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

[PlzBreakMyCampaign]

I'm noticing a lack discussion on RAW campaign styles. I seem to remember a creature generator / loot generator that I think JaronK and his friend were working on but I can't seem to find it. This kind of is alive and kicking elsewhere, so I thought I'd get that going over here. It's been going on a long time (PhaedrusXY, LoP, T_G, the WotCOhort, etc) but this board is new so...

I'll start with some of the assumptions I see in other interpretations of RAW non-epic campaigns and then ask questions of slight changes that I think most people would be fine with. High level mages running things sounds plausible except:
A) Tippy assumes custom craftable automatic spell reset traps can be used to remove all barriers to societal growth. This makes those traps that are not based off same magical device (spells) custom magic items and DM dependent.
B) Catgirls die when vacuum tubes and antimatter are thought to exist in Greyhawk. Think of the catgirls.
C) Evil outsiders don't pose enough of a systemic threat to such a society. **rollseyes**
D) Teleportation isn't that big a deal due to: forbiddance, wierdstones, dead magic planar breaches, and ...

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.
F) What if XP wasn't a river and spending x XP meant that you were always behind by x (maybe more with weighted averages on part ECL xp distribution)? Magic items would only slowly, but steadily build.

[Raineh Daze]

Conceptually speaking, B and C seem really weird.

B: no, they don't. But an essentially technocratic society where the most successful guys spam mental stats? That's like saying the Industrial Revolution is totally impossible because the Medieval period didn't have Roman concrete.

C: ... doesn't this defeat the entire point of their existence? That is, if either CE or LE managed to get their shit together, they would steamroll society. Just tossing Pit Fiends and Balors at the world would normally defeat it, but the Blood War keeps them way too distracted.

Meanwhile, E: not all 9th's are broken.

[kitep]

A) Tippy assumes craftable automatic spell reset traps can be used to remove all barriers to societal growth.
"No Reset
Short of completely rebuilding the trap, there’s no way to trigger it more than once. Spell traps have no reset element."

And yet

Burning Hands Trap: CR 2; magic device; proximity trigger
(alarm); automatic reset; spell effect (burning hands, 1st-level
wizard, 1d4 fire, DC 11 Reflex save half damage); Search DC 26;
Disable Device DC 26. Cost: 500 gp, 40 XP.

Inflict Light Wounds Trap: CR 2; magic device; touch trigger;
automatic reset; spell effect (inflict light wounds, 1st-level cleric,
1d8+1, DC 11 Will save half damage); Search DC 26; Disable
Device DC 26. Cost: 500 gp, 40 XP.

And while text trumps tables, table 3-16 lists the costs for creating magic traps that auto reset.

I think this is a case of contradicting text.

You could also use the Energy Transformation Field spell, or just have enough eternal wands since most of the spells in question are 3rd level or lower, so resetting magical traps aren't strictly necessary.

[phaedrusxy]

Umm... why am I mentioned here? 

[SorO_Lost]

There is no contradiction. Examples do not create and establish rules

You also need to understand as far as Trap Creation goes it is literately for the DM. The Designing Traps header says you (the DM) can use the trapmaking rules to surprise PCs and the DM is specifically told he can pick anything he wants for Magic Traps. The for-Player concept comes from the *ahem* PC-Designed Magic Traps subentry that requires DM agreeance on the Spell used an all other elements and of note contains no text that overrides to the reset-specific text.

The problem is Tippy is a plagiarist with no understanding of the rules at all. "Tippyverse" is literately a washed down Eberron, he isn't even aware that Forbiddance completely blocks Teleport (and wish) or as Extradimensional Spaces pretty much never have something you can use as a Focus nothing short of Wish and it's 5,000XP cost can be used to teleport into a Portable Hole. I mean in a real D&D world Wightopoclyses can't even happen without someone spamming Disjunction on a city full of Ice cloned Epic Spellcasters.

[linklord231]

The issue with A) is that there's a difference between Spell Traps and Traps that Cast Spells.  "Spell Traps" are spells that, in themselves, are traps.  Alarm and Glyph of Warding are Spell Traps.  Traps that Cast Spells are not the same thing - they are things like the Burning Hands Trap or any of the other examples there, and are what Tippy is talking about when he mentions his "spell traps".  Traps that Cast Spells are called "Magic Device Traps" by the rules. 

Isn't D) kind of missing the point?  The point of Teleportation Circle in Tippyverse is to explain the existence of the Cities, and to explain the non-existence of small towns and villages. 

Teleporation Circles will be set up between the City and fellow Cities simply because they are the only remotely safe and cost effective way to rapidly move goods between the cities. Who is going to ship goods by boat when TC’s are faster, cheaper, and safer? Or by wagon train? The fact that TC’s are point to point and have fixed points is going to eliminate the various small villages and towns that tend to dot the path between Cities both in real life and in more traditional D&D settings. The high initial investment of a permanent teleportation circle is also going to ensure that they are only set up between locations that can make them profitable within a relatively short period of time, which eliminates most of the smaller cities and villages as well.
All of this combines to create a self reinforcing cycle that concentrates the vast majority of the worlds population in cities that are linked to each other by teleportation circles, fed by create food and water traps (as farms can’t be defended effectively), and require large standing armies for defense.
You are quickly left with the large cities (most on par with the likes of Sharn, or even larger, in terms of population) that hold upwards of 99% of the worlds non monstrous population and cover (maybe) one percent of the worlds surface and the Wilds between the cities that are filled with the denizens of the various Monster Manuals. The Wilds are also where you will find the small villages and thorps of more traditional D&D, where the population is constantly threatened by monsters, rarely exceeds level 5, rarely sees magic, and is basically subsistence level.

In F), people who craft magic items simply continue to do so as normal, and then find a new group of people to adventure with when it starts getting too hard.  It would have no effect on the world. 

[oslecamo]

The reason D&D looks as expected is quite simple: Most humanoids are dicks. Or at least they're non-dicks only towards a relatively very small group of people.

The epic spellcasters? Too busy increasing/protecting their own power. Or they move to Sigil where everybody important is and stop caring about the material plane (completely raw, Sigil has epic spellcasters of all possible level combinations, normal settlements don't have even one).

Even for non-epic magic, spellcasters are too busy increasing/protecting their current power to really worry that much about the masses. Yes that cleric could go make a trap of food and water or cure disease. But that would mean less treasure and exp for crafting himself some sweet new armor or weapon. And even if he crafted said, it would mean the evil cleric next door would have an edge against said benevolent cleric, because a trap of food and water takes a very, very, very, very long time to pay its investment back, while new weapons and armor allow for much faster profit.

After all, in the real world we could have completely eliminated starvation, seriously reduced a lot of diseases and solved a lot of problems that appear in the newspaper. But we don't. Because the people with power don't deem it would be profitable for them personally. Yet said people think it's worth it to spend rivers of money in fancier weapons. And in the real world we actually need masses of people to get any kind of big work done, whereas in D&D land a high level character doesn't really need society at all to prosper, so why should he/she help them at all?

Just like the demons and devils can't get their shit together to invade the material plane, humanoids can't get their shit together to make super magic society. Too busy fighting and dealing with the monster invasion of the week.

And even when they manage to temporaly get their shit together and make the mage city of Kalimdor, it's only a matter of time until somebody gets too greedy or simply screws up. Or the demons and devils stop and agree that those puny humies are getting too full of themselves, destroy their fancy magic city, then go back to the chaos vs law conflict.

After all, this is D&D. There's ruins of fallen super-civilization everywhere.

Drow of the Underdark even mentions that drow society makes a lot of great discovers and advances, only for some other jealous drow group to backstab you and then said researches are lost in the following conflict.

There's also an official D&D setting where the mind flayers had created super magic society and were steamrolling everything (including the Blood War indeed stopping), but then the mind flayers created a super soldier race to fight for them. That then rebelled. And then said super soldiers rebelled against themselves because of some misunderstanding. And that's how the Githyanki/Githzerai were born.

tl/dr: It's foolish to think that, given power, humanoids will just hold honds and sing hippie songs for a better society.

Also, making a city filled with magic bling and tasty food souls to corrupt high quality brains to eat people is an excellent way of attracting the ill attention of dragons/outsiders/mind flayers. That tiny village just isn't worh the effort for a Balor to organize a dark crusade. But the golden city of Kalandar? That's something worth destroying!

Plus efreeti have a society of their own, and I'm pretty sure said society would not be amused at all if word got around that their kind were being enslaved by some arrogant humie mage.

[Nunkuruji]

The reason D&D looks as expected is quite simple: Most humanoids are dicks. Or at least they're non-dicks only towards a relatively very small group of people.

The epic spellcasters? Too busy increasing/protecting their own power. Or they move to Sigil where everybody important is and stop caring about the material plane (completely raw, Sigil has epic spellcasters of all possible level combinations, normal settlements don't have even one).

Even for non-epic magic, spellcasters are too busy increasing/protecting their current power to really worry that much about the masses. Yes that cleric could go make a trap of food and water or cure disease. But that would mean less treasure and exp for crafting himself some sweet new armor or weapon. And even if he crafted said, it would mean the evil cleric next door would have an edge against said benevolent cleric, because a trap of food and water takes a very, very, very, very long time to pay its investment back, while new weapons and armor allow for much faster profit.

I would be inclined to say the Good cleric might make the unselfish decision to craft the trap.
Even some Evil casters 'care' about the masses, as a means to an end, as there are at least a few modules or stories involving these guys rising to Deity status via mass sacrifice (Kyuss, Kiransalee - her whole damn material plane). Zhentarim have to keep that army healthy, etc.

After all, in the real world we could have completely eliminated starvation, seriously reduced a lot of diseases and solved a lot of problems that appear in the newspaper. But we don't. Because the people with power don't deem it would be profitable for them personally. Yet said people think it's worth it to spend rivers of money in fancier weapons. And in the real world we actually need masses of people to get any kind of big work done, whereas in D&D land a high level character doesn't really need society at all to prosper, so why should he/she help them at all?

To make a real world comparison, the US Defense and Health care budgets are on the same order of magnitude.

In DnD, more than likely the most altruistic Good leader's utopic visions will be hampered by less than Good selfish nobles. Simply banishing everyone who doesn't Detect Good is probably not a Good thing in itself...

The foundations of material planes are built upon all aspects of the inner/outer planes, so it's improbable to have any sort of one-sided society for very long.

Just like the demons and devils can't get their shit together to invade the material plane, humanoids can't get their shit together to make super magic society. Too busy fighting and dealing with the monster invasion of the week.

I think it comes down to value of soul, and their potential if once they get turned. The usual example of the once great high level champion Paladin falling, vs. who cares about spending effort on corrupting dirt farmer Ted.

And even when they manage to temporaly get their shit together and make the mage city of Kalimdor, it's only a matter of time until somebody gets too greedy or simply screws up. Or the demons and devils stop and agree that those puny humies are getting too full of themselves, destroy their fancy magic city, then go back to the chaos vs law conflict.

Or Netheril, and again back to the let's become Deities.

After all, this is D&D. There's ruins of fallen super-civilization everywhere.

So play in an era when they existed... which would essentially be playing in a Tippyverse?

Drow of the Underdark even mentions that drow society makes a lot of great discovers and advances, only for some other jealous drow group to backstab you and then said researches are lost in the following conflict.

Welcome to the failure of Chaos alignment? Then again, that's what their goddess set them up for, and it's a great show to watch from the top of the layer cake.

There's also an official D&D setting where the mind flayers had created super magic society and were steamrolling everything (including the Blood War indeed stopping), but then the mind flayers created a super soldier race to fight for them. That then rebelled. And then said super soldiers rebelled against themselves because of some misunderstanding. And that's how the Githyanki/Githzerai were born.

Again, play the game during that era?

tl/dr: It's foolish to think that, given power, humanoids will just hold honds and sing hippie songs for a better society.

Also, making a city filled with magic bling and tasty food souls to corrupt high quality brains to eat people is an excellent way of attracting the ill attention of dragons/outsiders/mind flayers. That tiny village just isn't worh the effort for a Balor to organize a dark crusade. But the golden city of Kalandar? That's something worth destroying!

Plus efreeti have a society of their own, and I'm pretty sure said society would not be amused at all if word got around that their kind were being enslaved by some arrogant humie mage.

That's essentially just another mage society anyways, considering Wish alone.


I think what this is really pointing out is that there are Cycles, which I can't recall if Planescape really hit on as one of the central themes, though I know some factions do (would seem appropriate), and it's certainly one of the themes seen in a lot of Eastern mythologies (Dark Souls anyone)

[phaedrusxy]

I don't think what Oslecamo and Nunkuruji are saying necessarily contradict each other... Good point about the cycles, and "Tippyverse" having existed in some forms during the history of many fantasy worlds (but then been destroyed due to greed/jealousy/accident/etc). I've played in games set in ancient fantastical societies like Netheril. It can be pretty fun.
Edit: This kind of stuff also goes all the way back to Tolkien with his "great civilizations" and the whole decline of elves and men, etc, especially if you read the Silmarillion. The ancient elves were total badasses, and could create things like the Silmarils. Some of the ancient lines of humans were also supposed to be "better" than the modern ones (Aragorn was a descendent of them, Numenoreans, IIRC).

Having worlds with very different "levels" of this meet and interact could be very interesting. The plot of this SciFi book that I'm dying to read could be an inspiration.

[oslecamo]

The reason D&D looks as expected is quite simple: Most humanoids are dicks. Or at least they're non-dicks only towards a relatively very small group of people.

The epic spellcasters? Too busy increasing/protecting their own power. Or they move to Sigil where everybody important is and stop caring about the material plane (completely raw, Sigil has epic spellcasters of all possible level combinations, normal settlements don't have even one).

Even for non-epic magic, spellcasters are too busy increasing/protecting their current power to really worry that much about the masses. Yes that cleric could go make a trap of food and water or cure disease. But that would mean less treasure and exp for crafting himself some sweet new armor or weapon. And even if he crafted said, it would mean the evil cleric next door would have an edge against said benevolent cleric, because a trap of food and water takes a very, very, very, very long time to pay its investment back, while new weapons and armor allow for much faster profit.

I would be inclined to say the Good cleric might make the unselfish decision to craft the trap.

Yes. Then some adventurers may run into his death knight form centuries later, because again a trap of food and water takes an awful time to pay back, and meanwhile the evil cleric unleashed his zombie assault while clad on his pimped gear.

Even some Evil casters 'care' about the masses, as a means to an end, as there are at least a few modules or stories involving these guys rising to Deity status via mass sacrifice (Kyuss, Kiransalee - her whole damn material plane). Zhentarim have to keep that army healthy, etc.

The funny thing about preparing the victims for a mass sacrifice is that they still end as a mass sacrifice.

Anyway skipping some of your other points because I don't really have much to disagree about them.

So play in an era when they existed... which would essentially be playing in a Tippyverse?

No, because tippyverse assumes all humanoids are living in harmony and nobody does anything stupid/selfish/cruel at the cost of others.

Welcome to the failure of Chaos alignment? Then again, that's what their goddess set them up for, and it's a great show to watch from the top of the layer cake.

Considering how humans play Simcity, Dwarf Fortress, and similar games, it's my opinion that Lolth keeps the drow that way for her personal luz.

There's also an official D&D setting where the mind flayers had created super magic society and were steamrolling everything (including the Blood War indeed stopping), but then the mind flayers created a super soldier race to fight for them. That then rebelled. And then said super soldiers rebelled against themselves because of some misunderstanding. And that's how the Githyanki/Githzerai were born.

Again, play the game during that era?

That era would be even more of an opposite the tippyverse. It's super grimdark. Mind flayers are conquering everything, and mind flayers don't really have as much as a society but "obey the local elder brain and gather more delicious brains".

It could make for a quite awesome campaign, but either you're leading a futile resistance against mind flayers and there's really no time for society development, or you're trying to infiltrate their completely alien dominions where everybody will be trying to kill/enslave you.

tl/dr: It's foolish to think that, given power, humanoids will just hold honds and sing hippie songs for a better society.

Also, making a city filled with magic bling and tasty food souls to corrupt high quality brains to eat people is an excellent way of attracting the ill attention of dragons/outsiders/mind flayers. That tiny village just isn't worh the effort for a Balor to organize a dark crusade. But the golden city of Kalandar? That's something worth destroying!

Plus efreeti have a society of their own, and I'm pretty sure said society would not be amused at all if word got around that their kind were being enslaved by some arrogant humie mage.

That's essentially just another mage society anyways, considering Wish alone.

The trick being that efreeti can't grant wishes for themselves, so I imagine a complex web of favors where they get suckers to wish for what the efreeti wants, but have to always take care said suckers don't get too smart.

Anyway efreeti haven't conquered the rest of the multiverse, so clearly cruelty and selfinesh rule the City of Brass (Lawful Evil ho!).

I think what this is really pointing out is that there are Cycles, which I can't recall if Planescape really hit on as one of the central themes, though I know some factions do (would seem appropriate), and it's certainly one of the themes seen in a lot of Eastern mythologies (Dark Souls anyone)

Precisely. Cycles. While Tippyverse assumes an unchanging utopia where nothing can go wrong, because everybody works together to put down layers over layers of contigencies, and nobody ever screws up, either by stupidity or just ill intention, and every freaking non-humanoid seems to have fallen asleep on their job.

[Raineh Daze]

I thought Tippyverse assumed more that, on the local scale people are nice to each other, whilst inter-city stuff is just... bad. Essentially a world of xenophobic magically advanced tribes.

[oslecamo]

The tippyverse contradicts itself on that.

In one hand tippy does very vaguely mentions war and conflict between the mage cities.

On the other hand it keeps babbling about the whole basis of the setting being teleport circles networks for trade and whatnot. And that kind of thing won't happen unless you have massive amounts of trust between said cities, because at any moment instead of merchants, what may come out of the teleportation circle set in the middle of your city are the enemy elite squad shooting Aoos, or bersek monsters, or something worst.

Only very trusted friends would go "sure, you can teleport some thousands of dudes in my main civilian areas whenever you feel like it" instead of "If my  greater antcipate teleportation effect triggers, we'll shoot first, then shoot some more, then we'll ask questions to the charred corpses that remain."

[SorO_Lost]

The issue with A) is that there's a difference between Spell Traps and Traps that Cast Spells.  "Spell Traps" are spells that, in themselves, are traps.

*Sigh* Do you even know the difference because it sounds like you just think there is but have no f'ing clue how to explain it.

On page 67 is differentiates the types of traps are split into two categories; Mechanical Traps & Spell Traps. Spell Trap is further divided into yet another Magic Trap section and Magic Device. After the examples Mechanical Trap have a PC-Designed section and it's from this you pull PC-Crafting rules from. Similarly, Spell Trap has a PC-Designed section, and it says your DM has to agree with you. In a world without DMs, how do you do this?

Reset can ambiguously apply to both because "Magic Trap" is both an entire category or a subsection. The idea it only applies to one is purely based off the examples. This serves a problem you anyone who runs around shouting RAW this and RAW that because RAW doesn't care about what you think intent is.

And kind of the final straw, a strawman really, there are other things that require DM approval of, so if you're going to fart out any illogical reason that you have such approval, why the hell wouldn't you just use Epic Spells?

The point of Teleportation Circle in Tippyverse is to explain the existence of the Cities, and to explain the non-existence of small towns and villages.

No it isn't. According to Tippy him self "The Tippyverse (TV henceforth) was created when I was looking at the impact of long distance teleportation magic on a setting; more precisely just how badly such magic mangles the traditional settings. Let’s look at the military and economic implications of such magic." For military he assumes no one would ever fucking ward them selves against Teleport and for Economic he never even discusses the impact it would have outside of city size.

And let's go ahead and hit that up, normally cities grow outwards due to requiring more land as more and more people are born and migrate into it. Eventually this consumes other nearby towns which become "regions" or "areas" inside the city. Like Hollywood Florida was/is it's own city until it was swallowed up by Miami and "forced" into a merger. But if you remove distance as a factor? What if a stroll down the street can take you ten feet or fifty miles in the same amount of time? Nearby cities can maintain their walls and refuse to submit. And so what if they do? Your farmlands can be halfway around the world, their fields thousands of miles apart, and to you it's 10ft of walking distance to reach each. The cities are not large can compact because there is no room to grow, it's literately the opposite.

And speaking of, if you're assuming you can shove an infinite number of resetting spell traps in the world, why the hell would you use Teleportation Circle? 

[PlzBreakMyCampaign]

Meanwhile, E: not all 9th's are broken.

Of the percentage that aren't, most of those are unnecessary. You don't lose much by not having the non-broken 9ths considering 8ths are around. Actually finding a 9th only good (useful, unique, etc) but non broken spell is hard.

I think this is a case of contradicting text.

They are just specifics that break the rule. None of the those are 'helpful' traps anyways, except for tomb-tainted team evul coming out ahead again.

Umm... why am I mentioned here? 

Doc Roc mentioned you in one of the RAW campaign threads.

In F), people who craft magic items simply continue to do so as normal, and then find a new group of people to adventure with when it starts getting too hard.  It would have no effect on the world.

I wasn't explicit but I did mean always behind the xp ball. So they'd only get 190k xp before being considered epic

[Chemus]

Your proposal regarding XP costs gives crafters an effective level adjustment, permanently hosing anyone who makes a magic item. Casters would be dominating anyone with crafting feats into doing the crafting, instead of making items themselves. Therefore, nobody would take crafting feats for fear of losing life force. One of the things that gives 3.x an edge over 2nd ed. is the ability for magicky characters to make magic stuff.

The fix, IMO, would be to have any magical effect that can do work have a use cost when invested in a magic item; charges for example. No more rods of freebie mending, freebie heat metal, et al. I hate costed abilities because of bookkeeping, but it's one way to fix the thermodynamics trouble when applying physics to the D&D rules. I don't play my campaigns in the Tippyverse, preferring to hand-wave most of the fluff, so I'm gonna keep golems and at-will/continuous spell effect items, personally.

The concern about 'xp is a river' is misplaced, IMO. GP is a river too; treasure is not required to be evenly split among party members (unless one or more have VoP). If one character overspends, his share can be adjusted by the other characters in the party until an equilibrium they find satisfying, or some semblance thereof, is reached. XP is a river because without it, if anyone gets behind, they can't catch up without leaving the party behind, at least temporarily. Or, as you seem to propose, they never ever ever catch up. Not conducive to fun play. At least not among the twelve year olds.

[SorO_Lost]

After all, this is D&D. There's ruins of fallen super-civilization everywhere.

So play in an era when they existed... which would essentially be playing in a Tippyverse?

LMAO no.

Tippyverse is built on ruins, not the other way around. Specifically, Eberron's world is torn to shambles. He uses House Cannith, Eberron-style currency, the idea of a large city such as Sharn, the concept of using magic for transportation, Gods don't interfere, and so on. I think his locations (dragons in mountains, elves in woods) are the only different things since that is literately as unimaginative as you could possible be. It's all just toned down & grayscaled with some very poor design decisions with so little written about it that it's vague enough to pretend it's supposed to mean something.

Good point about the cycles, and "Tippyverse" having existed in some forms during the history of many fantasy worlds (but then been destroyed due to greed/jealousy/accident/etc). I've played in games set in ancient fantastical societies like Netheril. It can be pretty fun.

Not always, most I've read fall into the don't.

The Sword of Truth and the Dragon Rider series share the concept that the peaks of Spellcasting happened a generation ago, simply because the BBEG is currently murdering everyone. Series like the Wheel of Time and the Wild Mages have strong casters in the past but the present has even stronger casters with new powers making the "prime" age of magic current instead of anything else. In Star Wars the uber Force users appear in the Extended Universe, and even in the films the most powerful Jedi & Sith to note appear. In the massive line of Valdmer (sp) books the peak of magic is restored during the series and is rebuilt anew. And everyone knows the Fellowship of the Ring which has no deterioration between past and present, the same goddamn elves that were alive for the first war were still around for the second. Futurama of course says ancient aliens were inspired by us.

The Trope does have several entries on TVTropes but not near as many as you'd think. I think it's also insulting to equate real authors to "Tippyverse" by the way. Even George Lucus has a better track record, he at least waits until the third of fourth film to crap on his universe, and no one is dumb enough to suggest "Lucusverse" appears in other novels unless you really want to piss someone off.

No, because tippyverse assumes all humanoids are living in harmony and nobody does anything stupid/selfish/cruel at the cost of others.

Is that what you read? I mean it's vague and generic as hell so you have to fill in the details and probably assumed everyone lives in peace in order to make things happen as a means to explain how things can function as stated. But there is no notation of it and the Barbarian tribes and Orcs living in the "Wild" suggest different Races of Humanoids don't get along at all. And in his history section he suggests Civil Wars destroy cities suggests the people in the cities don't even like each other to begin with either.

Your proposal regarding XP costs gives crafters an effective level adjustment, permanently hosing anyone who makes a magic item. Casters would be dominating anyone with crafting feats into doing the crafting, instead of making items themselves.

The creator's CL must be high enough to crete the item, even if another Spellcaster will cast the specified Spells for it. Permanent Teleportation Circle requires Dominating a 17th level Spellcaster which has had access to Mindblank for a couple levels already.

As a tip, read the next response twice.

so I'm gonna keep golems and at-will/continuous spell effect items, personally.

Creating a Shadesteel Golem costs more than creating an Ice Assassin of a Warforged Wizard, and while both are immune to SR-checking Spells only the latter has Spellcasting.

Also Shadesteels love Undead and are best used along side an army of Zombie Hydras ordered to support the Golem. But I suppose both of these options are too optimized for GitP...

[Chemus]

Hunh. I had the impression that 'Tippyverse' was a generic term for 'D&D rules merged with manufacturing and processing methodology' rather than a particular construct at GitP. My bad. Shoulda done moar homework.

Yes, Ice Assassin trumps dominate, dominate came to mind first is all. Wish I'd thought of IA first. The warforged (animated construct thingy) w/ casting is definitely better than a golem (animated construct thingy) w/o casting. What I intended to say with that line was: 'I'm not gonna play in the mfg/processing D&D, so I'll just keep things as they are, for now.' Again, I hadn't understood that this was a reference to a specific 'setting' rather than to a generic concept.

[linklord231]

The issue with A) is that there's a difference between Spell Traps and Traps that Cast Spells.  "Spell Traps" are spells that, in themselves, are traps.

*Sigh* Do you even know the difference because it sounds like you just think there is but have no f'ing clue how to explain it.

On page 67 is differentiates the types of traps are split into two categories; Mechanical Traps & Spell Traps. Spell Trap is further divided into yet another Magic Trap section and Magic Device. After the examples Mechanical Trap have a PC-Designed section and it's from this you pull PC-Crafting rules from. Similarly, Spell Trap has a PC-Designed section, and it says your DM has to agree with you. In a world without DMs, how do you do this?

Reset can ambiguously apply to both because "Magic Trap" is both an entire category or a subsection. The idea it only applies to one is purely based off the examples. This serves a problem you anyone who runs around shouting RAW this and RAW that because RAW doesn't care about what you think intent is.

And kind of the final straw, a strawman really, there are other things that require DM approval of, so if you're going to fart out any illogical reason that you have such approval, why the hell wouldn't you just use Epic Spells?

First off, the two types of traps are Mechanical Traps and Magic Traps, not Mechanical and Spell.  Those two categories are further split off in to 6 subcategories:  Pits, Ranged Attack Traps, Melee Attack Traps, Spell Traps, Magic Device Traps, and Special. 

Types of Traps: A trap can be either mechanical or magic in nature. Mechanical traps include pits, arrow traps, falling blocks, water-filled rooms, whirling blades, and anything else that depends on a mechanism to operate. A mechanical trap can be constructed by a PC through successful use of the Craft (trapmaking) skill (see Designing a Trap, page 74, and the skill description on page 70 of the Player’s Handbook).
Magic traps are further divided into spell traps and magic device traps. Magic device traps initiate spell effects when activated, just as wands, rods, rings, and other magic items do. Creating a magic device trap requires the Craft Wondrous Item feat (see Designing a Trap, page 74, and the feat description on page 92 of the Player’s Handbook). Spell traps are simply spells that themselves function as traps, such as fire trap or glyph of warding. Creating a spell trap requires the services of a character who can cast the needed spell or spells, who is usually either the character creating the trap or an NPC spellcaster hired for the purpose.

The rule PBMC quoted only applies to Spell Traps, while 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, but I honestly don't see how you can argue that the Tippyverse can't exist because the "traps" it's based on can't exist by RAW. 

Regarding the whole "DM must agree with you" thing:  Are you seriously arguing that a campaign setting can't exist because the author of said setting didn't ask his DM whether or not a character in the setting can create a certain magic item? 

Edit:  For reference, The Definative Guide to the Tippyverse, as explained by the author. 

[Heliomance]

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. That's the reason for the high density megacities - to condense the population into an area that can plausibly be protected with Forbiddance, Weirdstones, or other such effects.

Forbiddance also has that irritating side effect of killing all the commoners in your nation that don't share your alignment, which is a bit of an inconvenience.

[Nunkuruji]

Back to the original post

A) Inevitably across eras/editions there are unlimited/continuous/daily magic items, cost is somewhat of an edition RAW thing, but it can at least be assumed increased level of magic is relatively costly to create. So it's merely a matter of defining how relatively expensive are these reusable magic items that fulfill basic societal needs.

D/E) Stepping into DM only territory, I've seen things written such as spell warded area redirects teleports into a dimensionally locked prison. I'm not sure how one achieves that RAW, but it's within the intention and power of high level magic, 8th level spells probably.

E) I'll touch on this briefly for 5e here
http://www.minmaxboards.com/index.php?topic=14678.0

Getting Fabricate and Wall of Stone online in a quickly reusable fashion is quite a boon to material construction. These are core to most/all editions.


F) I'm not sure XP as a river matters. It's a PC/adventure length optimization, but at the macro scale, everyone is on the same footing. Have to calculate the rate of magic item creation over time, and destruction/loss of those items vs. population growth/decline.