Explain it to Me.

[darkmaster]

He was talking about the kind of magic items that can be in a town of that size, not the actual amount of gold in the town. That is, however, an extremely large small town.

[Kaelik]

Well, there are like 5 levels of settlement smaller than small town.

Pick some of these:

Small Thorpe
Thorpe
Large Thorpe
Small Hamlet
Regular Othello
Large King Henry
Small Settlement
Settlement
Large Settlement

[Surgo]

Large King Henry

What the...

[Vebyast]

Large King Henry

What the...

Regular Othello

[RobbyPants]

Large King Henry

What the...

Hamlet -> Othello -> King Henry

Shakespeare jokes.

[Username17]

One thing about the city list in the DMG is that the settlements are very small. London in 1100 was 15,000 people, which puts it in as a "Large City", and in 1300 it clocked in at 80,000 people putting it near the upper end of "Metropolis". But actually major cities of antiquity don't wipe their ass with cities that small. You only need one hundred thousand people to count as a "planar metropolis" and classical Rome, Teotihuacan, or Xianyang all clocked in at roughly ten times that.

But even without the brutal historical comparisons, it should be noted that the players at your table live in the modern world. And in the modern world a city of more than 100,000 people just isn't impressive at all. We aren't talking about great hubs of trade like New York, we're talking about footnotes like Temecula California, Centennial Colorado, or South Bend Indiana. Seriously, a "planar metropolis clocks in as "The fourth biggest city in Utah (West Jordan)". So far from being a massive hub of trade where you could get anything you could imagine - it could easily be like Billings Montana where there are like two restaurants open after six and one of them is a Hooters.

The largest city type in the game amounts to what a modern person would call a sleepy burg that they don't give a fuck about. The expectation that these places are like the bazaar world from the MythAdventures series is just fucking bizarre.

-Username17

[Vebyast]

There's also a problem with high-level character demographics. There's a table somewhere that puts down the number of characters of each level in a city of a given size, and it turns out that high-level characters are ridiculously common. I forget exactly what the numbers were, but, depending on the setting's rural/urban ratio, something like .1% of the world's population can cast Limited Wish out of their own spell slots.

[ModelCitizen]

A metropolis has four wizards of level 1d4+12, so yeah, an uncomfortably high number of Limited Wish casters.

But the average metropolis also has four epic level Commoners, which isn't even a thing you should be allowed to be. I can't figure out the stupidest part of that table, because every row I look at becomes the new stupidest thing.

[K]

A metropolis has four wizards of level 1d4+12, so yeah, an uncomfortably high number of Limited Wish casters.

That's barely enough casters for a single high-level fight.

I mean, high-level play needs high-level good NPCs and high-level villains, and honestly the planar metropolis is not even filled with enough high-level characters for a decent adventure, much less a campaign.

In practice, a typical high-level campaign is going to feature that many high-level characters per adventure and is still going to have to cheat and use a bunch of high-CR animals and other things that the party could kill ten levels ago with something like flight.

[ModelCitizen]

That's just wizards though. A metropolis also has four clerics, druids, sorcerers, etc of level 1dX+12.

I see how it's useful for putting enemies on the field, but it also means the players can't be the big dogs in a city until the game gets into Wish/Gate levels.

[darkmaster]

Likely, the high level casters in a city just don't care enough about you to do anything. If they really don't like something you do, they can prepare a spell to undo it the next day. If they're really vindictive, then they probably send the endless waves of minions they can afford to pay to throw their bodies at you, all the while never even knowing you by face.

[K]

That's just wizards though. A metropolis also has four clerics, druids, sorcerers, etc of level 1dX+12.

Meh, who cares? I mean, a single adventure can cut through all four guys of the twelve real classes and the party will barely gain a level and won't even get rich on the crap NPC-levels of loot. Heck, they won't even notice/remember the fight where the four bards get ganked.

That being said, the actual number of engaged high-level characters is probably much smaller. The "law of DnD stories" says that at least a third will be villains and in hiding because they run the thieves guild or dark temple or some other criminal enterprise. Some will be retired because they've gotten as rich and powerful as they care to or they don't want to risk leaving their kids as orphans. Others will just be more interested in spending their wealth or doing magic research or administrating some thing like a temple or just doing their own adventures.

I know that once I was chain-binding sex demons/angels, getting me to leave the house is going to require more than gold or fame or power when the downside is all the terrible things that can happen to an adventurer which include being turned into ghoulspawn or sent off to some no-magic hell dimension or mindraped or something.

Of the 48 high-level NPCs in a planar metropolis, probably five or six will be non-villains the PCs might meet. The chances of those guys having abilities that make the PCs feel small in pants is pretty low.

I mean, there really is no number of high-level bards that will ever make my PC feel small in the pants.

[Fuchs]

Even if it's a sublime chord build with level 9 wizard spells?

[K]

Even if it's a sublime chord build with level 9 wizard spells?

Level 9 sorcerer spells. Remember that.

Yeh, I'm not too worried about a class with less spells known and less spells per day than a sorcerer and no PrC abilities worth mentioning. I mean, a decent high-level spellcaster build is based on having a lot of buffs and knowing enough spells to know the right spells, and a Sublime Chord is bad at both of those things.

As far as I can tell, Sublime Chord is a class that is supposed to make PCs feel like they are killing powerful NPCs because they have higher-level slots, but they suck enough to be comparable challenges to much-lower level characters.

[Fuchs]

Even if it's a sublime chord build with level 9 wizard spells?

Level 9 sorcerer spells. Remember that.

Yeh, I'm not too worried about a class with less spells known and less spells per day than a sorcerer and no PrC abilities worth mentioning. I mean, a decent high-level spellcaster build is based on having a lot of buffs and knowing enough spells to know the right spells, and a Sublime Chord is bad at both of those things.

As far as I can tell, Sublime Chord is a class that is supposed to make PCs feel like they are killing powerful NPCs because they have higher-level slots, but they suck enough to be comparable challenges to much-lower level characters.

The buffs are one thing, but the right spells is iffy - if you plan on NPC wizards having prepared just the right spells you could as well plan on sorcerors to have chosen just the right spells known.

[Aharon]

What about a sublime chord that uses the ridiculous CL-interpretation?

But seriously, I thought it was accepted that bards aren't that bad. Sure, maybe not the most interesting to play, but with some optimization, still a reasonable challenge for PCs.

I admit I haven't actually seen them in high level play, but between 7th and 10th, the bard in the party really helped everybody that used attack rolls or damage rolls in any way a lot. And that includes the wizard that shoots debuffs like enervation around as well as the archer cleric.

[Just another user]

Where does the magemart idea even come from? I can't recall an example of it in fiction, off the top of my head, at least one that wasn't a joke or a trap.

The 3E DMG implies that you can buy any magic item you want, and the Magic Item Compendium straight up says that DMs should allow players to buy what they want.

It doesn't specifically say magemart, but taht's the basic assumption since it doesn't say you're waiting for the item to be crafted.

In 4E you can craft any magic item in an hour so commissioned items are much more doable.

OTOH in 4e many items should not exist practically because anybody who could craft them could, and will, always craft something better, and this even without considering things like NPCs that can't use healing potions because they don't have healing surges (so why craft them?) and things like that.