Maintaining your world in the face of the RAW

[Mike_G]

The Magically Armed Military thread got me thinking.

Now, D&D presupposes a fantasy Medieval world, where PCs are the exceptional, outstanding members of that world, destined for great things. Most members of the world population are low level NPC classed "extras."

If we look at army building threads, people are thinking like a PC. They expect to use the rules, pay the gp cost and have whatever they want. Golems, Dragons, Outsiders, etc.

Now, while all this is legal by the RAW, it kinda bones the world concept. If leaders of nations can easily hire a dozen 20th level wizards, then yes, armies are obsolete. So, what do you do for the 1st level party who need to free the town from the oppressive invading army, when that army is legally and logically composed of a flight of Dragons, a heavy Golem brigade and a scout corps of Warforged with ranger levels, all co-ordinated by a Wizard flying above in an AWACS?

Well, you can't. There needs to be a mostly mundane area for the low level PCs to kick around in. Where Kobolds, Goblins and bandits are the usual threats, and where the Crown authority actually has some difficulty controlling those threats.

Now, there can easily be high and low level areas. There are many places in the world today where a local boss with a dozen assault rifle armed thugs can be a lord of a small outlaw kingdom, and some places where you can't oppose the government with anything less than nukes.

How do people reconcile the "standard" D&D world where the king is a 6th level Aristocrat and his General a 10th level Fighter, and most of his army warriors under level 5, with the RAW-legal style of world where the King's brigade of high level wizards open gates to distant planes to buy material to make armies of unstoppable golems? Can these co-exist?

[SilverClawShift]

The easy answer is "The DM reconciles them however he wants for his campaign". It's also the truest answer, in the sense that D&D content is meant to be used as raw material you build your roleplaying experience out of.

For example, there are literally hundereds of prestige classes, and that's only in official WOTC material. Start adding in published D20 material, and you're probably looking at over 1000 classes. Then your players remember Dragon magazine, and all the cool homebrew classes they've seen on the internet...
Just taking the prestige classes as an example is a good place to start. Each of these classes has the POTENTIAL to exist in your game world, either as a player class or as features for an NPC. But is that potential actualized? If you asked your DM "Is there really at least 1 person of every prestige class in this game world?" they would likely say 'of course not'. But then if you needed to find one member of that prestige class to train you before you took your first level, you could find them at the top of a mountain meditating quietly, waiting for an adventurer of noble spirit to survive the climb and ask the questions on how to begin.

That illustrates the dynamic nature of a roleplaying world. Whatever needs to exist for the continuation of the campaign will be created in some pocket of existance by the DM. Anything not actively explored and examined by the player doesn't currently exist, it's just a potential addition waiting to be made real by DM inclusion, or made non-existant by DM order.

Schrodinger's Monk.

************************

But that's a cop-out answer that addresses what you asked, but didn't touch on what you were GETTING at.

So for that, I'll say that the low-level versus high-level dillema is solved by two things. Geographic isolation, and DM imposed hinderance.

Geopgraphic Isolation is something you touched on. In some areas of the globe, enough AK 47s turns you into a king. In others, a lone resister to the government will be met with a line of tanks and a team of snipers.
This real-world example is not destroyed when translated into fantasy structure.
In some areas of a fantasy globe (which can be much, much larger than ours, if the DM needs it to be), an intelligent rogue and his half-ogre bodyguard might be the baddest two on the block, ruling with an iron fist over cowering commoners and recruiting an army of low-levels with a "Fight for me or I burn your house down and sell your children into slavery" attitude.
In other areas, verbal dissent might be met with immediate execution by a police force of flying wizards and warriors with gowing red swords that scorch what they cut and unbreakable full plates.

The other limiting factor, DM imposed hinderance, is something known to all roleplayers. "The DM said no" is the ultimate rule, but guess what? it doesn't just apply to you, and your urge to play a pixie samurai. It also applies to the kings, archmages, and even the DEITIES of this world.
If the Dm said they can't FIND the raw resources, the willing help, or the skilled craft required to make it happen, then they simply don't have it.
If the Dm said the kingdom has an army of exactly 500 55 year old warriors, then that's what they get, regardless of their wealth. he might have a reason, or he might simply make it that way "because I said so".

So yeah. Both can exist in the same world. They're likely to, if that's what the DM wants.

[Ramza00]

I think you need to simplify and rephrase your question.

How I would put it

How do you maintian the feeling of disbelief, the feel of the world, when the RAW allows other options to be the more "logical" outcome. How can you maintain your world feeling "real" and not just "forced."

Is this what you are trying to ask?

[Swordguy]

Without a hefty dose of DM fiat, no, they cannot logically co-exist.

While there are certainly exceptions, (due to beaurecratic interia, etc.) developing a military is an all-or-nothing proposition. Either your army works and you win (thus propagating itself amidst extra-national copycats) or it doesn't work and you lose, and other people don't copy your army doctrine. With RAW, the high-level army wins. It simply does. Ergot, there is no reason to have hordes of low-level mooks filling the ranks.

The DM must state at the beginning of the game whether he's going for flavor (hordes o' mooks) or pure RAW (both sides summon an infinite number of titans), and then enforces it, vetoing PC actions if needed. EITHER is fine, but you have to be consistent. You won't run into really game-breaking problems until you combine the two...

[SoulCatcher78]

Absolutely. As the GM you have to make it either ridiculously expensive to create your army of constructs or bribe your flight of dragons (both have precedent in D&D). Being fantasy, all things are possible.

Would your level 1 PCs face off against either of these threats? Only if they're stupid/suicidal. The nice thing about power is that it corrupts those who use it, this being the case with the flight of dragons...while you may get them to do a single battle together, it's unlikely that you will hold them long enough to fight an entire war. Constructs have the same sort of issue...to make one permanent (Iron Golem for instance) requires quite a bit of magical power (not to mention parts, etc) and that sort of stuff doesn't grow on trees. Did your cabal of level whatever wizards build in a safeguard in case the golems were turned against them as well? You'd better bet they would...they are wizards after all.

A few well thought out hurdles can dismantle a players need to overcompensate with a huge magical army. Even if you can't come up with something right away to disuade them from doing it "because it's RAW", you can always let them find out that the millions of gp they spent got them almost nothing in return (in the long run) when the constructs stop functioning or the dragons start getting pissy with each other about who the biggest predator is and wipe out half a city in a Godzilla like fight to see who the biggest monster in the valley really is.

In the background, you can hear his followers mumbling "who's bright idea was this anyway?".

[Mike_G]

I think you need to simplify and rephrase your question.

How I would put it

How do you maintian the feeling of disbelief, the feel of the world, when the RAW allows other options to be the more "logical" outcome. How can you maintain your world feeling "real" and not just "forced."

Is this what you are trying to ask?

Pretty much.

Now, if the DM is controlling the kingdoms, and the players are just freelance trouble shooters, which is what the game models very well, you're fine, since the king just doesn't have his Wizard summon infinite Titans to fight the war.

But when the PCs decide to start their own little power enclave, even if they just move in to the tower of the evil necromancer after they defeat him and start building their power, you gte issues.

A bunch of computer programers form th 21 st century who take the assembly line and an organized consumer driven economy for granted, handed a book full of prices for creating magic items and Gates and Monsters, suddenly can turn the world on its head.

There's no way a Medieval flavor world can survive in the face of that. The rest of the world has to adapt, and become "modern" but with teleported constructs replacing airmobile heavy special forces units, or gets trampled by the PCs with there penchant for optimization and reading Adam Smith and Sun Tzu.

[SilverClawShift]

The DM must

Bad words, he said bad words!

[The Faceless]

The laws, traditions, and history of the land, simple enough. why doesn't the army have a 20th level wizard up front riding a gold dragon and with a brigade of golems as the heavy infantry? simple. Golems are considered an abomination by the nation heading the army, so they can't be used. the nations founder was a great dragonslayer, so good luck getting any dragon to join their cause. and as for the 20th level wizard: where are you going to find him, what can you offer him that he can't already have, why should he care about your pitiful mortal struggle when he's concerned with higher matters.

But then why is that nation down the road able to call in dragons to do the occasional favor? because they treat them properly, give them their dues, and the capital is home to a great temple of Bahamut.

why aren't wizard and sorcerers hired into armies? a mage war occurred five centuries ago, leaving areas of the land scarred and unlivable to this day, the ground soaked in magical energy to the point that the soil is alive. Anyone using casters in their armies will have every single arcane order in the world marching on them.

why no druids? the ancient order of oaklords has sworn an oath not to get involved in humans wars, only engaging if nature is being abused, and always as a third party, never siding with anyone but themselves.

these get rid of some of the problems about D+D armies, and can provide a little bit of depth to the world. its not a solution to everything, but it can cover a lot of stuff.

[Ulzgoroth]

The real key is you don't have to reconcile with RAW, only with local RAU (rules as used). Heck, if you use RAW, the PCs are preempted 100+ years before their birth by somebody with a candle of invocation breaking the multiverse.

But you can get a lot of it to be less corrosive than that. You can't just buy a level 17 wizard, you know. In fact, the DMG random generation yields no wizards above 16 in the world (though of course you can seed them to taste, and if you go to the planar metropolis scale you get them at random I think). Dragons and outsiders likewise don't come with price tags, unless you bring them in with calling spells and succeed in negotiating long-term employment. Golems do, but they're spectacularly expensive and take a fair bit of magic to construct, as well as being a lot less impressive.

Consider cost-benefit as well. What's the total productive yield of the village? The rules aren't definative, but I'd say a healthy adult peasant is worth less than 100gp per year. A clay golem will put you out 400 peasant-years of production to buy, has no mind, can only be in one place, and needs wizardly maintenance if it is damaged. And goes on a berserk rampage eventually. That's the cheap option. Wizards charge hundreds of gold to cast a single spell...employing them for long-term field duty would require either a mage-draft or a huge amount of gold.

[Emperor Tippy]

A system that I have found that models both the effects of RAW applied to the world as a whole (teleportation, golem armies, etc.). Is that you have cities and enclaves spread across the world.

The city is in the antarctic (for example) because it has a huge gold mine and food is grown in Texas (because it is much more fertile). Both places are part of the same nation but the land in between can be wilderness, have a city of another nation, or anything else.

Now out in the wilderness (outside the cities and enclaves) you have the few people who don't want to live in the cities, can't live in the cities (fugitives), or who were born outside the cities. You also have the tribes of monsters and what not.

So when a city fights a city or defends its self you see a force of a thousand golems flying about and teleporting around, you see dragons attacking. You see armies of warforged infantry.

And when a tribe in the wilderness is attacked by a band of orcs you see people with swords, spears, and bows defending themselves.

[Ramza00]

So in effect Tippy a world society which has tiers of humanity, The Upper Castes which don't associate with the Lower Castes for they are so much more advanced and there is no profit to associate with savages, and the Lower Castes who avoid the Upper Caste for they don't want to risk the Upper Caste wrath.

Works alot better in an "island" type campaign, even if there is no physical islands, instead the islands being plane X, Y, Z. The sea/wilderness being plane hopping, gates, paths, etc.

[stainboy]

How do people reconcile the "standard" D&D world where the king is a 6th level Aristocrat and his General a 10th level Fighter, and most of his army warriors under level 5, with the RAW-legal style of world where the King's brigade of high level wizards open gates to distant planes to buy material to make armies of unstoppable golems? Can these co-exist?

Simple. Nations can't get wizards to fight their wars for them.

Your typical nonmagical nation just doesn't have anything to offer a high-level spellcaster. A wagonload of gold for a lot of work just isn't worth anything to someone who can just telepeort to somewhere with a wagonload of gold, load up a couple floating discs, and teleport home. As a rule, high-level wizards don't want money or land. They want magical power, and that's something your typical nation is short on.

When magical threats do show up, that's what keeps adventurers in business, and it's critical to your stock D&D setting that an army is useless against the resources of powerful spellcasters. When the archetypical megalomaniacal lich shows up, who does the king send, his army? No, he sends a small group of adventurers.

[Emperor Tippy]

So in effect Tippy a world society which has tiers of humanity, The Upper Castes which don't associate with the Lower Castes for they are so much more advanced and there is no profit to associate with savages, and the Lower Castes who avoid the Upper Caste for they don't want to risk the Upper Caste wrath.

Not really. Excepting the criminals all of the other people out in the wilderness choose to stay out there. The cities don't care about the wilderness because it is to spread out to be able to hold effectively when you are facing enemies with similarly powerful armies.

The wilderness people could move into the cities if they wanted but they would have to be insane to attack one.

Works alot better in an "island" type campaign, even if there is no physical islands, instead the islands being plane X, Y, Z. The sea/wilderness being plane hopping, gates, paths, etc.

Not really. My way has the advantage of the PC's still having all the opportunities for magic items and city adventures that regular D&D has in addition to allowing all of the more standard "fight the orcs" adventures and "explore the lost ruins" kind of adventures.

[Nerd-o-rama]

Wow. Actually, that sounds like a good basis for a setting, especially including Ramza's spin on it. Not that I really think large-scale teleportation and physical isolation/discretion is a necessary consequence of the rules system, but when you add in the social dynamic that Ramza suggested, it practically writes the "Life in..." pages for you, and half the plot hooks.

Of course, I'm still not even going to think about how magic items work in any real economy, or how wandering monsters generally have a net worth orders of magnitude higher than most trained laborers. Not to mention the economics behind spell components with a listed cost. That all gets put under Willing Suspension of Disbelief.

[Emperor Tippy]

I'm finishing up refluffing magic and then I plan to run it.

I'm making the leveling mechanic make sens in the world without changing it mechanically.

[Kurald Galain]

If leaders of nations can easily hire a dozen 20th level wizards, then yes, armies are obsolete.

Well, here's the thing. You don't hire a 20th-level wizard. A 20th-level wizard hires you, if he needs you at all, and if you're lucky enough that he doesn't simply dominate you.

I believe Pug had some nice words to say about this to his dear king Patrick...

[Raum]

How do people reconcile the "standard" D&D world where the king is a 6th level Aristocrat and his General a 10th level Fighter, and most of his army warriors under level 5, with the RAW-legal style of world where the King's brigade of high level wizards open gates to distant planes to buy material to make armies of unstoppable golems? Can these co-exist?

They can, with some work. The easiest (laziest) method is simply DM fiat.

Almost as easy is the champion method. Remember the legendary stories of Troy where armies would arrive facing each other and then have champions fight instead of the armies? You can do something similar with high level characters. It even fits most worlds' flavor - high level NPCs should be rare so one per army might be normal. Or make it a group of four if you want an even challenge for the average party.

Another potential method can be done by creating a system of wards. If the wards take large numbers of people to empower but last six months to a year, a city might have yearly defense festivals where the majority of the population parties / meditates / whatever it takes to create power while a few ritual celebrants shape the power into the city's ward. This might stop powerful magic from working in a city or even do other things such as powering siege golems to protect the city. The result potentially makes strategy rely on defense using teams of heroes to take out threats before risking an army against warded cities where high level characters would be partially nullified. It also opens up plots around interfering with a city's warding ritual...

The last one is my favorite, though I never did finish writing up ward details.

[Jack_Simth]

So in effect Tippy a world society which has tiers of humanity, The Upper Castes which don't associate with the Lower Castes for they are so much more advanced and there is no profit to associate with savages, and the Lower Castes who avoid the Upper Caste for they don't want to risk the Upper Caste wrath.

Works alot better in an "island" type campaign, even if there is no physical islands, instead the islands being plane X, Y, Z. The sea/wilderness being plane hopping, gates, paths, etc.

You can have as many tiers as you like.

Occasionally, a village in the wilderness survives long enough to begin fortification, which makes it more stable and more susceptible to prosperity. It then grows into one of the "cities" - perhaps making contact with the existing "city network" when it gets to the point where someone in the new city can cast Teleport; at that point, you start getting an influx of "civilization" which progressively boosts it over time. A village undergoing this transition can be encountered at any stage.

Occasionally, a village/town/city/metropolis/whatever dies. Perhaps a mage decides to harvest the place for the XP. Perhaps there's a struggle that unleashes titanic mystic energy that renders the place uninhabitable for a few generations. Perhaps they simply lose a war to another such habitation. Perhaps it's overrun by monsters. Perhaps the ore that established the place plays out. However it happens, you've got ruins - perhaps with defensive fortifications of some kind, perhaps with underground catacombs of some kind, or perhaps with a rabbit warren of tunnels dug out by way of Summon Nature's Ally II (Dire Badger) and Speak With Animals. Perhaps an area dug into solid granite by a pet beholder. Perhaps mines that followed the ore (essentially random directions, for later observers) played out, and there was no longer any particular reason to stay. This begets ruins and dungeons.

As to why a monster might be roaming with more wealth than most laborers see in a decade? Well, they picked it up from the only people who have a reasonable chance in the wilderness - well-funded adventurers.

[horseboy]

Obvious answer: Don't play games where you've got to worry about this.

[Damionte]

Tippy's model makes sense. It's essentially how the real world works anyway.

[Matthew]

Whenever this sort of thing comes up, it always strikes me as odd that the Player Characters somehow think what they are planning has 'never been tried before'. It seems to me that pretty much anything that appears as though it should 'totally work' and would transform the nature of a Campaign World, simply won't. For whatever reason, Greyhawk isn't dominated by armies of Golems or whatever. It's just one of these moments where the DM has to get inventive to explain why plan X doesn't result in consequence Y.

[karmuno]

Hm, all good points. The way I think of it, there are the super powers which use dragons and golems and wizards (oh my), and then there are the minor countries which use a more standard medieval army. The only thing stopping the super powers from completely annihilating the smaller states is other super powers. That is, if a kingdom suddenly decides to conquer a small city, the other super powers would protest, arguing that it disrupts the balance of power or simply that the offending power is over-aggressive. Basically, you'd have 19th/20th century politics in a medieval world. Smaller countries can still have conflicts, but the super powers rarely step in since it would be a waste of resources to them.

Of course, if a world war starts, the smaller countries will likely be annexed by the super powers and standard medieval conflict would not occur for a while (except in isolated parts of the world).

[Emperor Tippy]

Well I'm running a world like I talked about above. Here's the recruitment thread

http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showt...05#post2866105