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DrakebloodIV
2008-12-01, 12:28 AM
Okay, here goes...

This thread is an idea spawn from reading several posts on this (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?t=97897) thread. which gave me an idea.

Those magical posts

7 gold pieces per week = 1 gp per day. Assuming, for the moment, that he doesn't have a hut somewhere, just from the PHB, we can get...

1) Common Inn Stay (5 sp/night)
2) Common meals (3 sp/day)

That's.... "a place on a raised, heated floor, the use of a blanket and a pillow" and "bread, chicken stew, carrots, and watered-down ale or wine"

With 2 sp/day to spare.

If the poor guy has a hut (free lodging), then he can purchase good meals (5 sp/day), and have 5 sp/day left over.

If he's got a wife who can cook, clean, and maintain everything (Craft: Food, possibly Craft(Hut)... or no ranks and just takes 10 on a DC 10 task), then all he has to purchase is the actual materials - which are 1/3rd the cost of the base items. He's buying for two, but he's also paying less than half price - which means that 1 gp/day gets him good meals, again with a little left over.

This is why magic needs to applied AFTER you've established a baseline non-magical economy, and then as you add more and more advance magic, the model becomes more and more sophisticated.

So I decided to do exactly as Elliott said, and produce a base economy in which magic is gradually introduced into. Starting with 0th level and working gradually up to 9th.

Following the base idea to Marxism, I decided to devide the world into three social classes.

The Low- 1st level commoners who make the basic 8gp/week, they buy low to normal quality food for their families (and/or rent a room) and produce income which at most goes to buying tools for their trade and paying taxes up to the Middle and High. Minimal skill in profession and craft skills, often forced to take 10. Life expectancy is low, as clerics dont exist to heal things and living conditions are sub par

The Middle- Higher level commoners, skilled in profession and craft skills. Make between 16 and 40 gp/week outside of producing goods on craft checks. Also includes the entertainment industry, which has high checks with decent ranks (12 ranks and +3 cha garuntees at least 1d10sp/night)

The High- Diplomats, Intellectuals and other such people. NO skill ranks in profession and rarely ranks in craft.


EDIT:
Note that the amount of magic wielding people is few, with about one mage/bard/druid/cleric per 30 people

DrakebloodIV
2008-12-01, 12:29 AM
0th Level spells (Caster level still lvl 1)

0th level Cleric/Druid spells(Orisons if you must)

Create water- Only significantly economy shaking in a desert environment, and even then minimally so with only 2 gallons.

Cure Minor Wounds- Maybe used in emergencies, could improve the quality of life but economically unimportant.

Detect poison- Infinitely valuable to any unloved High class citizens, they would pay a hefty sum to be able to tell if their beverage was deadly.

Light- Valuable in low wood areas, but not very due to low duration.

Mending- High value, even a minimal amount of clerics would quickly outdate the repair industry and many smiths.

0th level Bard/Wizard/Sorcerer spells (Cantrips, I guess)

See Light and Mending in the Orisons list



1st level spells

1st level cleric spells

Heal light wounds- Obviously a potent way to provide emergency medical response
Comprehend languages- Totally outdates any form of translator, international relations skyrocket

1st level Druid spells

Goodberry- Incredibly useful because it isn't just one-shot, a druid can stash berries or occasionally even sell them. They also have the potential to be sold as a medical commodity

1st Level Sorcerer/Wizard spells

Same as Cleric, suprisingly



MORE SOON, to tired to read through more tables on freakin d20srd

DrakebloodIV
2008-12-01, 12:30 AM
also reserved 4 later

DrakebloodIV
2008-12-01, 12:32 AM
this ones reserved just to annoy you

Sstoopidtallkid
2008-12-01, 12:32 AM
this one taken to break the cycle. :p

Yukitsu
2008-12-01, 12:35 AM
Taken to predict cantrips will mostly be influenced by clerics.

Oracle_Hunter
2008-12-01, 12:46 AM
Taken for Great Justice!

And for the upcoming Proletariat Revolution :smallamused:

Emperor Tippy
2008-12-01, 12:56 AM
Taken to explain the base failure of elliott20's post.

Magic has existed for a very long time. How long depends on the game. But if it is not a new invention (last thousand years or so) then it has already altered the economy to such an extent that their is no baseline, at all.

Teleporation Circle makes it so that moving goods by ship never even comes up. There is no reason to ever even think of sending goods by ship. Create Food and Water traps means that farming (if it exists at all) is only a specialty used to grow delicacies. The effects of teleportation on warfare means that nations never form in the traditional sense (a traditional nation can't defend it's claimed territory). Fabrication traps mean that the need for raw materials or even work are eliminated.

If magic is a new invention (or at least teleportation magic) then it's a different story. But if it's been around for thousands of years (or from the beginning of time) then you have to throw out the entire non-magical economy and start with the effects of magic.

If a single cleric can feed a nation by creating a single magic item then why does farming ever exist? Once the magic exists there is no reason for them not to use it. You go straight from a hunter gatherer society to a post farming society.

If a single wizard can make an item that spits out a suit of clothes made of the finest silks and of the finest manufacture every second then why does a cloth making industry ever come to exist?

If a single wizard can construct an entire city in under a week on his own (and do so better than any non magical builders) then why do people not have houses?

---
Ultimately economics and economies rest on the idea of a certain amount of non trivial work and effort being needed to produce a product that someone else needs or wants. Magic in D&D removes that base need. It's free energy.

Yukitsu
2008-12-01, 12:57 AM
Level 0:
Create water: Clean water is a major issue in many societies, even today. The ability to produce enough water for about 6 people per day is phenominal. Especially because it's clean. This alone could cut fatalities due to disease in half. And we all know, diseased people are not productive people.
Cure minor wounds: No one in town need bleed to death. Of course, they only have a minute to grab a cleric and get him to the dying individual, but it's better than what they had as an alternative.
Mending: Don't need to have as many smiths working on constantly repairing broken objects. May get complaints from guilds from this one.
Purify food and drink: The other major one. You can take that old putrescent stuff that would either be tossed or which would make someone ill, clean it off with this spell, and it's as good as new. Efficiency would skyrocket.
Arcane mark: It's a hard to forge symbol that very few can make, and those that can make it can rarely forge.

DrakebloodIV
2008-12-01, 01:02 AM
But for Purify food & drink and Create Water you have to take into account the pitiful amout. 1 in 30 people is a caster and last time I checked 2 gallons dosen't split up that well between that many people. Nor does one cubic foot of food/drink.

Oracle_Hunter
2008-12-01, 01:05 AM
Tippy, I think the question is what if Magic were introduced into the RAW D&D economy.

So, no high level wizards or clerics (initially), but they suddenly start appearing as 1st level characters. What happens to the RAW economy as these first magic users level up?

A far more interesting question, IMHO.

EDIT:
I think the incidence of magic is too high, BTW. No higher than 1 in a 100, or you'll start getting natural concentrations even in smaller towns.

Yukitsu
2008-12-01, 01:05 AM
Yes, I'm saying it supplements the current resources well. Besides, you can get either 3 castings of one, or a mix of both. 6 gallons of water, pure and clean for drinking is a significant difference compared to a dirty mallaria infected well for everyone. 3 square feet of food is a decent amount as well. A level 6 can feed the entire 30 and then some, and though he'll be rare, he'd still be literally sustaining a city block. And that's without "create food and water".

Sstoopidtallkid
2008-12-01, 01:11 AM
Keep magic items in mind, too. The Altar to Vkandis, Bringer of Life, that grants all true believers who pray at it their daily bread, is 15,000 GP. Perfectly reasonable for a Temple in a major city to create ASAP.

Yukitsu
2008-12-01, 01:12 AM
EDIT:
I think the incidence of magic is too high, BTW. No higher than 1 in a 100, or you'll start getting natural concentrations even in smaller towns.

1 in 30 is reasonable if you add the NPC class adepts.

Oracle_Hunter
2008-12-01, 01:17 AM
1 in 30 is reasonable if you add the NPC class adepts.

I meant in terms of this thought experiment.

Or, at least, this thought experiment as I framed it. If you allow even small towns to gain significant concentrations of spellcasters, then you'll end up with a Tippy Society in no time; it'll be impossible for anyone to stamp them out within a few levels.

But if you keep them rare enough that they can be effectively repressed, then you end up with a more interesting situation. Large towns have substantial governments who may not appreciate individuals wielding so much power. As magical items start being invented, those in power will have a choice between leaving these things on the open market, or suppressing their public distribution and enslaving 'casters to produce weapons for their armies. How long could that state of affairs last?

Hell, this might even make for an interesting campaign setting, though I bet it has been done to death.

DrakebloodIV
2008-12-01, 01:18 AM
I think the incidence of magic is too high, BTW. No higher than 1 in a 100, or you'll start getting natural concentrations even in smaller towns.

But its only 1 in 30 for ANY form of magic, so if you do the math there is only a one in 150 chance of each base magic class

Yahzi
2008-12-01, 01:27 AM
Okay, here goes...
I think your thought experiment is great, but I think you need to re-examine your starting propositions.


The Low-
These are not the low. These are the middle class. The low live in peasant huts that they share with the family cow. Maybe you missed the post on how at least 60% of your people have to be growing food (or you could be just talking about townsmen, I guess).


The High-
Actually intellectuals in the medieval era didn't do as well as highly skilled tradesmen or merchants.


Note that the amount of magic wielding people is few, with about one mage/bard/druid/cleric per 30 people
Er... 1/30 is not particularly low. There is about 1 doctor for every 400 people in the USA. Yet that number is large enough to radically change society. If you want rare magic, you should be talking 1 per 1000 or so.

Oracle_Hunter
2008-12-01, 01:27 AM
But its only 1 in 30 for ANY form of magic, so if you do the math there is only a one in 150 chance of each base magic class

But you really only need a small town to get 2 casters of the same type to really take off. They can "research" spells independently and then share them with each other. I suppose with Clerics it doesn't matter, but as soon as a Wizard finds a buddy, their potential knowledge begins to explode.

Yahzi
2008-12-01, 01:38 AM
Large towns have substantial governments who may not appreciate individuals wielding so much power.
Except that the governments of those towns almost certainly are wielders of that kind of power themselves. That's why they're the government.

Yukitsu
2008-12-01, 01:39 AM
I meant in terms of this thought experiment.

Or, at least, this thought experiment as I framed it. If you allow even small towns to gain significant concentrations of spellcasters, then you'll end up with a Tippy Society in no time; it'll be impossible for anyone to stamp them out within a few levels.

Yeah, adepts can't do the Tippyverse things. At least not normally. They have pretty much a bunch of useful trinket spells that help in cities, but very little that would help in a fight or a coup. basically, adepts are casters, but they need to keep their day job.

DrakebloodIV
2008-12-01, 01:42 AM
But even so at lower levels there are very few game-changers. Im gonna make a new rule now just to make sure things stay pretty balanced.

AND THE HEAVENS DID THUNDER AND THE SKY OPENED UP AND THE DRAKEBLOOD4 DID SPEAK, SAYING

Only 1/2 of 1st level casters progress to be able to cast 2nd level spells, of those 2nd levelers only 1/3 make it to 3rd level spells and so on.

So it works something like this

{table] 1st | 1/30
2nd | 1/60
3rd | 1/180
4th | 1/720
5th | 1/3600
6th | 1/21,600
7th | 1/151,200
8th | 1/1,209,600
9th | 1/10,886,400
[/table]
Keep in mind that the population of large countries in that time was around five million, so a single ninth level caster would be earth shattering.

DrakebloodIV
2008-12-01, 01:47 AM
Also, with the doctor comment. The reason that doctors are so rare is that there is little need to constantly go to the doctor if you are a healthy individual. One can easily cycle out people to go visit the doctor but one could not have a doctor catering to the entire 400 people daily. Not to mention all of the suppourting medical staff around a doctor that aren't technically doctors: Nurses, PA's, pharmasists, you name it.

elliott20
2008-12-01, 01:53 AM
Taken to explain the base failure of elliott20's post.

Magic has existed for a very long time. How long depends on the game. But if it is not a new invention (last thousand years or so) then it has already altered the economy to such an extent that their is no baseline, at all.

Teleporation Circle makes it so that moving goods by ship never even comes up. There is no reason to ever even think of sending goods by ship. Create Food and Water traps means that farming (if it exists at all) is only a specialty used to grow delicacies. The effects of teleportation on warfare means that nations never form in the traditional sense (a traditional nation can't defend it's claimed territory). Fabrication traps mean that the need for raw materials or even work are eliminated.

If magic is a new invention (or at least teleportation magic) then it's a different story. But if it's been around for thousands of years (or from the beginning of time) then you have to throw out the entire non-magical economy and start with the effects of magic.

If a single cleric can feed a nation by creating a single magic item then why does farming ever exist? Once the magic exists there is no reason for them not to use it. You go straight from a hunter gatherer society to a post farming society.

If a single wizard can make an item that spits out a suit of clothes made of the finest silks and of the finest manufacture every second then why does a cloth making industry ever come to exist?

If a single wizard can construct an entire city in under a week on his own (and do so better than any non magical builders) then why do people not have houses?

---
Ultimately economics and economies rest on the idea of a certain amount of non trivial work and effort being needed to produce a product that someone else needs or wants. Magic in D&D removes that base need. It's free energy.
Hey, I'll admit my assumption here is not necessarily universal. The idea I had in my mind was that the RAW society seems pretty free of magic infrastructure and institution, and so an experiment of development from that point on would be interesting. In essence, I'm saying draw back to what happen when magic FIRST entered the equation. Now, let's not forget, when magic FIRST came around, we're not talking about a wizard who just pops out of the cosmos as a level 20, with all the crunch for making magical teleportation circles intact. That's why it's new.

If you want to just go straight to "level 20 wizards are everywhere, and has existed as long as humanity has" assumption, well, sure, tippy verse seems like a pretty logical conclusion, assuming again that people are not resistant to change, that all the infrastructural and institutional structures you've erected stay functioning, and actual get utilized at a high rate.

and just right there, you've already made a number of assumption that in any other situation, is highly unlikely as well. (That is, conditions that are BEYOND the RAW)

your society also assumes that

1. people will not want more from their magic after they've been clothed and fed. Well, maybe entertainment, but that's about it. That's a flawed assumption. Your magical effects on societal productivity doesn't just stop at your standard tippy-verse. If you wanted to, you can really just keep going.

2. that magic will not evolve either. Yes, it is a necessity for magic to evolve beyond the RAW if we are to use economic models to it's logical conclusion. At some point, somebody is going to come up with a way to block teleporters and such, i.e. Rich Burlew's own "Cloister" spell in OOTS. After all, there is a clear need for this kind of protection lest we are to all submit ourselves to the whims of wizards who think they know better. That is, the force of innovation will have unexpected affects on the plans you've proposed.

but again, these are issues that go beyond the RAW and quite frankly the RAW is just not equipped to deal with. Me? I think it's a reasonable method of going about constructing a magical society based off of an existing one, and add things on one by one, showing it's evolutionary progress. It also makes the model easier to work with, as opposed to have to swallow the tippverse in it's entirety without questioning.

Emperor Tippy
2008-12-01, 09:53 AM
Actually RAW can deal with a pretty magical society (unless you throw in epic magic, when it still can but it gets different). The standard tippy-verse stops at the point it does not because I can't take it farther but because it makes gaming in it pretty difficult. The cities become effectively nut houses who do truly random and outrageous (apparently) things because they are bored. But if you interject a few little tweaks it becomes playable.

----
Let's assume that one day teleportation magic just appears. This is day 0. On day -1 the most advanced teleportation magic around was Dimension Door, and then on day 0 Boccob came down and now every mage can learn the teleportation line of spells.

On about day 1 a number of wars start and a number of leaders are assassinated as soldiers are teleported straight into cities and castles. These wars go on for a good chunk of time, until the cities become effectively armed camps that an enemy won't survive just teleporting into. Well now the surrounding villages become targets. Eventually those people head into the cities because they are at least relatively safe there. Well now the cities need a way to feed these people. Create Food and Water traps can take care of that. A disintegrate trap can take care of all the waste.

Well now that the people have food it's time to get them work. They can't go outside the cities because they won't be protected or safe. The armed men are needed to defend the city and so the local monsters have come back and reclaimed a lot of the previously inhabited territory. This means gaining raw materials is very difficult. So a mage whips up a fabricate trap that spits out blocks of various raw materials. At the same time the decision is made to whip up another one that spits out clothes. Well all those clothes (and any other goods you feel like making traps to produce) are identical. Only the poorest who can't afford custom clothes wear them.

Well now that everyone is making stuff it's time to deal with trade. Some cities want to be able to trade with or defend each other easier. So they construct permanent teleportation circles between each other to facilitate travel, as it's not possible to survive an overland journey.

There, you have the cities taken care of without going to the extreme of assassination games. :smallwink:

Now what about the monsters and people who aren't in the cities? Well the wilds is the area in between the cities and it's mostly ignored. None of the monsters out here are a real threat to the golem and warforged legions of the cities (built to defend against each other). So the smart ones tend to avoid the cities. And now they have a lot more ground to inhabit as most of the people who had been taking their territories are now in the cities. The people who either didn't want to go too the cities, left the cities, or are stuck in the wilderness live largely like standard greyhawk D&D. Magic is rare. Why? Because unlike the cities where most everyone is taught at least basic cantrips and the more capable are taught higher level magic, that kind of educational system doesn't exist. Sorcerers and druids are the main casters out here, with a number of psions and some clerics of the more nature oriented gods. But all magic is pretty rare. Continuous warfare with the various monsters, very little trade, and being relatively small groups living at subsistence level makes them a very minor irritant to the cities at best.

Every once in a great while a band of these people is more successful and settles down into a city. And eventually they connect to the network of teleportation circles and become a minor city (under the protection of one of the older cities that can defend it against other cities).

Likewise, every once in a great while a city is destroyed for any number of reasons. And it's population is now in the wilds, most likely thousands of miles from the nearest city, with minimal supplies or survival skills. Those that survive generally form new bands and continue the cycle.
---

The primary driver for magic altering the world drastically is not it's effects on the economy but it's effects on warfare. You can't defend against a teleporting army except by already having a sufficient force at the location attacked. And that means that cities get defended while smaller concentrations of population get sacrificed. And once you have the majority of the population living in the cities you have to feed them. Well you can't defend farms and the city. So you resort to magic. Same with gathering raw materials. Once that is taken care of you get to the economy.

hewhosaysfish
2008-12-01, 10:12 AM
I hope I don't offend Tippy by saying this (although, if I do, then he's not the man I think he is....) but the whole "Tippyverse" concept is, in my eyes, an extremely logical and well-thought out excercise in completely missing the effing point.

If I may offer an analogy, suppose that as winter draws in and the days get shorter, you find you don't have enough light to read by at your favourite seat by the window. To fix this, you go out and buy a new lamp. However, on getting the lamp home realise that it doesn't really provide that much light. You then have, as I see it, 4 options:

1) Strain your eyes trying to read using the dim light available from the lamp.
2) Go out and buy a brighter bulb for the lamp.
3) Go out and buy another lamp. Maybe get a refund on the defective one.
4) Notice that the lamp may not give out much light but does give plenty of heat. Forget the books and sit by the window, warming your hands by the lamp.

We probably all have varying opinion about how long we should be prepared to try #1 (if at all) before going for #2 but equally probably we all agree that we would try #2 before #3, only trying #3 if the lamp turns out to use some non-standard bulb.
Who would go for #4? Not me. It seems weird and... well... kinda stupid. If I ever find myself needing a small space heater, I may remember that the lamp would serve that purpose to it. I may recommend it to my friends for that purpose and, when the give me a strange look say "No really, try it!"
But for the moment I want light to read by.

When we discover that our chosen roleplaying system is not as good as we'd hoped at representing a medieval-fantasy-with-knights-and-wizards-and-dragons theme what options do we have?
1) Handwave the problems when they come up and try not to think about it .
2) Houserule the bits that don't work.
3) Switch to a system that hopefully works better.
4) Abandon the medieval fantasy theme in favour of some sort of magitek, pseudo-cyberpunk distopia with Wizard's Guilds instead of megacorps (ok, to Tippyverse could lead to a utopia, assuming a benevolent dictator, but leaves little room to adventure).

Not a perfect analogy, I'l admit but it wil do for now.

Emperor Tippy
2008-12-01, 10:20 AM
I hope I don't offend Tippy by saying this (although, if I do, then he's not the man I think he is....) but the whole "Tippyverse" concept is, in my eyes, an extremely logical and well-thought out excercise in completely missing the effing point.

If I may offer an analogy, suppose that as winter draws in and the days get shorter, you find you don't have enough light to read by at your favourite seat by the window. To fix this, you go out and buy a new lamp. However, on getting the lamp home realise that it doesn't really provide that much light. You then have, as I see it, 4 options:

1) Strain your eyes trying to read using the dim light available from the lamp.
2) Go out and buy a brighter bulb for the lamp.
3) Go out and buy another lamp. Maybe get a refund on the defective one.
4) Notice that the lamp may not give out much light but does give plenty of heat. Forget the books and sit by the window, warming your hands by the lamp.

We probably all have varying opinion about how long we should be prepared to try #1 (if at all) before going for #2 but equally probably we all agree that we would try #2 before #3, only trying #3 if the lamp turns out to use some non-standard bulb.
Who would go for #4? Not me. It seems weird and... well... kinda stupid. If I ever find myself needing a small space heater, I may remember that the lamp would serve that purpose to it. I may recommend it to my friends for that purpose and, when the give me a strange look say "No really, try it!"
But for the moment I want light to read by.

When we discover that our chosen roleplaying system is not as good as we'd hoped at representing a medieval-fantasy-with-knights-and-wizards-and-dragons theme what options do we have?
1) Handwave the problems when they come up and try not to think about it .
2) Houserule the bits that don't work.
3) Switch to a system that hopefully works better.
4) Abandon the medieval fantasy theme in favour of some sort of magitek, pseudo-cyberpunk distopia with Wizard's Guilds instead of megacorps (ok, to Tippyverse could lead to a utopia, assuming a benevolent dictator, but leaves little room to adventure).

Not a perfect analogy, I'l admit but it wil do for now.

Ok, that's I'll take issue with. The "tippyverse" (at least the base version) does a better job of modeling D&D and dealing with adventurers than any of the standard settings. D&D expects your players to have access to Ye Old Magic Shoppe, which the cities provide. It expects political intrigue to be possible, which is what the cities provide. It expects war's against monsters and defending villages against monsters, which the wilds provide. It expects delving into ancient ruins, which the fallen cities provide.

In fact, between the wilds and the cities it covers most everything that you can come up with for adventures without any alteration of the base setting.

And at high levels is continues to provide challenges to the PC's. Why do the PC's have to deal with the big bad monster out in the wilds? Because most people of their power level are in the cities and don't care about the wilds. Why can't the PC's just gut a city before breakfast? Because that cities collection of high level mages, legions of golems, and other defenses are an actual challenge.

Riffington
2008-12-01, 10:38 AM
Tippy: how large a part of your world is traps abuse? If it turns out (for example) that traps must be harmful, or that traps with reset mechanisms have limited charges, how different does the world become?

If the DMG "Spoon that can produce oatmeal for 4" is really priced correctly, and farmers need acres of fields to remain unravaged by beasts... do cities still get to remain islands?

Emperor Tippy
2008-12-01, 10:50 AM
Tippy: how large a part of your world is traps abuse? If it turns out (for example) that traps must be harmful, or that traps with reset mechanisms have limited charges, how different does the world become?

If the DMG "Spoon that can produce oatmeal for 4" is really priced correctly, and farmers need acres of fields to remain unravaged by beasts... do cities still get to remain islands?

At the moment? Most of it because it's the most efficient way to get the required magic. If you can't then just look at a custom magic item of use activated Create Food and Water at CL 20. It's much more expensive and those rules (unlike those for magical traps) are guidelines so it's up to the DM. If you can't do that you end up with farms, but farms far different than the standard. Arcane Genesis let's you feed everyone with that and using Warforged or Intelligent golems (thanks to Rudimentary Intelligence) to farm a plane where time passes at a rate of a year for every round that passes on the prime material and where the soil is perfect and the sun is always in the sky can let you produce the required food in safety.

Yukitsu
2008-12-01, 10:54 AM
Actually RAW can deal with a pretty magical society (unless you throw in epic magic, when it still can but it gets different). The standard tippy-verse stops at the point it does not because I can't take it farther but because it makes gaming in it pretty difficult. The cities become effectively nut houses who do truly random and outrageous (apparently) things because they are bored. But if you interject a few little tweaks it becomes playable.

----
Let's assume that one day teleportation magic just appears. This is day 0. On day -1 the most advanced teleportation magic around was Dimension Door, and then on day 0 Boccob came down and now every mage can learn the teleportation line of spells.

On about day 1 a number of wars start and a number of leaders are assassinated as soldiers are teleported straight into cities and castles. These wars go on for a good chunk of time, until the cities become effectively armed camps that an enemy won't survive just teleporting into. Well now the surrounding villages become targets. Eventually those people head into the cities because they are at least relatively safe there. Well now the cities need a way to feed these people. Create Food and Water traps can take care of that. A disintegrate trap can take care of all the waste.

Well now that the people have food it's time to get them work. They can't go outside the cities because they won't be protected or safe. The armed men are needed to defend the city and so the local monsters have come back and reclaimed a lot of the previously inhabited territory. This means gaining raw materials is very difficult. So a mage whips up a fabricate trap that spits out blocks of various raw materials. At the same time the decision is made to whip up another one that spits out clothes. Well all those clothes (and any other goods you feel like making traps to produce) are identical. Only the poorest who can't afford custom clothes wear them.

Well now that everyone is making stuff it's time to deal with trade. Some cities want to be able to trade with or defend each other easier. So they construct permanent teleportation circles between each other to facilitate travel, as it's not possible to survive an overland journey.

There, you have the cities taken care of without going to the extreme of assassination games. :smallwink:

Now what about the monsters and people who aren't in the cities? Well the wilds is the area in between the cities and it's mostly ignored. None of the monsters out here are a real threat to the golem and warforged legions of the cities (built to defend against each other). So the smart ones tend to avoid the cities. And now they have a lot more ground to inhabit as most of the people who had been taking their territories are now in the cities. The people who either didn't want to go too the cities, left the cities, or are stuck in the wilderness live largely like standard greyhawk D&D. Magic is rare. Why? Because unlike the cities where most everyone is taught at least basic cantrips and the more capable are taught higher level magic, that kind of educational system doesn't exist. Sorcerers and druids are the main casters out here, with a number of psions and some clerics of the more nature oriented gods. But all magic is pretty rare. Continuous warfare with the various monsters, very little trade, and being relatively small groups living at subsistence level makes them a very minor irritant to the cities at best.

Every once in a great while a band of these people is more successful and settles down into a city. And eventually they connect to the network of teleportation circles and become a minor city (under the protection of one of the older cities that can defend it against other cities).

Likewise, every once in a great while a city is destroyed for any number of reasons. And it's population is now in the wilds, most likely thousands of miles from the nearest city, with minimal supplies or survival skills. Those that survive generally form new bands and continue the cycle.
---

The primary driver for magic altering the world drastically is not it's effects on the economy but it's effects on warfare. You can't defend against a teleporting army except by already having a sufficient force at the location attacked. And that means that cities get defended while smaller concentrations of population get sacrificed. And once you have the majority of the population living in the cities you have to feed them. Well you can't defend farms and the city. So you resort to magic. Same with gathering raw materials. Once that is taken care of you get to the economy.

This with one caveat:

Entire cities are forbiddanced, except for one vaulted room guarded by AMFs and the top tier fighters and beasts of the kingdom. This lets the city focus troops onto the walls.

Another aspect I ran into when I turned the world into in game, was that it was best to connect all cities via a hub created from a genesis. This way, an army could be ready without disrupting the cities, or taking up room in the cities.

Dervag
2008-12-01, 11:04 AM
Tippy: how large a part of your world is traps abuse? If it turns out (for example) that traps must be harmful, or that traps with reset mechanisms have limited charges, how different does the world become?

If the DMG "Spoon that can produce oatmeal for 4" is really priced correctly, and farmers need acres of fields to remain unravaged by beasts... do cities still get to remain islands?Nitpick: since most spells that cause harm to some creature will cause benefit to some other creature, it could be very tricky to have a rule like "traps can only cause harm." A Cure Wounds trap is a great idea in a hospital, but it also makes a good defense against attacking zombies. Is it a trap that causes harm, or not?
_________

That aside, this is a relevant point- the linchpin of a Tippyverse economy seems to be the ability to use certain spells over and over at the push of a button by putting them in traps.

Not that removing those traps changes everything. The idea of heavily defended magical citadels where all the powerful people live because they won't be safe from teleportation magic outside the citadels still makes sense, of course.

The difference is that if magical Create Food and Fabricate traps aren't available for infinite uses, then those citadels will be small. Powerful people and their immediate servants will live in the citadels, and they will be able to afford in-house casters that can see to their needs. So instead of magic cities, you get magic castles or fortresses or wizards' towers.
______________

Meanwhile, everyone else still lives outside the citadels, including a lot of leveled characters not powerful enough to rate a citadel of their own. So what you end up with is a setting where high-level characters are like the gods living on Mount Olympus, in towers you can't even get into without teleportation magic, defended by armies of golems and such.

Mid-level characters live in their own crude imitations of those citadels, places that look more like medieval castles. They provide good defense against purely physical threats like a bunch of rampaging ogres, but poor defense against the godlike scry-and-die wizards of the Tippyverse. On the other hand, mid-level characters aren't powerful enough to be much of a threat to Tippian superwizards, and aren't likely to wind up with enemies among that class of beings. So the fact that a Tippian wizard can kick your castle down around your ears doesn't matter much, because he doesn't do anything to offend said wizard.

Low-level characters need a citadel of some kind to stay alive, but the high-level types with the impregnable magic citadels aren't going to let them inside. Letting people inside is a security risk, and low level people don't have much to offer the godlike beings who rule the citadels.
___________

So the end result is something like what Tippy just described, but with a slight difference. You still get a traditional D&D world, but instead of huge magic cities you get small magic citadels. The majority of the population will live on farms and in city-states, ruled by mid-level types not powerful enough to rate their own magic citadel. The magic citadels and the city-states are practically in completely different worlds, though, because the citadels don't need anything the city-states can offer, and the city-states can't do anything that really affects the city-states.

Emperor Tippy
2008-12-01, 11:12 AM
This with one caveat:

Entire cities are forbiddanced, except for one vaulted room guarded by AMFs and the top tier fighters and beasts of the kingdom. This lets the city focus troops onto the walls.
That depends. It's certainly reasonable but it doesn't provide more than the illusion of security. Just rent a room or building in the city and start digging down until you have gone down 65 feet. Now you can teleport to that location. You are better off just making use of Contact Other Planes, your populations permanent telepathic bonds, and your fast response force (mages with readied actions to teleport golem forces to the location of any breach) on standby.


Another aspect I ran into when I turned the world into in game, was that it was best to connect all cities via a hub created from a genesis. This way, an army could be ready without disrupting the cities, or taking up room in the cities.

In play I use a slightly altered setting that has them working through a hub. Originally run and controlled by a cabal of wizards who first created it and ruled the world until they warred amongst themselves. Now the fully automated hub continues to function but all attempts to take it over by force have failed miserably (in fact all attempts to move large concentrations of troops through it have failed miserably). But how you handle that depends a lot more on the specific setting.

The problem with genesis though is that you can't use teleportation circles to link them, although you could just open portals from it too all the cities when you build it (which makes it significantly more difficult too add or remove cities).

hewhosaysfish
2008-12-01, 11:13 AM
It expects war's against monsters and defending villages against monsters, which the wilds provide.

... high level mages, legions of golems, and other defenses...

In a distopian take on Tippyverse, where the Wizard Emperor does not care what happens to the proles, then yes, there is space to play a prole with a stick fighting of gnolls. But I did say that a utopia left no room for adventure and if, when gnolls attack, one of the Wizard Emperor's apprentices teleports in, invisible, with a squad of Shadesteel Golems with shadow evocation continual flames... well... what's left for a normal adventurer to do?

TengYt
2008-12-01, 11:18 AM
Yeah, the problem with the "Huge Magical Citadel" idea is that everyone who's not either a mage, in the army or is a useful crafter is worthless to the society. Unless the rulers (who will almost certainly be the strongest casters) are particarly benevolant, I can see the majority of the population (basically everyone with a Commoner class and probably many others) being cast out to defend for themselves. Even if the wizards are kindhearted, this can change with time. All it takes is a group of extremists or radicals for the whole magical society to turn on the non spellcasters. Either it will result in a form of ethnic clensing where everyone who can't cast magic is brutally purged, or they will simply be forced to leave the magic cities.
Thus, I can see a form of "Mad Max" style dystopian society, where everyone who is not a mage or otherwise useful to the wizards have no choice but to scratch out a living outside the walls of the great cities, resulting in probably a nomadic society if monsters are really common and the wizards are cruel enough not to allow new kingdoms etc to form out of paranoia. It'd be nice for a campaign set after a devastating magical war or something, with many of the world's food stocks wiped out, other than that which is made by Create Food spells. Adventurers could be exceptional people born outside the walls of the cities, or even spellcasters that have been outcast for some reason. Either way, I picture a lot of tension between spellcasters and non-spellcasters (with the latter living in fear, not only from the wild, roaming monsters, but also from the high level wizards with the power to Mindrape them from miles away)

Emperor Tippy
2008-12-01, 11:21 AM
In a distopian take on Tippyverse, where the Wizard Emperor does not care what happens to the proles, then yes, there is space to play a prole with a stick fighting of gnolls. But I did say that a utopia left no room for adventure and if, when gnolls attack, one of the Wizard Emperor's apprentices teleports in, invisible, with a squad of Shadesteel Golems with shadow evocation continual flames... well... what's left for a normal adventurer to do?

The "tippyverse" is never a utopia. It always has the wilderness. And you assume that the "wizard emperor" (which doesn't exist) has the ability or desire to take care of the people living in the wilderness. A gnoll attack on the city is one thing, a gnoll attack on some village a thousand miles away won't even show up in his divinations. Sure, you can make a setting where adventuring never happens but it isn't likely or even particuarly possible.

The wilds are a vital safety valve for the cities. Those who have too much energy, who want adventure, who want to fight wars, who would cause trouble when bored have the wilds to go adventure in. They are also a key way to keep the population under control, it's an ever present threat.

hewhosaysfish
2008-12-01, 12:34 PM
The "tippyverse" is never a utopia.
In that case my statement "the Tippyverse could lead to a utopia, assuming a benevolent dictator, but leaves little room to adventure" was wrong from the outset.


It always has the wilderness. And you assume that the "wizard emperor" (which doesn't exist) has the ability or desire to take care of the people living in the wilderness.
Since you were responding to my comment on a specifically utopian tippyverse, that seemed like a fairly safe assumption to me.


In any case, my main point still stands: changing the setting to match the rules is ass-backwards. If someone looks to DnD for a fantasy adventure with a medieval-knights-and-dragons theme then you can't just give them industrialised city-states with a teleportation network and robot armies.

Yukitsu
2008-12-01, 01:15 PM
In any case, my main point still stands: changing the setting to match the rules is ass-backwards. If someone looks to DnD for a fantasy adventure with a medieval-knights-and-dragons theme then you can't just give them industrialised city-states with a teleportation network and robot armies.

Why? I did it twice as a player character.

Oracle_Hunter
2008-12-01, 01:35 PM
Except that the governments of those towns almost certainly are wielders of that kind of power themselves. That's why they're the government.


:sigh:

The point was that we had the D&D RAW economy, and then added magic, starting with 1st level casters spontaneously appearing at some rate. The government, as exists, is non-magical because there was no magic. If anyone in the government turns out to be a spellcaster, they'll probably be ruling the local order in a few levels, but any non-magical government is going to view the spellcasters as a terrible threat to their established order. And if they don't, then those power structures will be overthrown by the first army that has a LV 5 Wizard and Fireball.

This is not a bad hook for a campaign, but I feel like it must be a fairly obvious one.

Emperor Tippy
2008-12-01, 01:40 PM
:sigh:

The point was that we had the D&D RAW economy, and then added magic, starting with 1st level casters spontaneously appearing at some rate. The government, as exists, is non-magical because there was no magic. If anyone in the government turns out to be a spellcaster, they'll probably be ruling the local order in a few levels, but any non-magical government is going to view the spellcasters as a terrible threat to their established order. And if they don't, then those power structures will be overthrown by the first army that has a LV 5 Wizard and Fireball.

This is not a bad hook for a campaign, but I feel like it must be a fairly obvious one.

Sure, making magic a spontaneous and new emergence would be an interesting campaign. But it's even less standard than the "tippyverse". Something like Shadowrun's emergence of magic in 2011 could work and would have massive effects.

Oslecamo
2008-12-01, 02:20 PM
Sure, making magic a spontaneous and new emergence would be an interesting campaign. But it's even less standard than the "tippyverse". Something like Shadowrun's emergence of magic in 2011 could work and would have massive effects.

What you've got to take in acount is that even if magic is old, stuff such as agriculture, literature and nonmagic stuff is even older.

High-middle level casters don't pop out of nowhere. They were low level casters at some point. And low level casters can't go around making traps of endless food and other stuff like that. Before the first 5th cleric came to be, thousands of people had to farm and craft by hand day and night to feed the lower level clerics.

High level casters(17th and above, enough to cast 9th level spells) are stupidly rare, close to becoming gods themselves.

Thus, high level magic is also extremely rare, because only a few people ever get high level enough to be able to use it.

This is due to how exp is earned. A low level character gets exp for killing almost anything. A high level character only gets exp for killing very strong things.

So for someone to be able to cast a teleportation circle, they must have ventured far and wide, fighting all kind of nasty monsters.

Only a few survive to tell the tale.

And of those few, they've probably have to spend their lifes fighting high level threats such as Balors and elder brains, instead of going around spaming teleportation circles they don't need anyway.

Just look at Eberron. The highest rulers are only 12-15th level, still not enough to cast 9th level spells. There's no one to make teleportation circles!

Thus, since only a very few people in history ever become able to cast 9th level spells, most people indeed have never seen it, and it's as good as it was new.

And thus Joe Farmer still has to farmy by hand, since his little village was never deemed important enough to get a trap of create food by the few clerics who could afford the exp to build it, let alone a teleportation circle who will have to wait untill some really high level monster appears so Gandalf the grey can kill it and earn new enough exp to build a new one, since you can't pay so much exp you would lose a level.

Blood_Lord
2008-12-01, 03:12 PM
In any case, my main point still stands: changing the setting to match the rules is ass-backwards. If someone looks to DnD for a fantasy adventure with a medieval-knights-and-dragons theme then you can't just give them industrialised city-states with a teleportation network and robot armies.

Maybe, and this is particularly likely with Tippy, maybe people got into D&D not because they wanted to play a fantasy adventure with medieval knights and dragons, but because they read the rules, and so all these cool things that characters can do that are inherently better then anything portrayed in legend, and they wanted to do that.

I mean, my first contact with D&D was Baldur's Gate II, so I very quickly got used to the idea that Gateing in Demons that could devour you, and cloning yourself, and just generally having a single guy take on armies is what D&D is about.

So when I actually started playing real D&D, well, I really didn't want to be Joe McKnight, the guy who challenges a Dragon to single Combat, and charges at the flying Dragon on his horse and the Dragon is nice enough to stay on the ground. I wanted to be Joe McCrazyWizard, the guy who's response to a Dragon is to cast Protection from Evil, Summon a Demon to distract it, then spam spells that lower resistance/saves until I can successfully turn the Dragon into a squirrel.

Oracle_Hunter
2008-12-01, 03:20 PM
What you've got to take in acount is that even if magic is old, stuff such as agriculture, literature and nonmagic stuff is even older.

I mean, true, but what about the elves? They live for hundreds of years at a time and, in many fluff pieces, they were the first race to exist. Why don't they have Tippy Societies? Or even just one Tippy Society? At some point the "elves are lazy" excuse just doesn't cut it.

@Tippy
I don't know if my setting is quite so radical. The way I see it, the Economics of D&D and the Adventures of D&D were thought in isolation. Adventurers routinely walk around with enough gold to found their own kingdoms long before they reach Epic - what kind of Economy based on gold could exist with these kind of people walking around?

All I'm proposing is introducing D&D Adventurers into a D&D Economy world. :smallbiggrin:

hamishspence
2008-12-01, 03:24 PM
In Faerun, they had a near-Tippy Society- Aryvandaar. it became incredibly evil- worse than the drow, and the other elves needed the Gods themselves to step in.

an Ancient Empires version of "Rocks Fall. Your Tippypire dies!"

TengYt
2008-12-01, 03:29 PM
The problem with the standard "PCs raid ancient ruins and caves for treasure" idea is if the world has people of higher level than the PCs. If there's so many dungeons around, each packed with gold and magical items, surely some high level NPCs would try and devise ways to clear them all out for relatively easy profit? Even if people die on the way, the EXP gained and wealth accumulated will probably make Raising the dead easy. If all these sources of wealth are such common knowledge, even if they're guarded by tough creatures it seems illogical they are ignored by almost everyone but adventurers.

Oslecamo
2008-12-01, 03:31 PM
I mean, true, but what about the elves? They live for hundreds of years at a time and, in many fluff pieces, they were the first race to exist. Why don't they have Tippy Societies? Or even just one Tippy Society? At some point the "elves are lazy" excuse just doesn't cut it.


They probably have. And then they atracted the atention of a lot of very powerfull enemies, or perhaps an inner struggle for power broke out. And now their tippy society is a bunch of powerfull ruins where the party is gonna adventure.

Remember minor artifacts? Magic stuff that can be built by mortals but no one knows how to anymore? Guess from where they came from.:smalltongue:

And then there's the gods themselves. They really don't like direct rivals, so they probably rain rocks in any emerging tippy society, making it really hard for one to last for long.

hamishspence
2008-12-01, 03:42 PM
faerun has a long, long history of Powerful Wizard empires collapsing- demonic outbreak, very angry deities, killing the deity of magic and bringing whole society down, wars with aberrations, etc.

TengYt
2008-12-01, 03:45 PM
Yeah, if you get a society of spellcasters powerful enough, they're more likely to suffer the wrath of a god, a demon lord, or something else. There's always bigger fishes, and they typically don't like outsiders moving into their pond.

AKA_Bait
2008-12-01, 03:47 PM
The problem with the standard "PCs raid ancient ruins and caves for treasure" idea is if the world has people of higher level than the PCs. If there's so many dungeons around, each packed with gold and magical items, surely some high level NPCs would try and devise ways to clear them all out for relatively easy profit? Even if people die on the way, the EXP gained and wealth accumulated will probably make Raising the dead easy. If all these sources of wealth are such common knowledge, even if they're guarded by tough creatures it seems illogical they are ignored by almost everyone but adventurers.

Well sure, but the high level NPCs don't really care about the low level junk that is in most of these places. They may care about some single unique thing known to be in a place. That's why the Duke/Wizard hires a bunch of adventurers to go a loot the place, keeping what they like, so long as they bring them back that single unique thing. Sound like a familiar plot to anyone?

Dervag
2008-12-01, 03:47 PM
The "tippyverse" is never a utopia. It always has the wilderness. And you assume that the "wizard emperor" (which doesn't exist) has the ability or desire to take care of the people living in the wilderness. A gnoll attack on the city is one thing, a gnoll attack on some village a thousand miles away won't even show up in his divinations. Sure, you can make a setting where adventuring never happens but it isn't likely or even particuarly possible.

The wilds are a vital safety valve for the cities. Those who have too much energy, who want adventure, who want to fight wars, who would cause trouble when bored have the wilds to go adventure in. They are also a key way to keep the population under control, it's an ever present threat.My theory is the one I outlined at the bottom of the last page- the magic cities dominated by Tippian god-wizards aren't the only centers of civilization out there. There are other lesser centers constructed by less powerful leveled characters that look more like 'normal' castles, where people still have to perform quaint activities like growing food and walking from place to place rather than teleporting.

Obviously, if the people in one of these lesser centers cross swords with one of the magic cities, they die messily. A bunch of shadesteel golems come in and kick their caste to rubble while singing cheerful songs. Or the god-wizard opens a gate to the Elemental Plane of Way Too Much Lava in the central courtyard. Or something like that.

But unless something like that happens, most of the actual population of the world lives in places like this. The magic cities have no desire or use for the average human being, and the average human being is understandably averse to living in a hut and getting burned out by rampaging ogres every other week.

Emperor Tippy
2008-12-01, 03:47 PM
Yeah, if you get a society of spellcasters powerful enough, they're more likely to suffer the wrath of a god, a demon lord, or something else. There's always bigger fishes, and they typically don't like outsiders moving into their pond.

Not really. Epic Magic is the biggest fish (barring, maybe, greater deities). :smallwink:

hamishspence
2008-12-01, 03:49 PM
mysterious lurking creatures from the Far Realm the size of continents?

Darkmatter
2008-12-01, 03:57 PM
The problem that I foresee with the "magical citadel" universe is in the way advancement occurs under the rules. You get XP by killing things. In fact, without DM arbitration, that is the only way you get experience - going out and killing something that's as powerful as you are. This has been alluded to, but I think the consequences are so far reaching as to throw the citadel society into chaos every generation.

First of all, magical items cost XP. The wizard lords making magical traps will have to pay 40 x caster level x spell level in XP per trap. Each permanent teleportation circle costs 4500 XP. Eventually, however, due to the magical arms race described in the formation of the cities, the wizards will have to hole themselves up in their castles, because the permanent defenses of anywhere they would go to get experience would kill them very quickly (all the other wizards are just waiting for one of them to head out - after all, they need that precious XP too.) If the wizard tries to fight things where he lives, the permanent defenses are so great that nothing he is capable of summoning will constitute a threat, and so no XP is earned.

There is no XP to be had in the cities. But the wilds, now; that's a rich source. The wizards in their towers can't have constant scrying effects on every one of the dirt farmers out there to see which ones become powerful enough to warrant their attention, and even if they found a nice chunk of XP, the fact that they would be killed by the other wizards just waiting for them to step outside will deter them from teleporting out there to kill. So, people in the wilds advance. They have goblins, then gnolls, then owlbears, and so on until they're fighting each other. Only a few wilders per generation will get to 20th level, but they will do so. And they'll be able to craft as many items as they need, since they're constantly getting an influx of XP from their rivals. And finally, since we know that these marginalized people on the outskirts of society resent their wizard absentee overlords, they'll storm the keeps. Since they've got all the items they can craft (or even buy in the cities) and are as high a level as the wizard overlords, and typically have a party with diverse skills, they'll succeed in killing one of those wizards, almost certainly. And once they've taken his city as a base of operations, the others can fall quickly as well. Now these adventurers become the overlords, and the cycle begins again.

All in all, it's a pretty nice campaign setting, because of the inherent instability.

Oracle_Hunter
2008-12-01, 04:04 PM
I gotta say Tippy, the Divine Wrath Conjecture is a powerful counter to your Tippy Society. The Gods, knowing that if anyone achieves Epic Magic they are screwed, always intervene on any society that seems to get too advanced in terms of magic. It's something they could do, and more importantly, something they would do, if for no other reason than self-preservation.

This presumes, of course, that there are no Epic Casters in the world. It could be all potential Epic Casters are given a "Join or Die" ultimatum at some point - they can either serve a divinity as a proxy or be erased from existence. The binding that divine proxies are subject to should be sufficient to prevent any later Epic Casting from threatening the Gods.

I like it. Thoughts?

EDIT:
@Darkmatter - a fine theory, but there is one problem of Wild Wizards; they are easily detectable via question-based divination. Tippy has the correct build (which I wish he'd re-post) for this sort of situation - all a Caster needs to do is ask "Who is the most powerful and least protected person in the world" to find these Wild Wizards, and then perform a quick Scry & Die for massive XP.

Yukitsu
2008-12-01, 04:07 PM
Depends on setting and wizard.

A wizard in Eberron can do essentially whatever the heck he wants. Not much the gods can do to stop him.

Other setting, you have to be in allegiance as a significant member of some group of gods. Elminster is an epic wizard, for instance, associated with a god that is sufficiently powerful that the other gods can't really act. Usually, anyway. In campaign, I did it by aligning myself with the local gods, then by getting to the level that they couldn't kill me if they wanted. Didn't betray them, but I don't exactly rely on their protection.

Emperor Tippy
2008-12-01, 04:13 PM
*shrug*

I don't like active deities so I mostly take an Eberron approach. They are generally accepted to exist but they don't interfere. Divine magic exists but whether it is actually granted by the gods or not isn't confirmed one way or the other.

And in regards to someone previous comment about eberron not having reached tippyverse level or having high level NPC's. I refer you to Xen'Drix and the dragons. The gian't society certainly seems to qualify and it lasted until they did something stupid and an even more powerful force interceded (the dragons who as great wryms are some of the most powerful casters in the game). It's quite possible that the dragons saw the whole Xen'drix experiment as a failure and decided that letting any of the other nations reach a similar power level is a bad idea so they quietly remove those who become a potential threat.

It fits and if you have an outside force with the desire and power to force society onto one path (or away from one path) then you get different results. A single epic mage can cast a spell that makes non epic casting not work for the entire world. If that happens then none of this ever occurs. Or what if he just negates teleportation circle's? Or create food and water? It's possible by the RAW.

Oslecamo
2008-12-01, 04:21 PM
*shrug*

I don't like active deities so I mostly take an Eberron approach. They are generally accepted to exist but they don't interfere. Divine magic exists but whether it is actually granted by the gods or not isn't confirmed one way or the other.

They just seem do to don't interefere. You think it's a coincidence no NPC in Eberron has even reacehd 9th level spells yet?



And in regards to someone previous comment about eberron not having reached tippyverse level or having high level NPC's. I refer you to Xen'Drix and the dragons. The gian't society certainly seems to qualify and it lasted until they did something stupid and an even more powerful force interceded (the dragons who as great wryms are some of the most powerful casters in the game). It's quite possible that the dragons saw the whole Xen'drix experiment as a failure and decided that letting any of the other nations reach a similar power level is a bad idea so they quietly remove those who become a potential threat.

Precisely. There's always a bigger fish waiting to crush your emerging Tippypiverse. Aka every mage who reaches 17th level spellcasting gets a not so friendly visit from a bunch of wyrms/gods/abominations from other realms and is magically bound to never try to create tippy town or suffer a messy death.

Oracle_Hunter
2008-12-01, 04:21 PM
*shrug*

I don't like active deities so I mostly take an Eberron approach. They are generally accepted to exist but they don't interfere. Divine magic exists but whether it is actually granted by the gods or not isn't confirmed one way or the other.

I've never tried Eberron, but I, too, don't like interventionist deities. However, when you're talking about Epic Magic, I can't see any world in which the Divine Wrath Conjecture fails unless the deities are unable to directly act... or are unable to identify such threats in a reasonable time frame.

Yukitsu
2008-12-01, 04:24 PM
Precisely. There's always a bigger fish waiting to crush your emerging Tippypiverse. Aka every mage who reaches 17th level spellcasting gets a not so friendly visit from a bunch of wyrms/gods/abominations from other realms and is magically bound to never try to create tippy town or suffer a messy death.

Actually, it already is the Tippyverse, the only difference being is that the baseline=dragons, not people. People=oppressed peasants.

Oracle_Hunter
2008-12-01, 04:30 PM
Actually, it already is the Tippyverse, the only difference being is that the baseline=dragons, not people. People=oppressed peasants.

Which begs the question: how does any elder dragon get offed? Shouldn't they just Shapechange into someone with the manual dexterity to build Magic Traps and keep a ton of self-buffs on all the time? Throw some super-defense on your hoard when you go out to cull the field of high-level casters, then come back and chill.

Emperor Tippy
2008-12-01, 04:32 PM
They just seem do to don't interefere. You think it's a coincidence no NPC in Eberron has even reacehd 9th level spells yet?
Seeing as a lich created the first Shadesteel Golems in Eberron it would seem that at least 1 has. And the giants most certainly did. And the dragons.


Precisely. There's always a bigger fish waiting to crush your emerging Tippypiverse. Aka every mage who reaches 17th level spellcasting gets a not so friendly visit from a bunch of wyrms/gods/abominations from other realms and is magically bound to never try to create tippy town or suffer a messy death.
Why would they care? The gods have no particular reason to give a **** about what mortals are doing until the mortals either challenge them or threaten to do great harm to one of their domains. And I don't know of any deity who has the "keep the world in the dark age's" domain or portfolio. In fact the tippyverse would prolly help them gain followers. Those in the cities now have lots of free time to devote to things like finding religion and those in the wilds now need the gods help more than ever because powerful temporal authority doesn't exist.

Likewise dragons, why do they care? Unless the wizards are inclined to hunt them down (which they have no reason to do) then it's more trouble than it's worth (and draconomicon says that dragons are generally pretty lazy). Throw in the fact that they are sorcerers with a very limited spell list and it gets even worse.

I'm not saying that you can't stop a "tippyverse" from forming, only that to stop it requires the interference of an outside force with both the ability and desire to do so and that the existence of said force is not a given occurrence.

Oslecamo
2008-12-01, 04:40 PM
Seeing as a lich created the first Shadesteel Golems in Eberron it would seem that at least 1 has. And the giants most certainly did. And the dragons.

Do any of them show their face publicy? Have any of them created a massive empire that conquered all of Eberron under their magic encnanched boot?



Why would they care? The gods have no particular reason to give a **** about what mortals are doing until the mortals either challenge them or threaten to do great harm to one of their domains. And I don't know of any deity who has the "keep the world in the dark age's" domain or portfolio. In fact the tippyverse would prolly help them gain followers. Those in the cities now have lots of free time to devote to things like finding religion and those in the wilds now need the gods help more than ever because powerful temporal authority doesn't exist.

1-Forces of chaos that nobody really knows what they want, Daelkyr.
2-Dragon below and elder evils, hate pretty much everyone and everything, and indeed want to keep the world in the dark ages, if not worst.
3-Psionic aliens trying to gain control of the world and wich hate arcane and divine magic, trying to create PsionicTippyvserse, wich would never be as powerfull as vancian Tippyverse.
4-Cyre and the day of mourning. Probably first atempt at serious Tippyverse in Eberron. Nuked to oblivion with all kind of secondary nasty effects by mysterious force. I rest my case.

Oracle_Hunter
2008-12-01, 04:48 PM
Likewise dragons, why do they care? Unless the wizards are inclined to hunt them down (which they have no reason to do) then it's more trouble than it's worth (and draconomicon says that dragons are generally pretty lazy). Throw in the fact that they are sorcerers with a very limited spell list and it gets even worse.

Aren't dragons notoriously paranoid? :smallconfused:

Even the laziest paranoid dragon would use divination to identify likely threats to their existence. Since adventurers are known for killing evil creatures with large treasure troves, I'd figure any dragon who identified an adventurer as a potential threat would try to take him out sooner rather than later. Indeed, the most ancient of dragons would have to have been very successful at this - natural selection and all.

Now, I'm not really up on Dragons with class levels, but if they can become Epic Casters, why wouldn't they? And if they become Epic Casters, wouldn't they want to use that power to chop off any potential rivals? I mean, there can't be that many high-level adventurers in the world to pay attention to, right?

Yukitsu
2008-12-01, 04:51 PM
I think they did.

I mean, half the things that can crush the wannabe Tippy casters are doing it because they are themselves Tippy casters.

Oslecamo
2008-12-01, 04:55 PM
I think they did.

I mean, half the things that can crush the wannabe Tippy casters are doing it because they are themselves Tippy casters.

Just because you're a Tippycaster it doesn't mean you want to make the world a better place, aka trying to start Tippyland. Specially when the other Tippcasters are waiting for a moment of weakness from you to jump at your throat before you jump at theirs.

Oracle_Hunter
2008-12-01, 04:55 PM
I think they did.

I mean, half the things that can crush the wannabe Tippy casters are doing it because they are themselves Tippy casters.

I mean generally.

I dunno about Eberron, but considering the generic write-ups of dragons I've read, it seems like any world with a Great Wyrm Chromatic Dragon would have to be like this, unless there was a similar Metallic one keeping it in check.

Yukitsu
2008-12-01, 04:59 PM
More generally? Align yourself to someone big enough to guarantee protection, and don't tell anyone your level until it's already too late.

Oracle_Hunter
2008-12-01, 05:04 PM
More generally? Align yourself to someone big enough to guarantee protection, and don't tell anyone your level until it's already too late.

But can you foil high-level divinations like that? And who can protect you from an Epic Caster aside from other Epic Casters?

Yukitsu
2008-12-01, 05:08 PM
In theory you can block the high level divinations if you get a few name changes through your life and don't plan on backstabbing anyone. Divinations don't tell level, and since they don't seem to axe mid range wizards, you can likely get away with it.

Epic divinations will shred any protection you put up, but you can simply act in a manner that will imply that you will never be a threat to the person doing the divination. (ie. geas yourself to not attack that person.)

Oslecamo
2008-12-01, 05:11 PM
More generally? Align yourself to someone big enough to guarantee protection, and don't tell anyone your level until it's already too late.

Your "protector" is surely going to notice when you start killing beholders as a warm up and you don't bother to kill goblins anymore.

Also, the trap soul spell says it's possible to discover how much HD someone has with some carefull study, in order to know how valuable the traping jewel must be.

Yukitsu
2008-12-01, 05:12 PM
If your protector is sizing you up for a trap the soul, I think you're pretty much doomed anyway.

Edit: Remember kids, HD=/= caster levels. Don't kill that commoner 19 wizard 1 just because you want to stop the Tippyverse. You'll fall for trying.

AKA_Bait
2008-12-01, 05:13 PM
In theory you can block the high level divinations if you get a few name changes through your life and don't plan on backstabbing anyone. Divinations don't tell level, and since they don't seem to axe mid range wizards, you can likely get away with it.

Epic divinations will shred any protection you put up, but you can simply act in a manner that will imply that you will never be a threat to the person doing the divination. (ie. geas yourself to not attack that person.)

I'm not really sure that would work. Heck, I'm pretty sure one could craft a contingent spell that would instantly teleport them to the location of a character that just cast a 9th (or 8th) level spell. I.E., if someone gets powerful enough to be a potential threat Big Bad Dragon Tippyslayer automatically end ups nose to nose with the caster.

Yukitsu
2008-12-01, 05:14 PM
Yeah, you kind of need a skillful enchanted weapon, so you can pretend to be a gish build, ignoring your ninth level spells until you hit epic anyway. Basically, you can't stop the divinations from getting you, but you can stop them from relaying the answers you don't want relayed simply by not doing whatever it is the diety thinks you might be doing.

AKA_Bait
2008-12-01, 05:24 PM
Yeah, you kind of need a skillful enchanted weapon, so you can pretend to be a gish build, ignoring your ninth level spells until you hit epic anyway. Basically, you can't stop the divinations from getting you, but you can stop them from relaying the answers you don't want relayed simply by not doing whatever it is the diety thinks you might be doing.

Well, in the alternative, the trigger for the contingent spell could simply be whenever someone starts the process of developing an epic spell. It takes at least a day to deveop an epic spell, so our anti-tippy chromatic dragon should still have plenty of time to eat the face of the aspiring tippy caster before they actually get to use any epic magic.

Emperor Tippy
2008-12-01, 05:27 PM
Contingent spells require that you know that the trigger condition has occurred. You can't use them as super uber divinations.

Yukitsu
2008-12-01, 05:30 PM
That's true. On the other hand, unlike the divination seed, the transport seed can't break non-epic means of stopping the teleport, meaning unless the wizard can safely scribe from within a magnificent mansion with forbiddance. A technique that obviously doesn't work pre epic, because at that point, he still needs to level.

Oslecamo
2008-12-01, 05:31 PM
Contingent spells require that you know that the trigger condition has occurred. You can't use them as super uber divinations.

And that's why you create an epic custom contigent spell:D

if(Tippyland=true){
Scanf location
Cast mourning
?
Profit
}

else killing catgirls=1

AKA_Bait
2008-12-01, 05:40 PM
Contingent spells require that you know that the trigger condition has occurred. You can't use them as super uber divinations.

Where are you getting that from? I don't see that requirement anyplace and considering the below it seems unlikley to be the case.


A contingent spell is tied to the bearer’s body, alive or dead, and stories circulate among adventurers of contingent spells remaining quiet for hundreds of years on a slain bearer’s remains, only to suddenly activate when the proper trigger condition arises.

And yes, I realize that using a contingent spell this way is against the spirit of the idea, but so is making create food and water traps so I'm not letting that stop me from making the argument.

Yukitsu
2008-12-01, 05:41 PM
Even an epic port won't bring you face to face with a wizard using a magnificent mansion and a dimension lock. Especially if he cast magnificent mansion while in a portable hole that was turned inside out then dimension locked.

Darkmatter
2008-12-01, 05:42 PM
The power mind blank is an extremely effective way for an aspiring wizard-slayer (and caster herself) to remain off the enemy's radar, and in this kind of place, it would be an absolute must. This means that psions would likely be the most common high level casters, due to the fact that they get mind blank (personal) at 13th level, two levels before anyone else gets the effect. Once they hit 15th level, they (and any wizard friends) can mind blank the whole party. A CR 12 doesn't give any experience to a level 20 wizard, so wouldn't show up on any divinations for major threats, and at CR 13, she enjoys blanket protection from any divination but metafaculty, which requires the subject to have been seen by the diviner beforehand. Thus, anyone growing up on the "outside" will be able to remain undetected by the wizard rulers until they decide to topple the system which has oppressed them. Meanwhile, the wizards would be pinned in their castles, since their rivals (all with the same high level divinations) would be watching their moves like hawks, eager for that delicious XP...

It still seems to me like rather than a stalemate, this situation will result in a constant and tumultuous turnover of power.

This, of course, supposes that epic casting is not in use by the wizard-rulers, which is believable due to their deficiency of XP - once everyone knows about them, mind blank won't be enough.

Yukitsu
2008-12-01, 05:43 PM
Where are you getting that from? I don't see that requirement anyplace and considering the below it seems unlikley to be the case.

The activation typically requires the spell be cast on, or at least near the caster himself, the alternative being a useless item and a ton of wasted gold. (Oh, high dragon Bob, thought it was a jerk wizard making an epic spell. No Dragon Jim, just me making a spell to kill jerk wizards better.)

Emperor Tippy
2008-12-01, 05:49 PM
The power mind blank is an extremely effective way for an aspiring wizard-slayer (and caster herself) to remain off the enemy's radar, and in this kind of place, it would be an absolute must. This means that psions would likely be the most common high level casters, due to the fact that they get mind blank (personal) at 13th level, two levels before anyone else gets the effect. Once they hit 15th level, they (and any wizard friends) can mind blank the whole party. A CR 12 doesn't give any experience to a level 20 wizard, so wouldn't show up on any divinations for major threats, and at CR 13, she enjoys blanket protection from any divination but metafaculty, which requires the subject to have been seen by the diviner beforehand. Thus, anyone growing up on the "outside" will be able to remain undetected by the wizard rulers until they decide to topple the system which has oppressed them. Meanwhile, the wizards would be pinned in their castles, since their rivals (all with the same high level divinations) would be watching their moves like hawks, eager for that delicious XP...

It still seems to me like rather than a stalemate, this situation will result in a constant and tumultuous turnover of power.

This, of course, supposes that epic casting is not in use by the wizard-rulers, which is believable due to their deficiency of XP - once everyone knows about them, mind blank won't be enough.

Who said anything about oppressing them? The wizards in charge have no interest in oppressing anyone. Smart wizards, which they universally are by the requirements of high level casting, don't take actions that will weaken them as a whole. It's much easier to just bring any caster who reaches high levels into the fold, and if they won't go along they just gang up on them and off them.

As for XP, these wizards all have their contingent True Res. So daily they just fight each other too the death and then get ressed. Gaining 6,000 XP (if they are both level 20). And the True Res trap means that they don't even have to pay for that. Two level 20 wizards just stand on them and attack each other. Every death counts as overcoming the encounter so they gain XP. :smallwink:

AKA_Bait
2008-12-01, 05:50 PM
The activation typically requires the spell be cast on, or at least near the caster himself, the alternative being a useless item and a ton of wasted gold.

Typically, yes. Hence my comment about it being against the spirit of craft contingent spell. However, CA only says that triggers 'are usually events that happen to the bearer of the spell,' not that they have to be.


(Oh, high dragon Bob, thought it was a jerk wizard making an epic spell. No Dragon Jim, just me making a spell to kill jerk wizards better.)

Well, yes. That would happen. Of course, depending upon the dragons, Dragon Jim might be just as willing to murder Dragon Bob for reaching that level of arcane power too.

Yukitsu
2008-12-01, 05:53 PM
Dragons Bob and Jim can't fight eachother without risking starting a massive dragon paranoia style war which would in all odds lead to their demise. Since both of the are assumed to already be epic level casters, they will be researching the spells all the time anyway. This is why you want to go RAI on the contingent spell. If you don't, you wind up talking to a lot of dragons, or wind up not talking to a lot of people that prepared polymorph.

Inyssius Tor
2008-12-01, 05:59 PM
Or, y'know, a gigantic epic-level dragon war followed by a massive cataclysm and the extinction of all the dragons bar one.

Who would presumably end up bereft of any opponents whatsoever, and in possession both of all the other dragons' treasure and of a very good motive to keep more epic-level casters from showing up.

AKA_Bait
2008-12-01, 06:00 PM
Dragons Bob and Jim can't fight eachother without risking starting a massive dragon paranoia style war which would in all odds lead to their demise. Since both of the are assumed to already be epic level casters, they will be researching the spells all the time anyway.

Why are we assuming lots of epic spell casting dragons (or gods, etc)? I was assuming just one... when someone else starts preparing an epic spell the contingency kicks in and they kill the interloper before they can even touch them. I think Chromatic dragons would behave this way without a second thought.

I could easily tailor the contingency to be more specific (i.e. to exclude spells being prepared within the dragons lair for example) if we want to have more than one epic caster that are all on the same side.


Or, y'know, a gigantic epic-level dragon war followed by a massive cataclysm and the extinction of all the dragons bar one.


We don't even quite need that. We just need a Dragon ruthless enough to kill any other dragons of it's kind once they start getting powerful enough. They can keep others around to breed with so long as Daddy is willing to murder his children/consort as soon as they could potentially pose a threat.

kopout
2008-12-01, 06:01 PM
Well, in the alternative, the trigger for the contingent spell could simply be whenever someone starts the process of developing an epic spell. It takes at least a day to develop an epic spell, so our anti-tippy chromatic dragon should still have plenty of time to eat the face of the aspiring tippy caster before they actually get to use any epic magic.
But someone powerful enough to develop an Epic spell
could just brake off the development and kill the tippy slayer. With the non-Epic magic they already have, or assemble a team to protect them. I mean if it is know to at lest a few casters that dragons go around doing this they could set up a conspiracy to destroy the dragons for the benefit of all casters (themselves especially) with all the old and powerful dragons dead, and a tradition of killing dragons before they get powerful, a Tippy society becomes increasingly likely as time goes on provided no medaling gods it is extreamly likely to survive and become the norm with "traditional" nations being few and far between.

Yukitsu
2008-12-01, 06:02 PM
The metalics all work together in communities, and have two of the higher dragon types (silver and gold) as opposed to the chromatics which have only one greater dragon type. (red, IIRC) The metalics have a bit of an advantage in this field, and as such, any metalic that hits epic is likely to keep getting stronger.

Yukitsu
2008-12-01, 06:03 PM
But someone powerful enough to develop an Epic spell
could just brake off the development and kill the tippy slayer. With the non-Epic magic they already have, or assemble a team to protect them. I mean if it is know to at lest a few casters that dragons go around doing this they could set up a conspiracy to destroy the dragons for the benefit of all casters (themselves especially) with all the old and powerful dragons dead, and a tradition of killing dragons before they get powerful, a Tippy society becomes increasingly likely as time goes on provided no medaling gods it is extreamly likely to survive and become the norm with "traditional" nations being few and far between.

We're assuming epic level caster dragons. As such, the combination of better stats, better casting and a more powerful form, siding with the dragon on the conflict would probably be the safe bet.

kopout
2008-12-01, 06:08 PM
We're assuming epic level caster dragons. As such, the combination of better stats, better casting and a more powerful form, siding with the dragon on the conflict would probably be the safe bet.

True, but People can kill dragons. It has been done before and can be done again!
Edit; A cabal of sub-Epic wizards and their Epic leader, with a supporting contingent of meat shields, can kill a dragon or two ,or three, or......

Fizban
2008-12-01, 06:51 PM
Who said anything about oppressing them? The wizards in charge have no interest in oppressing anyone. Smart wizards, which they universally are by the requirements of high level casting, don't take actions that will weaken them as a whole. It's much easier to just bring any caster who reaches high levels into the fold, and if they won't go along they just gang up on them and off them.

As for XP, these wizards all have their contingent True Res. So daily they just fight each other too the death and then get ressed. Gaining 6,000 XP (if they are both level 20). And the True Res trap means that they don't even have to pay for that. Two level 20 wizards just stand on them and attack each other. Every death counts as overcoming the encounter so they gain XP. :smallwink:

They don't even need the traps: you can get half xp for a nonlethal encounter that still has some significance. If killing each other mindlessly with promise of resurrection nets xp, then nonlethal duels will too. Without the annoying pain of dying over and over again. If you need a justification for the encounter they're overcoming, the winner gets official wizard sanctioned bragging rights until the next fight.

Dervag
2008-12-01, 07:21 PM
This presumes, of course, that there are no Epic Casters in the world. It could be all potential Epic Casters are given a "Join or Die" ultimatum at some point - they can either serve a divinity as a proxy or be erased from existence. The binding that divine proxies are subject to should be sufficient to prevent any later Epic Casting from threatening the Gods.So... the penalty for hubris is recruitment?


As for XP, these wizards all have their contingent True Res. So daily they just fight each other too the death and then get ressed. Gaining 6,000 XP (if they are both level 20). And the True Res trap means that they don't even have to pay for that. Two level 20 wizards just stand on them and attack each other. Every death counts as overcoming the encounter so they gain XP. :smallwink:Doesn't that rely on you trusting someone else to stick you in the True Resurrection trap?

kopout
2008-12-01, 07:25 PM
So... the penalty for hubris is recruitment?


Yes, but then they make you into a tool for their own purposes, and eventual you do the same to a new class of recruits, Welcome to the Unseen university!

Jack_Simth
2008-12-01, 07:32 PM
Who said anything about oppressing them? The wizards in charge have no interest in oppressing anyone. Smart wizards, which they universally are by the requirements of high level casting, don't take actions that will weaken them as a whole. It's much easier to just bring any caster who reaches high levels into the fold, and if they won't go along they just gang up on them and off them.

As for XP, these wizards all have their contingent True Res. So daily they just fight each other too the death and then get ressed. Gaining 6,000 XP (if they are both level 20). And the True Res trap means that they don't even have to pay for that. Two level 20 wizards just stand on them and attack each other. Every death counts as overcoming the encounter so they gain XP. :smallwink:
The ECL 1 commoner-1 who triggers and survives the technically CR 2 Endure Elements trap picks up 600 xp. The ECL 1 commoner-1 who triggers and survives the technically CR 4 Create Food and Water trap picks up 1,350 xp. The ECL 1 commoner-1 who triggers and survives the technically CR 10 Permanencied Teleportation Circle gains 10,800 xp. With the Teleportation Circle, being a "spell trap" at CR 10, you can, in theory, farm XP until you hit ECL 18, just by walking through a long series of them (at CR 10, at ECL 17, you get 425 XP by "defeating" a CR 10 Teleportation Circle on your own).

But as that's totally ridiculous, you'll note that the DMG does include a line that notes when you encounter something that's not really dangerous in any way, shape, or form, it's not an XP-worthy encounter. If you're standing on a True Resurrection trap when engaged in a Wizard's Duel, and the opposing Wizard isn't particularly going to prevent you from coming back, you don't necessarily get XP for that fight. You can't necessarily rely on that method of XP gain.

Besides - starting with 9th level spells isn't really the goal of this particular thought-experiment... and the Tippyverse mostly requires 9th level spells to function. Likewise, it pretty much requires the ability to arrange for at-will helpful effects, whether that's from custom items or from "traps" of useful spells - which may not be possible.

There's two three basic parameters on this particular thought-experiment, as stated in the OP, starting with a mundane society:
1) Maximum spell level available (e.g., Cantrips/Osirons only, 1st level spells, 2nd level spells, and so on, up to Epic, which makes everything looks exactly like what the first Epic spellcaster wants it to look like)
2) Amount of spells available (anywhere from the per-day allotment of the one casters available in the entire world to "at-will" from custom items or custom traps that have been spammed to every household).
3) Spell Sources. Mindrape, if it sees use, notably changes a society, and quite quickly at that. However, that's not a Core spell, so it may or may not be permitted under an "arbitrary DM".

There's also a few others: Acceptance of Magic, use level of magic, and Widespread amount of magic, availability of expended resources, and the like, but that can be mostly subsumed into the first two three.

Tippyverse is generally:
1) 9th level spells
2) At-will availability
3) Most WotC sources available

If either of the first two tests fail, you don't get the Tippyverse. You can mostly get it even if three fails, although it's generally pictured with most sources available unrestricted.

Oslecamo
2008-12-01, 08:00 PM
As for XP, these wizards all have their contingent True Res. So daily they just fight each other too the death and then get ressed. Gaining 6,000 XP (if they are both level 20). And the True Res trap means that they don't even have to pay for that. Two level 20 wizards just stand on them and attack each other. Every death counts as overcoming the encounter so they gain XP. :smallwink:

It's not an ecounter if it doesn't involve true risk to the participants. A perfectly safe duel where no side has the minimum intention of actually taking anything from the oponent is a test of skills, not an ecounter.

Otherwise players would get experience just by passing by other people and creatures.

Yahzi
2008-12-01, 08:04 PM
Why don't they have Tippy Societies? Or even just one Tippy Society? At some point the "elves are lazy" excuse just doesn't cut it.
That's right - you need a real reason for why 17th level casters haven't completely wrecked the world.

The secret is in controlling the flow of XP. At the right rate, you can have a good D&D game. Too much and you get Tippyland; too little and a single mage player conquers your whole world.

XP must be a physical resource, like gold and food, that is metered in such a way as to produce the desired result. This is what I do in my world. I make XP a tangible substance, like gold (1 XP = 5 gold, in fact); XP comes from killing people and eating their souls (thus making it a renewable but expensive resource); and the XP required doubles every level, so as to keep 17th level wizards very rare. Finally, I have a cult of monsters who destroy anyone over 17th level as a threat to their secret rule over the world.

And you can't do any of the XP abuse crap, because XP is a physical substance, not a metaphysical "if it was hard/dangerous suddenly XP is generated!." Nope, the only way to make XP is to grow it, one sentient mind at a time.

I think it's working pretty well so far. :smallsmile:



Basically, you can't stop the divinations from getting you, but you can stop them from relaying the answers you don't want relayed simply by not doing whatever it is the diety thinks you might be doing.
That's brilliant - it explains why Gandalf was unwilling to start a fire on Weathertop, because you never know who might be watching! All high-level spells must be cast in secret so the boogie man doesn't get you! Oh wait, that's what I'm doing with my cult of monsters... :smallbiggrin:

Waspinator
2008-12-01, 08:55 PM
You know, the "Tippyverse" kind of reminds me of Dragonmech. In that world, there's these huge city-robots that a large percentage of the population lives in and feature wonders of technology and magic. Outside of the mechs, there's hordes of lunar dragons and constant lunar debris raining down making it kind of obvious why people hide in the mechs.

Long story short, Highpoint was your standard, pseudo-medieval-magical D&D world up until about a century ago. That's when people noticed that the moon was in a decaying orbit and had come close enough that the tidal stresses were tearing it to bits. The fact that the moon was populated makes things worse. Literal chunks of the moon rain down constantly, battering the landscape and smashing ecosystems. Plus, there's things like lunar dragons that are big, nasty, and capable of surviving the fall.

However, there are enough reasons to want to go outside occasionally to make a career out of adventuring (enter the player characters). They're the ones who go out into the wilderness of the ruined world and bring things back to the magi-steam-tech city-mechs.

elliott20
2008-12-01, 09:23 PM
Tippy, you're making a bold assumption about the effect of a high INT character. Just because a character has high INT doesn't mean he'll automatically perceive your cabal of wizards (or rather, your singular L20 caster when you first get started) as necessarily a good idea. c'mon, "join me or die"? sounds more like a gangster of wizards. And if your logic holds true about high level creatures, ALL Dragons would have banded together by now to create a super-dragon society, rivaling the tippyverse easily in scope and power. And yet they don't. Why?

In the very end, you're just gonna end up with a bunch of wizards with highly questionable moral fibers, which will probably tear the whole apart from within anyway.

But that's all in-game story plot.

one thing that does bother me is the fact that nobody has bothered bringing up the fact that at some point, somebody is going to see the gapping holes that the various spells introduce into their defenses. But instead of say, just researching a spell that stops another specific spell in an area (like say, teleport), they would go ahead and build an entire infrastructure, change the way people live, and have civilization change forever. That just seems like an awful inefficient as opposed to just come up with a new spell that stops teleports. (I mean, they are like, what, int 40 individuals? I'm sure they'll manage to come up with something) and the only reason they don't? it's not in RAW.

seriously people, are we really that married to the RAW that we would go for the long route just to accommodate not expanding upon it?

kopout
2008-12-01, 09:34 PM
Tippy, you're making a bold assumption about the effect of a high INT character. Just because a character has high INT doesn't mean he'll automatically perceive your cabal of wizards (or rather, your singular L20 caster when you first get started) as necessarily a good idea. c'mon, "join me or die"? sounds more like a gangster of wizards. And if your logic holds true about high level creatures, ALL Dragons would have banded together by now to create a super-dragon society, rivaling the tippyverse easily in scope and power. And yet they don't. Why?

In the very end, you're just gonna end up with a bunch of wizards with highly questionable moral fibers, which will probably tear the whole apart from within anyway.

But that's all in-game story plot.

one thing that does bother me is the fact that nobody has bothered bringing up the fact that at some point, somebody is going to see the gapping holes that the various spells introduce into their defenses. But instead of say, just researching a spell that stops another specific spell in an area (like say, teleport), they would go ahead and build an entire infrastructure, change the way people live, and have civilization change forever. That just seems like an awful inefficient as opposed to just come up with a new spell that stops teleports. (I mean, they are like, what, int 40 individuals? I'm sure they'll manage to come up with something) and the only reason they don't? it's not in RAW.

seriously people, are we really that married to the RAW that we would go for the long route just to accommodate not expanding upon it?

you make exilant points my friend . I had considered the effect of a "cloister"spell on the emerging Tippyvers and although it would be helpful teas are panicked people . By the end of year 1there would be few of the old cites left and by the end of year 2 there would be little of the old infrastructure left . If teleportation magic appeared in a d&d world that was normal in every way except the non-existent of said magic magic it would be devastating. And ,yes the tippy socites whould probably wipe them selves out but that is not unprecedented over half of all Tippy civilizations fall due to there own actions, I never said other wise.


Edit: and yes their "gangsters" a cabal is NOT a knitting club

Waspinator
2008-12-02, 01:51 AM
You know, I have to think of the Warcraft universe during all these discussions of a high-arcane society. You know, this used to be all one continent:
http://img293.imageshack.us/img293/1151/worldmapworldjz8.jpg
There used to be an elven empire where that big storm is. The problem with that many high-level casters is that eventually, someone's going to be a moron and then you're up to your eyebrows in demons and really big explosions.

Dervag
2008-12-02, 02:06 AM
Or rather, someone is going to be a fool. Wizards have high intelligence; they need not have high wisdom.

And may the gods have mercy on a Tippian civilization when the high level sorcerers start reaching levels where they get real power. Those guys don't need to have either intelligence or wisdom to obtain phenomenal cosmic power.

elliott20
2008-12-02, 02:39 AM
haven't you heard? Sorcerer magic is illegal and is cause for eugenics!

Oslecamo
2008-12-02, 05:09 AM
Or rather, someone is going to be a fool. Wizards have high intelligence; they need not have high wisdom.

And may the gods have mercy on a Tippian civilization when the high level sorcerers start reaching levels where they get real power. Those guys don't need to have either intelligence or wisdom to obtain phenomenal cosmic power.


This would actually explain why Tippyvserse still hasn'st hapened.

Sorcerors level faster than wizards, since they don't need so much time preparing stuff to be effecient and can just go around spaming spells.

Sorcerors reach epic tier first. But since they've got their powers from the rule of cool, the tought of making a super advanced society never ocurrs them.

So they expend their time taking revenge in all the wizards who run around saying lol sorceror are the suckorz wizardz rulez!

The wizard population takes a heavy hit, and Tippyverse never happens, since the few high level wizards are too busy fighting the hordes of pretty boy sorcerers.

NotMe
2008-12-02, 08:03 AM
With cities full of citizens / slaves with all physical requirements met and a low level of threats, what is going to stop the population expanding?

If it does expand, then space per person will be reduced unless the city expands or other planes or dimensions are populated. Assuming that people want personal space, then expansion will be necessary and you end up with both the planet and the planes populated by such a society.

If you assume a Tippyesque society where reshaping pretty much anything has a low cost to perform, then I see no reason to assume that their would be large areas of wilderness between cities, when cities could just expand to make use of this space.

Jack_Simth
2008-12-02, 08:30 AM
one thing that does bother me is the fact that nobody has bothered bringing up the fact that at some point, somebody is going to see the gapping holes that the various spells introduce into their defenses. But instead of say, just researching a spell that stops another specific spell in an area (like say, teleport), they would go ahead and build an entire infrastructure, change the way people live, and have civilization change forever. That just seems like an awful inefficient as opposed to just come up with a new spell that stops teleports. (I mean, they are like, what, int 40 individuals? I'm sure they'll manage to come up with something) and the only reason they don't? it's not in RAW.

seriously people, are we really that married to the RAW that we would go for the long route just to accommodate not expanding upon it?
Oh, you can stop Teleport, quite cold, with a Core spell that's available (to Clerics) just after Teleport comes into play, level-wise. Forbiddance is a Cleric-6 spell, and Permanently stops incoming teleports - and at a 60-foot cube per level, it gets a pretty wide area, too, although it's a bit pricy, especially with the password you'll need to actually use that in society.

Of course, that requires 6th level spells....

Let's see...
Cantrips clean society up - Cure Minor Wounds means a lot fewer deaths in childbirth. Purify Food and Drink cuts down notably on disease. Prestidigitation means gourmet tasting foods are fairly easy to come by. If they can be made at-will (weather by a widget or by a trap), they do this even better - at-will Cure Minor Wounds means nobody stays injured for long. At-will Create Water means nobody goes thirsty, and all drinking water is perfectly potable. At-will Purify Food and Drink means that food stores don't spoil. Everyone still does work (you still need to grow crops, build buildings, wear clothing, and so on), but you get a situation that looks very similar to a modern society with at-will cantrips... if enough wealth is poured into making it happen. This raises the population considerably, which encourages specialization, resulting in a fairly decent craft society.

1st level spells don't change much, unless they can be spammed to the entire population. An Endure Elements trap obliviates the need for a common man to have a house to sleep in (just trigger the trap and you're good for today). Cure Light Wounds doesn't do anything that multiple invocations of Cure Minor Wounds doesn't. Goodberry at-will would change things, except that it requires *fresh* berries. Without a greenhouse or some such, you'll still need traditional agriculture for winter stores, as the Goodberries won't be around at that time.

2nd level spells don't do much as far as society is concerned - Detect Thoughts does much more for justice than does Zone of Truth - Zone of Truth fails, and doesn't let anyone know it fails, if you beat the save; this means that high-will save crooks can get away with murder if you rely on it. Detect Thoughts, on the other hand, lets you know when you can't make out an individual's thoughts - and knowing what a person is thinking while they're making their case will generally be quite effective at weeding out the liars in court - and as a bonus, it'll also get most of the weasel-types who try to skirt around the facts.

With 3rd level spells, things start to get interesting. At will Water Breathing really opens up your colonization options. Permanent or At-Will Daylight means you have a permanent growing season... for the rich who aren't going to stay with the utterly bland food from the Create Food and Water traps/widgets available at the same resource level. Remove Disease, combined with Cure spells, means almost everyone lives to their racial maximum age. This is where things potentially get interesting - if Create Food and Water is available at will (especially if it includes a Prestidigitation effect for flavoring), suddenly there's a lot fewer farmers. This does, however, cause problems - a Rogue with Disable Device is suddenly a terrorist, as he can cut off the food supply to a very large area very quickly (Create Food and Water traps must be public access, and they are expensive enough and productive enough that there will only be a few of them, but a Rogue can turn them off for good in 2d4 rounds). If there's a lot of external pressure to keep people bottled up in cities, then farming will trickle off and vanish, leaving society very vulnerable to terrorist-rogues. If there's not, people will continue with reliable farming over the newfangled magics. Additionally, this is the point at which the people who own production start choosing what everything looks like. After all, you do need to keep people busy - boredom ferments rebellion. If everyone eats for free, and is immune to the weather for free, suddenly there's little motivation to do anything... and when people get too bored, they tend to get uppity. If you charge for access to the Create Food and Water traps, and the Endure Elements traps, then you have a means to keep everyone working - which also means they won't be rebelling. As a side-effect, as your post-investment costs on food production are virtually nil, you're a money sink - which means you ultimately have to end up employing everyone (directly or indirectly), which means you get to decide what everyone's doing. Society becomes what you want it to look like, if you're reasonably skilled at ruling in this manner. Whether it's art, war, wine, exotic dancers, or material goods, the people that control access to the Create Food and Water traps for the masses control what society looks like after they become common-use.

Beyond that, things are significantly less society-altering for a long, long time. Teleport changes the face of war... until Forbiddance comes into play. Wall of Stone makes housing easy to come by... except that it's not particularly needed, due to the Endure Elements spam from earlier. Fabricate cuts down on the amount of manual production... except that you need to keep people busy. And so on.

Emperor Tippy
2008-12-02, 11:04 AM
With cities full of citizens / slaves with all physical requirements met and a low level of threats, what is going to stop the population expanding?

If it does expand, then space per person will be reduced unless the city expands or other planes or dimensions are populated. Assuming that people want personal space, then expansion will be necessary and you end up with both the planet and the planes populated by such a society.

If you assume a Tippyesque society where reshaping pretty much anything has a low cost to perform, then I see no reason to assume that their would be large areas of wilderness between cities, when cities could just expand to make use of this space.

Two reasons. One, population doesn't expand really in post industrial nations (the US is ahead of the curve and is just barely at replacement level, most of the EU is shrinking). And two, security. The reason the people are in the cities is because the land outside of the cities can't be defended and isn't safe (and can't be made safe).


Oh, you can stop Teleport, quite cold, with a Core spell that's available (to Clerics) just after Teleport comes into play, level-wise. Forbiddance is a Cleric-6 spell, and Permanently stops incoming teleports - and at a 60-foot cube per level, it gets a pretty wide area, too, although it's a bit pricy, especially with the password you'll need to actually use that in society.

Of course, that requires 6th level spells....
...
Beyond that, things are significantly less society-altering for a long, long time. Teleport changes the face of war... until Forbiddance comes into play. Wall of Stone makes housing easy to come by... except that it's not particularly needed, due to the Endure Elements spam from earlier. Fabricate cuts down on the amount of manual production... except that you need to keep people busy. And so on.

Forbiddance can not protect a nation. You might be able to cover a city but the price tag runs 252,500 GP to cover a mile of land. And that only provides cover up to 60 feet up. Getting into an area protected by Forbiddance is as simple has having a guy go and rent a room before digging down 10 feet (they are now below the spells level) or just teleporting in above it.

Just for reference it would cost 2,525,000,000 GP (that's 2.525 BILLION) to cover 100 square miles of land to a height of 60 feet.

bosssmiley
2008-12-02, 12:23 PM
Waspinator please spoiler that image.


This would actually explain why Tippyvserse still hasn't happened.

The Tippyverse has happened already in D&D, several times in fact. Look up "Dark Sun", "Netheril", "Imaskar", "elven mythal", "Alphatia", "Jakandor" and "ancient Xendrik". There really is nothing new under the sun. :smallamused:

To be honest most of these societies are more interesting as a) thought exercises, or b) ruins to be picked through by your standard issue post-apocalyptic/Dark Ages gang o' four than they are as primary settings.

Utopia is ultimately a boring place to live; scouring the ruins of fallen greatness and attempting to reconstruct a lost utopia in one's own image is awesome. :smallcool:

Waspinator
2008-12-02, 01:23 PM
Don't forget Azeroth! As I said, they basically had this kind of arcane uber-society until it literally blew up and took half a continent with it.

kopout
2008-12-02, 04:40 PM
Don't forget Azeroth! As I said, they basically had this kind of arcane uber-society until it literally blew up and took half a continent with it.

Yeah, Tippy societies tend to blow up and take their continents with them.

Asheram
2008-12-02, 05:04 PM
Yeah, Tippy societies tend to blow up and take their continents with them.

Not that we complain too much. Tippy society go boom! ..and we get to loot the ruins a few centuries later.

Jack_Simth
2008-12-02, 06:14 PM
Two reasons. One, population doesn't expand really in post industrial nations (the US is ahead of the curve and is just barely at replacement level, most of the EU is shrinking). And two, security. The reason the people are in the cities is because the land outside of the cities can't be defended and isn't safe (and can't be made safe).

Nothing can be perfectly safe. For every defensive measure, there is a countermeasure. The most you can do is make it expensive to attack you... but that is, in and of itself, very expensive. Ultimately, all of society relies on trust to one degree or another.


Forbiddance can not protect a nation. You might be able to cover a city but the price tag runs 252,500 GP to cover a mile of land. And that only provides cover up to 60 feet up. Getting into an area protected by Forbiddance is as simple has having a guy go and rent a room before digging down 10 feet (they are now below the spells level) or just teleporting in above it.

And you can't defend a shoreline, either. This is a classic beachhead scenario, really. As for your cost references....


Just for reference it would cost 2,525,000,000 GP (that's 2.525 BILLION) to cover 100 square miles of land to a height of 60 feet.
A Tippyverse mostly relies on the ability to make spell effects at-will anyway. While yes, it would cost about that to do repeated castings, a Command-word Widget of Forbiddance, at the minimum caster level (11), would run (by DMG estimates) Spell level * caster level * 1800 + 100 * material component cost. If we set it for a single 60-foot cube per invocation, with the password option, that's 500,000 for the material components. Grand total for the widget: 618,800 gp (market).

Compare to the True Resurrection trap you postulated for dealing with the XP problem, which runs 2,500,000 for the material components, 76,500 for the magical supplies, and 6,120 xp to craft.

Emperor Tippy
2008-12-02, 06:27 PM
Nothing can be perfectly safe. For every defensive measure, there is a countermeasure. The most you can do is make it expensive to attack you... but that is, in and of itself, very expensive. Ultimately, all of society relies on trust to one degree or another.
Sure. But most people won't willingly live in what amounts to the wild west without any real hope of something profitable coming out of it.


And you can't defend a shoreline, either. This is a classic beachhead scenario, really. As for your cost references....
True. But you can have your forces meet the enemy forces at sea.


A Tippyverse mostly relies on the ability to make spell effects at-will anyway. While yes, it would cost about that to do repeated castings, a Command-word Widget of Forbiddance, at the minimum caster level (11), would run (by DMG estimates) Spell level * caster level * 1800 + 100 * material component cost. If we set it for a single 60-foot cube per invocation, with the password option, that's 500,000 for the material components. Grand total for the widget: 618,800 gp (market).

Compare to the True Resurrection trap you postulated for dealing with the XP problem, which runs 2,500,000 for the material components, 76,500 for the magical supplies, and 6,120 xp to craft.

Except that traps and trap prices are RAW allowed. Unlike all the other magic items their prices aren't guidelines. Making an at will wondrous item of Forbiddance requires DM approval and is effectively a houserule. Blocking the True Res trap likewise requires a houserule.

And Forbiddance does have the unfortunate effect of killing most commoners of different alignments who enter without knowing the password. And it stops you from making use of teleportation to respond to your enemies beach heads effectively.

Jack_Simth
2008-12-02, 07:05 PM
Sure. But most people won't willingly live in what amounts to the wild west without any real hope of something profitable coming out of it.

An awful lot of people left paying jobs to move out west and farm. You don't necessarily have to have a captial "c" City to be able to fend off most of the beasties that will think the locals are a prize worth eating (and a Tippy-city will still have some problems if a few Spectre's walk under the city streets to locate a nice large batch of commoners to eat in relative privacy, even if it's not a completely fatal happenstance). A reasonable wall, cleared land sufficient to give a lot of warning of incoming critters, a system of bells and watchmen, and having everyone go around armed with both ranged and melee weapons will take care of most beasties, unless they get attacked in-mass (which is always a problem anyway). Exactly how disparate the village is from the City in terms of survivability will depend on just how bad things are outside... which isn't well-defined in RAW, and is quite campaign dependent.


True. But you can have your forces meet the enemy forces at sea.

Only if you can see them coming. Have fun watching under the water, or during a storm. For every defensive measure, there is an offensive countermeasure. They just become progressively more expensive. And generally, defense is more expensive to begin with.

The guy who rents a room and digs down to establish a beachhead? You can potentially locate him in advance by way of abusing Contact Other Planes to get info about anyone planning to do something like that. Even if you don't catch him in advance, though, there's a limit to how fast they can move various sorts of soldiers through that beach-head. If you have a way to detect that such an event has occured (Lawful-Neutral, Rebuking Cleric-6's that Commanded Shadows, having them patrol under the city, perhaps), you can then counter with overwhelming force (as you have considerably less limitations on how many of your soldiers you can move - after all, you've prepared for this sort of thing occurring, if not for the specific choice of beachhead).

There's going to be a nasty fight, sure. Lots of casualties, sure. But then, there's also no real way to stop someone nuking a modern city by way of, say, smuggling in a nuke in with a very large shipment of something else, and setting it off in the harbor before (or when) the inspectors get there.

Nuclear weapons have been used as weapons exactly twice in recorded history - Hiroshima and Nagasaki - for the simple reason that nobody wants to face a world where they are used a lot (a variation of trust, if a somewhat twisted version of it). Set things up so that anyone who pulls such an attack may do massive amounts of damage, but won't survive the repercussions, and you can have an amazing amount of peace. Once you've got that set up, all you have to worry about are the people who aren't clever trying it - and they won't generally be the ones thinking about having someone immigrate, rent a room, and dig a pit for a beachhead.


Except that traps and trap prices are RAW allowed. Unlike all the other magic items their prices aren't guidelines. Making an at will wondrous item of Forbiddance requires DM approval and is effectively a houserule. Blocking the True Res trap likewise requires a houserule.

Traps show up in the DMG, not the PHB; it's for the DM's use, first and foremost. All traps are supposed to be approved by the DM, even if it's not explicit. Likewise, the DMG is quite clear the PrC's are supposed to be tightly controlled, but almost everyone pretends like they're normal character building and the players should have easy access to them. You generally don't play strict RAW anyway.


And Forbiddance does have the unfortunate effect of killing most commoners of different alignments who enter without knowing the password. And it stops you from making use of teleportation to respond to your enemies beach heads effectively.
Not really; there's no reason to keep the password secret, so you post the password in common on the wall at each boundary. It's a clerical spell anyway, so the password is something like "All Hail to Pelor". Use the same password each time, and make sure the boundaries are clearly marked. Crossing a boundary becomes comperable to crossing the street at an intersection - either can get people killed, but it'll generally be the stupid people, and even at that, it doesn't happen often.

Likewise, you can build your own beachheads to deal with the reciprocal non-teleport issue. There's several stations spaced every so often, where you've got what amounts to a plug in a hole in the ground, with something set to push the plug out of the hole when a particular event occurs (a Telekinesis trap, triggered by a particular pattern of a Dancing Light spell in the sky). Put a bunch of fake plugs every here and there, make sure your teleport response team is familiar with where the real ones are, and then as soon as a hostile beachhead is discovered, you can drop your troops on them.

Yahzi
2008-12-03, 12:37 AM
you still need to build buildings,
Well, until you get a Lyre of Building.

Dervag
2008-12-03, 01:25 AM
1st level spells don't change much, unless they can be spammed to the entire population. An Endure Elements trap obliviates the need for a common man to have a house to sleep in (just trigger the trap and you're good for today).Nitpick: I don't like sleeping in the rain, even if it isn't cold.

Muad'dib
2008-12-03, 06:20 AM
Nitpick: I don't like sleeping in the rain, even if it isn't cold.

I'm sleeping in the rain
Just sleeping in the rain
What a glorious feelin'
I'm happy again
I'm laughing at clouds
...

Oslecamo
2008-12-03, 06:23 AM
Nitpick: I don't like sleeping in the rain, even if it isn't cold.

I probably wouldn't like to spend the rest of my life holed up in some tiny extradimensional space in constant paranoia, or become an undead unable to feel anything ever again so they can't cause me pain or play tricks with my mind.

However a lot of players seem more than willing to sacrifice every little piece of comfort from their characters in return for moar power.

Sstoopidtallkid
2008-12-03, 06:31 AM
I probably wouldn't like to spend the rest of my life holed up in some tiny extradimensional space in constant paranoia,MMM is a perfectly reasonable place to sleep, let alone what I'd make with Genesis and time. Even Rope Trick is about the size of a dorm room.
or become an undead unable to feel anything ever again so they can't cause me pain or play tricks with my mind.and never have to eat or sleep again. I could definitely get behind that.
However a lot of players seem more than willing to sacrifice every little piece of comfort from their characters in return for moar power.We're talking about people who are essentially going boar hunting on a daily basis because if they do it for ~3 years they'll be immortal and rich. It's perfectly reasonable that they'd want to do whatever is necessary to survive.

Jack_Simth
2008-12-03, 06:42 AM
Well, until you get a Lyre of Building.
Do note that particular line was in the context of "cantrips" - 0th level spells. A Lyre of Building requires Fabricate (5th level spell) to create.


Nitpick: I don't like sleeping in the rain, even if it isn't cold.
Yeah. But Endure Elements spammed to everyone, constantly, means going from needing a roof, four walls, a fire, and blankets to needing a little cover over your head and a bit of thresh on the floor. There's an order of magnitude difference in how much cover is required there.

elliott20
2008-12-03, 09:35 PM
and never have to eat or sleep again. I could definitely get behind that.
the only difference that would really make for some people would just be a lunch break anyway.

Yahzi
2008-12-04, 01:20 AM
in the context of "cantrips" - 0th level spells.
Roulette - another victim of cantrips. The game would simply be banned. :smallbiggrin:

kopout
2008-12-04, 09:41 PM
Roulette - another victim of cantrips. The game would simply be banned. :smallbiggrin:

i don't get it


also in responds to the people calming that forbidence would negate teliportation . Well, couldn't' they come up with a spell to counter that ? A magical arms race is not unlikely in a Tippyvers.

Yukitsu
2008-12-04, 10:14 PM
i don't get it


also in responds to the people calming that forbidence would negate teliportation . Well, couldn't' they come up with a spell to counter that ? A magical arms race is not unlikely in a Tippyvers.

Prestidigitation and mage hand can screw over the roulette results, though it's usually less obvious on the craps tables.

As for magical arms race, epic spell seeds don't let you bypass that particular immunity. The only arm race that exists in epic is between divinations and divination blockers. Everything else, immune means immune.

Emperor Tippy
2008-12-04, 10:22 PM
Prestidigitation and mage hand can screw over the roulette results, though it's usually less obvious on the craps tables.

As for magical arms race, epic spell seeds don't let you bypass that particular immunity. The only arm race that exists in epic is between divinations and divination blockers. Everything else, immune means immune.

Actually not exactly. The pinnacle of epic spellcasting is Origin of the Species. And when creating a species you can give it a teleport ability as an Ex ability. Forbiddance only works against teleportation spells (at least specifically). Not teleportation effects.

Yukitsu
2008-12-04, 10:29 PM
Dimension lock works on all the above, however. It merely gives a non definitive list. Not to mention how fiddly epic spell creation gets when you try to make non-achierai version of origin of the species when things have EX teleports. It doesn't really stop the fact that the arms race to prevent teleport commando raids occurs pre epic, and never really advances.

Time stop can emulate it, however, if you're fast enough I suppose. Still, really inefficient method in my opinion.

Sstoopidtallkid
2008-12-05, 12:53 AM
Prestidigitation and mage hand can screw over the roulette results, though it's usually less obvious on the craps tables.Not to mention the 1st level spell Cheat(BoVD).

Yahzi
2008-12-05, 01:10 AM
i don't get it .
Mage hand - 5 lbs of telekinesis would ruin Roulette, just like a decent Minor Image/Slieght of Hand would ruin poker. Give yourself an Ace! And hope somebody else isn't already holding it. :smallbiggrin:

Yukitsu
2008-12-05, 01:17 AM
"I'm all in."
"Weal, or woe?"

kopout
2008-12-05, 03:33 PM
As for magical arms race, epic spell seeds don't let you bypass that particular immunity. The only arm race that exists in epic is between divinations and divination blockers. Everything else, immune means immune.

Actually, I am saying you could research up a spell that lowers wisdom as an area effect and prevent the clerics from ever casting. Also I recently ran across the template living spell that would make rouge- terrorist obsolete and could be fed refuse, a win-win. Further if teleportation has just been introduced why would there be a fobideanc spell?

kopout
2008-12-08, 03:35 PM
Sooooo...... This died?

TheCountAlucard
2008-12-08, 08:49 PM
Sooooo...... This died?

Just give it time.

Thrawn183
2008-12-08, 09:50 PM
So who wants to look at society once you get casters around level 10? It's enough that you would see some major differences but you probably wouldn't quite have tippyverses yet, barring things like candles of invocation and the like.

kopout
2008-12-08, 09:51 PM
So who wants to look at society once you get casters around level 10? It's enough that you would see some major differences but you probably wouldn't quite have tippyverses yet, barring things like candles of invocation and the like.

I have to go to bed. But do you have any ideas?

Jack_Simth
2008-12-08, 10:29 PM
So who wants to look at society once you get casters around level 10? It's enough that you would see some major differences but you probably wouldn't quite have tippyverses yet, barring things like candles of invocation and the like.
Well, 9th is when Teleport comes into play - at a point where there aren't any effective counters. War suddenly changes quite a lot (teleport in troops with things like Neclaces of Fireballs, possibly over the course of several days, and you can simply wipe out the city behind a traditional army, and there's little, if anything, the army can do about it), and you get what amounts to the brinkmanship of the Cold War (nobody pushes the button because everyone realizes that pressing it means everyone else will, too).

Waspinator
2008-12-08, 10:54 PM
Just give it time.

And necromancy!

*starts passing out black onyx*

horseboy
2008-12-09, 05:35 PM
On about day 1 a number of wars start and a number of leaders are assassinated as soldiers are teleported straight into cities and castles. These wars go on for a good chunk of time, until the cities become effectively armed camps that an enemy won't survive just teleporting into. Well now the surrounding villages become targets. Eventually those people head into the cities because they are at least relatively safe there. Well now the cities need a way to feed these people. Create Food and Water traps can take care of that. A disintegrate trap can take care of all the waste.
You don't even have to teleport soldiers. WAAY back in 1st edition when I made my first game world, the dwarves declared war on humans over lycanthropy and in defense humans created rust monsters, mass bred them and teleported them into fortifications. They're far more expendable in case the spell % is off and cause massive problems for the traditionally heavy armour wearing dwarves. The humans then used flint headed arrows to take down both the rust monsters and the severely weakened dwarves. Likewise golem creation was illegal by international treaty, cause two armies of golems had already almost destroyed the world.
Who would go for #4? Not me. It seems weird and... well... kinda stupid. If I ever find myself needing a small space heater, I may remember that the lamp would serve that purpose to it. I may recommend it to my friends for that purpose and, when the give me a strange look say "No really, try it!"

But for the moment I want light to read by.Actually, yes, #4 is used quite often. Especially in bathrooms, dog houses and barns. Find a better mouse trap and the world will beat a path to your door. Once that use is found out then people will use it for that use.
What you've got to take in acount is that even if magic is old, stuff such as agriculture, literature and nonmagic stuff is even older.It doesn't matter how old it is, once rendered obsolete. Much like sewing in the modern world. One can not buy a zipper in the city of St. Louis. Sewing has been around for a very long time, yet is practiced by so few people that selling items related to the skill is just not economically viable, so an already dying skill accelerates it's demise.

Or, y'know, a gigantic epic-level dragon war followed by a massive cataclysm and the extinction of all the dragons bar one.

Who would presumably end up bereft of any opponents whatsoever, and in possession both of all the other dragons' treasure and of a very good motive to keep more epic-level casters from showing up.Dark Sun?
Tippy, you're making a bold assumption about the effect of a high INT character. Just because a character has high INT doesn't mean he'll automatically perceive your cabal of wizards (or rather, your singular L20 caster when you first get started) as necessarily a good idea. c'mon, "join me or die"? sounds more like a gangster of wizards. And if your logic holds true about high level creatures, ALL Dragons would have banded together by now to create a super-dragon society, rivaling the tippyverse easily in scope and power. And yet they don't. Why?
"Age of Dragons" and "Empire of Dragons" are quite common history elements of campaign settings. Usually it does happen early on, while the other races are still young/weak then a great hero emerges and topples the whole thing usually with inside help.
1st level spells don't change much, unless they can be spammed to the entire population. An Endure Elements trap obliviates the need for a common man to have a house to sleep in (just trigger the trap and you're good for today).
Wall of Stone makes housing easy to come by... except that it's not particularly needed, due to the Endure Elements spam from earlier. Fabricate cuts down on the amount of manual production... except that you need to keep people busy. And so on.
Except housing, like clothing, doesn't exist solely for protection from elements. It provides expression of self, a place to put your stuff, a place not just of refuge from weather but others as well. Not to mention sensations of comfort so people would still want houses. As to jobs, while fabricate traps can be used to create factory quality items. Things that are "hand crafted" even today command a higher price than mass produced goods. There's still a market for artisans. Thinkers, dreamers and athletes will likewise still have job opportunities. The question is "What do you do with the talentless bucket heads?" That's easy. Put them in charge of the traps. The person comes in, orders food, the minion pushes the create buttons to create a type of food then prestidigitation buttons to flavor the food, then serves the food, then cleans up afterwords. In fact, given it's not uncommon for PC's to establish their own inns in their favorite towns, this is probably going to be one of the early manifestations. Good Lord, I just created McClerics.

Oslecamo
2008-12-09, 05:55 PM
It doesn't matter how old it is, once rendered obsolete. Much like sewing in the modern world. One can not buy a zipper in the city of St. Louis. Sewing has been around for a very long time, yet is practiced by so few people that selling items related to the skill is just not economically viable, so an already dying skill accelerates it's demise.

Perhaps in North America. Not in the rest of the world. Aka the other 90% of the population.

Half the population in my country keeps basic sewing material in their homes, and you can find it easily in stores, and we constantly use it to both repair clothes and improvise stuff. Even my aunt from Netherlands knows how to sew, and she sells houses for a big company as a living!

So it isn't obsolete. Because a sewing machine may be more effecient if you want to produce clothes for an entire country, but it's not effecient if you just want to mend your own clothes or improvise some home stuff.

Similary:
-Despite computers existing for several decades now, books are still very popular. As paper newspapers.
-People still send paper mail.
-People still kill each other with knives despite there being fire guns all around.
-Mormons, nuff said.

How much costs a trap of make food again? 7500 GP. So if you're a small comunity in the middle of nowhere, you can't really afford traps of this and that. It goes much cheaper to just do the stuff yourselfs.

Why? Because there will always be people who aren't interested in conquering the world and just want a peacefull life, even if they have to-gasp-work hard for it, instead of relying on other's work.