Are you really nostalgic for 3.5, or just for PHB Wizards?

[jt]

I never got into TippyVerse. The first post says that the world ends up being a handful of huge cities connected by teleportation circles, but as soon as there's a permanent teleporter that's just one big city.

If you enjoy this sort of thing you may like The Two Year Emperor, which is a story that explores D&D rules exploits and then societies built on them. The plotting is repetitive though.

[Libertad]

Tippy's proposed setting is predicated on the notion that 17th level arcane spellcasters don't inherently consider such petty concerns as conquering the entire Prime Material to be beneath their notice, much less expertise.

Hey man, the US and Soviet Union invaded plenty of third-world countries to show off their dick-nukes, I don't find it implausible that archmages would regularly go smacking around the muggles as an ego trip.

[maglag]

Tippy's proposed setting is predicated on the notion that 17th level arcane spellcasters don't inherently consider such petty concerns as conquering the entire Prime Material to be beneath their notice, much less expertise.

(More precisely, he states in the thread "Remove permanent Teleportation Circles and a Tippyverse will never form in the first place." That spell is Sor/Wiz 9 in the edition that he was working with.)

And to a degree on the idea that armies even matter in RAW D&D, particularly as it thinks shadesteel golems (CR 11) are not roadkill to any target that a 17th level wizard deems worthy of their effort to oppose.

By raw D&D, anybody in the army can become another 17th level arcane caster in a matter of a few months or even weeks, so the 17th level arcane caster needs to keep a constant eye on the material plane lest a bunch of dangerous rivals pop up.

Of course then the logical progress for any RAW D&D campaign would be "You start at the tavern and...You all no-save, just-died by the high level caster that divined one day you would become powerful enough to challenge them head on so he's taking you out of the picture now that you're still weak and vulnerable. Wasn't that a fun RAW D&D campaign?"

[Lokey]

Don't forget about the Mirror Mephit in your backstory, that was just a simulacrum of your party

RaW is what we can discuss excepting widely known stuff like Tomes. Tippy's group actually plays that way, so that's an interesting fishbowl to stare into (mostly they dream up non-caster builds that have a chance to be relevant. Find his Elder Evil monk challenge, that's a good read.)

Let's see...Shadesteel Golems are really neat (there are cheesy ways to mind-switch with one). Perfect Fly, neat conceal ability that gets you cover, which is one of the most effective ways to say no to anything and the chassis is plenty good. Throw in some golem crafting and they're able to mulch most things a couple CR above them and they get int/more int/actually a lot of int with caster level boosters.

You actually don't need a 17th level arcane for Perm Teleport Circles, Warlock 12 can do any of that if they can meet the xp cost (and crafting feats and whatnot). Or anyone with a Gate Scroll and some knowledge checks.