A Critical Flaw in the Tippyverse

[icefractal]

I mean, define "actual threat".

It's relatively low, but if those troops are at all powerful, then that's still a dangerous amount of offense suddenly showing up inside your territory. And that's assuming it's quickly intercepted. The spell has a good duration and the though-put is per-round, so if nobody notices your troops massing for the first 15 minutes, you have a lot of troops there.

Threat to an omni-surveilled city that can teleport in troops as good or better within a round or two? Not much of one.

Threat to a fairly dense city with its own troops of comparable strength ready to spring into action? Not crushing, but not trivial either, the equivalent of a major terrorist attack.

Threat to a kingdom where it will take a messenger half a day to announce the threat, and the nearest garrison another half day to send troops there? Huge.


As far as needing a caster, how much this limits the tactic depends on how rare those are. Anti-teleportation defenses are limited by the same thing (available casters), so in a way the relative threat level remains constant.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Destro2119
"much, much faster than 4 people per round."

Clarify this?

According to this post in the original Tippyverse thread, Tippy claims that 960 people per round can transit a teleport circle if they run through in all four directions.

From this, he extrapolates an army can go through in a minute or so. There are some practical issues never really addressed with this, but this seems to be the basis of Tippy's estimates.

[Melcar]

Well, you don't need a *lot* of wizard 20s, really. Just one 9th-level spellcaster per major, geopolitically influential nation, and you've got the ability to drop a major strike-force onto any part of the opposing nation that you have a good enough description of. Teleportation circle lasts 10 minutes per caster level, so that's 170 minutes at a bare minimum, or 1700 rounds. Even assuming that you have to move into and end your turn in the circle, the 5ft radius (not diameter) of the circle means you can move 4 people per round per circle, or 6,800-8,000 people. That's not enough to *hold* a position against the entire enemy army, but it's enough to wreck up any undefended mine, academy, factory, etc. And the Tippyverse also comes with the assumption that you can move people through a teleportation circle much, much faster than 4 people per round.

Tippy forgets thats his entire planet would be covered in Halaster’s Teleportation Cage... if his scenario would play out!

[Destro2119]

According to this post in the original Tippyverse thread, Tippy claims that 960 people per round can transit a teleport circle if they run through in all four directions.

From this, he extrapolates an army can go through in a minute or so. There are some practical issues never really addressed with this, but this seems to be the basis of Tippy's estimates.

I mean, yeah, I at least can definitely see how it would work practically speaking for the whole movement thing.

What I am confused about is how teleportation circle's exit point is decided, and whether it is potent enough to, again, even warrant any of Halaster's TP Cage/weirdstone defenses and what have you.

You have any insights on this?

[Destro2119]

I mean, define "actual threat".

It's relatively low, but if those troops are at all powerful, then that's still a dangerous amount of offense suddenly showing up inside your territory. And that's assuming it's quickly intercepted. The spell has a good duration and the though-put is per-round, so if nobody notices your troops massing for the first 15 minutes, you have a lot of troops there.

Threat to an omni-surveilled city that can teleport in troops as good or better within a round or two? Not much of one.

Threat to a fairly dense city with its own troops of comparable strength ready to spring into action? Not crushing, but not trivial either, the equivalent of a major terrorist attack.

Threat to a kingdom where it will take a messenger half a day to announce the threat, and the nearest garrison another half day to send troops there? Huge.


As far as needing a caster, how much this limits the tactic depends on how rare those are. Anti-teleportation defenses are limited by the same thing (available casters), so in a way the relative threat level remains constant.

Can you explain how the TP circles can even target inside of a city?

Also, what is your opinion on spell traps/spell clocks of greater teleport?

[JNAProductions]

I mean, yeah, I at least can definitely see how it would work practically speaking for the whole movement thing.

What I am confused about is how teleportation circle's exit point is decided, and whether it is potent enough to, again, even warrant any of Halaster's TP Cage/weirdstone defenses and what have you.

You have any insights on this?

It functions like Greater Teleport.

[liquidformat]

According to this post in the original Tippyverse thread, Tippy claims that 960 people per round can transit a teleport circle if they run through in all four directions.

From this, he extrapolates an army can go through in a minute or so. There are some practical issues never really addressed with this, but this seems to be the basis of Tippy's estimates.

I am not sure if this is correct, if you instantaneously teleport when you move onto the circle than it should be though the spell isn't entirely clear on that.

I mean, yeah, I at least can definitely see how it would work practically speaking for the whole movement thing.

What I am confused about is how teleportation circle's exit point is decided, and whether it is potent enough to, again, even warrant any of Halaster's TP Cage/weirdstone defenses and what have you.

You have any insights on this?

I mean this isn't the only trick that can be pulled, as stated above, as a high level caster you can also teleport in drop a nasty spell like earthquake and then teleport out.

Alternatively for a high level caster who has abusively boosted their caster level they could for example use wish to transport a number of Balor demons equal to your CL (so 20+) into the city to cause chaos and havoc. Heck you are pretty likely to get them to agree to it if you talk to them before hand so you don't even have to worry about SR or saves and can just send them in...

There are a lot of ways a caster with level 9 spells can destroy a city not to mention someone with epic casting. It is easily more than enough of a threat to have safeguards put in place. and multiples at that.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Destro2119
What I am confused about is how teleportation circle's exit point is decided….

The caster selects the exit point as part of the casting procedure. The caster needs to have been to the exit point or have a clear description of it. This means that either the caster himself needs to be familiar with the drop zone in the target city, or receive a detailed description from someone else who scouted the location.

Originally Posted by liquidformat
I am not sure if this is correct, if you instantaneously teleport when you move onto the circle than it should be though the spell isn't entirely clear on that.

I make no claims about the accuracy of Tippy’s reading. Just providing the post where he presents his math.

[KillianHawkeye]

and the fact that it needs a high level spellcaster is a weakness.

Needing a high level spellcaster isn't a weakness when having high level spellcasters is assumed to be true by the setting.

[liquidformat]

The caster selects the exit point as part of the casting procedure. The caster needs to have been to the exit point or have a clear description of it. This means that either the caster himself needs to be familiar with the drop zone in the target city, or receive a detailed description from someone else who scouted the location.



I make no claims about the accuracy of Tippy’s reading. Just providing the post where he presents his math.

True, its all interesting. I don't really prescribe to Tippyverse but I find it interesting. I think the logic behind how things progress is in question as much as the rules abuse inside Tippyverse but its still an interesting concept.

Are you aware that Tomb-Tainted Soul wasn't around when the DMG's list was published?

Using only core rules, the DMG's list seems correct.

Anyway, you're wrong: it is a RAW argument.

Saying the DM can decide what to allow and what not to allow outside of the PBH is is RAW; however, making that decision is up to DM fiat. Saying only traps that are 'harmful' to the pcs may exist, is in no way RAW or RAI and can end up extremely dysfunctional since it isn't internally consistent and 'what is harmful to pcs' can change even within a campaign. For example dropping a number of inflict traps into a low level dungeon then your pcs later become undead so they go back to the dungeon to collect said traps breaks your whole logic and you are left with fuzzy handwaving as a dm since you just broke your own system...

[NotInventedHere]

What I am confused about is how teleportation circle's exit point is decided,

Can you explain how the TP circles can even target inside of a city?

You create a circle on the floor or other horizontal surface that teleports, as greater teleport, any creature who stands on it to a designated spot.

It functions as greater teleport, so:

you need not have seen the destination, but in that case you must have at least a reliable description of the place to which you are teleporting (such as a detailed description from someone else or a particularly precise map).

[Destro2119]

Needing a high level spellcaster isn't a weakness when having high level spellcasters is assumed to be true by the setting.

Yes, but how many? Again, if it everybody needs to be a wizard 20 then the setting cannot function under Tippy's proposed premise.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Destro2119
Yes, but how many? Again, if it everybody needs to be a wizard 20 then the setting cannot function under Tippy's proposed premise.

I don't think that's one of Tippy's assumptions. It's not that everyone is a Wizard 20, just that there is the expected number of high-level casters based on the DMG tables.

[NotInventedHere]

Yes, but how many? Again, if it everybody needs to be a wizard 20 then the setting cannot function under Tippy's proposed premise.

Well, suppose you've got a Cold War kind of situation with two big superpowers, you'd need two 17th+ level wizards over the entire world.

Or let's consider a more medieval geopolitical setup. The big world empires around the 1200-1300 period, what we generally think of as the High Middle Ages, the classic knights-and-castles era, are the Mongol Empire (shifting over to the Yuan Dynasty over the course of this period, but let's consider the two together for now), the Holy Roman Empire, the Mali Empire, the Byzantine Empire, and the Abyssinian/Ethiopian Empire. (There's also the beginnings of the Ottoman Empire and the slowly-coalescing group of city-states that will become the Aztecs in a century or two, but let's not worry about them.) So that's 5 major powers. 5 high-level wizards, across the entire world, suffices to at the very least allow these powers to clash and threaten one another. Does 5 seem like too high a number for the world population of 9th-level arcane casters?

[Melcar]

Yes, but how many? Again, if it everybody needs to be a wizard 20 then the setting cannot function under Tippy's proposed premise.

You really only need one... the rest is using scrolls and UMD to achieve said thing... You think its only level 17+ spellcasters who can cast level 9 spells... how about every commoner in the land... there is a level 2 spells that grants +20 to a skill, plus items, skill focus etc... casting level 9 spells is so mundane that every commoner is doing it...

[liquidformat]

You really only need one... the rest is using scrolls and UMD to achieve said thing... You think its only level 17+ spellcasters who can cast level 9 spells... how about every commoner in the land... there is a level 2 spells that grants +20 to a skill, plus items, skill focus etc... casting level 9 spells is so mundane that every commoner is doing it...

Which highlights another issue of the game to be abused... I think there are also some tricks that allow a level 1 wizard to cast 9th level spells but I don't remember the specifics...

[Melcar]

Which highlights another issue of the game to be abused... I think there are also some tricks that allow a level 1 wizard to cast 9th level spells but I don't remember the specifics...

Indeed, that would a sufficiently high UMD check... specifically DC37, which most level 1s can do, by help of buff spells, items and build!

[JNAProductions]

Indeed, that would a sufficiently high UMD check... specifically DC37, which most level 1s can do, by help of buff spells, items and build!

I actually think they're talking about Elven Generalist Domain Wizard leapfrogging.

There's a LOT you can do in 3.5 to break the game.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Melcar
…there is a level 2 spells that grants +20 to a skill….

Which one is this?

Originally Posted by liquidformat
Which highlights another issue of the game to be abused... I think there are also some tricks that allow a level 1 wizard to cast 9th level spells but I don't remember the specifics...

The question is what proportion of possible tricks and abuse are available in any given setting.

We’ve seen one vision of what happens when a lot of dubious readings are taken as inevitable for the progression of a particular setting. It’s one possible endpoint, but not the only possible endpoint, despite what Tippy sometimes claimed.

Has anyone ever defined the various extremes possible, just sketching out the conceptual space of possible settings? Tippyverse is one extreme, reached through a series of permissive rules assumptions; but what other potential extremes are out there?

[JNAProductions]

Which one is this?

Guidance of the Avatar

[NotInventedHere]

Which one is this?

Guidance of the Avatar

For ref, it's a Web Enhancement spell: Guidance of the Avatar

[Destro2119]

You really only need one... the rest is using scrolls and UMD to achieve said thing... You think its only level 17+ spellcasters who can cast level 9 spells... how about every commoner in the land... there is a level 2 spells that grants +20 to a skill, plus items, skill focus etc... casting level 9 spells is so mundane that every commoner is doing it...

I personally think spell traps/clocks of Greater teleport or magic items that cast TP circle 1/2/3/day would be eventually made.

[Destro2119]

I mean, define "actual threat".

It's relatively low, but if those troops are at all powerful, then that's still a dangerous amount of offense suddenly showing up inside your territory. And that's assuming it's quickly intercepted. The spell has a good duration and the though-put is per-round, so if nobody notices your troops massing for the first 15 minutes, you have a lot of troops there.

Threat to an omni-surveilled city that can teleport in troops as good or better within a round or two? Not much of one.

Threat to a fairly dense city with its own troops of comparable strength ready to spring into action? Not crushing, but not trivial either, the equivalent of a major terrorist attack.

Threat to a kingdom where it will take a messenger half a day to announce the threat, and the nearest garrison another half day to send troops there? Huge.


As far as needing a caster, how much this limits the tactic depends on how rare those are. Anti-teleportation defenses are limited by the same thing (available casters), so in a way the relative threat level remains constant.

I am intrigued by the communication aspect you bring up. It seems to me that such a society would rapidly development widespread communications equipment, like commlinks etc, to accelerate information dissemination. Possibly leading to a sort of internet.

[Clistenes]

Agreed, but that was Tippy’s justification. A little later in the same thread he claims that it’s allowed under the “transport travelers” clause—even though the wording, as you point out, is specifically limited to creatures.

You could put the Weirstone in a place that doesn't allow anybody to teleport there... like, create six intersecting Prismatic Walls right besides, above and under the stone, forming a small box around it (you can research a spell to create horizontal ones). Repeat a hundred times: Now anybody teleporting next to the stone is crossing hundreds of Prismatic Walls at the same time.

You can add Force Walls for extra protection. You can research a spell that surrounds the Weirdstone with a small box of Force Walls, and surround that box with insersecting overlapping Prismatic Walls..

[Telok]

The precise mechanical rules for the items and spells are less important than the ligic chains of "thing A can be done, it is profitable/useful to someone, thus it is done at some point, people will react/retaliaye with B, repeat".

So, there are characters who become high level &or powerful enough to be age-immortal. It may be that the violent death rate + resurrection prevention rate is greater than the rate people achieve this power level. If not then there is a ever increasing population of high-end spellcasters, psions, etc. Interesting but not critical.

Assume at some point someone makes a permanent portal link between two distant cities. Cleric of a trade god using Greater Planar Ally Wishes, L20 wizard doing metamagic rod Widened Teleport Circle and Permancy, use activated magic arches of Greater Teleport, variant on Mirror of Mental Prowess (I think that's the scry & portal one). Whatever, there's a link. Now, trade = economics = money = power = politics. As soon as anyone makes money off this someone else wants to replicate it. Once the distance between two cities is functionally zero those cities are functionally one city.

You can argue about access and bottlenecks. But it's profitable, and taxable. There are three general outcomes: 1. Nobody can agree on stuff, big fight, all the people able & willing to make the portals are perma-killed, everything back to normal until next time. 2. Leaders work thing out, two cities become like one megacity with a massive trade distance shortcut, there will be more money sloshing around, they want more links, other people in other cities want either access or to do the same thing, they want links too. 3. Starts like #1 but someone wins and ends up with #2.

Bigger cities have more stuff & luxuries & opportunity. More high-end power people want to be in the big big city. They don't want their homes destroyed and friends killed. The megacity becomes more and more immune to attack as more high end casters move in. Eventually one of the immortal wizard becomes a not-terrible leader, or a leader becomes an immortal wizard, or the people making & controlling portals go all "power behind the throne". Whatever, one or more of the 30+ mental stat and ability to divine the future gets into power and promotes more people like themselves.

Either this trend continues and you're thinking about Tippy type stuff, or there's a massive war and everything blows up and most of the high end casters die permanently. That's going to depend on how well the people in power can deal with each other. Tippy assumed someone won or they worked stuff out and then went on from there.

[Destro2119]

The precise mechanical rules for the items and spells are less important than the ligic chains of "thing A can be done, it is profitable/useful to someone, thus it is done at some point, people will react/retaliaye with B, repeat".

So, there are characters who become high level &or powerful enough to be age-immortal. It may be that the violent death rate + resurrection prevention rate is greater than the rate people achieve this power level. If not then there is a ever increasing population of high-end spellcasters, psions, etc. Interesting but not critical.

Assume at some point someone makes a permanent portal link between two distant cities. Cleric of a trade god using Greater Planar Ally Wishes, L20 wizard doing metamagic rod Widened Teleport Circle and Permancy, use activated magic arches of Greater Teleport, variant on Mirror of Mental Prowess (I think that's the scry & portal one). Whatever, there's a link. Now, trade = economics = money = power = politics. As soon as anyone makes money off this someone else wants to replicate it. Once the distance between two cities is functionally zero those cities are functionally one city.

You can argue about access and bottlenecks. But it's profitable, and taxable. There are three general outcomes: 1. Nobody can agree on stuff, big fight, all the people able & willing to make the portals are perma-killed, everything back to normal until next time. 2. Leaders work thing out, two cities become like one megacity with a massive trade distance shortcut, there will be more money sloshing around, they want more links, other people in other cities want either access or to do the same thing, they want links too. 3. Starts like #1 but someone wins and ends up with #2.

Bigger cities have more stuff & luxuries & opportunity. More high-end power people want to be in the big big city. They don't want their homes destroyed and friends killed. The megacity becomes more and more immune to attack as more high end casters move in. Eventually one of the immortal wizard becomes a not-terrible leader, or a leader becomes an immortal wizard, or the people making & controlling portals go all "power behind the throne". Whatever, one or more of the 30+ mental stat and ability to divine the future gets into power and promotes more people like themselves.

Either this trend continues and you're thinking about Tippy type stuff, or there's a massive war and everything blows up and most of the high end casters die permanently. That's going to depend on how well the people in power can deal with each other. Tippy assumed someone won or they worked stuff out and then went on from there.

Which makes sense, since high level casters typically have tons of "anti-death" backups anyways/then the setting wouldn't be Tippyverse-type so much as Numenera.

Also, I would love to see Space Age tippyverse.

[Crake]

You don't wish YOURSELF to the weirdstone. You wish a mindless creature who is expendable with a giant stack of explosive rune notes and a magic trap that first casts disintegrate and then dispel magic triggered by them being moved and calibrated to always fail the dispel check even on a 20 of the explosive runes. The target location is "Directly touching the weirdstone" and everything in the area takes 6000000d6 force damage. The only substance that can survive that force damage is riverine and riverine is destroyed by the disintegrate.

Except that's when the weirdstone is encased in riverine while also being within a selective AMF and globe of invulnerability (so that way even an invoke magic spell won't be able to go off as that gets cancelled by the globe of invulnerability) so that only the guards can perform magic, while the riverine prevents line of sight for the AMF to affect the weirdstone, allowing it to continue functioning. So your mindless expendable creature arrives and just deflates with no fanfare.

Point being, it's not as simple as "teleport the wierdstone away" or "teleport in and handily defeat the guards and destroy the weirdstone" it takes a proper assault on each of the weirdstones, and you're gonna have to invest in a lot of wishes to send a sizable enough force to take out the redundancy weirdstones on top of that. Sure, with enough investment it can be achieved, but it's not as simple as Tippy made it out to be, and eventually it becomes an equation of "do we risk our most capable mages in an assault on their weirdstones, and potentially lose everything while fighting on their home turf, or do we invest in an army to march on the city?" Keep in mind, that while the wierdstone is keeping everyone OUT, it's also keeping everyone IN as well, so it becomes a proper good siege situation. Of course, with the city being self sustaining, and the army having an easy supply line back, it actually ends up being a war of espionage.

[Bugbear]

I am intrigued by the communication aspect you bring up. It seems to me that such a society would rapidly development widespread communications equipment, like commlinks etc, to accelerate information dissemination. Possibly leading to a sort of internet.

Try a Psinet. Telepathy is a weak magic, so giving everyone a headband of telepathy is not so hard for a magic society.

Add in some telepathic intelligent magic items "books" for lots of information on the psinet.

For more fun add telepathic undead, like ghosts, liches and brains in jars.

Plus Udoxias (Each udoxia is at its core an incredibly advanced cognizance crystal, with seemingly no limit to its storage capacity. In each udoxia was imprinted many powers and psionic feats.)

And this only scratches the surface of psionincs too....

[icefractal]

Except that's when the weirdstone is encased in riverine while also being within a selective AMF and globe of invulnerability (so that way even an invoke magic spell won't be able to go off as that gets cancelled by the globe of invulnerability)

At this point, you're spending some serious resources on this defense though, most notably the Weirdstone itself.

Unless you have an abundance of 20th level casters (specific requirement) on retainer, you'll probably be wanting to fit inside a limited number of 6 mile circles, not spread out over large areas of territory. It's also kind of a two-edged sword since you can't teleport your own troops there either, nor benefit from trade-portals, but good to have as an emergency measure.

[Asmotherion]

Heressy!

Jokes asside, just look at the duration of Teleportation Circle (the spell). It has a duration of 10 minutes per Level, and given the minimum caster level to cast it is 17, that amounts to 2 hours and 50 minutes. Even if it was a 5 foot square, that's plenty of time for a massive wave to teleport and start making massive damage before the first responders notice, let alone arrive. Which, as established, is not the case, as 5 foot radius essentially means a 10 foot circle. Finally, the spell can be targeted with permanency.

On the Casting time, it's nothing that can't be countered by casting the spell from a scroll; Tippyverse has plenty of ways to make magic items at-will at no cost.

Counter measures; A large area covering a city with Dimensional Lock, cast by all citizens periodically.

And, to quote Fudge from Harry Potter:“The trouble is, the other side can do magic too, Prime Minister." The premice is, we have a Magocracy that has it's own hierarchy and basically does not care about the rest of the world. What stops a Mage from rebeling would be the knowlage that, he's not the only one who can do "awesome magic", and that any serious attempt to do so will be met with expotential force by Mages loyal to the System.