Help finding an old concept; natural RAW result being magocratic city-states

[johnbragg]

Wasn't the deal with the traps some kind of resetting once per round for a ridiculously cheap price and therefore being utterly broken and banned in most games ?

The biggest piece of the puzzle is the Teleportation Circles, which can be permanency'ed for a listed price of 4500 xp each. Or if you use the item creation rules, 306,000 gp. https://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/permanency.htm

Next on the agenda is Create Food and Water stations, for 30,000 gp each. The spell creates bland food, but that's fixable with a Prestidigitation trap for SL 0.5 * CL 1 * 2,000 gp = 1,000 gp a pop, which makes your soy-bugpaste porridge taste like filet mignon or starfruit or chicken nuggets with szechuan sauce or a McRib or whatever.

Now, the initial cost is enough to limit these shenanigans in table games. Not a lot of 15th-20th level PCs are going to sink half their WBL into a public works Teleportation Circle between Westford City and Port Stormsea for a campaign that only has a few levels left. But sorcerer-kings and vampire merchant dukes and lich-pharoahs and dwarf lords and Shadow Councils and elven high kings and dragon-emperors operate on 1000 year lifespans.

OF course it doesn't work if you start banning things from RAW as implausible and stupidly broken. The point was to assume that RAW was accurate, and think through how a magical society would develop (assuming that the gods don't drop a mountain on the first city to put the pieces together.)