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<blockquote data-quote="pawsplay" data-source="post: 3553088" data-attributes="member: 15538">I'm going to address this in more detail.It has to be expressed as something. But as noted many times in the text, ordinary wealth is tied up in capital and commodities, not coin.Of course they were exceptional! Anyone who achieves great advancement is exceptional. We were talking about exceptions. Obviously, not everyone can be President of the United States at the same time, or king, or whatever.As to their fates, ... do most PCs meet better ends? At least Joan wasn't killed by vegepygmies.Knights were required to have &quot;franchise&quot;, i.e. freedom. Scottish lairds, free farmers, German burghars, escaped peasants, craftsmen, and many others existed on a plane below true aristocrats but had freedom, saved wealth, and opportunity for advancement. German landsknechts and Swiss pikemen were also freemen, as were most ship captains. While the knight and baronial classes tended to blend, ultimately you had both freemen (of which knights belonged) and minor gentry (the barony) who were not precisely interchangeable. I think the tanner's guild would be surprised to learn that, or leaders of glass.I think that the personalization of magic... that is, the need for a live spellcaster, the need to handcraft individual items, the inaccessiblity to the masses... makes it an excellent parallel to medieval science and technology, which lacked mass production. Eberron, of course, turns this assumption on its head. It's all very well and good to talk about paradigm shifts, but tell me, on what day and date, and where, did the Renaissance begin? Was there some specific event that caused people to start &quot;pioneering&quot; instead of merely &quot;experimenting?&quot; If the Renaissance began in Italy, what were people in England doing at the time?</blockquote>

[QUOTE="pawsplay, post: 3553088, member: 15538"] I'm going to address this in more detail. It has to be expressed as something. But as noted many times in the text, ordinary wealth is tied up in capital and commodities, not coin. Of course they were exceptional! Anyone who achieves great advancement is exceptional. We were talking about exceptions. Obviously, not everyone can be President of the United States at the same time, or king, or whatever. As to their fates, ... do most PCs meet better ends? At least Joan wasn't killed by vegepygmies. Knights were required to have "franchise", i.e. freedom. Scottish lairds, free farmers, German burghars, escaped peasants, craftsmen, and many others existed on a plane below true aristocrats but had freedom, saved wealth, and opportunity for advancement. German landsknechts and Swiss pikemen were also freemen, as were most ship captains. While the knight and baronial classes tended to blend, ultimately you had both freemen (of which knights belonged) and minor gentry (the barony) who were not precisely interchangeable. I think the tanner's guild would be surprised to learn that, or leaders of glass. I think that the personalization of magic... that is, the need for a live spellcaster, the need to handcraft individual items, the inaccessiblity to the masses... makes it an excellent parallel to medieval science and technology, which lacked mass production. Eberron, of course, turns this assumption on its head. It's all very well and good to talk about paradigm shifts, but tell me, on what day and date, and where, did the Renaissance begin? Was there some specific event that caused people to start "pioneering" instead of merely "experimenting?" If the Renaissance began in Italy, what were people in England doing at the time? [/QUOTE]

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