If all you want to do is dungeon crawl, stay mid-level.

[Orion]

Well, I think there *is* a legitimate question about whether the features Lago wants are mission creep for D&D or the fulfillment of the D&D vision. Nobody is denying that those who want world-shaping power should write a game that uses it.

The question is, should it be called D&D 5 or Exalted 3?

[Midnight_v]

I for one am not completly satisfied that any of lagos definitons of high level play are not simply low level play, but with epic Dlc costumes.

I mean from the last time this came up he's seems to have managed to refine the verbage of his "Nyah nyah can't stab it" zombie apocalypse motif but really having read a couple Max Brooks literary works would let you in on even when the continent is over run, it still not epic. Why?
Zombies are fought with education.

Anyone with diplomacy, a standing army, and the ability to spread the idea "headshots only" could stop stop a zombie apocalypse really.
Course thats tradtional romero zombies... which has approximately jack shit to do with D&D zombies. (becase they're not contagious).

Giving you that point for free though and even if it is the shadow over the sun thing, you have an option there. Either:
A. Someone has a power that says "I merge the positive and negative plane" which isn't an adventure, because its in thier talent tree and its "All in a mornings work"
Or
B. You have to go on a quest to get "Said merger power" which can only be assembled via difficult to reach locales and therefore is the same as any "Fetch McGuffin" power.

So am I way off there? Is this whole thing still not:
Epic Level = (High Leve)l^2
.................................................................................................

This could be extrapolated to all his other examples as well.

[DSMatticus]

Yeah, his examples don't satisfy me very much, because they're basically examples of quests.

And quests, no matter what power level you expect from the players who participate in them, follow the exact same 'minigame/rules system' we already have rules for. "Go here, do X, repeat until done. Results."

To actually get the fun out of high-level play, we need entirely new 'minigames/rule systems.' Systems for ruling baronies, kingdoms, and eventually being able to do godly things. You can still do quests at that part, but characters are interacting with more minigames that make them feel more bad-arse and important, and it's more than just, "to conquer this kingdom, go here, do X, repeat until done. Results," where eventually the PC's realize, "hey, this is all arbitrary based on what you say, huh? Kinda... disappointing."

[Lago PARANOIA]

What I really wanted to get at is that Lago is talking about a wide range of things, each of which should actually be happening at a different point of the game. Lago's idea of high-level play actually breaks down into at least two distinct realms of play, and I feel like it could be three or four. Just because we've stopped dungeoneering doesn't mean the progression from there is straight to god.

I can kind of see where you're going with this but how do you decide what goes in what layers? How does each layer interact? At what point do you stop worrying about the lower layers?

Look, all of the stuff I said that were the non-phlebtonium facets of high-level play isn't exclusive to high-level play. There's no reason why you can't do any of that at level 1, same reason why you can't rescue the world at level 1 if the DM or module throws enough MacGuffins at you.

The point of the high-level division is to tell people that from now on, that is the standard of adventuring. When you were mid and low levels you may have experienced one or more of those paradigms but it wasn't mandatory at any point. But now that you're playing with the Big Boys you don't have an option to regularly refuse them. When you are a high-level person, you STOP devoting your life to magical sword upgrades. You STOP pretending like any city smaller than Sigil matters enough to someone of your abilities.

Mid-level characters still do crap like raid lairs for lewt and take quests from the king and do 95% of their adventuring in small bands; even if they do do stuff that high-level characters do, the dungeon crawling crap inherently gimps their flavor. If you do small-time stuff and worry about small-time things then... you're still small-time. It's the Spider-Man paradox. Even though he's saved the world several times that he has to haggle over the price of hot dogs and live with his Aunt make him small-time. If Spider-Man wants to advance to the ranks of Epic like Dr. Strange, it's not enough for him to get a power upgrade. He needs to abandon all of that mundane crap.

[Midnight_v]

I feel like he just glanced at what I said... still, maybe I'm missing something. Anyone? There seems to be only local and stake changes which are superficial at best.
Working for the Tzar Perilous is no different from working for Apollo the sun god and is no different when you replace them yourself.
Punch in face, sit in chair, hear the lamentation yadda yadda.
So maybe I dont' get it, and I hope someone can explain but fighting the kobolds at level 1 is going to be superficially the same mission as fighting the devil horde at level XXX. Locals numbers, and tactics change but thats it. Ryu throwing a fireball at bison is the same thing as Goku firing kamehameha at Frieza or whoever.
So the thing isn' tthat I think you're "wrong" perse its that I genuinely don't understand what high level play is supposed to be other than low level play with bigger numbers and analogy difined background.

(Low Level^2) = High Level
Inn Tavern in Chult = In tavern in Sigil
Ogre Lord = Demon lord
Save the city = Save the world/plane/multiverse (ooohhh epic)

So the entirety of the idea that a new type of game is needed is both pretentious and obvious, because its not any better to use the "OVER 9000!" as your slogan, and obvious because there are no rules that exist for merging plances you just need the cosmic mcguffin.

Also:

If Spider-Man wants to advance to the ranks of Epic like Dr. Strange, it's not enough for him to get a power upgrade. He needs to abandon all of that mundane crap

google "Captain Universe" Marvel comics.

[Swordslinger]

Okay, here are some examples of what I regard as high-level plots and deeds.

The funny thing is that most of these things are dungeon crawls. Going into hell and fighting the demon princes is going to end up being an invasion of their fortresses. Fighting in some dude's dreams is going to play out similar to a dungeon, albeit a very unorthodox one.

All I really see is that you want adventures to have more longstanding consequences. Which is good for epic adventures, but ultimately doesn't require a huge amount of changes. I don't really see why most of that stuff couldn't be accomplished in 4E if you added a few rituals to handle the basic premise.

The plotlines that don't play out like dungeon crawls are basically going to be entirely either DM fiat or something you can or can't do with minimal effort. Creating winged orcs is either a power your character has or doesn't have, it's really not an adventure. At most it's using the spell research mechanic. Advancing society or terraforming the moon is going to end up just being the DM fast forwarding stuff, and DM fiat everything. At that point you might as well not even have a rules set because you wont' bother making any die rolls.

D&D is a combat game. I just don't see any point trying to go beyond that and pretend it can be Empire: Total War, SimCity or SimEarth. Because it's just not. The more you go that direction, the more you're just having your DM purely make shit up. Easier to just use a homebrew rules lite system for that anyway.

[souran]

I have an idea:


IF LAGO DOES NOT WANT TO PLAY AN ADVENTURER ANYMORE THEN LAGO SHOULD PLAY ANOTHER GAME

Past experience has shown that thier is a limited desire for a fairly simple ruleship minigame that could accompany D&D. 3.X shows that it is by no means mandatory.

However, Lago desires to go way beyond that. He wants level 18-20 to be some kind of SPORE/CIV/SIM hybrid. That minigame doesn't exist for most Fantasy/Sci-fi rpgs because it would only tangentially interact with the entire rest of the ruleset.

I also feel for Lago, I really do because there is no table top wargame or rpg that is designed around building races and then fighting them to determine which axis of the great wheel wins. While this is not a bad game concept I think it is probably limited in appeal.

The other thing I would like to piont out is that High level D&D characters are impressive because they are really good at doing D&D things.
9th level spells are impressive becuase of how awesome they make at being a murder hobo. Not a single spell makes you a better emperor, or a more effective diety or even provides a bonus to the roll to merge the positive and negative planes.

The only reason high level heroes in D&D and other TTRPGS are world beaters anyway is because of aribitrary decisions in the way the combat engine works.

D&D combat is good for fighting one band of 2-8 murder hobos against another similar sized band. Sometimes the enenmy band gets 20+ people but in a situation like that often its depected waves.

Forced to fight like that, and with only a single +2 bonus awarded no matter how overwhelming the numerical superiority is heroes can kill a near infinite number of lower level threats. If you made those lower level threats able to act like swarms or something and inflict auto-damage based on massively outnumbering the heroes then the players would want/need armies themselves and quite a bit of Franks ranting on why D&Dland can't have a real society stops being meaningful.

My point is only that if we are going to have an alternate mini-game that is going to become the central focus of the game after a certain point then the spells/magic items/class abilities need to be focued on this new game. That would seem to imply that all the stuff that is designed around being an adventurer should get crammed back into the "adventerur" part of the game. So if High Levels (16-20 or 18-20 I don't know when Lago wants GAME 2 to start) where do black tentacles, gate, impronsment, wish, desintegrate and power word kill go in the level chart?

Part of the Problem is that Lagos defintiion of both high level and epic are really meaningless to everybody except Lago. "The Lord of the Rings" is epic. Its powerlevel is low compared to some other media. Aragon probably couldn't even take Beowolf in a fight. The wheel of time is epic. However, even as the last battle is approaching even Rand doesn't come close to what fits into your "epic" game. The story is still character focused with significant mcguffins being keys to why characters take actions. Af far as I can tell your EPIC heroes are some sort of divine Dexter-Nietzche amalgum where morality is really a meaningless fiction to them and they take action to fill intrinsic needs that may be universilzable. However, they are still totally unrelatable. Lago doesn't want an Epic D&D game, he wants Epic characters of a sort that humans don't really tell stories about beacause they defy casual narrative.

So I think that the only really workable solution is for Lago to play a different game and in that game pretend to be his D&D character.

[Wrathzog]

D&D is a combat game. I just don't see any point trying to go beyond that and pretend it can be Empire: Total War, SimCity or SimEarth. Because it's just not. The more you go that direction, the more you're just having your DM purely make shit up. Easier to just use a homebrew rules lite system for that anyway.

That's the thing, D&D Isn't JUST a combat game. It's a roleplaying game which just so happens to have lots and lots of rules for combat. If players want to be murdering hobos, then that's great. D&D can handle that just fine.

But if the players want to be Generals or Kings or Gods, things start to change. You need rules for mass combat for the Generals. You need rules for kingdom management for the kings. You need rules for creating winged Orcs for the Gods.
Actually, that's it right there. That's the four layers of gameplay that you need to keep track of.

1) Dungeon Level - This is the lowest level of gameplay. This is basically 4E D&D. Units at this level represent individuals (disregarding things like swarms). Distance is measured in 5 ft squares. Time is measured in 6 second chunks.
2) Battlefield Level - The next level up... An Enemy unit may actually be a Squad of Hill Giants or a Platoon of Goblins. There may be some individuals running around, but they're going to be equal in strength to a squad of hill giants or a platoon of goblins. Distances are measured in thousand foot increments. Time is measured in 6 minute chunks.
3) Kingdom Level - Ruling and maintaining a Kingdom or Realm of Influence. Units now represent entire Armies of Thousands of creatures or Cities. Distances are measured in Leagues (or maybe something larger) and time is kept track of in terms of Days.
4) Cosmic Level - This should be so abstract to the point that things like Distance and Time don't matter to you anymore. Units are Gods, Planets, and entire Races of creatures. I don't actually know how this would play out exactly... I guess like the last episode of Gurren Lagann.

9th level spells are impressive becuase of how awesome they make at being a murder hobo. Not a single spell makes you a better emperor, or a more effective diety or even provides a bonus to the roll to merge the positive and negative planes.

Sure, but 9th Level spells can make you an Emperor. If you're the most powerful dude in the Empire, that means you can take the Empire and become Emperor, and once it's established that that is possible, we need rules for it. Not because EVERYONE is going to be doing it, but because SOMEONE is going to be doing it.
If you don't want something like this in the game, you have to establish the fact that players will never gain enough power to reach those levels of influence. 4E is the worst offender of this because it straight up lies to you once you hit Epic. You're supposed to be someone that shakes the very planes with his every step... and there is absolutely no mechanical backing for that concept. That is bad.

[RadiantPhoenix]

I don't think the concern is "I want to play logistics and dragons" (Although I personally would be interested...), but rather that many people seem to want a high level 'dungeon crawl' to be just like a low level 'dungeon crawl' except with bigger numbers and fancier window dressing.

A 'dungeon crawl' where each 'room' is a some place on a different plane and you 'kick in the door' by teleporting in, 'kill the monsters' where the monsters are concepts like starvation which you attack with things like, in this case, hero's feast sounds like an appropriate high level adventure even though you can nominally fit it to a conventional dungeon-crawling paradigm.

[souran]

Sure, but 9th Level spells can make you an Emperor. If you're the most powerful dude in the Empire, that means you can take the Empire and become Emperor, and once it's established that that is possible, we need rules for it. Not because EVERYONE is going to be doing it, but because SOMEONE is going to be doing it.

Did you really read anything? Being the most powerful individual in the empire only matters if everybody has to fight you

using the combat system designed to fight murder hobos and giant lizards We can make the rules for the emperor minigame such that being a good murder hobo doesn't help, because these rules are just as aribtrary as our original combat rules.

Second: There is NO SPELL that you can cast that gives you an empire save Wish. A wish used that way would be subject to such DM wankery and backlash that it basically procludes it.

However, even that is not really what I said. What I said is that there are no spells in the game currently that make you a BETTER emperor. There are no spells/magic items/ or class abilities in the game that are designed to play the new rulership minigame.

The spells are all designed to make you a better murder hobo. If you want to have another major minigame then all the high end murder hobo abilities in the game need to be placed at the high end of being a murder hobo.

If you don't want something like this in the game, you have to establish the fact that players will never gain enough power to reach those levels of influence.

Well thats sort of the whole point isn't it? Having 20 levels of murder hobo themed abilities with progressive more dangerous foes that are designed to be overcome using murder hobo tactics would seem to place the emphsis of the game on being a murder hobo and the lack of rules for merging the various planes or figting mass combats between armies of angels and demons or the rulership of empires would mean that those elements are peripheral to the game.

4E is the worst offender of this because it straight up lies to you once you hit Epic. You're supposed to be someone that shakes the very planes with his every step... and there is absolutely no mechanical backing for that concept. That is bad.

And this is pure bullshit.

A 4E character can be a king, or an emperor or a demi-god. However, its pretty up front about telling you that the game doesn't include rules for determining if your emperor has a 30 year reign of piece and prosperity.
Its rules let you tell stories were the king personally goes out to save his kingdom - and becomes the murder hobo he was in his youth or whatever.

Similarly, what "mechanical backing"would be needed in order for you to feel that you "shake the very planes with your every step?"

Epic 4E characters fight demon princes, are involved in the death of dieties can travel to the ends of the universe, Pretty much the stuff campaign ending adventures are filled with. 3.x characters coudl od this as well and so could 2e and 1e characters. However there have never really been rules that let you change the nature of elves and orcs or change the existing cosmology.

Epic is always going to be somewhat relative to the the idea at hand. "A story of Epic Adventure" will generally be about adventurers - be the kings or divine bastards or just jumped up dirt farmers.

[tzor]

However, even that is not really what I said. What I said is that there are no spells in the game currently that make you a BETTER emperor. There are no spells/magic items/ or class abilities in the game that are designed to play the new rulership minigame.

I'm going to strongly disagree; there are a ton of spells that can be used to optimize your forces and maximize your profit. That makes you a better emperor.

[souran]

However, even that is not really what I said. What I said is that there are no spells in the game currently that make you a BETTER emperor. There are no spells/magic items/ or class abilities in the game that are designed to play the new rulership minigame.

I'm going to strongly disagree; there are a ton of spells that can be used to optimize your forces and maximize your profit. That makes you a better emperor.

No it doesn't because all you can do is the same old magi-tech bullshit people have been talking about for 4 fucking editions.

Further, you are still limited to doing various murder hobo things at a murder hobo scale and the things you can do are defined under the murder hobo rules.

So these spells only help at points where you are willing to model your "I the emperor now!" game using the "I'm a murder hobo" rules.

Look if your going to play empires and apocolypses you would need spells that do things relevant to your new minigame(s) and those would be the defining ones.

Perhaps a divination that lets you forsee what the next major change in fashion/desired goods will be so that you get a benefit to your next "trade and caravanning" skill roll.

Where are the spells that let a mage-overlord mind control his entire populace so that they don't change religion or culture to something that might be subverse or harmful?

Where are the spells that make your populous get to making children to solve your population deficiancy? Where are the spells that then magically age those children to working adult age and give them the artisan skills needed to keep an economy going.

Where are the class abiltiies that let you bargain with dieties to throw in just 1 extra growing season this year because you helped them out that one time.

Where is the spell that lets you change the past so that Lagoland was always at war with Souranland and always allied to Tzorland and everybody is ok with that.

Where is the spell that lets you identify who will get real class levels from your population at birth so that you cna raise them in special adventurer schools and then unleash them into neighboring lands to try and destablize/destroy the other empires.

Wouldn't all of these things be facets of the rulership game that would need to be addressed with subsystems and then destributed around?

[RadiantPhoenix]

Polymorph Any Object
Human -> Superhuman

You now have Space Marines.

EDIT to address what was brought up in the post that ninja'd me:

The spell Divination can give you a useful piece of advice for something up to a week in the future, such as what fashions will be 'in' when you get to market.

Mind Rape from the Book of Vile Darkness can mold people's personalities

Suggestion and Geas let you get your population reproducing, Genesis has been interpreted by some people to allow you to make a fast-time plane

normal diplomacy works on deities, and eagle's splendor and greater heroism help charisma and skill checks, respectively

Altering history would probably take a Wish or plot device

The last one depends on your campaign world, but it could be as simple as summon monster and see who gets more powerful fighting them.

[Wrathzog]

Did you really read anything? Being the most powerful individual in the empire only matters if everybody has to fight you using the combat system designed to fight murder hobos and giant lizards We can make the rules for the emperor minigame such that being a good murder hobo doesn't help, because these rules are just as aribtrary as our original combat rules...
What I said is that there are no spells in the game currently that make you a BETTER emperor. There are no spells/magic items/ or class abilities in the game that are designed to play the new rulership minigame.

So, are you saying that because there isn't any explicit support for empire building that we shouldn't have empire management in the game? I just want to be sure of your position before we continue on this line of discussion.

Second: There is NO SPELL that you can cast that gives you an empire save Wish. A wish used that way would be subject to such DM wankery and backlash that it basically procludes it.

I didn't say that there was an individual spell that gave you an empire. The fact that you can cast 9th level spells can give you an empire. This is based on the grounds that you can murder the emperor and take everything he owned (no, we don't care about the particularities of solidifying your rule. We are assuming total success because it is possible at all).

A 4E character can be a king, or an emperor or a demi-god. However, its pretty up front about telling you that the game doesn't include rules for determining if your emperor has a 30 year reign of piece and prosperity.
Its rules let you tell stories were the king personally goes out to save his kingdom - and becomes the murder hobo he was in his youth or whatever.

Again, 4E lies to you about your epic destinies. A demi-god in 4E is still just a murdering hobo with "Demi God" tattoo'd on his forehead. You don't gain much out of becoming a Demi-god. A level 21 character and a level 20 character were more or less equal.
In comparison, a demi-god in 3E actually could warp reality (to change things related to its portfolio) and were pretty much incomparable to even the most powerful of mortals. It's all in the SRD, you should read it.

[souran]

RadiantPheonix, your ideas would be valuable only if you were a mudering hobo with a kingdom that was only as far as your muderous hobo reach.

The spell Divination can give you a useful piece of advice for something up to a week in the future, such as what fashions will be 'in' when you get to market.

Divination can let you see one week in the future but thats totally small time and not useful for building your nations economy.

Knowing what is going to sell well 1 week in the future would let an individual make a forturne. For a nation you just literally don't give a flying fuck unless it effects the trade balance/economic health of your whole country.

Thats why the spell NEEDS TO CHANGE WHAT PEOPLE WANT not just let you know what they want in the future. Knowing that one week from now people will be paying a shitload for raccoon caps is usless if your nation has no raccoons. You want people buying wererat coats because you have a wererat problem.

Divinations that tell you things on Hobo scale do fuck all when you are looking at if your natural resources will last 1 decade or 3.

Mind Rape from the Book of Vile Darkness can mold people's personalities

One person at a time is a good piece of propaganda for the government but a terrible method of implimentation. If you need to change your populous attitudes or personalities you need it done to everybody now not 20 people a day for several years.

Suggestion and Geas let you get your population reproducing, Genesis has been interpreted by some people to allow you to make a fast-time plane

Doesn't actually increase reproduction at all, further, there is nothing in these spells that would actually make sure that people kept at it until they got results. Also, for a suggestion and geas of these sorts there is nothing that would make them really get right to it. Again, these are hobo scale solutions. They don't mean crap all in the game where you are the emperor.

normal diplomacy works on deities, and eagle's splendor and greater heroism help charisma and skill checks, respectively

Ok, then the ability should be entierly on the player's side. Players need the ability to make years and seasons longer and shorter. They also need spells that let them send much less important people than themselves to bargain with the dieties with a good chance of success because they are literally to fucking busy to be bothered.

Altering history would probably take a Wish or plot device

Actually the only way to achieve most of them is with "mother may I" wishes because none of these effects are in the game because they are not needed to play murder hobos but they are needed to play magic emperor.

The last one depends on your campaign world, but it could be as simple as summon monster and see who gets more powerful fighting them.

That specifically doesn't work because summon monsters grant no experiece because they are a class feature of the summoner. Further, you would murder most of your population instead of single out the useful ones which is your objective.

Seriously, if we are going to play magic emperor and the way you get to be a magic emperor is by murder hoboing an old magic emperor wouldn't the first thing you would do is figure out who has the potential to be a murder hobo?

These murder hobos are really the only meaningful way of fighting other magic emperors you have. Because you can both just annihilate each others armies at a whim.

Further, if we are playing D&D -> Magic Emperor where you have to rest for 4-8 hours to get spells back, and spells are what really seperate magic emperors from dirt farmers the first law of my new magic empire is nobody except the emperor gets to sleep for more than 3 hours straight. Everybody else has to sleep for 3 hours, spend an hour awake and repeat. That should reduce the number of low level murder hobos not under my control to something managible becuase nobody can rememorize spells.

[souran]

So, are you saying that because there isn't any explicit support for empire building that we shouldn't have empire management in the game? I just want to be sure of your position before we continue on this line of discussion.

Only partially. Its not that you cannot manage an empire, its just the the lack of rules means that managing an empire with D&D will meaning lots of hand waving.

Lago's central point seems to be that D&D is actually 10 levels of being a murder hobo, 5 levels of being a magic emperor and 5 levels of being a plutoarchian "original concept" embodied in a star that creates new forms of life to wage a battle over weather the universe will include the concept of lonelyless or not. I believe he thinks this because high level or epic level D&D characters are presumed to be at a crazy level of power.

My argument is that said level of power only exists when viewing them through the murder hobo game. There are no levels that grant you relevant abilities for the magic emperor mini game becuase we don't have a magic emperor minigame. Level 20 wizards do not get a class skill to make perfect chairs.

Level 20 Characters are just REALLY IMPRESSIVE murder hobos. There is nothing on their character sheets that makes the more ready or able to play in a game not about being a murder hobo than a level 1 character.

We could make the minigames needed to play Lago's dream game but there is no reason they couldn't take place after level 20.

I didn't say that there was an individual spell that gave you an empire. The fact that you can cast 9th level spells can give you an empire. This is based on the grounds that you can murder the emperor and take everything he owned (no, we don't care about the particularities of solidifying your rule. We are assuming total success because it is possible at all).

The only reason you think you can get to be emperor is becuase you believe that you will get to use the murder hobo rules to fight your way to the top. If you were not using the murder hobo rules you wouldn't have a clue if you were in any position to take over an empire or not. You have no knowledge of how to interact with magic emperor game.

Again, 4E lies to you about your epic destinies. A demi-god in 4E is still just a murdering hobo with "Demi God" tattoo'd on his forehead. You don't gain much out of becoming a Demi-god. A level 21 character and a level 20 character were more or less equal.

You gain quite a bit by becomming a demi-god. It a not inconsequential boost in effectiveness and is still considered one of the better epic destanies.

But its a silly argument. its similar to arguing that a level 16-17 character should change alot. A level 21 character is a just begginning epic character. He will get the chance to exchange most of his encounter and daily powers for higher level ones that are noticable more effective. A level 30 demi-god is unquestionably superior to the level 20 character that he was before.

In comparison, a demi-god in 3E actually could warp reality (to change things related to its portfolio) and were pretty much incomparable to even the most powerful of mortals. It's all in the SRD, you should read it.

Thats because this had to do with the aquisition of divine ranks and all kinds of not-normally available B.S. further, a the sort of demi-god you are talking about is still a faith powered entity. There were no access points to those sorts of things through prestige classes.

A 4E demi-god can go on plenty of epic adventures and is defintiatnly superior to a non-epic character. Further, they are designed to be in-player-hands as opposed to the 3.x counterpart which is really just a way of stating divine opposition. Its only "lieing" to you if they told you a demi-god got to warp reality and then it didn't.

[Wrathzog]

On Spells and.. Stuff

Dude, you know what the best part of having authority is? Delegation.
As long as you have the power to influence other people to act in your interests, you are golden. There is absolutely no need for a ruler to personally make changes to his region. In fact, I will agree that it's pretty much unfeasible.
But it doesn't mean that he can't influence change in his region at all, and that's the kind of thing that we're trying to set up.

Seriously, why are you so rabid about not letting player run kingdoms?

-e- Added Quote tags

[tzor]

Souran, I think you are looking at this from the wrong perspective. The biggest advantage of a "ruler" over an "adventurer" is the existance of minions. They are in fact, very effective. When fanatically loyal, they are damn effective.

So the biggest tools you have on your wizard's toolkit are the ones for scrying and communication. You can scry on various ports that service your domain, you can scry at various locations within your own domain. In fact, you don't even need to scry everywhere as long as you have good communication with your ordinary spies on the ground; the silent folk who obseve and then inform you of what is going on.

With that, you set up your minions so that you can deploy the right minion subset as needed. There really is more than one way to deal with an potential threat and your loyal quiet minions can easily get the people to turn against them. (Those who turn against you can easily be "eliminated.")

You don't need to know the fashions in the future, you need to know the fashion of the present. Shipments that are not under your control can be ... discretely eliminated. (This causes more and mor merchants to accept your protection payment plan because, oddly enough, it works.)

Command and control spells work wonders too; there is nothing as rewarding as having those ambasadors that come to you become your minions. If you are really bad-ass you can let other mid level idiots into your global scry network and *BAM* near instant minion (basically this was the magic item in Tokein's world known as the palantir and it was how Sauron managed turn Saruman the White to the "Many Colors").

And while scry and die might be "beneath you" there is nothing as effective as making someone an offer they cannot refuse on occasion.

All you really need are knowledge and command and control and you can manage quite a large chunk of real estate.

[Wrathzog]

Only partially. Its not that you cannot manage an empire, its just the the lack of rules means that managing an empire with D&D will meaning lots of hand waving.
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My argument is that said level of power only exists when viewing them through the murder hobo game. There are no levels that grant you relevant abilities for the magic emperor mini game becuase we don't have a magic emperor minigame. Level 20 wizards do not get a class skill to make perfect chairs.
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We could make the minigames needed to play Lago's dream game but there is no reason they couldn't take place after level 20.

Okay... so we both agree that there needs to be another System for what Lago's talking about.
Where we don't agree is where to put it. Alright, I'm good with that.

The only reason you think you can get to be emperor is becuase you believe that you will get to use the murder hobo rules to fight your way to the top. If you were not using the murder hobo rules you wouldn't have a clue if you were in any position to take over an empire or not. You have no knowledge of how to interact with magic emperor game.

Murder hobo rules give you plenty of options for taking and keeping power. Diplomancy can do it. Magic Jar could do it. Slaying a Dragon and marrying the King's Daughter is probably the most traditional.
It doesn't actually matter how you get there, just that it's possible at all means that someone is going to do it and that means that the game needs something to support it. Yes, in the case of 3E and 4E, this would mean that we need new mechanics for running a large kingdom and we would need classes, spells, and items that will help you with that.

You gain quite a bit by becomming a demi-god. It a not inconsequential boost in effectiveness and is still considered one of the better epic destanies.

That's because all of the epic destinies are shit. They're given labels and flavor that do not match up with the mechanics behind it.

But its a silly argument. its similar to arguing that a level 16-17 character should change alot.

No, it's not the same. Being level 17 means that you're still a Paragon level adventurer. Becoming 21 is supposed to mean that you've graduated to Epic and that's supposed to actually mean something.
But it doesn't. All your numbers get bigger and that's it. You get a snazzy superfical title woo.

Thats because this had to do with the aquisition of divine ranks and all kinds of not-normally available B.S. further, a the sort of demi-god you are talking about is still a faith powered entity. There were no access points to those sorts of things through prestige classes.

And it doesn't matter. There are Rules set up for it. There is a System for being a demi-god. Players COULD play Demi-gods.

[souran]

Dude, you know what the best part of having authority is? Delegation.
As long as you have the power to influence other people to act in your interests, you are golden. There is absolutely no need for a ruler to personally make changes to his region. In fact, I will agree that it's pretty much unfeasible. But it doesn't mean that he can't influence change in his region at all, and that's the kind of thing that we're trying to set up.

Seriously, why are you so rabid about not letting player run kingdoms?

If people want to play a game where they run kingdoms thats awesome, I would probably even play.

However, I also want to be able to play D&D and I want it to be able to let me have my party face ancient dragons, demon lords of the abyss, and other "high level" threats. There are plenty of monsters "tuned" to high level play and there are plenty of interesting "dungeoneering" things for high level characters to do.

And I want to be able to do them.

Further, everybody is looking at high level murder hobos and acting like they are these cosmic movers and shakers. The problem is that everything in the rules is designed to make those heroes awsome, and if you were to write rules for an "empires" or "dieties" game you probably wouldn't make it so that one person can be an invincible army killer. You wouldn't write the rules we have for our murder hobo game at all.

[Swordslinger]

But if the players want to be Generals or Kings or Gods, things start to change. You need rules for mass combat for the Generals. You need rules for kingdom management for the kings. You need rules for creating winged Orcs for the Gods.
Actually, that's it right there. That's the four layers of gameplay that you need to keep track of.

That's just my point. D&D doesn't have rules for all those things, the army managing aspect is mutually exclusive for what D&D tries to do. The basic assumption in D&D is that mass combat is basically a waste of time because combat is won and lost by superheroes (aka big monsters and high level humanoids).

Being a general doesn't give you great power in D&D, it's basically a glorified babysitter where you're going to send a bunch of weak guys to their deaths for little to no gain. Do you seriously want to be the guy ordering a bunch of tanks to try to stop godzilla just so they can get their asses kicked or would you rather be Kratos who runs up and rips Godzilla's head off?

[souran]

Murder hobo rules give you plenty of options for taking and keeping power. Diplomancy can do it. Magic Jar could do it. Slaying a Dragon and marrying the King's Daughter is probably the most traditional.
It doesn't actually matter how you get there, just that it's possible at all means that someone is going to do it and that means that the game needs something to support it.

First none of those methods guantee you any kind of political power. Diplomacy cannot make people hand you the keys to a kingdom. When these things work they include significant handwaving and "narrative bonus" being part of the game.

Second that is not what was being proposed by Lago et. al at all. They were saying that being the most powerful guy in the room lets you grab power by force if you want it. However, this is only true because of the very way we have written our rules. Therefore, this is a bullshit reason. If we didn't want this we could change the rules to something else and get a different result.

Thirdly is the thing that is where we are in conflict. I don't think that having support for running empires and planes or whatever is really neccessary or beneficial. They will take a lot of time and effort. They won't have a lot of interface with our existing rules because our existing rules are for a totally different style of game.

The more minigames you have, especially ones that get used little or rarely the worse the whole game is because they each get design hours that could be better spent on other ideas.

I wouldn't mind a seperate game. IF that game is owned by the property owner of D&D then it can have a tie in where you can "port" in a D&D character as a faction leader. Sure.

But Lago's Idea that high level D&D should be some other game is what I find frustrating because I am fine just playing D&D with high level characters.

And it doesn't matter. There are Rules set up for it. There is a System for being a demi-god. Players COULD play Demi-gods.

I have played high level 3.x and epic level 4e. They both work fine. I know which one I prefer and I would bet you do to. You are not going to be able to change my mind because there is to much stuff I don't like and I would be the same applies to you.

The other argument has nothing to do with this so I am just giong to drop it.

[RadiantPhoenix]

That specifically doesn't work because summon monsters grant no experiece because they are a class feature of the summoner. Further, you would murder most of your population instead of single out the useful ones which is your objective.

Oops, you're right. You'd have to use calling spells then, I guess. It's more difficult but still doable.

[Novembermike]

That's the thing, D&D Isn't JUST a combat game. It's a roleplaying game which just so happens to have lots and lots of rules for combat. If players want to be murdering hobos, then that's great. D&D can handle that just fine.

DnD has always been a pretty decent set of rules for combat and a bunch of really dumb rules for roleplaying. Diplomacy doesn't work, the skill system in general is worthless (an average Fighter can pick two of Jumping, Climbing, Swimming and Intimidation, for example) and there aren't any consistent rules for things like how people react to a retired war hero who's part of the underclass.

[souran]

That specifically doesn't work because summon monsters grant no experiece because they are a class feature of the summoner. Further, you would murder most of your population instead of single out the useful ones which is your objective.

Oops, you're right. You'd have to use calling spells then, I guess. It's more difficult but still doable.

While I find the idea of herding large groups of people into a pit and then "calling" an infernal giant scorpion to fight them and then "rewarding" the winners by converting them into your own person D&D spec ops group trained to destablize other Wizard-lords really humerous, it still seems like a bad way to identify the people with class levels in your populous.

Mostly because you would end up killing everybody who didn't have a pc class level. Thats not really the goal. The goal is to find them while they are impressionable children so that you can skulpt them into kill teams, not kill off your population EXCEPT for the world beaters.