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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DEFCON 1" data-source="post: 9758741" data-attributes="member: 7006">Yep.  Exactly.  That's really the advantage that was theoretically gained by the Dragonmarked Houses-- 99.999% of the populace might have at best up to 3rd level spells... but the House members who exhibited the more powerful dragonmarks would give those individuals the 5th, 6th, 7th level spells etc. that practically nobody else would have.  And its because of that the Houses were able to make their cheese because they had daily magic that could not be replicated by anyone else and thus they could profit from it by selling it off.Now to Keith's (et. al.s) credit... they DID attempt to fix this fatal flaw in the setting by stating that having high-level magic spells weren't enough to produce the sorts of magitech the setting is known for... the Houses also had schema (aka blueprints) that were required to make all this magitech possible.  So if you had a party of high-level PCs, they couldn't replace the Dragonmarked Houses or The Twelve or Arcanix etc. because they didn't have the schema needed to do what those groups did.  But that didn't solve what to me is the actual "at-the-table adventuring issue" which is making these organizations worthwhile or necessary for the party to interact with. They won't need Orien for travel, they won't need Jorasco for healing, with Tiny Huts and Magnificent Mansions they won't need Ghallandra for housing, they'll be powerful enough that they won't need Deneith's or Tharashk's help for mercenaries and the like, the rogues in the party will be better spies for their needs than what any member of the Dark Lanterns or House Phiarlan could give them, etc. etc. etc.  The higher the party's level... the more they can do it all for themselves, especially when almost every other NPC has powers that are at best 5th level, but mostly quite a bit below.</blockquote>

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