Derailing the Tippyverse; or how to make DnD look as expected

[SorO_Lost]

On the contrary; Tippy is perfectly aware that Forbiddance blocks teleportation (except for Wish, due to that pesky "regardless of local conditions" clause). The issue is that Forbiddance is small enough that you can't put it up over the entire country.

No he wasn't, it comes up in the thread along with Extradimensional locations, the forum argued about that not Tippy. Further, Tippy is the kind of guy to have couple dozen threads asking bout the rules and having several of his posts shot down for not working. You can even go into it so far that I swear he posted one trick, was denied, and reposted it again months later because he forgot it doesn't work (or hoped everyone left?). Heck a month after Dream of Metal was posted he ended up posting about how Forced Dream can be used for time travel.

Also who cares? In Tippy spammed the crap out of Shadesteels, Teleportation Circle, and Magical Traps for his world. You're going to draw the line of WBL after you dumped billions into a single city? That seems awfully stupid and one sided. Anyway, you are aware that you save money by doing this right? You take a 130,000gp Shadesteel and replace it with the superior Ice Assassin that only costs 31,500gp and forward the rest into Forbiddance's Components, you can cast four of them at CL20 and still have change left over. If they are Widened that's eighty 120x120x120 cubes to cover whatever you wish.

So I suck at math but if you try to arrange those cubes into a square you're one short of having a nice 9x9 arrangement, or 1,080ft long sides which is 1,166400 square feet is it not? And each story is typically 10~12 foot tall so reasonable you can ward a 12 story-tall building off the square footage (you don't need to protect the roof or base since you can't teleport into solid objects).

(click to show/hide)

You can protect up to 897 of these per floor (kind of need hallways through) which house a typical 4 person nuclear family each.
12 floors * 897 houses sharing walls * 4 people in each = 43,056 residents

And that's per Shadesteel, per Tippy you get 1 Shadesteel per 5,000 residents you shove into a Forbiddance, any left over space goes to protecting uninhabited areas like roads and farmlands.

Forbiddance also has this cool effect of not just blocking Teleport allowing you to control the access points, it also zaps demons and undead just for trying to walk in. You can literately claim your city doesn't contain anyone of the Evil Alignment because every few feet they travel hits them for at least 6d6 damage.

[Keldar]

Frankly, you don't even need Forbiddance to cover everything to have it provide essential security.  As long as vital areas and the 3D perimeter are covered, security is achieved through obscurity.  A foe would need to get lucky not to bounce off a Forbiddance and hit an empty area.   And those that do luck out will face cheaper, redundant security measures.  Like Guards or Ice Assassins.

Anyway.


The thing is, the world as assumed just can't work within the rules as written.  Even a little bit.
By 3rd level at the latest, spellcasters completely invalidate traditional defensive stronghold design.  All courtyards suddenly become points of entry for the enemy.  A lone 1st level caster (Even an Adept!) can make breaching a castle's wall much easier just with Obscuring Mist or Silent Image.  No classic castles would withstand a force with even low level spellcasters.

The classic Linear Warriors and Quadratic Wizards gets in the way as well when coupled with the level disparity.  Armies pale in comparison to the might of a spellcaster.  A high level one could take on every first level character in the world at the same time and win handily.  Even with Mob rules, mundanes are so vulnerable and immobile, casters can curb stomp the lot of them with no real shenanigans.

In order to approach the expected look of DnD, you'd need to nerf the snot out of spellcasters mobility and range while dramatically increasing the abilities of the mundane.  Teleport couldn't exist, or would need to be high level, or work more like 4E's version did.  Even Levitate would need to come very late.  Overland Flight would probably need to be eliminated entirely. 
Fighters would need to be flat out replaced with Warblades.  And mundane characters would need some counters to magic built into the setting.  Horseshoes, four leaf clovers, and rabbits feet, or the like would need to actually protect against bad mojo.  And more counters like garlic and wolf's bane would need to be available to give the masses a half chance to thrive around the remaining might of the spellcasters.

And that's not even getting to all the problems divinations and fiat success spells (Like True Sight and Freedom of Movement) cause.  Any number of which can ruin the standard DnD plot in one casting.

[Unbeliever]

Armies pale in comparison to the might of a spellcaster.  A high level one could take on every first level character in the world at the same time and win handily.  Even with Mob rules, mundanes are so vulnerable and immobile, casters can curb stomp the lot of them with no real shenanigans.

This is actually true for any high level character.  A high level Rogue can kill the entire kingdom of <4th level characters.  Ditto Fighters, Barbarians, etc.  Really, you'd just be talking about a difference in efficiency and tactics.  I also have no idea how common people with PC class levels, especially of any level of note, are in the population.  So, you might have a barbican to defend against the ubiquitous thugs and orcs, who it's effective against, even if it doesn't work against the half dragon cryohydra who might potentially appear.

I'm not going to wade too far into the specifics of the Tippyverse (which I also thought referred to a general idea rather than something specific).  That's for a few reasons, part of which was obliquely touched on above in SorO's posts.  What are D&D's rules designed to do?  They are not, emphatically not, designed to create a functional whole world with working economies, etc.  Play Civ for that or something.  So, expecting it to hang together in that way is essentially a category error.

A smaller, but perhaps less dismissive question is what do you think D&D is supposed to look like.  The high level characters comment that I quoted above highlights a key, if subtle conceit, in D&D.  It's a lot like the Iliad:  only heroes can counteract other heroes.  Or, Greek mythology more generally:  an army of chumps, for various reasons, had no hope against the Nemean Lion.  That takes a Hercules.

So, if a group of high level magically inclined people decide to crown themselves Godkings and Speakers of the True Source and create their own utopia.  Well, that's "working as intended."  Of course, as again noted above by others, the Tippyverse seems to ignore all the other forces in the universe.   Is Asmodeus, and his attendant legion of spellcasters, just going to ignore Utopia? 

Now that I think about it, OOTS covers a lot of this pretty handily.  I guess I'd suggest the people on GitP to read it ...

[awaken_D_M_golem]

  ... don't invite any Half-Ogres over for dinner.  That 1/2 bath can barely fit a Pixie.

[PlzBreakMyCampaign]

Good discussion on the RAW campaign stuff. Keep it coming.

Casters would be dominating anyone with crafting feats

Assuming the dominee is a caster that can craft. Forcing casters to fight seems like a good way to not have a caster utopia. It still seems like a step in the right direction, even if they could already do this. Also insert the cannot give up life-force involuntarily trope.

GP is a river too

I consider those who advocate that willfully misreading. No one plays like that and if you did, everyone would just use consumables spells all day like persistent spell on crack.

Again, I hadn't understood that this was a reference to a specific 'setting' rather than to a generic concept.

I'm looking at the big picture, but starting from one example

the auto-resetting beneficial "traps" in the Tippyverse are quite clearly Magic Device Traps which have no such limit.  I admit that I could have been a bit more clear in my wording previously

Valid. Though the elements do seem to have few restrictions on spells that may be included, I'm still not sure that the samples are not an all-inclusive list. Traps outside those spells (with variations as depicted in the formulas) seem to be in custom magic item territory. I'll edit the OP.

[Raineh Daze]

Casters would be dominating anyone with crafting feats

Assuming the dominee is a caster that can craft. Forcing casters to fight seems like a good way to not have a caster utopia. It still seems like a step in the right direction, even if they could already do this. Also insert the cannot give up life-force involuntarily trope.

GP is a river too

I consider those who advocate that willfully misreading. No one plays like that and if you did, everyone would just use consumables spells all day like persistent spell on crack.

Are you telling me that nobody, anywhere, at least tries to keep the value of equipment between characters roughly the same?

[SorO_Lost]

... don't invite any Half-Ogres over for dinner.  That 1/2 bath can barely fit a Pixie.

It appears to be 8x4 with two sinks which is pretty for good a 1/2.

[phaedrusxy]

Casters would be dominating anyone with crafting feats

Assuming the dominee is a caster that can craft. Forcing casters to fight seems like a good way to not have a caster utopia. It still seems like a step in the right direction, even if they could already do this. Also insert the cannot give up life-force involuntarily trope.

GP is a river too

I consider those who advocate that willfully misreading. No one plays like that and if you did, everyone would just use consumables spells all day like persistent spell on crack.

Are you telling me that nobody, anywhere, at least tries to keep the value of equipment between characters roughly the same?

I don't think that's willful misreading. I think that's RAI.

[SorO_Lost]

I don't think that's willful misreading. I think that's RAI.

Sort of. You have some room as I have always said, the quick and easy quote is found in treasure but the lengthy answer with details requires some calculations and formatting.

*ahem*

Code: [Select]

Wealth Comparisons
Party Expected Treasure from Treasure per Forgive & Forget
Level Wealth Gain Encounters Character Budget
1st 900 gp 3,999 gp 1,000 gp 100 gp
2nd 1,800 gp 7,998 gp 2,000 gp 200 gp
3rd 2,700 gp 11,997 gp 2,999 gp 299 gp
4th 3,600 gp 15,996 gp 3,999 gp 399 gp
5th 4,000 gp 21,328 gp 5,332 gp 1,332 gp
6th 6,000 gp 26,660 gp 6,665 gp 665 gp
7th 8,000 gp 34,658 gp 8,665 gp 665 gp
8th 9,000 gp 45,322 gp 11,331 gp 2,331 gp
9th 13,000 gp 59,985 gp 14,996 gp 1,996 gp
10th 17,000 gp 77,314 gp 19,329 gp 2,329 gp
11th 22,000 gp 99,975 gp 24,994 gp 2,994 gp
12th 22,000 gp 130,634 gp 32,659 gp 10,659 gp
13th 40,000 gp 173,290 gp 43,323 gp 3,323 gp
14th 50,000 gp 226,610 gp 56,653 gp 6,653 gp
15th 60,000 gp 293,260 gp 73,315 gp 13,315 gp
16th 80,000 gp 373,240 gp 93,310 gp 13,310 gp
17th 100,000 gp 479,880 gp 119,970 gp 19,970 gp
18th 140,000 gp 626,510 gp 156,628 gp 16,628 gp
19th 180,000 gp 813,130 gp 203,283 gp 23,283 gp
Expected Wealth Gain: This is what Table 5–1 indicates a character should gain while reaching his next level.
Treasure from Encounters: This is the average treasure value from Table 3–3: Treasure Values per Encounter multiplied by 13.33 encounters.
Treasure per Character: This is Treasure from Encounters divided by four, the expected party size. The amounts are rounded to the nearest gold piece.
Forgive & Forget Budget: Money obtained - money needed to reach next WBL, aka this cash is "forgotten" at each level.


Normally even going from 19-to-20 which has the highest amount sacrificed you can only afford six 9th level Scrolls provided the none of them have costly Components. Not really offensively helpful. A good optimizer should be able to pull things off using expendables-only using some clever combinations, like Wand Bonding + Unfettering Heroism + Wand Surge or just plain Enhance Item with a massive Ability Bonus.

To me, the budget is mostly about paying for healing or previous Wand buffs. Like a Wand of Wraithstrike can be used about three times per Encounter and then it's used up and you have leveled, the useless stick of wood no longer impact's your WBL and you're not penalized for using up old Wands. Similarly all those Wands of Lesser Vigor & Restoration or Potions of Cure Light Wounds to keep your Character's ass alive are forgotten. Significant expenses, say True Resurrection on your butchered Character, impact your WBL so badly it takes at least two levels to pay off.
In other words. tl;dr: Old wands don't reduce your budget but if you abuse this it will.

[Raineh Daze]

True Resurrection taking two levels to pay off seems inherently overkill on top of losing a level.

[SorO_Lost]

True Resurrection taking two levels to pay off seems inherently overkill on top of losing a level.

TR doesn't reduce your level. And in the 19th-going-20th range it only impacts your budget by 5k if you only needed it once.

A second death after that however takes another 28k dent putting you down 33k. So try to avoid being res-killed.

[SolEiji]

One of the things I end up doing is that NPCs have caps on their levels, a limit to their potential.  In effect, NPCs are play E6, or E8, or whatever I happen to set the limit for them.  Thus, most people never see those 16th level wizards cause most stop growing at 6th.

PCs, being PCs, are exceptional and thus don't have such caps, nor do named NPCs and other plot devices.

Mix that with the Efreet Mafia which kills the Wish Economy, and you only have the rare super wizard who won't always change things for the better.

[Chemus]

Casters would be dominating anyone with crafting feats

Assuming the dominee is a caster that can craft. Forcing casters to fight seems like a good way to not have a caster utopia. It still seems like a step in the right direction, even if they could already do this. Also insert the cannot give up life-force involuntarily trope.

That's an interesting concept. As SorO said, Ice Assassin can bypass that, though it has an XP component of its own.

GP is a river too

I consider those who advocate that willfully misreading. No one plays like that and if you did, everyone would just use consumables spells all day like persistent spell on crack.

I don't find that to be any kind of misreading; WBL guidelines have to do with the costs of any permanent items or effects. Yes once a scroll is used up, as long as it has no lingering valuable effects, such as a wall of stone that is now part of your new castle, it no longer impacts WBL. You still must find the resources to replace it, very much like how lower level characters get more XP by normal rules. If the other players, or their characters, wanna be hardasses and choose not to enable your spendthrift ways, that's their choice. If you have been spending poorly, they likely won't help you. If, however they are sanguine with your expenditures, they'll likely foot some or all of the bill to replace the resources that you consumed to aid the party. That's XP GP as a river to me; the resource, Wealth, can be shuffled around by the characters in any way they all agree upon. The Monk thinks that he's OK with a smaller share (and does Not have VoP), then the rest of the party is justified in giving him a smaller share. Equitability is up to the group dynamic.

[Samwise]

As an ornery old grognard, I would suggest one of the easiest ways to fix things is to rewind RAW an edition or two.

"Second, the utterance of the spell attracts the attention of the sought-after dweller in the other plane. When casting the spell, the wizard must name the entity he desires to use the gate and to come to the wizards aid. There is a 100% certainty that something steps through the gate. Unless the DM has some facts prepared regarding the minions serving the being called forth by the gate spell, the being itself comes.
If the matter is trifling, the being might leave, inflict an appropriate penalty on the wizard, or attack the wizard; if the matter is of middling importance, the being can take some positive action to set matters aright, then demand appropriate repayment; and if the matter is urgent, it can act accordingly and ask whatever is its wont thereafter, if appropriate."

That is a chunk of the description for the Gate spell in AD&D.
Not particularly useful for spamming solars.

Wish ends with this:

"This discretionary power of the DM js necessary in order to maintain game balance. As wishing another character dead would be grossly unfair, for example, your DM might well advance the spellcaster to a Future period in which the creature is no longer alive, effectively putting the wishing Character out of the campaign."

Even though the basic options have been toned down, it still needs a line like that to keep things in perspective.
(Not to mention that back in the day it was considered near mandatory for a DM to make a player regret even thinking about wishing for something more significant than a sandwich, and even that could be risky if you asked the wrong creature granting said wish.)

Between that and a few strategic smirks combined with "Are you really sure you want that?" and any Tippyverse should be cancelled before it gets to the review committee.

[awaken_D_M_golem]

Some similar language (still) exists for those spells in 3.Xe.
You self identify as grog-ish.  Have you heard of the Oberoni Fallacy?
(I can't infer from your post whether you might have or not)

Certainly the Solar's version of the grape vine (urm , twitterverse)
contains rumors of more powerful beings, toying with them.

... Think of the catgirls ...

You did that on purpose ... 

... Now I'd like to ask what happens to RAW campaigns when you house rule:
E) No 9th level spells. You can't sneak teleportation circles or otherwise create portals. No wish economy or ice assassins. 0th-2nd, 3rd-5th, and 6th-8th spells are fine ..

Yeah sure.  If you have the resources to spam Wish, then
you have more resources to monitor the junior leaguers.
So they just can't get to the 9s, unless they know and
are able to execute some really new overpowered combo.
When an 8s or less combo messes up the world too much,
a 9'er swoops in and fixes all most of the cat-ass-strophe.

Dude:  "Pazuzu, Pazuzu, Pazuzu"
Pazuzu (noticing ... and subconsciously rubs his forever aching right hip): 
"Uh-huh.  You want me to get you an Efreeti for a little  innocent chat."
(a small corner of his lesser demonic brain starts to "tingle" in a way he always wants to forget)
Way off in the deep astral, a little girl-uberdeity-ling is jumping rope and spots a bug she doesn't like.
_{engage improbability drive}

[Samwise]

Some similar language (still) exists for those spells in 3.Xe.
You self identify as grog-ish.  Have you heard of the Oberoni Fallacy?
(I can't infer from your post whether you might have or not)

Certainly the Solar's version of the grape vine (urm , twitterverse)
contains rumors of more powerful beings, toying with them.

I was using "fixed" in the context of the thread.

Whether or not the changes to D20 "fixed" the "problems" from AD&D or whether the "problems" in D20 can be "fixed" by reverting to the wording in AD&D is of course thoroughly subjective.
It has for me, and seems to satisfy many complaints I hear from others.

As for the Oberoni Fallacy, I've heard of it but never had much use for it, as it never does anything to resolve any issues that arise, whether they be in RPGs or wargames.

As for being grog-ish, people called me that years ago. I figured why keep fighting it. 

[PlzBreakMyCampaign]

Casters would be dominating anyone with crafting feats

Assuming the dominee is a caster that can craft. Forcing casters to fight seems like a good way to not have a caster utopia. It still seems like a step in the right direction, even if they could already do this. Also insert the cannot give up life-force involuntarily trope.

GP is a river too

I consider those who advocate that willfully misreading. No one plays like that and if you did, everyone would just use consumables spells all day like persistent spell on crack.

Are you telling me that nobody, anywhere, at least tries to keep the value of equipment between characters roughly the same?

Player: I don't have as much gold as co-adventurer Joe!
DM: you all encountered the same pile of treasure from the dragon and all the other monsters.
Player: Yeah but I spent all mine!
DM: And that's my fault because why?

True Resurrection taking two levels to pay off seems inherently overkill on top of losing a level.

DnD is hard.

You still must find the resources to replace it, very much like how lower level characters get more XP by normal rules.... The Monk thinks that he's OK with a smaller share (and does Not have VoP), then the rest of the party is justified in giving him a smaller share.

I'm always mentioning xp as a river for a reason. Have you ever played Diablo II and seen higher level characters 'rush' lower level ones even with experience ratio load-balancing? It's still going to happen, it just won't be really easy/abused.

Hey samwise do you have any example spells that aren't 9th level?

aDMg, I wasn't looking for justifications. I was just assuming they don't exist. Like most everyone does with epic spells. I seem to think it would make DnD closer to the expected appearance, but I was asking for others thoughts on how big a difference they would think this presents.

[Raineh Daze]

Casters would be dominating anyone with crafting feats

Assuming the dominee is a caster that can craft. Forcing casters to fight seems like a good way to not have a caster utopia. It still seems like a step in the right direction, even if they could already do this. Also insert the cannot give up life-force involuntarily trope.

GP is a river too

I consider those who advocate that willfully misreading. No one plays like that and if you did, everyone would just use consumables spells all day like persistent spell on crack.

Are you telling me that nobody, anywhere, at least tries to keep the value of equipment between characters roughly the same?

Player: I don't have as much gold as co-adventurer Joe!
DM: you all encountered the same pile of treasure from the dragon and all the other monsters.
Player: Yeah but I spent all mine!
DM: And that's my fault because why?

Wrong argument. It's consumables vs permanent equipment. The idea is that the value of the stuff you have should tend to be roughly similar. Buying that wand of lesser vigour shouldn't forever leave your character with less assets than the rest of the party, since that's declaring them permanently weaker. Not the intended goal of WBL.

True Resurrection taking two levels to pay off seems inherently overkill on top of losing a level.

DnD is hard.

Not intrinsically. Aside from my getting Resurrection and True Resurrection muddled, you're being a dick if you say "well, your character's back, but they're weakened for more or less the rest of the game, thus possibly trapping them in a spiral of death and impotence. Enjoy your inferiority."

[SorO_Lost]

Not intrinsically. Aside from my getting Resurrection and True Resurrection muddled, you're being a dick if you say "well, your character's back, but they're weakened for more or less the rest of the game, thus possibly trapping them in a spiral of death and impotence. Enjoy your inferiority."

Who else do you convince them to roll up something more than a 12 Str Fighter with less than seven Skill Focuses?

Also D&D isn't a dumbed down video game of the new ages where death awards you XP points (see deadpool). But even still at least it's not Nintendo hard where if you waste too many lives you have to restart from the beginning.

[Raineh Daze]

Not intrinsically. Aside from my getting Resurrection and True Resurrection muddled, you're being a dick if you say "well, your character's back, but they're weakened for more or less the rest of the game, thus possibly trapping them in a spiral of death and impotence. Enjoy your inferiority."

Who else do you convince them to roll up something more than a 12 Str Fighter with less than seven Skill Focuses?

Also D&D isn't a dumbed down video game of the new ages where death awards you XP points (see deadpool). But even still at least it's not Nintendo hard where if you waste too many lives you have to restart from the beginning.

There's 'you made a dumb character, so you'll keep dying' and 'you had bad luck on a SoD, now be forever behind the rest of the party monetarily AND in levels'.