[Pathfinder] Magic items to change [s]the world[/s] a town.

momothefiddler · Post by **momothefiddler** » Wed Jun 04, 2014 1:41 pm

Ferret wrote:Training NPCs seems like the kind of thing that could be handled by hiring -other- NPC Experts from a nearby metropolis or temple.

Hire them to train your villiagers to become your R&D enclave. Your Enchanters Guild can start churning out local-use items, and overages can be sold outside the villiage, or the crafters can turn to churning out low-level consumables (potions, perhaps?)

Selling consumables provides your income for purchasing ongoing material components until you can access True Creation and Fabricate for full-on Star Trek Replicators

Fair. But can NPC's gain levels? Is that even possible? I can't find any sorts of rules on that, and I don't know how else to give them any sort of ability to take care of themselves in that manner.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed Jun 04, 2014 9:20 pm

I generally assume that a person who isn't going adventuring, just sitting around doing their npc-class thing in town, gains ~1000xp per year. (I used to figure 1 level per year, but that leads to 35 year old 20th level commoners).

If you're training them to be wizards and other full pc classes, you can speed that up by either organizing adventures, or setting up safe but seemingly dangerous training sessions for them (well, ok, that's going to be up to your DM). I'd say that if your actually strenuously training a person, but not taking them adventuring they would gain 1500-2000xp/year.

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Wed Jun 04, 2014 9:29 pm

Prak_Anima wrote:I generally assume that a person who isn't going adventuring, just sitting around doing their npc-class thing in town, gains ~1000xp per year. (I used to figure 1 level per year, but that leads to 35 year old 20th level commoners).

If you're training them to be wizards and other full pc classes, you can speed that up by either organizing adventures, or setting up safe but seemingly dangerous training sessions for them (well, ok, that's going to be up to your DM). I'd say that if your actually strenuously training a person, but not taking them adventuring they would gain 1500-2000xp/year.

No. That leads to ricockulous elves.

radthemad4 · Post by **radthemad4** » Wed Jun 04, 2014 9:36 pm

You could shift it so it's 1000 xp per 10% of lifespan or something. Or 20%, or whatever, depending on what you want the maximum level for mundane people to be.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Wed Jun 04, 2014 10:20 pm

You could also put a cap on that kind of non-adventuring level gaining. I tend to not think npcs should have more than 3 or 4 levels of an npc class. Beyond that, they should be going adventuring to trade those for real PC class levels. (and I count war or life-endangering expeditions as adventuring)

Emerald · Post by **Emerald** » Thu Jun 05, 2014 12:20 am

Alternately, assign rough, arbitrary CRs to things like living [amount of time] in [type of area] as a [primary occupation], maybe a little lookup table with area vs. occupation per year or something. If "living 1 year in a relatively civilized area as a middle-class professional" is CR 1, then that's roughly 1/4 level per year up through level 8 (reached no earlier than age 47 for a human), and nothing above that.

That gives you a built-in cap with diminishing returns, and does things like let long-lived races be more powerful on average without making any individual member of those races too powerful or make the peasants in a dangerous frontier village generally tougher than the peasants in a nice and safe big city. It also lets you, if you care about such things, do stuff like describing the captain of a town guard as someone only in their late 20s to signal "Watch out, this person has PC levels and is probably a badass" or figure out how well a town could fight off an invasion based on its demographic information.

erik · Post by **erik** » Thu Jun 05, 2014 4:45 am

momothefiddler wrote:But can NPC's gain levels?

Yes.

momothefiddler wrote:Is that even possible?

Again. Yes.

momothefiddler wrote:I can't find any sorts of rules on that, and I don't know how else to give them any sort of ability to take care of themselves in that manner.

DMG 3.5e. Page 104-105. Details how Cohort NPCs gain experience. Generally they gain based upon receiving 2/3 of what their Leader would get.

Page 105 notes that Followers and Hirelings do not gain experience because they suck and aren't supposed to be having initiative.

Page 107 notes that NPCs gain experience just the same as player characters.

It's kind of obvious that NPCs can gain levels, otherwise there would be no such thing as a level 2+ NPC.

As for gaining levels based upon age. That's horrible. Horrible. It's bad enough that stupidfluff says elves aren't mature until they've lived a century, but don't let that have a stupidcrunch impact as well.

Omegonthesane · Post by **Omegonthesane** » Thu Jun 05, 2014 3:00 pm

erik wrote:As for gaining levels based upon age. That's horrible. Horrible. It's bad enough that stupidfluff says elves aren't mature until they've lived a century, but don't let that have a stupidcrunch impact as well.

Y'know, the thing aboxe where Profession X has CR f(X) which you count as defeating every N years working as an X seems like a "not terrible" framework for procedurally generating the CR of random peasantry.

Obviously you'd want to fuck with the numbers a bit - the obvious tweak to me would be ruling that there is no XP to be gained in jobs, say, 2 CR below your actual HD, so that elf villages aren't full of level 9 commoners.

EDIT: Emerald, just to be clear, did you really intend to say that elf villages should be full of level 8 commoners? Even with Commoner stats that seems pretty hardcore for peaceful areas.

Laertes · Post by **Laertes** » Thu Jun 05, 2014 3:03 pm

Y'know, the thing aboxe where Profession X has CR f(X) which you count as defeating every N years working as an X seems like a "not terrible" framework for procedurally generating the CR of random peasantry.

Obviously you'd want to fuck with the numbers a bit - the obvious tweak to me would be ruling that there is no XP to be gained in jobs, say, 2 CR below your actual level, so that elf villages aren't full of level 9 commoners.

Old people having more skill is good. Old people having more HP and better Fortitude and Reflex saves seems a bit weird.

In fact, generalising: The fact that you can't *lose* HP and Fort/Reflex saves as you get old and decrepit is understandable in a game about heroes, but looks weird when you generalise the rules to the populace in common.

Omegonthesane · Post by **Omegonthesane** » Thu Jun 05, 2014 3:20 pm

Laertes wrote:
Y'know, the thing aboxe where Profession X has CR f(X) which you count as defeating every N years working as an X seems like a "not terrible" framework for procedurally generating the CR of random peasantry.

Obviously you'd want to fuck with the numbers a bit - the obvious tweak to me would be ruling that there is no XP to be gained in jobs, say, 2 CR below your actual level, so that elf villages aren't full of level 9 commoners.
Old people having more skill is good. Old people having more HP and better Fortitude and Reflex saves seems a bit weird.

D&D has Aging Penalties. Once a human hits 35, that's a -1 to Str/Dex/Con, which will probably give them a -1 to Ref or Fort and -1/HD hitpoints. At 53 they are now Old, so they get a stacking -2 (total -3) to all physical stats, so either -1 or -2 depending how they statted earlier. At 70 it becomes Venerable, so -6 to all physical stats, so a flat -3 in all circumstances to saves and HP/HD.

At 8th level - the original proposal, which I think is fucking absurd, but that's not the point - a Venerable Commoner 8 has a +2 to all saves from their class. Compared to an Adult Commoner 1, this is smaller than the -3 they get for being elderly, and similarly their +4 BaB barely outweighs their -3 to all attacks, so the remaining sticking point is HP. Assuming a Con bonus of +N at adulthood, AC1 will have 4+N HP, while VC8 will have 4 + 7d4 + 8*(N-3). Assuming that all those 7d4 roll 2.5, VC8 has 21.5 + 8N - 24 = 8N - 2.5 hitpoints. At that point, average Commoner constitution to generate less-than-retarded HP results is a solvable equation.

I haven't addressed the effects of taking a non-terrible class and having an actually Good Fort or Ref, because I don't actually think it's a bad thing for old but active people to be in better shape than young but sedentary people.

Laertes · Post by **Laertes** » Thu Jun 05, 2014 3:36 pm

That's a fairly elegant solution.

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Thu Jun 05, 2014 4:10 pm

A startilingly high percent of core 3.5 rules are elegant and produce reasonable results. For all the things wrong with it, it's still my favorite engine.

Emerald · Post by **Emerald** » Thu Jun 05, 2014 5:51 pm

Omegonthesane wrote:EDIT: Emerald, just to be clear, did you really intend to say that elf villages should be full of level 8 commoners? Even with Commoner stats that seems pretty hardcore for peaceful areas.

Well, I'd assume the average "middle class professional" elf is actually an expert, magewright, or adept rather than a commoner, and that they'd be spending more chargen resources on Profession (Looking Pretty) and Craft (Angsty Poetry) than on adventuring-relevant stuff. But yes, it's an intentional (or at least not unwanted) result because it lets elves be stereotypically Better Than You while not actually making elves strictly better than other races.

If you don't like the leveling rate, declare that an elven village is a "relatively civilized area" and not a "ridiculously safe area" which is only CR 1/2 per year (meaning elves hit top level at middle age) or that CRs are lowered in "high magic" areas because the handful of casters there make crafting and farming easier than normal or whatever. You can pick whatever baseline you want, the point is just to give a consistent level-by-age progression using the existing advancement rules.

RadiantPhoenix · Post by **RadiantPhoenix** » Thu Jun 05, 2014 7:14 pm

Or we could come up with a non-level-based chargen/advancement system for non-adventurers.

That would be a bunch of work, though.

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Thu Jun 05, 2014 9:50 pm

Continual flame (or other light source) is a game-changer. It extends the useful day, and lets you actually seal windows, keeping out bugs and preventing disease.

Create Pit is at least an infinitely strong pump, and possibly also an elevator or water-lock.

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Thu Jun 05, 2014 9:55 pm

Gusting sphere might be a glider-launcher, or airship propulsion.

momothefiddler · Post by **momothefiddler** » Fri Jun 06, 2014 3:41 am

fectin wrote:Create Pit is at least an infinitely strong pump, and possibly also an elevator or water-lock.

Holy shit I like this a lot.

darkmaster · Post by **darkmaster** » Fri Jun 06, 2014 3:43 am

How does it make a pump though.

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Fri Jun 06, 2014 3:56 am

When it expires, the bottom of the pit raises up over the course of a round. Slap two sheets of iron together, and plumb the top with an inflow pipe and an outflow pipe (with valves). Cast pit on the bottom plate. Fill with water during the duration. When it expires, that water is forced through the outflow.

You can dump the whole assembly in a river for an easy water source, or set up a water tower, or do a complicated reservoir-and-pipes system,depending what you're trying to accomplish.

TiaC · Post by **TiaC** » Fri Jun 06, 2014 4:08 am

Just use it to drive a giant piston.

DSMatticus · Post by **DSMatticus** » Fri Jun 06, 2014 4:09 am

Ninja'd. I wouldn't call it an infinitely strong pump, though. It's true in the sense that the pit-pump will function perfectly no matter what it's pumping and no matter how much of it it has to pump, but the amount of energy the pit-pump will generate is still very much finite and totally based on what it's pumping and how much of it it's pumping.

erik · Post by **erik** » Fri Jun 06, 2014 4:09 am

Can also displace water with shrink item + permanency. Downside is only the caster can do the command words.

So maybe have a bound genie going "One. Two. One. Two..."
It's more fun than just creating steam with permanency + wall of fire.

Can get a permanently spinning turbine with permanency + animate object (the object being the turbine).

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Jun 06, 2014 4:25 am

erik wrote:Can get a permanently spinning turbine with permanency + animate object (the object being the turbine).

Name it Gurren Lagann, just so you can command it "Gurren Lagann-- SPIN ON!!!!!!"

fectin · Post by **fectin** » Fri Jun 06, 2014 4:27 am

Permanency costs xp, which I generally consider much less replaceable than gold or spell slots. You can cast continual flame as often as people bring you rubies; permanency is on a stricter limit.

Which isn't to say that you're wrong (because those are both good tricks), just to share my biases.

Prak · Post by **Prak** » Fri Jun 06, 2014 4:33 am

Also, completely mundane, but made vastly easier with magic Solar Power generators made in the 19th century and 1910. Of course, you need to figure out a use for electricity, and possibly explain why your supposedly iron age wizard would even conceive of this, but...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augustin_Mouchot
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Frank_Shuman

Just off the top of my head, once you have a need for electricity, and the means to generate it from solar power, stick a generator on a plane with no night, run the electricity-conveying wires through a ring gate to where you need it.