Extrapolating from the rules...

[Victim]

Stupidity might also be more widespread, since the Darwin award winners might be resurrected by well meaning friends and relatives.

Not sure about this one. Smart people can become wizards or otherwise have more skill points for social skills and thus might able to charm or charm members of the opposite sex and thus create additional breeding opportunities that aren't availible to the stupid.

 

[Umbran]

The fact that a spell exists in the rulebooks does not imply that it exists in infinite supply, or even will be where you want it, when you want it. There's only so many spellcasters in a community. And their powers would have to cover not only all of the community's different needs, but their own wants, as well. So, only a small amount of the available spell-power can be turned to any one spell. The likelyhood that there'll be enough of any particular spell around to dominate society is very small.

 

[Darkness]

Edit that darned post, Jasper... It's messing up board formating.

Taken care of.

- Darkness

 

[shurai]

Re: Re: Extrapolating from the rules...

According to the DMG a community with 30,000 adults will
have 7,500,000,000 chickens. [DMG p 137]

0.5 x the GP limit [100,000] x 0.1 x the population [30,000]
is the total value available. Thus at any given time the
metropolis will have 150,000,000 GP's worth of chickens
available. At 2 CP/chicken this will be 7.5 billion chickens.

Extrapolating is dumb. [/B]

Only if you do it wrong. I'll grant that the DMG isn't worded too well in the paragraph this example comes from, and also that the 7.5 billion figure is definitely over the top. It's worth remembering however that 'the total value of any item' means the maximum number of that item the town can generate, not has on hand. Look at the longswords example on that page for proof.

To make this seem a little more plausible, I quote (with a barely straight face):

http://www.ers.usda.gov/publications/aer787/

by saying that that the US produces 20 billion pounds of poultry annually. Also given that

http://animalscience.ucdavis.edu/Avian/pfs20.htm

states that the average weight of a chicken is about 4 to 5 pounds, that means the US is producing 4 billion chickens each year.

How many people work in the chicken farming industry? Less than 30,000, garaunteed.

Admittedly these numbers reflect the modern situation, so therefore medeival chicken production per person could not be so high. But given that a population of less than 30,000 in the US produces more chickens than the DMG assumes possible, with the help of magic and good organization I think several hundred million chickens is not outside the realm of plausibility for a city of 30K, if they are willing to turn most of their effort into chicken farming.

-S

 

[Buttercup]

Which is why the resistance is based in rural areas, of course. Much as many anti-government groups in our world tend to center themselves in thinly populated areas where they're harder to observe, so too would the inhabitants of a world with dnd magic and rules.

And if you give this rural-based resistance cell access to anti-scrying magics such as Misdirection, Mind Blank and Nondetection, they could become quite large and well organized, without alerting the police state.

Also, murder is not as serious as we think of it as; you can be raised (maybe at your killer's expense, once he's caught). Things like rape and torture suddenly become more serious though, since the psychological harm can't be undone as simply as death.

True. And how serious the crime was considered to be might hinge on the severity or longevity of the psychological harm it caused.

Here's what I wonder though. What would be the psychological results on a populace of living in a LG so-called utopia? It seems to me that happiness is made more sweet by the fact that it isn't a constant. In a society where nothing ever goes wrong, and no one wants for anything, and no one ever complains, how long before people start dying of ennui?

By the way, I love this thread! It's really filled with lots of potential campaign ideas.

 

[Henry]

Hi, Alcamtar!

I love the exercise, but your example could bear some refinement. This is because the entire supposition is based on the existance of Detect Evil / Good / Law / Chaos spells, knowing the difference between good and evil. The only thing such a spell will tell is the presence or absence of such. Since there is no longer any such spell as Know Alignment, such spells can be easily defeated by nondetection and similar spells, because such an individual would register much as a neutral being would.

Now, I can certainly see a lawful society that tries to ensure that its elected officials were lawful by using such spells - by elect a chaotic person to a government office, when they don't care for the government!

Another supposition: Teleportation and dimensional magics. I can see where this would cause some shifting in transportation, but frankly I can't see it shifting the whole populace into mass transit overnight. There would likely be the equivalent of Federal Express, where a wizard could for an exhorbitant fee transport your package far away - but again, limited by cost per pound, much the same way that the Pony Express used rice paper for their messages for the riders to carry.

Also, dark streets would never be, because streets can be illuminated with no expenditure of power. Instead, you hire a town guard to open the shutters on the continual flame posts at night, and close them during the day for aesthetic reasons.

I can see the clergy withholding mass healing, and disease cures, because of expenditures of power and the prestige such power brings; but I could also see a populace that never goes hungry, or never has a massive fatal disease outbreak, because the key carriers are identified and cured quickly. The druids can help the crops when rain is scarce, wizards can redirect river flows in public works projects, and in truly desparate times clerics can purify food and drink, and create food or water so the mass populace does not starve to death.

So I can see the clear delineation between classes, but it would also be coupled with many modern concepts, and indeed allow the size if cities grow much larger than medieval equivalents.

 

[Garmorn]

I was thinking about the Detect Evil/Good/Law/Chaos spells, for example, and it occurred to me that any government would LOVE to have a guaranteed means to identify and malcontents in society. Especially if alignments are real objective magical forces and not just personal worldviews.

I disagree with this. By my reading of the rules most people would not show up as any alignment. An evil creature has to have at least 5hd just to show up as faint. On top of that you must concentrate for at least 3 rounds (18 second on each arc)just to identify those that do show up. Not all that useful for what you are proposing.

Now Discern Lies would be useful for police but because there is a will save in most countries it would not be admitted in a court of law. (Same as a lie detectors aren't).

For other rules: Tanglefoot bags would be carried by almost every western beat cop. Fast and safe way to stop a fleeing suspect with out endangering bystanders. The same for wand or items of sleep. charm, or other temporary mind control but these are more expensive and/or require special training to use.

Most high level combat types would sever or have served in a nations special forces, but just like in our world. There would never be enough of these to replace the regular military forces.

 

[jester47]

Re: Re: Extrapolating from the rules...

Here we go again....



Extrapolating is dumb.

Especially when you dont consider that the wealth of society is a mixed bag. To use the model posted, no city would have all thier wealth in swords, chickens or cows. They might have a lot of it in one area, but that is the ammount of the place that if you went door to door and confiscated everything and then sold it to some guy on the outer planes for gold, then you would get half that ammount.

Each person in the US does not own 1000+ PHBs.

As for alignment, and the magic for detecting it, it just makes things more interesting. In our society the criminals ussually can afford the better stuff before the law enforcement can. So while the LG people have great ways of finding those who break the laws, those breaking the laws are even more effective at getting away. So you would not see an absolute difference. The only thing different than what we know would be the methods of pursuit and evasion.

A chaotic evil ruler can still support a city where people are elected as he can see that as chaos picking those who are deemed the stronger (in might or brains or talent or whatever). Such a ruler might even support the laws because the system makes the decisions for him. He might power trip over the fact that he might have the power to bypass the laws if he so chose to, and probably does, but in such a way he wont get caught, cause well, he's in charge, the city is more prosperous under his rule anyways, so why not let him do what he wants?

Alignment is an indicator of a characters moral reasoning. There are many situations where you can find an evil person and a good person working together getting along as friends. Mutual experience is a lot stronger than the moral inclinations.

I think a good paladin and an evil thief could be found working together. I can even envision arguments in a party where each side of the argument had a good mix of alignments.

Alignment is somthing that only magic can discern. I think it would be awesome if a player in my campaign was evil but really didn't know it. Then someone's know alignment spell would point it out to then and the character has a big delima of either trying to change his alignment or discovering who he or she really is.

I figure my point is that someone can be evil and need not be a villan or even beheve like one. I do not think that an evil person would always go in with a lich that offered him power "what and never know the touch of a woman again?! I think not."

Aaron.

 

[jester47]

Re: Re: Re: Extrapolating from the rules...

Admittedly these numbers reflect the modern situation, so therefore medeival chicken production per person could not be so high. But given that a population of less than 30,000 in the US produces more chickens than the DMG assumes possible, with the help of magic and good organization I think several hundred million chickens is not outside the realm of plausibility for a city of 30K, if they are willing to turn most of their effort into chicken farming.

-S

Well, looking at what Peasants were expected to supply thier lords in the Middle ages, chickens probably were quite common. I think I read somewhere that it was somthing like over 30 days 10 chickens were expected or somthing like that.

If I have time I will look it up.

Aaron.