Menu
News
All News
Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
Pathfinder
Starfinder
Warhammer
2d20 System
Year Zero Engine
Industry News
Reviews
Dragon Reflections
Columns
Weekly Digests
Weekly News Digest
Freebies, Sales & Bundles
RPG Print News
RPG Crowdfunding News
Game Content
ENterplanetary DimENsions
Mythological Figures
Opinion
Worlds of Design
Peregrine's Next
RPG Evolution
Other Columns
From the Freelancing Frontline
Monster ENcyclopedia
WotC/TSR Alumni Look Back
4 Hours w/RSD (Ryan Dancey)
The Road to 3E (Jonathan Tweet)
Greenwood's Realms (Ed Greenwood)
Drawmij's TSR (Jim Ward)
Community
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Resources
Wiki
Pages
Latest activity
Media
New media
New comments
Search media
Downloads
Latest reviews
Search resources
EN Publishing
Store
EN5ider
Adventures in ZEITGEIST
Awfully Cheerful Engine
What's OLD is NEW
Judge Dredd & The Worlds Of 2000AD
War of the Burning Sky
Level Up: Advanced 5E
Events & Releases
Upcoming Events
Private Events
Featured Events
Socials!
Twitch
YouTube
Facebook (EN Publishing)
Facebook (EN World)
Twitter
Instagram
TikTok
Podcast
Features
Top 5 RPGs Compiled Charts 2004-Present
Adventure Game Industry Market Research Summary (RPGs) V1.0
Ryan Dancey: Acquiring TSR
Q&A With Gary Gygax
D&D Rules FAQs
TSR, WotC, & Paizo: A Comparative History
D&D Pronunciation Guide
Million Dollar TTRPG Kickstarters
Tabletop RPG Podcast Hall of Fame
Eric Noah's Unofficial D&D 3rd Edition News
D&D in the Mainstream
D&D & RPG History
About Morrus
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
Forums & Topics
Forum List
Latest Posts
Forum list
*Dungeons & Dragons
Level Up: Advanced 5th Edition
D&D Older Editions
*TTRPGs General
*Pathfinder & Starfinder
EN Publishing
*Geek Talk & Media
Search forums
Chat/Discord
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
The
VOIDRUNNER'S CODEX
is LIVE! Explore new worlds, fight oppressive empires, fend off fearsome aliens, and wield deadly psionics with this comprehensive boxed set expansion for 5E and A5E!
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
How do you handle the "economy killing spells" in your game?
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Kinematics" data-source="post: 7606932" data-attributes="member: 6932123"><p>How many of job X make it to level N?</p><p></p><p>There's really no easy way to gauge that in a vacuum, but if I had to pick a scaling rate, I'd probably say 1/(2^N). That is, half the people studying to be wizards actually make it to level 1 (the other half just don't have the talent); half of those make it to level 2; half of those make it to level 3; etc. (Note: It doesn't mean that those who don't make it to that level die; they might have retired, or been too injured to continue adventuring, or been offered a job by the kingdom and decided it was better to have a stable job, etc.)</p><p></p><p>With that scaling, 1 in a million people who try to become wizards make it to level 20. That doesn't feel out of line with expectations. Likewise, half the people who try to become wizards flunk out of wizard school. It feels a little high, perhaps, but then in a mostly low-tech world, actual leveled adventurers are relatively rare, and amazing, so it's not entirely out of line.</p><p></p><p>So it feels like a reasonable scaling rate, and I'll go forward with this assumption.</p><p></p><p>~~</p><p></p><p>Next, how many wizards make it to level 7? 2^7 is 128, so 1/128, or about 1%. Or 1/64 if you ignore those who didn't even make level 1.</p><p></p><p>If we take the urbanization of a D&D world as not being higher than 1850's US, the urban population is maybe 10%, compared to 90% rural. That also matches the population split in England at the time of the Domesday Book (1086), though it's probably closer to 20% urban by the 17th century. Given the large cities prevalent in many worlds (eg: Forgotten Realms), I'm willing to go with 10%-20% urban as a reasonable base figure. (More likely leaning towards 20% after evaluating the Plant Growth section, below.)</p><p></p><p>Looking at the variation of England's population between 1000 AD and 1800 AD, it would not be out of line to expect an equivalent kingdom in a D&D world to have a population of about 5 million. That would give it an urban population of 500,000–1,000,000, which would be the source of the vast majority of specialized classes. If 1% of those were a relatively rare adventuring class like wizard (gated by intelligence, plus split among various class options), you could have 5000–10000 wizards in the kingdom.</p><p></p><p>At the assumed level scaling rate, about 1.5% of the wizard population would be level 7 or higher. So maybe 80–150 or so, with 40–75 having settled at level 7. Overall, I'd put the size of the pool of candidates that can be Fabricators for the kingdom at about 50 (not counting the actual crafting skill requirement).</p><p></p><p>* Aside: Using these numbers, you could expect to, on average, have a single level 13 wizard in a kingdom this size. That would be peak expectations for wizard level, and pretty much fits as roughly upper end of tier 3 play.</p><p></p><p>Now, the king hiring a few of those wizards for helping the kingdom? Perfectly reasonable. However not all of them are going to be on fabricate duty. Maybe at the start, allowing you to get full plate for the palace guard and some elite units, but over time they'll be put on a variety of other duties. And that's only the king, not any of the lesser nobles, who are less likely to have the resources to keep such a wizard employed fulltime. Most likely it would be a nice little favor to give a baron 10 suits of plate mail for his men. Usual political give-and-take bribery.</p><p></p><p>So yes, I see it happening, but not nearly on the scale suggested by the OP. It's reasonable, and not economy-breaking.</p><p></p><p>~~</p><p></p><p>Druids should be similarly rare as wizards, but you only need to reach level 5 for Plant Growth. So that puts 300–600 druids as being capable of casting the spell, with 150–300 as having settled around level 5.</p><p></p><p>Modern farming methods can roughly feed one person per acre of farmed land (including grazing areas for meat sources, etc). Historical production peaked at about 1/3 to 1/4 of modern production yields (during the 1800's), and pre-Industrial Revolution produced about 1/3 of *that* (pre-1700).</p><p></p><p>If modern yields are 20 (tons per hectare across multiple crops, but ignore the units), you'd have a 6 in 1800, and a 2.5 in 1600. Given that D&D is pre-Industrial Revolution for the most part, raw, unmodified production should probably be around the 2.5 value, while Plant Growth could boost it to 5. That's actually pretty nice, and would help explain the relative prosperity of the typical D&D world.</p><p></p><p>If production scales with the amount of land needed to feed each person, a year-1600-level of production would need 8 acres per person, and Plant Growth would reduce that to 4. So you'd normally need 40 million acres farmed to feed a population of 5 million, but could reduce that to 20 million acres if Plant Growth was used on all of it.</p><p></p><p>That's 62,500 square miles, or 31,250 square miles with PG. Plant Growth requires 8 hours of meditation for about 0.8 square mile.</p><p></p><p>Math aside: Since PG's area of effect is a circle, you actually lose some efficiency (about 20%) if dealing with square cultivation areas. If you have a 1 mile square field, 80% of it gets boosted by PG, and 20% gets normal growth. Total value: 1.8. To get the entire field inside the PG area, it would need to be 0.7x0.7 miles for 0.5 square miles of field getting doubled, and some extra waste outside the field itself (about 40% of the spell area). Total value: 1.0, but you can have two fields to add up to a full square mile yielding 2.0. So do you take a 0.2 loss from a single cast, or pay for an extra casting of PG on two smaller fields? I'll assume 1 square mile fields because it's less wasteful, even if some of the crops have lower yield.</p><p></p><p>So, with the math adjustment, it's more like 35,000 square miles need to be boosted if you want to use this on 100% of farming production. Each casting lasts for a full year, so you'd basically need 100 druids working on this process full time for a kingdom of 5 million. That's a fairly large percentage of the druids that settled down at level 5 (1/3 to 2/3 of them), and a high risk point-of-failure if the druids decide to bail on you.</p><p></p><p>Still, the kingdom might be able to employ some without worrying about that risk. Every 10 druids so employed reduces the necessary farming area (and manpower) by 5%.</p><p></p><p>Estimates from 1850-1860 in the US puts about 24-25 people per square mile to operate farms. 10 druids using PG would thus reduce the needed rural population by about 75,000. That in turn implies that any significant use of druids for Plant Growth would lead to a massive urbanization push, or perhaps a shift to more specialized food markets.</p><p></p><p>~~</p><p></p><p>Most likely the kingdom would employ 10–20 or so druids, with a large portion of the additional production going to granaries and food stores, and probably an agreement to limit cultivation expansion from areas that the druids want to preserve. In a world of magic and monsters, you have to deal with a lot more than just random weather drought, and having ready food supplies would go a long way towards keeping a kingdom stable.</p><p></p><p>At the same time, the improved production will likely lead to a fairly large urbanization shift, probably on the order of a hundred thousand people. (Which would likely get you a few dozen more level 5 druids, so a net positive for druid culture.) This will in turn lead to a lot more of the urban benefits that most adventurers take for granted — plus a large pool of adventurers in general. In a world with many monstrous threats, more adventurers is a good thing.</p><p></p><p>While some have pointed out a power monopoly of the druids, I don't think it will scale to 100% use of PG in all farming. However even a 10% boost to production gives you a strong edge, and options for food storage, without granting a great deal of power to the druids. And even if you lose the druids you have employed, you likely still have a large food surplus in storage to last you until you can negotiate another deal.</p><p></p><p>Overall, I think it will balance out reasonably well.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Kinematics, post: 7606932, member: 6932123"] How many of job X make it to level N? There's really no easy way to gauge that in a vacuum, but if I had to pick a scaling rate, I'd probably say 1/(2^N). That is, half the people studying to be wizards actually make it to level 1 (the other half just don't have the talent); half of those make it to level 2; half of those make it to level 3; etc. (Note: It doesn't mean that those who don't make it to that level die; they might have retired, or been too injured to continue adventuring, or been offered a job by the kingdom and decided it was better to have a stable job, etc.) With that scaling, 1 in a million people who try to become wizards make it to level 20. That doesn't feel out of line with expectations. Likewise, half the people who try to become wizards flunk out of wizard school. It feels a little high, perhaps, but then in a mostly low-tech world, actual leveled adventurers are relatively rare, and amazing, so it's not entirely out of line. So it feels like a reasonable scaling rate, and I'll go forward with this assumption. ~~ Next, how many wizards make it to level 7? 2^7 is 128, so 1/128, or about 1%. Or 1/64 if you ignore those who didn't even make level 1. If we take the urbanization of a D&D world as not being higher than 1850's US, the urban population is maybe 10%, compared to 90% rural. That also matches the population split in England at the time of the Domesday Book (1086), though it's probably closer to 20% urban by the 17th century. Given the large cities prevalent in many worlds (eg: Forgotten Realms), I'm willing to go with 10%-20% urban as a reasonable base figure. (More likely leaning towards 20% after evaluating the Plant Growth section, below.) Looking at the variation of England's population between 1000 AD and 1800 AD, it would not be out of line to expect an equivalent kingdom in a D&D world to have a population of about 5 million. That would give it an urban population of 500,000–1,000,000, which would be the source of the vast majority of specialized classes. If 1% of those were a relatively rare adventuring class like wizard (gated by intelligence, plus split among various class options), you could have 5000–10000 wizards in the kingdom. At the assumed level scaling rate, about 1.5% of the wizard population would be level 7 or higher. So maybe 80–150 or so, with 40–75 having settled at level 7. Overall, I'd put the size of the pool of candidates that can be Fabricators for the kingdom at about 50 (not counting the actual crafting skill requirement). * Aside: Using these numbers, you could expect to, on average, have a single level 13 wizard in a kingdom this size. That would be peak expectations for wizard level, and pretty much fits as roughly upper end of tier 3 play. Now, the king hiring a few of those wizards for helping the kingdom? Perfectly reasonable. However not all of them are going to be on fabricate duty. Maybe at the start, allowing you to get full plate for the palace guard and some elite units, but over time they'll be put on a variety of other duties. And that's only the king, not any of the lesser nobles, who are less likely to have the resources to keep such a wizard employed fulltime. Most likely it would be a nice little favor to give a baron 10 suits of plate mail for his men. Usual political give-and-take bribery. So yes, I see it happening, but not nearly on the scale suggested by the OP. It's reasonable, and not economy-breaking. ~~ Druids should be similarly rare as wizards, but you only need to reach level 5 for Plant Growth. So that puts 300–600 druids as being capable of casting the spell, with 150–300 as having settled around level 5. Modern farming methods can roughly feed one person per acre of farmed land (including grazing areas for meat sources, etc). Historical production peaked at about 1/3 to 1/4 of modern production yields (during the 1800's), and pre-Industrial Revolution produced about 1/3 of *that* (pre-1700). If modern yields are 20 (tons per hectare across multiple crops, but ignore the units), you'd have a 6 in 1800, and a 2.5 in 1600. Given that D&D is pre-Industrial Revolution for the most part, raw, unmodified production should probably be around the 2.5 value, while Plant Growth could boost it to 5. That's actually pretty nice, and would help explain the relative prosperity of the typical D&D world. If production scales with the amount of land needed to feed each person, a year-1600-level of production would need 8 acres per person, and Plant Growth would reduce that to 4. So you'd normally need 40 million acres farmed to feed a population of 5 million, but could reduce that to 20 million acres if Plant Growth was used on all of it. That's 62,500 square miles, or 31,250 square miles with PG. Plant Growth requires 8 hours of meditation for about 0.8 square mile. Math aside: Since PG's area of effect is a circle, you actually lose some efficiency (about 20%) if dealing with square cultivation areas. If you have a 1 mile square field, 80% of it gets boosted by PG, and 20% gets normal growth. Total value: 1.8. To get the entire field inside the PG area, it would need to be 0.7x0.7 miles for 0.5 square miles of field getting doubled, and some extra waste outside the field itself (about 40% of the spell area). Total value: 1.0, but you can have two fields to add up to a full square mile yielding 2.0. So do you take a 0.2 loss from a single cast, or pay for an extra casting of PG on two smaller fields? I'll assume 1 square mile fields because it's less wasteful, even if some of the crops have lower yield. So, with the math adjustment, it's more like 35,000 square miles need to be boosted if you want to use this on 100% of farming production. Each casting lasts for a full year, so you'd basically need 100 druids working on this process full time for a kingdom of 5 million. That's a fairly large percentage of the druids that settled down at level 5 (1/3 to 2/3 of them), and a high risk point-of-failure if the druids decide to bail on you. Still, the kingdom might be able to employ some without worrying about that risk. Every 10 druids so employed reduces the necessary farming area (and manpower) by 5%. Estimates from 1850-1860 in the US puts about 24-25 people per square mile to operate farms. 10 druids using PG would thus reduce the needed rural population by about 75,000. That in turn implies that any significant use of druids for Plant Growth would lead to a massive urbanization push, or perhaps a shift to more specialized food markets. ~~ Most likely the kingdom would employ 10–20 or so druids, with a large portion of the additional production going to granaries and food stores, and probably an agreement to limit cultivation expansion from areas that the druids want to preserve. In a world of magic and monsters, you have to deal with a lot more than just random weather drought, and having ready food supplies would go a long way towards keeping a kingdom stable. At the same time, the improved production will likely lead to a fairly large urbanization shift, probably on the order of a hundred thousand people. (Which would likely get you a few dozen more level 5 druids, so a net positive for druid culture.) This will in turn lead to a lot more of the urban benefits that most adventurers take for granted — plus a large pool of adventurers in general. In a world with many monstrous threats, more adventurers is a good thing. While some have pointed out a power monopoly of the druids, I don't think it will scale to 100% use of PG in all farming. However even a 10% boost to production gives you a strong edge, and options for food storage, without granting a great deal of power to the druids. And even if you lose the druids you have employed, you likely still have a large food surplus in storage to last you until you can negotiate another deal. Overall, I think it will balance out reasonably well. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Community
General Tabletop Discussion
*Dungeons & Dragons
How do you handle the "economy killing spells" in your game?
Top