How on Earth do you have a tightly controlled D&D world with normal magic (Long)

[Harold Mayo]

Well...saving throws ARE missed. Nothing that's been said negates any example that I've given. High level doesn't mean invulnerable or unstoppable. It also doesn't mean that the luck (or unluck) of the dice rolls aren't going to catch up with you sooner or later. Also, just because an ability is present in the rules doesn't mean the high level group would have it or even, if they did have it, think of using it.

One of the most important things that many DMs miss, especially those who are not all that experienced, is that the enemies of the PCs can and will fight with intelligence and ingenuity. If the PC party is outclassed by monsters that you have thrown at them at some point, they will retreat, regroup, and think of a plan that will enable them to have a better chance at winning. In the above examples it's merely like the PCs becoming the monsters and the army that it's up against becoming the PC party. Any and all resources will be brought to bear.

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No one has addressed the most important point, though...the high level PCs don't exist in a void. There are always people out there who are as high in level as they are if not more so. What is available to the PCs is available to the NPCs. Same tricks, same magic items, same spells, same abilities...and then some.

There are also powerful "monsters" that might be with an army or to whom the leader of the army might be allied and able to get aid from....endless possibilities. One poster mentioned beholders...great monster with multiple nasty ranged attacks that require saving throws, many of which attacks can instantly incapacitate characters of any level. Another possibility (one which I would never use because of the "cheese factor"...but then, I also would never have PCs trying stuff like that with an army) might be a bunch of grimlocks with nymphs in their midst. In D&D, the possibilities are endless. If you sit there and say "this spell will do this to this person or thing", you're discounting possibilities. For every tactic that someone can think up, there is a counter...and a counter to the counter...and so on...

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Another point...whatever the PCs are trying to do has been done before. If you're trying to take the "logical" approach to what might happen in a D&D world, then you must also take that into consideration. The PCs wouldn't be the first group to try those tactics. The enemy will have studied long and hard to make sure that they have something to counter such attacks. If they don't have the resources to do so, then they likely wouldn't even mount the attack to begin with. Certainly they wouldn't continue if such things were happening to their army. They would surrender, lick their wounds, and THEN plot and recruit and train.

The world is going to have a history and it is unlikely that the PCs will be the first powerful group to have ever existed. Anyone who is in any position of major power in the world will, more than likely, have his own groups of powerful people to draw upon if one is going to follow some of the world scenarios that we've been discussing. More than likely, these NPCs have done or tried the same things that we're talking about...

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Sorry for all of the jumping about but it's a hectic night....

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Another factor...no plan ever survives contact with the enemy. That poisoned arrow, that missed save...these things can matter a lot. People here have probably played the Baldur's Gate and Icewind Dale games. They demonstrate better than tabletop figures and battlemats what can happen in a fight where magic is in use. Look at the havoc that an umber hulk confusing a high level fighter can cause among his comrades...or a dire charm on a buffed high level fighter...or a fireball cast into an area that happens to contain PCs who have been swept there by the tide of battle but weren't there moments before...or the rebounding effects of a lightning bolt. No matter how prepared the PCs are, it is EASY to throw a wrench into the works...

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My own world...

Low magic. I've tried high levels of magic and loved it at the time but never again. I probably played for 15 years in the "traditional" manner without much altering of the rules and with standard amounts of D&D magic but I got tired of it.

The PCs in my current world have no mages in their group. No priests, either. They're all fighters and fighter sub-classes. They've had both mages and priests before but they've come and gone. They are, at present, tough enough to handle with relative ease any normal foes that I throw up against them. They are still always on their toes, though. I use the critical hit tables from the Player's Option: Combat & Tactics book. This means that, regardless of the level of their foe, a lucky hit at the wrong time and with certain dice rolls will incapacitate or even kill a character.

He who lives by the sword will die by the sword.

So far no PC has been killed by this, even though it has been in use for years. Effects? The lead PC has had an arm broken by a dire wolf and has had a foot broken by a morning star. The dire worf was an enemy that he could easily dispatch by himself and the guy with the morning star was 1st level while the lead PC was 7th. The next PC has had one leg broken twice. In one case it was a 1st level fighter with an axe and the PC was 5th level and in the other it was a regular ogre while the PC was 7th level. The last PC (who plays on a regular basis, anyway) has never had a broken bone but has been forced to retreat on two different occasions because the dice were against him...in one he was fighting goblins and slew all of the ones around him, giving several human archers the chance to shoot at him. Two 20's and a 19 rolled on the dice gave him three critical hits, all of which ALSO ended up in the same leg. He failed to save against any of them and ended up with some BAD bleeding results. That signalled that it was time to activate the ring of spell storing and teleport DIRECTLY to a place where he could get some healing.

I have to challenge the PCs with tougher and tougher monsters, which means that they have to journey farther afield since an area can only support so many of certain creatures, but they still fear low level foes enough that they still take care in fights (well, not always, but they get reminded by the dice sooner or later).

 

[Harold Mayo]

This is a fun thread, so I'm gonna post even more...

While that party is doing things to the enemy army, what are the spellcasters and high level PCs of the enemy army doing? Since several posters seem to think that defense is impossible and luring them into a trap is impossible, what are they going to do? Sit on their hands?

Nah...

They're going to go and ravage areas and people in the realm of the PCs. Station one guy who can communicate via distances with the army, when the PCs start in with their nuclear stuff he waits and then contacts HIS people when they're done. The PCs are going to have exhausted their supply of spells and stuff for the nonce. This means that the enemy guys have total freedom to do whatever they please with the armies of the PCs or with their homes or loved ones or favorite dog (or even that prized sheep!). What the PCs just did to the enemy army, the enemy guys do to their army or homeland.

What is this called, gentlemen?

In this world, we call it Mutually Assured Destruction, or M.A.D. for short. It's a Mexican stand-off and it's the answer to pretty much any question about the "why" of "realistic fantasy warfare" (or R.F.W., for short). Real-world parallels.

Only a madman (or madmen) will go on such a spree when the same is going to happen to what they love. Even if they're mercenaries and don't care about anything but the money, the guy paying the bills is going to want living citizens to work the land and pay taxes and he's not going to want such a thing happening.

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What you have seen in this thread is a fantasy arms race. Everyone trying to "one-up" the next guy. The thing is, like I said before, there is a counter to every move and a countermove to the countermove. Only in the most extreme circumstances is someone going to just destroy without regard to the consequences. This is when the adventurers step in to right wrongs...or someone steps in to right the wrongs being done by the PCs, I suppose, if your PCs are evil...

 

[hong]

Seems to me that if you don't find the activity worthwhile, you probably don't have much to add to the discussion. Coming on board just to say you think the whole thing is a waste of time is hardly constructive.

Hey, some of us aren't here to be constructive.


Hong "although I can't speak for ALL of my clones" Ooi

 

[Gez]

The problem with that arguement, the way I see it, is that it could be used to support almost any assumed status quo state. All it really does it state that most people aren't that interested in starting a revolution.

Indeed. I was not saying that D&D required feudalism. Just that it accepted it.

Fantasy worlds are frequently somewhat static, even with apocalypses and world-shattering events like the Time of Trouble in FR or the various events of DL, peoples still have the same mindset.

And keeping a system rather than another is a question of mindset more than of efficiency of that system.

 

[WizarDru]

Hold on there! No reason to get all size=5 on me. I realise you added the phrase "for me" although I don't know why you think simply adding that phrase doesn't make your post dismissive. Seems to me that if you don't find the activity worthwhile, you probably don't have much to add to the discussion. Coming on board just to say you think the whole thing is a waste of time is hardly constructive.

Fair enough, but that's not what I was saying. What I was trying to say was that ultimately, this sort of thing becomes so complex, that effectivley modeling it can become so time-consuming as to have nothing to do with the actual game, any longer. Just like the famed 'magical street lamps' and 'D&D Economy' threads of days gone by, it results usually in point-counter point arguments, and answering every possibility only opens further questions.

I originally thought that Ace's entire line of thinking was solely based that a feudal could never occur under the standard D&D system. In the realms, perhaps this may apply, but not under every implementation of D&D. But I didn't want to spend hours debating every single point, and degenerating into the point-counterpoint debates we've already seen beaten to death.

IMHO, Ace's basic argument ignores a variety of factors, not the least of which are emotions and human nature. Unless every single adventurer is a dispassionate robot, some of them will end up loving or marrying some of those poor 1st-level commoners. Unless they all come from a line of powerful adventurers, are raised only by powerful adventurers and associate purely with powerful adventurers...they are vulnerable, and they will care for people who need protecting. Sure, the King is a 16th-level mage and the mayor is 10th level fighter: but what about the queen, the mayor's son and his father? No one exists in a vacuum...and if the peasants aren't harvesting food, then eventually the PCs starve, unless they spend valuable time and spells generating food and water, and so on and so forth, ad nauseum. Add to this the fact that certain classes are disposed towards certain behaviors, and you have all sorts of arguments that can't really be resolved to everyone's satisfaction.

For my part, I follow Glen Cook's line of reasoning, for the greater extent; spellcasters tend to cancel out spellcasters and gods tend to cancel out gods. In a huge battle, spellcasters tend to spend their time dealing with enemy spellcasters, not the grunts. On a macro level, the followers of God A may or may not directly oppose God B. Powerful beings become concerned with the actions of other powerful beings, and tend to move into the shadows to deal with each other. Everyone has to sleep sometime, and everyone eventually fails a save. All it takes to ruin a 20th level wizard's day is a 1st level rogue and a lucky roll. A game world where spellcasters or adventurers rose to prominence would see some interesting dynamics take place, as people rose to oppose them in unexpected ways.

Ultimately, D&D makes concessions between being a completely logical setting and a good game. When in doubt, the creators erred on the side of game balance, not logic. I think they made the right choice, but YMMV.

 

[Desdichado]

That's a fair enough position to take. IMO, despite all the arguments that one can (and often does) make about the ramifications of the magic as written rules. At the end of the day, one has to come up with a set-up that one feels comfortable with and works for them. For you, and others, this means -- to a certain extent -- handwaving the effects of magic on society as essentially irrelevant. To others, like SHARK for instance, he's crafted a complete world based on the institutionalization of magic. Although when he brings it up, he gets the same kind of debate we've seen here about armies vs. magicians. To yet others, like myself, I prefer to come up with a system that is inherently more "low magic" to explain away parts of the problem. Ironically, I don't want my world's to be too foreign -- I think games (and stories) are more gripping and compelling to the players (or readers) as more things in the background are familiar. Therefore my campaign settings assume that a lot of the values and society and organizations, etc. are much more modern and American. I throw in some differences, primarily for flavor and interest, but the basic background is very familiar to the players because I think it works better that way.

For that matter, FR (to use an example I'm moderately familiar with) despite it's claims to be feudal and traditional really does the same thing, although it doesn't own up to it.

Again, if I go into it from this angle -- developing the setting first and laying the groundwork for what I want that to look like, and assuming that some quick-glance consistency is desirable, I very quickly find that the D&D magic system isn't what I want, really. So the game I'd really like to run next is based on d20 Modern instead of D&D to eliminate spellcasting classes, and all magic is done ala Call of Cthulhu d20 (with lots of D&D spells modified into the system) Sanity points and all. This gives me a world that is low magic, magic is dangerous and primarily the province of the insane, and I can add into my "modern" society a dark, WHFRP element very easily. Voila, I've got everything I want.

 

[Ysgarran]

Also what makes you think that the land based economics of fuedalism make any sense in a D&D world

D&D worlds can produce much much more wealth than a real world society could ever hope to.

Summoned Elementals
Move Earth
Disintegrate
Plant Growth
Continual Light (work all night )
Zombie Labor
Charmed Monsters
Guidance Spell (+5% on any task)
Control Weather
Cure Light (no more work related injuries)

Spells like this would have a tendency to increase the wealth but I think that some of the reasons you list earlier (Sorcerers raining fire on cities) would have the opposite effect. You have some incredibly destructive spells with their use being seen often enough to balance the positive effect spells have.

The question of whether these two effects (destructive spells vs. the wealth producing spells) balance each other to such an extent to create a society that is close to our historical feudal society is a question for the DM running the campaign.

Ysgarran.

 

[incognito]

Hi Ace,

I think you raise a good point, and many other's here hav provided counter points.

As an addendum to what some others have stated about adventuring parties, I'd like to adress the topic of PC wealth, as this seems to be a concern.

What has been mentioned already: PCs don't exist in a vacuum.

The other posters have used this to illustrate how "other" bands of adventurers will hunt them down at the Kings bequest, or how a existing Feudal govenment might have prepared for these types of Rogue attacks.

I think it's important to point out in an internally consisitent world, where magic items cost so much, and "normal" goods cost so little by comparison, that ANY very valuable items the characters poses (pick any gp value, I'll say $18,000 gp) are going to be important state treasuries or even considered minor artifacts - implying that the PCs are allied, or against certain city states already.

It's one thing to wield a +3 sword against an feudal Lord, it is quite another to wield the "Tooth of Larkinth" a known symbol of the Knight Genreral the city-state of Larkinth.

This makes PCs accoutnable for thier actions, inherently.

I you have more of a claok and dagger party, then you hav emore of a cloak and dagger world. How many parties can realistically stand up to being constantly scried and harrassed by the local Feudal Lords Wizards?

As far as the clergy is considered, I dictator type might have clerics of a Lawful Evil diety at his side. they can create items, Administer healing, and buff the would be dictator up with spells.

Everyone considere's spells caster so powerfull - but they have a very limited set of resources. A fighter can swing that sword all day. Casters had **better** take out the fighter types, becsaue if they run out of usefull spells, thier toast.

I do agree that the noblilty would be leveld, and that is abcked up by all the expaniosn matieral we've seen published for Greyhawk, FR, etc, etc. So now, that dictator of the feudal society, is not jsut a cruel individual, he is also a L14 fighter. He's got the Iron Will feat (greater Iron will if you allow it), and a reasoable (12-14?) Wisdom.

To your average party of adventurers though, he could be a chump - they have no idea. So when they jump him, and he has over 120 hp, a 25+ AC, and attacks 3 times in a round - plus the support of his evil clerics, and 'kept' wizards to counter or dispel the parties spells, - well - you have quite a fight.

 

[Ace]

When I finally accepted that my game world was very high magic and ran with it I found it vreated a very different king of D&D than the "small scale" kind of games I used to run

Under the current rules a 21st level wizard can kill cities with a minimum of effort, this is an incredible amount of power for one person to have!

The power of D&D magic armies is even more staggering,

a modern analogy imagine if every country on the planet had nukes, sattelite technology and nearly undetectable bombers. On the ground they had tanks and light infantry

Any war would result in smashed cities and mass destruction everywhere.

Scary

For future campaign I am making the following changes -- No "at will" items. No Continual light and related spells

Instead items will have a maximum of 5 uses per day

I will also drop wands and make staffs and rods artifacts...

There will still be magic armor but I will reduce its prevalence and power some. Yawn a +3 sword is out. Thats "starcutter" sword of the high king is in

To make it more of a "its you not your stuff" I will give extra feats, extra open skills, 2 more skill points per level and defense

Along with a few nerfed spells this shouls provide what I want

 

[jasper]

The world would have as many different governments as ours does.
The gods would cancel each other out unless you are planning Ragnorock.
High level Pc will mostly be cancelled by high level NPC's.

IMC Star City has a population over 100,000 people with continual flame lit roads, clean fountains etc. Of course it is against the law to cast dispell magic around most city property.
Star City is monarchy.

Hartsford is democracy town of 5,000 people and my current players who just got awarded citizenship. They 6th to 8th level and about to surpase the 10th level npcs. Good thing yes. Bad thing is they have used up all the town's ressurrection and regen scrolls.

Near Hommlet is the territory of Green Thumb. Who rules the land just by a shake down of some people there. But not everyday. He also kills off any group approaching 14th level. And has a great spy network. And a couple of side businesses.


if you check the dmg city table you will find not many people above 10th. So if you don't change the numbers (which I have) once the pc have move pass 10th level they are shakers and movers. But if they want to be challenge higher ranking foes have to appear.

You have to make some decisions. I left the magic level alone. But since I convert my campaign from 1st, then 2nd a lot of power are in some places. And in other places 3rd levels are gods.

You could have a global ecomony with teleporting circles rings etc but anything made by magic can be destroyed by magic. That depends on you and your group.

You also have decide whether magic items rust or decay. Yes I know gold does not rust but bear with me. IMC magic items unless protected by spells can destoryed. Toss the wand, rod, staff into the fireplace and bye bye wand. Heat up the gold piece with continual flame on it and get a lump of gold with some ex-magic power.

It will depend on what magic level your world has. And go from their. Yes Mt St helens can still blow kill the villiage of Pompeii but it could be wished back by the adventurers.

Oh one of my players was mad recently when I told him, yes the town judge did thank him for taking out the thieves guild, he still had to pay a fine for unlicense burglarly tools. And that his new set would be check and he would be questioned yearly under a truth spell. He was also surprise a town would hang thieves even thou they were kill in combat.

All the arguements for and against the pcs' as mover and shakers are right. They can destory armies and stuff as long as the other side is light in adventurers supply. But when they get powerfull enought to take out the 101st Airborne single handly, do they want to, how much x.p. is that, and will dogs still raise their legs on them.