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<blockquote data-quote="Ahnehnois" data-source="post: 6236003" data-attributes="member: 17106">I would think that most royalty would employ wizards, even if they didn't like them or didn't make this fact public, for the same reason that real governments have various powerful and ethically dubious defenses. Self-preservation is a powerful motive. And sure, the magic item angle makes sense too. Royalty is rich and paranoid, spending like crazy on defense is very reflective of real life.However, clerics are pretty useful. I would think that anyone powerful enough to be called a king would have a cleric (or clerics) casting Divination each day with a question something like &quot;What harm might befall King X today?&quot;. Those clerics can also detect and dispel magic, and have quite a few other useful ways of negating nefarious plans.There's also every reason to believe that really powerful monarchs have any number of magical creatures as allies (angels, dragons, mind flayers, etc.), perhaps even direct working relationships with deities (as many RL monarchs claimed to have had). Deus ex machina becomes the norm when you're talking about actual gods.The reason I suggested this example to begin with (probably over a hundred pages ago) was to show a case where the players were attempting an action that both they and the DM immediately understood was unreasonable and should not work (a subversive action by the players), and how (contrary to all this &quot;player fiat&quot; nonsense), nothing in any spell or skill would allow the players to dictate that their unreasonable idea would have any chance of success.In general, I'm inclined to agree that an actual group that knew each other well would probably not venture down that road.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="Ahnehnois, post: 6236003, member: 17106"] I would think that most royalty would employ wizards, even if they didn't like them or didn't make this fact public, for the same reason that real governments have various powerful and ethically dubious defenses. Self-preservation is a powerful motive. And sure, the magic item angle makes sense too. Royalty is rich and paranoid, spending like crazy on defense is very reflective of real life. However, clerics are pretty useful. I would think that anyone powerful enough to be called a king would have a cleric (or clerics) casting Divination each day with a question something like "What harm might befall King X today?". Those clerics can also detect and dispel magic, and have quite a few other useful ways of negating nefarious plans. There's also every reason to believe that really powerful monarchs have any number of magical creatures as allies (angels, dragons, mind flayers, etc.), perhaps even direct working relationships with deities (as many RL monarchs claimed to have had). Deus ex machina becomes the norm when you're talking about actual gods. The reason I suggested this example to begin with (probably over a hundred pages ago) was to show a case where the players were attempting an action that both they and the DM immediately understood was unreasonable and should not work (a subversive action by the players), and how (contrary to all this "player fiat" nonsense), nothing in any spell or skill would allow the players to dictate that their unreasonable idea would have any chance of success. In general, I'm inclined to agree that an actual group that knew each other well would probably not venture down that road. [/QUOTE]

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