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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Trickstergod" data-source="post: 1253290" data-attributes="member: 10825">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. 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. 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'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.</blockquote>

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