Optimization Optimizing a setting: Intelligent Monster Food Chain [Archive]

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Promethean

2023-01-02, 10:46 AM

Revisiting a series of threads for how a D&D setting would work if the inhabitants were semi-aware of optimization:

The idea proposed isn't that everyone wakes up one day with complete knowledge of the game mechanics and how to optimize them or that everyone in this setting is optimized.

Basically, the various societies in said world were able to figure out the "mechanics" by trial and error. They've gravitated toward improving magic/technology to improve their race/group's standard of living, and make efforts to standardize class education/builds to increase their power by reducing the number of "NPC classes". Not everyone would necessarily be optimized for the same reason that not everyone is a soldier, a farmer, or a computer engineer. It's a setting where optimization organically grew out of the circumstances as a form of technology.

Note: Inhabitants have semi-unlimited access to any material from any setting-specific books or *3rd party sources, including various production cost reducers, non-standard magic item types, and variant rules. By 3rd party I mostly mean the published 3rd party companies, leaving out out homebrew(even balanced homebrew), because anyone can homebrew anything and making an exceptions list would make things complicated.

The setting also has some assumed tweaks to prevent infinite/arbitrary Loops:

Virtual Size(inspired from immortals handbook): Basically, for every +8 strength a character has above their species average(10 for humans), they go up 1 "virtual" size category. Each virtual size gives -2 DEX, +4 CON, increases their natural armor by 1, and allows them to use weapons 1 size category larger. These bonuses have no cap, so a Cancer mage with festering anger or a cleric abusing consumptive field + reserves of strength will quickly end up helpless Coup-de-Grace targets from DEX loss

Caster Boost Limit: Casters cannot stack caster level increases above twice their base.

Sarrukh have Rules: Manipulate form now functions off the monster creation rules in Dark Sun: Lifeshapers Handbook from Athas<dot>org + Legacy magic item creation rules(for SP and SU abilities)

Warshaper Limit: Warshapers have a Limit to the number of natural attacks they have based on the shape of their current form. For each Head or Limb they can have 1 of each type of natural attack. They can have multiple different attacks on the same limbs(so they can have an absurd number of Nat attacks if they want, but they can't have Infinite attacks.)

Action Limit: No player or NPC can take a number of actions in a round higher than their first initiative roll for that round. If a spell, magic item, or other effect would give them extra actions above this, it has no effect.(basically, no infinite action psionics or perpetual time-stop. A user can still make A Lot of actions, but not Infinite actions.)

More than Dead: Creatures that go below "Dead" in hit points(0 for undead/constructs, -10, or their CON with some feats) gain the "Shredded" status effect. Shredded creatures have All of their ability scores reduced to -(non-ability) and cannot make any actions or die rolls until brought above "Dead" in hit-points.

Out of Phase: Planes with different rates of time Cannot interact. A character in a plane cannot effect events in planes with different flows of time without entering said plane and allowing themselves to adjust to the new flow of time(minimum 1 round in new plane).

Multiverse Theory: Anything that moves back in time is transported to an identical parallel plane that is currently experiencing the moment the creature or item is seeking to alter. The creature or item's original plane is not changed and they will be forced to interact with alternate versions of themselves or the original issue they ran from base on the situation.

Chaos Limit: Aura of Chaos(stance) is limited to double the attacks base damage(same as a crit). Can stack with a crit for up to triple damage.

Cost of Magic: any time a magic, psion, etc. effect requires XP, the caster must take 1 HP of damage for every 20 xp spent. If the effect is permanent(say like magic item creation or the True Creation spell), then the HP cost is permanently removed from the caster's maximum HP pool and this can never be healed under any circumstance. If the effect is cast using an item, the item can be made to pay the HP damage from it's own hit points(though the user must still pay the normal xp cost unless the item is an intelligent construct with HD and an XP pool. Any HP or XP left over if the magic item doesn't have enough HP or XP to pay for the effect is paid by the user. If there is still more left over, the user's soul is consumed to help offset the difference. This prevent any kind of resurrection, including wish or miracle, save direct intervention by a god of death). If the xp Cost of an effect is waved for any reason, the HP damage is Not. There is no circumstance that will ever allow a user to wave the HP cost of an effect.

Now question: How does society and the setting change when intelligent monsters understand even basic optimization tricks like converting HD to Class levels using a thought bottle? How does this affect their relationship with humanoid races the by average, don't have an HD to convert or LA to deal with?

Edit: It only just occurred to me that it might be helpful to link previous threads.

Optimizing a Setting? (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?640245-Optimizing-a-Setting-(3-PF))
Optimizing a Setting: Magic Items (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?640613-Optimizing-a-Setting(-)-Magic-Items(3-PF))
Optimizing a Setting: Wealth Discrepancies (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?640925-Optimizing-a-Setting(-)-Wealth-Discrepancies(3-PF))
Optimizing a Setting: City Design (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?641180-Optimizing-a-Setting(-)-City-Design(3-PF))
Optimizing a Setting: Tweaks to make it work (https://forums.giantitp.com/showthread.php?652719-Optimizing-a-Setting-Tweaks-to-make-it-work)

AvatarVecna

2023-01-02, 03:34 PM

Now question: How does society and the setting change when intelligent monsters understand even basic optimization tricks like converting HD to Class levels using a thought bottle? How does this affect their relationship with humanoid races the by average, don't have an HD to convert or LA to deal with?

I'm not entirely sure it changes all that much. It might, but it's weird. Was mulling things over about the item discussion and came to some conclusions. Presuming that the HP cost of creating items can't be reduced (as stated), and presuming there is a level cap (as stated), and presuming NI-loops for massive HP pools are shut down, then each person is going to max out at a certain number of HP for their life. There are many ways society could look, but the ones that succeed will be the ones that are generally more optimized. The closer it gets to the ideal, the more successful it'll be. Societies that don't look like the ideal will exist, but won't be as successful. So what does the ideal look like?

1) An individual in the society is capable of mating immediately upon being born.

2) An individual capable of mating conceives NI offspring immediately.

3) An individual is born immediately after being conceived.

4) An individual reaches lvl 20 immediately after being born.

5) An individual at lvl 20 has NI HP.

Example: Suppose we have a hypothetical race (let's call them Folk). A Folk does not require another Folk to breed, they can do son on their own. 10 seconds after being born, they are lvl 20, have 1000 HP, and are capable of mating. 10 seconds after becoming capable of mating, they conceive 10 children. Those children are born 10 seconds after they are conceived, at which point the initial Folk dies, turning their HP into magic items. If we did this for 5 minutes...

Time
(seconds)
Fetus
Folk
Baby
Folk
Adult
Folk
Pregnant
Folk
Dead
Folk

0

1

10

1

20
10

1

30

10

1

40

10

1

50
100

10
1

60

100

11

70

100

11

80
1000

100
11

90

1000

111

100

1000

111

110
10000

1000
111

120

10000

1111

130

10000

1111

140
100000

10000
1111

150

100000

11111

160

100000

11111

170
1000000

100000
11111

180

1000000

111111

190

1000000

111111

200
10000000

1000000
111111

210

10000000

1111111

220

10000000

1111111

230
100000000

10000000
1111111

240

100000000

11111111

250

100000000

11111111

260
1000000000

100000000
11111111

270

1000000000

111111111

280

1000000000

111111111

290
10000000000

1000000000
111111111

300

10000000000

1,111,111,111

5 minutes after a single Folk came into existence, there are 10 billion of them and they have ~555 trillion gp worth of magic items due to charity of the dead. That would only be ~55000 gp worth of magic item per person, but with just a slight change in wealth distribution, that pretty easily becomes public services: at-will magic items that can be used for the collective good forever.

Of course, that's just a hypothetical race. Real races don't work that way. But the closer we get to the ideal, the more optimized it is. Anyway, back to the top of this post:

I'm not entirely sure it changes all that much. It might, but it's weird.

Let's get into why by looking at one specific races: dragons, whose life cycles are thoroughly documented in Draconomicon.

1) An individual in the society is capable of mating immediately upon being born.

2) An individual capable of mating conceives NI offspring immediately.

3) An individual is born immediately after being conceived.

A pair of dragons mate. This will result in a clutch of 2-5 eggs, and can happen as often as once a year. Depending on dragon type, 1-2 years after mating, the eggs hatch. When the dragon becomes 51 years old, it is now capable of mating. So, from being incubated to being able to mate is 52-53 years.

4) An individual reaches lvl 20 immediately after being born.

A gold dragon wyrmling pops out of its shell; immediately, it has RHD 8/LA 4/Class 0/ECL 12/CR 2. One of the dragon's slightly older siblings (RHD 8/LA 4/Class 14/ECL 26/CR 19) takes his baby brother out on an adventure. Their dragon parents/grandparents/ancestors set up a farm of creatures that are technically CR 19 but do not deserve it (e.g. Human Commoner 19, 68-HD Assassin Vine, Elite Array Paragon Half Dragon Toad Aristocrat 1, etc). The two of them "work together" to kill the CR 19 fodder. The slight-older wyrmling gains 325 XP, while the younger wyrmling gains 21600 XP, on top of the 66000 XP it already had. It now has 87600 XP and is lvl 13, thus gaining it a class level and putting it on track to gain another 1. The two of them move on to another CR 19 fodder and kill it too (gaining 325 and 15600 XP respectively). Once again, the younger dragon levels up. General expectation: after 15 such "combats" of gradually-increasing CR, both of them are gold wyrmlings with 15 class levels. At this point, one of their even older siblings (also a wyrmling, but this one with 19 class levels) escorts the two of them through 5 slightly tougher encounters, and all 3 of them now have 20 class levels before ever reaching the Very Young age category.

If they have one such fight a day, this process took 3 weeks. That's not "immediately", but it may as well be since most of this takes place on a timeline measuring in years, decades, centuries, and millennia. Yes, you could probably do it faster by using Thought Bottles to turn RHD and LA into class levels, but we wanna maximum HD to maximize HP to maximize magic items gains. Even if we did the bottle trick, it's only saving us 12 days. 60% reduction in the time to reach lvl 20, but that time was already so small it barely mattered.

5) An individual at lvl 20 has NI HP.

Gold Wyrmling, a month after being born, had 8d12+20d[N]+56 HP (assuming he didn't spend any HD bumps on Con, or spend any feats on gaining HP). Gold dragons live to be 4400 years old, give or take. Based on the rate at which they advance age categories normally, one would expect one age category/3 HD per 200 years past Great Wyrm, so that's +16 age categories/+48 HD. A 4400-year-old Great Wyrm Gold Dragon who is also a Cleric 20 will have Str +32/Con +32 from epic advancement (among other things). The Str bonus means they have +4 virtual size categories (Dex -8/Con +16, among other things). This puts their physical stats at 79/2/81, not including any bonuses from those 5 HD bumps or from epic feats spent. This means they have 89d12+20d8+3815 HP (avg 4483 HP), which allows them on average to make 2.2 million gp worth of items when they bite the dust.

Back to your question:

How does society and the setting change when intelligent monsters understand even basic optimization tricks like converting HD to Class levels using a thought bottle?

Let's ignore the OP rules and assume that two races (dragons and any humanoid race) are spontaneously brought into existence. Two babies each - one girl and one boy - who don't have to worry about taking care of themselves until they're adults. No rules for inbreeding or menopause, just breeding from puberty to death. The first is gold dragons. Let's say that from parents mating to their children mating is 60 years. Dragons have 2 children per decade. Gold dragons die of old age at...let's say 4000 years old even though it's really 4400. The second is humans. Let's say that from parents mating to their children mating is 20 years. Humans will have 2 children per decade. Humans die of old age at...let's say 100 years old even though it's really 91. Let's give them 4000 years to develop (starting from when all 4 of them were 0 years old), and then compare their progress.

The dragon pair we started with is days from dying, but they've lived quite a life. Their clan has grown from just 2 baby dragons to a ponderous size: 20 tredecillion children not old enough to mate (2x 10^43), 8 tredecillion adults who haven't pushed into epic advancement yet (8x 10^42), and 16 sextillion elder dragons who have broken into epic advancement properly. There's roughly two "children" per "adult", and a total of ~28 tredecillion dragons (2.8x 10^43).

Humans start breeding sooner, but stop breeding waaaaaaaay sooner due to dying off. But that turns out to not really matter. There are 18.9 sexvigintillion children too young to mate or adventure (1.89x 10^82). There are 4.52 sexvigintillion adults, 2.81 sexvigintillion middle-aged, 2.84 sexvigintillion old, 1.52 sexvigintillion venerable, and 268 quinvigintillion dead (2.68x 10^80). In total, there are currently ~30.7 sexvigintillion humans alive, and over the course of these 4000 years, there have been a total of ~30.9 sexvigintillion humans at all. 99.1% of all humans who have ever lived are currently alive.

It's not a contest. Yes, dragon breed at the same per mating pair, and yes, dragons mate for 50 times as long...but humans start making in 1/3 the time the dragons take, and that means they're accumulating compound interest faster. Even if the dragons had 10 babies per decade across the board, they'd still be outnumbered 2 million to 1.

If both were placed in separate parts of the universe with no competition, one is indisputably outperforming the other. If they were competing for the same space, it becomes more complicated: on the one hand, humans breed faster, but a baby dragon can absolutely murder most any human child without any trouble, regardless of baby vs teenager. If they're both dropped into the same planet and made to compete for resources, humans win unless the dragons eliminate the competition before they can really start to snowball.

And then you remember that in most settings, dragons are primordial beings who've been around more or less since the dawn of time. They've got a head start long enough that the tectonic plates and the star maps have shifted. They've already been running roughshod. They're competing with giants, not humans, because humans have only recently started doing anything - recently in a cosmological sense.

I posited in a previous thread that this potential for endless growth and innate magic would probably mean that whatever proto-dragons existed in ancient history probably ended up mass migrating to the infinite Outer Planes, which has the room and resources for them to thrive, and tougher threats to gain levels, but also competition to keep them from getting complacent, and that the material plane is only really home to retiring great wyrms who don't wanna deal with the eternal politics anymore. But that's basically the kind of thing that has to be happening for humans to...exist? Either dragons are running roughshod over the material because they eliminate all their competition before they become a threat, or there's googols of dragons chilling in the outer planes and the materia plane actually has humanoids.

AvatarVecna

2023-01-02, 03:37 PM

If a humanoid race is going to become dominant regardless of monsters, they need to be fast breeders. Off the top of my head, there's three really good ones: kobolds and thri-kreen both reach adulthood in less than a decade, and probably breed pretty quickly all things considered...and then you've got "constructed races" like warforged, where they come out fully formed and how fast they "breed" is a matter of economics, which can be optimized. I recall that Elans are kinda constructed, but are also weird? Might be worth looking into.

Maat Mons

2023-01-02, 09:43 PM

Nezumi (Oriental Adventures, p13) reach adulthood at age 5 (Oriental Adventures, p69). Their best possible roll for maximum age is 40, which may be a benefit or a drawback, depending on how you’re planning to structure your society.

Fire Bats (Monster Manual II, p102) might be one of the fastest replicating monsters out there. They have a 25% chance of splitting in two every day if they’ve eaten well.

An important question is, “How many levels can monsters gain?” If they’re capped at ECL 20, hit dice and LA are a huge burden. That would also imply monsters without listed LA can’t gain levels.

Actually, even ignoring level caps, anything without a listed ECL gives no way of determining how much experience it needs to advance in level. This is fine in games that assume NPCs don’t use XP. But if you’re applying XP-based leveling to everything, monsters without listed LA are broken, in the sense of being nonfunctional.

It’s even weirder for monsters that have an LA when young, but not when old, like Dragons. At some point in your life cycle, XP stops applying to you.

If you gain racial hit dice do you also gain the corresponding XP? Are “powerful” races who are born with bunches of hit dice also born with bunches of XP? Or do they have to spend all their XP paying off the hit dice they already have before they can take class levels?

If you lose racial hit dice, do you also lose the corresponding XP? When an afflicted Lycanthrope is cured, do they have a bunch of excess XP? If you use a Thought Bottle, can you bank the XP from your Lycanthrope hit dice to spend on class levels after you’re cured?

Promethean

2023-01-03, 07:11 PM

Fire Bats (Monster Manual II, p102) might be one of the fastest replicating monsters out there. They have a 25% chance of splitting in two every day if they’ve eaten well.

It's a 6HD intelligent creature with probably the fastest breeding feature ever seen(if the bats aren't starving, they essentially double their population every 4 days)... with a regen/cold... that's native to the elemental plane.. of fire...

How have these things not picked the entire elemental plane clean of any living creatures? Wait scratch that, Every Creature, considering it's devour and attach abilities don't require a living target.

On top of that, they're one template and spell away from subsequently becoming immune to physical damage(half zombie for subdual immunity + that one spell that adds cold subtype). On top of that, their intelligence and racial HD is a though bottle and a wight away from turning into a level 5 character class.

Sometimes I wonder why the writers bother with the "Ecology of" series when they put blatantly invasive apex predators in the books. anything without DR 10 on the elemental plane is lunch meat with these things.

An important question is, “How many levels can monsters gain?” If they’re capped at ECL 20, hit dice and LA are a huge burden. That would also imply monsters without listed LA can’t gain levels.

As many as their HD at base when the Racial HD to Class level trick is discovered. Which basically puts any dragon older than "Adult" Firmly in the epic levels.

Actually, even ignoring level caps, anything without a listed ECL gives no way of determining how much experience it needs to advance in level. This is fine in games that assume NPCs don’t use XP. But if you’re applying XP-based leveling to everything, monsters without listed LA are broken, in the sense of being nonfunctional.

Creatures with an LA: - are only disallowed to players(which itself is tenuous when you consider that permanent polymorphs exist), they're 100% allowed to have class levels in setting/lore when you consider classes like Beholder Mage exist exclusively for LA: - races.

Oddly enough, they'd count as LA +0 do to not specifying an LA for non-players.

If you gain racial hit dice do you also gain the corresponding XP? Are “powerful” races who are born with bunches of hit dice also born with bunches of XP? Or do they have to spend all their XP paying off the hit dice they already have before they can take class levels?

If you lose racial hit dice, do you also lose the corresponding XP?

By RAW? Yes, sort of.

This is demonstrated by how Energy Drain works. Losing HD functions exactly as losing class levels, including the effect where you're put at 50% the XP for the next "Level" when losing an HD.

It's also reinforced by how spellcasting monsters like dragons will have vast XP pools even if they have no class levels.

Issue being, the XP isn't stated outight and the rules don't treat it as "There" unless an HD monster experiences an XP draining event like a Negative level, in which case they will suddenly have the minimum XP for their HD from then on and can accumulate more as normal. Might be able to come up with an in-universe explanation like "needing to be awakened to your power" or something

This makes races who advance HD by means other than Leveling(such as Dragons, who gain it just by going up in age categories) Overpowered As Heck the moment they discover they can trade in those racial empty levels for more substantial class levels via some tricks.

When an afflicted Lycanthrope is cured, do they have a bunch of excess XP?

The way it's written, No. You just lose the template.

If you use a Thought Bottle, can you bank the XP from your Lycanthrope hit dice to spend on class levels after you’re cured?

Yes in one specific case: gaining a negative level and losing one HD will put you suddenly as the halfway point between Class level + Racial HD - 1 and the next level.

Then you can thought bottle and cure yourself for extra levels. Looping this for infinite levels would be an Infinite/Arbitrary Loop though, and would be unusable for the cases of this thread series.

Maat Mons

2023-01-04, 01:21 AM

Promethean

2023-01-04, 06:34 AM

Mantle of the Icy Soul is the spell that gives the Cold subtype. But it’s actually only the Frostburn version of the spell that does what you want. The version in Spell Compendium is temporary and includes a line saying it doesn’t benefit a creature that already has the Fire subtype. Unfortunately, the version in Frostburn has an XP cost of 2,000, which doesn’t play nicely with your Cost of Magic rule.

There's a ritual in savage species that does the same thing. Still costs XP, but by raw it is permanent.

Funny thing is, Fire Bats can eat each other, or maybe even themselves, with no ill effects. Their attacks can’t overcome their own Regeneration. I’m not sure if hunger could drive them to this. Their creature type is Elemental, which would normally mean they don’t need to eat at all.

I was about to quote the rule that says creatures with DR can overcome that DR against others with their natural attacks, but that Only applies to DR.

A Firebat XP farm seems to be the Answer everyone was looking for last thread. It'd cost no resources other than real-estate and self-replenish at the speed that it'd Require constant usage to keep the firebat population in check.

Unfortunately, there aren’t any rules I can find for what happens when a nonstandard Fire Bat splits in two. Fire Bats can have up to 18 hit dice. Does an 18 hit die Fire Bat split into two 18 hit die Fire Bats? The same question for Fire Bats with the Elite Array or the Non-Elite Array. And again, for Fire Bats with class levels.

Considering the text say "Splits into two" rather than "creates another", I believe the two new firebats would be exact clones of the original.

Meaning if you Did put the Cold subtype on one, and it splits, you have an entire subspecies of firebats with the cold subtype. If it had 18 HD, the new subspecies would All have 18 HD. If it had class levels...

Firebats are a grey goo scenario waiting to happen.

So, the Lycanthrope XP trick is fine as long as we only do it once per person? Well, I guess we need a high-HD animal to make the one XP boost count for as much as possible. I think Legendary Tiger is the best choice, at 26 hit dice. Wait, Lycanthropy doesn’t let us use the advanced 48 HD version does it? I think it’s just the regular, non-advanced version for Lycanthropes. Is the version of the Curse of Lycanthropy spell from Complete Divine allowed? We’d still need to source a pint of Legendary Tiger blood, but that seems easier than finding an existing Were Legendary Tiger.

Funny thing about Lycanthrope, in lore(at least in 2e) it can infect animals too. Such creatures use the term [animal]-were rather than were-[animal](which means from the animals perspective, they get infected with a variety of humanoid-shift diseases). The jackalwere creature in 3.5 is actually one such creature.

The 3e-3.5 template doesn't allow this however, which leads to weird conflict between the rules and lore.