High Level Characters

[Roy]

The easiest explanation I've found that works for me is 'too small'.

Consider all those Kings and whatever, level low teens to mid teens. It's not that there isn't a single level 15 character who could kill him and take his stuff (kingdom) or multiple lower level guys who can work together to do the same. It's that the stakes (one kingdom) just aren't worth their time. So why is the King a King and not a World Emperor at the minimum? He's an NPC, he has to take what he can get.

That's not a bad model, it's just that the rules totally don't support it. Unfortunately, due to the fact that gold = power, it's always totally worth ganking some king and taking his shit. The very fact that you have the gold to afford armies and castles means that you have enough money that may be valuable to someone.

Unfortunately, the money curve isn't steep enough for a "it's not worth it" model to adequately work. Knocking over a king and his kingdom isn't just a drop in a bucket for most people, it's still a decent amount. And if you can do that with minimal risk, then why wouldn't you? It's probably easier than just going out and fighting dragons.

That would be true, if it were not for the fact that anyone who cares at that level has a gold value of NI.

But in any case, fighting humanoid NPCs = same gain as a dragon of equal level, but much easier. Just, they'd be humanoid adventurers (and thus more likely have their wealth in a form more useful to you) instead of random Kings and such.

[Agrinja]

The easiest explanation I've found that works for me is 'too small'.

Consider all those Kings and whatever, level low teens to mid teens. It's not that there isn't a single level 15 character who could kill him and take his stuff (kingdom) or multiple lower level guys who can work together to do the same. It's that the stakes (one kingdom) just aren't worth their time. So why is the King a King and not a World Emperor at the minimum? He's an NPC, he has to take what he can get.

That's not a bad model, it's just that the rules totally don't support it. Unfortunately, due to the fact that gold = power, it's always totally worth ganking some king and taking his shit. The very fact that you have the gold to afford armies and castles means that you have enough money that may be valuable to someone.

Unfortunately, the money curve isn't steep enough for a "it's not worth it" model to adequately work. Knocking over a king and his kingdom isn't just a drop in a bucket for most people, it's still a decent amount. And if you can do that with minimal risk, then why wouldn't you? It's probably easier than just going out and fighting dragons.

I'm not quite sure how that's easier than just going out and fighting dragons. Of course the king himself is a weakling, you just gank him. But why don't assassins just do that? He has resources. All that money that goes toward his armies and guards and whatnot goes toward....armies and guards and whatnot. When you attack a king, you're attacking his whole damn nation. If you get powerful enough to get a group together and gank the fuck out of a dragon, the dragon's dead, likely doesn't have friends who are going to scream "OMG HE KILLED THE DRAGON! GET THE TRAITOR!" And suddenly swarm you en masse, requiring you to kill every last man who was armed and loyal to him, not to mention dealing with all the stuff like traps and magic the king paid to have his place equipped with.

[RandomCasualty2]

I'm not quite sure how that's easier than just going out and fighting dragons. Of course the king himself is a weakling, you just gank him. But why don't assassins just do that? He has resources. All that money that goes toward his armies and guards and whatnot goes toward....armies and guards and whatnot. When you attack a king, you're attacking his whole damn nation. If you get powerful enough to get a group together and gank the fuck out of a dragon, the dragon's dead, likely doesn't have friends who are going to scream "OMG HE KILLED THE DRAGON! GET THE TRAITOR!" And suddenly swarm you en masse, requiring you to kill every last man who was armed and loyal to him, not to mention dealing with all the stuff like traps and magic the king paid to have his place equipped with.

The advantage of ganking the king is that you know where he is, and thus he's more easy to assassinate. If it's your typical king that lives in a castle, all it takes is bribing someone to find out where his bedroom is and then disintegrating or dimension dooring your way in, and then ganking him as he sleeps.

Yeah he's got guards and crap, but they can't be with him 24/7.

[Prak]

I'm not quite sure how that's easier than just going out and fighting dragons. Of course the king himself is a weakling, you just gank him. But why don't assassins just do that? He has resources. All that money that goes toward his armies and guards and whatnot goes toward....armies and guards and whatnot. When you attack a king, you're attacking his whole damn nation. If you get powerful enough to get a group together and gank the fuck out of a dragon, the dragon's dead, likely doesn't have friends who are going to scream "OMG HE KILLED THE DRAGON! GET THE TRAITOR!" And suddenly swarm you en masse, requiring you to kill every last man who was armed and loyal to him, not to mention dealing with all the stuff like traps and magic the king paid to have his place equipped with.

The advantage of ganking the king is that you know where he is, and thus he's more easy to assassinate. If it's your typical king that lives in a castle, all it takes is bribing someone to find out where his bedroom is and then disintegrating or dimension dooring your way in, and then ganking him as he sleeps.

Yeah he's got guards and crap, but they can't be with him 24/7.

actually, referring to the economicon and such... he's some pissant aristocrat whose only life skill is "have blue blood", he's probably sleeping with his primary guard because he married some powerful adventurer...

as for dragons not having people... At least some fiction assumes that dragons have little better to do than create personality cults and father little supersoldiers. There was also a whole story tangent in order of the stick devoted to pointing out that some evil dragons have family who will track your ass down.

[squee_nabob]

I thought the circle of wealth was that dragons killed kings and took their treasury as loot until a dude kills them and takes all their stuff?

[TheFlatline]

The advantage of ganking the king is that you know where he is, and thus he's more easy to assassinate. If it's your typical king that lives in a castle, all it takes is bribing someone to find out where his bedroom is and then disintegrating or dimension dooring your way in, and then ganking him as he sleeps.

Yeah he's got guards and crap, but they can't be with him 24/7.

The disadvantage of ganking the king is that likely, he's not sitting on a million GP, or even hundreds of thousands. He probably has a household expense account that is refreshed quarterly from taxes and duties. Everything else he does is probably done on credit because... well... he's the fucking king and so is kind of the ultimate in secure credit in that nation.

Which means if you want his resources, you get to stop everything that you're doing and become a ruler. You can't pillage the treasury because it's only got maybe 20,000 GP in it of liquid cash (and in a small kingdom I'd say even less than 10,000 GP), and the rest of his value is in abstract equity, such as ancient suits of armor, art, and credit among his constituents.

Going out and ganking a dragon that has been hoarding gold for a thousand years, is infinitely more appealing to actual adventurers than overthrowing a kingdom as far as immediate profit is concerned.

Also, as for the topic of royal blood, while kings may want to knock each other on the head and take neighboring territory, nobility was surprisingly unified on the idea of someone *without* royal blood never getting the chance to gank any monarch. I can easily see an uneasy alliance forming after the first kingdom or two that gets overthrown, and at that point you only need some competent mages and 10,000 conscripts to go hunt down and kill the interlopers.

Also, you can end-run around regicide for profit by simply moving from a precious metals = cash system to currency. Killing the king is a stupid idea, because in doing that, his reign ends, and his currency becomes useless unless some other entity (the adventurers?) are willing to supply the relevant wealth to back that currency up.

All this boils down to the idea that it's better to use diplomacy to make the king your thrall who does whatever you want, as opposed to just ganking him and inheriting all the headaches of running a kingdom.

[Judging__Eagle]

Honestly....

I'm fine with most NPCs being low, or mid level adventurers.

King Arthur is a... well equipped level 6 character. His level 8-11 Mage advisor....is the real character, or just an alternate friend.

Merlin, could, in theory; just be a master of Snake Mountain; and his 'stable of henchmen', is King Arthur, and his Knights. Thirteen level 6 knights; taking on level 6 challenges; but equipped with all sorts of gear, and used to collect wealth, spread 'good' (aka, good PR); and all to help protect a very long-sighted Cambion Wizard.

I'm fine with things being like that. Merlin is high enough level to have contingency plans that will get him to safety if he's in real danger. The PCs can beat up Merlin; but from then on, they're on King Arthur's, and his Knight's shit-list; and probably on the 'not friendly' status with anyone who finds out you once killed Merlin.

Of course, some people might like the fact that you've done this.

[RandomCasualty2]

Also, you can end-run around regicide for profit by simply moving from a precious metals = cash system to currency. Killing the king is a stupid idea, because in doing that, his reign ends, and his currency becomes useless unless some other entity (the adventurers?) are willing to supply the relevant wealth to back that currency up.

Wait what? Where the hell did this come from?

We aren't talking about paper money that amounts to an IOU or legal tender. We're talking about straight precious metals. The king's currency is just gold and it's not made more valuable if he chooses to put a stamp on a gold coin. The value of the coin is its weight in gold.

Killing the king doesn't diminish its value at all. The only way to diminish the value of a rare material is to make more of it. If you make gold common as shit, then it becomes much less valuable. But the value of gold isn't tied to the stability of any nations.

[Agrinja]

Also, you can end-run around regicide for profit by simply moving from a precious metals = cash system to currency. Killing the king is a stupid idea, because in doing that, his reign ends, and his currency becomes useless unless some other entity (the adventurers?) are willing to supply the relevant wealth to back that currency up.

Wait what? Where the hell did this come from?

We aren't talking about paper money that amounts to an IOU or legal tender. We're talking about straight precious metals. The king's currency is just gold and it's not made more valuable if he chooses to put a stamp on a gold coin. The value of the coin is its weight in gold.

Killing the king doesn't diminish its value at all. The only way to diminish the value of a rare material is to make more of it. If you make gold common as shit, then it becomes much less valuable. But the value of gold isn't tied to the stability of any nations.

Hell, the king stamping the coins likely ups their value from flat gold because a minted coin is a lot harder to fuck with. Those little ridges? Keep people from cutting them down without notice, means they're vaguely a uniform amount of gold. The complicated stamps means it's from the mint, and contains exactly [for the time period] X amount of gold by volume as opposed to an equivalent block of gold some jackass might have cut with some adulterant. For trade, a 1lb of the king's own minted coins is more likely be to be trusted, and therefor a little more valuable, than 1lb of something joe shmoe wants to give you.

[RandomCasualty2]

Hell, the king stamping the coins likely ups their value from flat gold because a minted coin is a lot harder to fuck with. Those little ridges? Keep people from cutting them down without notice, means they're vaguely a uniform amount of gold. The complicated stamps means it's from the mint, and contains exactly [for the time period] X amount of gold by volume as opposed to an equivalent block of gold some jackass might have cut with some adulterant. For trade, a 1lb of the king's own minted coins is more likely be to be trusted, and therefor a little more valuable, than 1lb of something joe shmoe wants to give you.

This is why merchants have scales to weigh the gold.

[Maxus]

But not all transactions involve a merchant.

[Agrinja]

And again comes up the subject of adulterants. Gold is very easy to melt. As are some other relatively common metals. You can mix them to get something basically the same color, and still pretty damn heavy to get basically more 'gold'. Weighing doesn't detect a halfway decent attempt at shorting someone via smelting, and the equipment would be easy to come by even in DnD land, perhaps even easier if you're a mage who can just cast a spell to heat and combine the metals.

[Meikle641]

There's always displacement, like (Who was it? Archimedes?) that Greek guy who had to check if some king's crown was all gold like he thought. If they could do that thousands of years ago, it's conceivable it could be done in D&D.

Probably still ways of fucking with it, but yeah.

[Agrinja]

Indeed, it was Archimedes [Eureka!] but while it could be done, it's just not feasible for every transaction to involve a precisely made fluid vessel and calculations. Granted, it could just be magic'ed away, but who wants to call a wizard when you just want to buy a goddamned sheep? You can just use the King's money, which even has somewhat of a backing in the sense they'll fucking draw and quarter whoever even -tries- to fake it. And that's historical. Counterfeiting = Treason in most ye olde countries, because it was considered Royal or Federal prerogative to ensure that their money remains valid. Tom Rodgers and wife were hung, drawn and quartered, and burnt at the stake respectively back in in the 15th century for clipping the edges off of silver coins . That sheer amount of fear is going to give the realm's currency a bit of backing in that you've really got 1 coin's worth of gold.

[Username17]

D&D coins are unmilled, a king's guaranty of the weight of a coin is worth very close to nothing.

-Username17

[Maxus]

But there's not any world-shaking reason they -couldn't- be milled in a D&D world

It seems to be just a decision when you're putting together a setting.

"Milling: Y/N?"

[TheFlatline]

D&D coins are unmilled, a king's guaranty of the weight of a coin is worth very close to nothing.

-Username17

Agreed. It's why I said that insurance against regicide is to move away from a precious metals style system and move onto a more abstract currency system.

I'll apply D&D tropes to the real world to help make my point.

Sure, a bunch of higher level adventurers could probably teleport into Washington, nuke the government, and take over, but they wouldn't be able to ransack the government's coffers: All that cash would be next to useless since confidence in the US dollar would plummet unless the adventurers took pains to maintain or rebuild trust in the dollar.

So it might make sense to hedge against regicide by encouraging an economy that wasn't based on direct precious metals trading, but upon the trust and security of your lineage. If your entire economy is based on the fact that your family is in charge, and it's a thriving economy, that economy is going to *want* to keep you there.

Plus, with the introduction of magic, counterfeiting can almost completely be eliminated with a little creative thought.

[K]

D&D coins are unmilled, a king's guaranty of the weight of a coin is worth very close to nothing.

-Username17

Agreed. It's why I said that insurance against regicide is to move away from a precious metals style system and move onto a more abstract currency system.

I'll apply D&D tropes to the real world to help make my point.

Sure, a bunch of higher level adventurers could probably teleport into Washington, nuke the government, and take over, but they wouldn't be able to ransack the government's coffers: All that cash would be next to useless since confidence in the US dollar would plummet unless the adventurers took pains to maintain or rebuild trust in the dollar.

So it might make sense to hedge against regicide by encouraging an economy that wasn't based on direct precious metals trading, but upon the trust and security of your lineage. If your entire economy is based on the fact that your family is in charge, and it's a thriving economy, that economy is going to *want* to keep you there.

Plus, with the introduction of magic, counterfeiting can almost completely be eliminated with a little creative thought.

Well, counterfeiting with magic would become the norm.

Trust in currency equals trust in the government, and in a system where the next king might be a Nero and/or get eaten by demons, I don't expect people to trust the government that much.

I mean, the government relies on wandering mercenaries to deal with the "manticores eating our babies" problem, so their own power is in question as a default.

[Crissa]

You guys have just pointed out great reasons for prices to adventurers to be highly inflated.

-Crissa

[Agrinja]

Not quite as good a reason though as "I can charge this jackass more because he can actually afford to pay these prices, and has enough money he likely just won't care. Unlike the rest of these turnip-eating shmucks."

[Agrinja]

Also, random note...anybody remember the shopkeep from that one gameboy Zelda game? I'm wondering what percentage of high level adventurers and whatnot just...retire. And open up a business or something. That guy always made me think of that, because he's relatively laid back until you show up and BLAM he hits you with a death effect, or hits for massive damage, or however it turns you into a grease stain. Regardless, why didn't -that- guy go kick all the asses that needed kicked? Because he's retired. Jaded. It doesn't directly effect him.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Guys, while knocking over a government in the real world is a poor way to get money, doing it in the fantasy world is not.

Gold in feudalism times is a bartering good in the same way that cows or swords or wheat is. It's not currency. You may as well be declaring that the economy runs off of shells or perfumed strips of paper. But since the currency isn't actually backed by any government that people would recognize the gold coins are only worth as much as the gold it is to make it.

As was pointed out, there isn't actually a lot of gold sitting around. And because gold is just a bartering good, people could seriously shut you out of the economy by deciding that they don't want gold anymore--same way all of your carpets and glass beads can suddenly not be worth anything. Now granted a nation might be reluctant to crash the value of its gold stocks to shut out a competitor, but if your opponent owns seriously millions of gold coins while you as the king only has tens of thousands on hand then you might as well declare that your kingdom uses turtle shells to trade.

[RandomCasualty2]

As was pointed out, there isn't actually a lot of gold sitting around. And because gold is just a bartering good, people could seriously shut you out of the economy by deciding that they don't want gold anymore--same way all of your carpets and glass beads can suddenly not be worth anything. Now granted a nation might be reluctant to crash the value of its gold stocks to shut out a competitor, but if your opponent owns seriously millions of gold coins while you as the king only has tens of thousands on hand then you might as well declare that your kingdom uses turtle shells to trade.

Well the main problem is getting people to listen to you. Even if you declare people should trade with turtle shells and that gold is valueless you'll totally get some guy going "Okay, cool, give me all your gold for this turtle shell." Because you can take that gold and trade it somewhere else, while the turtle shells are still going to be relatively valueless outside that kingdom.

And everyone probably doesn't even do that anyway cause when the king kicks the bucket or the government falls (and chances are if it's that poor, it will), you're going back on the gold standard.

[K]

The problem with using currency that is not a trade good in or itself is that in times of trouble, people are not going to accept your currency or there will be vast inflation.

So when the Undead Legion comes knocking and the kingdom needs to buy supplies and weapons from a neighbor, the old rate of one Elothar Buck to a gold coin is going to jump to ten Elothar Bucks to a gold coin if it's accepted at all.

The South had that problem during the Civil War. Considering that DnD Land is a lot more volatile, I think non-trade good currency is one of those civilization-ending experiments that ranks up with "open a portal to Hell to destroy our enemies" and "use magic to try to chain the Goddess of Magic."

[Agrinja]

As was pointed out, there isn't actually a lot of gold sitting around. And because gold is just a bartering good, people could seriously shut you out of the economy by deciding that they don't want gold anymore--same way all of your carpets and glass beads can suddenly not be worth anything. Now granted a nation might be reluctant to crash the value of its gold stocks to shut out a competitor, but if your opponent owns seriously millions of gold coins while you as the king only has tens of thousands on hand then you might as well declare that your kingdom uses turtle shells to trade.

Well the main problem is getting people to listen to you. Even if you declare people should trade with turtle shells and that gold is valueless you'll totally get some guy going "Okay, cool, give me all your gold for this turtle shell." Because you can take that gold and trade it somewhere else, while the turtle shells are still going to be relatively valueless outside that kingdom.

And everyone probably doesn't even do that anyway cause when the king kicks the bucket or the government falls (and chances are if it's that poor, it will), you're going back on the gold standard.

Not to mention that jackass that gets on a horse and rides to the next town, buys up a stupid amount of turtle shells for very little gold, comes back and goes to town.