there are an infinite number of integers that contain the number 3. The latter is a smaller infinity than the former.

No, it isn't. They're both exactly the same infinity, aleph-0.

WhamBamSam

2014-01-28, 04:58 PM

No, it isn't. They're both exactly the same infinity, aleph-0.Yep. There's an isomorphism between the additive group of integers and the additive group of integers divisible by 3. So they have the same cardinallity and the infinities are equal, insofar as the phrase "the infinities are equal" even means anything. That still doesn't mean that all integers are divisible by 3 though.

Math is weird and neat like that.

BeerMug Paladin

2014-01-28, 05:10 PM

I'm still trying to figure out what it means for a number to 'contain' a 3. Originally, he stated that all integers contain a 3. Given the right definition that statement could be either trivial or unexpected, but true.

The set of all integers is the same size as the set of all primes, and the set of all multiples of a single chosen prime, though. But abstract math has little to do with Tippyverse discussion, so it's best not to get into it. Save that infinity is stranger than we can usually suppose. It's probably better to not make qualitative statements about forever and infinity for a game world in general.

Actually, on the subject of infinity has anyone ever heard of a setting built on some ridiculous depth of the abyss, with a lawful good kingdom surrounded by the hordes of darkness? It would be some ridiculous distance down, like say, on layer Graham's number (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham%27s_number). They've never heard of other planes, save for other 'nearby' layers of the abyss, and the infinite variance of the abyss simply allows for this to exist. Even though it's kind of a ridiculous thing to suggest normally.

Draken

2014-01-28, 05:24 PM

RegalKain

2014-01-28, 06:25 PM

I'd like to pre-face this by saying, I in no way agree, or dis-agree with the posters here, as compared to me, you are all infinite wells of wisdom from which rules and corrections spring. The things you all come up with are fascinating to me, as such forgive me if I seem to be "wrong" about something, it's just because I'm ignorant of why I'm wrong, feel free to educate me as to my errors.

Here's the thing. The "kingodms" in the wilds are -nothing- next to the cities. They're minor city-states whose populations are -tiny- by comparison. They can't even exist during the middle portion of the Tippyverse ascension process.
This is kind of debatable, I can't find where the cities are given actual population numbers (Please link me if you can.) one would assume logically however, given the nature of TC-Cities, that the overall population of the world is rising, greatly so, seeing as people aren't dying in droves to starvation, disease, wolves (No really by D&D terms can't a pack of wolves wipe out most small towns with relative ease?) or any other number of terrifying things that come with the D&D world, as such there are greater population booms, this causes more worshippers to all gods, especially seeing as in any city hierarchy you have people making religions to X god all the time (This is seen in most modern day places as well.) so unless the Lord Wizards who rule these cities particularly single out and target these churches, the god's will, will spread anyway based on the edicts people most enjoy following, all of the gods would benefit from this, as there are more people in the world to have as worshippers. At least that's how I'm seeing it, seeing as the death-rate will decline drastically and the expected life will go from a handful of decades to most people in-city reaching venerable before dying.

Before the cities develop into post-scarcity stage, which can take a -long- time, they're consuming resources at an ever increasing rate from a wider and wider range, leaving very little for the "kingdoms' in between to subsist on, necessarily limiting the size of those "kingdoms." This isn't even considering the kingdoms that were smashed by the cities during their rise from pre-existing rivalries.
This happens in "core" D&D as well though, depending on how much fluff you read, the only reason cities aren't completely obliterated are because of some outside source saving them (PCs, Deities, Wizards and so forth.) Infact from my understanding alot of hamlets and small townships are destroyed on a semi-regular basis causing an influx to the larger more "well-protected" cities.

Take trans-oceanic shipping for example. Most non-TC cities and kingdoms simply won't have the economic wherewithal to make such shipping useful and even if they do, odds are there's a TC city that's closer and just as capable of meeting their needs.

I think the big issue many people are having here, is human nature (Which is not RAW by any means whatsoever and I am aware of that.) you are assuming everyone is happy to be completely and utterly lazy and having nothing done for them (That's how I read what you're saying anyway) which in practice for everywhere I've lived is completely untrue (I can't go more then 2 months without a job or I go crazy.) some are, some aren't. The promise I see with the TV (Which I think is addressed already) is that greed comes into play, which is where most/all of your strife is going to come down to for the mega-cities. Things such as Druids using goodberry traps to feed nations, that's all well and good, except some greedy person (Like a merchant who deals in food etc) isn't going to let that go quietly, there's a very real chance someone will be sent to kill (Or attempt to kill) the druid etc.
Remember that entire last post is 100% not RAW, as it's all based in "human" nature and how things would transpire, as such it doesn't really "debunk" anything it's just how I view things going.

Edit:
Not happy enough to offer up prayers of thanks to a sun god or that it'll be sunny instead of cloudy or rainy on any given day.
{{scrubbed}}
That said in the DragonLance series (Which was ported to 3.5 at some point.) the gods go by different names for the different races, and have different incarnations of themselves as such, they evolve with their worshippers, the deities do not force their worshippers to stay in a singular state o fbeing and mind (That's basicially mental domination and slavery for fear of death and eternal suffering for going against your god.) I could easily see the deities of any patheon in D&D evolving with a TV and encompassing more and learning to work with their worshippers, instead of saying "No change is bad, now I smite and kill you all".

Kane0

2014-01-28, 08:10 PM

The Playground really does have a love/hate relationship with you, don't they Tippy?
Please dont banish me

RegalKain

2014-01-28, 08:12 PM

The Playground really does have a love/hate relationship with you, don't they Tippy?
Please dont banish me

I for one love all of you, you're a collection of great and amazing minds, even if you do disagree and want to kill one another once in awhile but hey what community doesn't want to do that? :)

GITP is the only place I know where I can ask some random and obscure question about 3.5 and have it answered in full with sources in 10> Minutes.

Ionbound

2014-01-28, 09:36 PM

Yeah. I like Tippy. I think he's brilliant. A genius, even. I just hate the people who either A: Say playing like Tippy is the only way to play, and everyone else is doing it wrong, and B: The people who hear the people in group A, and think "Oh my GOD! They're going to wreck my CAMPAIGN! This must STOP!" and nerf otherwise fun classes into unplayability.

HaikenEdge

2014-01-28, 10:33 PM

As an optimizer, I love Tippy's work; I don't even mind Group A or Group B, because they won't affect me personally, because I know I'm not playing with them. However, I do get irrationally angry at people who claim to be debunking Tippy (or any optimization, for that matter), yet do not have a complete grasp of the mechanics at work in any given optimization problem, but nonetheless present themselves as though they fully understand the mechanics involved. To me, it's sloppy and just downright bad, and as an optimizer, I feel it affects the conversation that can be had regarding any optimization problem when one party does not fully understand the mechanics and will not put in the work to learn them.

tl;dr version: I love Tippy's optimization work, get angry when people who don't bother learning the mechanics of an optimization problem say they can debunk it, and enjoy conversations about D&D optimization.

Yukitsu

2014-01-28, 10:50 PM

The underlined isn't true. It's a result of what is likely an error in RAW. The fabricate spell lists the raw materials for the whatever you're fabricating as its material component. It almost certainly should've listed those raw materials as a -focus-, instead.

The problem is that it also has a required target which must match the end result, which the lack of a material component doesn't change. It doesn't matter, as it's honestly his interpretation petarding the setting's premise anyway.

Rubik

2014-01-28, 11:08 PM

DarkSun, most people in Tippyverse don't struggle at all... the reason there is such a vast wilderness filled with monsters is because people concentrate on mega-cities where every single need is taken care of.And this is a reason for numerous gods on both sides of the potential argument to appreciate the Tippyverse. Mystra and Corellon and fighters and rogues because of the high concentrations of people and the magic all in centralized spaces that comes with the Tippyverse. Malar and Mialikki and druids and whatnot because of the vast tracts of wilderness which also come with the Tippyverse. Lots of gods which some people presuppose would be against the Tippyverse would actually be all for it, given that the large cities generally leave the wilderness alone, rather than having vast, spread-out communities consisting of those same people. Far more diversity than in a "standard" campaign setting.

Gnaeus

2014-01-28, 11:22 PM

12owlbears

2014-01-28, 11:27 PM

My only problem with the TV is the wilds. Why would any one live out their if city life is so good? Do cites not allow immigrants from the wild? Why haven't the high level casters who run the verse done anything to help the people out in the wild? With an infinite supply of food, an easy way to transport it, magical automatons to make sure the food actually gets to the people who need it, and magic in general which can solve just about anything as a standard action it seems like the only thing stopping a group of high level casters from improving the wild folk's situation is apathy. The wilds just don't seem to fit with the rest of the verse.

Stux

2014-01-28, 11:31 PM

Why would any one live out their if city life is so good?

Some people love nature, some people can't behave in a civilized manner, and some people just resent living by the rules of semi-omnipotent god-wizards and would rather be free to choose their own lives. There are probably a bunch of other reasons.

erikun

2014-01-29, 12:11 AM

Actually, on the subject of infinity has anyone ever heard of a setting built on some ridiculous depth of the abyss, with a lawful good kingdom surrounded by the hordes of darkness? It would be some ridiculous distance down, like say, on layer Graham's number (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Graham%27s_number). They've never heard of other planes, save for other 'nearby' layers of the abyss, and the infinite variance of the abyss simply allows for this to exist. Even though it's kind of a ridiculous thing to suggest normally.
This sounds like an interesting campaign idea.
Some Good-aligned kingdom is hidden somewhere in the Abyss. Everywhere around then, for thousands of layers, is nothing but CE creatures trying to destroy them. They've found a way to destroy all of creation. The deities then get the party down to the layer of the Abyss, and the party must somehow convince the kingdom that there really is Goodness in creation and to not destroy everything... and that yes, they are honest and not yet another trick of the Abyss.
We return you to your regularly scheduled Trippyverse thread.

Drachasor

2014-01-29, 12:32 AM

Some people love nature, some people can't behave in a civilized manner, and some people just resent living by the rules of semi-omnipotent god-wizards and would rather be free to choose their own lives. There are probably a bunch of other reasons.

Yeah, but they won't really be able to stop aid from good-aligned wizards who want to make sure the people in the Wilds still have food, medical care, etc. They might be able to refuse for themselves, but they won't be able to stop the aid completely.

Though similarly there are likely to be evil-aligned powers that want to mess around, subjugate, torture, and otherwise do bad things to the Wilds for the lulz.

Depending on how many of each type there are, and what otherwise neutral parties do, you could have one side with the upper hand over the wilds or the wilds could be a warzone of competing interests.

On the other hand, if the people running the city are like the Time Lords, (dedicated lawful neutral with a strong non-interference clause), then you might have the wilds be pretty calm. Occasionally there'd be a rogue Wizard Lord running around, but he'd have to keep a low profile the results of his actions would be harder to spot (we'll assume protections against divination are reasonably effective -- but if they aren't then there are no rogues except the ones the system allows).

This happens in "core" D&D as well though, depending on how much fluff you read, the only reason cities aren't completely obliterated are because of some outside source saving them (PCs, Deities, Wizards and so forth.) Infact from my understanding alot of hamlets and small townships are destroyed on a semi-regular basis causing an influx to the larger more "well-protected" cities.

I think Core actually assumes there are generally pretty large areas that are relatively free of monsters and powerful evil forces. This doesn't really make sense given spells like teleport. Heck, cities being safe doesn't make sense. Still, Core assumes all casters are pretty stupid.

I think the big issue many people are having here, is human nature (Which is not RAW by any means whatsoever and I am aware of that.) you are assuming everyone is happy to be completely and utterly lazy and having nothing done for them (That's how I read what you're saying anyway) which in practice for everywhere I've lived is completely untrue (I can't go more then 2 months without a job or I go crazy.) some are, some aren't. The promise I see with the TV (Which I think is addressed already) is that greed comes into play, which is where most/all of your strife is going to come down to for the mega-cities. Things such as Druids using goodberry traps to feed nations, that's all well and good, except some greedy person (Like a merchant who deals in food etc) isn't going to let that go quietly, there's a very real chance someone will be sent to kill (Or attempt to kill) the druid etc.

Frankly, if someone came up with free energy tomorrow and proved how they could do it...then we'd get free energy. Companies based around providing power wouldn't like it and probably would try to stop it, but overall there are vastly more companies that would benefit from free power and would fight to get it. Net result is we'd get free power. If such a thing were possible, then eventually it would happen (even if some assassinations delayed it, which is questionable -- corporate murder isn't as common as people like to pretend).

Regarding having stuff to do, well, when you are in a post scarcity society you don't HAVE to do anything. That doesn't mean there's nothing to do. Art, invention, entertainment, and other things can still exist. Anything you really like doing, you can now do for free. Expensive hobbies are now free. The sky is the limit.

That said in the DragonLance series (Which was ported to 3.5 at some point.) the gods go by different names for the different races, and have different incarnations of themselves as such, they evolve with their worshippers, the deities do not force their worshippers to stay in a singular state o fbeing and mind (That's basicially mental domination and slavery for fear of death and eternal suffering for going against your god.) I could easily see the deities of any patheon in D&D evolving with a TV and encompassing more and learning to work with their worshippers, instead of saying "No change is bad, now I smite and kill you all".

Indeed. A God of Travel is likely going to be gaining teleportation to his portfolio.

Yahzi

2014-01-29, 03:44 AM

Say playing like Tippy is the only way to play, and everyone else is doing it wrong,
When Tippy says the Tippy-verse is inevitable, what he means is, your players will inflict it upon you if you let them get to high level without changing the rules. At least if your players are anything like mine. Or like me. As long as it is both possible and profitable, PCs will do it.

I don't want my world to turn into Tippyverse, so I am quite grateful to Tippy for pointing out the things that let it happen. It's like a huge guidebook of "here's all the crap your players will try to pull, so stop them before they start if you don't like where it leads."

Drachasor

2014-01-29, 04:06 AM

When Tippy says the Tippy-verse is inevitable, what he means is, your players will inflict it upon you if you let them get to high level without changing the rules. At least if your players are anything like mine. Or like me. As long as it is both possible and profitable, PCs will do it.

I don't want my world to turn into Tippyverse, so I am quite grateful to Tippy for pointing out the things that let it happen. It's like a huge guidebook of "here's all the crap your players will try to pull, so stop them before they start if you don't like where it leads."

As I read it, it is more like NPCs wizards will do this unless you make them dumber than a sack of bricks, have a powerful force stopping it, or change the rules. That said, it does seem D&D often assumes casters to NOT use the resources at their disposal in any sensible way.

Erik Vale

2014-01-29, 04:49 AM

Wizards only get to 16 unless you get to planar metropolis. Which means that in a standard game it's for players to do.

Of course, if you could figure out what class warlocks could replace in the group, then they could do it at level 12. And I could definitely see a business savy LE warlock create the Tippyverse.

charcoalninja

2014-01-29, 05:35 AM

Erik Vale

2014-01-29, 05:48 AM

Does the fact that a rail takes a few hours while a TC is instant really make that much of a difference? I get that the TCs change the setting but I personally don't see why TC leads to a situation where threat of invasion leads to highly compressed city states rather than a sprawling mass of towns connected by TCs with the state maintaining a highly mobile quick response force like we have today. ICBM attacks are essentially teleporting city destroyers after all, and considering that these super wizards both have the means to blanket their cities in teleport detection and the ability to stop time for arbitrarily long periods of time 3 rounds is really all they would need to mobilize their anti terror force.

Yes. Yes it does. Even ICBM's take time and can be responded to, a sudden army inside your capital, which is actually your only city? Have fun.

Of course, other magics [the traps] make it easier to compound, eventually destroying the desire to make real 'nations' as each city can be a island to itself. The problem comes from cities with expansionist leaders, who have to be careful not to get ganged up on/trip self destruct mechanisms.

Also, it is a verry specific cheese [Wizard X/War Weaver 1/Spellguard of Silvermoon... 5 I think] setting up long duration timestop for multiple people, unless you plan on fighting the invasion solely using delayed spells and timestop, which the enemy also has avaliable.

Drachasor

2014-01-29, 05:48 AM

One thing that I've always wondered about the Tippyverse is how is the Teleportation Circles any different from modern day Rail systems? Both move goods quickly and easily over vast stretches of land without the treat of anything being highjacked or eaten by bears and it hasn't created an instance of concentrated populations in super citys, instead it's created a sprawling network of connected local enforcement agencies able to call upon greater military power should the need arise.

Both TC and railway allow safe travel for anyone, focus commerce around the areas where they intersect, and even allow for the incredibly rapid deployment of military troops, although moreso than railway are our aircraft which only take a handful of hours.

What I'm saying is that the modern world is in essence a Tippyverse because any nation is powerful enough to completely annihilate another with very little chance of reprisal, have numerous ways of detecting and responding quickly to threats (calling in fast air as a response to say airspace being violated by a foreign power, nuclear subs with ICBMS that can lob nukes from 500km away) while telecommunications allows fine control and quick coordination of disperate elements the world over.

Does the fact that a rail takes a few hours while a TC is instant really make that much of a difference? I get that the TCs change the setting but I personally don't see why TC leads to a situation where threat of invasion leads to highly compressed city states rather than a sprawling mass of towns connected by TCs with the state maintaining a highly mobile quick response force like we have today. ICBM attacks are essentially teleporting city destroyers after all, and considering that these super wizards both have the means to blanket their cities in teleport detection and the ability to stop time for arbitrarily long periods of time 3 rounds is really all they would need to mobilize their anti terror force.

The difference is that it is instant, can't be hijacked (trains can and were hijacked), and requires no upkeep after it is put in place. All those together make for a pretty big deal.

And yes, timeframes of hours do matter if you are talking about military force projections.

The Insanity

2014-01-29, 06:01 AM

SiuiS

2014-01-29, 06:11 AM

One thing that I've always wondered about the Tippyverse is how is the Teleportation Circles any different from modern day Rail systems?

Rail systems are expensive to maintain, noninstantaneous, subject to entropy, require human control and lack autonomous function, have certain limiting protocols necessary to establish safety, and are much harder to use.

Teleportation circle is limitless after startup.

Except that the entirety of the Tippyverse doesn't take place inside the Cities... From the Tippyverse:

"The Wilds
The Wilds are the area between cities. Here is where you will find everything from dungeons to Orc armies to small farming towns. The Wilds are a Death World by most standards and most individuals will have a hard time eking out an existence. Magic is rare and largely limited to Sorcerers, Warlocks, Druids, and similar classes. Most individuals are low level and it’s rare to find a PC class.
The Wilds are where you will find most of the more traditional D&D quests occurring (dungeon crawling in the ruins of fallen cities, clearing out various monsters, rescuing the mayors daughter, etc.). You will also find a few “barbarian” kingdoms out here (more traditional D&D kingdoms) where the very lack of high level magic (as those capable of casting it migrate to the cities) keeps the kingdom from reaching that singularity point."

Emphasis mine.

Normal kingdoms still exist, as does traveling by foot/horse/ship and agriculture... None of these things are rendered extinct by a Tippyverse.

A failure of abstraction then. This would be much easier to swallow if instead of being told about the megacities (and also a normal game outside), the perspective was smaller; a normal D&D game that happened to have massive monolith stone structures the players as barbarians were mostly ignorant of.

He's said that non-Tippyverse settings require houserules or DM fiat.

No, I'm fairly sure in this thread he did say "... But basically yeah, you're doing it wrong"

I've read the thread in which Tippy described the setting. I'm aware of the wilderness between the cities.

Here's the thing. The "kingodms" in the wilds are -nothing- next to the cities. They're minor city-states whose populations are -tiny- by comparison. They can't even exist during the middle portion of the Tippyverse ascension process.

Before the cities develop into post-scarcity stage, which can take a -long- time, they're consuming resources at an ever increasing rate from a wider and wider range, leaving very little for the "kingdoms' in between to subsist on, necessarily limiting the size of those "kingdoms."

False. Post scarcity starts with 'everyone has free food and water forever'. That takes very little startup.

As a clarification, I'm not convinced that the Tippyverse is actually a post-scarcity system, in the classic sense. Certainly the points of light setting still has trade, currency, poverty, and severe limits on access to the most valuable resources.

If it was a post-scarcity system, there wouldn't be all that pesky darkness in between the cities. Or any particular need to congregate at all.

True, I suppose?

As strongly as I disagree with the premise that TV is the only possible outcome of the rules, he does have a fairly solid point on permanent TC's.

There's very little else in the rules that can cause such dramatic and, from an economic standpoint, positive changes. It quite literally makes the world a smaller place for those with access. The implications this has on trade are staggering. It's a benefit that anyone economically minded, pretty much everyone in the trade industry, would pounce on without a second thought.

It's such a no-brainer that, given enough time, it -will- happen. Divine intervention and the scarcity of people capable of coming up with the idea really -are- the major reasons that such an outcome becomes uncertain. Such sources of opposition make it probable that the world will end (hi Leviathan) before TV happens.

If the gods are inactive and a Travel cleric of 17th level who happens to have a wizard with permanency as a business partner comes up with the idea, that's all it takes. It only takes the wizard if the epic demographic table is in play.

Not so.

It's economically more viable to maintain the infrastructure yourself and prevent dissemination of the concept to maintain control than to allow everyone in the world open access to your business model. Only the magnate himself would know how this works, and when he died it would likely collapse due to preventative measures. Don't want assassins somehow commandeering your infrastructure.

There's plenty of incentive to venture out on foot; can't gain XP in the cities, that's the whole point of the wilderness in PoL.

There's no need for XP ever in cities. Everyone has the mentor feat so they start at fifth level and routine cycles toss people into the "eternity of torment+masochism+extract pain+liquid ambrosia" sarcophogi to generate infinite XP for expenditure on magic.

Society has no reason to accomplish anything; why defend your stuff? Give it away. You'll have more. Why have money? You've got infinite stuff. Why have a job? You've got robo servants. Why toil? You don't need XP. Why anything? It's covered.

Why play?

But the Tippyverse doesn't assume "enough time", the only assumption it makes is "characters act as intelligently as their INT scores would suggest". Because if one man, who almost certainly has no more than 18 INT, can come up with this idea in, what, maybe 10 years?

Compiling hubris. Very few brilliant people ever actually rethink their lot in life if they're advancing. It's only when you hit a plateau you reassess, and these super geniuses (who don't have all the setting knowledge Tippy does, and no reasonable method or reason to get it all) have no plateau. There is no stop I. Advancement that makes you rethink your meteoric rise.

Hubris shackles Wizard kind.

Hubert

2014-01-29, 07:00 AM

SiuiS

2014-01-29, 07:03 AM

First, wightocalypse doesn't require all that much magic power. Second, just because power exists to counter it, does not mean that power will be successful. We aren't talking a single attempt of the wightocalypse. We're talking an infinite number of stabs, because we're "given enough time."

Yup!

We're talking inevitability; how does Greyhawk end: Tippyverse, Abyss, Far Realm, other? To say that Tippyverse is inevitable means that Greyhawk must achieve the Tippyverse before the Far Realm succeeds. Show me where that is in RAW.

Actually!

We can establish that given enough time, TV will occur (I disagree but since my disagreement is in contention it cannot be used as proof of itself). We can assume it happens in nigh-infinite time, ni.

Now, we must move to the other side, Nd prove that the abyss, or far realms, happens in ni-1, that is, any amount of nigh infinite time that is still shorter in duration than the time to achieve TV.

Unless you can prove by RAW that the other forces will win first, TV is the winner because it's the only established eventuality.

Yes, it's something controllable, and it will be controlled poorly, because infinity.

Oh come on, now you're just being spiteful. That doesn't even make sense.

How low level are Wights possible?

Wights exist irrespective of NPC or PC power, as undeath is RAW a natural occurrence (although the nature and mechanics are vague/useles). So it's actually easier to assume that in any setting in which a wightocalypse has not occurred, it cannot because it hasn't. It's like the time traveler thing; where are they?

I presume this is sign of direct divine meddling since fledgling races without magic or technology (and which haven't been around long enough to level and develop all these feats, et al) would be unable to withstand the wights once a single person died and met the criteria.

I'm still trying to figure out what it means for a number to 'contain' a 3. Originally, he stated that all integers contain a 3. Given the right definition that statement could be either trivial or unexpected, but true.

[all numbers ever] has a 3 in there. That's all.

As an optimizer, I love Tippy's work; I don't even mind Group A or Group B, because they won't affect me personally, because I know I'm not playing with them. However, I do get irrationally angry at people who claim to be debunking Tippy (or any optimization, for that matter), yet do not have a complete grasp of the mechanics at work in any given optimization problem, but nonetheless present themselves as though they fully understand the mechanics involved. To me, it's sloppy and just downright bad, and as an optimizer, I feel it affects the conversation that can be had regarding any optimization problem when one party does not fully understand the mechanics and will not put in the work to learn them.

tl;dr version: I love Tippy's optimization work, get angry when people who don't bother learning the mechanics of an optimization problem say they can debunk it, and enjoy conversations about D&D optimization.

All this.

When Tippy says the Tippy-verse is inevitable, what he means is, your players will inflict it upon you if you let them get to high level without changing the rules. At least if your players are anything like mine. Or like me. As long as it is both possible and profitable, PCs will do it.

I don't want my world to turn into Tippyverse, so I am quite grateful to Tippy for pointing out the things that let it happen. It's like a huge guidebook of "here's all the crap your players will try to pull, so stop them before they start if you don't like where it leads."

Oh. Yeah, this I'll agree with.

TuggyNE

2014-01-29, 07:04 AM

One thing that I've always wondered about the Tippyverse is how is the Teleportation Circles any different from modern day Rail systems? Both move goods quickly and easily over vast stretches of land without the treat of anything being highjacked or eaten by bears and it hasn't created an instance of concentrated populations in super citys, instead it's created a sprawling network of connected local enforcement agencies able to call upon greater military power should the need arise.

Both TC and railway allow safe travel for anyone, focus commerce around the areas where they intersect, and even allow for the incredibly rapid deployment of military troops, although moreso than railway are our aircraft which only take a handful of hours.

What I'm saying is that the modern world is in essence a Tippyverse because any nation is powerful enough to completely annihilate another with very little chance of reprisal, have numerous ways of detecting and responding quickly to threats (calling in fast air as a response to say airspace being violated by a foreign power, nuclear subs with ICBMS that can lob nukes from 500km away) while telecommunications allows fine control and quick coordination of disperate elements the world over.

Does the fact that a rail takes a few hours while a TC is instant really make that much of a difference? I get that the TCs change the setting but I personally don't see why TC leads to a situation where threat of invasion leads to highly compressed city states rather than a sprawling mass of towns connected by TCs with the state maintaining a highly mobile quick response force like we have today. ICBM attacks are essentially teleporting city destroyers after all, and considering that these super wizards both have the means to blanket their cities in teleport detection and the ability to stop time for arbitrarily long periods of time 3 rounds is really all they would need to mobilize their anti terror force.

Railways can be damaged or destroyed or captured; troop movements are difficult to conceal, and attacks during transit can result in heavy casualties. In practice, therefore, railroads are not and cannot be used to deploy troops directly into enemy territory, but rather used to reinforce the front line.

ICBMs are trickier, but consider: it's impossible to hide an ICBM launch from a sophisticated enemy, and the missile takes some thirty minutes in transit, before either destroying a large area or being shot down. That's ample time for a counter-attack to be launched, and the end result of a nuclear exchange is nothing but destruction; cities attacked are highly likely to be simply gone.

The teleportation circle, however, can put lots of infantry in enemy territory right now with at most 18 seconds warning. These troops can then capture, destroy, or sabotage enemy works at their discretion, and can be further reinforced very rapidly and precisely. A well-planned assault could combine the force of a full army with the surprise of a covert ops mission. That's pretty potent.

Halbaradkenafin

2014-01-29, 07:15 AM

There's no need for XP ever in cities. Everyone has the mentor feat so they start at fifth level and routine cycles toss people into the "eternity of torment+masochism+extract pain+liquid ambrosia" sarcophogi to generate infinite XP for expenditure on magic.

Society has no reason to accomplish anything; why defend your stuff? Give it away. You'll have more. Why have money? You've got infinite stuff. Why have a job? You've got robo servants. Why toil? You don't need XP. Why anything? It's covered.

For the fun of it? For the experience (not in the xp sense but the actual thing that xp tries to represent). I've been reading the Culture novels recently and tippyverse is similar to what they have and yet they still have a lot of people going out and exploring and all sorts, because not everyone wants to sit at home and do nothing.

People have pointed out that the cities are boring, and they almost certainly are for some people, so why stay there? Want some excitement in your life then find a few like minded people and kit up and go exploring outside the city, you might get eaten by some monster but you might find treasure that's been lost for thousands of years. It's not likely to impact life in a city but there will always be people interested in the past or whatever other reasons there are to go out of town. There will be people who want authentic X item, leathers or whatever, and will find people who are bored and willing to go get some.

I'm running a game soon set in a tippyverse with high level PCs (level 16) and they are going to investigate an old city and see what they can find. I haven't decided if some monsters from the wilds have moved in, or the guardian golems are still around or what but it should be fun whatever happens. Plus it gives my players a chance to play high level which doesn't happen often.

SiuiS

2014-01-29, 07:34 AM

For the fun of it? For the experience (not in the xp sense but the actual thing that xp tries to represent). I've been reading the Culture novels recently and tippyverse is similar to what they have and yet they still have a lot of people going out and exploring and all sorts, because not everyone wants to sit at home and do nothing.

People have pointed out that the cities are boring, and they almost certainly are for some people, so why stay there? Want some excitement in your life then find a few like minded people and kit up and go exploring outside the city, you might get eaten by some monster but you might find treasure that's been lost for thousands of years. It's not likely to impact life in a city but there will always be people interested in the past or whatever other reasons there are to go out of town. There will be people who want authentic X item, leathers or whatever, and will find people who are bored and willing to go get some.

I'm running a game soon set in a tippyverse with high level PCs (level 16) and they are going to investigate an old city and see what they can find. I haven't decided if some monsters from the wilds have moved in, or the guardian golems are still around or what but it should be fun whatever happens. Plus it gives my players a chance to play high level which doesn't happen often.

What makes more sense, though, in a city that has literally everything? A recreation of the fiendish codex II illusion art scape full of grand sensation and beautiful people, always fulfilling? Or soft fat people traipsing off into the world and abandoning paradise on a large enough scale for adventures to happen?

Draken

2014-01-29, 09:45 AM

Lord Raziere

2014-01-29, 10:01 AM

What always bothers me with Tippyverse is: how does it ends?

As far as I understand, the claim is that if everything works on RAW (no DM's adjudications, no gods,...) then any setting becomes TV.

If everything that is RAW can exist in the setting, then there is the possibility of the existence of Pun-Pun, omniscifiers and all this kind of world-breaking stuff. Given that time-travel is also a possibility, all it takes to break the setting (like kill every living entity in the world) is one megalomaniac/mad/... TO wizard time-travelling from any past or future time. Therefore, the world being destroyed seems to me much more probable than having a TV staying in place for long a period of time.

To summarize: according to me a RAW-only setting evolution is:

Setting -> Tippyverse -> destruction of the world in any of the numerous ways available to a high-level TO character.

which is why I just skip Step 2 of that and just play Dark Sun. its all done for you! the logical effects of magic upon the world are all around you. they're the endless wastes that you call home. they're the realization that you might not live another day, they're fighting for your life amid arena's every day of your life, they're the empty little despair you feel as you look out upon the last remaining dregs of everything that ever was. thank you, magic, thank you for this endless hell.

12owlbears

2014-01-29, 10:04 AM

Watch Elysium, it has the answers you seek.

I see the similarity but I always thought that Tv was less of a dystopia and more similar to the federation from star trek(a society where technology has solved most of humanities problems). To me the wilds just seem like a way to shoe horn adventuring into a setting.

There's no need for XP ever in cities. Everyone has the mentor feat so they start at fifth level and routine cycles toss people into the "eternity of torment+masochism+extract pain+liquid ambrosia" sarcophogi to generate infinite XP for expenditure on magic.

Society has no reason to accomplish anything; why defend your stuff? Give it away. You'll have more. Why have money? You've got infinite stuff. Why have a job? You've got robo servants. Why toil? You don't need XP. Why anything? It's covered.

Why play?

This. Adventurers are an anachronism in the TV. A dnd style adventurer would be the equivalent of someone from modern Europe setting out to explore the new world. The only logical way for adventurers to exist in the tv would be for them to invent spelljammers than head out to space, boldly going where no one has gone before

SiuiS

2014-01-29, 10:52 AM

This. Adventurers are an anachronism in the TV. A dnd style adventurer would be the equivalent of someone from modern Europe setting out to explore the new world. The only logical way for adventurers to exist in the tv would be for them to invent spelljammers than head out to space, boldly going where no one has gone before

And then teleport there.
It's the Warlock In Spite Of Himself problem, really; democracy won a huge war and as long as people had colonies to found and support and space to explore, things would be good. As soon as human reach exceeded human infrastructure, people would decide the old king sucks and we should elect a shogun or something. It all collapses.

Unless you find a way to make the distance (and thus, time) between worlds meaningless...

Stux

2014-01-29, 11:15 AM

I see the similarity but I always thought that Tv was less of a dystopia and more similar to the federation from star trek(a society where technology has solved most of humanities problems). To me the wilds just seem like a way to shoe horn adventuring into a setting.

As Tippy said, there are many possible Tippyverses, all logical extensions of the application of strict RAW. The campaign he actually plays is only one such Tippyverse. I would have thought that many were utopian as you expected, but many would also be dystopian. It sounds like his actual campaign setting has a dash of both going on. I would think it mostly depends what kinds of people gather power first.

If a good wizard becomes the first to get themselves together and become a god-wizard then they can take measures to stop anyone who would want to destroy the world getting enough power. If someone hellbent on destruction gets there first then that Tippyverse probably does get completely annihilated before anyone can stop them.

Halbaradkenafin

2014-01-29, 11:26 AM

So your saying that people can't opt to do things the hard way? Say a group decide that as great as this city is they want to try going to that next city over but want a bit of a challenge so head there on foot or by horse or whatever transport they use which isn't using a TC. It's not because they can't just use a TC but that they want that sense of achievement from making it on there own.

To use a real world example, why does anyone climb a mountain? Everyone knows there is nothing useful at the top of most of them but still groups of people do it. It's for that chance to say "I did climb that mountain without using a helicopter" or something similar. Why would X race in Dnd be any different just because their normal daily life is easier than ours?

The Insanity

2014-01-29, 11:28 AM

Those people have the luxury of being able to do it, tho. I think in a D&D world it's mostly a fight for survival or profit.

SiuiS

2014-01-29, 11:52 AM

So your saying that people can't opt to do things the hard way? Say a group decide that as great as this city is they want to try going to that next city over but want a bit of a challenge so head there on foot or by horse or whatever transport they use which isn't using a TC. It's not because they can't just use a TC but that they want that sense of achievement from making it on there own.

In a universe with fast plateaus toward advancement, which can be reached before satisfaction in the majority of cases, and where gross needs are rarely satisfied at all times, let alone rarified needs? Yes.

In a world that doesn't glorify hard work because no one works ever, and you all instead exist in the matrix?

Eldest

2014-01-29, 12:07 PM

Those people have the luxury of being able to do it, tho. I think in a D&D world it's mostly a fight for survival or profit.

Remember, this is the city-folk. They don't have to fight for survival, due to the city infrastructure.

Hubert

2014-01-29, 12:25 PM

To use a real world example, why does anyone climb a mountain? Everyone knows there is nothing useful at the top of most of them but still groups of people do it. It's for that chance to say "I did climb that mountain without using a helicopter" or something similar. Why would X race in Dnd be any different just because their normal daily life is easier than ours?

Now I imagine a band of True Adventurers exploring an ancient Temple of Doom only to find that it has become a holiday destination for people from the city, who arrive with all their über-magic items mass-produced by wish-traps.

Emperor Tippy

2014-01-29, 12:40 PM

...
No one adventures, especially at high levels, without a pressing need or major mental problems.

To gain a level you need to defeat approximately 13 challenges that are each expected to take a significant expenditure of resources and hold approximately a 25% chance of death. A quarter of those encounters are expected to at least seriously threaten the survival of the individual PC's and even credibly threaten total party kills.

Take a Wizard and look at how much he can sell his spell casting services for. Or how much he can sell magic items for. Take the Hat of Disguise. Any wizard with the Craft Wondrous Items feat (which requires a caster level of 3) can create such a hat in two days for 72 XP and 900 GP and said hat has a market price of 1,800 GP. The average annual income in D&D runs less than 600 GP per working individual.

In two days of work a third level wizard has just made 150% of the total annual income of the average professional. In real life terms, the wizard is making approximately 60,000 dollars for two days or work.

But that has some XP cost so instead lets look at spell casting services. A first level spell sells for 10 GP per casting while a zero level spell sells for 5 GP per casting. A wizard with 12 Int has 2 first level spell slots and 3 zero level spell slots per day. The daily GP value of those slots is 35 GP. Or a bit over twelve and a half thousand GP per year.

This is a first level, barely competent, vanilla, wizard. Just the third level spell slots of a vanilla, minimal Int, fifth level Wizard have an annual GP value of 54,750 GP.

---
If anyone is adventuring to become rich then they have retired from that career buy the time they are fifth level or so at the latest.

People adventure beyond that point because they have some cause or other issue that they judge important enough to risk fates that make death look like paradise with odds of success that are so low as to be less than rounding error in most calculations.

Think about it this way. To go from level 5 to level 20 should take, per the DMG, approximately 195 equal CR encounters. If you assume that the odds of death in any given encounter average 5% then the odds of making it to level 20 without dying are so low that most calculators can't figure the actual number.

To put this in more comprehensible terms, the odds of going from level 5 to level 6 without dying are 51.3%. The odds of dying by playing Russian Roulette are about 16%. You are three times more likely to die before going from level 5 to level 6 than you are to die playing Russian Roulette.

You have better odds of taking a cops service semiautomatic pistol, putting it to your temple, pulling the trigger, and surviving (by a massive margin) than you do of surviving from level 5 to level 20.

Now think about the kinds of motivations that would get you to not just willingly risk your life but willingly and knowingly walking into certain death with what amounts to divine intervention being your only hope of survival and not just doing this once but to keep going out and doing it time after time after time.

You have better odds of jumping out of a 747 at thirty thousand feet without a parachute and walking away without any injuries beyond bruising than you do of surviving to level 20 (massively better odds).

---
What this means, besides any high level character basically being certifiably insane, is that every high level character is incredibly self motivated and driven. If they were lazy, unskilled, or otherwise lacking in self motivation then they would not have the power that they do.

Palanan

2014-01-29, 12:47 PM

Originally Posted by Tippy
No one adventures, especially at high levels, without a pressing need or major mental problems.

This is a good example of a statement clearly intended to be taken as the final word on character motivation in all worlds and all games, under all circumstances everywhere. Any moderately creative person can think of half a dozen counterexamples, but Tippy wants this to be accepted as established fact.

Those who don't, by definition, are just plain wrong.

Emperor Tippy

2014-01-29, 12:52 PM

HaikenEdge

2014-01-29, 12:53 PM

This is a good example of a statement clearly intended to be taken as the final word on character motivation in all worlds and all games, under all circumstances everywhere. Any moderately creative person can think of half a dozen counterexamples, but Tippy wants this to be accepted as established fact.

Those who don't, by definition, are just plain wrong.

To be fair, though, if the chances of even surviving the process of advancing one level is about 50% on any given level, you have to be some sort of insane or have a real pressing need to be risking your life repeatedly, because your chances of survival diminish every time you go out and try to level up.

That's not to say that there won't be people doing it, but those who go out adventuring professionally for extended periods either don't think about the risk, don't care about the risk, or have to take the risk because of some pressing need, and in the case of the former two, there has to be some pressing reason why they either don't think about the risks of dying, or don't care about them, and it kind of does break down to mental issues, ie, being an adrenaline junkie, believing in a cause over the value of your own life, etc.

BeerMug Paladin

2014-01-29, 01:31 PM

It's probably worth noting that a lot of campaign settings have a swanky afterlife that is known to the residents of the world where people of every alignment get a suitable afterlife for them.

Presumably, you can't just go get the lawful good afterlife by committing suicide. Going on a reckless adventure and trying your best might be a legitimate shortcut to getting there. If life bores you, choosing to adventure might be the logical thing to do. It's a win-win.

Also, the levels where you can start getting resurrected, raised, reincarnated or whatever would, I imagine, make one less risk averse. Death means little when you can just believe that your companions will raise you the next day.

Vanitas

2014-01-29, 01:36 PM

The basic Tippyverse category is. So long as permanent Teleporation Circles exist as they do under the rules as written in 3.5 you will, given time, inevitably end up with a Tippyverse unless it is being explicitly prevented by a great power (such as a deity). If not being actively prevented and such magic exists then it will eventually be used and the basic Tippyverse will eventually form.
Please, make it clear where the difference between Points of LIght and "basic Tippyverse" lies.

I will maintain that claim until someone can make a strong case for said claim being incorrect without relying on fiat, houserules, or divine intervention (which amounts to fiat).
Why is divine intervention fiat? The gods are NPCs with defined power presented in canon sources. It's the same as a dragon protecting his hoard. The gods are part of the 3.5 rules as written, are they not? I don't understand your reasoning here.

One thing that I've always wondered about the Tippyverse is how is the Teleportation Circles any different from modern day Rail systems? Both move goods quickly and easily over vast stretches of land without the treat of anything being highjacked or eaten by bears and it hasn't created an instance of concentrated populations in super citys, instead it's created a sprawling network of connected local enforcement agencies able to call upon greater military power should the need arise.

Both TC and railway allow safe travel for anyone, focus commerce around the areas where they intersect, and even allow for the incredibly rapid deployment of military troops, although moreso than railway are our aircraft which only take a handful of hours.

What I'm saying is that the modern world is in essence a Tippyverse because any nation is powerful enough to completely annihilate another with very little chance of reprisal, have numerous ways of detecting and responding quickly to threats (calling in fast air as a response to say airspace being violated by a foreign power, nuclear subs with ICBMS that can lob nukes from 500km away) while telecommunications allows fine control and quick coordination of disperate elements the world over.

Does the fact that a rail takes a few hours while a TC is instant really make that much of a difference? I get that the TCs change the setting but I personally don't see why TC leads to a situation where threat of invasion leads to highly compressed city states rather than a sprawling mass of towns connected by TCs with the state maintaining a highly mobile quick response force like we have today. ICBM attacks are essentially teleporting city destroyers after all, and considering that these super wizards both have the means to blanket their cities in teleport detection and the ability to stop time for arbitrarily long periods of time 3 rounds is really all they would need to mobilize their anti terror force.
Couldn't agree more.

Hecuba

2014-01-29, 02:03 PM

Any moderately creative person can think of half a dozen counterexamples, but Tippy wants this to be accepted as established fact.

I'd take myself as fairly creative, and I can't. There would need to be something that would qualify as "pressing need" (at least to the character) to attempt something as deadly to the character as adventuring should be based on the statistical implications of the rules.

I can think of several examples where characters survive over the level range under because of the necessity of the plot. Or because the lethality and power level of the setting does not match the capacities attributed to characters by the rules.

I would consider this equivalent to divine intervention for the purposes of this conversation.

The problem with those examples is that they do not hold to the presumptions inherent in the Tippyverse.

To take the (perhaps oversimplified*) 1000-foot view, the Tippyverse is a setting described by the implications^ of the mechanical rules of 3.5 rather than one structured by the traditional narrative patterns of fantasy literature and established settings.

If you are going to an overtly narrative characters (D&D novels) or attributing narrative purpose to deities/great powers to look for counter examples, you are missing the point: you cannot examine the effects of the rules on the long -term dynamics of a setting if the setting is divorced from the rules (or intentionally structured to limit their effects).

Why is divine intervention fiat? The gods are NPCs with defined power presented in canon sources. It's the same as a dragon protecting his hoard. The gods are part of the 3.5 rules as written, are they not? I don't understand your reasoning here.

The gods are part of the settings, not the mechanical rules themselves. You can have settings without gods (Athas/Dark Sun, for example) or settings with hyperactive meddling gods (Krynn/Dragonlance) or a setting with distant and non-participatory gods that might not even exist (Eberron).

Regardless, I don't recall Tippy ever being shy about the fact that neither active divine intervention nor epic magic are part of the basis of the Tippyverse. This seems imminently reasonable, as the motivations actions and effects of individual, highly powerful actors do not readily aggrigate to something that can be examined in terms of statistical implications.

__________________________________________________ ____

*My apologies to his Imperial Doughy-ness.

^Primarily demographic, statistical, and economic based on my understanding (though those may just stick out to me, since they're topics I enjoy in their own rights).

Vanitas

2014-01-29, 02:15 PM

I'd take myself as fairly creative, and I can't.
"Of course I can do this, I've did it for 5 years and I'm still alive."
"So no one survives this? Well, then I am going to be the first!"
"I need to save my brother, he is in over his head! I need to get the gang back together..."
"Of course it's dangerous, no one as skilled as me has ever tried doing that."
"I need to find something new. Nothing here interests me."
I could go on and on.

Hecuba

2014-01-29, 02:41 PM

One thing that I've always wondered about the Tippyverse is how is the Teleportation Circles any different from modern day Rail systems?

[...]

Does the fact that a rail takes a few hours while a TC is instant really make that much of a difference?

Time is one difference, but at least equally important is that defense against teleportation in 3.5 is markedly more difficult and less reliable than teleportation itself.

There are similar patterns in your ICBM example, but there are also important differences. Most pressingly, scope of damage: you can't really skirmish with nukes.
Scry and die tactics, in contrast, are equally applicable for small scale conflicts and world wars.
Which means that you cannot reliably fortify any position. You cannot make the Royal Palace significantly more difficult to infiltrate than a base camp for a small expedition.
If there is a conflict, everywhere is the front line.

"Of course I can do this, I've did it for 5 years and I'm still alive."
"So no one survives this? Well, then I am going to be the first!"
"I need to save my brother, he is in over his head! I need to get the gang back together..."
"Of course it's dangerous, no one as skilled as me has ever tried doing that."
"I need to find something new. Nothing here interests me."

I could go on and on.

(Numbers mine.)
3 & 5 would strike me as pressing need, if only to the character.
1, 2, and 4 I find very hard to buy without mental issues IF adventuring really is as dangerous as the base numbers would indicate.

What would be your reaction if someone used such reasoning to justify, say, skydiving without a parachute or jumping off a 40 story building?
People have survived 20000 foot free fall.
In the absence of pressing motivation, would you hold that a mentally sound person would try?

Togo

2014-01-29, 02:44 PM

I'd take myself as fairly creative, and I can't.

Seriously? It's not hard....

There would need to be something that would qualify as "pressing need" (at least to the character) to attempt something as deadly to the character as adventuring should be based on the statistical implications of the rules.

This isn't the statistical implications of the rules. This is a few statistics measuring danger levels and large lump of assumptions about human psychology and motivation.

Fortunately, all this statistical analysis is unnecessary - we already know exactly what proportion of high level characters exist in the population, by RAW. It looks like people who repeatedly expose themselves to danger is atypical, but not actually all that rare.

Regardless, I don't recall Tippy ever being shy about the fact that neither active divine intervention nor epic magic are part of the basis of the Tippyverse. This seems imminently reasonable, as the motivations actions and effects of individual, highly powerful actors do not readily aggrigate to something that can be examined in terms of statistical implications.

Sure, there's nothing wrong with the notion of a Tippyverse. Similar ideas have been around for decades. It's the extraordinary claims made around the Tippyverse that people are taking issue with. In particular, the rather strange and obsessive claim that Tippyverse contains no assumptions (DM fiat), that is it the inevitable result of the ruleset, and that anyone who builds a different world is simply getting the implications of the rules wrong.

Panalan captured the spirit of this kind of assertion quite well:

This is a good example of a statement clearly intended to be taken as the final word on (character motivation in) all worlds and all games, under all circumstances everywhere. Any moderately creative person can think of half a dozen counterexamples, but Tippy wants this to be accepted as established fact.

Those who don't, by definition, are just plain wrong.

Heliomance

2014-01-29, 02:47 PM

"Of course I can do this, I've did it for 5 years and I'm still alive."
Mental issues (inability to competently assess risk and understand probability)

"So no one survives this? Well, then I am going to be the first!"
Mental issues (hubris)/driving personal need (to prove yourself)

"I need to save my brother, he is in over his head! I need to get the gang back together..."
Driving personal need

"Of course it's dangerous, no one as skilled as me has ever tried doing that."
Mental issues (hubris)

"I need to find something new. Nothing here interests me."
Mental issues (not sure what to classify it as, but doing something as insanely dangerous as adventuring out of boredom? Definitely not a sane decision.)

I could go on and on.

Keep trying.

HaikenEdge

2014-01-29, 02:49 PM

"Of course I can do this, I've did it for 5 years and I'm still alive."
Belief in one's one infallibility is not exactly sane.

"So no one survives this? Well, then I am going to be the first!"
The desire to be the first to do something that's been deemed impossible isn't exactly a mark of sanity; it requires a certain level of obsessiveness, which itself is a mental disorder.

"I need to save my brother, he is in over his head! I need to get the gang back together..."
That's a pressing need.

"Of course it's dangerous, no one as skilled as me has ever tried doing that."
Seems to be a form of megalomania, possibly in conjunction with the belief of one's own infallibility.

"I need to find something new. Nothing here interests me."
Being unable to handle boredom is a kind of mental issue as well; I'm pretty sure psychiatrists have a term (and some drugs they prescribe) for it.

Edit: Swordsaged! First time I get to write that. Woohoo!!

Erik Vale

2014-01-29, 03:00 PM

"Of course I can do this, I've did it for 5 years and I'm still alive."
"So no one survives this? Well, then I am going to be the first!"
"I need to save my brother, he is in over his head! I need to get the gang back together..."
"Of course it's dangerous, no one as skilled as me has ever tried doing that."
"I need to find something new. Nothing here interests me."
I could go on and on.

1: Why'd he do it in the first place?/Doesn't Care.
2: Obviously isn't clearly thinking about the dangers.
3: Pressing Need.
4: Obviously isn't clearly thinking about the dangers.
5: Doesn't care about the dangers.

All those examples bar the first fit in one of the categories given above [Insanity, Stupidity, Lack of Care, Need].

Vanitas

2014-01-29, 03:04 PM

(Numbers mine.)
3 & 5 would strike me as pressing need, if only to the character.
1, 2, and 4 I find very hard to buy without mental issues IF adventuring really is as dangerous as the base numbers would indicate.

What would be your reaction if someone used such reasoning to justify, say, skydiving without a parachute or jumping off a 40 story building?
People have survived 20000 foot free fall.
In the absence of pressing motivation, would you hold that a mentally sound person would try?
The thing is, no one knows adventuring is that dangerous and no one even knows what a "level" is let along what it takes to do it. Of course you need pressing need to do dangerous stuff, otherwise there is no drama and no story. Everyone knows adventuring is dangerous and very few people are bold enough to do it. It's written right there in the DMG. That is not the same thing as assuming that high level characters somehow know what is written in the rules.

It's also not the same thing as assuming every little quirk is a mental conditioning, like two other posters have done, for some reason. Apparently, the only sane thing to do is sit down and die of old age - if you want anything other than that, you have a mental issue (never mind the fact that having a mental issue does not mean you are not sane; that's what they meant).

What I understand is that Jackie Chan and Tom Cruise must be insane - they do their own stunts. Firemen and policemen must be insane - they are in high risk jobs and there are others jobs that pay better and are safer. What about a kid that wants do be a firemen? Clearly he must be stupid, since there are lots of other jobs that pay more and are a lot safer. Juan Manuel Fangio? Ayrton Senna? They clearly had mental issues. F-1 is so risky, after all, right? Anyone sane would never run. Poor Tony Hawk - his list of mental issues must be huge, right? Hey, what about Jack Churchill? Not using the most perfect tools for a job is insane, right?

Hubert

2014-01-29, 03:05 PM

Vanitas

2014-01-29, 03:13 PM

On the other hand, death is quite cheap in D&D past a certain level, and even moreso in a TV with high magic everywhere. In this kind of setting, you can think of your own death as a mere inconvenience.

You don't even need to die at high levels. Contingent Delay Death + Death Ward + Contingent Heal works wonders.

HaikenEdge

2014-01-29, 03:16 PM

What I understand is that Jackie Chan and Tom Cruise must be insane - they do their own stunts. Firemen and policemen must be insane - they are in high risk jobs and there are others jobs that pay better and are safer. What about a kid that wants do be a firemen? Clearly he must be stupid, since there are lots of other jobs that pay more and are a lot safer.
It's a subset of "hero syndrome", which is actually a legitimate psychological problem.

Juan Manuel Fangio? Ayrton Senna? They clearly had mental issues. F-1 is so risky, after all, right? Anyone sane would never run. Poor Tony Hawk - his list of mental issues must be huge, right? Hey, what about Jack Churchill? Not using the most perfect tools for a job is insane, right?
To become an F1 racer, a person has to have a certain kind of obsessiveness that goes into pretty much living and breathing F1 racing. That's a kind of unhealthy psychological obsession that could be diagnosed as a psychological condition.

Hecuba

2014-01-29, 03:24 PM

Fortunately, all this statistical analysis is unnecessary.
Unnecessary? It's the point.

It's the extraordinary claims made around the Tippyverse that people are taking issue with. In particular, the rather strange and obsessive claim that Tippyverse contains no assumptions (DM fiat),
I'd certainly agree that that would be a problem, since it makes fairly explicit assumptions (no epic magic, mechanical rules as natural law, net 0 direct divine action).

There are also some implicit assumptions that probably could be more explicit:
As you implied above, you do can't take the level distribution of the population as prescriptive (as it is otherwise unresponsive to the forces the other rules exercise on it).
There also needs to be a minimum necessary population for the trade forces that drive the initial conversion TC-based singularity to have the indicated effect.

That is it the inevitable result of the ruleset, and that anyone who builds a different world is simply getting the implications of the rules wrong.[emphasis mine]

Personally, I've never taken any related discussion to indicate that. To my eye, it is "inevitable" in that it is the natural result of taking game-rules as natural laws (again, within the acknowledged constraints).

Even if you have another setting that is based on RAW as natural law, a disagreement between the two doesn't make other settings wrong: there are any number of places where a significant outside influence would change significantly the resultant setting.
Instead it merely implies:

a narrative event at some point in the past
a disagreement with a premise
a disagreement with the logic chain

Vanitas

2014-01-29, 03:30 PM

charcoalninja

2014-01-29, 03:40 PM

See I would agree about the teleporting but between teleportation detection, commune algorythums, and time stop the fact that an army can teleport into your city doesn't make any appreciatble difference from the ICBM scenario.

Here's my examples:
You have your megacity, someone is in charge of defence. This is a full caster because Tippyverse. So they have ways of not only detecting an incomig teleport, but locating exactly where it will occur, and when and even have the ability to divert the teleport or render it nonfunctional. The only question is the 3 round warning.

Similarly ICBM has 30 mins from its detection.

Tippy defence uses a timestop trap to give himself enough time to personally invoke the countermeasures and arrange for the army to be transported to where the incursion will occur. So in bamf the invaders and they're surrounded by the home states army after all the civilians have been wish trap evacuated.

Similarly, the ICBM is shot down or LRA is intercepted and forced away.

The timeline doesn't matter IMO because in both cases the defender has enough time to enact their countermeasures successfully.

On the tampering front, terrorists could easily damage the circles just as they could the Rail, or a more accurate comparison te freight aircraft or passwnger plane. Get to the station, blow it up, now you need to build a new one.

I'm not convinced there's much of a difference.

And regarding modern day being contained in mega cities, the main difference between our situation and what I understand to be Tippyverse is that in TV the wilds are left to rot while in our modern age they are protected and considered valuable parts of the nation.

My arguement is that once you reach your TV critical mass you'll see the political standoffs similar to what we see now. There's no reason why good people would lose in TV, hell in D&D they're mechanically stronger (at least as far as Outsiders are concerned). So all you need are enough city states who would rather work together than try and kill each other and citystate invasions become a non issue except in areas that aren't established yet just like our modern world. So now the threat comes from people without the infrastructure tryig to work against the established order as terror cells et all, or petty warlords profiting off of the primitives in the wilds. And historically inportant areas or smaller cities in close proximity matter to a citystate for whatever reason and their defense expands to cover their territory as well and before long you have essentially the modern world albiet with unlimited food.

Emperor Tippy

2014-01-29, 03:41 PM

The thing is, no one knows adventuring is that dangerous and no one even knows what a "level" is let along what it takes to do it. Of course you need pressing need to do dangerous stuff, otherwise there is no drama and no story. Everyone knows adventuring is dangerous and very few people are bold enough to do it. It's written right there in the DMG. That is not the same thing as assuming that high level characters somehow know what is written in the rules.

It's also not the same thing as assuming every little quirk is a mental conditioning, like two other posters have done, for some reason. Apparently, the only sane thing to do is sit down and die of old age - if you want anything other than that, you have a mental issue (never mind the fact that having a mental issue does not mean you are not sane; that's what they meant).
Except that both the fluff and crunch point out explicitly in multiple locations just how deadly and dangerous adventuring is. Ninety percent of all "adventurers" don't survive their first encounter. Ninety percent of those survivors don't make it to level 5.

That bad ass adventurer who can blast whole armored columns of goblins to ash with a single spell? He's the one in a hundred or so who decided to become adventurers and managed to reach that point, and the path he took is littered with the ninety plus corpses of the failures who started on that path with him.

What I understand is that Jackie Chan and Tom Cruise must be insane - they do their own stunts. Firemen and policemen must be insane - they are in high risk jobs and there are others jobs that pay better and are safer. What about a kid that wants do be a firemen? Clearly he must be stupid, since there are lots of other jobs that pay more and are a lot safer. Juan Manuel Fangio? Ayrton Senna? They clearly had mental issues. F-1 is so risky, after all, right? Anyone sane would never run. Poor Tony Hawk - his list of mental issues must be huge, right? Hey, what about Jack Churchill? Not using the most perfect tools for a job is insane, right?
There is no real life profession that has an expected *daily* survival rate of a mere 80% and a weekly survival rate of a mere 23%.

Vanitas

2014-01-29, 03:50 PM

Except that both the fluff and crunch point out explicitly in multiple locations just how deadly and dangerous adventuring is. Ninety percent of all "adventurers" don't survive their first encounter. Ninety percent of those survivors don't make it to level 5.

That bad ass adventurer who can blast whole armored columns of goblins to ash with a single spell? He's the one in a hundred or so who decided to become adventurers and managed to reach that point, and the path he took is littered with the ninety plus corpses of the failures who started on that path with him.
Which is another reason for him to keep on doing it, not the opposite.

There is no real life profession that has an expected *daily* survival rate of a mere 80% and a weekly survival rate of a mere 23%.
And you assume the game characters know this because...? They know it's dangerous and that's all they know.

Also, if you could please point out what is the "basic Tippyverse" as opposed to Points of Light, I'd be very grateful.

SiuiS

2014-01-29, 03:57 PM

...
No one adventures, especially at high levels, without a pressing need or major mental problems.
---
What this means, besides any high level character basically being certifiably insane, is that every high level character is incredibly self motivated and driven. If they were lazy, unskilled, or otherwise lacking in self motivation then they would not have the power that they do.

I don't think you're running the numbers right. That is, you've got the right answers but plugged the wrong variables in.

Every adventurer in such a setting would start at 5th level (mentor feat, basically guaranteed). Every adventurer would have five levels from the get go to fall back on, including knowledge skills. Every adventurer has the base capacity to look at any given threat and estimate it's danger level, avoid, flee or placate the insurmountable and rickroll the really easy for cheap loot and easy but slow experience.

Requires higher average intelligence but presumes a more cream of the crop starting point.

This is a good example of a statement clearly intended to be taken as the final word on character motivation in all worlds and all games, under all circumstances everywhere. Any moderately creative person can think of half a dozen counterexamples, but Tippy wants this to be accepted as established fact.

Those who don't, by definition, are just plain wrong.

No, see, the first and last parts cannot be separated. They are one thought.

On the other hand, death is quite cheap in D&D past a certain level, and even moreso in a TV with high magic everywhere. In this kind of setting, you can think of your own death as a mere inconvenience.

Pain is really the incentive here. Few people really grok dying. Many fear even light pain. Getting stabbed is something you only want to feel zero times, and that's something you learn the first time you get stabbed.

Darkz0r

2014-01-29, 03:59 PM

And you assume the game characters know this because...? They know it's dangerous and that's all they know.

I quite agree with this.

Sure, bards would tell tales of how deadly the wilds are and such, but there's no excel worksheet telling whats your % chance of reaching level 20, of surviving, etc. Thus adventurers would adventure.:smallsmile:

Tyndmyr

2014-01-29, 04:04 PM

First off, "bunk" is traditionally held to be a word meaning something that is untrue. It seems that "debunking" is used oddly. Just an aside.

And here is where we have fun debunking the Tippyverse. It gets brought up all the time, and most see it as cannon. But most of the time you just get ''oh do this or that'' or even worse the ''oh there are tons of ways to do that'' and then leave them unsaid.

Canon and cannon are two different things. Sorry to nitpick, but if you're delving deeply into RAW, you'll need to get used to it. Details are important.

Lots of the things require interpretations of the rules, at best. Lots of abilities, spells, items, feats and so forth don't list or not list everything, so there is often lots to interpret and say ''oh, they meant to say or mean that''.

Starting with the Bird of Prey:

So you start off as a WereEagle. So first up is the Alternate Form ability. And we have our fist interpretation. Alternate form/polymorph does not mention Class Features. So it's anyone's call if when you assume an alternate form weather or not you keep your Class Features. The rules don't say. Tippy would say you do, with no basis other then that is what he wants.

The rules also do not say if you do or do not have to dance in a circle and sing "Row, row, row your boat" every time you cat Polymorph.

You read the rules, you apply what the rules say to do. "the rules don't say I can't" is not a real argument.

It's also trivial to point out that shape changing does not strip class abilities. You can point to official modules where it does not. Hell, Druid's wild shape wouldn't even make sense if you lost all class features when you used it.

Now note Alternate form/polymorph does say that ''The creature retains the spell-like abilities and supernatural attacks of its old form'', but say a supernatural attack from a class feature is not from a ''form'' is an interpretation. The rule only mentions spell-like abilities and supernatural attacks of its old form. Also note you get the physical ability scores of the small little eagle. So your Dexterity of 20 or more becomes 15.

There are only two forms here. Old and new. You take some stuff from one statblock, some from another. The rules tell you which come from which.

Fixating on the word "form" is not relevant.

Somehow the WereEagle gets a +4 Inherent, +6 Enhancement to Wisdom at 1st level. That makes no sense in a by the rules game.

These can be accomplished via money. Lots and lots of money. Breaking D&D economics is so trivial it is usually not listed.

Then we get to Soulbow. Now the throw mind blade/mind arrow is a Supernatural Class Feature. It is Not a supernatural attack of your from of whatever humanoid your base creature is. So it is wishful thinking and an interpretation to say a wereeagle in eagle animal form can use mind arrows. Note also that the Mind Arrow ability says ''You must have one hand free to create and project a mind arrow.'' And another interpretation. Does that mean ''you can't hold something in both hands and use this ability, so an eagle with no hands qualifies'' OR ''you must be a humanoid with a free hand to use this ability''.

Many monsters in official D&D are capable of two weapon fighting, and lack proper humanoid hands. Clearly, references like "offhand weapon" are to the weapon in your secondary appendage.

RAW is not about willfully ignoring rules to make some obscure argument.

That said, if you were particularly insistant about hands, there are ways to put hands on an eagle within RAW. Clawed Arm would add a (clawed) hand* and even an arm to your now rather strange-looking eagle. I suppose if that's preferable....

*If the claw bothers your particular sense of RAW, there are several other grafts as well. If grafts bother you, we have spells like Girallon's Blessing. Meh.

HaikenEdge

2014-01-29, 04:20 PM

No, it's called "wanting to be a firemen". They profile you upon taking those jobs specifically to reduce the risk of something like that happening. Unless you think your armchair diagnosis is more accurate than that of professionals.
Children want to become firemen mostly because they want to fight fires and save people; similarly, it's why they want to become police officers, to catch criminals, serve justice, save lives and the like; saying that people want to be firemen because "they want to be firemen" is zero-step thinking and circular logic. It'd be like saying people want to become chefs because they want to become chefs; it fails to address the root of why they want to join the profession.

Could be if it was a psychological condition, which it not necessarily is. Wanting something or wanting to be good at something does not mean you're obsessed.
Wanting to be something or wanting to be good at something doesn't mean you're obsessed; putting in the time to become world class at something, just because you want to, is a symptom of obsession. One is a desire; the other is the desire put into practice, to a level of obsession.

Say I want to be a good driver. I learn the rules of the road, I learn to drive, and I follow the rules of the road when I drive, being cautious when I do drive. I don't, however, spend tens of thousands of dollars on a car that I spend hours upon hours fine-tuning on a track to a point where the car feels just like an extension of my body, then go and race people with similar lives as my own to prove I'm a good driver; that's a kind of obsessive behavior that goes beyond reasonable.

Scow2

2014-01-29, 04:25 PM

What I understand is that Jackie Chan and Tom Cruise must be insane - they do their own stunts. Firemen and policemen must be insane - they are in high risk jobs and there are others jobs that pay better and are safer. What about a kid that wants do be a firemen? Clearly he must be stupid, since there are lots of other jobs that pay more and are a lot safer. Juan Manuel Fangio? Ayrton Senna? They clearly had mental issues. F-1 is so risky, after all, right? Anyone sane would never run. Poor Tony Hawk - his list of mental issues must be huge, right? Hey, what about Jack Churchill? Not using the most perfect tools for a job is insane, right?Jackie Chan and Tom Cruise would be insane if their stunts weren't safe. Adventuring long enough to gain levels is an "Unacceptable Risk" - most people probably will go on an adventure or two in their lives, but never enough to gain more than a handful of levels before they realize what the risks are. After all, Bilbo Baggins only went on one adventure in his entire life, and then retired.

Firemen and Policemen are "Pressing Need" - Someone has to save the day for someone.

Tvtyrant

2014-01-29, 05:24 PM

charcoalninja

2014-01-29, 05:36 PM

The OPs comments were dismantled long ago and I think now we're just generally engaging in talk about the TV as a concept with some disputing it as an inevitable result

Hecuba

2014-01-29, 05:37 PM

I don't really get the point of this thread. People do not go around posting "debunking Dragonlance" or "debunking Forgotten Realms"

They may not have worded it quite as debunking, but I've certainly participated in discussions on the merits of both of those settings.

It's the internet: someone's discussing it on some forum or another.

I quite agree with this.

Sure, bards would tell tales of how deadly the wilds are and such, but there's no excel worksheet telling whats your % chance of reaching level 20, of surviving, etc. Thus adventurers would adventure.:smallsmile:

So you would posit that, say, a hypothetical wizard's college (which likely has a average INT for entering students in the mid to high teens, conservatively) would not have anyone who has taken a look at mortality rates of it's students in enough detail to note the relative mortality rates of say, adventuring vs. being the level 1 or 2 village wizard?

If the rules define natural laws for the setting, then their results are observable to the characters in the setting and their patterns can be determined (if perhaps not perfectly) through the inductive method.

They may not use the same terms as the rules. Unless there is a reason for the intellectually curious in a society not to examine those patterns, however, the should be at least generally aware of them (though with, perhaps, with less than perfect of precision).

unseenmage

2014-01-29, 06:44 PM

...
(though with, perhaps, with less than perfect of precision).

Just a thought, but I read someone else somewhere else pointed out that spells expire after very precise amounts of time. So precise in fact that they could be used as a timing device. Spells as wristwatches as it were.

Musicians keep near perfect time without mechanical assistance too.

Not to mention the ancient Greeks and the ridiculous feats of mathematics and precision they were capable of using just an abacus.

D&D-verse is more than capable of precision.

Yukitsu

2014-01-29, 07:14 PM

It's a subset of "hero syndrome", which is actually a legitimate psychological problem.

Really? That's interesting to me, as it's not in any volume of the DSM, doesn't have any diagnostic criteria, and the only reference I can find to the supposed problem is TV tropes and a newspaper article that doesn't have any academic citations.

That aside though, a tendency to adventurers happens in D&D land because the world isn't assumed to start with level 20 wizards and massive cities already in play. If you're a tribe with 500 members, where your top guy is level 6 and you're being plagued by a dire chicken, you're probably going to end up with a champion or some such that slays it, gets a reputation, fame, wealth etc. If down the line, another tribe that perhaps lost their level 6 guy to their chicken hears of his exploits, and appeals him to slay their dire chicken which he does, you have the start of an adventurer. If these people are wealthier, more famous and more commendable in the world than others, which frankly they should be, other people will risk becoming one. Perfectly rational people are perfectly capable of picking a vocation which could have a high risk, as risk isn't the only consideration, you also have to consider the reward.

Togo

2014-01-29, 07:15 PM

It's a subset of "hero syndrome", which is actually a legitimate psychological problem.No, it's called "wanting to be a firemen". They profile you upon taking those jobs specifically to reduce the risk of something like that happening. Unless you think your armchair diagnosis is more accurate than that of professionals.

Quite so. I think you're scraping the barrel here.

Jackie Chan and Tom Cruise would be insane if their stunts weren't safe.

Watch past the credits on a Jackie chan film and you'll get to the outtakes, which are mostly footage of all the injuries sustained during fliming. The stunts aren't safe.

I don't think you're running the numbers right.

He's not. The maths referred to is for calculating the probability of unrelated events, while the entire premise of optimising is that overcoming challenges shows high correlation (if you are capable of winning a few fights, you're much more likely to be above average at winning fights).

The reasoning also violates other premises of the setting. If you want to model danger of adventuring as a flat % chance irrespective of who you are, then wizards are no more successful or survivable than monks. If wizards are better at surviving and gaining power than monks, then the danger of adventuring is not a flat % of success.

Fortunately, all this statistical analysis is unnecessary.
Unnecessary? It's the point.

No, it's not. The point is the assertion being made, which is that noone would go adventuring except for pressing need or mental instability. The statistical analysis simply attempts to demonstrate that adventuring would be seen as dangerous, a point that might be made more simply by the fact that it involves dragons trying to eat you.

This kind of mistake is common enough to be well established as a debating trick - quote lots of stats that are distantly related to your point, and it sounds like your position is supported by those stats. In practice, Tippy is just saying that adventuring seems dangerous therefore people wouldn't do it unless they had to, or were mad. The stats are interesting, but don't relate to the conclusion.

That is it the inevitable result of the ruleset, and that anyone who builds a different world is simply getting the implications of the rules wrong.
Personally, I've never taken any related discussion to indicate that.
You don't need to, since Tippy states it explicitly both in this thread and in others.

Again, there's nothing inherently wrong with a Tippyverse style setting, but the claims made for it are overblown and a bit silly.

Heliomance

2014-01-29, 07:54 PM

Watch past the credits on a Jackie chan film and you'll get to the outtakes, which are mostly footage of all the injuries sustained during fliming. The stunts aren't safe.

They may not be safe, but how many of those injuries are even as bad as a broken limb? A lot less than one per film, I imagine. How many are actually life threatening? Probably low double digits in the history of filmmaking.

Hecuba

2014-01-29, 09:35 PM

No, it's not. The point is the assertion being made, which is that noone would go adventuring except for pressing need or mental instability.

I meant the point of the Tippyverse, not the point of the debate. It's chief merit, at least as I see it, is that its structure is based on the demographic, economic, and statistical implications of the 3.5 rules. To try to divorce a discussion of the setting from those elements seems odd to me.
Tippy certainly hasn't published have the kind of expansive back-story to be interesting on its narrative merits (though what he has posted implies it could be).

[long set of quote replies to Togo-- spoilering as a courtesy to the for post size]

The statistical analysis simply attempts to demonstrate that adventuring would be seen as dangerous, a point that might be made more simply by the fact that it involves dragons trying to eat you.
Not merely dangerous. Firefighting is dangerous. Being a soldier is dangerous. The mortality rates being described are higher than those by a huge degree.

An adventurer isn't enlisting to for the Army: they are knowingly enlisting under Lord Cardigan with foreknowledge of the outcome of the Battle of Balaclava. The statistics serve to demonstrate the difference between the two.

This kind of mistake is common enough to be well established as a debating trick - quote lots of stats that are distantly related to your point, and it sounds like your position is supported by those stats. In practice, Tippy is just saying that adventuring seems dangerous therefore people wouldn't do it unless they had to, or were mad. The stats are interesting, but don't relate to the conclusion.

With the survival rates he is describing, adventuring is monumentally dangerous. As such, it's really never occurred to me before this conversation that someone would object to the idea that danger-seeking at that extreme without significant cause would be highly psychologically concerning.

If that is a concern though, I would be happy to argue for the counterposition. At minimum, with the mortality rates described, voluntary adventuring without a compelling cause should raise questions about attempts at indirect suicide/subintentional death-seeking*.

I am by not remotely qualified to diagnose the psychological issues related to indirect suicide/subintentional death-seeking.
Nonetheless, if someone were to tell me that they wanted to try something with a survival rate well below 1% without any significant motivation or duress they are aware of, I would heavily push them to seek psychological aid.
Why then would this not apply to a character in-setting exhibiting the same behavior?

You don't need to, since Tippy states it explicitly both in this thread and in others.

You seem to be reading his tone very differently than I am. The way you are describing his comments seems to indicate that you take them to mean that other settings somehow inherently inferior and that using them is WrongBadFun.

To my reading, his comments (in this thread or others) to indicate at most vigorous defense of his position regarding the implications of the rules described as they apply to the long term operation of the setting.

One should not enter a debate, after all, not intending to defend one's position.

Again, there's nothing inherently wrong with a Tippyverse style setting, but the claims made for it are overblown and a bit silly.

I think, perhaps, that the whole disagreement here could well be summed as a mirror of the debate of between Great-Man Theory and Historical Anthropology:
Ought we discuss history in terms of the actions of individual men, or in terms of economic and social forces?
Ultimately, the patterns described by historical anthropology might be countered by specific actions of great men.
I would not hold, however, that that invalidates historical anthropology as a method or undermines its conclusions in any meaningful way.

Likewise, there are certainly any number of world-changing events or individuals you can insert into a setting that would significantly change the direction of such as setting. Tippy himself has pointed some out, both explicitly (acts of divine intervention) and implicitly (when he notes his "Points of Light" setting to be the result of specific sets of such historical events).
I would not, however, hold that the possibility such events might happen does not meaningfully invalidate the observations the Tippyverse makes about the underlying social forces or their implications.

Moreover unless such an event creates a durable social force of its own that runs counter, the overall pattern should eventually reassert itself. Dark ages and Renaissances don't last forever, after all. Afterward, you'd need another world-changing event to divert the pattern again...

______________________________________________
*Spoilered aside
The preeminent psychological journal on the subject of suicide (Suicide and Life-Threatening Behavior) regularly examines the the psychological implications of far safer things (soldiers volunteering for more dangerous duties, intentional overdoses, and -every so often- smoking). There was a particularly interestingarticle in it on PTSD and subintentional death-seeking along veterans last year, if memory serves.
It's a very interesting bi-monthly if you're interested in multi-disciplinary psychology, though saddly not one I can always keep up with.

Kelb_Panthera

2014-01-30, 12:31 AM

Lose internet for a day and you fall -way- behind in these sorts of discussions. :smallsigh:

Back to it then! :smallamused:

This is kind of debatable, I can't find where the cities are given actual population numbers (Please link me if you can.) one would assume logically however, given the nature of TC-Cities, that the overall population of the world is rising, greatly so, seeing as people aren't dying in droves to starvation, disease, wolves (No really by D&D terms can't a pack of wolves wipe out most small towns with relative ease?) or any other number of terrifying things that come with the D&D world, as such there are greater population booms, this causes more worshippers to all gods, especially seeing as in any city hierarchy you have people making religions to X god all the time (This is seen in most modern day places as well.) so unless the Lord Wizards who rule these cities particularly single out and target these churches, the god's will, will spread anyway based on the edicts people most enjoy following, all of the gods would benefit from this, as there are more people in the world to have as worshippers. At least that's how I'm seeing it, seeing as the death-rate will decline drastically and the expected life will go from a handful of decades to most people in-city reaching venerable before dying.

It's an extrapolation. While it's true that the overall population of a Tippy world is rising, and quite rapidly, it's rising -much- faster in the cities than in the wilds. This becomes even more true when the food and water traps come online in mass scale, removing the normal spacing limitations by removing the need for supporting agricultural terrain. It's a simple matter of there being greater population density giving more people more opportunity to procreate.

Because the city dwellers population is so much larger and city dwellers' needs and values* differ from wildlanders', the gods they venerate will see an increase in power (regardless of how it affects their divine rank, if at all) at a much greater rate than the gods who're more popular with the wildlanders.

*This is not a comment on morality or ethics. People who grow their food are more concerned with the weather than people who buy it. They place different value on the same aspect of daily life. This extends to many other facets of life; politics, business practices, etc.

This happens in "core" D&D as well though, depending on how much fluff you read, the only reason cities aren't completely obliterated are because of some outside source saving them (PCs, Deities, Wizards and so forth.) Infact from my understanding alot of hamlets and small townships are destroyed on a semi-regular basis causing an influx to the larger more "well-protected" cities.

It's a difference of scale. TC cities can grow immensely faster than can settlements on any other trade model, including modern, RL trade models. Supersonic air travel has less than nothing on a network of TC's.

It's this immense growth rate and the ability to hedge out outside influences that raises the odds of achieving post-scarcity before societal collapse to semi-plausible. It's till got a fair chance of failure too though.

I think the big issue many people are having here, is human nature (Which is not RAW by any means whatsoever and I am aware of that.) you are assuming everyone is happy to be completely and utterly lazy and having nothing done for them (That's how I read what you're saying anyway) which in practice for everywhere I've lived is completely untrue (I can't go more then 2 months without a job or I go crazy.) some are, some aren't. The promise I see with the TV (Which I think is addressed already) is that greed comes into play, which is where most/all of your strife is going to come down to for the mega-cities. Things such as Druids using goodberry traps to feed nations, that's all well and good, except some greedy person (Like a merchant who deals in food etc) isn't going to let that go quietly, there's a very real chance someone will be sent to kill (Or attempt to kill) the druid etc.
Remember that entire last post is 100% not RAW, as it's all based in "human" nature and how things would transpire, as such it doesn't really "debunk" anything it's just how I view things going.

You completely missed this one. TC's are so immensely more profitable, not to mention cheaper, than trans-oceanic shipping by vessel that it makes no business sense at all to choose the latter. It's not a question of human nature but of pure logic. You can have what you're shipping from another continent tomorrow for a service fee or you can have it in 6 months for what is almost certainly a higher fee. Which would you choose?

That said in the DragonLance series (Which was ported to 3.5 at some point.) the gods go by different names for the different races, and have different incarnations of themselves as such, they evolve with their worshippers, the deities do not force their worshippers to stay in a singular state o fbeing and mind (That's basicially mental domination and slavery for fear of death and eternal suffering for going against your god.) I could easily see the deities of any patheon in D&D evolving with a TV and encompassing more and learning to work with their worshippers, instead of saying "No change is bad, now I smite and kill you all".

If you're a god of travel and travel is all but outright eliminated for the rapidly growing majority of people, you're losing power. Evolving into a god of teleportation might be a way to avoid that decline but then comes the question of can he and, if so, how. This, like much of the rest of divinity, varies with setting. In FR, for example, you take a god's portfolio by theft or by force by convincing worshipers of the current god that it's yours already or slaying the god that holds it. Only the overdeity, Ao, can assign newly created portfolios as the world changes and new things come into being.

One thing that I've always wondered about the Tippyverse is how is the Teleportation Circles any different from modern day Rail systems? Both move goods quickly and easily over vast stretches of land without the treat of anything being highjacked or eaten by bears and it hasn't created an instance of concentrated populations in super citys, instead it's created a sprawling network of connected local enforcement agencies able to call upon greater military power should the need arise.

Both TC and railway allow safe travel for anyone, focus commerce around the areas where they intersect, and even allow for the incredibly rapid deployment of military troops, although moreso than railway are our aircraft which only take a handful of hours.

You're -severely- overstating the apparent similarities. As others have pointed out, TC's are instant. Unlike a railway, there's absolutely no opportunity intercept or divert people or cargo in transit (though technically you -can- divert such things from the point of arrival). While it's hardly ever done, especially in the modern era, trains can be and sometimes are hijacked for one purpose or another and, unless there are no switch points between stations, can be diverted part way to their destination. They also take anywhere from between several hours and several days to move cargo from a point of origin to a point of destination, though people often take shorter trips. This is a -huge- difference. The greater the distance, the greater TC's superiority.

What I'm saying is that the modern world is in essence a Tippyverse because any nation is powerful enough to completely annihilate another with very little chance of reprisal, have numerous ways of detecting and responding quickly to threats (calling in fast air as a response to say airspace being violated by a foreign power, nuclear subs with ICBMS that can lob nukes from 500km away) while telecommunications allows fine control and quick coordination of disperate elements the world over.

On a certain level there's a touch of tippyesque flavor. IRL people -do- concentrate themselves into cities of ever increasing size. Take a look at a satellite photo of the east coast of the US; there's basically just one megacity stretching from southern Maine to northern North Carolina.

The fundamental difference is, again, scale. RL cities are limited by the need for an agricultural support structure and the fact that resources can only be moved so fast. That and the fact that magical devices are ridiculously superior to modern technology. Cure X wounds, remove disease, and regenerate make modern medicine look like a joke. Fabricate (even if a trap made from it didn't create objects from nothing) is a factory that can turn out one unit of -anything-, regardless of complexity, every 6 seconds and takes up virtually no space compared to a RL factory. The list just goes on.

Does the fact that a rail takes a few hours while a TC is instant really make that much of a difference? I get that the TCs change the setting but I personally don't see why TC leads to a situation where threat of invasion leads to highly compressed city states rather than a sprawling mass of towns connected by TCs with the state maintaining a highly mobile quick response force like we have today. ICBM attacks are essentially teleporting city destroyers after all, and considering that these super wizards both have the means to blanket their cities in teleport detection and the ability to stop time for arbitrarily long periods of time 3 rounds is really all they would need to mobilize their anti terror force.

TC's allow troop movement on a completely unprecedented scale; troops and supplies to -anywhere- in the world as quickly as you can file them into the TC. As it has been said upthread, this makes -everywhere- the front-line in a conflict. While there are ways to block teleportation, they can only be used to prevent enemy forces from teleporting directly into the city or other holding, save for designated arrival areas, which are heavily guarded.

This situation leads to forces being concentrated only in the most important holdings and lesser holdings being destroyed fairly rapidly in any conflict and -that- is why populations concentrate in megacities. Note that this is a gradual process. Generally it won't be until after the first such war that this becomes an action people are consciously taking, assuming that war doesn't result in the destruction all TC powers, resulting in a Tippyverse false-start.

False. Post scarcity starts with 'everyone has free food and water forever'. That takes very little startup.

Free food and water doesn't build houses or manufacture tools. You don't have post-scarcity until both food and shelter are essentially free.

More importantly, you can't abolish commerce until anything people might want to have can be had trivially. This takes a -lot- more than just a few food and water traps. At minimum devices that mimic true creation to produce the raw materials for the fabricate traps need to be developed.

Not so.

It's economically more viable to maintain the infrastructure yourself and prevent dissemination of the concept to maintain control than to allow everyone in the world open access to your business model. Only the magnate himself would know how this works, and when he died it would likely collapse due to preventative measures. Don't want assassins somehow commandeering your infrastructure.

The problem is that you can't hide your infrastructure when it's your entire business. If your whole business is transporting cargo, nevermind doing so instantly, then trying to hide how you do it simply isn't viable business practice. You can throw up a front and even conduct more traditional logistics but unless the business owner manually transport every single piece of cargo that goes through the TC himself, the secret gets out and sooner or later. Intentionally collapsing the infrastructure either just prior to or just after his death makes it unusable for any offspring he may have and -most- parents don't intentionally thwart their offspring.

There's also the simple matter of such a business -easily- out-competing all of its rivals. At a certain point you plateau because some of the highest level clientele simply -won't- use your service without knowing how their goods are to be transported and what route it's taking. Forcing them to go to rivals keeps those rivals alive and desperate and gives them continuing opportunity to ferret out your secret.

Any way you slice it, the secret -will- get out. (Who was it that said a secret known by more than one person cannot be kept?)

There's no need for XP ever in cities. Everyone has the mentor feat so they start at fifth level and routine cycles toss people into the "eternity of torment+masochism+extract pain+liquid ambrosia" sarcophogi to generate infinite XP for expenditure on magic.

Society has no reason to accomplish anything; why defend your stuff? Give it away. You'll have more. Why have money? You've got infinite stuff. Why have a job? You've got robo servants. Why toil? You don't need XP. Why anything? It's covered.

Why play?

What? Nobody starts at 5th level.

In any case, you're talking about late-game, post-scarcity Tippyverse. It does lend itself to a more limited range of games but it's not unplayable. Since you're not constrained by the need for resources of any kind and wealth has no value for the characters the players will have to give their characters some other motivation and goals; perhaps a difference of philosophy with the ruling body or a desire to explore some wildlands ruins for archeological studies, maybe they're sent as envoys to one of the other cities on a diplomatic mission, etc.

If you go with a point a bit earlier in the timeline, say around the period Points of Light is set, there's plenty to work with. All the same options as the later period, plus more traditional adventures such as thwarting criminal organizations, founding criminal organizations, dealing with cults and magical mishaps, etc.

In -any- period of the tippyverse you can also set the campaign -outside- the cities. Lots to do out there, eh? All of the traditional stuff plus the possibility of trying to thwart the city-dwellers from taking over a resource point such as a mine or a valley where important herbs grow or perhaps trying to establish your town's own place in the TC network.

Lord Raziere

2014-01-30, 12:38 AM

I don't really get the point of this thread. People do not go around posting "debunking Dragonlance" or "debunking Forgotten Realms" do they? I agree that the setting is not a perfect one or one I would really want to play in, but it is hardly a travesty (seriously Elminster is.)

Also what does the were-eagle thing have to do with a setting about cities that run off of spellclocks and resetting traps? Isn't the primary point of Tippyland to be post-scarcity?

well here is the thing:

y'know the Elminster problem in Forgotten Realms? to me, Tippyverse is the Elminster problem multiplied by 1000. if super-epic archmages with post-scarcity society levels of magic are ruling the world, why would I adventure when I could go to one of them and ask them to solve the problem for me, heck why isn't all problems already solved? magical education should be soaring and wizards should be taking all the jobs at this rate, who then gradually expand the cities which then produces more wizards so that more city can expand until its all a big safe city, with the wizards controlling everything so that there are no environmental repercussions from this at all.

Yukitsu

2014-01-30, 12:46 AM

Tvtyrant

2014-01-30, 01:10 AM

HaikenEdge

2014-01-30, 01:24 AM

No doubt. However Elminster is set in a world where we are expected to believe that a TWF Drow is one of the finest killers on the planet, capable of defeating armies of enemies. In the Tippyverse at least we all know that there are limited good choices :P

To be fair, that TWF Drow might be (and likely is) fighting against armies of enemies way below the appropriate CR for his level.

Scow2

2014-01-30, 01:30 AM

well here is the thing:

y'know the Elminster problem in Forgotten Realms? to me, Tippyverse is the Elminster problem multiplied by 1000. if super-epic archmages with post-scarcity society levels of magic are ruling the world, why would I adventure when I could go to one of them and ask them to solve the problem for me, heck why isn't all problems already solved? magical education should be soaring and wizards should be taking all the jobs at this rate, who then gradually expand the cities which then produces more wizards so that more city can expand until its all a big safe city, with the wizards controlling everything so that there are no environmental repercussions from this at all.The problems are in the process of being solved.

Why should Sir Lancelot ride into battle atop his mighty steed and strike down the foes of King Arthur when his nation will be one of the leading imperial powers anyway with a mighty armada and hundreds of ships in 300 years, and be a slightly-relevant footnote in only 600 years as people are talking across international borders nearly freely, while wars are fought from thousands of miles away with weapons that strike beyond visual range and etc. Why should the 19th century explorer go hunting through jungles for glory and wealth when in less than 150 years Archaelogy will be an accepted and codified science and study with trained professionals who pour over the trash of ancient civilizations and leave as much stuff in the original condition as possible?

The "playtime" of the Tippyverse is an ideal one, as it's the time your characters have some of the securities of a new utopian paradise while there's still the room to explore and find new threats... and some of those megacities are in need of recalibration worthy of a whole adventure to keep them from devolving into horrific dystopias where billions of people are mindslaves of a nearly-omnipotent wizardry caste.

The Random NPC

2014-01-30, 02:17 AM

If you're a god of travel and travel is all but outright eliminated for the rapidly growing majority of people, you're losing power. Evolving into a god of teleportation might be a way to avoid that decline but then comes the question of can he and, if so, how. This, like much of the rest of divinity, varies with setting. In FR, for example, you take a god's portfolio by theft or by force by convincing worshipers of the current god that it's yours already or slaying the god that holds it. Only the overdeity, Ao, can assign newly created portfolios as the world changes and new things come into being.

Arguably, they already are the gods of teleportation. Fharlanghn is the god of travel, regardless of path, and I'm sure the other gods of travel have similar wording. The Travel domain grants teleportation, so that's further proof that teleportation is considered traveling. The travel gods might have to focus on teleportation more than they like, but it might be part of their domain already.

Erik Vale

2014-01-30, 02:34 AM

To be fair, that TWF Drow might be (and likely is) fighting against armies of enemies way below the appropriate CR for his level.

And using the Field of Blood rules so that he can kill way faster than he should whilst reducing the chances of being killed by random 20's. Is Drizzt stated up somewhere, I could actually take a look at that.

Kelb_Panthera

2014-01-30, 03:17 AM

Ceaon

2014-01-30, 03:45 AM

Getting teleport spells on their domain list could easily be explained as the god recognizing that, sometimes, getting to the destination in a timely manner is important enough to skip the journey but would still expect their clerics to forego its use unless it's necessary.

However, getting teleport spells can ALSO easility be explained another way, one that doesn't invalidate the Tippyverse. I feel you are interpreting Farlanghn's portfolio in a specific way in order to make the Tippyverse NOT work. You could also fluff teleport like this: teleporting is an awesome feeling and experience; an amazing, instantaneous journey. The god of travel tries to get everyone to teleport, but only his strongest clerics are capable of receiving this blessing. Now that teleportation circles are becoming common, Farlanghn is overjoyed and glad everyone can travel so easily now. He has done well for his followers, and people bless his name every time they can.

SiuiS

2014-01-30, 04:01 AM

First off, "bunk" is traditionally held to be a word meaning something that is untrue. It seems that "debunking" is used oddly. Just an aside.

Debunk is it's own word. It means "I expose the falseness or hollowness of a (myth, story or ideal)". To debunk is to prove something bunk. Bunk as an informal noun meaning nonsense is actually less meaningful because it started solely as slang, where I believe debunk did not.

I don't really get the point of this thread. People do not go around posting "debunking Dragonlance" or "debunking Forgotten Realms" do they? I agree that the setting is not a perfect one or one I would really want to play in, but it is hardly a travesty (seriously Elminster is.)

Also what does the were-eagle thing have to do with a setting about cities that run off of spellclocks and resetting traps? Isn't the primary point of Tippyland to be post-scarcity?

The forum we are on is an English-only forum. I don't post a debunk dragon lance thread because I can only get into the nuances of the setting by speaking Frothing Rage.

The were eagle is relevant to the I related tippyverse by being an available and transparent representation of the abstract concepts used to generate the tippy verse (theoretically). If this were eagle were to be displayed to use faulty assumptions or processes and it is but a single creature, it follows that any other system designed by the same person using the same process would also be less credible. It creates the shadow of doubt.

However, this is not the case. Tippy verse arises from an entirely different mechanism – extrapolation. There is no rules interpretation; the rules are "teleportation circle exists. It has these parameters. It can be made permanent." And the tippy verse part comes in from "what would be one possible result of this phenomenon?" And then business logic is applied.

There are many possible results of TC permanency, but there are much fewer results of TC permanency that actively hedge out or oppose other results. In a broad market, the organism or force which is both successful and aggressive will win; you have five hundred men arguing, and one of them has full armor and a chainsaw and all the rest have Vow Of Nonviolence, and we all know who wins. Chainsaw guy.

You have teleportation circle use that is free, temporary and altruistic, and you have teleportation circle use which is profitable, world shaping and has an active interest in shouting down all competitors, perhaps violently, and we know where this leads. And the idea CANNOT be debunked; we had this idea back in 1e, and again when 3e came out (3.0, even). We just never got far enough with a DM who cared about economics.

If the tippy verse is "teleportation circles will obviate trade, forcing people into patriotic cliques to avoid being nuked" then yes, that result will always eventually arise. It will not always attain prominence, but it is one of many eventualities, nimrod which are mutually exclusive.

The tippy verse at that level cannot be debunked.

He's not. The maths referred to is for calculating the probability of unrelated events, while the entire premise of optimising is that overcoming challenges shows high correlation (if you are capable of winning a few fights, you're much more likely to be above average at winning fights).

The reasoning also violates other premises of the setting. If you want to model danger of adventuring as a flat % chance irrespective of who you are, then wizards are no more successful or survivable than monks. If wizards are better at surviving and gaining power than monks, then the danger of adventuring is not a flat % of success.

I initially read your post as "he is", did you change it? Otherwise these two paragraphs are contradictory :?

Tippy' math on the danger is accurate but fails to account for intelligence in execution. It's a meta-argument. Yes, x% of the time you will find encounters which will drastically threaten you, and y% of that x% will kill you... If you engage.

It also strikes me that, no, wizards are not more successful at adventuring than monks. If the wizard had sufficient intelligence that she could succeed easily, it is much more likely she would be part of city infrastructure and design – the clearly superior path – instead of mucking through the wilds with a priest of the nongods and a thief who never practiced because invisible golem army and a fighter who got his black belt by a war forged corporal taking it easy on him.

Wizards who are on a quadratic curve will not adventure; they have the ability to be more and the raw capacity to realize it. Adventurers who are wizards would be linear in growth, which means only blasters and specialists who bar transmutation will be out there.

Adventuring is only for those who already failed the Darwinian process. The only winning move is not to play.

They may not be safe, but how many of those injuries are even as bad as a broken limb? A lot less than one per film, I imagine. How many are actually life threatening? Probably low double digits in the history of filmmaking.

Several breaks that I know of, one where he did the rest of the film in a cast.

Several deathly stunts only made survivable by his experience.

I find this analogy similar to saying war is safe because war Heroes survive it, when they become heroes by surviving because war isn't safe.

But I think I have a logical flaw in there? Writing it out, it feels different.

I
I think, perhaps, that the whole disagreement here could well be summed as a mirror of the debate of between Great-Man Theory and Historical Anthropology:
Ought we discuss history in terms of the actions of individual men, or in terms of economic and social forces?

Sweet, new stuff to read about!

It's an extrapolation. While it's true that the overall population of a Tippy world is rising, and quite rapidly, it's rising -much- faster in the cities than in the wilds.

Like how severe infant mortality rates reduced the dark ages to an average lifespan of ~28, despite people living into their 80s? People still think the average human got to 30 and died of old age...

You completely missed this one. TC's are so immensely more profitable, not to mention cheaper, than trans-oceanic shipping by vessel that it makes no business sense at all to choose the latter. It's not a question of human nature but of pure logic. You can have what you're shipping from another continent tomorrow for a service fee or you can have it in 6 months for what is almost certainly a higher fee. Which would you choose?

This is immediately false, though it would prove true over time.

The complex network of trade, taxes and tariffs, supporting distant trade cities and small cities along the way, and businesses which ca only exist because of trades routes would be more profitable in the short term until you had the massive supply of goods in one location already; you're not shipping billions of tons of anything without infrastructure, and you're not affording to utterly revamp infrastructure until you can already ship billions of tons. The first use of an economical TC would be to expedite shipments from a central hub, where all goods were transported the long way from their respective sources, to a central location to send them all through with ease.

But that means you've got a network of economics which is your bread and buyer you're going to collapse, which means those goods will stop being made, which means you won't have the resources to startup the fabrication systems to generate more resources...

You have to have an established TC trade system to afford to establish a TC trade system. I can see how that works, but is far less intuitive than the TC invention causing utter world re shaping.

Free food and water doesn't build houses or manufacture tools. You don't have post-scarcity until both food and shelter are essentially free.

Eh. Shelter depends. Shelter is very easy to generate, especially when you're paying people in calories and hydration.

More importantly, you can't abolish commerce until anything people might want to have can be had trivially. This takes a -lot- more than just a few food and water traps. At minimum devices that mimic true creation to produce the raw materials for the fabricate traps need to be developed.

This is true though, although I don't think you took the ramifications far enough.

The problem is that you can't hide your infrastructure when it's your entire business. If your whole business is transporting cargo, nevermind doing so instantly, then trying to hide how you do it simply isn't viable business practice. You can throw up a front and even conduct more traditional logistics but unless the business owner manually transport every single piece of cargo that goes through the TC himself, the secret gets out and sooner or later. Intentionally collapsing the infrastructure either just prior to or just after his death makes it unusable for any offspring he may have and -most- parents don't intentionally thwart their offspring.

Not so; I've actually see this happen on two separate occasions, independently. The idea of a wizard being altruistic and also business minded is novel enough that even in games where players develop the start of this, they won't generate a tippyverse. Which is phenomenal, since apparently the only difference in games I've experienced between TV and nonTV is whether or not I myself am playing as opposed to DMing... Sigh.

There's also the simple matter of such a business -easily- out-competing all of its rivals. At a certain point you plateau because some of the highest level clientele simply -won't- use your service without knowing how their goods are to be transported and what route it's taking.

That clientele quickly sees the error of it's ways, even if it's only after their competition ruins them. It is 100% possible to black-box an operation like this... In fact, that may be exactly what prevents a Tvformation! The scale necessary to maintain secrecy is too small to allow for the singularity, both because it's much easier to protect (no reverse engineering) and because it's so constrained it cannot grow.

Interesting.

What? Nobody starts at 5th level.

Mentor feat. EVERYONE starts at fifth level; you take mentor, you get a mentor. You level up to fifth, you swap out mentor for apprentice (by the rules), and your apprentice automatically attains fifth level when they reach... Age of majority?

For NPCs, this means once someone cares enough about passing on their works to take an Apprentice (via the feat, DMG 2, 3.5e), their apprentice will start adventuring at fifth level. And so will their apprentice. Etc.

well here is the thing:

y'know the Elminster problem in Forgotten Realms? to me, Tippyverse is the Elminster problem multiplied by 1000. if super-epic archmages with post-scarcity society levels of magic are ruling the world, why would I adventure when I could go to one of them and ask them to solve the problem for me, heck why isn't all problems already solved? magical education should be soaring and wizards should be taking all the jobs at this rate, who then gradually expand the cities which then produces more wizards so that more city can expand until its all a big safe city, with the wizards controlling everything so that there are no environmental repercussions from this at all.

You're reading it wrong. This only works if he is solving your problems. If he is not solving your problems, you don't know he exists.

Cities are less likely cities and more likely monolithic cubes of magical fabrication. So if you have problems, you don't know about all this awesome stuff. You just know about these superstructures that mysteriously dot the landscape... Because you're outside them.

Inside, you've got ten personal elminster ice assassins solving all your woes.

Well, more realistically, why hasn't some jerk pacified the entire wilds with infinite free golems of whatever flavour.

Edit: Also, no one does any work or learns anything because they just have a stick that does everything for them. The setting likely won't even have wizards in a generation, as 30 years of college gets completely subverted by a widget and a bit of muttering if you don't want your wish stick going off without you deliberately asking it to..

Kinda. Weird setting. Fun. Will examine more.

BeerMug Paladin

2014-01-30, 04:03 AM

Has anyone considered perhaps that the basic idea of a Tippyverse leads to a fairly natural consequence of 'after'? Following spoiled for vaguely off-topic and length.
That is, people grow complacent with the free stuff, new generations fail to learn the abilities required to 'add' and maintain the post-scarcity society (as in, gain the levels required for wish traps, and the teleportation circles required for Tippyverse). Since there is virtually no reward for gaining the experience required to do such things, new generations of people just don't create new magical items or traps. It's just pointless. No matter what you decide to do, someone's already done it better than you ever could. Great minds instead focus on art, acting, socializing, philosophy, politics, history, everything else instead.

And eventually the old rulers, wizards, spellcasters, etc... Grow bored and leave to travel, die from old age, or otherwise withdraw from the world, leaving behind a world of comparative mundanes who use the magic traps left behind to live a good life, but not have the ability to actually create more post-scarcity enabling traps and magic. A few low-level magic users exist, but they're not anything close to the uber-wizards and other casters which are simply gone. The old age ends and a new one is beginning.

A few generations pass since the old guard left. Society is slowly decaying, with remnants of forgotten high-magic all around. The high level traps are now guarded by an elite growing ever more jealous, who hire soldiers to defend their unique access to the best traps and the greatly expanded population's needs exceeds the industrial capacity that was around just a few decades earlier. Suddenly you have a world that is falling apart into ruin from a golden age. Scarcity is coming back simply because the growing demand cannot meet the now static supply.

Small conflicts grow into wars as people try to gain access to the best traps. People flee the cities to escape the wars, leaving behind some magical cities that are brimming with splendor, but empty because of brutal warfare breaking out in the streets. Some of the best traps are lost in dungeons that have been abandoned because of the wars fought over them. Knowledge of what traps do what is jealously guarded and sometimes rivals hire assassins to knock out their competitors and gain their territory. Sometimes everyone who knows what something does is killed, and the knowledge is lost.

Of course, most teleportation circles, wish traps, and everything are still around. Some have been destroyed, some have been lost, many are still known and guarded by a dictatorial elite who sell the output at a profit to the displaced populations and can afford to build luxurious palaces and hire adventurers to try and rediscover the old, lost magics and what they are capable of doing.

The loss of the post-scarcity, perfect cities have led to vast population displacements as they escaped into the surrounding lands, trying to farm and pick up the forgotten knowledge of the pre-Tippyverse age. There is villainy afoot, there are people in need of heroes, and perhaps, one day, some people may recover the access to the old magics, and how to reforge them. Suddenly, there is a much more pressing need to adventure, to study magic, and to gain levels. The lost knowledge may be possible to recover.

I propose that the Tippyverse isn't really an endgame. But merely a phase in a constantly evolving universe.

When I was recently trying to dream up a 'silly-high-magic' setting, this is the sort of backstory I considered for the world. One where a high-magic age like this drew to a close, then the world eventually recovered and reached a fairly low-level state of high-magic equilibrium. No uber-wizards running everything, few spellcasters above, say 10th level or so (most spellcasters retire when they can cast 5th level spells or sooner), and a long history of people creating lots of magic. There's people to create new food and water traps, and fabricate new buildings, but few people making wish-traps or teleportation circles. The best magic was built long ago and the setting is not going to return to that same age. A lot of magical knowledge is simply lost.

Then I happened to look up the Tippyverse (because of all the posts about it) and was amused to find that it's apparently a widely known, seemingly end-game scenario that lots of people object to. I neither think it's an end-game scenario, or really that objectionable, but I guess everyone's different.
I hope that the anti-Tippyverse folks at least find my rambling an amusing thought experiment, and perhaps can make them appreciate the idea of the Tippyverse more than they did.

Kelb_Panthera

2014-01-30, 04:16 AM

However, getting teleport spells can ALSO easility be explained another way, one that doesn't invalidate the Tippyverse.

Perhaps.

I feel you are interpreting Farlanghn's portfolio in a specific way in order to make the Tippyverse NOT work. You could also fluff teleport like this: teleporting is an awesome feeling and experience; an amazing, instantaneous journey. The god of travel tries to get everyone to teleport, but only his strongest clerics are capable of receiving this blessing. Now that teleportation circles are becoming common, Farlanghn is overjoyed and glad everyone can travel so easily now. He has done well for his followers, and people bless his name every time they can.

However you fluff the fact that gods that grant the travel domain granting their followers teleport, To suggest that I'm misrepresenting Farlanghn's dogma is absurd.

"The road is the best teacher,".... The only way to flunk out of Fharlanghn's training is to ask when the journey will be over. Those faithful to Fharlanghn know that the journey never ends.

Fharlanghn insists that people need to move around and experience new things. The state of the world is not fixed, and you never know when you might need a new perspective or even a new home. Look to the horizon for inspiration.

Fharlanghn's clerics travel the world, always seeking out new things. They... explore new territories, scout for armies and settlers, .... Still others are involved in the manufacture of traveling gear, everything from shoes to sailing ships. No matter what their activites, Fharlanghn's clerics move around frequently, and a character who visits a shrine or temple more than once is lkely to meet a different group of clerics there each time.

...His temples usually double as rest stops for travelers in need of shelter or protection.

and as a topper, one of the two relics associated with him are the Boots of the Unending Journey, a pair of magical shoes that allow the faithful wearer to travel indefinitely.

All of this points in the same direction. It's the journey that's important, not the destination. With TC's there is no journey. They even negate 3 of his remaining domains. With safe, instant travel, what need is there to be protected, have good luck, or concern for the weather?

The Random NPC

2014-01-30, 04:29 AM

However, getting teleport spells can ALSO easility be explained another way, one that doesn't invalidate the Tippyverse. I feel you are interpreting Farlanghn's portfolio in a specific way in order to make the Tippyverse NOT work. You could also fluff teleport like this: teleporting is an awesome feeling and experience; an amazing, instantaneous journey. The god of travel tries to get everyone to teleport, but only his strongest clerics are capable of receiving this blessing. Now that teleportation circles are becoming common, Farlanghn is overjoyed and glad everyone can travel so easily now. He has done well for his followers, and people bless his name every time they can.

No he's right Farlaghn is more about long journeys, he's actually a really poor choice of examples. I just mean he might already be the god of teleportations, and though he might not like it, he might have to switch to a more teleportation focused dogma.

AMFV

2014-01-30, 04:35 AM

All of this points in the same direction. It's the journey that's important, not the destination. With TC's there is no journey. They even negate 3 of his remaining domains. With safe, instant travel, what need is there to be protected, have good luck, or concern for the weather?

Well it depends, maybe there's still a reason for traveling, in fact it's now more meaningful since there is no economic incentive, those who travel are the true wanderers, who choose that life, and that's more significant and much more in line with his Dogma than even the regular world.

SiuiS

2014-01-30, 04:57 AM

Arguably, they already are the gods of teleportation. Fharlanghn is the god of travel, regardless of path, and I'm sure the other gods of travel have similar wording. The Travel domain grants teleportation, so that's further proof that teleportation is considered traveling. The travel gods might have to focus on teleportation more than they like, but it might be part of their domain already.

Been touched on already.

And using the Field of Blood rules so that he can kill way faster than he should whilst reducing the chances of being killed by random 20's. Is Drizzt stated up somewhere, I could actually take a look at that.

Field of blood rules? Say what?

Well it depends, maybe there's still a reason for traveling, in fact it's now more meaningful since there is no economic incentive, those who travel are the true wanderers, who choose that life, and that's more significant and much more in line with his Dogma than even the regular world.

There is no "that way of life". The difference between staying here and traveling is more severe than voluntarily becoming a gender and ethnic persecuted minority beggar in a third world country from being the gender and ethnic majority in a first world country who is also rich and powerful.

Every other city hates you because you could be a spy. The wilds will destroy you because you can't be prepared for them (unless Mentor Feat). It's unlikely you can come back to your city because you've got nothing of value and they likely would distrust your motives on something as fleeting as 'I felt like experiencing travel'.

So, as far as "gods would be fine because the god of long journeys would find sufficient portfolio in one or two people every twenty years deciding they need a new life experience and forsaking the wonders of their city – including unlimited and varied new life sensations for some reason – to travel a little bit and hopefully some of them survive this utterly new experience long enough to matter, so this guy would totally not get involved in a society that I does everything he stands far and can only ever I do everything he stands for, despite his being easily powerful enough to thwart it"? This argument has no validity. It's been winnowed down so much that you could answer yes, technically, to each step along the Way but still see the answer as clearly no when you view the big picture.

AMFV

2014-01-30, 05:15 AM

There is no "that way of life". The difference between staying here and traveling is more severe than voluntarily becoming a gender and ethnic persecuted minority beggar in a third world country from being the gender and ethnic majority in a first world country who is also rich and powerful.

Every other city hates you because you could be a spy. The wilds will destroy you because you can't be prepared for them (unless Mentor Feat). It's unlikely you can come back to your city because you've got nothing of value and they likely would distrust your motives on something as fleeting as 'I felt like experiencing travel'.

There's a God of murder-cults, I'm pretty sure that the Gods don't mind being part of an oppressed minority, we'd just shift which folks would be that minority. It's interesting to say the least.

So, as far as "gods would be fine because the god of long journeys would find sufficient portfolio in one or two people every twenty years deciding they need a new life experience and forsaking the wonders of their city – including unlimited and varied new life sensations for some reason – to travel a little bit and hopefully some of them survive this utterly new experience long enough to matter, so this guy would totally not get involved in a society that I does everything he stands far and can only ever I do everything he stands for, despite his being easily powerful enough to thwart it"? This argument has no validity. It's been winnowed down so much that you could answer yes, technically, to each step along the Way but still see the answer as clearly no when you view the big picture.

The problem is that the "gods would stop it" argument can easily work more than one directoin and depends very heavily on your interpretation of the Gods, I've created a scenario where the Gods would be fine with it, it took maybe 30 seconds of thought, and is fairly plausible, so as far as a setting goes, this isn't an armor piercing bullet for the Tippyverse. The problem I have is not that the Tippyverse is a gaurantee, it's that 3.5 is clearly not internally consistent with the rules. So if it's not the tippyverse it's something different, but it's not the setting as provided.

Drachasor

2014-01-30, 05:24 AM

As far as "adventuring" goes, I think it is hard to analyze this just going by the rules in D&D. For one, I am not sure the world would really work by tossing level-appropriate challenges at you (most of the time). Well, to be precise, that's how it works for PCs, but there's nothing that says that's how it works for NPCs. If "adventuring" means going up against stuff that has a 50-50 shot to kill you a decent percentage of the time, then it probably wouldn't be done by almost anyone. If it just means exploration or the like, then I think it would be decently common.

Of course, with contingencies, high-level wizards and magic looking over your shoulder, and easy raising, it isn't like death is a big concern 99% of the time. A given TV society could have a much higher level NPCs than is typical. It could be setup to actually increase the levels of people as rapidly as possible.

Overall though, I think the overriding issue in a TV setting would be different "City-States" competing with each other and different high-level wizards working against each other. Whether on purpose or not, interests and competition could easily spill over into the Wilds.

Though I think the existence and extent of the "Wilds" is a bit nebulous in general. Since these are largely going to be lands creating food and so forth during the early stages of TV, I have a hard time seeing them left high and dry when resources don't matter anymore. There's no reason not to improve them as well as a major city when money doesn't matter. The only real question is how quickly people move on to living on Demiplanes (which are far more secure places to exist).

I could see a far-future TV where the cities have been abandoned and the people/races/monsters left behind are the only ones left on the planet (beyond the odd archaeological expedition).

SiuiS

2014-01-30, 05:32 AM

There's a God of murder-cults, I'm pretty sure that the Gods don't mind being part of an oppressed minority, we'd just shift which folks would be that minority. It's interesting to say the least.

But you're wrong, those gods actively despise being a minority, that's why they constantly spread their murder cults. They're just losing. They're not okay with it.

The problem is that the "gods would stop it" argument can easily work more than one directoin and depends very heavily on your interpretation of the Gods, I've created a scenario where the Gods would be fine with it, it took maybe 30 seconds of thought, and is fairly plausible, so as far as a setting goes, this isn't an armor piercing bullet for the Tippyverse. The problem I have is not that the Tippyverse is a gaurantee, it's that 3.5 is clearly not internally consistent with the rules. So if it's not the tippyverse it's something different, but it's not the setting as provided.

Yes and no. It's not a magic bullet, but the 30 second plausible scenario isn't plausible.

If you go by strict rules, then the first step is again, why has their not been an undead apocalypse? By the rules, naturally occurring spawning undead which can't be stopped would wipe out people before they finished chargen.

Unless you have an answer other than "the 60 HD outsider voyeur is protecting it's interests", this is going to be a very hard discussion to even get to the "farlaghn is okay with the tippyverse" point. He was okay with humans who travel too, but now they're all dead.

As far as "adventuring" goes, I think it is hard to analyze this just going by the rules in D&D. For one, I am not sure the world would really work by tossing level-appropriate challenges at you (most of the time). Well, to be precise, that's how it works for PCs, but there's nothing that says that's how it works for NPCs. If "adventuring" means going up against stuff that has a 50-50 shot to kill you a decent percentage of the time, then it probably wouldn't be done by almost anyone. If it just means exploration or the like, then I think it would be decently common.

No, tippy is right on that one. Going by the book, X% of all encounters you face will be CR = [ECL of party +7]. Where I think he errs is that people would still engage those encounters. And even then, he probably accounted for it – I'm simply awaiting confirmation.

And, why would a wizard in a universe based on economy be okay with letting you go die and paying to raise you while you achieve nothing but negative levels, instead of keeping you home? Once it's important, the shade steel legion does it.

charcoalninja

2014-01-30, 05:39 AM

As was touched on earlier there are still a variety of reasons for adventuring, one simply being tourism, the city folk want to go out and see how the other half lives or to see exotic locations, etc.

Another motivation would be religion or politics. If you're not content with doing as you're told by the super wizards in charge you may want to go out and adventure to find the means to build your own megacity and BE the boss, rather than a gruel consumer. The risks would be interesting to some people, the same way people still join the infantry and go to war even though it isn't in the least bit safe. Religion would play a huge factor as well.

Additionally people could be motivated to leave their safe havens and slum it in the wilds out of a sense of responsibility. A real world analogue would be doctors without borders. If the wilds do not have the same life saving magic that the cities have, good people with courage would leave them and do what they can for those who cannot help themselves.

Honestly the more the world is discussed the more I see it turning out almost exactly like the modern world. The main consideration is what the post scarcity does to the world. If everything actually IS given away for free which it may never actually be and certainly wouldn't be in all cities as its a fantastic way to control people and there are better things to do with your time if all you care about is power. I mean every food trap made is a defensive or offensive trap not made, etc.

And just because the cities have infinite wealth doesn't mean every individual in it has infinite wealth, so considering that having your food and shelter needs covered isn't a concern for the modern day middle class, I don't see how there's that much of a difference between the modern middle class, and the eat for free citizens of the TV megacity. Neither will starve, and most of their time and energy will be devoted to having fun rather than toiling to live.

Kelb_Panthera

2014-01-30, 05:42 AM

Like how severe infant mortality rates reduced the dark ages to an average lifespan of ~28, despite people living into their 80s? People still think the average human got to 30 and died of old age...

Are you agreeing with me here? The failure of text to carry tone makes it hard to tell.

The complex network of trade, taxes and tariffs, supporting distant trade cities and small cities along the way, and businesses which ca only exist because of trades routes would be more profitable in the short term until you had the massive supply of goods in one location already; you're not shipping billions of tons of anything without infrastructure, and you're not affording to utterly revamp infrastructure until you can already ship billions of tons. The first use of an economical TC would be to expedite shipments from a central hub, where all goods were transported the long way from their respective sources, to a central location to send them all through with ease.

You're overlooking something here. Putting up a permanent TC is only 15 minutes of work and if the caster is approaching level 18 he can put up 3 of them in as many days. One at the point where resources are gathered, one at a hub to move in supplies for the resource point and a third to move the resource to a location where demand is high. By the time that market is flooded the caster should be able to afford scrolls of permanency to use in creating circles with new market destinations.

Hell, just casting it normally with a rod of extend gets you a circle that lasts for over 5 hours allowing for -immense- shipments of goods. It's probably much more economical to create a piece of magical architecture that can generate a TC 1/day at CL 18. For 3 hours a day, you can send goods to whichever destination is on the schedule instead of just the one location the permanent circle is keyed to.

The business owner isn't losing any money by not having to pay trade tarrifs and taxes in the cities he's skipping over. He's doesn't have to pay anywhere near as many guards or porters. There's little to no equipment maintenance and he can charge just a little less than his competitors who are using traditional shipping methods. The profit margins are -huge- with next to no drawbacks and virtually negligible startup cost.

Yes, it hurts the infrastructure of towns and cities in between but the bottom line only gets fat..... quickly.

But that means you've got a network of economics which is your bread and buyer you're going to collapse, which means those goods will stop being made, which means you won't have the resources to startup the fabrication systems to generate more resources...

It's somebody's bread and butter. I don't know why you think it's the shipper's though.

You have to have an established TC trade system to afford to establish a TC trade system. I can see how that works, but is far less intuitive than the TC invention causing utter world re shaping.

You've drastically overestimated the cost of setting up a network. That bit of architecture I mentioned only costs a bit under 73k; a trivial sum to a 17th level character or a successful trade magnate. A scroll of permanency powerful enough for TC is only about a third of that. Worst-case, he has to travel to the outer planes and by up 450k worth of ambrosia and it's not until -that- point that it begins to look like you're right, if indeed there even is such a supply to be bought.

Eh. Shelter depends. Shelter is very easy to generate, especially when you're paying people in calories and hydration.

Good shelter takes a fair amount of man-hours and payment in free but nigh flavorless food isn't something most free people will accept if they can get coin. The megacities large enough to necessitate the food and water traps are necessary to make that flavorless gruel an acceptable form of payment and even then only for the lowest-income people. Even a flavorizer can't do anything about the texture. Until money becomes obsolete it will always be the preferred form of payment.

This is true though, although I don't think you took the ramifications far enough.

How do you mean?

Not so; I've actually see this happen on two separate occasions, independently. The idea of a wizard being altruistic and also business minded is novel enough that even in games where players develop the start of this, they won't generate a tippyverse. Which is phenomenal, since apparently the only difference in games I've experienced between TV and nonTV is whether or not I myself am playing as opposed to DMing... Sigh.

Generally, in the context of a campaign that's actually being played there simply isn't a long-enough passage of time for TV to get into full swing. We're not talking about a timescale of a single humanoid lifetime; not even for an elf.

That clientele quickly sees the error of it's ways, even if it's only after their competition ruins them. It is 100% possible to black-box an operation like this... In fact, that may be exactly what prevents a Tvformation! The scale necessary to maintain secrecy is too small to allow for the singularity, both because it's much easier to protect (no reverse engineering) and because it's so constrained it cannot grow.

The beginning seeing fits and starts isn't at all odd. This is, indeed, one way that a TV startup can fail, but successfully blackboxing such an endeavor is a squirrely proposition. To go just one humanoid lifetime without the secret being revealed would be nothing less than astonishing. Masters of espionage and masters of trade tend to work together quite frequently but are rarely the same people or organizations. The military applications would be obvious to governments if they ever found out, so it only stands to reason that whatever government is in place in the city where this business is setup would strongarm it into either allowing use of the TC or that one be made for government use.

The raw impact that such a device is capable of is such that it makes any epoch defining technology that we've seen IRL pale in comparison.

Mentor feat. EVERYONE starts at fifth level; you take mentor, you get a mentor. You level up to fifth, you swap out mentor for apprentice (by the rules), and your apprentice automatically attains fifth level when they reach... Age of majority?

For NPCs, this means once someone cares enough about passing on their works to take an Apprentice (via the feat, DMG 2, 3.5e), their apprentice will start adventuring at fifth level. And so will their apprentice. Etc.

You've got that backwards. You can't take mentor until 5th level (normally) because of its requirement of 8 ranks in the appropriate skill. You really need to go back and read that section of DMG2 again. You've got it really FUBAR'ed.

Drachasor

2014-01-30, 06:16 AM

No, tippy is right on that one. Going by the book, X% of all encounters you face will be CR = [ECL of party +7]. Where I think he errs is that people would still engage those encounters. And even then, he probably accounted for it – I'm simply awaiting confirmation.

And, why would a wizard in a universe based on economy be okay with letting you go die and paying to raise you while you achieve nothing but negative levels, instead of keeping you home? Once it's important, the shade steel legion does it.

By RAW, such encounter rates are for PCs. There are no rules for NPCs. It is also far from a hard and fast rule in the books -- it's really a guideline.

The high level casters don't have to do anything beyond setting up the basic traps and creatures to automate this process. Though having some Ice Assassins to watch over it to make sure the wrong sort don't get powerful is a good idea. It would be the most effective educational system, so might as well do it if education matters. If education doesn't matter, then "optimally" the wizard doesn't need anything besides himself and his creations.

Scow2

2014-01-30, 08:32 AM

For the Big F, all of life is a journey, regardless of how fast you get through individual legs of it, or how long you rest along it - Just because you reach your momentary "Destination" doesn't mean the journey of your life has ended.

SiuiS

2014-01-30, 08:48 AM

As was touched on earlier there are still a variety of reasons for adventuring, one simply being tourism, the city folk want to go out and see how the other half lives or to see exotic locations, etc.

Why go and possibly die instead of visiting ackbar's tent of Life Experiences? They're literally as good as the real thing, easier to acquire, and have no actual danger.

Another motivation would be religion or politics. If you're not content with doing as you're told by the super wizards in charge you may want to go out and adventure to find the means to build your own megacity and BE the boss, rather than a gruel consumer. The risks would be interesting to some people, the same way people still join the infantry and go to war even though it isn't in the least bit safe. Religion would play a huge factor as well.

Emotionally loaded statements. Some super wizards might be like this, but it's far more likely for a city to exist almost completely separate from the rulers (as far as they know). Do you now your mayor, governor, etc., personally? Why would these peasants of paradise be rubbing elbows with the plantagenets?

And just because the cities have infinite wealth doesn't mean every individual in it has infinite wealth, so considering that having your food and shelter needs covered isn't a concern for the modern day middle class, I

No. Stop. You're just wrong.

The middle class works to maintain. You've drastically ne'er estimated the value of infinity and equated it with 'seems infinite enough to me'. Infinite. It's... You cannot compare any system with finite numbers to infinity. It just don't brain.

Are you agreeing with me here? The failure of text to carry tone makes it hard to tell.

I am agreeing, yes.

You're overlooking something here. Putting up a permanent TC is only 15 minutes of work and if the caster is approaching level 18 he can put up 3 of them in as many days. One at the point where resources are gathered, one at a hub to move in supplies for the resource point and a third to move the resource to a location where demand is high. By the time that market is flooded the caster should be able to afford scrolls of permanency to use in creating circles with new market destinations.

No, see, "the point where resources is gathered" doesn't exist. It's a bunch of points; cities, mines, fields, etc, otherwise you're not moving enough freight in the first place for TC to matter. Once you have hundreds of tonnes, you have several sources which you need a TC at each of, and then a deployment TC to each market, and then a return TC, etc., and the contracts already drawn up, etc.

Further, you've got the entire economy over a barrel. You want for nothing, can create anything, can move anything, don't need money in the first place, can rule a country on literal fiat, and if you do want money you could commandeer the existing billion GP industry wholesale simply through blackmail or asking politely.

So why do you choose to tear down multimillion Gp infrastructure as far as profit losses, in order to slowly rebuild all of it through personal work? You're not gaining anything. You have it all already.

The business owner isn't losing any money by not having to pay trade tarrifs and taxes in the cities he's skipping over. He's doesn't have to pay anywhere near as many guards or porters. There's little to no equipment maintenance and he can charge just a little less than his competitors who are using traditional shipping methods. The profit margins are -huge- with next to no drawbacks and virtually negligible startup cost.

I dunno man. Any plan that's "I'll make a cumulative ten dollars every day, and all I have to do is crash the us economy entirely instead of taking it over" is just... What?

Good shelter takes a fair amount of man-hours and payment in free but nigh flavorless food isn't something most free people will accept if they can get coin. The megacities large enough to necessitate the food and water traps are necessary to make that flavorless gruel an acceptable form of payment and even then only for the lowest-income people. Even a flavorizer can't do anything about the texture. Until money becomes obsolete it will always be the preferred form of payment.

Define "good shelter", then. Sufficient shelter is easy and can be built up easily.
Flavorless gruel? Crew brûlée, filet mignon, rock candy... All just a prestidigitaion away. Too expensive for the infinite food generator? Doubtful. Texture too, actually; it's constructing an object out of the food.

How do you mean?

The entire economy, not just these two people in transaction, basically.

You've got that backwards. You can't take mentor until 5th level (normally) because of its requirement of 8 ranks in the appropriate skill. You really need to go back and read that section of DMG2 again. You've got it really FUBAR'ed.

It is my understanding that an apprentice eventually automatically graduates, hits fifth level thereby, and swaps their apprentice feat for the mentor feat, taking on an apprentice of their own.

By RAW, such encounter rates are for PCs. There are no rules for NPCs. It is also far from a hard and fast rule in the books -- it's really a guideline.

Pfffff.

There are no XP rules either, so they can't advance and don't matter.

The Insanity

2014-01-30, 08:59 AM

Vanitas

2014-01-30, 09:08 AM

To be fair, that TWF Drow might be (and likely is) fighting against armies of enemies way below the appropriate CR for his level.

Yes, he fights armies of mooks and has trouble fighting named opponents. He has particular trouble against spellcasters. People saying Drizzt make sense probably have never read a Drizzt novel - he is considered so good specifically because everyone acknowledges magic is stronger than a sword and he manages to survive against such odds. Not to mention most of his adventures were under AD&D, during which magic was a lot less reliable and HP a lot lower, making a sword much deadlier. Canon sources such as the Baldur's Gate games even have Drizzt acknowledging several others to be more powerful than him. "Omg they think a TWF drow is any good, lol" only applies when you know absolutely nothing about the character or the setting.

TL;DR Drizzt is a high level character fighting mid level enemies and still has trouble against them, do your research

So, while I wait for Tippy's reponse on the difference between basic TV and Points of Light, let's list all the non-RAW stuff in Points of Light, then let's see how much of it applies to basic TV later.

Doesn't respect demographic rules
Doesn't respect NPC wealth by level
Ignores existence of gods; while many settings deal with the gods differently, by RAW they exist.
Uses custom magical items, which always requires DM approval

I remember someone putting up a more complete list earlier in the thread, but I could not find it.

Scow2

2014-01-30, 09:10 AM

TL;DR Drizzt is a high level character fighting mid level enemies and still has trouble against them, do your researchAnd relic from a system in which his build DIDN'T suck.

Drachasor

2014-01-30, 09:16 AM

Pfffff.

There are no XP rules either, so they can't advance and don't matter.

While you say that in jest, there's a fair point there. However, that's a very different matter than the fact the "rules" that give a statistical spread of encounters are quite literally guidelines and not hard and fast rules. Experience required for leveling, on the other hand, is a hard and fast rule. You can ignore the statistical spread guidelines without breaking any rules, but you can't do the same for experience tables. In particular, it's under the guidelines for designing an adventure from the ground up.

Halbaradkenafin

2014-01-30, 09:33 AM

It is my understanding that an apprentice eventually automatically graduates, hits fifth level thereby, and swaps their apprentice feat for the mentor feat, taking on an apprentice of their own.

My understanding was that it's the other way round, you reach 5th level some how and then graduate. It doesn't make sense that I take apprentice (something minor with no chance of injury like journalist or something) and then some time later I'm 5th level, unless that's 5 levels of expert or something that reflects the apprenticeship you just completed.

Threadnaught

2014-01-30, 09:37 AM

Drachasor

2014-01-30, 09:41 AM

Y'all want to really know how to stop the Tippyverse from existing?
Remove Teleportation Circle and Wish.

In order to stop Emperor Win from creating it during a game, get enough money to hire him as your defence attorney, then whenever he opens his mouth to do something in game, pick up every single book and throw their combined mass at his head while shouting "NO" at the top of your lungs.
It has to be every single book in a single throw or it won't work. Then you just have to hope he'll be willing to Tippy the case (if there is one) in your favour.

Tippyverse officially debunked. Thread complete.

Actually, you need to limit the creation of magic traps in some fashion. A self-reseting magical teleport trap can do much the same work.

Wish is only necessary to create magic items for pure cash using a trick to get the wish without needing further expenses. Handy, but not necessary to have the Tippyverse, imho.

Also, your post comes across as a bit mean.

HaikenEdge

2014-01-30, 09:52 AM

Yeah, I'd have to agree that the self-resetting magical trap is probably more an aspect of the Tippyverse, than teleportation circle or wish; self-resetting create food & water traps can pretty much feed the population of an entire city.

AMFV

2014-01-30, 09:56 AM

Y'all want to really know how to stop the Tippyverse from existing?
Remove Teleportation Circle and Wish.

In order to stop Emperor Win from creating it during a game, get enough money to hire him as your defence attorney, then whenever he opens his mouth to do something in game, pick up every single book and throw their combined mass at his head while shouting "NO" at the top of your lungs.
It has to be every single book in a single throw or it won't work. Then you just have to hope he'll be willing to Tippy the case (if there is one) in your favour.

Tippyverse officially debunked. Thread complete.

You'd have to continue to remove other spells which can break the game, at some point you're going to wind up with almost all utility spells banned.

SiuiS

2014-01-30, 10:01 AM

D&D worlds are already quite dangerous. Some people simply don't care and go a step further. Higher risk, higher reward, as they say. IRL you buy tons of lottery tickets. In D&D you become an adventurer.

Fair.

While you say that in jest, there's a fair point there. However, that's a very different matter than the fact the "rules" that give a statistical spread of encounters are quite literally guidelines and not hard and fast rules. Experience required for leveling, on the other hand, is a hard and fast rule. You can ignore the statistical spread guidelines without breaking any rules, but you can't do the same for experience tables. In particular, it's under the guidelines for designing an adventure from the ground up.

Well, my point was that anyone adventuring is a PC, so "NPCs don't benefit" isn't really applicable.

My understanding was that it's the other way round, you reach 5th level some how and then graduate. It doesn't make sense that I take apprentice (something minor with no chance of injury like journalist or something) and then some time later I'm 5th level, unless that's 5 levels of expert or something that reflects the apprenticeship you just completed.

NPC//PC.

NPCs who are mentored basically reach maturity / age of majority for their class and are guaranteed fifth level. I'll do actual research in a bit though. I'm o. My phone right now, at work, away from books.

Y'all want to really know how to stop the Tippyverse from existing?

Nope.

Tippyverse officially debunked. Thread complete.

Also nope. Not what debunked means.

We're playing myth busters. That includes verifying as much as busting.

Drachasor

2014-01-30, 10:12 AM

Well, my point was that anyone adventuring is a PC, so "NPCs don't benefit" isn't really applicable.

That's certainly not in the rules by any stretch. You can run across NPC adventurers and they use the NPC WBL table.

Vanitas

2014-01-30, 10:34 AM

And relic from a system in which his build DIDN'T suck.

I've mentioned that in the rest of the post.
Comparatively, in 4e Drizzt is too powerful to be challenged by basically anything level apropriate, seeing as not only is he a Ranger (the best striker class), he has above average stats and above average wealth.

SiuiS

2014-01-30, 11:01 AM

That's certainly not in the rules by any stretch. You can run across NPC adventurers and they use the NPC WBL table.

What does that have to do with NPCs leveling up and using encounter tables? How does "NPCs use their own wealth by level charts" have anything to do with NPCs not advancing because there are no rules for advancement for NPCs?

Drachasor

2014-01-30, 11:05 AM

What does that have to do with NPCs leveling up and using encounter tables? How does "NPCs use their own wealth by level charts" have anything to do with NPCs not advancing because there are no rules for advancement for NPCs?

The discussion is about whether anyone would adventure because it's so dangerous. Using the recommended guidelines for a DM crafting an adventure for PCs is not going to accurately reflect the situation here. Most adventurers are not PCs so a lot of this doesn't apply when determining the danger of adventuring.

As best I recall, NPCs can still gain experience, and they'd still use the standard rules for leveling as well. For what that's worth.

Vanitas

2014-01-30, 11:28 AM

The discussion is about whether anyone would adventure because it's so dangerous.
This is a moot point. They would, because they don't know how dangerous it is. First of all, Tippy's data is flawed because it ignores optimization and it assumes you adventure every single day, which inflates his percentage. Second of all, even if his data was not flawed, no one in the game world has access to it. They just know it's dangerous because of course attacking a dragon is dangerous - they also know some people succeed and that is enough for some to try. There really is no point discussing this.

Drachasor

2014-01-30, 11:39 AM

This is a moot point. They would, because they don't know how dangerous it is. First of all, Tippy's data is flawed because it ignores optimization and it assumes you adventure every single day, which inflates his percentage. Second of all, even if his data was not flawed, no one in the game world has access to it. They just know it's dangerous because of course attacking a dragon is dangerous - they also know some people succeed and that is enough for some to try. There really is no point discussing this.

It's not hard to get general access to the data with divinations or a simple statistical measurement of the dangers based on the number that adventure and those that come back.

More significantly, the data is flawed because it is based on guidelines for a DM creating an adventure. We don't know what the actual data looks like outside of those guidelines, and using them is extremely dubious.

Though as you say there's also the fact that in a TV there are all manner of ways to stack the deck in favor of adventurers and to recover from untimely death.

SiuiS

2014-01-30, 12:02 PM

Sorry, Kelb, I have to back out of discussion for now. The DMG II is literally the only book I can't locate – I instead located books I didn't know I owned. I knew about 1e oriental adventures, but not the fiend folio...

The discussion is about whether anyone would adventure because it's so dangerous. Using the recommended guidelines for a DM crafting an adventure for PCs is not going to accurately reflect the situation here. Most adventurers are not PCs so a lot of this doesn't apply when determining the danger of adventuring.

As best I recall, NPCs can still gain experience, and they'd still use the standard rules for leveling as well. For what that's worth.

Wait, you're the one who said there are no rules for NPCs leveling by experience in the first place, aren't you?

Vanitas

2014-01-30, 12:06 PM

It's not hard to get general access to the data with divinations or a simple statistical measurement of the dangers based on the number that adventure and those that come back.
Yes, it is, it's very hard. You would need someone with access to that information willing to spend a lot of time and money (every spell you spend is one spell you don't sell, after all) just to come up with that data. For... which reason, now? This guy is already powerful, he already knows how hard it was and he could just as well say "I've dealt with this, it's hard" instead of "I've checked with magic, it's hard" - which statement should hold more weight? (he could simply lie about having checked with magic, anyway)

More significantly, the data is flawed because it is based on guidelines for a DM creating an adventure. We don't know what the actual data looks like outside of those guidelines, and using them is extremely dubious.
Exactly.

Though as you say there's also the fact that in a TV there are all manner of ways to stack the deck in favor of adventurers and to recover from untimely death.
Not only in TV, just spending some time scouting and making Knowledge checks can increase your odds of survival quite a lot.

Halbaradkenafin

2014-01-30, 12:23 PM

NPC//PC.

NPCs who are mentored basically reach maturity / age of majority for their class and are guaranteed fifth level. I'll do actual research in a bit though. I'm o. My phone right now, at work, away from books.

I assume you mean NPC does not equal PC (which is usually signified by <> or != rather than // which is usually for Gestalt characters).

So I did a bit of searching and here are the relevant parts of the DMG II for Mentors/Apprentices:

Surpassing the Mentor: Once the apprentice reaches
5th level, he graduates from his apprenticeship. He continues
to gain the benefi ts of the Apprentice feat, but no longer
needs to work with his mentor. The mentor’s associated
skills remain class skills for purposes of determining the
maximum rank he can have in those skills, and he still
retains the secondary benefi ts, but an associated skill can
only be purchased as a class skill if he gains a level in a
class that has that skill as a class skill. He no longer needs
to tithe to his mentor upon gaining levels. If you allow, he
can also immediately exchange his Apprentice feat for the
Mentor feat (see below).

So its entirely up to the DM if the Apprentice can become a Mentor without spending another feat on it.

Training an Apprentice
Apprentices advance with training. Each week, a mentor
is expected to dedicate at least 8 consecutive hours to
training with her apprentice. Meeting this minimum
amount of training allows the apprentice to advance and
keeps the mentor’s own skills honed. If she neglects her
apprentice, not only does she take a penalty to her mentor
score, but she also loses her skill check bonuses until she
spends time with her apprentice.
With adequate training, the apprentice gains a level each
time the mentor gains a level. He also acquires equipment
appropriate to an NPC of his class (see Chapter 4 of the
Dungeon Master’s Guide).
When the apprentice reaches 5th level, he graduates
and follows the mentor as a cohort, as if she had the
Leadership feat.

This is more intended for PCs obviously but could just as easily apply to NPCs. So one side needs to gain levels if they want to stop being an apprentice. I'm sure it's possible to level up just on social encounters but that depends entirely on the profession and there is likely to be a point where it's not possible to find challenging encounters that would grant enough exp.

Drachasor

2014-01-30, 12:32 PM

Wait, you're the one who said there are no rules for NPCs leveling by experience in the first place, aren't you?

No. I said there are no rules to determine how difficult their encounters are. Someone else said there were no rules regarding experience and leveling.

Yes, it is, it's very hard. You would need someone with access to that information willing to spend a lot of time and money (every spell you spend is one spell you don't sell, after all) just to come up with that data. For... which reason, now? This guy is already powerful, he already knows how hard it was and he could just as well say "I've dealt with this, it's hard" instead of "I've checked with magic, it's hard" - which statement should hold more weight? (he could simply lie about having checked with magic, anyway)

When you can get yes/no answers to questions, it doesn't take too many questions to get a percentile answer that's reasonable accurate. Unlike some things, there's really no way a god is going to be blocking most of the data on random adventurer deaths. There are definitely gods that would have the data as well.

Not only in TV, just spending some time scouting and making Knowledge checks can increase your odds of survival quite a lot.

Yeah, but TV is many, many levels above that.

charcoalninja

2014-01-30, 12:33 PM

Why go and possibly die instead of visiting ackbar's tent of Life Experiences? They're literally as good as the real thing, easier to acquire, and have no actual danger.

Emotionally loaded statements. Some super wizards might be like this, but it's far more likely for a city to exist almost completely separate from the rulers (as far as they know). Do you now your mayor, governor, etc., personally? Why would these peasants of paradise be rubbing elbows with the plantagenets?

No. Stop. You're just wrong.

The middle class works to maintain. You've drastically ne'er estimated the value of infinity and equated it with 'seems infinite enough to me'. Infinite. It's... You cannot compare any system with finite numbers to infinity. It just don't brain.

Firstly, because these people are 1) Daredevils, 2) Authenticity is important to them, 3) The danger is part of the thrill.
Why swim across the English channel when you could just swim in a pool for 3 days for the same effect. Because doing the real thing matters. There is intrinsic value in the tasks.

On the mayor: you don't need to rub elbows with your governer to be impacted by their policies. If uber wizard decides action X is illegal, and I don't like it, I have to go elsewhere to be able to do that illegal thing. Additionally political discontent rises all the damn time especially by marginallised groups and those who don't like the omnipresent military elements. Maybe you have criminal interests or you simply want to be incharge, so you go out and find the power to make it happen.

And on the middle class thing:
Infinite wealth is the exact same thing as having the ability to buy everything you need ever. The only difference between infinite wealth and a middle class existence is in the kinds of fun you indulge in. In both cases you have your needs covered, and you work to enable your ability to have fun. There is no difference. Making 50k a year or 500k a year is the same thing as far as having your needs covered if your expenses are only 20k a year.

The wizard does some things to make their infinite money then use that to ensure their needs are covered. Whatever is left is spent on fun.
Middleclass guy does some things to make their money then use that to ensure their needs are covered. Whatever is left is spent on fun.

Seems the same to me.

Just like having infinite space to build is the exact same thing as always having enough room to build whatever you want. If I live in a globe that's 30,000 miles wide, but I only ever use 10 miles, there's no difference between that and a globe that's only 50 miles wide because anything beyond what I can use is wasted.

Same thing with damage. Enough damage to kill something is intrinsically the same as dealing infinite damage to a target because once you've accomplished whatever you've set out to do, the rest is overkill and waste.

Similarly, a Tippy Wizard with infinite wealth against a robberbaron with finite wealth, but if they spend money at the same rate and neither run out, then what's the difference?