[3.5] Optimized child-rearing in a magical world

[Phelix-Mu]

Hi all! I was inspired by another thread (here (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=330429)) to ask the forum to bend its skills at TO/PO toward a more nurturing and creative purpose than the usual rocket tag/cosmic power/NI action economy that we normally discuss.

Thus,

Give me ideas on how magic and class abilities could be used to optimize the process of bringing up a child.

I'd prefer humane methods; there are various methods of mind-control that can be brought to bear, but would have DM-fiat type effects on a person's psyche if overused, I'd think.

Anyway, all 3.5 sources allowed, including Dragon Magazine. If you care to explain some aspect of PF that you think particularly relevant, go for it. Feats, items, psionics, and other subsystems are all game as well.

[Coidzor]

The spell Endure Elements probably helps with the need for incubation/newborns/preventing babies from getting fussy from the temperature.

[Forrestfire]

Ghostwalk has a spell called Sherem Transformation that lets the child take a feat to count their Charisma as 2 higher for Sorcerer spell DCs (if female) or their Wisdom as 2 higher for all Monk abilities (if male).

[CrazyYanmega]

Starting off with the child-birth, Bear's Endurance, Lesser Vigor, and Sheltered Vitality on the mother as she gives birth. These spells work. Trust me, I've used them in this situation.

Also: Never knew that a single question would become an infant meme.

[kirerellim]

Unseen Servant. Seriously. Unseen Servant. Doing all those things that you really, really don't want to do.

[Coidzor]

Collar of Perpetual Attendance, maybe?

[(Un)Inspired]

Hoard Gullet is probably the best way to transport a kid outside of Fusing with the child directly.

[kirerellim]

Hu... would you put it on the baby or the parents though lol

In continuation though, how much time would you have to spend focused on the kid(s) if you didn't have to worry about anything else? Cleaning, cooking, all that done reasonably well.... ok well at least its done and the house isn't burning. Much.

[(Un)Inspired]

Hu... would you put it on the baby or the parents though lol

In continuation though, how much time would you have to spend focused on the kid(s) if you didn't have to worry about anything else? Cleaning, cooking, all that done reasonably well.... ok well at least its done and the house isn't burning. Much.

Just store the kid in your Hoard Gullet every day until its old enough to gain its first level. Then just Mind Rape a happy childhood into it.

[SPoilaaja]

Hoard gullet: You can safely swallow and transport any object you could normally swallow (including items at least three size categories smaller than you).

you can't normally swallow a baby.


You can't remove individual items from your hoard gullet, but as a full-round action, you can expel its entire contents into your square.
It otherwise functions as a bag of holding (DMG 248).

You'd be puking the baby out of yourself, which is not that controlled reaction (dropping the baby)


Bag of holding: "If living creatures are placed within the bag, they can survive for up to 10 minutes, after which time they suffocate."

And the baby would suffocate

[(Un)Inspired]

Getting a baby to be three sizes smaller than you is trivial. The same can be said for making it immune to suffocation.

Also, why do you assume you cant catch the baby when you puke it up? I've puked in me hands before. Easy Peasy Livin Greasy

[SPoilaaja]

Yeah I agree. Just pointing out that it's a bit fuzzier than just casting hoard gullet. You also need to modify your size (probably enlarge person) everytime you eat or puke the baby and make sure that the baby doesn't poke the bag of holding while he/she is swallowed. And you also need to get the baby immune to suffaction/no need to breathe.

You also need to feed the baby or sovereign glue a ring of sustanance on the baby's finger.

[Eldariel]

Not technically mind control: you can use Mind Rape to pour all knowledge in existence to the child's brain with no need for schools of any sort.

[Bullet06320]

prestidigitation insta clean diapers
sleep its just simple an easy

[Kazyan]

The basic goal of raising a child is to get them to the point where they can function in society. If they grow up happy and they flourish, you've done the job well. It's really, really hard, though. You can't just give the kid everything they want, or they won't learn to work.

Thankfully, we don't have to do the hard work of imparting values and such ourselves. Let's find a monster with psychological qualities we'd want out of a parent, make a Simulacrum, and delegate the hard questions. Ideally, it would have a very high Wisdom score to know what to do, and be Good-aligned. Flipping through the SRD and the Monster Manual, a Lammasu simulacrum pretty much fits the bill; bonus points if you can get trimmings from the Golden Protector. You may or may not want to make your delegate parent humanoid, via some kind of polymorph or whatever; depends on if you think having a lion as a parent will make the kid all weird.

You want to periodically cast divinations to figure out long-term effects of your actions on the child's psychology--in the real world, we don't have this, and nurturing parents stress out about it all the time. Go get an Elemental Weird and it can tell you exactly how not to mess up your kid.

With those two checks in place, you can basically assume that your kid will become psychologically healthy. Next, create a safe and happy environment--I'll leave the details of this part to others. While you're doing so, ask the Elemental Weird simulacrum about what sorts of nice things will just make them happier and which will make them "entitled", but you want the kid to be as happy as possible without ruining them in the long term.

To keep them happy, you want to make sure they grow up with the ability to stay so. One option is to make raise them as an indestructible cheese wizard, but ideally, you should respect what the child wants to be when they grow up. Another option is, no joke, Monk. Bhuddists and experienced meditators in general are pretty happy with life. So you've got options.

You should also do what you can to give them high ability scores, which will help them out in life no matter what they do, whether it be chasing ultimate cosmic power or achieving enlightenment. While we're making Simulacrums, go get one of a wish-granting monster and give the kid +5 inherent bonuses to all of their ability scores. Templates are probably bad because they reduce the kid's capacity to level up and improve at what they really want to do in life. I mean, unless you're going to do Lycanthropy + Thought Bottle cheese. That would allow the child to become an epic-level Monk or Wizard without investing their whole life into working for it. In any case, you should nurture the child's body and mind so that, when they're adults, they at least have the Elite Array of ability scores--but the higher their numbers, the better.

[nedz]

Spell selection for the baby care Sorcerer
0th Level: Dancing Lights, Mage Hand, Mending, Prestidigitation
1st Level: Sleep, Tenser's Floating Disk

[AnonymousPepper]

I wonder if Lastai's Caress from the BoED wouldn't be helpful for cheering a fussy/upset baby.

[Eldariel]

To keep them happy, you want to make sure they grow up with the ability to stay so. One option is to make raise them as an indestructible cheese wizard, but ideally, you should respect what the child wants to be when they grow up. Another option is, no joke, Monk. Bhuddists and experienced meditators in general are pretty happy with life. So you've got options.

I'm not sure making the child happy and keeping it happy is necessarily desirable: one of the biggest driving factors for at least humanoids is striving for happiness (incidentally a central concept in Buddhism) so just giving permanent happiness might destroy the being's drive to do anything. This gets quite philosophical, but can that truly be called happiness?

Is a being with effectively everything given to them with nothing left to achieve happy? Well, certainly they could become scientists or artists from that point to go after their heart's desire, but I feel such a baseline choice could be dangerous with unexpected ramifications that might be contrary to the original intention. It is often stressed that the path is more important than the goal (probably most significantly treated in fiction in the quest for the Grail); as such, cutting the path away might not be what we ultimately should do.


My idea of pouring knowledge would be to enable basically the start to be finding and creating new knowledge since your starting point is that of the present civilization. I can only imagine there's still masses to discover but this would significantly enhance the rate of discovery, and also ensure that probably every individual gets to achieve important discoveries.

[Meowmasterish]

I know other people have already said this, but Prestidigitation would be a life saver.

[HaikenEdge]

This may be outside RAW, but are there any ways for a egoist to manipulate a child's development via hormone therapy and the like? It would fit the theme of psychometabolism, to say the least?

[Dimers]

Take ranks in Profession: Childcare, become an Exemplar, get people fanatically devoted to you for how awesomely you care for children. The baby itself is irrelevant unless you can convince the DM to have it count as a masterwork tool.

[Urpriest]

Not technically mind control: you can use Mind Rape to pour all knowledge in existence to the child's brain with no need for schools of any sort.

This is how Tippy educated Cindy anyway, which is how a 6 year old elf is a powerful wizard.


The basic goal of raising a child is to get them to the point where they can function in society. If they grow up happy and they flourish, you've done the job well. It's really, really hard, though. You can't just give the kid everything they want, or they won't learn to work.

Thankfully, we don't have to do the hard work of imparting values and such ourselves. Let's find a monster with psychological qualities we'd want out of a parent, make a Simulacrum, and delegate the hard questions. Ideally, it would have a very high Wisdom score to know what to do, and be Good-aligned. Flipping through the SRD and the Monster Manual, a Lammasu simulacrum pretty much fits the bill; bonus points if you can get trimmings from the Golden Protector. You may or may not want to make your delegate parent humanoid, via some kind of polymorph or whatever; depends on if you think having a lion as a parent will make the kid all weird.

You want to periodically cast divinations to figure out long-term effects of your actions on the child's psychology--in the real world, we don't have this, and nurturing parents stress out about it all the time. Go get an Elemental Weird and it can tell you exactly how not to mess up your kid.

With those two checks in place, you can basically assume that your kid will become psychologically healthy. Next, create a safe and happy environment--I'll leave the details of this part to others. While you're doing so, ask the Elemental Weird simulacrum about what sorts of nice things will just make them happier and which will make them "entitled", but you want the kid to be as happy as possible without ruining them in the long term.

To keep them happy, you want to make sure they grow up with the ability to stay so. One option is to make raise them as an indestructible cheese wizard, but ideally, you should respect what the child wants to be when they grow up. Another option is, no joke, Monk. Bhuddists and experienced meditators in general are pretty happy with life. So you've got options.

You should also do what you can to give them high ability scores, which will help them out in life no matter what they do, whether it be chasing ultimate cosmic power or achieving enlightenment. While we're making Simulacrums, go get one of a wish-granting monster and give the kid +5 inherent bonuses to all of their ability scores. Templates are probably bad because they reduce the kid's capacity to level up and improve at what they really want to do in life. I mean, unless you're going to do Lycanthropy + Thought Bottle cheese. That would allow the child to become an epic-level Monk or Wizard without investing their whole life into working for it. In any case, you should nurture the child's body and mind so that, when they're adults, they at least have the Elite Array of ability scores--but the higher their numbers, the better.

Having Elemental Weirds around is in general pretty nice. They've got high Wis as well, and at Usually Neutral you can probably find a Good one. An Air Weird's pool is the safest, if you line it with something soft. Seems like a good Mommy-type.

As for the meditative aspect, Ardents have similar fluff.


This may be outside RAW, but are there any ways for a egoist to manipulate a child's development via hormone therapy and the like? It would fit the theme of psychometabolism, to say the least?

Egoists generally just screw with their own hormones. You'd need a Sangehirn or something.

[Red Fel]

Ghostwalk has a spell called Sherem Transformation that lets the child take a feat to count their Charisma as 2 higher for Sorcerer spell DCs (if female) or their Wisdom as 2 higher for all Monk abilities (if male).

Take Sherem Transformation to its logical conclusion. It's used to infuse the noble daughters of women of an unbroken line of noble sorceresses with extra magical power.

Translation: When you're a Sorcerer Princess of a Sorcerer Princess, and it's Sorcerer Princesses all the way back, you've got to assume that Mommy Dearest doesn't plan to do everything for you, just has her Mommy Dearest didn't either. There's going to be magical mishmosh everywhere.

I think Mindrape and similar spells to expedite teaching will be common, Unseen Servants to perform simple tasks, stuff that everyone's mentioned.

But what about discipline? If we're assuming a powerfully magical family, they may be compassionate, sure, but they may also be overpowered jerks who find that magic is the answer to everything and won't take your lip young lady, now you go to your room before I Teleport you there myself, and so help me if I have to, we're taking a shortcut through the Plane of Shadow, don't you take that tone with me, I can cast a Silence so thick you won't be able to hear yourself think, don't you roll your eyes, be glad I don't cast Blindness on you, you should appreciate your eyes instead of rolling them, that's right you head upstairs young lady.

Or something like that.

All that said, we're talking about optimizing childrearing, and we're forgetting something important - Regional feats! Clearly, when you're preparing to give birth, you have to move to a region with fantastic regional feats - you don't want a lame one like Thunder Twin, do you? Move on out of there or your kid will grow up with a lame advantage!

Also, let's talk about templates! Clearly, you want to live in a place where your wife is likely to be seduced by some Outsider or Dragon, so that your kid can grow up with an awesome bloodline or template. So excuse her infidelities - it's in the kid's best interest, after all!

Alternatively, throw spells around while the kid is growing up, and hope the kid gets Spelltouched. Just not one of those lame ones like Controlled Immolation.

[Coidzor]

This is how Tippy educated Cindy anyway, which is how a 6 year old elf is a powerful wizard.

Huh. I'd managed to completely miss that she was 6. :smalleek:

[Jeff the Green]

:smalleek:

Step 1: Do not let playgrounders raise it.

[Jack_Simth]

Hmm... Yeah, Simulacrum of a good-aligned Elemental Weird to make sure you're not making significant mistakes, special-purpose good-aligned intelligent item of a Ring of Telekinesis (special purpose being to raise children - Dedicated Power: True Resurrection 1/month, greater powers Locate Creature and Status, lesser powers Cure Moderate Wounds 3/day, Major Image 1/day, 10 ranks in Sense Motive, 10 ranks in a suitable Knowledge skill - ability scores focus on Wisdom and Intelligence) to keep the kid safe at all times (at-will TK right there means the kid is not going to get into anything it shouldn't), and a Simulacrum of a Solar to teach the tyke.

[FlyingHellfish]

Calm Emotions would probably be useful. Persist it when the kid becomes a teenager.

[HaikenEdge]

If there was a way to make stasis cocoon not kill its inhabitant when it ends, and a way to change it's length, it would be an awesome way to just plop the child down for a couple years, before mind raping a happy childhood into them.

[Knaight]

On the actual benevolent side, and not the horribly unethical that we're seeing with some of these suggestions:

Tongues. It lets the baby understand speech, and allows them to speak. Being able to communicate is exactly the sort of thing that will improve their early life. It's probably best not to pair with Permanency, depending on how that impacts actual linguistic development. It's also a fairly low level spell.

Heavy Tongues use would also allow for exposing an infant to a lot of languages quickly, so they can learn them through observation. Extreme multilingualism is a useful trait to have, and this pretty much guarantees it.

It's also worth noting that many of the big improvements would be improving the society around them. Just opening up more time for the people in the society to do things other than work on staying fed and sheltered would help immensely, and that gets into all of the various free-energy, free-water, and free-food schemes that D&D magic allows.

[Jeff the Green]

It's also worth noting that many of the big improvements would be improving the society around them. Just opening up more time for the people in the society to do things other than work on staying fed and sheltered would help immensely, and that gets into all of the various free-energy, free-water, and free-food schemes that D&D magic allows.

Or, hell, turn the baptismal fonts into self-resetting Bestow Curse (infertility) traps and give everyone access to both Remove and Bestow Curse at will when they turn 18 so there are no unplanned pregnancies and no teenagers having babies because they feel unloved.

[Metahuman1]

Craft contingent spells like Teleport, Revivify and Feather Fall would be good as a bit of a safety net.

[(Un)Inspired]

Does anything matter other than Mind Rape? Just put them in a pit and supply them with some nutrient rich gruel and breathable air at regular intervals.

Then just write a pleasant backstory into their brain later. Give him whatever morals and ethics you want, whatever motivations you want etc. etc...

Why do the methods of child rearing matter at all? All you want is a good, well adjusted child right? One single casting of Mindrape can get you that.

I can't imagine any effects that raising a child in a pit with food, water, air and a treadmil will create that Mindrape can't smooth into some boring "happy" upbringing. It's not like you can dispel Mindrape. The only really counter is Wish and by that point you can Wish a lot worse stuff into someones life than horrific memories about living in a pit.

Do you want the pleasures of child-rearing that don't involve dumping food and water into a pit with a kid in it? Just Mindrape yourself into thinking you have that same schmaltzy backstory you gave to the kid.

[veti]

Unseen Servant. Seriously. Unseen Servant. Doing all those things that you really, really don't want to do.

This. So much this. Honestly, if there were no such thing as housework, I'd have absolutely no worries about spending enough time with my kids to make sure they grew up just dandy.


Calm Emotions would probably be useful. Persist it when the kid becomes a teenager.

Yeah, the problem with that (and a lot of other suggestions in this thread, including even 'Sleep' on infants) is that - the kid needs to learn to do that for himself. Using mind-altering magic is like using mind-altering drugs - you're not going to end up with a healthy, well-adjusted adult.

[(Un)Inspired]

Yeah, the problem with that (and a lot of other suggestions in this thread, including even 'Sleep' on infants) is that - the kid needs to learn to do that for himself. Using mind-altering magic is like using mind-altering drugs - you're not going to end up with a healthy, well-adjusted adult.

Why would mind altering magic be like mind altering drugs in any way? Enchantment magic isn't particularly addictive. Why do kids need to learn things for themselves? Why can't I just create memories of them having learned lessons and plug those directly into their memories? I can even give context for those lessons so that they don't exist inorganically in the child's mind.

[Coidzor]

Would there be any life stages that Bestow Curse aging would allow ducking without causing more harm than good?

[veti]

Why would mind altering magic be like mind altering drugs in any way? Enchantment magic isn't particularly addictive. Why do kids need to learn things for themselves? Why can't I just create memories of them having learned lessons and plug those directly into their memories? I can even give context for those lessons so that they don't exist inorganically in the child's mind.

Yeah, you think you know enough about psychology to be able to reproduce, in perfect detail, exactly how the lessons you want learned - are learned, without unforeseen side effects or implications? Heck, you think you could even list, exhaustively, everything you want your kid to know?

Good luck with that.

The 'Mindrape' spell is [Evil] for a reason.

[Metahuman1]

Yeah, you think you know enough about psychology to be able to reproduce, in perfect detail, exactly how the lessons you want learned - are learned, without unforeseen side effects or implications? Heck, you think you could even list, exhaustively, everything you want your kid to know?

Good luck with that.

The 'Mindrape' spell is [Evil] for a reason.

Plus, if some twist of fate happens and the kid does find you, you've destroyed him, might I add with out necessity of doing so. And a lot of things can come of that, some of them not desirable and some of them really bad for you and/or a lot of other people.

Seriously, this sounds like a 90's anti-hero or a major villains origin story waiting to happen.

[(Un)Inspired]

Yeah, you think you know enough about psychology to be able to reproduce, in perfect detail, exactly how the lessons you want learned - are learned, without unforeseen side effects or implications? Heck, you think you could even list, exhaustively, everything you want your kid to know?

Good luck with that.

The 'Mindrape' spell is [Evil] for a reason.

Of course I can, I'm a wizard with divination magic and I've got a 36 Int. I'm infinitely more capable of making good decisions for my child than those that it would receive through natural raising. Just because it seems like good ole folksy wisdom to let a child grow and learn naturally doesn't mean its true.

The [Evil] tag on mindrape means absolutely nothing because all of its effects can be recreated though other spells and powers that don't have it. In fact, some of its most evil uses can be replicated through spells in the BoED

You can wallow in cliches about free will being good and doing things the "natural" way being better then using magic all you want. Personally I'm going to stick with a precognitive super genius programming the best possible memories into a child over the near constant bungling and emotional damage that actual child raising is.

[Prime32]

The [Evil] tag on mindrape means absolutely nothing because all of its effects can be recreated though other spells and powers that don't have it. In fact, some of its most evil uses can be replicated through spells in the BoEDProgrammed amnesia is basically the same thing with no alignment descriptor, though IIRC it has a longer casting time.


Yeah, the problem with that (and a lot of other suggestions in this thread, including even 'Sleep' on infants) is that - the kid needs to learn to do that for himself. Using mind-altering magic is like using mind-altering drugs - you're not going to end up with a healthy, well-adjusted adult.

Yeah, you think you know enough about psychology to be able to reproduce, in perfect detail, exactly how the lessons you want learned - are learned, without unforeseen side effects or implications? Heck, you think you could even list, exhaustively, everything you want your kid to know?

Good luck with that.

The 'Mindrape' spell is [Evil] for a reason.I have the solution to all your problems. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/mindSeed.htm) :smalltongue:

[Flickerdart]

I have the solution to all your problems. (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/psionic/powers/mindSeed.htm) :smalltongue:
Amusingly, that power only works on humanoids, so it wouldn't work for a monstrous creature raising a child.

Though it would work on a monstrous creature raising a human child. Imagine a psionic dragon that gets stuck with a newborn baby; dragon wyrmlings are fully intelligent within something like minutes of being born, so it would get frustrated pretty fast with the annoying pink thing. One power later you've got an infant with the awe-inspiring power of a dragon, and greed to match...baby doesn't just want the rattle, baby wants a rattle of gold and platinum, encrusted with jewels.

[nedz]

Does anything matter other than Mind Rape? Just put them in a pit and supply them with some nutrient rich gruel and breathable air at regular intervals.

Then just write a pleasant backstory into their brain later. Give him whatever morals and ethics you want, whatever motivations you want etc. etc...

Why do the methods of child rearing matter at all? All you want is a good, well adjusted child right? One single casting of Mindrape can get you that.

I can't imagine any effects that raising a child in a pit with food, water, air and a treadmil will create that Mindrape can't smooth into some boring "happy" upbringing. It's not like you can dispel Mindrape. The only really counter is Wish and by that point you can Wish a lot worse stuff into someones life than horrific memories about living in a pit.

Do you want the pleasures of child-rearing that don't involve dumping food and water into a pit with a kid in it? Just Mindrape yourself into thinking you have that same schmaltzy backstory you gave to the kid.

So, the Matrix basically :smallwink:

[HaikenEdge]

Yeah, you think you know enough about psychology to be able to reproduce, in perfect detail, exactly how the lessons you want learned - are learned, without unforeseen side effects or implications? Heck, you think you could even list, exhaustively, everything you want your kid to know?

Good luck with that.

The 'Mindrape' spell is [Evil] for a reason.

And this is why my Mindrape-happy epic Spell-to-power Erudite has max ranks in and Skill Focus for Craft (Memories).

[Kazyan]

I can't imagine any effects that raising a child in a pit with food, water, air and a treadmil will create that Mindrape can't smooth into some boring "happy" upbringing.

1) Mindrape cannot change ability scores. If you put your child in solitary confinement with no mental stimulation for the duration of their upbringing, they will learn only the most rudimentary thought patterns, have no worldly experience, be basically unable to express themselves, and have no social experience. I doubt the child's mental ability scores will total to above 10. This is not mere hypothesizing; Genie (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genie_(feral_child)) experienced something somewhat like the conditions you describe (if more horrific), and had the mental capabilities of a 13 month old child at age 13. Even if you teach the child these things via Mindrape, you still cannot fix the ability scores, which will be so low as to be crippling. If the child cannot function, you have not raised them properly.

2) Mindrape cannot impart language, in the way we use it, anyway. While Mindrape can add memories, merely knowing a bunch of words and grammar rules does not allow one to automatically use them proficiently, If you've ever tried to learn a language, you know what I'm talking about--extensive practice with them is required. Becoming fluent in a language is a difficult and rote memorization is one of the less effective ways to do so. Further, studies of feral children suggest that they need to learn their first language before a certain age, or they may never be able to do so. Finally, the child's probable Intelligence score of 3 will make it extraordinarily difficult for them to internalize their memories of how to use these sounds that mean things.

3) Mindrape has no ability to erase mental illnesses; they are nether memory, emotion, opinion, nor alignment. Long-term solitary confinement severely damages a subject's psychology.

4) No amount of Mindrape will undo the fact that, if your character does this, they have committed child abuse.

[Jeff the Green]

1) Mindrape cannot change ability scores. If you put your child in solitary confinement with no mental stimulation for the duration of their upbringing, they will learn only the most rudimentary thought patterns, have no worldly experience, be basically unable to express themselves, and have no social experience. I doubt the child's mental ability scores will total to above 10. This is not mere hypothesizing; Genie (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Genie_(feral_child)) experienced something somewhat like the conditions you describe (if more horrific), and had the mental capabilities of a 13 month old child at age 13. Even if you teach the child these things via Mindrape, you still cannot fix the ability scores, which will be so low as to be crippling. If the child cannot function, you have not raised them properly.

2) Mindrape cannot impart language, in the way we use it, anyway. While Mindrape can add memories, merely knowing a bunch of words and grammar rules does not allow one to automatically use them proficiently, If you've ever tried to learn a language, you know what I'm talking about--extensive practice with them is required. Becoming fluent in a language is a difficult and rote memorization is one of the less effective ways to do so. Further, studies of feral children suggest that they need to learn their first language before a certain age, or they may never be able to do so. Finally, the child's probable Intelligence score of 3 will make it extraordinarily difficult for them to internalize their memories of how to use these sounds that mean things.

3) Mindrape has no ability to erase mental illnesses; they are nether memory, emotion, opinion, nor alignment. Long-term solitary confinement severely damages a subject's psychology.

4) No amount of Mindrape will undo the fact that, if your character does this, they have committed child abuse.

Even setting all this aside, imagine what would happen when the child runs into the kindly lady next door who baked cookies for him but only remembers him as "that kid (Un)Inspired kept in a shoebox".

[pwykersotz]

Of course I can, I'm a wizard with divination magic and I've got a 36 Int. I'm infinitely more capable of making good decisions for my child than those that it would receive through natural raising. Just because it seems like good ole folksy wisdom to let a child grow and learn naturally doesn't mean its true.

The [Evil] tag on mindrape means absolutely nothing because all of its effects can be recreated though other spells and powers that don't have it. In fact, some of its most evil uses can be replicated through spells in the BoED

You can wallow in cliches about free will being good and doing things the "natural" way being better then using magic all you want. Personally I'm going to stick with a precognitive super genius programming the best possible memories into a child over the near constant bungling and emotional damage that actual child raising is.

Some people have this awkward tendency to love their children or something. Embracing the interpersonal relationship as it forms, treating life as a journey and not a destination, that sort of thing.

And if you think hyper-intelligent wizards are incapable of making very bad mistakes, well, nevermind. You're probably right. (http://www.entheos.com/quotes/by_teacher/dumbledore)

[(Un)Inspired]

Even setting all this aside, imagine what would happen when the child runs into the kindly lady next door who baked cookies for him but only remembers him as "that kid (Un)Inspired kept in a shoebox".

Hahaha Well obviously I can't let anyone know I raised my dark apprentice in a shoebox.


Edit: Wait a minute, I kinda want to make a character with this as their backstory now. Hmmmm factotum/duskblade for the kid and StP Erudite for the man who raised him?

[Urpriest]

3) Mindrape has no ability to erase mental illnesses; they are nether memory, emotion, opinion, nor alignment. Long-term solitary confinement severely damages a subject's psychology.


To be fair, Heal and even Heart's Ease can cure mental illness, seeing as the genre-appropriate term for mental illness is insanity.

[HaikenEdge]

Hahaha Well obviously I can't let anyone know I raised my dark apprentice in a shoebox.


Edit: Wait a minute, I kinda want to make a character with this as their backstory now. Hmmmm factotum/duskblade for the kid and StP Erudite for the man who raised him?

Make sure the kid is claustrophobic, but can never pin down why.

[Phelix-Mu]

Just to be pedantic, the game does make a distinction between being intelligent and being wise. The supra-genius wizard may know the contents of every study and treatise on child-rearing, but if his wisdom is terrible (and he doesn't do something to fix that), he may still suck at many of the practical endeavors of life (or decide that magic is the best solution to all his problems).

Incidentally, Wisdom lets us know that, if we aren't 100% sure that our Matrix/whatever is just like real life, then it's not a good idea to plug Junior into it and come back in 18 years. The consequence of our failure to anticipate a worst-case outcome may result in something that we will have even more trouble dealing with. Namely that Junior grows into a sociopathic nutjob that believes reality is a worthless illusion and perception is more valuable than truth. Frankly, that isn't even a real problem, except that we've also raised Junior to be a wizard (or other pc-grade character), and sociopathic wizards can prove problematic.

Basically, just because we can empirically show that the chances of Junior reacting badly to mindrape/similar are vanishingly small, that doesn't mean it's the kind of risk that is worth taking (especially if we care about Junior). If Junior is just an equation, a series of inputs/outputs governed by controllable factors, then we can optimize the outcome. A wise person knows that it's generally stupid to think you can understand everything and anticipate all outcomes.

But I do like this discussion. The application of magic to mental deficiencies, in particular, is interesting.

[Lightlawbliss]

Just to be pedantic, the game does make a distinction between being intelligent and being wise. The supra-genius wizard may know the contents of every study and treatise on child-rearing, but if his wisdom is terrible (and he doesn't do something to fix that), he may still suck at many of the practical endeavors of life (or decide that magic is the best solution to all his problems)....

Are you saying we are intelligent but not wise?

[Phelix-Mu]

Are you saying we are intelligent but not wise?

No, I certainly was not targeting anyone irl. Just the assertion that hyper-intelligent beings are necessarily going to be good at things, since the game sets up Intelligence as only governing certain things. Profession(wetnurse) is not going to be a strong point of the wizard (although there is a spell to fix that).

[TuggyNE]

Are you saying we are intelligent but not wise?

If the shoe fits…. :smallwink:

Statistically, I'd expect this pattern to be more likely than normal on RPG forums. I myself am almost certainly substantially less wise than intelligent.

[(Un)Inspired]

If the shoe fits…. :smallwink:

Statistically, I'd expect this pattern to be more likely than normal on RPG forums. I myself am almost certainly substantially less wise than intelligent.

I'm significantly more Constitutional.

[MonochromeTiger]

I'm significantly more Constitutional.

I...well the only stat I can really associate with sarcasm is charisma and if I had that I'm fairly sure I would be better at making my tone not sound sarcastic when I'm being serious...or be better at being serious..

and on topic reply to phelix, they're a wizard, the best (and likely only) solution to all their problems IS magic.

[Knaight]

Does anything matter other than Mind Rape? Just put them in a pit and supply them with some nutrient rich gruel and breathable air at regular intervals.

Then just write a pleasant backstory into their brain later. Give him whatever morals and ethics you want, whatever motivations you want etc. etc...

Why do the methods of child rearing matter at all? All you want is a good, well adjusted child right? One single casting of Mindrape can get you that.

Lets say, hypothetically, that you actually can give a full backstory, that it's done elaborately enough that they enter the world with the connections they should have through it (e.g. friends), so on and so forth.

You've still inflicted however many years of isolation on someone. You've left a kid in the magical equivalent of solitary confinement - something bad enough that it generally isn't used on imprisoned violent criminals if avoidable - and then to top it off you've added brainwashing more extreme than anything in reality. This is unjustifiable. That they won't remember you doing all of this to them doesn't somehow make it okay.

Children are people. They have human rights, they experience life like anyone else, and they are generally people. This is an unacceptable way to treat people in general, and only makes sense if you assume that your children are somehow your property to do as you see fit with. Said viewpoint is vile.

[Flickerdart]

Children are people. They have human rights, they experience life like anyone else, and they are generally people. This is an unacceptable way to treat people in general, and only makes sense if you assume that your children are somehow your property to do as you see fit with. Said viewpoint is vile.

This is the same forum that figured out how to establish the world's most effective and also nastiest breeding program (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=101587). The topic says optimized, so they're optimizing. Human rights are underpowered in d20.

[MonochromeTiger]

This is the same forum that figured out how to establish the world's most effective and also nastiest breeding program (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=101587). The topic says optimized, so they're optimizing. Human rights are underpowered in d20.

...their child-rearing thread involved terrasques, I feel sad now for not seeing it before.

[(Un)Inspired]

Lets say, hypothetically, that you actually can give a full backstory, that it's done elaborately enough that they enter the world with the connections they should have through it (e.g. friends), so on and so forth.

You've still inflicted however many years of isolation on someone. You've left a kid in the magical equivalent of solitary confinement - something bad enough that it generally isn't used on imprisoned violent criminals if avoidable - and then to top it off you've added brainwashing more extreme than anything in reality. This is unjustifiable. That they won't remember you doing all of this to them doesn't somehow make it okay.

Children are people. They have human rights, they experience life like anyone else, and they are generally people. This is an unacceptable way to treat people in general, and only makes sense if you assume that your children are somehow your property to do as you see fit with. Said viewpoint is vile.

Why do morals matter at all in this discussion? Also why do I have to bow to your moral authority? Doesn't mind taping the child make it okay? They're no negative repercussions for the kid. Any negative vibes he got from growing up in a hole are poofed away.

Is he upset cause he didn't have a childhood? Nope I gave him a childhood

Does he lack social skills? Nayeth, I can give him those too.

Missing an education? Not likely when I'm done casting.

[Coidzor]

So, even if mindrape solves all issues of education and mental health...

What are we doing to ensure that children have good physical and mental ability scores or at least a high point buy?


If the shoe fits…. :smallwink:

Statistically, I'd expect this pattern to be more likely than normal on RPG forums. I myself am almost certainly substantially less wise than intelligent.

The way we interact seems like it would be more likely to favor Int over Wis when we take what we produce as a group as a whole. I think the topic more than anything determines how emergent Wis will manifest.

[Jeff the Green]

This is the same forum that figured out how to establish the world's most effective and also nastiest breeding program (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=101587). The topic says optimized, so they're optimizing. Human rights are underpowered in d20.

Yes, but the goal of the emerald legion is an invincible army. The goal of child rearing isn't "eighteen years of misery and then perfection."

Also, what happens if you die before you have a chance to come back and mindrape them? If some paladin comes along and rescues them? When an elemental weird nanny is both safer and more certain, why would such a risky and inhumane option even be considered? It can't be because it's easier, because you can call an elemental weird with GPB two levels before you could mindrape the kid.

Edit:

Why do morals matter at all in this discussion? Also why do I have to bow to your moral authority? Doesn't mind taping the child make it okay? They're no negative repercussions for the kid. Any negative vibes he got from growing up in a hole are poofed away.

Is he upset cause he didn't have a childhood? Nope I gave him a childhood

Does he lack social skills? Nayeth, I can give him those too.

Missing an education? Not likely when I'm done casting.

You're assuming that the instantiations of Kid between birth and 18 have less moral worth than the instantiations that came after 18. In which case everyone should be fine being tortured so long as we give them that drug that prevents you from forming memories right after. Personally, I wouldn't volunteer for that.

[(Un)Inspired]

Yes, but the goal of the emerald legion is an invincible army. The goal of child rearing isn't "eighteen years of misery and then perfection."

Also, what happens if you die before you have a chance to come back and mindrape them? If some paladin comes along and rescues them? When an elemental weird nanny is both safer and more certain, why would such a risky and inhumane option even be considered? It can't be because it's easier, because you can call an elemental weird with GPB two levels before you could mindrape the kid.

What would happen? Well first I guess that paladin should fall for dooming that kid to a horrible life and second that kid would have a horrible life.

[Coidzor]

Yes, but the goal of the emerald legion is an invincible army. The goal of child rearing isn't "eighteen years of misery and then perfection."

Also, what happens if you die before you have a chance to come back and mindrape them? If some paladin comes along and rescues them? When an elemental weird nanny is both safer and more certain, why would such a risky and inhumane option even be considered? It can't be because it's easier, because you can call an elemental weird with GPB two levels before you could mindrape the kid.

I'd like to think of Mindrape as the final finishing touches and polish. Like at the end of a tutorial level where you're allowed to completely rebuild your character before settling on one for the rest of the game.

[Jeff the Green]

I'd like to think of Mindrape as the final finishing touches and polish. Like at the end of a tutorial level where you're allowed to completely rebuild your character before settling on one for the rest of the game.

See, that I don't have a problem with. There are a number of lessons I would not mind having had implanted in my mind at 18 when I failed to learn them before them. Like: Thou shalt no longer eat a dozen donuts in a sitting, for thy metabolism doth begin to slow. Also, thou wilt have a tummy ache.

[HaikenEdge]

Yes, but the goal of the emerald legion is an invincible army. The goal of child rearing isn't "eighteen years of misery and then perfection."

Also, what happens if you die before you have a chance to come back and mindrape them? If some paladin comes along and rescues them? When an elemental weird nanny is both safer and more certain, why would such a risky and inhumane option even be considered? It can't be because it's easier, because you can call an elemental weird with GPB two levels before you could mindrape the kid.

Yeah, no, if you're a high enough level Wizard to a point where you can consistently cast Mindrape, you're high enough level to just be untouchable by anything outside of DM fiat. Hell, you can stash said baby on a Genesis plane with the flowing-time trait, then pop out and pop back in. The Paladin in question doesn't stand a chance of finding said child, and the Wizard is pretty much death-proof anyways, so that's not even an acceptable objection.

As for why you would mindrape the child: a child raised by an elemental weird gets to have their own opinions and beliefs. A child you mindraped, has the opinions and beliefs you give it.


You're assuming that the instantiations of Kid between birth and 18 have less moral worth than the instantiations that came after 18. In which case everyone should be fine being tortured so long as we give them that drug that prevents you from forming memories right after. Personally, I wouldn't volunteer for that.

I think you're confused; like the child, you don't get a choice. Unless you're at a level with a similar saving throw, that Mindrape is going into your head whether you like it or not, and afterwards, you won't ever remember thinking any other way.

Morality doesn't really have a place in a discussion of optimization; in terms of optimization, it's far cheaper, quicker and more efficient to just cram the child's head full of knowledge, than it would be to hire the requisite tutors and what not.

[Jeff the Green]

Yeah, no, if you're a high enough level Wizard to a point where you can consistently cast Mindrape, you're high enough level to just be untouchable by anything outside of DM fiat. Hell, you can stash said baby on a Genesis plane with the flowing-time trait, then pop out and pop back in. The Paladin in question doesn't stand a chance of finding said child, and the Wizard is pretty much death-proof anyways, so that's not even an acceptable objection.

Okay, fine, a similarly optimized wizard. I'm fairly sure he has a 50% chance of being able to stop you from making it there even if he can't kill you.


As for why you would mindrape the child: a child raised by an elemental weird gets to have their own opinions and beliefs. A child you mindraped, has the opinions and beliefs you give it.

Uh huh. So are you topping the kid up every few months with another mindrape? Because years 0-17 aren't the only things that produce opinions and belief. Plus you have to assume that not only do you stand on the shoulders of giants, but no one can see any further if they stand on your shoulders. Which I suppose you could believe with Intelligence 36 and Wisdom 2. :smallannoyed:


I think you're confused; like the child, you don't get a choice. Unless you're at a level with a similar saving throw, that Mindrape is going into your head whether you like it or not, and afterwards, you won't ever remember thinking any other way.

That's entirely irrelevant to what I was saying. In order for you to think that was okay, you'd have to think that memory is the only thing that matters, and not experience.


Morality doesn't really have a place in a discussion of optimization; in terms of optimization, it's far cheaper, quicker and more efficient to just cram the child's head full of knowledge, than it would be to hire the requisite tutors and what not.

(Un)Inspired was the one who asked if the mindrape didn't make it okay. And see my previous statement on the goal of this child-reering. This is one of those optimization scenarios where truenamer-optimization doesn't cut it: 19 levels of suck are not cancelled out by one level of omnipotence.

[(Un)Inspired]

Wait, how is experience different than memory after the fact?

[HaikenEdge]

Okay, fine, a similarly optimized wizard. I'm fairly sure he has a 50% chance of being able to stop you from making it there even if he can't kill you. A similarly optimized wizard is unlikely to want to do it, though; sure, neither party can die, but both parties can make the other miserable for a long time, so there's really no good reason to cross another wizard of similar optimization level.

Only cases where this would happen is if the PC was trying to rescue said child from an NPC's "care", or a NPC was trying to rescue the child from a PC's possession. Either way, it would involve a lots of DM intervention, ie, there's going to be a plot hook involved there somewhere, so it'd be hard to say whether this could even happen outside of a campaign scenario, that is to say, it's unlikely two PCs would try to steal said child from one another.




Uh huh. So are you topping the kid up every few months with another mindrape? Because years 0-17 aren't the only things that produce opinions and belief. Plus you have to assume that not only do you stand on the shoulders of giants, but no one can see any further if they stand on your shoulders. Which I suppose you could believe with Intelligence 36 and Wisdom 2. :smallannoyed:

People react to the world based on how they were taught, and look for evidence supporting their beliefs, oftentimes dismissing evidence contrary to what they want to believe. It's less that you need to mindrape the child every couple months, so much as you craft a mindset and history for the child reflective of how you want them to perceive the world, then set them out onto it, letting the perspective you give them color how they perceive the events that happen to them.

Also, mindraping them on interval is unfeasible, because their memories will start become dissonant with actual events, to a point where, the child will notice the discrepancies and investigate for themselves.




That's entirely irrelevant to what I was saying. In order for you to think that was okay, you'd have to think that memory is the only thing that matters, and not experience.

Experiences are memories. If I eradicate your memories, you have no experiences, and if I give you experiences, then you have your memories. Unless you mean experience points, but there are ways to handle that too, in game, if I recall correctly.




(Un)Inspired was the one who asked if the mindrape didn't make it okay. And see my previous statement on the goal of this child-reering. This is one of those optimization scenarios where truenamer-optimization doesn't cut it: 19 levels of suck are not cancelled out by one level of omnipotence.

Yeah, I'm not seeing how that matters. There are more than one way to raise a child; it seems to me, you're promoting a more traditional methodology of child-raising, whereas I'm thinking more along the lines of battery farming children. Or, if you prefer, you want to produce special individual snowflakes, and I want to mass produce trained killers who will go out into the world as adventurers, a really dangerous profession that very few sane people would want to get into because of the associated risks.

I'm sorry if I'm coming off as really aggressive and confrontational, but I think we just have very different ideas as to what constitutes the "rearing" of a child; I get a sense that you look at the process, and I look at the end result.

[Jeff the Green]

Wait, how is experience different than memory after the fact?

It actually happened? I mean, if this weren't the case it wouldn't matter how you killed something: torturing a cow to death and using a captive bolt gun would be equally ethical means of getting hamburger. Likewise, it'd be fine to take someone with a damaged hypothalamus and use them as your personal non-consensual BDSM partner because they couldn't form memories of the experience.

[Der_DWSage]

I think the issue is more with what happens with the Mindrape. If a single thing goes wrong, whether it's the child dying at some point in those 18 years, to someone taking the child in the interim, to forgetting to feed him at some point, there's too many points of potential error that even a 36 intelligence Wizard could make.

Then there's the Mindrape itself. Sure, you could potentially program your boy/girl to be exactly who you want them to be. But if there's a single misstep, well...good job. You've got yourself a b-list supervillain on your hands, in all likelihood.

That said, if everything goes right, it's just ducky. But I think I'd prefer the Intelligent Item + Elemental Weird combo. There's a lot fewer chances for things to go wrong, up to and including the deities looking at what you're doing and declaring holy war on you.

(I've avoided the moral implications for a single reason-this is a TO discussion. Morals don't have much place there. That said, yeah, you have to live with the fact that you're essentially committing 18 years of child abuse with that method. I certainly couldn't live with that.)

[Knaight]

Yes, but the goal of the emerald legion is an invincible army. The goal of child rearing isn't "eighteen years of misery and then perfection."

Exactly this. Optimized child rearing isn't just about producing the best adult possible. The children also have value, and as such optimizing child rearing also means doing what you can to ensure a good childhood. Solitary confinement is not a means to this.


You're assuming that the instantiations of Kid between birth and 18 have less moral worth than the instantiations that came after 18. In which case everyone should be fine being tortured so long as we give them that drug that prevents you from forming memories right after. Personally, I wouldn't volunteer for that.
It's a very end focused viewpoint, that totally ignores everything between now and whatever the end is.

[(Un)Inspired]

It actually happened? I mean, if this weren't the case it wouldn't matter how you killed something: torturing a cow to death and using a captive bolt gun would be equally ethical means of getting hamburger. Likewise, it'd be fine to take someone with a damaged hypothalamus and use them as your personal non-consensual BDSM partner because they couldn't form memories of the experience.

Why does something happening make it important? Lets take your cow example because it's less sensational and were less likely to fall into the fun little emotional traps that your second scenario attempts to lay.

Why does it matter if your tortured the cow to death or if you went No Country for Old Men on it? The cow is now dead. It's completely unfeeling. It cannot react to anything that you did to it. In what way is the world affected by your Sadism parade on the cow? The horrendous conditions of its life are irrelevant once its dead. The only thing that changes is that some people might feel bad for the poor heffer and that can be solved with lying to them.

If you are fearing the wrath of a cow ghost then... well I can't help you. Contact your local Shaman? Cow Shaman? Is this what Space Cowboys are actually for?



Exactly this. Optimized child rearing isn't just about producing the best adult possible. The children also have value, and as such optimizing child rearing also means doing what you can to ensure a good childhood. Solitary confinement is not a means to this.
.

I totally fail to see any value a child can have that can't be replicated better and faster with magic, including emotional fulfillment.

[Kazyan]

Besides the use of heal et al. to erase the child's surely vast derangements, I don't think it's been addressed that the shoebox method will produce a child with awful ability scores and no ability to use language--although now that I think about it, the latter can be corrected with a Pearl of Speech. The former is particularly important if you go with HaikenEdge's goal of producing an adventurer that is basically your character's own PC.

I think completely disregarding morality works for most TO, but childrearing is inherently a very morally-charged process. While you can and should have your own views, it's probably best to not be Voldemort about the whole thing.

[(Un)Inspired]

Besides the use of heal et al. to erase the child's surely vast derangements, I don't think it's been addressed that the shoebox method will produce a child with awful ability scores and no ability to use language--although now that I think about it, the latter can be corrected with a Pearl of Speech. The former is particularly important if you go with HaikenEdge's goal of producing an adventurer that is basically your character's own PC.

I think completely disregarding morality works for most TO, but childrearing is inherently a very morally-charged process. While you can and should have your own views, it's probably best to not be Voldemort about the whole thing.

Do the books have any official rules for how ability scores develop on children and the effects of being raised in a pit on them? I've never seen any. In the absence of them I would say that at worst the child is taking ability damage to his physical stat for lack of exercise and to his mental stat from lack of stimulation. Those can be cured with more spells. But I still think penalizing ability scores at all would be a house rule.

[Urpriest]

As for why you would mindrape the child: a child raised by an elemental weird gets to have their own opinions and beliefs. A child you mindraped, has the opinions and beliefs you give it.

Yes, and the opinions and beliefs the Elemental Weird inculcates will be objectively better than yours, due to infinite use of Divination and likely higher Wis. Plus, if you pick one that knows Mindrape (they get 9ths after all), it can decide whether or not its use is warranted, and unlike you is basically guaranteed to make the correct decision.

[HaikenEdge]

Besides the use of heal et al. to erase the child's surely vast derangements, I don't think it's been addressed that the shoebox method will produce a child with awful ability scores and no ability to use language--although now that I think about it, the latter can be corrected with a Pearl of Speech. The former is particularly important if you go with HaikenEdge's goal of producing an adventurer that is basically your character's own PC.

I think completely disregarding morality works for most TO, but childrearing is inherently a very morally-charged process. While you can and should have your own views, it's probably best to not be Voldemort about the whole thing.

Because there's no rules on how a child's ability scores actually develop, I made previous inquiries as to whether there was any way to provide the child with some kind of hormone therapy or what not via psychometabolism or what not; without actual rules on child development, anything we go into is pretty much conjecture based on how our real world functions, when it's somewhat clear, given things like the action economy creating the commoner delivery service, that rules governing our world doesn't necessarily apply to the world of D&D.

That is to say, whose to say reduced stats aren't really just ability drain caused by stunted growth, as opposed to having an ability score that was actually stunted during development. In other words, a lack of rules in the area isn't particularly helpful, but, regarding physical ability scores, there are likely hormonal therapies and automated exercise machinery that could be used to help in the development of the child's physical abilities, but again, without rules on the developmental stages of children, all we have is speculation.

[HaikenEdge]

Yes, and the opinions and beliefs the Elemental Weird inculcates will be objectively better than yours, due to infinite use of Divination and likely higher Wis. Plus, if you pick one that knows Mindrape (they get 9ths after all), it can decide whether or not its use is warranted, and unlike you is basically guaranteed to make the correct decision.

Objectively, or subjectively? That is to say, this is a case where, as an optimization challenge, the elemental weird might produce a better child if the child you're looking for should also fall under the elemental weird's worldview; however, if you want a child who shares a worldview with you (or to have a completely different but specific worldview), with a background you want the child to have, then the elemental weird is objectively inferior.

That's to say, I think we have different endgames: you want to raise a child, any child, in a good (procedural, not necessarily moral) manner; I want to raise a child that I can fire as a ballistic missile at a target and then let it play out. I think both approaches are valid, so I'm not discounting what you're suggesting; I'm just pointing out that, the version I'm suggesting isn't without merits.

[(Un)Inspired]

Yes, and the opinions and beliefs the Elemental Weird inculcates will be objectively better than yours, due to infinite use of Divination and likely higher Wis. Plus, if you pick one that knows Mindrape (they get 9ths after all), it can decide whether or not its use is warranted, and unlike you is basically guaranteed to make the correct decision.

Ok. I just did some research on Elemental Weirds. I'm totally diplomacy bombing one into going into my child pit to raise the kid. They are so awesome and seem perfect for raising my pit-child.

[Jeff the Green]

A similarly optimized wizard is unlikely to want to do it, though; sure, neither party can die, but both parties can make the other miserable for a long time, so there's really no good reason to cross another wizard of similar optimization level.

Only cases where this would happen is if the PC was trying to rescue said child from an NPC's "care", or a NPC was trying to rescue the child from a PC's possession. Either way, it would involve a lots of DM intervention, ie, there's going to be a plot hook involved there somewhere, so it'd be hard to say whether this could even happen outside of a campaign scenario, that is to say, it's unlikely two PCs would try to steal said child from one another.

Honestly? If I were playing in a game and my fellow wizard tried this, even the villains I play would drop anything to stop them. Including chasing after the inevitable that's trying to release Pandorym.


People react to the world based on how they were taught, and look for evidence supporting their beliefs, oftentimes dismissing evidence contrary to what they want to believe. It's less that you need to mindrape the child every couple months, so much as you craft a mindset and history for the child reflective of how you want them to perceive the world, then set them out onto it, letting the perspective you give them color how they perceive the events that happen to them.

Also, mindraping them on interval is unfeasible, because their memories will start become dissonant with actual events, to a point where, the child will notice the discrepancies and investigate for themselves.

Which is why everyone born of fundamentalist Christian Republicans ends up as such, and everyone spawned by hippie-dippie granola-eating lefties ends up working at Whole Foods. Oh, wait.

Adult experiences (also body chemistry, which mindrape can't change) matter a lot.

For the latter point, how are you preventing their memories of childhood from being dissonant with reality? Unless their background is "you hate everyone in your home village, including the other kids you played with" or "your nanny elemental weird got killed in a planar invasion and an artificer ate your sentient babysitter ring", neither of which are likely to create happy adults, you have acquaintances you're either making up out of whole cloth that they might at some point want to go back and visit.

I have some very vivid memories from childhood that are confabulations. I know this not because they're bizarre or my dad told me he implanted false memories as a gag (something I can imagine him considering, actually) but because they're inconsistent with other people's memories.


Experiences are memories. If I eradicate your memories, you have no experiences, and if I give you experiences, then you have your memories. Unless you mean experience points, but there are ways to handle that too, in game, if I recall correctly.

Child!Newborn through Child!JustBeforeMindrape still existed. The fact that there is now nothing causally connecting them to a living being is irrelevant


Yeah, I'm not seeing how that matters. There are more than one way to raise a child; it seems to me, you're promoting a more traditional methodology of child-raising, whereas I'm thinking more along the lines of battery farming children. Or, if you prefer, you want to produce special individual snowflakes, and I want to mass produce trained killers who will go out into the world as adventurers, a really dangerous profession that very few sane people would want to get into because of the associated risks.

I'm sorry if I'm coming off as really aggressive and confrontational, but I think we just have very different ideas as to what constitutes the "rearing" of a child; I get a sense that you look at the process, and I look at the end result.

That's the problem. End result isn't sufficient in this case. As I've mentioned before, just because there is no causal link between the past child and the present child does not mean that the past child did not exist and suffer.


Why does something happening make it important? Lets take your cow example because it's less sensational and were less likely to fall into the fun little emotional traps that your second scenario attempts to lay.

They're not emotional traps. It's called reductio ad absurdam and any logical argument has to stand up to it.


That's to say, I think we have different endgames: you want to raise a child, any child, in a good (procedural, not necessarily moral) manner; I want to raise a child that I can fire as a ballistic missile at a target and then let it play out. I think both approaches are valid, so I'm not discounting what you're suggesting; I'm just pointing out that, the version I'm suggesting isn't without merits.

Let's look at the OP. (Emphasis added.)


Hi all! I was inspired by another thread to ask the forum to bend its skills at TO/PO toward a more nurturing and creative purpose than the usual rocket tag/cosmic power/NI action economy that we normally discuss.

Thus,

Give me ideas on how magic and class abilities could be used to optimize the process of bringing up a child.

I'd prefer humane methods; there are various methods of mind-control that can be brought to bear, but would have DM-fiat type effects on a person's psyche if overused, I'd think.

Anyway, all 3.5 sources allowed, including Dragon Magazine. If you care to explain some aspect of PF that you think particularly relevant, go for it. Feats, items, psionics, and other subsystems are all game as well.

These suggestions are akin to someone saying "I'd like advice on how to build a monk. As in, a PHB monk. I know about monk/caster PrCs and swordsage and don't want them. I want a monk," and then you posting "Play a swordsage."

[(Un)Inspired]

They're not emotional traps. It's called reductio ad absurdam and any logical argument has to stand up to it.

Sort of, I don't agree with the premises of your argument but more importantly I don't want to be distracted by attempted appeals to pathos so I decided to focus on your bovine example.

[HaikenEdge]

Honestly? If I were playing in a game and my fellow wizard tried this, even the villains I play would drop anything to stop them. Including chasing after the inevitable that's trying to release Pandorym.

Are you sure you're playing villains, then? Because this is something I would actually do in-game, if the DM allowed it, and if it was a NPC doing it, I really wouldn't interfere unless it got in my own character's way, or it was a plot hook I was dragged along on.

That is to say, it seems like you're going for Even Evil Has Standards (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/EvenEvilHasStandards), and I'm just neutral evil.



Which is why everyone born of fundamentalist Christian Republicans ends up as such, and everyone spawned by hippie-dippie granola-eating lefties ends up working at Whole Foods. Oh, wait.

Adult experiences (also body chemistry, which mindrape can't change) matter a lot.

For the latter point, how are you preventing their memories of childhood from being dissonant with reality? Unless their background is "you hate everyone in your home village, including the other kids you played with" or "your nanny elemental weird got killed in a planar invasion and an artificer ate your sentient babysitter ring", neither of which are likely to create happy adults, you have acquaintances you're either making up out of whole cloth that they might at some point want to go back and visit.

I have some very vivid memories from childhood that are confabulations. I know this not because they're bizarre or my dad told me he implanted false memories as a gag (something I can imagine him considering, actually) but because they're inconsistent with other people's memories.
I'm not saying you need to control them all the way; I'm saying, you just need to control how they are at launch, then you fire them like a missile and let them do their thing. If that doesn't turn out how you want it, go create and fire off another child. And another. And another.

As for the childhood memories you mentioned, I'd just wipe them completely, and start them out with a background I concocted specifically for them. Preferably one suited to my needs. Also, you're creating a lot of specific memories, whereas, I'd more likely create a lot of general memories, and anything that is specifically personal would come back to "I can't remember that name/face/place".

Regarding vivid memories not matching up with the memories of other people, the simplest way to resolve it is to have no other people capable of sharing the person's memories.




Child!Newborn through Child!JustBeforeMindrape still existed. The fact that there is now nothing causally connecting them to a living being is irrelevant
I'm not sure how this is relevant.




That's the problem. End result isn't sufficient in this case. As I've mentioned before, just because there is no causal link between the past child and the present child does not mean that the past child did not exist and suffer.

And? What if I told you I don't care about the suffering of the child? You said the end result is insufficient, and I'm saying the end result is all that matters. Unless you choose to apply morality, both are equally valid perspectives.

[Coidzor]

Morality doesn't really have a place in a discussion of optimization; in terms of optimization, it's far cheaper, quicker and more efficient to just cram the child's head full of knowledge, than it would be to hire the requisite tutors and what not.

Eh, the investment in order to keep the child alive for ~15 years (human adulthood in 3.5) is just a more-or-less trivial investment for a wizard who can casually cast Mindrape. And creating said caretaker-tutors is a trivial increase/alteration of said investment, from what I recall of how one gets such things as simulacrums for free.

Better something that can interact with them and intervene/contact the entity setting this all up than a vacuum.

[HaikenEdge]

Eh, the investment in order to keep the child alive for ~15 years (human adulthood in 3.5) is just a more-or-less trivial investment for a wizard who can casually cast Mindrape. And creating said caretaker-tutors is a trivial increase/alteration of said investment, from what I recall of how one gets such things as simulacrums for free.

Better something that can interact with them and intervene/contact the entity setting this all up than a vacuum.

And I'm coming from the point of view of, "If you want something done right, do it yourself". It's unlikely the tutors will have a skill mod for the skills you want to teach the child higher than what the wizard could conceivably get up to, or could a simulacrum (which would have half the HD, even if you went with something huge [in terms of HD]).

[Jeff the Green]

And? What if I told you I don't care about the suffering of the child? You said the end result is insufficient, and I'm saying the end result is all that matters. Unless you choose to apply morality, both are equally valid perspectives.

See, in case you didn't, what I edited into my last post about the OP.

Also, how are you defining end result? In standard D&D cosmology, you just gave Asmodeus an incomprehensibly powerful soul. Doesn't matter what you do, he's going to collect eventually and will be sending everything in his arsenal (including level 20 wizard pit fiends) to collect it.

[Knaight]

Why does it matter if your tortured the cow to death or if you went No Country for Old Men on it? The cow is now dead. It's completely unfeeling. It cannot react to anything that you did to it. In what way is the world affected by your Sadism parade on the cow? The horrendous conditions of its life are irrelevant once its dead. The only thing that changes is that some people might feel bad for the poor heffer and that can be solved with lying to them.
You're ignoring the period before it dies. Sure, once the cow's dead it doesn't matter to the cow. There's no cow left for it to matter to, just a cow shaped chunk of corpse. During the dying period there is an actual cow suffering needlessly. Said actual cow is affected, and that is an effect on the world - if only a tiny part of it.


I totally fail to see any value a child can have that can't be replicated better and faster with magic, including emotional fulfillment.
It's not about the value a child has to their parents. It's not even about what value that child has to outside society. They have value to themselves, and that's enough to make most of your suggestions dubious at best.

You can argue that it doesn't matter in the long run. As far as that is concerned, I defer to Keynes. "But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead."

[(Un)Inspired]

You're ignoring the period before it dies. Sure, once the cow's dead it doesn't matter to the cow. There's no cow left for it to matter to, just a cow shaped chunk of corpse. During the dying period there is an actual cow suffering needlessly. Said actual cow is affected, and that is an effect on the world - if only a tiny part of it.


It's not about the value a child has to their parents. It's not even about what value that child has to outside society. They have value to themselves, and that's enough to make most of your suggestions dubious at best.

You can argue that it doesn't matter in the long run. As far as that is concerned, I defer to Keynes. "But this long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead."

That's a really cool quote. I don't see why you can't replicate whatever value a child would have for them self using magic.

Why does it matter that the cow suffered before it died? What does it matter that these things happened to the cow? It did affect a small part of the world but it doesn't affect the world afterwards. Like your quote says, in the long run were all dead the circumstances of our lives are irrelevant.

[HaikenEdge]

See, in case you didn't, what I edited into my last post about the OP.

Also, how are you defining end result? In standard D&D cosmology, you just gave Asmodeus an incomprehensibly powerful soul. Doesn't matter what you do, he's going to collect eventually and will be sending everything in his arsenal (including level 20 wizard pit fiends) to collect it.

And I'm saying that it is humane; however, to be fair, I'm not the one who suggested tossing the child into a pit, since my approach was more along the lines of The Matrix, that is to say, put them in some kind of suspended animation while they developed, using a combination of psionics and mechanics to stimulate and control the child's development, then use mindrape to complete their mental construct. That is to say, I don't have any moral objections to tossing the child into a pit, but I believe there are superior ways to controlling the growth and development of the child which are, unfortunately, just not covered within the rules of the game.

Then again, you're talking to somebody who literally believes morality is arbitrary and a construct created by society to protect those who could not otherwise protect themselves, so I think we just have extremely different perspectives to begin with, which is one of the reasons why we haven't reached an agreement.

Also, are you referring the the soul of my PC, or the soul of the child? I don't remember the rules of which souls go to which archdevils, but, looking at the statblock for the Archdevils, they don't seem like they'd be a problem for a high level PC to ace and usurp, due to low optimization on the end of the books.

As for the child's soul, it won't be that powerful for a while.

[(Un)Inspired]

And I'm saying that it is humane; however, to be fair, I'm not the one who suggested tossing the child into a pit, since my approach was more along the lines of The Matrix, that is to say, put them in some kind of suspended animation while they developed, using a combination of psionics and mechanics to stimulate and control the child's development, then use mindrape to complete their mental construct. That is to say, I don't have any moral objections to tossing the child into a pit, but I believe there are superior ways to controlling the growth and development of the child which are, unfortunately, just not covered within the rules of the game.

Then again, you're talking to somebody who literally believes morality is arbitrary and a construct created by society to protect those who could not otherwise protect themselves, so I think we just have extremely different perspectives to begin with, which is one of the reasons why we haven't reached an agreement.

Also, are you referring the the soul of my PC, or the soul of the child? I don't remember the rules of which souls go to which archdevils, but, looking at the statblock for the Archdevils, they don't seem like they'd be a problem for a high level PC to ace and usurp, due to low optimization on the end of the books.

As for the child's soul, it won't be that powerful for a while.


I think morality is a funny way to justify people self righteous behavior and to trick people into persecuting your enemies.

As the current champion of the raise the kid in a pit plan, I'd like to say that my child-pit would be painted in bright colours with giraffes and clowns. The kid is gonna love it.

[Urpriest]

Objectively, or subjectively? That is to say, this is a case where, as an optimization challenge, the elemental weird might produce a better child if the child you're looking for should also fall under the elemental weird's worldview; however, if you want a child who shares a worldview with you (or to have a completely different but specific worldview), with a background you want the child to have, then the elemental weird is objectively inferior.

That's to say, I think we have different endgames: you want to raise a child, any child, in a good (procedural, not necessarily moral) manner; I want to raise a child that I can fire as a ballistic missile at a target and then let it play out. I think both approaches are valid, so I'm not discounting what you're suggesting; I'm just pointing out that, the version I'm suggesting isn't without merits.

I had actually meant objectively. That was mostly because I thought that Elemental Weirds got Divination at-will as a free action, at which point they could simply ask "what is the correct decision" repeatedly until they got a sensible answer without taking any time at all. However, they actually only get Contact Other Plane, which only lets you ask one question per round, so their ability to hone in on the perfect decision is potentially much more time consuming.

To put it another way, you may want to raise a child as a ballistic missile, but if that's just objectively not what you should be doing and someone explained logically why that is the case then you would cease to want to do that, so it's better to put the decision in the hands of someone most qualified to make that call.

[HaikenEdge]

I think morality is a funny way to justify people self righteous behavior and to trick people into persecuting your enemies.

As the current champion of the raise the kid in a pit plan, I'd like to say that my child-pit would be painted in bright colours with giraffes and clowns. The kid is gonna love it.

As the champion of The Matrix idea, I would like to say the child wouldn't even know it exists until I'm ready to let it out of whatever sleep-like effect I put it under, in the flowing-time genesis plane it exists on.

[HaikenEdge]

I had actually meant objectively. That was mostly because I thought that Elemental Weirds got Divination at-will as a free action, at which point they could simply ask "what is the correct decision" repeatedly until they got a sensible answer without taking any time at all. However, they actually only get Contact Other Plane, which only lets you ask one question per round, so their ability to hone in on the perfect decision is potentially much more time consuming.

To put it another way, you may want to raise a child as a ballistic missile, but if that's just objectively not what you should be doing and someone explained logically why that is the case then you would cease to want to do that, so it's better to put the decision in the hands of someone most qualified to make that call.

I'm not exactly sure how you can say that it's "objectively" not what I should be doing, since it seems to presuppose a specific type of worldview, presumably one valuing human life, freedom and happiness, is the only valid one. If anything, it seems to be a very subjective perspective, since it presupposes the values of that worldview are more valid than the worldview of a conflicting worldview.

That is to say, I reject your supposition that it's objectively better because this "objective" perspective is based on assumptions which serve the perspective and deem perspectives not in agreement with it to be inferior.

[DMVerdandi]

Jean-Jaques Rousseau
Erudite 10/ Thrallheard 10

Emile Rousseau
Erudite 10


Taking in Emile from a wealthy friend to raise as his own, Jean-Jaques takes on the task of raising Emile to be a powerful erudite, not reliant on the magic but turning those spells into powers.

Emile is 10 years old. Jean-Jaques has been training him on a demi-plane made with the genesis power. Jean-Jaques has been loading powers into Emile for quite some time now, and as Emile is his thrall, he risks no danger in him rebelling.

They eat by creating magical food, they amuse themselves and train by summoning monsters to fight and kill (Also how they farm for XP), and by thinking deeply and philosophizing with each other about the nature of things.

Emile is a physically impressive boy, as he has read the magical tomes that increase ability scores, as well as had reality revisions to increase the scores even further. He is a paragon specimen of a human being.

Soon he inches closer to level 20, where Rousseau will allow him to go free, after imparting on him every spell possible.

[Flickerdart]

Soon he inches closer to level 20, where Rousseau will allow him to go free, after imparting on him every spell possible.
Pretty sure that it'll be considered too cruel by some people in this thread to teach him rubbish spells like Bigby's Disrupting Hand.

[Jeff the Green]

Pretty sure that it'll be considered too cruel by some people in this thread to teach him rubbish spells like Bigby's Disrupting Hand.

Ppppft! Knowledge for its own sake, sir.

They'd probably need to call rather than summon for XPH, though. Summons are under control of their summoner and so probably don't count as an actual challenge.

[Qoios]

As Jeff the Green previously noted, the most significant issue with the premises of (Un)Inspired's & HaikenEdge's methods is that while they may fulfill their respective Epic Erudite Parent's objectives of creating whatever resultant persons they desire, this does not seem particularly relevant in light of the OP's original objective of optimizing the process of raising the child. Not optimizing the result.

Ethical concerns aside (and ignoring, for the moment, the numerous Evil Overlord List violations their methods entail), their objective of weaponizable persons is not relevant to a discussion of how to enhance the process of child-rearing, because it stems from a results-focused paradigm, instead of a process-focused paradigm. With that established, I'll now deconstruct their methods from within such a results-focused paradigm:

(Un)Inspired's Pit-N-Porridge method does not have any appreciable advantages over simply using the Mindrape spell on an already existing adult. His pit-raising has done nothing to condition the body of this child to be more capable than any other individual, and is in fact likely to result in a deficient, notably incapable individual. Also, (Un)Inspired loses style points for a particularly boring approach to the problem of person making. Normal breeding, normal birthing, basic sustenance and confinement, then Mindrape. Unispired, indeed.

HaikenEdge's Matrix Stasis fails to understand that the end-result desired from child-rearing is an independent, equal adult, not a disposable person-weapon. Any failure to understand that should be enough to disqualify one from any kind of child-rearing. However, for the purpose of creating a living biologically mature creature matching certain specifications, his method is explicitly superior to (Un)Inspired's method, and begins to approach a level of investment appropriate for a dedicated Epic Erudite Parent. However, it lacks logistical sense.

Given his objective of creating a person that he can "fire as a ballistic missile at a target", he would be much better off pursuing other methods of person creation. Namely, constructs. They're much more readily programmable, have better natural capabilities and statistics, versions exist to cover every possible murder-person model desired, and, instead of needing to perform Mindrape upon them to top off his creation, he can instead use Incarnate Construct to turn it from a robot into a natural creature. Or use robots. Because, well, robots! Raising natural-born children in this way is time-inefficient, and provides no appreciable benefits over construct creation for his apparent objective of creating missile-people. I'm sure that the true Optimizers of the Playground can assert that there are even better ways to create powerful pawns than I've suggested, but my point still stands that HaikenEdge's method is sub-optimal, given the resources of his Epic Erudite Parent.

Both of their Methods share the serious flaw of creating individuals who would be extremely likely to turn upon their creator if the method of their creation was revealed to them, or if the Mindraping were somehow undone. This is not good planning. You want to ensure that your minions do not resent what you've done to make them into good minions, and you cannot assume that your resources are greater than those of your enemies. If your magic can do it, theirs can undo it. You've got to use subtler methods if you want real reliability when the magic turns off. Like, for example, realizing that morality is not just "a construct created by society to protect those who could not otherwise protect themselves". It's an indicator of group psychology, and is useful for understanding the reactions your actions will incite from others. Interdependence is at the core of human interactions, morality is a guideline for teaching how the interplay of those interactions work. Ensuring that you do not immediately draw the ire of others who learn of your actions is optimal, unless you know that there is a 0% chance that they, or those they could involve could interfere with your aims.

So far, DMVerdandi's Rousseau Family and Kayzan's Simulacrum Daycare have made the greatest strides towards involved-yet-optimized child-rearing, for the purposes of creating a child, rather than an expendable pawn. Now, I do seriously hope that this conversation can return to the original subject: Optimizing the process of raising children, rather than devolving into a Build-a-Bastard Competition.

TLDR: (Un)Inspired's & HaikenEdge's Methods are bad, and miss the point. Morality has a place in Practical Optimization. Jeff the Green, Kayzan, and DMVerdandi are awesome.

[Phelix-Mu]

@mindrape debate: One good reason not to mindrape is because, unlike actually doing something challenging, mindrape has no potential to enrich the life of the mindraper. If you are already an amoral wizard that finds it amusing and engaging to Easy Button relationships into nonexistence, then this is fine. But most people will find that this is not the case.

The difference between experience and memory is that one is based on concluding there is objective reality, while the second is based on a very subjective internal reality. Just because I can make everyone around me have whatever internal subjective reality I wish doesn't mean that I should. Why not? Because, at the end of the day, everyone else had a decent life (or whatever else their new memories say), while I spent all of my time programming people like they were computers.

In short, the folly isn't that perfect manipulation of others' memories is bad for them; that's beside the point. It's just that it may fail to satisfy the manipulator's own desire for an actual life (or for people with whom the manipulator shared an actual life).

Physician, mindrape thyself.

Purely non-RAW, of course, but I did state in the OP that preference is given to non-mindrapey type methods.

[HaikenEdge]

HaikenEdge's Matrix Stasis fails to understand that the end-result desired from child-rearing is an independent, equal adult, not a disposable person-weapon. Any failure to understand that should be enough to disqualify one from any kind of child-rearing. However, for the purpose of creating a living biologically mature creature matching certain specifications, his method is explicitly superior to (Un)Inspired's method, and begins to approach a level of investment appropriate for a dedicated Epic Erudite Parent. However, it lacks logistical sense.

Given his objective of creating a person that he can "fire as a ballistic missile at a target", he would be much better off pursuing other methods of person creation. Namely, constructs. They're much more readily programmable, have better natural capabilities and statistics, versions exist to cover every possible murder-person model desired, and, instead of needing to perform Mindrape upon them to top off his creation, he can instead use Incarnate Construct to turn it from a robot into a natural creature. Or use robots. Because, well, robots! Raising natural-born children in this way is time-inefficient, and provides no appreciable benefits over construct creation for his apparent objective of creating missile-people. I'm sure that the true Optimizers of the Playground can assert that there are even better ways to create powerful pawns than I've suggested, but my point still stands that HaikenEdge's method is sub-optimal, given the resources of his Epic Erudite Parent.

Both of their Methods share the serious flaw of creating individuals who would be extremely likely to turn upon their creator if the method of their creation was revealed to them, or if the Mindraping were somehow undone. This is not good planning. You want to ensure that your minions do not resent what you've done to make them into good minions, and you cannot assume that your resources are greater than those of your enemies. If your magic can do it, theirs can undo it. You've got to use subtler methods if you want real reliability when the magic turns off. Like, for example, realizing that morality is not just "a construct created by society to protect those who could not otherwise protect themselves". It's an indicator of group psychology, and is useful for understanding the reactions your actions will incite from others. Interdependence is at the core of human interactions, morality is a guideline for teaching how the interplay of those interactions work. Ensuring that you do not immediately draw the ire of others who learn of your actions is optimal, unless you know that there is a 0% chance that they, or those they could involve could interfere with your aims.

The reason why I chose the went with growing an artificial human, as opposed to, say, going with an incarnate construct, was because an incarnate construct will detect as a humanoid but with no subtype, and thus wouldn't pass a lot of simple detection schemes. The idea of the "fire and forget" child isn't so much the fact I'm trying to create an army of minions, but more along the lines of one-off adventurers who I can then point at a quest goal and send them off to it, after which they're free to do their own thing. These are not pawns that I'm creating, but more along the lines mass-produced guided missiles that can be fired at a target, ie, a quest objective, but will continue to grow and progress once they complete their task.

Regarding time-expenditure, the only really time-consuming aspect, as far as I can tell, would be setup (the flowing time genesis plane, the machinery and psionics required for an ideal development) and the procurement of babies; the rest is relatively automated, and due to being in a flowing-time plane, could possibly be completed in a round in prime-material-plane-time, with the added benefit of making it possible to mass produce said adults.

I think one of the reasons why you're misunderstanding where I'm coming from is that I'm not really interested in creating minions, or even having meaningful relationships with the adults I'm producing; in my scenario, I'm creating instant adventurers I can send off to, say, slay the evil red dragon terrorizing the countryside, or, fetch the magical potion to cure the king's ailments, or, find a way to stop the Kobolds living in the warrens from stealing all the village's food. Whether they rebel against me or not is irrelevant, because I don't have any long-term plans for any individual one of them, and I have no interest in even knowing them after I fire them off.

That's to say, I'm not interested in being a parent; I'm interested in quickly producing fully-grown adults who can be sent off as adventurers to do the low-level quests I wouldn't get XP for if I did them.

Maybe the best way to put it is, I'm addressing the topic of "Optimized child-rearing in a magical world" in a more literal sense, than in the sense of "How would I raise a baby in a nice, optimized manner".

[ideasmith]

Because there's no rules on how a child's ability scores actually develop, I made previous inquiries as to whether there was any way to provide the child with some kind of hormone therapy or what not via psychometabolism or what not; without actual rules on child development, anything we go into is pretty much conjecture based on how our real world functions, when it's somewhat clear, given things like the action economy creating the commoner delivery service, that rules governing our world doesn't necessarily apply to the world of D&D.

That is to say, whose to say reduced stats aren't really just ability drain caused by stunted growth, as opposed to having an ability score that was actually stunted during development. In other words, a lack of rules in the area isn't particularly helpful, but, regarding physical ability scores, there are likely hormonal therapies and automated exercise machinery that could be used to help in the development of the child's physical abilities, but again, without rules on the developmental stages of children, all we have is speculation.

While there aren’t any official rules for this, nor any third party rules for it that I know of, there is at least one set of homebrew rules for babies and children (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=216088). (A little scrolling down is needed, but it is in the OP.)

These might do if nothing better shows up.

[Coidzor]

The reason why I chose the went with growing an artificial human, as opposed to, say, going with an incarnate construct, was because an incarnate construct will detect as a humanoid but with no subtype, and thus wouldn't pass a lot of simple detection schemes. The idea of the "fire and forget" child isn't so much the fact I'm trying to create an army of minions, but more along the lines of one-off adventurers who I can then point at a quest goal and send them off to it, after which they're free to do their own thing. These are not pawns that I'm creating, but more along the lines mass-produced guided missiles that can be fired at a target, ie, a quest objective, but will continue to grow and progress once they complete their task.

Regarding time-expenditure, the only really time-consuming aspect, as far as I can tell, would be setup (the flowing time genesis plane, the machinery and psionics required for an ideal development) and the procurement of babies; the rest is relatively automated, and due to being in a flowing-time plane, could possibly be completed in a round in prime-material-plane-time, with the added benefit of making it possible to mass produce said adults.

I think one of the reasons why you're misunderstanding where I'm coming from is that I'm not really interested in creating minions, or even having meaningful relationships with the adults I'm producing; in my scenario, I'm creating instant adventurers I can send off to, say, slay the evil red dragon terrorizing the countryside, or, fetch the magical potion to cure the king's ailments, or, find a way to stop the Kobolds living in the warrens from stealing all the village's food. Whether they rebel against me or not is irrelevant, because I don't have any long-term plans for any individual one of them, and I have no interest in even knowing them after I fire them off.

That's to say, I'm not interested in being a parent; I'm interested in quickly producing fully-grown adults who can be sent off as adventurers to do the low-level quests I wouldn't get XP for if I did them.

Maybe the best way to put it is, I'm addressing the topic of "Optimized child-rearing in a magical world" in a more literal sense, than in the sense of "How would I raise a baby in a nice, optimized manner".

Scans more like optimized adventurer mass production. Which, as long as you also can prevent them from ever being linked back to you, is a great and useful thing to have on the table.

[HaikenEdge]

Scans more like optimized adventurer mass production. Which, as long as you also can prevent them from ever being linked back to you, is a great and useful thing to have on the table.

Technically, the definition of "child-rearing" is "the care and upbringing of a child", so it technically fits the parameters of the thread title, albeit probably not in the traditional sense.

Besides, I think the original intent was the raising of children, as though they were all precious individual unique snowflakes; as I don't really take that view towards children (or people in general), I went the other direction, more along the lines of a battery farm mass-producing adults who can be useful to society, with the growth and development aspect (one which I don't find particularly interesting) automated.

[Phelix-Mu]

Technically, the definition of "child-rearing" is "the care and upbringing of a child", so it technically fits the parameters of the thread title, albeit probably not in the traditional sense.

Besides, I think the original intent was the raising of children, as though they were all precious individual unique snowflakes; as I don't really take that view towards children (or people in general), I went the other direction, more along the lines of a battery farm mass-producing adults who can be useful to society, with the growth and development aspect (one which I don't find particularly interesting) automated.

They don't need to be "precious and unique snowflakes," but I was hoping to aim for something a little more generally useful (and more elusive) than the well-trodden "people as cogs in a grand scheme" concept. Not that I have anything against those concepts, of course.

Wasn't there general consensus that time traits can't be copied by the genesis spell/power?

[Naanomi]

One would have to be careful with any scheme that relies on erasing a horrible childhood. 99/100 it works as planned but sometimes you go back to check on it and it's baby madness has ripped a hole to some horrid place beyond the multiverse or drawn the attention of some world-ending jerk or another, which give even epic wizards headaches.

Frankly if that is your game plan, cut out the middle man and just polymorph rocks into blank humans to mindrape or some such, never wory about the hassle (or morality, which lets not forget comes with actual mechanical baggage in DnDworld) of an actual baby

[Urpriest]

I'm not exactly sure how you can say that it's "objectively" not what I should be doing, since it seems to presuppose a specific type of worldview, presumably one valuing human life, freedom and happiness, is the only valid one. If anything, it seems to be a very subjective perspective, since it presupposes the values of that worldview are more valid than the worldview of a conflicting worldview.

That is to say, I reject your supposition that it's objectively better because this "objective" perspective is based on assumptions which serve the perspective and deem perspectives not in agreement with it to be inferior.

You misunderstand, I assume no such thing. I merely assume that the question "what should I do?" is well-formed. I do not assume that the answer to that question ends up valuing human life/freedom/etc. It might, or it might not. But wouldn't you rather have the correct answer, regardless of what it is, than a potentially false answer?

[HaikenEdge]

You misunderstand, I assume no such thing. I merely assume that the question "what should I do?" is well-formed. I do not assume that the answer to that question ends up valuing human life/freedom/etc. It might, or it might not. But wouldn't you rather have the correct answer, regardless of what it is, than a potentially false answer?

The problem with that is the answer to the question, "Should I do X?" will always be a subjective one, since the question is requesting an opinion, as opposed to a fact. You seem to value the opinions of powers of other planes; I don't, because they're not my own, nor the opinions of those I trust.

So, if you prefer, the reason I discount it is basically, every answer you're getting will be false, because it is not an your own. What I don't want is somebody else's answer to what is essentially a subjective question; unless you're asking yes/no questions for very specific scenarios, which have a binary answer ("If I do X, will Y happen?"), you'll basically be asking, "Should I do X?". In the case of the latter question, that's a matter of opinion, whereas, with the first question, it would take too long to ask the question enough times regarding enough scenarios to create a resolution in a timely manner.

[Twilightwyrm]

I think there is a certain faulty assumption here about the use of Mindrape in child development: even if there is no RAW rules regarding the development of ability scores for a child, this still does not mean that use of the Mindrape spell can produce these results.


"The caster enters the mind of a creature, learning everything that creature knows.
The caster can erase or add memories as she sees fit and alter emotions, opinions, and even alignment.
When the caster is done, she can leave the creature insane (as described in the insanity spell) or seemingly unaffected, without any memory of the intrusion.
Severe changes to personality and changes to alignment can be corrected by a break enchantment spell (although an atonement spell might be needed as well, depending on circumstances).
Alterations to memories and subtler thoughts can be restored only through use of a miracle or wish."

By RAW, the only things that the spell can alter are memories, emotions, opinions and alignment. You cannot, by RAW, Mindrape a commoner's class levels away, give them an Int of 18, instantly make them a 20th level cleric, or anything that actually has anything to do with experience. Indeed, whether or not abilities from experience is intrinsically tied to memory in reality or not is irrelevant, because in D&D precedent goes the opposite way. Apparently, in D&D there is some connection between actually doing things and gaining XP/class levels from them. And of all the various memory altering spells in D&D, few to none actually allow any change in ability scores, skills, or class abilities (the closest seems to be Psychic Reformation, which does not via any description in the text, actually alter memories in the subject of the spell). Therefore Mindrape alone cannot, by RAW, accomplish the adventurer creating purpose (Un)Inspired an HaikenEdge wish it to, even if they care nothing for the moral ramifications.
As for the resulting child, well as has been pointed out, there is little to no precedent for ability score development in D&D. Because of this, RL takes over where D&D leaves off (See: "Dead" condition). While D&D precedent indicates that falsified or artificial experiences do not actually grant XP, change class, skills, etc, there is no precedent for the "temporary ability damage" theory, and therefore we are free to assume that maturation and development of specie in D&D progresses much as it does in real life i.e. real continuous mental and physical stimulation is necessary to produce intelligent, capable adults of a species. Singular or even multiple applications or the Mindrape spell do not alter these parameters. Therefore, keeping the child in either a) a hole in the ground or b) stasis for their entire life is likely to produce a sickly, barely sentient 1st level commoner, not a perfectly healthy blank slate for you to program with your desired class and abilities.
So it should be kept in mind when debating this subject the best you can get, by the RAW for Mindrape and real life extrapolation, with the "Mindrape Method" is a underdeveloped, animalistic 1st level commoner that thinks its X adventuring class. Not so much a ballistic missile as an balloon you just let the air out of.

[Endarire]

What if you're in an E6 setting?

[Hecuba]

To play devil's advocate:

1) Mindrape cannot change ability scores. If you put your child in solitary confinement with no mental stimulation for the duration of their upbringing, they will learn only the most rudimentary thought patterns, have no worldly experience, be basically unable to express themselves, and have no social experience. [...]

True to a point, but if you can 1/3 of peak human performance with a nice set of books. So you can afford at least some brain damage.


2) Mindrape cannot impart language, in the way we use it, anyway.
If they get at least 2 skill points and you can get them a psionic reformation, language is easy.


3) Mindrape has no ability to erase mental illnesses; they are nether memory, emotion, opinion, nor alignment. Long-term solitary confinement severely damages a subject's psychology.
Correct: mind rape has an option to cause insanity, but not cure it.
To cure insanity, you want Heal.


4) No amount of Mindrape will undo the fact that, if your character does this, they have committed child abuse.
Not going to devil's advocate this one: it's not the kind of thing one tries to gussy up.

[Urpriest]

What if you're in an E6 setting?

Then your DM wants you to not solve all of your problems with magic, and you probably shouldn't try to do so?

[Tengu_temp]

Thread lurker here! I'd like to point out two things:
1. The OP said that ethical ways of raising children are preferable.
2. If we go for unethical, let's just go with something funny and creative. "Keep the kid in a hole for years and then mindrape a happy childhood into it" is pretty boring.


I think morality is a funny way to justify people self righteous behavior and to trick people into persecuting your enemies.

So edgy I cut myself.

---

Can we go back to coming up with new ideas now?

[Coidzor]

Then your DM wants you to not solve all of your problems with magic, and you probably shouldn't try to do so?

Even in E6 you're not expected to never use magic ever though. :smalltongue: I imagine the question is how you'd do it without the ability to just magic up perfect caretakers and give it whatever physical body you wanted to.

[Drachasor]

Thread lurker here! I'd like to point out two things:
1. The OP said that ethical ways of raising children are preferable.
2. If we go for unethical, let's just go with something funny and creative. "Keep the kid in a hole for years and then mindrape a happy childhood into it" is pretty boring.

Years? Kill them, reincarnate, mindrape. Done. Sorry about the con loss (there is probably a way around that). Boring as heck though.

Hmm, Lesser Planar Binding should be able to get a suitable guardian and child rearer. Though, I think the more interesting question is what is the best way to set up intellectually stimulating toys.

[Mithril Leaf]

Years? Kill them, reincarnate, mindrape. Done. Sorry about the con loss (there is probably a way around that). Boring as heck though.

Hmm, Lesser Planar Binding should be able to get a suitable guardian and child rearer. Though, I think the more interesting question is what is the best way to set up intellectually stimulating toys.

Last Breath has no XP loss.

[Tengu_temp]

intellectually stimulating toys

Mini-dungeon filled with harmless traps. Any kids raised this way will be socially maladjusted to the point becoming adventurers is the only viable future career for them, might as well start early.

[Urpriest]

Here's a thought, in the ethical child-raising direction: it might be worthwhile to give the child an opportunity to experiment with being different genders (or even species). Any way to give someone else the ability to Alter Self?

For that matter, polymorphing the kid occasionally is a fantasy child-rearing trope of long lineage, just look at Merlin and Arthur.

[Drachasor]

Here's a thought, in the ethical child-raising direction: it might be worthwhile to give the child an opportunity to experiment with being different genders (or even species). Any way to give someone else the ability to Alter Self?

For that matter, polymorphing the kid occasionally is a fantasy child-rearing trope of long lineage, just look at Merlin and Arthur.

You also want teleportation, a lot of teleportation. The world ain't just 3 dimensions.

I'd recommend a Ring of Feather Fall (or something that incorporates Feather Fall) and a Ring of Sustenance.

Edit: Though later on the kid is going to be a bit weird.

"Your house is broken. I can't seem to teleport upstairs."

"OMG, what are you putting in your mouth!"

"Ok, princess, I noticed those hobgoblins outside left you tied up in here alone. Mind explaining why you didn't just turn into a bird and rescue yourself? What's wrong with you?"

"Look, I understand your son was pushed off the 100' tower over there. Sounds like a harmless prank, so why are you blowing it out of proportion?"

[otakumick]

If you are an optimized psion of some sort, sure that you are the perfect mental specimen. Mindrape is not the answer for raising a child... normally I would view Mind Seed as a bad idea because overwriting an individual just seems rude(not to mention kinda evil) to me... however, if you used it on a baby before it developed a personality or became self aware( you can use telepathic means to determine that) then you have finished half the job of raising the child in only one week. Mentally (stats and all) the child is now you 8 levels younger. Now the trick is how to raise it physically(and possibly even improve it mentally as it physically develops). A ring of sustenance(preferally with the enchantment from a necklace of adaptation incorporated) can provide for mini-you's nutritional needs. What mini-you needs is a caretaker/personal trainer/playmate possibly that elemental weird nanny. Biggest problems would probably come from how mini-you will react to having an undeveloped/developing body. An interesting idea psychologically.

[Eldest]

Here's a thought, in the ethical child-raising direction: it might be worthwhile to give the child an opportunity to experiment with being different genders (or even species). Any way to give someone else the ability to Alter Self?

For that matter, polymorphing the kid occasionally is a fantasy child-rearing trope of long lineage, just look at Merlin and Arthur.

A better spell for that would be Change Gender from BOEF. (Yes, I've read it, no, it wasn't that horrible, no, I still don't plan on reading it a second time) It's a 1st level spell that, IIRC, changes you to the opposite sex/gender (both) for 1 hour/CL, and can be made permanent, unlike alter self.

[Phelix-Mu]

If you are an optimized psion of some sort, sure that you are the perfect mental specimen. Mindrape is not the answer for raising a child... normally I would view Mind Seed as a bad idea because overwriting an individual just seems rude(not to mention kinda evil) to me... however, if you used it on a baby before it developed a personality or became self aware( you can use telepathic means to determine that) then you have finished half the job of raising the child in only one week. Mentally (stats and all) the child is now you 8 levels younger. Now the trick is how to raise it physically(and possibly even improve it mentally as it physically develops). A ring of sustenance(preferally with the enchantment from a necklace of adaptation incorporated) can provide for mini-you's nutritional needs. What mini-you needs is a caretaker/personal trainer/playmate possibly that elemental weird nanny. Biggest problems would probably come from how mini-you will react to having an undeveloped/developing body. An interesting idea psychologically.

Gives living vicariously through your children an entirely new meaning. Too bad that's normally seen as a harmful thing to do.


I do like the idea of a nanny/protector. If it's the child of an adventurer, chances are it's a target of the DM some old score that was never quite settled. Elemental weird is a good idea, but I'd be kind of worried that the weird would resent being forced to be a nanny (and weirds play a really, really long game), so this might be a case for a simulacrum/ice assassin.

Moreover, I think we are overstating the use of trying to give the child experience/pc levels/optimized stats. Sure, the child should be well-educated and have a stimulating experience, but if we think that process is a valuable thing in and of itself, then we shouldn't be too attached to the mechanical oomph of the outcome. Infirmity and sickness are obviously worth preventing, just as in real life, but I think if you attack the child with the full monty of optimizing effects, the child will likely end up feeling that it isn't valued for itself, just for what the parent thinks the child could be after spell/power combos x, y, and z. Which would result in some self-esteem issues.

You could always mindrape those issues away, but I tend to feel if you are using mindrape to cover up flaws in your approach, your approach is not optimal.

EDIT: A change gender spell is canon in my houserules; so self-evident, really. Anyway, don't they still have a cursed item for gender-switching?

[Lord Vukodlak]

Calm Emotions would probably be useful. Persist it when the kid becomes a teenager.

That couldn't possibly have long term negative ramifications.

[Phelix-Mu]

That couldn't possibly have long term negative ramifications.

I drug all my children. Right after my dose of Mother's Little Helper, Johnny and Tina get their dose of mood-stabilizers.:smalltongue:

(Lol, suddenly had a flashback of Pillsy the Squirrel.)

[Drachasor]

Moreover, I think we are overstating the use of trying to give the child experience/pc levels/optimized stats. Sure, the child should be well-educated and have a stimulating experience, but if we think that process is a valuable thing in and of itself, then we shouldn't be too attached to the mechanical oomph of the outcome. Infirmity and sickness are obviously worth preventing, just as in real life, but I think if you attack the child with the full monty of optimizing effects, the child will likely end up feeling that it isn't valued for itself, just for what the parent thinks the child could be after spell/power combos x, y, and z. Which would result in some self-esteem issues.

I think you can avoid this issues just by actually spending time with your child, or at the very least making sure the time you spend with them is quality time. Children today don't view toys, vaccinations, doctor visits, school, and the like as their parents just caring about the min/max result. You're only going to get concerns like that by not treating them as individuals, and that's independent of min/max stuff.

But it is important to remember not to put too much pressure on a child. However, min/maxing in other ways should still be fine.

[Zetapup]

The following scenario assumes you want a large amount of semi-normal (how normal are you going to be being raised by a deity-like wizard though) children raised in a morally gray area at the worst to become adventurers/PC-esque characters.

First of all, you'll want a place to raise the youngins, preferably one where time moves more quickly than usual. If you can do this with genesis, great, otherwise you'll need to do a bit of research on the planes.

Assuming you're going for power, you'd want an upbringing filled with templating possibilities (preferably ones with a LA that can be bought off soon). A connection to the shadow plane for the Dark template, casting lots of spells around them for the Spelltouched template, that sort of thing. It'd be preferable to have templates that won't drive them bonkers/socially isolate them if you want to raise them humanely.

The basic scenario for raising them would be like a boarding school of sorts. You make a bunch of simulacrums of yourself/whatever creature. These will be the teachers. You teach a broad variety of subjects, ranging from magic to fighting to disarming traps, whatever you want really. The children would be getting exercise, learning new things, interacting with each other, etc, so there's no need to cast restoration type spells on them like you might with a pit baby. The "boarding school" can be small (20-30 children) or as large as you have real estate/simulacrums/etc for (I can see a wizard with enough simulacrums having a city sized school). The education so far is pretty much the same as the Spartan 2s from Halo, except they'd be more general and less focused specifically on combat.

So far there's no real issue morally, at least as far as I can see. You might want to add more adults beyond just simulacrums so the children have a more accurate viewpoint of what the rest of the world will be like. At age 14 or so, you give the children a choice: take a test which will tell them what class(es) would be optimal for them to go into and continue their training at the school, or leave the school and live a fairly normal life. You can test attributes/whatnot fairly easily: see how often they fail at a given task and then you know, with a decent amount of accuracy, what their ability score is (there might be a spell that tells you their ability scores, but I don't know of one). Anyway, you tell the children what class they'd be best for, how powerful it is, etc, and then let them choose a class (For example, someone with a high int would get classes recommended like factotum, wizard..., whereas someone with no high ability scores would get recommended class like warlock or something similar).

At this point, training becomes more specialized. Wizards and sorcerors would start learning optimal spells for specific situations/in general, rogues might do a bit more "field learning" by running con shows and stuff like that, etc. Once the kids (although at this point they may not be kids anymore) are no longer squishy (at least 4th level I think), you give them the choice to go out into the world and do some adventuring and get some more experience. You highly recommend that the children come back to the school for more teaching/whatnot, but it's not really required. If you want to make sure they all stay at least neutral, you can keep tabs on them and let them know when their actions are getting iffy morality wise. I suppose if you want you could institute some sort of "give back to the school" policy where you send high level adventurers out on quests for artifacts and powerful magic items for the school, but as a high level wizard you don't really need others for that. Retired adventurers that you raised could come back to the school and teach future generations of adventurers.

To be honest, I don't think mindrape is at all necessary in this scenario. The kids had a decent upbringing, so there's no reason to take the time to write a happy childhood for each kid. The idea of filling everyone to the brim with knowledge is an interesting one, but there's no mechanical bonus that it gives so eh. If students were okay with that, I guess that'd be okay; otherwise it just seems very ethically gray.

Looking back at the rest of my post, the only thing I see that's missing is some sort of parental figure(s) for the kids. This is pretty easy to do: simulacrums, people with a desire to adopt, yourself, whatever. Stuff like Rings of Sustenance are handy for the nitty gritty details of child raising, but if you're going for a large amount of kids raised at once, there's not really a reason to use them in most cases. Constructs have no sense of smell (actually I'm not sure about this, but they won't mind the smell), so basic stuff like diaper changing isn't too bad either.

Anyways, using this method you end up with an effectively arbitrarily large amount of adventurers who were raised fairly well and without possible side effects from mind affecting spells (mechanically there's no negative side effects, yeah, but what we're discussing goes outside of the scope of the d&d rules). At the worst right now, it's morally gray because you're raising kids in an abnormal way. Nothing done here really screams evil though, at least as far as I can tell. You're giving the kids choices when they're old enough to know the consequences of their decisions and giving them the tools to do pretty much whatever they want. I think it fits the OP's parameters fairly well, although I may be focusing slightly more on results.

(I may put something like this in a game I run, actually. It's an interesting concept.
Also wow this was a lot longer than originally intended. I can put it in a spoiler if anyone wants me to)

[nobodez]

That couldn't possibly have long term negative ramifications.

Yeah, and giving kids Methylphenidate (and it's varieties), Amphetamine mixed salts (and their varieties), and other similar stimulants couldn't possibly have long term negative ramifications either.

As for the OP's question…

I'm going to assume that we're not going to use the "Raise them in a Pit, then Mindrape" version of child rearing.

I think the Elemental Weird Simulacrum is good, as is giving the child reliable access to a comprehend languages or tongues spell, especially from a young age. Just being able to communicate with your child before they'd normally be able to is just great.

If you want to raise the kind as a future adventurer, then giving the weird a mobile trap of revivify is important (go with that rather than last breath since that one gives your child a shortcut to adulthood), also make sure that your kid has a supernatural contingent gentle repose on them, in case the Weird takes longer than six seconds to catch up to the rambunctious future adventurer.

Put the kid on magical clothes (not armor, since it doesn't resize outside of the base size category), make sure they have prestidigitation and the glamoured effect from armor on them. If you want your kid to be a bit more "well rounded" (and ready for when their future adventuring parties skimp and go for the reincarnate over the raise dead), allow these magical clothes to alter self and have the kid go through various phases of species and/or sex (what their gender ends up being is up to the nature vs. nurture people). It might be best if your other adventuring buddies also had kids at the same time, so they can all be raised together (a future adventuring group perhaps) and have proper social interactions.

When they become a young adult, switch out the alter self clothes and revivify trap for a last breath trap, to give your child a true taste of what it means to be the various different species and/or switch sexes.

After reading the Emerald Legion post, you may also want to get yourself infected with lycanthropy (don't worry, you'll just have it long enough to get the sprog the inherited form of the template) with a useful form (just make sure you're dealing with a universe with good level adjustment buyoff rules).

EDIT Also, once they're young adult and onto the last breath cycle of "oops I died", you'll have yourself a slew of fresh bodies for your necromancy needs.

[Phelix-Mu]

I think you can avoid this issues just by actually spending time with your child, or at the very least making sure the time you spend with them is quality time. Children today don't view toys, vaccinations, doctor visits, school, and the like as their parents just caring about the min/max result. You're only going to get concerns like that by not treating them as individuals, and that's independent of min/max stuff.

But it is important to remember not to put too much pressure on a child. However, min/maxing in other ways should still be fine.

Expressing concern and interest in your child is one thing. But children are great at divining the true motives of adults (often better than the adults are at realizing their own motives). Just because you spend a bit of quality time with Johnny doesn't mean he won't eventually think that maybe all the mindrape/kill-reincarnate chaining/ditching on flowing time plane means that you somehow don't approve of him. Doubt is like that.

Not that some of min/maxing can't be used. Just that it can be a bit of slippery slope, just as in real life. I am invested in the abilities of my child, and see a capable child as a reflection of my own success as a person. Thus I have considerable incentive to increase my child's abilities, to the extent that I might lose track of the fact that the thing I really value isn't my child's abilities, but my child.

[Drachasor]

Expressing concern and interest in your child is one thing. But children are great at divining the true motives of adults (often better than the adults are at realizing their own motives). Just because you spend a bit of quality time with Johnny doesn't mean he won't eventually think that maybe all the mindrape/kill-reincarnate chaining/ditching on flowing time plane means that you somehow don't approve of him. Doubt is like that.

Not that some of min/maxing can't be used. Just that it can be a bit of slippery slope, just as in real life. I am invested in the abilities of my child, and see a capable child as a reflection of my own success as a person. Thus I have considerable incentive to increase my child's abilities, to the extent that I might lose track of the fact that the thing I really value isn't my child's abilities, but my child.

Well, obviously I meant being sincere about caring for them, not faking it. But if you want to fake it, mindrape yourself for your visits! Kids aren't that great are divining actual motives (they are worse than adults) -- they are still developing their ability to read and model the behavior of others. And people are really, really good at lying to themselves; kids are people. So I think you overestimate the perception of children.

I wouldn't say it is a slippery slope. There's some stuff that's clearly fine, some stuff that isn't, and some gray areas. Some people might lose track of that, and some wouldn't. For instance, exposing them to a bunch of planar energies on the off-chance they gain a useful template...that's pretty clearly NOT ok.

[Drachasor]

Yeah, and giving kids Methylphenidate (and it's varieties), Amphetamine mixed salts (and their varieties), and other similar stimulants couldn't possibly have long term negative ramifications either.

It depends on the situation and duration. There are plenty of sound medications that are great for you if properly administered, but awful if improperly given.

Calm Emotions on kids can have its place, but if you use it every time they get upset or the like then you are teaching them to never control their emotions. That's pretty bad. On the other hand, if you use it to help deal with depression or some such, then it could do a great deal of good -- but Suggestion or other lighter magic is probably better for that.


I think the Elemental Weird Simulacrum is good, as is giving the child reliable access to a comprehend languages or tongues spell, especially from a young age. Just being able to communicate with your child before they'd normally be able to is just great.

This is not good. They won't learn any language naturally and their speech centers won't develop.


I'm going to assume that we're not going to use the "Raise them in a Pit, then Mindrape" version of child rearing.

Because killing them repeatedly is better somehow?

[Phelix-Mu]

Perhaps I have unduly been influenced by my own experience as a child. I, personally, could pretty much tell when adults lied to me, but often found it convenient not to be confrontational about it, since results of doing so were mixed at best. Whenever talk was about "what do you want to do when you grow up," I pretty much knew that was a silly talk, as almost no adults I knew were really doing what they wanted to, and even if they were, growing up generally sucked. I had a fantasy or two around the age of 4-6, but by the time I was a couple grades into school, I began to see that much of parenting involved parents portraying to their kids the way they wished the world would be, rather than the way the world was. Nothing wrong with that, ofc, since being brutally honest with kids is kind of soul-crushing, but I didn't much appreciate the obfuscation as a kid.

Like, for instance, and rather more on-topic, any adventurer in any campaign I had ever run would pretty much never want their kids to grow up to be adventurers. It can seem a glamorous life on the way to power and fame, but really it's a bunch of unsustainable power trips punctuated by brutal beat downs and the abject victimization of [enter group/individual here]. As long as the parent is clear about the true nature of adventuring, I guess I don't have a problem. But the tendency to sugarcoat things has always been evident to mine jaundiced eye.

[Qoios]

The reason why I chose the went with growing an artificial human, as opposed to, say, going with an incarnate construct, was because an incarnate construct will detect as a humanoid but with no subtype, and thus wouldn't pass a lot of simple detection schemes.
It is trivially easy to add subtypes to a creature. Savage Species Rituals can grant subtypes rather readily, for instance. Alignment types, too.


...due to being in a flowing-time plane, could possibly be completed in a round in prime-material-plane-time, with the added benefit of making it possible to mass produce said adults.
Genesis specifically states that planes created with it cannot have their Time Trait altered. So your Genesis Plane is going to be 1:1 for time with the Material Plane. So that's ~16 years per human, minimum. Longer for more aged adults, or slower-aging races.


...the machinery and psionics required for an ideal development)...
Which machines and psionic effects are you referring to? The only effect I know of that can actually grant levels without them being earned would be Mind Seed, which turns them into a version of you with eight fewer levels. It also takes a week to fully take effect, can only be used on a single creature at a time, and can create numerous issues if "You-minus-eight-levels" is resistant to or immune to any part of the process.


...the rest is relatively automated...
How, I must ask, are you automating any of this? And be somewhat specific. No other cog in your system works as you claim it would so far, so I don't expect this one to, either. But I'd at least like to see more than a vague handwave, and the assumption that because you can conceive of it, your undefined (but arbitrarily powerful) avatar could accomplish it.


I think one of the reasons why you're misunderstanding where I'm coming from is that I'm not really interested in creating minions, or even having meaningful relationships with the adults I'm producing; in my scenario, I'm creating instant adventurers I can send off to, say, slay the evil red dragon terrorizing the countryside, or, fetch the magical potion to cure the king's ailments, or, find a way to stop the Kobolds living in the warrens from stealing all the village's food. Whether they rebel against me or not is irrelevant, because I don't have any long-term plans for any individual one of them, and I have no interest in even knowing them after I fire them off.
I'm not misunderstanding any of that. I just disagree that:
Your method can actually produce ready-made adventurers.
Your method, even if it functioned (which it doesn't) would be an optimal use of the resource you create, as you see them as single-use, whereas they could be reused.
Your method is remotely relevant in a discussion of optimizing child-rearing processes, since it is not a child-rearing process. It's just a spell that can turn an adult into a different adult of your design, and a (non-functional) adult body factory.



That's to say, I'm not interested in being a parent; I'm interested in quickly producing fully-grown adults who can be sent off as adventurers to do the low-level quests I wouldn't get XP for if I did them.
If that is the case, why are you wasting time with any of this nonsense? There are immeasurably better ways to have someone else accomplish your lower-level goals for you that:
Produce more capable servants
Are easier to set up
Require less resource investment
Leave fewer loose-ends after usage
Have fewer points-of-failure
Inspire less backlash
Actually work

Or, if they are so low-level that you wouldn't even get XP for doing them, wouldn't that mean that they would be trivially easy to accomplish, without all the needless Mindrape?


Maybe the best way to put it is, I'm addressing the topic of "Optimized child-rearing in a magical world" in a more literal sense, than in the sense of "How would I raise a baby in a nice, optimized manner".
I don't care about whether your method is "nice" or not. Set up some sort of resurrection system for the child and then throw him into lethal situations repeatedly for all I care. But don't substitute adult-body-production for child-rearing just because memory-altering magic exists. It's a clear, and seemingly intentional misinterpretation of the intent of this thread.

[pwykersotz]

Taking an approach mentioned earlier, helping the parents is a great way to go. Spells and items that affect the child have the chance of going awry. For example, if you Cure Disease the chicken pox, you might make his immune system unable to fight them off later in life. If you give the child a Ring of Sustenance, they will have no culinary appreciation or experience and may not even be able to chew or swallow properly.

Anything that minimizes pain and stress for the parent though, potentially translates directly into positive interaction with the child.

I like the at-will item of Prestidigitation, great for cleaning diapers.
Unseen servant for cleaning up after the rest of the house (not the kid's room until he's old enough to cast his own).
Ring of Sustenance for the parents (2 hours of sleep a night to have full rest is a godsend).
If you are not one yourself, access to a town Healer will take care of most medical needs that are severe enough to need to be wiped away.
Deathwatch to see if your kid is REALLY in trouble.
Animated Object that the kid can play with and love that makes no mess.
Erase to remove all the crayon from the walls.
Make whole to mend rips and tears in clothing or broken toys.
Swift Invisibility for AWESOME games of peek-a-boo.

...and other such things. An Elemental Weird consultant is also too good to pass up if you can wrangle it.

[Phelix-Mu]

Taking an approach mentioned earlier, helping the parents is a great way to go. Spells and items that affect the child have the chance of going awry. For example, if you Cure Disease the chicken pox, you might make his immune system unable to fight them off later in life. If you give the child a Ring of Sustenance, they will have no culinary appreciation or experience and may not even be able to chew or swallow properly.

Anything that minimizes pain and stress for the parent though, potentially translates directly into positive interaction with the child.

I like the at-will item of Prestidigitation, great for cleaning diapers.
Unseen servant for cleaning up after the rest of the house (not the kid's room until he's old enough to cast his own).
Ring of Sustenance for the parents (2 hours of sleep a night to have full rest is a godsend).
If you are not one yourself, access to a town Healer will take care of most medical needs that are severe enough to need to be wiped away.
Deathwatch to see if your kid is REALLY in trouble.
Animated Object that the kid can play with and love that makes no mess.
Erase to remove all the crayon from the walls.
Make whole to mend rips and tears in clothing or broken toys.
Swift Invisibility for AWESOME games of peek-a-boo.

...and other such things. An Elemental Weird consultant is also too good to pass up if you can wrangle it.

These are all excellent ideas, and combine well with some of the other ideas earlier in the thread.

[Drachasor]

A Hat of Disguise is probably one of the best toys for the whole family. Sort of going crazy with polymorph items -- not sure what there is as far as that goes though.

Awaken is probably a pretty good way to make friends that can actually look after the baby and will stick around.

[Aegis013]

We could combine a lot of these into one thing, and assuming we already have the baby/child in question, a Wizard or StP Erudite could manage it with a single spell. I'm going to do this with more morals/ethics, though trying to still fulfill the purposes (Un)Inspired and HaikenEdge have for it.

Cast Ice Assassin of yourself. Command the Ice Assassin to go about rearing the child in a Good aligned way using all of tricks you yourself would use for improving it. You go about your business.

Your Ice Assassin likely gets the counsel and assistance of an elemental weird, or another Ice Assassin of said creature, creates a flowing time (or not, if you don't think genesis has that power) genesis plane complete with divined environmental traits that will serve the child well, such as perhaps slightly increased gravity (I don't know the actual effects of this, it is merely an example) etc., various actual beings that are invited onto the plane for the child to interact with, spells and such to instruct and teach the child, and raise it to be what/who/how you would like, with a little bit of its own flavor. Probably with excursions to various places under the tutelage of your Ice Assassin and/or Elemental Weird for social adjustment etc.

If you want to use them as guided missiles (this one really kind of assumes the flowing time for achieving time sensitive matters, possibly removing the excursions from the plane) you simply have the Ice Assassin raise them to believe they have a specific destiny and at the end of raising them, you use Mindrape to "tell them that destiny" and/or add additional lessons and knowledge to them. Hopefully you can get enough trust between the Ice Assassin and the child to have the child willingly accept the Mindrape spell (choose to fail its save) when told directly the intended use.

After all of this, if it is the case you wish to have a relationship with the child, you simply have the Ice Assassin find you, and Mindrape all of the experiences shared between it and child into your brain, letting you effectively replace your exact copy by having all of the experiences it did.

Since we've yet to discuss procurement of the child in question, I'm assuming it's a moot point. This method, however, can serve both HaikenEdge's and (Un)Inspired's result based focus, while serving the desires of those who wish to raise the child morally and ethically.

It does cost a bit more of the rearer's resources since Ice Assassin carries an XP cost, but it's something. So it's not perfectly optimized, but it's something.

[Particle_Man]

Get a paladin or cleric devoted to a god of child-rearing, make sure that character has a phylactery of faithfulness. Get another phylactery of faithfulness for the kid as soon as the kid can talk and train the kid to use it. Not so much mind-control as ways to encourage them to stop doing things that are bad.

[Endarire]

Having pondered this issue for The Metaphysical Revolution (http://forum.rpg.net/showthread.php?614036-3-5-MODULE-The-Metaphysical-Revolution-%28Levels-1-3%29-Now-on-RPG-net!), my answer is, "It depends."

This is how child rearing works in that E6-like setting. (It's not totally E6, since the potential for later level things is still very present, but it's rare that anyone in this modern society is even level 6. Going beyond that at the start of this campaign is effectively unheard of.)

Basic world background: Society is self-sustaining through magic. The masses are kept fed via plant growth traps, mount traps, prestidigitation traps, create food and water traps, and Undead laborers. In major cities, the temperatures are kept comfortable, there is plenty of light (due to continual flame lampposts keeping the city well lit at all times), and everyone has all the food and drink they want. Menial labor is left to Undead and Constructs. What's left for the average person to do? Adventure and politics.

In the world of Yevir (the world of The Metaphysical Revolution), there are several major trade houses that control the creation and trade of various items and services, mostly magic-related. The trade houses police themselves and other houses, and are combination trade centers and local government. These trade houses diagnose children aged around 5 for their potentials and preferences. Traditionally, if a family is a member of a house (like House Felsad, which specializes in divine magic), their children will be part of this house, too. Even though houses tend to specialize in one form of magic, houses won't turn away a promising candidate with aptitutes and interests outside the house's specialty. Mentors exist to train and guide children in their best path. Parents collaborate with children and mentors to ensure everything goes smoothly.

Magical engineering occurs in willing participants to create better children (pre-birth) and give children every advantage (after birth). The result is the vast majority of children are of adventurer-grade by the time they're physically adults, and, rarely, with a second class level.

While harsher methods could be applied, for the sake of civility, they aren't. Those in charge of their trade houses see the great potential for someone to snap (due to harsh treatment, especially in the 'dehumanizing' of someone) and cause a ruckus. Typically, child growth and development occurs naturally with minor magical augments.

[dreadwind80]

Assuming that money is little issue and magic unlimited as frequent talk of 9th level spells - the mindwipe solution mentioned.

Why go quite so far when a few more low level options are available? The traditional approach - hire help

To start: a nanny. I would personally go for a warforged Bard. The already mentioned exceptionally useful spells needed for day to day care are present: prestidigitation, mending, unseen servant, sleep, minor image. All useful for the nurture and care of the child, assuming from birth. The warforged does not need sleep, does not get tired - all things a parent of a baby would kill for. The variety of spells help with care too, the skills as needed and bardic knowledge will help entertain/educate the child as they get older. Bardic music will aid in this role as well, entertain, inspire competence to help build skills and confidence, fascinate to amuse the child while performing various tasks. Use Magic device for various things that the existing spells, which remember include basic first aid such as cure and remove disease, do not.

Now to add to this, I would suggest an artificer co-worker for the added versatility of items needed as the child grows. Also additional people for social interaction will help the child's development.

As the child grows older the all powerful caster parent can use planar binding/allay to summon specialist teachers to supplement the child's education as well as just broaden their world view. Perhaps even field trips with magical brings. This artificer could also be the cook, as the warforged will make a poor chef due to not eating. I would hire a ranger/druid for this, for tending garden/hunting, to again teach, widen world view and provide food and protection.

All this assuming that the child and its guardians on an estate somewhere. Thoughout all this caster parent should be involved and interacting - as a busy adventurer/demi god, imagining that this is going to slightly aloof. A bit like parent and boarding school or a noble removed from rearing their child.

On the optimising of the child, I would assume that this loving and healthy care should help and rounded base for any class they wish. I would expect the child to be a superb example of whatever race its born to, as any decent parent would apply a few spells to help start life, a few wishes at birth to improve already good stats, if no template fun involved.

I have this image of a young child with a warforged armed with handy haversacks, but with more child decorations on them, a few custom items and a small laughing child that would exhaust a normal parent but the Nanny-forged carries on.

On a another note amazed no use of geas or mark of justice yet, for child control in the later years i.e. teenager

[tricktroller]

as an actual parent of a 15 month old I can tell you there are a ton of spells in DND that would be amazing!

One suggestion I saw earlier was tongues and another was sleep. Both of those would be great!

I also like the suggestion for dancing lights, prestidigitation, unseen servant, and tenser's disk.

A few more that I think would be good would be the watchful guard dog, silence, mage armor, and arcane lock for all the cabinets and outlet covers.

[Clistenes]

If you are willing to go that far, why not just create the kid as an adult, avoiding all the horrible torture you would have the baby endure for years?

Create a medium-sized, humanoid-looking construct with high mental and physical stats and only one racial HD. Add bonus feats and skills. Add the Sacred Guardian template for even higher mental and physical stats and the right alignment. Cast Incarnate Construct on it. Mindrape it into having the right personality and background. Make him or her retrain its single humanoid HD into a PC class of your choosing (creatures with a single racial HD can replace it for their first class level).

If you want them to have the Human, Elf, Dwarf or whatever subtype, use Last Breath until they become the right race (which would be a pity, since they would lose its awesome physical stats) or use Savage Races' rites to give them the right subtype.

[Phelix-Mu]

The idea of the thread was, supposing you have a child and need to raise it, how to best do so in a world where magic is present in some fashion. This got slightly redirected into how would a full caster raise their child, but that's pretty closely related, all things considered.

The inhumane methods, from mind seed in children, to mindrape an ideal childhood, to child farming techniques involving daelkyr half-breeds and creatures that have multiple live births, are all fairly self-evident and easy-peasy. I was looking for something a bit more practical for raising a more normal child in a healthier, more educated manner than the faux-medieval setting otherwise provides for.

[MadGreenSon]

I was looking for something a bit more practical for raising a more normal child in a healthier, more educated manner than the faux-medieval setting otherwise provides for.

[/muse ON!]
On the other hand, imagine how a campaign setting would look once this new generation was out and about. They'll have been born of and raised by people who worked their optimizing up into possibly epic levels and then passed their hard-won knowledge and power to their offspring without the struggle that they went through.

It'll turn your setting of choice into Kingdom Come.
"They say this new generation of adventurers have slain all the evils of yesteryear. Small comfort, as now they fight simply to fight, the only foes that can challenge them are each other. For those of us still mortal, all we can do is attempt to hide when one of their battles comes near and pray we are not collateral damage."

Seeing Waterdeep or Sharn looking like Metropolis in the opening bits of Kingdom Come would be awesome. Then, when the new generation finally does something beyond the pale, the good-aligned legends of yesteryear come out of their retirement demi-planes to set things right.

Might make a better story than setting, but it's neat to think about.
[/muse OFF!]

Generally, in my opinion, having the Unseen Servant for the messy bits, communication spells, educational simulacrums, etc. plus a peer group they can socialize with would be the way to go.
No need to get the kids on performance enhancing magic until you can see if the more "normal" methods of raising healthy intelligent children are working.

By all means though, supplement education with an item that can reproduce the effect of Scholar's Touch to help get the book reading bits out of the way. (More ethical than Mindrape or Programmed Amnesia too!)
The Ring of Babysitting sounds like a good insurance policy too.

[Icewraith]

There are two optimal points for wishing your kid a +5 to intelligence. The principle holds somewhat for the other stats but the INT bonus affects skill point accrual and isn't retroactive like hit points.

1) Immediately after birth, assuming everything advances exactly according the aging tables and it won't mess with your kid's mental development. The concern is as follows- think of it like growing up in a powered exoskeleton- something is doing your heavy lifting for you so you never develop strong muscles yourself.

2) Immediately before the kid officially attains its first class level, but after as much cognitive and personality development has taken place as possible. This is probably the route less likely to turn your kid into a maladjusted evil overlord in training, but identifying the point at which it should be done is tricky.

[Zetapup]

There are two optimal points for wishing your kid a +5 to intelligence. The principle holds somewhat for the other stats but the INT bonus affects skill point accrual and isn't retroactive like hit points.

1) Immediately after birth, assuming everything advances exactly according the aging tables and it won't mess with your kid's mental development. The concern is as follows- think of it like growing up in a powered exoskeleton- something is doing your heavy lifting for you so you never develop strong muscles yourself.

2) Immediately before the kid officially attains its first class level, but after as much cognitive and personality development has taken place as possible. This is probably the route less likely to turn your kid into a maladjusted evil overlord in training, but identifying the point at which it should be done is tricky.

Well, divinations can be used to decide when the best point is to wish +5s to their various attributes. If you can somehow get at will divinations (elemental weird, etc), making the decisions for when to do things like that becomes a LOT easier.

I'd lean towards number 2 because it'd be less likely to have a negative effect on the kid's development. I have no idea how number 1 could influence someone and it probably wouldn't be a good idea to use that method on the child without lots of divinations and whatnot.

[Phelix-Mu]

Rather unrealistically, the kid seems to get their first HD immediately upon being born. Thus, I'm not sure you can get them that +5 inherent boost to Int before they have their first HD, which you would need to do in order to get more skill points. It would still be useful to have a very smart baby/child, of course, but wishes are pretty expensive for the vast majority of the population to be throwing them around (barring the extremes of TO).

I do like the idea of using scholar's touch to speed up reading. I do like doing it the old-fashioned way, but being able to read a book, especially a scholarly text, in less than a minute would be sweet. I'd still probably make the kid read good literature by hand, hehe, but I guess that is my inner bibliophile speaking.

[Eldariel]

Rather unrealistically, the kid seems to get their first HD immediately upon being born. Thus, I'm not sure you can get them that +5 inherent boost to Int before they have their first HD, which you would need to do in order to get more skill points. It would still be useful to have a very smart baby/child, of course, but wishes are pretty expensive for the vast majority of the population to be throwing them around (barring the extremes of TO).

Once it gains its first level tho it replaces the racial HD with that. So that should allow it to gain the 4xInt skills (otherwise no classed character would get that, since they should've all had a standard humanoid HD before that point).

[Phelix-Mu]

Once it gains its first level tho it replaces the racial HD with that. So that should allow it to gain the 4xInt skills (otherwise no classed character would get that, since they should've all had a standard humanoid HD before that point).

Where is this hammered out in the RAW? I've often wondered just what stats that human warrior had before becoming a human warrior. Is there a default stat block for unclassed humans? It's entirely possible that I've always overlooked it, lol.

Basically, what I am thinking is that a commoner is born a commoner. It is implied that there is a humanoid HD for humans, but I don't recall ever seeing how to put together a human that lacks any class levels whatsoever.

[TuggyNE]

It is implied that there is a humanoid HD for humans, but I don't recall ever seeing how to put together a human that lacks any class levels whatsoever.

That's because you can't. Any playable creature with one racial HD has to trade it in for a class level, no exceptions. So no Humanoids with one HD exist: they always and only have class levels.

It makes it weird to figure out timelines, of course; maybe those too young to have a class level simply aren't statted at all.

[Phelix-Mu]

That's because you can't. Any playable creature with one racial HD has to trade it in for a class level, no exceptions. So no Humanoids with one HD exist: they always and only have class levels.

It makes it weird to figure out timelines, of course; maybe those too young to have a class level simply aren't statted at all.

So the RAW seemingly leaves me back at my point. Johnny the Commoner was born with the stats of a Commoner. That's fairly believable. Is there any indication that Robert the Warrior wasn't born with the stats of a Warrior? Like, are there training times listed for how long it takes to gain a level in npc class X?

[Ruethgar]

Use lucid dreaming and just raise them in a time warped zone, takes only one night and they are fully grown if you really want to expedite things.

[Thurbane]

Not sure if it's already been mentioned, but the Endless Slumber (CM p.103) spell could be handy. Just make sure you've got some way to Dispel it - you don't want to have to damage the child to wake it up.

[Eldariel]

Where is this hammered out in the RAW? I've often wondered just what stats that human warrior had before becoming a human warrior. Is there a default stat block for unclassed humans? It's entirely possible that I've always overlooked it, lol.

Basically, what I am thinking is that a commoner is born a commoner. It is implied that there is a humanoid HD for humans, but I don't recall ever seeing how to put together a human that lacks any class levels whatsoever.

Humans are a bit weird since they aren't in Monster Manual (something even OotS has parodied). Elves, Dwarves & al. don't have their Racial HD version listed, to be fair, but based on the properties of Humanoid HD (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/typesSubtypes.htm#humanoidType), that's not overtly hard to do. Amusingly, a HD'd human would have all single weapon proficiencies, something it might not have after class. The clause on Humanoids & Monstrous HD is here (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/monstersAsRaces.htm).

[Urpriest]

That's because you can't. Any playable creature with one racial HD has to trade it in for a class level, no exceptions. So no Humanoids with one HD exist: they always and only have class levels.

It makes it weird to figure out timelines, of course; maybe those too young to have a class level simply aren't statted at all.

This tends to be my opinion, based on the statement that giant children too small to have RHD are noncombatants.

[Phelix-Mu]

I find this to just be frustrating. Are there any 1HD humanoid critters out there that don't have a class level? Does a feral human divorced from a chance to learn skills have a humanoid HD instead of an npc class?

I know they seem to have avoided statting-out many creatures for simplicity's sake, and also to discourage going around killing babies/noncombatants, but I prefer completeness in most cases (especially since 3e is not simple by any common definition of the word). The conflation of job/class with race among the common humanoids is weird, verging on immersion-breaking. All humans are Commoners, and bugbear children can eat them for dinner.:smallconfused:

Alas, it is easy to see imperfection in the system in retrospect.

[Icewraith]

I think anyone younger than the starting age for the class they intend to be either starts at "level zero" (I've seen rules for that somewhere) or uses npc stats unless it's in their backstory. The only objection I have to using commoner until the character gains its first "real" class level is the skill list discrepancy.

A feral human who doesn't learn normal skills probably just takes their first level in barbarian. It's the only way to become illiterate, and it's not like you need special training in things like jump, climb, and survival to be good at them.

[Frozen_Feet]

Let me posit a revolutionary new ideas:


Even in a magical world, most magic-users will not be high-level Wizards or Psions capable of using Genesis, Mind Rape or Psychic Reformation.

Most magic-users will also not be very high level, so items for using such abilities will wreak havoc with their budget, possibly ruining their own career chances of survival.

Raising kids at all is sub-optimal during a time of stress, such as a war or active adventuring career. On one hand, the source of stress tends to detract from your ability to raise your kid; and on the other, kids as means of producing extra manpower are strictly inferior to other modes of minion-mancy, such as creating constructs or summoning monsters.

If your kid grows up to be an adventurer, you have failed as a parent, because adventurers have a huge mortality rate and 100% chance of being subjected to extensive physical and mental trauma. As such, even if they survive, they are likely to end up as antisocial murderhobos or insane hermit wizards who honestly think raising a kid in a pit and then brainwashing them to think it was a good idea are sound parenting strategies. This is a very good way to kill your family line, and those of others too.

Furthermore, alignment is an objective force in D&D. Using evil methods, [Evil] spells or raising your kid to be of evil alignment are good ways to doom both yourself and your offspring to rather miserable afterlife on the lower planes. Circumventing such a fate (like through becoming immortal) requires considerably more resources and hijinks, and is hence unoptimal.


So, if I was going to optimize child-rearing, I would do it within the following constraints:


Avoid using magical abilities and class features unavailable to NPC classes.
Avoid using magical abilities from outside sources - that is, spend minimal amount of cash on buying spells and magic items
Avoid using any abilities and class features requiring ECL higher than 10.
Avoid using any abilities and class features requiring exceptional ability scores, in this case defined as abilities exceeding that of the Elite Array or equivalent point-buy.


Now, we can get more specific. First, we need to determine, what are the likely parents like? Since we are largely restricting ourselves to low-level, non-exceptional NPC characters, the best parents we can hope for using SRD material are an ECL 10 Adept and ECL 10 Expert.

Of these, the Adept should naturally put his highest ability to Wisdom. Expert should put hers to Intelligence. Both should have their Charisma as average or above average to prevent negative influence from their own lacking social skills. Preferably, their alignments will be within one step of each other, selected from Lawful Good, Lawful Neutral, Neutral Good and True Neutral.

What do I have against Evils or Chaotic parents, you ask? Well, Evil parents are likely to screw up their children or each other for fun and profit - maybe good for them, but definitely bad for the child. Chaotic parents, meanwhile, are less likely to agree on what rules and regulations their child should follow; "do whatever as long as you harm no-one" is a good personal philosophy for an adult, not so much for a toddler or kid whose idea of "whatever" really means whatever and who doesn't yet have a good clue of what constitutes "harm" in the first place. More pressingly, Chaotic characters are more likely to be at odds with prevailing culture and traditions, which will mean the child would grow up under conflicting sets of expectations and guidelines - hardly ideal.

The parents also should try to raise their kid towards LG, LN, NG or TN. Because an Evil kids is more likely to screw over their parents for fun and profit, and Chaotic kids are more likely to be rebellious and stubborn towards their parents as well as likely to draw unwanted attention to the family due to disobedient behaviour in the general society.

Back to the parents. Combined, they have wealth of 32,000 GP. Remember: all their own equipment and expenses must be paid from this allotment as well! On their own, they have access to 3rd level spells. Let's go over the Adept spell list and see what gems we can find. Spells I find particularly useful are marked in blue:

0 level: create water, cure minor wounds, detect magic, ghost sound, guidance, light, mending, purify food and drink, read magic, touch of fatigue.

Create water is obviously useful. It will handily ensure both the child and parents have supply of clean, fresh water. This decreases risk of disease or parasites from spoiled drinks considerably, saves money and makes the family less reliant on outside factors.

Cure minor wounds is essentially magical band-aid. It will be useful for patching up the kid when it hurts itself.

Guidance is a minor but helpful effect for both parents. Parenting will involve a lot of skill checks, and whether that +1 goes to teaching the kid something new or using Profession to raise a bit extra cash, it'll be of use. Can also be used on the kid itself to combat disease, for example.

Mending is another big money-saver. It can sew together broken clothes or fix all those tiny household items the kid is going to break when young.

Purify Food and Drink saves money and decreases the chance of the family being poisoned or diseased. Should ideally be cast on every meal the family has.

1st level: bless, burning hands, cause fear, command, comprehend languages, cure light wounds, detect chaos, detect evil, detect good, detect law, endure elements, obscuring mist, protection from chaos, protection from evil, protection from good, protection from law, sleep.

Command may look like a puzzling choice, but it's majorly useful for times when you really, really need the kid to do something now. Mostly, I see it being used for when the kid is in obvious danger but has not realized it yet. Time for explanations can come later. Also serves as a great, non-violent manner of subduing an uppity child.

Cure light wounds is another family health insurance spell.

Detect Evil and Detect Chaos were picked as the most useful detection spells, because out of all people and creatures, the Evil and Chaotic ones tend to be the most dangerous and most unpredictable, respectively, and hence most likely to get your kid into trouble. Be sure to use on your kid's new friends from time to time.

The same reasoning is why Protection from Evil and Chaos are the best Protection spells, though their short duration keeps them from being major boons for sedentary family life. Still, they might serve to keep your kid from being possessed by a ghost or demon.

2nd level: aid, animal trance, bear’s endurance, bull’s strength, cat’s grace, cure moderate wounds, darkness, delay poison, invisibility, mirror image, resist energy, scorching ray, see invisibility, web.

Animal trance and Aid will be useful for teaching animal handling and natural knowledge to the kid. Temporary hitpoints and the fascination effect make such endeavors much safer than usual.

All ability score increasing spells will be situationally useful for doing chores, whether the one doing them is parent or child.

Cure Moderate Wound and Delay Poison continue the health insurance line of spells, helping to keep the child and parents alive or buying time to get professional help.

Resist Energy is good for any sort of endeavor that involves extreme temperatures - such as cooking, smithing or going to play in the snow.

See Invisibility is good for spotting all those nasty creepy-crawlies that might sneak into the house or try to tempt the child behind your back. Seriously, read through the monster entries and see for yourself just how many invisible monsters there are! Plus, most of the various domestic spirits and demons tend to invisible. This way, you will have an honesty guarantee when you tell your kid there are no monsters under his bed.

3rd level spells: animate dead, bestow curse, contagion, continual flame, cure serious wounds, daylight, deeper darkness, lightning bolt, neutralize poison, remove curse, remove disease, tongues.

Bestow Curse is a great way to grant non-violent penalties for disobedient or idiotic behaviour. For the record, I'm not a fan of the "infertility curse" bandied about as a solution to teenage pregnancies. First of all, from a genetic point of view, you will eventually want to have grand-kids; cursing your own offspring with infertility and trying to pass it off as a good thing will set a bad precendent. Secondly, when they leave your care as a young adult, they will not be a 10th level Adept with access to third level spells. You will want them to learn to think of what they do and take responsibility before that happens; smoothing over the potential bumps using a spell that is meant to be punitive in nature (it's bestow curse, get it?) will set another bad precedent. That's the kind of thing that makes your kids grow into mind-raping wizards!

Bestow Curse is open-ended enough to teach actually useful lessons, though. One psychologically effective means would be to use it as enforced conscience; whenever the kid does something they've previously been punished of, an image of their disappointed family and friends will pass through their eyes.

Continual flame is just golden. It is a permanent light-source that is not a fire hazard. You can also sell lanterns made with it for good profit.

Neutralize Poison and Remove Disease finalize the family health insurance packet. If using lower-level spells to pre-empt disease and parasitic infestation have failed, these will be the last line of defense.

Remove curse is obviously used to relieve the kid from punishments that have run their course, as well as to save them hexes of local witches and other creepy-crawlies.

Tongues might be very useful for day-to-day communication, depending on where the family lives.

Now, let's look at skills. An expert can pick any ten skills as class skills.

Knowledge skills deserve a special mention. All of them are useful, but it is not practical to have them all as class skills, let alone try to keep them all maxed. If I had to pick some of them as class skills, I would choose Nature, Local and Religion. These cover the most common types of creatures a non-adventurer is likely to meet, as well as religious practices of the Adept parent. Hence, they are the most useful for everyday life as well as teaching to the kid. Fields that might warrant cross-class ranks include Nobility and Royalty, History, Architechture and Engineering, Geography and Arcana. The only fields I would leave completely without ranks would be Dungeoneering and Planes. If our parenting is succesful, our kid will absolutely not endanger their life in some murky basement, let alone visit the afterlife before they die of old age!

I would choose one Profession skill and one Craft skill, the first for some common service-based trade with good chances of employment, the second for a more lucrative and specialized productive trade. Profession (Barber) and Craft (Alchemy) or Craft (Shoemaking) would be good picks. These are the career(s) to make money with and to teach to your kid.

The remaing five skills I would use for the most mechanically powerful or useful ones: Autohypnosis, Diplomacy, Handle Animal, Use Magic Device, Survival (etc.). These are what most skill ranks would go into and ones I would use most feats to optimize. Especially Handle Animal should be very useful both for gaining money and ensuring the house is properly guarded by a ten-feet-tall carnivorous dinosaur or something.

Now, I will take a short detour to detail few spells and other external services you really might want to pay for:

Blessed seed (Spell; Book of Erotic Fantasy): This is a 4th level Cleric/Paladin spell, so we'll need to find a 7th level Cleric to cast it for us. It has an Experience Point component of 500, so it's not exactly cheap, costing the parents 2780 gp in total. So why do we want it? First, it ensures we get the kid in the first place. Once it is cast on the parents, the next time they copulate, pregnancy happens. Second, it makes the kid into a Half-Celestial. +4 Level Adjustment is a lot, but that doesn't matter if our kid will lead a happy, peaceful & well-adjusted life as an NPC, rather than bloody and violent as a PC (Ha!).

Nymph's Kiss (Feat; Book of Exalted Deeds): To get this on the kid, we need them to have a Fey lover when they come of age. Fortunately, there are a lot of good Fey creatures we can use our snazzy Knowledge (Nature) skill to find and introduce to our offspring. Such creatures have high Charisma almost as a rule, so I don't see the offspring objecting. :smallwink: We want this feat primarily for the +1 skill point per level. It is an Exalted feat though, so it requires the offspring to not be naughty, but I see that as a bonus. :smalltongue:

All of the above is just a start, though. I'd say between Profession, Craft and the Adept parent selling his excess spells as services, we can cover expenses of living well enough. What I'd want is suggestions on what to use our remaining 29220 gold pieces on. I'm also very interested in what further template stacking we could do. I suppose the Expert parent could be a were-creature of some kind?

Lastly, some thoughts on what class we want the child to take:

NPC classes: Adept, Expert and the Magewright (from Eberron) are without doubt the most powerful and versatile NPC classes. As such, we'd really want the kid to pick up after their parents. Aristocrat is a middling choice: they have a reasonably good skill list, plus good starting wealth (joy!).

Warrior and Commoner are just awful. What kind of a parent wishes for their children to become illiterate peasants, or uneducated grunts to die in some stupid war?

PC classes:

We absolutely don't want our kid to be any sort of a fighting man, whether that be a Fighter, Ranger, Paladin, Barbarian, Psionic Warrior or Swashbuckler! Not only are those classes mechanically unoptimal, be or be killed is basically their profession. We want grandkids, damn it! Short life expectancy is not a great plan for that!

Monks and Wizards are borderline. On one hand, they lend themselves to safe and sedentary lifestyle; on the other, life in a monastery or a wizard's tower usually don't make a person into a social butterfly. Wandering monks and mad-scientist-type Wizards are absolutely awful, the first falling in the same category as fighting men, the latter being all too likely to have their soul devoured by devils or blowing themselves up during alchemical research.

Our best bet would be Clerics and Druids, of Neutral Good alignment and serving deities of communal interests, such as deities of farming, fertility etc.. The above Adept/Expert combo should be well-geared to prod the child towards this type of career.

Bard is something of a wild card. I have yet to develop an opinion on it, but a diplomancer-Bard would be a good pick for peaceful and long life.

Warlocks, any Evil-only classes or other sell-your-soul-to-beings-of-questionable-origin are obviously out.

[otakumick]

Nymph's Kiss (Feat; Book of Exalted Deeds): To get this on the kid, we need them to have a Fey lover when they come of age. Fortunately, there are a lot of good Fey creatures we can use our snazzy Knowledge (Nature) skill to find and introduce to our offspring. Such creatures have high Charisma almost as a rule, so I don't see the offspring objecting. :smallwink: We want this feat primarily for the +1 skill point per level. It is an Exalted feat though, so it requires the offspring to not be naughty, but I see that as a bonus. :smalltongue:

...

Warlocks, any Evil-only classes or other sell-your-soul-to-beings-of-questionable-origin are obviously out.

Fey based Warlocks are very fluffy, they don't have to be Evil.

EDIT: To clarify, why not an exalted fey based warlock. Fluffed that the powers were given by the fey lover.

[Frozen_Feet]

Okay, fine. Exception for Exalted Fey Warlocks granted.

Though they're not very optimal. :smalltongue:

[otakumick]

possibly not optimal for an adventurer, but for some npc who just wants the easy life? they would likely have high skills in diplomacy and bluff... they are probably pretty tricky, but rather kind and Good... what with being half celestial Exalted fey powered face guy... probably makes a living adjudicating disputes and stuff. Doing Good things (no manual labor though) and tricking others into doing Good things too.

EDIT: Actually, this sounds like a pretty fun character to me... I may have to build one.

[Frozen_Feet]

I recall Warlock being placed in the same tier as Adept in various listings. I'm not an expert on Warlock optimization, so it's possible a Warlock would come ahead. (Druid and Cleric are still strictly superior, though, and just as logical progression based on the presumed parents.)

I read through Book of Erotic Fantasy again, and I found few more gems that would be really useful for the parents to have, or apply to their child:

Find a soulmate: A 1st level spell in the Joining domain, so available to 1st level clerics. An instantaneous effect that will reveal one perfect mate for the target creature, akin to Locate Creature. Will also tell if said creature is already in love with the target. Has a really cheap material component (two dolls tied together). Hence, overall price is between 10 and 20 gp.

First, this will ensure the parents are compatible, which will obviously smooth over a huge amount of potential problems of family life. Second, we can use this to scan for potential mates for the offspring as well. As per rules of BoEF, there can be multiple perfect mates for an invidual, so with some luck we will end up with a selection.

There is one downside, though. While there is no compulsion for either the target or their possible mate to seek out each other, the target will remember and keep dreaming of their possible mate. Can end up ugly if the perfect mate is impossible to reach or is not in love with the target. At a glance, the spell may look like "happily ever after" in a bottle, but a deeper look will reveal it can just as well be the sharp edge of reality that will break your heart.

"So... you're saying my perfect mate is the Queen of the realm?"
"Yes."
"Who lives half a country away?"
"Aye."
"And is married to King?"
"Right on the mark, son."
"And will probably be an old crone by the time he dies and she becomes available again?"
"Hey... never said this was going to be easy."

Lifebond: A 3rd level spell for Clerics and the Joining domain. Has a permanent duration, so one casting should last long enough to regain the funds spent for it (2 x 150 gp, approximately). Will serve as a Status (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/status.htm) spell between creatures who love each other.

Potential problem: may lead the parents to divorcing real quickly when a casting of the spell fails, revealing one parent is not really in love with the other. Divorces are not good for child-rearing.

Pleasant Dreams: A 2nd level Cleric spell, 1st level Paladin spell or 2nd level Imagist spell. Lasts for 24 hours per pop. Prevents negative influences of dreaming while asleep, whether mundane or magical in origin. This spell is simply golden from both psychological and mythological perspectives. On the former side, it will keep a baby sleeping soundly, lessening stress on the parents, help a sick child to rest and recover, and could even be used to treat post-traumatic stress symptoms! On the latter side, just think of how many supernatural creepy-crawlies target children with bad dreams!

Problem: people usually sleep 365 days a year. Since our parents likely can't use the spell themselves, to get all out of this spell we need to shell out the cash for per-day magic item. Base cost for an item of Pleasant Dreams usable 5 times per day (good for the whole family!) would be 12000 gp. Ouch. A continuous, wearable item would cost 6000 gp. Too much to invest in one item. A once-per-day item would be just 2400 gp. This is on the edge of being worth it.

It might be worth it for the Adept parent to take Craft Wondrous Item feat. That way, we could get the once-per-day item for 1200 gp and 96 xp. Still not as cost-effective as I would like, but since the item would be good for the kid's whole life, it might end paying itself up.

[Zetapup]

Yup, the warlock is usually considered high tier 4. They're prolly better than the adept for adventuring, but worse at day to day things (unless they become a magic item crafter, I suppose). Considering you don't want the child to become an adventurer, adept is likely the better choice.

If I remember the magic item rules correctly, you could get the 1/day pleasant dreams item more cheaply by adding class/race/skill/etc requirements to it. If they have an artificer friend, the price could be much lower.

(also whoops at first I read pleasant dreams as "pheasant dreams".)

[Frozen_Feet]

If I remember the magic item rules correctly, you could get the 1/day pleasant dreams item more cheaply by adding class/race/skill/etc requirements to it. If they have an artificer friend, the price could be much lower.

Hmmm. Could someone dig up those rules and tell how much cheaper we could make it if it was particular to, say, biological members of a specific family line? I don't think those rules are part of the SRD. (Artificer definitely isn't.)

[Zetapup]

According to this (http://brilliantgameologists.com/boards/index.php?topic=7274.0) handy dandy cost reduction handbook, you can get an item's cost down to... 3.8% of its original cost. Eesh. Most of the methods used to get it down that low are outside of core though. Restricting the item to requiring a certain skill is 90% and alignment/class reduces it to 70% cost. That's not bad if you're limited to core.

Unfortunately, nothing about biological members of the family for restrictions, but that's pretty similar to an alignment/class restriction, so I'd think 70% original cost would be reasonable.

[Frozen_Feet]

Looking at that handbook, at least Apprentice (Craftsman) and Extraordinary Artesan are both generally useful and easily applied-for by the Adept parent. Apprentice also opens up Mentor feat for the Adept parent, meaning he can possibly serve as a mentor to his child!

The overall cost would then be:

2400 x 50% (Crafting it yourself) x 90% (Apprentice [Craftsman]) x 75% (Extraordinary Artesan) x 70% (Restrict to Adept Parent's Alignment) x 90% (Restrict to some generally useful skill shared by those in the family such as Handle Animal) = 510 gp.

In a pinch, the Expert parent might be able to use UMD to activate the item if they're of different alignment.

510 gp is still costly, but feasible. On the minus side, between Apprentice (Craftsman), Craft Wondrous Item, Extraordinary Artesan and Mentor, we've pretty much used up all feats for our Adept parent. We also have to pay 500 gp for the parent's apprenticeship, but the parent can potentially get all that back (and more!) by taking other apprentices besides just his own kid. So that's yet another potential cash-earning route for the family.

[Phelix-Mu]

@Frozen_Feet: I really like a bunch of your ideas. And, while I know it gets some very mixed reviews around here, I really like BoEF as a sourcebook. A bunch of its class-related mechanics and PrCs were terribly unbalanced, but I found some of the spells, feats, and general rules for things like pregnancy and race-types (fey kissed, etc) to be very useful and interesting to explore.

[Frozen_Feet]

BoEF is overall a pretty good sourcebook. Where it fails the most is the same place where most of 3.x D&D fails the most: too much focus on spells and magic. The most broken class in the book is a spellcasting one with little to do with the book's actual subject matter.

On the other hand, it's one of the very few RPG sourcebooks in any game system that deals with family-making and pregnancy in detail. As such, it pretty much has to be included over and above most other generally useful sourcebooks, if we want to use actual rules for this discussion.

Now, back to rearing our child: if the Expert parent was a were-bear, how would people in this thread rule stacking with the half-celestial template from Blessed Seed? If we start with a humanoid base creature (f. ex. both parents are humans at base), can we presume were-bear is added first, and then half-celestial? Would the child retain his natural-born lycantrophic traits even is his type changes from humanoid to outsider (native)?

Furthermore, Lycantrophy can be considered a disease, and half-celestials are immune. Normally, this consideration only applies to being afflicted by lycantrophy later in life. Do we extend this to govern inborn lycantrophy (thus making these templates incompatible), or do we consider inborn lycantrophy exempt from the disease clause?

In any case, assuming the templates can be stacked, what are your thoughts of a half-celestial were-bear as a child? They would be CR 7 (5 from were-bear, +2 from half-celestial) as NPCs, or ECL 14 as PCs (7 HD, LA +4 from half-celestial, +3 from inborn lycanthrope). (Once again proof how borked both CR and LA are...)

The benefits of this combination are:

Abilities: +20 Str, +4 Dex, +12 Con, Int +2, Wis +4, Cha +4.
+3 natural armor (base form), +7 (hybrid or bear)
Damage reduction 5/magic and 10/silver
Immunity to disease
Resist acid, cold, electricity 10
Scent, low-light vision, darkvision
Spell resistance 17
+4 fort vs. poison
Flies at twice ground speed, good maneuverability
Supernatural Daylight and Smite Evil
Spell-like Prot. from Evil, Bless, Aid, Detect Evil, Cure Serious Wounds, Neutralize Poison, Holy Smite, Remove Disease
Possibility for 4 x 8 skillpoints at 1st level, mentioned because superior to any NPC class.
Brown Bear racial skills & feats, alternate form to bear or bear-humanoid hybrid.

From an adventuring viewpoint, the LA makes it not worth it, of course. But we don't want our kid adventuring. For everyday life in a peaceful NPC city or village, the above combination is decent. Immunity to disease and the ability to cure disease and poison from those not immune are golden. DR and energy resistance ensure our kid is not going to die off young.

7 levels of Druid or Cleric would still be superior, of course. The question is more, is there a way to gain experience in those two classes without facing constant mortal danger? I can't recall any good alternatives to adventuring when it comes to gaining XP.

The reason for choosing half-celestial and inborn lycantrope is because they are inheritable. Once parents have paid the money and XP to get them to our kid, they can then pass on those traits to their own offspring fee-of-charge. Templates are more easily transferable and hence have better longevity than class levels usually do.

I've heard of the Apprentice and Mentor feats allowing transfer of class levels, but saw no mention of that in the feats themselves. Are there rules for that, and if so, where (My guess would be PHBII, but my copy is missing)?

So my current questions to other participants of the thread are:

Are there safe methods of gaining XP or transferring class levels? (I'm already aware of Mind Seed, it's too high level and too costly)
Are there superior template combinations for same CR or ECL?
Are there ways to reduce LA from the above combination to 0, without losing its benefits?

[Zetapup]

7 levels of Druid or Cleric would still be superior, of course. The question is more, is there a way to gain experience in those two classes without facing constant mortal danger? I can't recall any good alternatives to adventuring when it comes to gaining XP.

In the chicken infested thread, someone did the math and showed that a chicken infested commoner could draw a chicken, attempt to kill it in the surprise round, and repeat. This got them to 7th level in a few hours. After that, the chickens are too low cr to gain any experience from. Incredibly cheesy, yes, but it would give you 6 levels of whatever.

If you don't allow chicken infested, the same would be doable by going up against extremely weak foes, it'd just take a lot longer and be more expensive because you'd have to acquire the foes somehow.

[Icewraith]

In the chicken infested thread, someone did the math and showed that a chicken infested commoner could draw a chicken, attempt to kill it in the surprise round, and repeat. This got them to 7th level in a few hours. After that, the chickens are too low cr to gain any experience from. Incredibly cheesy, yes, but it would give you 6 levels of whatever.

If you don't allow chicken infested, the same would be doable by going up against extremely weak foes, it'd just take a lot longer and be more expensive because you'd have to acquire the foes somehow.

It goes on longer if you can get awakened chickens to kill each other and level before killing them. It's technically infinite, but takes significantly longer for each additional level as you have to get more and more chickens more and more xp to make the "top" chickens worth fighting. Also the chickens get more intelligent and far more dangerous since there's not necessarily a way to prevent turning out a chicken sorcerer instead of say a chicken fighter.

This makes the ideal parent a commoner 1/expert X, since we can't have the adept parent losing caster levels.

In terms of LA reduction, there might be an incarnate construct trick that probably doesn't work or qualify as good child rearing, and you could always level the kid to 84 (assuming I'm using the LA buyoff rules correctly from memory), at which point you would have been able to buy off the remainder of the LA.

[Frozen_Feet]

If you don't allow chicken infested, the same would be doable by going up against extremely weak foes, it'd just take a lot longer and be more expensive because you'd have to acquire the foes somehow.

Not workable. At ECL 1, even the weakest possible opponents that grant XP carry a risk of significant injury or death. Since you have to defeat multiple, the chance of offing our offspring before they reach desired ECL is too high.

I meant more like how to gain XP without fighting. You know, doing something peaceful.

I also refuse to consider joke feats like Chicken-infested as legitimate optimization factors. :smalltongue:

[Phelix-Mu]

I also refuse to consider joke feats like Chicken-infested as legitimate optimization factors. :smalltongue:

Agreed. Chicken-Infested and that one about Orcus are humorous and nice for niche TO stuff, but can't really be seriously suggested for world-building or setting discussions. I mean, that one commoner slaying chickens to level up would either produce enough food to feed a nation or create a Superfund site from all the decomposing bodies. Also, probably an issue with chicken ghosts and other manifestations of negative energy due to the massacre.

Oh, maybe the commoner could continue to level up off of vengeful ghost chickens.:smalltongue:

[Zetapup]

Not workable. At ECL 1, even the weakest possible opponents that grant XP carry a risk of significant injury or death. Since you have to defeat multiple, the chance of offing our offspring before they reach desired ECL is too high.

I meant more like how to gain XP without fighting. You know, doing something peaceful.

I also refuse to consider joke feats like Chicken-infested as legitimate optimization factors. :smalltongue:

Yeah, that's fair. Does anyone know what the exact parameters are on combat to gain xp though? For example, could you pay some adventurers to surround a very weak monster and attack it while having your child use aid another on one of the adventurers? That'd be fairly safe, as far as encounters go, and would let you get to non squishy levels where you can do the "below cr enemy" option (if it gives you xp, that is).

I can't recall any ways to gain xp besides adventuring, sadly. I'm sure there must be at least one way, but adventuring is almost definitely the fastest (sadly also unsafe for the most part).

[Jack_Simth]

I meant more like how to gain XP without fighting. You know, doing something peaceful.
That's what traps are for. Apply Resist Energy (Acid) to the child (at caster level 9, at least), send it across a magic device trap of Acid Arrow, and it's perfectly safe - the trap can't hurt it on a crit. Meanwhile, surviving the trap means defeating that encounter, and it's a CR 3 trap.

[Sith_Happens]

*skips to last page*

This thread seriously hasn't segued into Crafting the Perfect Nanny-Bot: An Artificer's Guide to Easy Parenting yet? I'm disappointed in you, Playground.:smalltongue:

[MadGreenSon]

*skips to last page*

This thread seriously hasn't segued into Crafting the Perfect Nanny-Bot: An Artificer's Guide to Easy Parenting yet? I'm disappointed in you, Playground.:smalltongue:

Well ok, for a nanny-bot we'll assume you mean a construct of some kind. It'll need to be capable of kindness and compassion for any sane child rearing to happen, so Awaken Construct is a must.

So.. An Effigy of something cuddly or just a matronly human/[YOUR RACE HERE] might be the way to go. If it needs to be capable of acting as a wet-nurse that complicates things, but not by too much, if you're decently creative.
It is also incumbent upon the creator to make sure that the Effigy in question is properly trained to do this job and willing to do so. But anyone with decent social skills can get that arranged.

So, there ya go. Nanny-bot with refillable "bottles" for infant/child care!

[Sith_Happens]

So, there ya go. Nanny-bot with refillable "bottles" for infant/child care!

Needs more Rudimentary Intelligence Shadesteel Golem. Because if there's anything those things can't do, it's just because Tippy hasn't been on that thread yet.:smallwink:

[MadGreenSon]

Needs more Rudimentary Intelligence Shadesteel Golem. Because if there's anything those things can't do, it's just because Tippy hasn't been on that thread yet.:smallwink:

Shadesteel Golems look like the Alien with cyberanorexia. I would not be letting those things tend my kids!


They can guard the house.

[Phelix-Mu]

Shadesteel Golems look like the Alien with cyberanorexia. I would not be letting those things tend my kids!


Agreed. They are excellent for lots of things. I don't think this is one of them.

[Frozen_Feet]

That's what traps are for. Apply Resist Energy (Acid) to the child (at caster level 9, at least), send it across a magic device trap of Acid Arrow, and it's perfectly safe - the trap can't hurt it on a crit. Meanwhile, surviving the trap means defeating that encounter, and it's a CR 3 trap.

How much does a self-resetting trap of Acid Arrow cost? Can our Adept parent make it with his feats?

[MadGreenSon]

How much does a self-resetting trap of Acid Arrow cost? Can our Adept parent make it with his feats?

More to the point, does anyone play their games in such a way that characters in setting would try to game the system like that?

It is still a roleplaying game. I'd think you'd want some aspect of roleplaying involved if your characters are reproducing.

[Phelix-Mu]

More to the point, does anyone play their games in such a way that characters in setting would try to game the system like that?

It is still a roleplaying game. I'd think you'd want some aspect of roleplaying involved if your characters are reproducing.

Well, more to the point, since this isn't a char-op discussion and more of a setting discussion, it really stresses believability if everyone spends their days with a self-resetting trap of [dangerous something] in order to gain more power.

OMG, don't leave your kids with the ipad too long, they'll level up.:smalleek:

I rather like the idea of using heritable templates to increase power level, rather than class levels. Less optimal, to be sure, but far more believable that parents would opt for better/stronger/healthier (if more freakish) babies rather than putting their precious offspring through the wringer in Level-Up Plan mk 20518. At least, in my view.

[Jack_Simth]

How much does a self-resetting trap of Acid Arrow cost? Can our Adept parent make it with his feats?

Let's see... adept parent can't make it themselves, no (doesn't have the right spells), but it's your basic Magic Device Trap (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/traps.htm#magicDeviceTrapCost) - so basic, in fact, that the DMG includes two (www.d20srd.org/srd/traps.htm#cr3AcidArrowTrap) versions (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/traps.htm#cr8AcidArrowTrap).

Of course, our adept parent could make a CR 2 Burning Hands trap (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/traps.htm#cr2BurningHandsTrap) and use Resist Energy(Fire) spells to much the same effect. 1d4 fire damage won't get through Fire Resist 10 (minimum from Resist Energy).

[Frozen_Feet]

The CR 2 burning hands trap is cheap enough, and the Expert parent could have Trapmaking as her Craft skill. So making the trap is possible and by strick reading of the rules provides easy experience. Our Adept parent doesn't have limitless Resist Energy spells, so we can pass our kid through the trap only 3 times on a good day.

How many days does it then to get from ECL 1 to a point where CR 2 stops yielding experience, and what level will our kid be then?

[Azoth]

You can always make a Resist Energy trap.

I am a bit sad I got to this after we went after NPC Classes instead of PC Classes. I had a real fun idea for it really. Use an Archivist/Runecaster as one parent and an Artificer as the other. Say they decided to retire after their final level up.

Dad (archivist/runecaster), sells access to his prayer book for cash. He then uses this money to purchase as many books on as many subjects as he can find. He stores them in Enveloping Pits labeled by genre.

Mom (artificer) creates a permanent rune of Scholar's Touch having Dad contribute the spell.

When Junior needs to study, he just opens an enveloping pit and presses the rune to the designated books. Instant studying. No tutors required. If he has questions about the material, just ask mom or dad they already scanned it.

There is a spell in BoED that creates fealings of bliss. Normally a 24hr casting time, but as a permanent rune it is instant. Best way to use positive reinforcement on a child ever. Put the rune on a ring and just touch the kid whenever he does something good.

Mom and Dad's old buffing runes that they kept as beaded bracelets, let little junior have them so he doesn't get hurt too badly while playing. Just remove the one's that can be too powerful/wierd (Divine Power, Greater Luminous Armor, Greater Visage of the Diety, ect).

Give Junior a rune of Find the Path and tell him to think of home when he touches it so he will always know the way incase it get's dark before he is done playing with (insert friends here).

Make sure he got your rune of Vigor, so if he gets hurt while playing he will be good as new in a matter of seconds.

Dad works as a craftsman in the vilage because using his class feature requires atleast one craft skill to be very high, so he can cover most anything a village would lack. Mom can help or make cheap little magic items, claiming she tried to be a wizard but wasn't cut out for it.

If they want to make more runes for the kid as he grows or ever need more money just have Mom dismantle a piece of their old gear/loot. Have her cooperate with Dad to make the item using her craft reserve and cost reduction feats while he provides the spell and craft rune feat. Ten minute's later they have the rune. Best part is that no one will think to rob a kid wearing a wood/glass bead bracelet as he plays about town. Even if they try, the kid is warded and protected 12 ways from the abyss without realizing it.

[Taveena]

The Handle Animal DC to rear a creature that isn't an Animal, Vermin, or Magical Beast is 40+HD of Creature. This, bizarrely includes humanoids. And implies that commoners raise really terrible children.

[Icewraith]

The Handle Animal DC to rear a creature that isn't an Animal, Vermin, or Magical Beast is 40+HD of Creature. This, bizarrely includes humanoids. And implies that commoners raise really terrible children.

This sounds like there should also be failure rules a la use magic device.

What is involved in "rearing"? Can you grant things levels this way?

[Thurbane]

Isn't there a Handle Humanoid skill in the Wizards article about cats? Although I think you need to be feline to take it.

[SinsI]

Coup-de-grace + Reincarnate = Instant young Adult.

[Azoth]

Coup-de-grace + Reincarnate = Instant young Adult.

Isn't that the basis of one of the "Infinite mental stat" tricks? Combine that with Bestow Curse to rapidly age the body to Old Age for the +3 to all mentals. Then just loop it over and over to have NI Int/Wis/Cha.

[Taveena]

This sounds like there should also be failure rules a la use magic device.

What is involved in "rearing"? Can you grant things levels this way?

All it lets you do is 'make them domesticated', which has no ingame definition.

[Phelix-Mu]

Isn't that the basis of one of the "Infinite mental stat" tricks? Combine that with Bestow Curse to rapidly age the body to Old Age for the +3 to all mentals. Then just loop it over and over to have NI Int/Wis/Cha.

Except getting smarter is a chronological effect, not a biological one. If you don't get dumber for going back to an adult body (and there is a fair argument that you might depending on how it affects the brain), then it's not biological.

Any DM that would let that bit of RAW idiocy fly can get a book-to-the-forehead from me, free of charge.:smalltongue:

To the more general discussion, does this mean we can raise Warbeast children?

[Taveena]

I think you could raise a warbeast child if you'd gotten high enough on your Handle Animal for it to count as domesticated. DC 20, like any other domestic animal.

[One Step Two]

So, I've read the first few pages of this thread, I love the idea. There's so much potential, so I'm gonna throw in my two cents.

First, let's take a look at the direction and purpose of our child-raising optimisation. We need to decide what's best for our little tyke!

Using the PHB classes, as an good and somewhat controlling parent, we want to try and give our child some direction, while they are free to choose any path that they want, we sorta need to decide what they're gonna be ahead of time.

Let's start off with two parents, Race doesn't matter, but Human is pretty neat. One is a High level Spell-to-power Erudite, the other can be a anything at all really, but a nice Artificer is a good way to go, possibly Psionic for synergy, and also to help create the aforementioned items of prestidigitation, and Collars of Perpetual Attendance.
Ideally, they would each have a high Int (18+), love each other very much, and not be afraid of a little... experimentation.

Preperation: Genesis to create a demi-plane to suit your ideal environemnt, a cottage with a picket fence, and a huge backyard. The time trait passes faster the Prime Material, let's call it The Nursery

So, let's say our parents want to make a perfect little crusader against all injustice in the world. Our Erudite uses his ability to Polymorphy Any Object, and turns them both into an Assimar, for a happy bouncing Aasimar baby. Bonus points if you can get a Major Celestial Bloodline into that equation.

Then the parents use a Lesser Planar Binding to call a Movanic Deva, and have it play Babysitter/Mentor. The deal made for it's service should be relatively cheap, as with the properly accelerated time trait, all of 15 rounds will pass in the real world as the child is being raised.

Of course, you want to be present for the child while it's growing up, but aging 15 years kinda Sucks, so Astral Project yourself into your new demi-plane. Your Perception might experience 15 years, but your bodies are safe, sound and unaged (barring githyanki intervention).

Use Illusions and Programmed images for pets and friends, or summon up some Lantern Archons and Blink Dogs. A touch isolated, true, but no worse than some home-school kids.

When the child is 15, it's time to take them Out of the Nursery, and into school, enroll them to become a Cleric, Paladin or possibly Crusader. They're well on their way with the best start you can give them for those careers.
Heck, if they want to defy you and run off to become a bard, then they got the necessary boosts to make that work as well.

[SinsI]

No need to test your luck with genetics on his mental scores:

Polymorph Any Object the child into a cute little fir tree.
Maximized Intensified Awaken it.
Polymorph Any Object it back into a child.

[Phelix-Mu]

I really was aiming for optimizing the child-rearing, not optimizing the parents. In other words, I was thinking of methods that could be widely used, as opposed to used by one couple with an ideal number of levels in select character builds and access to arbitrarily high levels of wealth.

Not that I don't appreciate the contributions, as some have been fairly horrifying interesting.:smallamused:

[MadGreenSon]

No need to test your luck with genetics on his mental scores:

Polymorph Any Object the child into a cute little fir tree.
Maximized Intensified Awaken it.
Polymorph Any Object it back into a child.

Things like this are why I posted that idea earlier about the next generation of adventurers having the same effect on their world as the next generation of superheroes had on theirs in Kingdom Come. :smalltongue:



On the other hand, imagine how a campaign setting would look once this new generation was out and about. They'll have been born of and raised by people who worked their optimizing up into possibly epic levels and then passed their hard-won knowledge and power to their offspring without the struggle that they went through.

It'll turn your setting of choice into Kingdom Come.
"They say this new generation of adventurers have slain all the evils of yesteryear. Small comfort, as now they fight simply to fight, the only foes that can challenge them are each other. For those of us still mortal, all we can do is attempt to hide when one of their battles comes near and pray we are not collateral damage."

Seeing Waterdeep or Sharn looking like Metropolis in the opening bits of Kingdom Come would be awesome. Then, when the new generation finally does something beyond the pale, the good-aligned legends of yesteryear come out of their retirement demi-planes to set things right.

[Jack_Simth]

The CR 2 burning hands trap is cheap enough, and the Expert parent could have Trapmaking as her Craft skill. So making the trap is possible and by strick reading of the rules provides easy experience. Our Adept parent doesn't have limitless Resist Energy spells, so we can pass our kid through the trap only 3 times on a good day.

How many days does it then to get from ECL 1 to a point where CR 2 stops yielding experience, and what level will our kid be then?
It's a CR 2 trap. The last level at which you can gain experience from that is 9th, so it'll cap at 10th level via that method (after you level to 10th, you no longer gain experience for defeating CR 2 traps).

If we assume that the parent casting Resist Energy on the child means that the parent counts as being the child's ally in the encounter, then there's two people involved each time the challenge is overcome. When the child is between 1st and 4th levels (inclusive), that's 300 xp/pop for the child. 250/pop at 5th, 225/pop at 6th, 175/pop at 7th, 150/pop at 8th, 112/pop at 9th.

10,000 xp gets to 5th level - 300 xp/pop means 33 and 1/3rd pops, or a touch over 11 days. 34 hits at levels where it's 300 xp per, and that rate ends with the child at 10,200 xp and 5th level. Next level is at 15,000 xp (4,800 more), and at 250/run, that's another 20 hits (5000 xp even, leaving the child at 15,200 xp and 6th level). The next level is at 21,000 xp (5,800 more), and at 225/hit, that's another 26 hits (5,850 xp, bringing the child's total to 21,050 and 7th level). The next level is at 28,000 xp (6,950 more), and at 175/pop, that takes 40 pops (7000 xp even, bringing the child to 28,050 xp and level 8). The next level is at 36,000 xp (7,950 more), and at 150/trip, that takes 53 trips (even, for 7950 xp, bringing the child to exactly level 9 with 36,000 xp). The final level obtainable through that CR 2 trap is at 45,000 xp (9,000 more), and at 112 xp/stroll, it takes 81 strolls to get it (9,072 xp), leaving the child at level 10 with 45,072 xp. Total castings of Resist Energy (assuming one per encounter with this extremely well-known trap): 34+20+26+40+53+81=254 trips. At 3/day, that's 84 and 2/3rds days, or just a little shy of three months. This can be done by an adept-3 parent with Craft Wondrous Item.

After that, you need to upgrade the trap to have an effect. An Adept-9 parent could make, say, a CR 4 Lightning Bolt trap at caster level 5, which deals a maximum of 30 damage. With some caster level boosters (needs caster level 11), Resist Energy will stop 30 points of electricity damage. Boosting the trap to CR 4 means you can get the child to level 12.

An Adept 12 parent could make a CR 5 Wall of Fire trap - which, at caster level 12, will deal (at most, assuming the child walks right through the wall, does not have vulnerability to fire, and is not undead) 24 points of damage. As a 12th level caster, the Adept parent's Resist Energy spell will stop 30 points. That CR 5 trap can get the child up to level 13.

That is... about the highest you can chain in that manner keeping to NPC classes. To get higher than 13th via traps would pretty much require a 5th level spell trap, or some risk of injury to the child (Baelful Polymorph is Adept-5, and makes for a 6th level trap... fail the save, and the Adept Parent busts out Break Enchantment - no real risk beyond a bit of embarrassment if you do this under controllable circumstances; you can do some boosting to make CR 10 traps with lower level spells, however, that is going to be hard to stop with the Adept spell list).

If you use PC classes for the parent, on the other hand, it's possible to chain all the way up to 18th (limit of how high a CR 10 trap can get you). A Cleric parent is particularly good at this, because of the relatively low damage of the Inflict line and the absolute stopping power of Death Ward, as well as the easy availability of Deathwatch (suitable only for Evil or Neutral parents...) before Death Ward is available. Make several series of traps - Inflict Minor Wounds (CR 1, deals at most 1 point of damage, can get the child up to level 9 - and of course, a Cleric-9 child can be a parent for the next generation). A Cleric-9 can cast both Death Ward (which protects the child) and can craft a trap of Inflict Light Wounds Mass (which won't hurt a child protected by Death Ward, and makes a CR 6 trap). That CR 6 trap can get a child up to level 14... and again, if the child is a Cleric, that child will then be a parent who can do the same... only this time, with a CR 8 Mass Inflict Serious Wounds trap. That CR 8 trap can get a child up to 15th, which lets the cleric parent craft a CR 9 Mass Inflict Critical Wounds trap. That CR 9 trap can get a child up to 17th, at which point, the child is capable of crafting a CR 10 Energy Drain Trap, capable of bringing a child up to 18th.

To get higher than that, you'll need something other than traps.

[Gavinfoxx]

I'm wondering if any of the ideas in my Transhuman guide might be useful?

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Z9NJIs751Af3i0IEIJwCkIp9H9YFiZYZ7u-wmYVaheI/edit

Empty Vessel implies that it gives people Elite Array, so that's useful... just saying...

[Frozen_Feet]

@Jack_Simth: 10 levels for 500 gp and 40 XP (less after we factor in discounts from Apprentice [Craftsman] and Extraordinary Artesan) and three months of time is already good enough; remember, our parent characters themselves are only ECL 10! In essence, this one cheap trap allows transferring basically all of the parents' skill and wisdom to their offspring.

I don't feel there's a point in making better traps after this - at ECL 10, our kid should be able to earn their XP on their own. All further investments just drain resources from the parents.

The trap plan also beats aforementioned Blessed Seed + Born Lycantrope combo, costing both less money and XP. Of course, you could try to combine them, but I'm a bit hazy on what the results would be. A half-celestial werebear is a CR 7 creature with 7 HD, so as an NPC, it could gain 3 more levels with the trap (?). As a PC, it would have ECL 14, so the trap would do nothing, though.

Of course, from in-setting perspective, the trap plan is all kinds of messed up. We are passing our kid through a veil of holy fire thrice a day, and this somehow grants them experience and makes them master their craft instead of traumatizing them horribly.

I suppose we could delay starting the trap plan until the kid is almost a young adult and ready to leave home. It takes just three months, after all. We hardly need to torture them when they're mere infants. Still makes for one heck of an initiation rite, though.

"Three months from now, you'll come of age, son. So in order to prepare you for the harshness of life, we will be throwing you in a fire and reforge your body and spirit in the flames of our god."

[MadGreenSon]

Of course, from in-setting perspective, the trap plan is all kinds of messed up. We are passing our kid through a veil of holy fire thrice a day, and this somehow grants them experience and makes them master their craft instead of traumatizing them horribly.

Giving them power they didn't really earn, possibly leading to the Kingdom Come scenario I outlined for the net generation.

Which I still think would make a good campaign.

[Frozen_Feet]

Saying they "didn't really earn it" depends on your definition of earning. Does fire still hurt when you're under Resist Energy?

If yes, then gaining those levels means three months of agony.

Likewise, each day for three days, your parent is imbuing you with some power granted by a god. Go back a page or two and read my analysis on the adept spell list. He could be using those 2nd level spell slots for a number of other things, like protecting the community from invisible boogiemen or healing the wounded. So there's certainly an opportunity cost. A price that is paid in tears, prayers and time.

This is comparable to many real-life initiation rites, which are often similarly counter-intuitive and apparently useless, yet a person is not considered a real adult before going through them.

[MadGreenSon]

@ Frozen Feet: What you say does have some truth to it. But even assuming that there is a price paid in pain, we (like the characters in the scenario) lack a certain perspective on what ECL 10-14 means.

A 15 year old human starting out at that level? In most campaign worlds they would be walking into a veritable "world of cardboard" that would never catch up.

I mean, c'mon, there's no way Epic Mom and Epic Dad are send Junior out to make his/her way in the world with substandard gear!

So a new horde of optimized, relatively high level youth make their way into the world with a skewed perspective on what power is, what it means, and maybe what it is used for. The ones who could reign them in have retired to distant lands and other planes.

They will be challenged, but unopposed.

They are, after all, heroes.

(We can't assume that all parents among the previous generation are high level Adepts, some are gonna really be wonky in how they do things, and then the fun REALLY starts)

And more of a campaign setting is taking shape in my head...

[Jack_Simth]

@ Frozen Feet: What you say does have some truth to it. But even assuming that there is a price paid in pain, we (like the characters in the scenario) lack a certain perspective on what ECL 10-14 means.

A 15 year old human starting out at that level? In most campaign worlds they would be walking into a veritable "world of cardboard" that would never catch up.

I mean, c'mon, there's no way Epic Mom and Epic Dad are send Junior out to make his/her way in the world with substandard gear!

So a new horde of optimized, relatively high level youth make their way into the world with a skewed perspective on what power is, what it means, and maybe what it is used for. The ones who could reign them in have retired to distant lands and other planes.

They will be challenged, but unopposed.

They are, after all, heroes.

(We can't assume that all parents among the previous generation are high level Adepts, some are gonna really be wonky in how they do things, and then the fun REALLY starts)

And more of a campaign setting is taking shape in my head...

What's this Epic Mom & Epic Dad business, or this High Level Adept business? That CR 2 trap has a fair market price of 1,000 gp, and takes a day to make. It can be made by an Adept-3 (and the only reason for Adept-3 is the prerequisite of Craft Wondrous Item... although you do want an Adept-4 or higher parent for the Resist Energy spells). So it takes nine months, rather than three, for the child of an Adept-4 to become 10th level.

If Resist Energy is not available... 1d4 damage is not going to kill anyone outright. At worst, they're bleeding out. Get a reset delay on the trap, and if they collapse... walk in, drag them past, Heal check to stabilize, let them rest up for a few days. Roll max damage every time, and you can still go through at least once every four days if you cut it right (so 36 months to level 10... except that you'll only average 2.5 damage/run... if you fail the save (50% chance as a Commoner-1 with a Dex of 10) ... and the little issue that you heal faster the higher level you are - so that Commoner-4 is all healed up in a single day even in the worst case). First Aid is DC 15, or an Adept-1 can fix the damage entirely with one cure Light Wounds (and 1-2 Cure Minor Wounds). The Trap can be built by an Adept-3, and in a pinch, operated by an Adept-1. A randomly-generated Thorp has a 1 in 6 chance of being able to do it completely via Adept (highest level: 1d6-3). If you have at least an Adept-1 (50%) or Wizard-1 (25%), and any 3rd level caster (1 in 6 for an Adept, 1 in 6 for a Bard, 1 in 6 for a Cleric, 1 in 6 for a Druid) that Thorpe can arrange to have this rite of passage training method to get 10th level citizens (someone needs to take Craft Wondrous Item... but really, good to have anyway, and retraining rules). So the probability of a given thorpe not being able to arrange for the nine month version...
Chance of Burning Hands being available: 1-(P(! Adept-1+) * P(! Wiz-1+))=0.625
Chance of a 3rd level caster being available: 1-(P(! Adept-3+) * P(! Bard-3+) * P(! Cleric-3+) * P(! Druid-3+))=0.517746914
Chance of being able to do this in the smallest possible settlement, a Thorpe: 1-(P(! Burning Hands) * P(! 3rd level caster))=0.819

... OK, I've got my math marginally off, because if they have an Adept-3, you don't need to check for Adept-1 or Wizard-1, so it's slightly higher than that. Eh, whatever. Regardless, that's pretty good odds it's possible - for the smallest randomly-generated settlement size available.

Edit: Oh. It's higher than that. A Druid-3 could do a Produce Flame trap to much the same effect, and a Cleric-3 with the fire domain can do the Burning Hands trap as well.

[MadGreenSon]

So... You're proposing that full-grown adults take 13-15 year olds and a long weekend and make these youngsters vastly more powerful than they are themselves?

Have you ever thought through the implications of that level of power in the hands of someone who has not had time and practice to grow into it?

For an extreme and easily available example look at Titan (or "Tighten") in the movie Megamind.

In a fantasy setting, look at Game of Thrones for a few examples of people given power they were in no way ready for.

A 10th level character has access (potentially) to 5th level magic. Let's say the young lad or lass is a Sorcerer (needs less actual education, the Traps will work better), unchecked by wisdom or (real) experience they are one bad day from reducing that Thorpe their 3rd level Mom and Dad "raised" them in to dust and zombies.

This is the seed of an awesome campaign. I'm making notes, this is better than the Epic Mom and Dad. This is trying to absorb an energy field larger than your own head!

Thank you! Seriously, this is gonna be an awesome campaign.

[Jack_Simth]

So... You're proposing that full-grown adults take 13-15 year olds and a long weekend and make these youngsters vastly more powerful than they are themselves?

Have you ever thought through the implications of that level of power in the hands of someone who has not had time and practice to grow into it?

For an extreme and easily available example look at Titan (or "Tighten") in the movie Megamind.

In a fantasy setting, look at Game of Thrones for a few examples of people given power they were in no way ready for.

A 10th level character has access (potentially) to 5th level magic. Let's say the young lad or lass is a Sorcerer (needs less actual education, the Traps will work better), unchecked by wisdom or (real) experience they are one bad day from reducing that Thorpe their 3rd level Mom and Dad "raised" them in to dust and zombies.

This is the seed of an awesome campaign. I'm making notes, this is better than the Epic Mom and Dad. This is trying to absorb an energy field larger than your own head!

Thank you! Seriously, this is gonna be an awesome campaign.

Actually, with the proposed setup, the person running the thing (the Adept/Cleric/Bard/Druid/whatever with Resist Energy or Cure X Wounds) is ALSO gaining XP (at least until they hit 10th themselves and need to switch to a stronger trap) as I'm assuming that being ready to help out with the consequences means you're an ally in the encounter. It was part of the original write up, although I merely called that out as reducing the XP gain, I didn't note at the time that the person running the thing would gain XP:

If we assume that the parent casting Resist Energy on the child means that the parent counts as being the child's ally in the encounter, then there's two people involved each time the challenge is overcome. When the child is between 1st and 4th levels (inclusive), that's 300 xp/pop for the child. 250/pop at 5th, 225/pop at 6th, 175/pop at 7th, 150/pop at 8th, 112/pop at 9th.

[MadGreenSon]

Actually, with the proposed setup, the person running the thing (the Adept/Cleric/Bard/Druid/whatever with Resist Energy or Cure X Wounds) is ALSO gaining XP (at least until they hit 10th themselves and need to switch to a stronger trap) as I'm assuming that being ready to help out with the consequences means you're an ally in the encounter. It was part of the original write up, although I merely called that out as reducing the XP gain, I didn't note at the time that the person running the thing would gain XP:

Ok. I see where I misread. But my misreading has given me a great seed for a game, so I'm going with it.

The trailer for said idea is below, I might make a thread to discuss it and some ideas (I'll need a good list of classes and maybe PrCs that run off "inborn talent" fluffwise rather than training for the whole thing to work)

[Sometimes scared people make dangerous mistakes, a small town, fearing the dangerous wilderness around them enacts a dangerous plan concocted by a mad genius "The Forge of Power" to turn some of their children into the "Heroes" they need to save them from the dangerous creatures preying on them.
But who will save them from their manufactured heroes?]

No sarcasm intended, I seriously like this idea and I appreciate you guys for having sparked it, however unintentionally.

[Frozen_Feet]

So... You're proposing that full-grown adults take 13-15 year olds and a long weekend and make these youngsters vastly more powerful than they are themselves?

Three months ain't a "long weekend". And as has been pointed out by me and Jack, the kids don't become (or at least they don't have to become) vastly more powerful than the parents - they'll become of the exact same ECL, 10.


Have you ever thought through the implications of that level of power in the hands of someone who has not had time and practice to grow into it?

Sorry, but what is this "no time to practice to grow into it"?

We are not talking about an infant - we're talking about a young adult who has been parented by two invidiuals with above average Wisdom, Intelligence and Charisma. (See my prior post on the potential parents.)

Let's take real world as a comparison point. Here in Finland, elementary schooling starts at the age of 7 and continues until 15. After this, a person moves to highschool or vocational training. Both last for 3 years on average, so a person can be ready for joblife at 18. But just for kicks, we'll throw in 1 year of conscription in the army and 3 years of university or polytechnic, for age of 22.

Funny. This is the average starting age for a Cleric or Druid, the ideal character classes for our kid (like I proposed earlier).

Add to this the fact that gaining experience points takes only minority of time during the three months we're using to get to ECL 10. We can use the rest of time to teach the kid how to use their new abilities. Especially towards the end of the process, gaining each new level takes several days. Plenty of training we can cram into that time. To give some perspective, basic military training takes two months. In that time, a person with no prior experience is taught how to operate with grenades and firearms, and they usually are around age of 18 when this happens.

As the parents control the trap and the procedure of going through it, they can decide to put their kid through it whenever. "Whenever" includes after they've taught their kids basics of life and their profession, and that's been my suggestion throughout the discussion.

[MadGreenSon]

Three months ain't a "long weekend". And as has been pointed out by me and Jack, the kids don't become (or at least they don't have to become) vastly more powerful than the parents - they'll become of the exact same ECL, 10.



Sorry, but what is this "no time to practice to grow into it"?

<snip eloquent explanation>



I concede your point.
I still got an awesome game idea from the misunderstanding, so I think we all win here. :smallbiggrin:

Still. We're here to discuss magical child rearing, and leveling them up is basically the end of the process. Have we sufficiently covered everything else?

Maybe we need to go back through and gather up the least horrifying ideas (no Mindrape please) and put together a kind of handbook that can cover everything from Epic Level parenting to well optimized strategies for giving the kids a leg-up in life.

[CrazyYanmega]

There is a spell in BoED that creates fealings of bliss. Normally a 24hr casting time, but as a permanent rune it is instant. Best way to use positive reinforcement on a child ever. Put the rune on a ring and just touch the kid whenever he does something good.
On the other end of the spectrum, to punish the child you'd need a ring with a rune of Crushing Despair.

[Telok]

To the more general discussion, does this mean we can raise Warbeast children?

Oddly enough there is a 73 page child-rearing thread on the Dwarf Fortress forums here (http://www.bay12forums.com/smf/index.php?topic=91093.1065).

The method last under testing was to construct a small room with a food and booze stockpile, a bed, a gap for the mist generator and chained daycare attendant, and about 20 large birds. The birds were confined to one section of the room where the food stockpile was, there were enough of them that they attacked anything nearby due to overcrowding. Any time the kid got hungry or thirsty he had to fight the birds for the food. The birds (peahens if I recall) were carefully selected in number and size to be just strong enough to force xp gain in the kid while not being dangerous to cause serious injury. The mist caused happy thoughts and kept the kids form becoming suicidal while the daycare attendant was to try and prevent social skills from deteriorating.

Hey, it's child-rearing in a magical world and better than letting the mothers take the kids into the danger rooms with them.