High Level Characters, Psychology and their impact on Society

[PeterMikelsons]

I would question just how any nation could reasonably continue existing when those who rule lack any ranks in skills such as Bluff, Diplomacy, Intimidate, Knowledge (Geography), Knowledge (History), Knowledge (Nobility and Royalty) and Sense Motive.

I think I agree that a nation requires individuals with high levels of those skills. However, while they are developing those skills, they are losing ranks in Listen, Spot, Tumble, Hide, Move Silently, Survival, and other survival skills, and not optimizing BAB, hit points, or spell use. So the nation building individuals will be vulnerable to physical threats from other individuals who care not for nations but only for adventuring and their own power. With nation building being so risky, it seems like nations would be very unstable and rare.

Instead, it seems to me like the largest common social structure would be a small clan of people clustered around a hierarchy of a few high-level individuals. The nature of each clan depends on its high-level leader, whether Beholder or Paladin. With magic, some of the clans would be quite productive and pleasant places to live. Others would be squalid cults enslaved to their leader. Still, all would lack the skills and inclination to form sprawling empires.

 

[Urbannen]

The way I do it IMC is to simply reduce the number of people. Magic amplifies an individual's productivity to very high levels, so you need far fewer people to have a survivable society. If a single 10th-level bad guy could kill every peasant in a 5-mile radius, gee, I guess there aren't any peasants left. IMC, there are Experts and Aristocrats, but nothing as weak & tasty as a Commoner survived the last Demon-War 1,000 years ago. Most people have PC Class levels. What separates adventurers from normal folk (guards, etc.) is the lack of a survival instinct.

Instead of using the medieval model of 20 farmers -> 1 urban dude, make it 1 farmer -> 20 urban dudes. Of course, that one farmer probably has some Druid levels.

Also, professional armies are the rule, not the exception. When Dragons and Demons are credible threats, no-one is going to live in a non-millitary society -- unless they have excellent protection against detection. Army life is very dangerous -- there are few people above 16th level because they tend to get eaten while saving their nation -- but very honorable. High-level Paladins are natural commanders for the armies -- like a more-egalitarian medieval "Noble".

IMC, "Natural" life expectancy is around modern 1st-world life expectancy -- 90 or so. However, very few people die of natural causes, so total life expectancy is more like 30. People have many children, but most are eaten by monsters.

So, to sum up: make the world high-magic. Make NPCs high level. But don't forget to make disasters truely epic, world-shattering, such that only high-level NPCs are likely to survive. Since civilization is powerful, keep it small -- limited to only places that are easy to defend and not home to more powerful, man-eating predators.

-- N

Wow! Great thinking about what a D&D world might actually look like.

 

[PeterMikelsons]

Now imagine one of the paranoid freaks as a sorcerer. Sure, at some point he's going to reveal his paranoid freakishness. But what if he was smart enough (paranoid enough?) not to do so until he'd put into place every conceivable trick and trap and contingency plan his paranoid genius could come up with?

Sounds like a good question to me. I think the answer is pretty scary, which makes for a very promising campaign setting. (Can we prove this has not occurred in the Real World!?)

But how does the PF avoid detection while gaining power? In D&D, you gain power by overcoming challenges. By far, most of these challenges come from conflict with other creatures. How does the PF conflict with and defeat other creatures without becoming known to society? A revealed PF is dead meat to (self?)righteous adventurers or stronger PFs. Does the PF have to skulk in far, far remote wilderness defeating only Vermin and landslides?

Or, I suppose, avoiding detection might count as an encounter deserving of experience points for the PF. Those that avoid all detection to reach high level might be very, very rare, but it only takes one to upset the apple cart.

Also, is training required to gain levels? That would have a huge impact on the society of high level people.

 

[barsoomcore]

(Can we prove this has not occurred in the Real World!?)

Darn! Somebody figured it out!

Ahem.

"Peter Mikelsons, please report to Sub-Level Four Processing Station for re-education. The Computer loves, Citizen Mikelson. The Computer wants you to be happy."

 

[Trickstergod]

I think I agree that a nation requires individuals with high levels of those skills. However, while they are developing those skills, they are losing ranks in Listen, Spot, Tumble, Hide, Move Silently, Survival, and other survival skills, and not optimizing BAB, hit points, or spell use. So the nation building individuals will be vulnerable to physical threats from other individuals who care not for nations but only for adventuring and their own power. With nation building being so risky, it seems like nations would be very unstable and rare.

Nations wouldn't be unstable and rare; for that matter, it seems people are under the impression that just because the king (or whatever) couldn't protect himself should he be attacked, that he doesn't have any number of individuals who could protect him. The fact is, outside of a few, fairly primal societies, I'm tempted to say that most leaders would be, if forced into a one-on-one fight, soundly beaten to within an inch of their lives by just about everyone. Leaders do not rely upon personal power - they rely upon others. That's why they're leaders. They get other people to do things for them. The leader is not the one training every day in the art of swordplay, the leader is the one saying, "You, go train those men in swordplay. You, go collect my taxes and make sure they're all there. You, go spy on these rabble-rousers for me. You, go do research into this subject and come back to me with a report and advice on it," and so on. Very few leaders are particularly dangerous in and of themselves, and there's any number of dangerous people out there who can kill you 200 different ways, knows how to set up a bomb and by-pass security measures, and more besides, who don't rule. In fact, they probably take their orders from someone they could kill with relative ease if they wanted to. Perhaps they would - but then, what about those other 11 guys who are more or less as equally trained to kill who work for the authority figure? Perhaps they're not particularly loyal, either, but who says they'd be loyal to the assassin? Chances are, they'd use the rulers murder as a justifiable excuse to kill the murderer and take the place the assassin wanted in the first place.

Even when a leader is fairly well versed in the ways of warfare, whatever form it may take, they are very rarely the best at it (outside of perhaps tactical or strategic knowledge). The same should hold true in D&D.

 

[Trickstergod]

I'm talking about self-preservation. The best solution, given D&D power systems, is to kill everyone else who possesses power, because they are a potential threat to you.

No, the best solution in D&D power systems is to recruit everyone else who possesses power, then stay off the battlefield and let them handle it. This is how it usually works in the real world, and this is how it would usually work in D&D as well. A single 16th level character will be sorely pressed to handle a dozen 14th level characters. There's plenty of correlation. The less one tries to disconnect from the real world, the more holes that begin cropping up into an argument, even when factoring in magic and other impossibilities. It's a simple matter of logic that the individual most likely to survive is not the one who goes looking for a fight, but the one who gets others to do it for him. And does so without potentially starting a fight - which Charm spells have the potential to do.

Trickstergod: Why would the immortal ruler be the exception? Again, it's the smart play. I mean, after having gone to all that trouble to acquire this power, this safety, you're just going to die of old age? Not me, pal.

Because you're forgetting the human factor, which seems to be lacking in most of what you're saying.

Most people are not going to want to become fetid, rotting, skeletal corpses who can't eat, dream or have sex, amongst other things. Most people don't want to become ugly. Many people wouldn't want to have to murder their fellow man just to continue existing. Look to, say, Pirates of the Caribbean. No, perhaps not the best of examples, but a recent, and therefore, readily rememberable one. Sure, people fear death, but the alternatives aren't always so great.

You're also presuming infallibility and fearlessness. Liches shouldn't be exactly common, nor, for that matter, vampires. While one could do research into them, that takes time, and in that time, one is likely not acquiring "power," outside of the idea that knowledge is power. While High King Muckity Muck is strengthening his guards for those assassin beholders, making sure they're well trained - and making sure that he never has to directly face such a creature, by having adequate guards and protection - the freak is going to be too busy making sure that when he tries to become a lich, he's not just going to end up being a corpse when he kills himself to complete the process, or just kills himself in the process. Or that however he attains vampiricism, he won't be a slave to the vampire who created him, or dead from the spells and rituals he intends on using to be a self-made undead creature. Or, presuming this sorcerer or what have you already rules, while he's busy doing his research, his nation will fall to ruin. Personal power doesn't extend much past a city, if that. Furthermore, if personal power is the judge of who rules, then it either means that all those lesser nobles bear their own personal power, which means that every one of them is a conceivable threat to their better, meaning that personal power doesn't mean much, or the ruler with the personal power ensures none of his lessers are potent enough to oust him, in which case, we again have a rule of essentially Aristocrats and Experts where the personally powerful authority figure is the exception, not the rule. And in either case, all that research into not dying and attaining personal power likely means that the nation will fall into ruin and swiftly crumble. While the wizard is researching meteor swarm and the ritual to become a lich, the aristocrat king next door is busy finding a number of people to, say, cast meteor swarm, and recruiting a powerful army, and more than gleeful at the fact that while the wizard-king next door might be powerful enough in and of himself to take on that army, he'll also have to expose himself, at least in part, to a direct, return attack, while the aristocrat-king sits safely away from the battlefield and continues to make plans and recruit the right people to implement them.

And as for rulers not bothering to acquire real power -- well, they'll just get annihilated the first time somebody who went another route and DID acquire some power comes along. Sons of rulers having cushy lives just isn't going to fly -- if I know I only gained my power through my personal hard work and dangerous effort then I know perfectly well that my son or daughter is going to need the same power level as I have in order to manage things, or else they'll fall prey to the first assassin beholder that comes in through the window.

I think it's interesting to imagine a world where politicking doesn't do you any good, because the sorcerer ruler of the neighboring kingdom is scrying on you, knows all your plans and in fact had you killed last week by a shape-changing demon. A ruler doesn't need to KNOW stuff, they need to be able to survive stuff.

Yes, the ruler needs to be able to survive stuff. You seem to be forgetting, however, that the point of ruling is not needing to do certain things for your self, but having other people do them for you. A ruler is the one who makes the decision and expects others to follow them. You're going to tell me that a ruler will not surround him self with individuals who can't protect him from those beholders and mages and demons? Of course, you might offer up the rebuttal of "Sure he's going to, but that doesn't mean he's not personally powerful as well." To which I say, take any group of a Wizard, Fighter, Cleric, Rogue, and Aristocrat or Expert, all of essentially equal level, with each optimized to their respective roles, with the exception that the Aristocrat or Expert have been optimized towards being a leader, and who do you think that everyone's going to listen to? The one who knows what he's talking about, or the one who, while he may be able to Charm an entire army, lacks the tactical knowledge to best make use of them, or can't speak their language, or what have you? No, the Wizard will do the Charming, then the Aristocrat will make the decisions. Because the other three people, who also might want to lead just as much as that Wizard, will favor the Aristocrat first and will get their stab on for the Aristocrats benefit over the Wizard any day. More so if the Wizard tries to bully his way into a leadership position. And they will continue to follow the Aristocrat because they realize that, should any one of them try for the leadership position, they will be overruled by everybody else in favor of the leader-type who, while not personally powerful, knows just how best to lead everyone else. And anyone who tries to bully their way to the top will be summarily chopped down. If that's not the case, things exist essentially in a state of anarchy, anyway. No stability. Any form of stable society will likely be lead by Aristocrats and Experts in D&D, or someone with a few levels in each.

Furthermore, again, you're forgetting the human factor. Very few people - rulers or otherwise - don't indulge in creature comforts. Or train their hardest when they don't have to. While a father who worked tooth and nail to get where he is may instill that in his child, and that child into his, and so on, after a while, that hard work ethic will dissipate, because it won't be necessary. No man is an army in and of themselves, and once one has been in place for long enough, those who rule it will no longer need to try and be a one man army. They'll have their court Sorcerer, and Paladin champion, and Rogue spymaster, and so on, all of whom make it unnecessary for the ruler to work so hard, and make it more likely that the individual will have the knowledge to rule, even if incapable of stopping someone from Scrying. That's what the Sorcerer is for. And when the demon comes, that's what the Paladin is for. And when rebellion begins to stir up, that's what the Rogue is for. All of whom make it unnecessary and unlikely that the ruler will have the drive to become potent beyond compare.

I mean, come on, the notion that Richard vs Saladin proves that high-level characters balance each other is just silly. At best, it proves that common folk suffer whatever fate the powerful decide to visit upon them. And that's in OUR world.

I'll grant you that. There's not necessarily going to be a polar opposite for any potent individual. However, there will always be any three or four people who, while perhaps incapable of handling an individual on their own, will be overkill when they work together against the individually more powerful person.

Unless of course you get into Sauron-situations. But in those cases, that's not so much a matter of high-level people, as god-like. Of a status that really no one can realistically attain. At least, if they can, it's once in a blue moon. Otherwise, there would exist those three or four people who could kill that figure.

 

[barsoomcore]

Trickstergod, you seem to be misunderstanding two ideas that are central to my argument:

1. D&D power is fundamentally different from social power. A king who gets other people to do stuff can have plenty of power in OUR world, because that's the only kind of power there is. But in D&D, where one person can literally go up against an army and come out on top, those rules aren't going to fly. A king who relies on others is sooner or later going to run afoul of someone who doesn't, and that someone is going to win.

So it's kind of my whole point that kings CAN'T delegate stuff. You can't reliably recruit other powers -- because if I'm a real paranoid what I'm doing is LOOKING trustworthy while I manipulate the others into destroying each other.

2. It doesn't matter if MOST people won't follow the paranoid route. All that's required for my argument is that ONE person does. That one person is capable of ruining everything. And probability alone suggests that sooner or later that person will arise in any environment.

So to say that most people wouldn't want to become a lich is beside the point. I'm not FORGETTING the human element, I'm saying that for some people, it doesn't matter. And therein lies the danger. It's not the normal people that worry me -- it's the freaks.

Here's another way to look at: Power relations (especially in a D&D context) can be viewed as multiple individual contests. One person's power gets pitted against another person's, and somebody comes out on top. ALL OTHER THINGS being equal, of two persons contending with D&D power, the MORE paranoid one will always win.

If two fighters are scrapping, ALL OTHER THINGS (skill level, strength, etc) being equal, the more paranoid one will win, because he'll be able to take advantage of an opening the less paranoid one doesn't see. Being paranoid is all about seeing opportunities to eliminate threats -- and seeing EVERYTHING as a threat.

So if two 20th level wizards go at it, the more paranoid one will always win, because she'll be trickier, sneakier, more well-prepared and nastier than the other.

D&D power selects for paranoia. This is the fundamental difference between D&D power and "social" power -- in social power paranoia will only get you so far. But not in D&D power.

Follow that logic and you end up with the MOST paranoid people acquiring the most power. Which strikes me as an unpleasant state of affairs.

Again, I'm not arguing that this is the way it MUST be. Of course as DMs we can structure our world to operate under any rules we like. The question of the gods and their involvement in things, the idea of alignment, one's basic view of human nature -- all these things deeply influence what might happen.

My ideas are just that -- ideas. I think they're interesting ones, and Barsoom is a pretty unique campaign as a result.

 

[WayneLigon]

Generally for my worlds, I do a variant of the 'Great Man' theory of history. Most of the people in the world take one of the NPC classes simply because the other classes are not available to them, period. The Warriors can train all they want, for as long and hard as they can, and they'll never be more than a sidekick to the rare Fighter that comes along. It just does them no good.

Likewise, the normal peasent lad who is somehow taught to read can't be taught magic. It's like trying to teach a pig to sing. All you wind up with is an annoyed pig. It's not even a genetic (kinda) thing, like it is with the Sorcerer. It's just normally impossible for him.

 

[barsoomcore]

Sauron's a good example, because he could never have been defeated had not the Istari been sent to fight him -- and had not "grace" intervened in order to destroy the Ring just at his moment of triumph.

If your campaign doesn't allow for divine intervention, Sauron wins easily. Sauron is a great paranoiac.

 

[Altalazar]

So, in other words, Rogues and Bards take over from Aristocrats and Experts. And adventuring types are gong to progress much faster due to the risks they take. So the young fighter or paladin might be able to match wits with most Aristocrats since the PC hero types are higher level, or use magic to augment skills.

Even if there's an equally powerful hero for every villain (or some equivalent set up), you still won't end up with a stable society. Events will be very dynamic and dependent upon powerful individuals. If the church's paladins and the Royal wizards catch the mad sorcerer, it will be after he does something. And what if he wins - then the guy is even more powerful. You might end up with parity or balance, but I don't think you'll find much stability outside of repressive governments - magic would be a nice tool for big brother.

I don't know about that - courtly politics can be VERY dangerous and difficult - and the nobles who end up on top probably start learning the tricks of politics and people manipulation from a very young age, such that some of them might be the equivalent of 10th level aristocrats by the time they come of age. For them, it isn't about saving throws, it is about bluff and intimidate and other skills that they would be maxing out at each level.

I wonder if there shouldn't be a class that is like a full class (not like a "weak" NPC class), only all it has are skills, no combat, no magic, nothing but skills and knowledge, and so its primary power comes in skill points - lots of them - far more than rogues, even - say 12 per level, or some such. And perhaps extra skill-related feats every few levels as well. Call it the 'Political-Noble' class or something like that. Of course, the only save is a Will save.