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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dr. Strangemonkey" data-source="post: 389041" data-attributes="member: 6533">Benefits to FeudalismSomething that's missing from this debate is the fact that Feudalism is at its roots a contract system.  There are a lot of variations and corruptions of this idea, but since we're talking lawful good here consider the following:Even the best Feudal systems featured areas of flagrant abuse or inadequacy, but even the worst systems served their peasants better than the poor capitalist systems that replaced them.  The urban poor of early industrial England were much worse off than their medieval ancestors and the nobility far wealthier.If we take the best medieval model, taxes would be lighter than they are in most first world nations today.  tithe=10% random secular fees: rents, tolls, and head=15%10%+15%=25% peasant pays if there is accurate record keeping and low corruption.Compare that to America where Federal Income Tax alone is around 30% of income or higher.  Plus sales and state taxes.Most of the nobility and clergy only recieve a minor portion of their income from taxes.  The majority of their wealth is in thier owned estates.   The value of peasantry is that they will work these estates in return for services and protections.Their labor is key to everything.They often got:-military protection  -assurance of salvation  -right to competing secular and church courts  -limited access to professionals  -more vacation than modern Europeans or Americans, count the number of Saint's days  -access to public resources the likes of which are non-existent in Western societiesAnyone who messed with these rights directly could expect heavy ineffeciencies and a smack down from the competing secular or ecclesiastical authority.  Later peasants could just leave and join the local town.There was heavy competition on the part of authorities to treat these peasants right. Labor was critical and there was no system of large scale slavery or farming.While the threat of invasion or raid was real, peasants did not live in trembling fear.  Every European authority was basically living within a population that could seamlessly and instantly become a localized guerrillla army.So I think, again given the idea of the best real model, that magic would definitely come back to the common man.  Priests and Knights definitely need the populace and Wizards need the coin that Priests and Knights could dole out.The major complication I see is that the huge expense necessary to the creation of even a minor magical item would create a huge drain on national and personal resources.  I don't see the creation of modern infrastructure, but I do see a necessary edge in a constant struggle against forces that are essentially more evolved than you are.If paying ten percent to a god helps support a cosmology where there is only one tarrasque and things like drow and Illithid are mysteriously absent from the surface, then my money is well spent.</blockquote>

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