Medieval Economies and D+D

[squirrelloid]

You do realize that by the 1100's the Vikings are basically done as a real threat? The Viking Age is basically 850-1050.
By the 1100's the Europeans are so over that whole Viking thing. They're busy concentrating on fighting Muslims in the Near and Middle East.


By the Late Medeival Period, no shits are given about Vikings. They're just another Christian Kingdom.

Yes. My point was 'early medieval' covered the entire duration of viking activity.

[Vebyast]

One would imagine that there's actually some mobility between the turnip-gold-wish economies. It's not that there isn't any amount of gold that could buy the favor of an 11th level wizard, it's that it's so large that there's a good chance the cost isn't worth it; like enough adamantine armor/shield/weapons to outfit half a dozen soldiers.

There is a little bit of mobility, but only a very, very tiny amount. In the same way that it'd be insane to try to buy a stat+6 item with gold, it'd be insane to try to hire even a second-level adventurer with turnips. That's what the entire problem boils down to: we're all used to there being a divide between gold and wish, but none of us have ever interacted with a turnip economy and don't realize that the divide between the turnip and gold economies runs just as deep. Throw in the fact that the DND environment regularly spawns gold-economy-level rampaging monsters that are just as happy to rampage through turnips as through gold and it becomes obvious that everybody that isn't dead is probably on the gold economy.

[Grek]

What are you expecting the peasants you're helping at the altruistic paladin's urging to be able to reward you with? Sure, their children might have been kidnapped by a vampire, but they're not going to pull 1000 gp for each PC out of their asses.

Actually, let's take a look at this assumption:
You are a 16 year old Human Commoner. This gives you 2+Int x4 skill points, 4 of which you spend in Profession (farmer), Profession (shepard), Profession (fisherman) or Profession (whatever the fuck else commoners do) and the rest you piss away on useless shit like Use Rope. Your parents were eaten by a Manticore and bugbears stole everything you own except for a bag full of seeds and a hoe. Each week you make a Profession Farmer check, which allows you to "practice your trade and make a decent living, earning about half your Profession check result in gold pieces per week of dedicated work."

0.5*Profession Check in GP = 50*Profession Check in CP

On a minimum roll, you grow (1+4)*50=250cp worth of food in a week. On a maximum roll, you grow (20+4)*50=1200cp worth of food in a week. On an average roll, you make (10.5+4)*50=725cp in a week.

If you eat 3 Poor meals a day, that will cost you 3 silvers or 30cp each and every day. At 7 days a week, that's 210cp a week in food. So, your minimum profit is 40cp and your average profit is 515cp a week. On average, it takes you 10 weeks - less than a season - to save up enough gold to pay the village blacksmith to make you some masterwork farming tools. This gives you +2 on your Profession checks and is thus a guaranteed extra 100cp a week and will pay itself off within a year. After that, your average profit is 615cp a week.

But then vampires attack! And they steal your children (Did I mention you had children? You do. Congrats.)! Assuming a party of adventurers offer to slay the vampires for 1000gp each, that comes out to 4000gp. At a rate of 6.15gp per week, it will take 650 weeks, on average, or 12.5 peasant-years to earn that much money. Which means that either you need to have been saving up all your money for the past decade, OR the 50 or so people in your village need to be willing to fork over a whole season's profits to save the children. Maybe some will, maybe some won't. But it could happen, if you were especially well liked or an unusually large number of children were taken and all of their families agreed to pitch in.

[sabs]

You forgot to feed his children 3 squares and a cot.
You also did not pay any taxes, or buy wnything st sll except some food.

[hyzmarca]

Adventurers are usually murder-hobos, not Shadowrunners. They don't need an offer of payment from the villagers because the vampire's swag is valuable enough on its own.

[violence in the media]

Adventurers are usually murder-hobos, not Shadowrunners. They don't need an offer of payment from the villagers because the vampire's swag is valuable enough on its own.

Who are you playing with?

[fectin]

You forgot to feed his children 3 squares and a cot.
You also did not pay any taxes, or buy wnything st sll except some food.

He also didn't give him any starting advantages, like inheriting masterwork tools, and didn't calculate the money the kids generate either. Kids are an investment just like tools.

[squirrelloid]

Politics and Adventurers

For basically any work to get done, land needs to be cleared of monsters and stay cleared of monsters that would disrupt productive work. This work doesn't have to actually be done by humanoid adventurers - the more civilized giants, dragons, couatl, or sphinx are only the most obvious of the creatures in the monster manual who might be sufficiently benevolent or find humans sufficiently useful to clear a domain and lord over humans.

This of course supposes that there are even humans to begin with. Ie, humans have to be able to survive in the environment of D+D. This doesn't necessarily mean 'civilization'. So our starting point is probably hunter-gatherer tribes that can avoid or kill a decent fraction of the D+D bestiary. Whether or not the warrior hunters clear the initial land that allows for the start of a sedentary existence doesn't matter, humans are coming into 'civilization' with a significant history of martial prowess. (Possibly a history of divine power too - arcane power is likely a post-settlement development).

The alternative is that humans are specially and divinely created as already sedentary creatures... but at that level of divine intervention the deity itself could also clear and protect the domain.

Whatever the case, if history teaches us anything its that overlords are lazy when it comes to action. If there isn't a serious threat to their persons or their power, they'd prefer not to deal with it, and will use subordinates or let locals handle problems. So whether your overlord is a dragon, an avatar of god, or a really powerful human, they're not going to come and deal with every bugbear incursion personally.

Since players seem to like pseudo-medieval worlds, it's fortunate that the feudal system works as a reasonable model for how power might be distributed with the purpose of keeping land productive. (It's certainly not the only option). The guy at the top mostly wants wealth to keep flowing towards him or her, and designates subordinates to various corners of the domain to make sure it doesn't get interrupted, and these people also have subordinates, etc... Smaller threats get dealt with locally, and as threats escalate in power higher levels of the heirarchy get called in to deal with it.

This means that political power needs to correspond with ability to stab stuff in the face, because otherwise the 'nobles' cannot do their job.

But again, lords are lazy. And they're skimming wealth off the gravy train that's supplying the ruler of the domain, so they can just pay people to deal with problems for them. So not only do we have an aristocracy of face stabbing, we also have a whole industry of adventurers that get paid to deal with owl bears, chimera, and hobgoblin raiding parties. Even if we assume lords aren't lazy, they probably have better things to do than chase down low CR threats.

So when kobolds eat the village's babies, the village doesn't go running to adventurers. The village complains to their local lord, who either deals with the kobolds personally or pays some adventurers to deal with it.

Adventurers also find employment as personal retainers of lords, which, despite the implied subservient nature of the position, can form a decent basis for a mid-level party. There's also a large demand for adventurers to protect trade routes - travel is still dangerous, especially away from better settled areas.

There's similarities to historical situations here, but there are some notable differences.

(1) Threats are more omnipresent and more dangerous on average. This mostly means that mercenaries (ie, adventurers) extract even more wealth from the economy than they historically did, because they're needed pretty much all the time. Adventurers are an essential part of the economy, from keeping monsters out of farmers' fields, to protecting trade caravans, to defending towns where markets are held.

This does solve the historical problem of 'what do i do with mercenaries when i don't have a war to fight?', and that's 'clear the dark forest of nasty critters'. Indeed, mercenaries are mostly not that useful when you do have a war to fight.

It's also important to remember that the historical solutions to threat of force simply don't work. A bunch of experts who serve on a town militia are not an adequate response to most monster incursions. D+D monster threats are much better dealt with by trained specialists, adventurers, than weekend warriors.

(2) Because personal power is extremely well stratified and immediately tied to ability to do the job, political structures don't change in the same ways.

On the one hand, there's no reason that inheritance by birth even makes sense, and so the death of a noble might be a cause of political upheaval even more routinely than historical. And if for some reason you did get a job for which you weren't qualified, that'll become apparent the moment you have to perform your job. If you escalate to your liege when its unwarranted, your liege may very well just replace you, and if you pay adventurers to deal with the problems you should be dealing with then you'll likely bankrupt yourself. Effectively those adventurers just extract the wealth from you that your position affords you, and at some point they may decide that they deserve your title as well.

On the other hand, if a lower noble surpasses a higher noble in power, there's likely a method to get promoted. This may be anything from some formalized dueling or tournament system to drow-style house warfare where the loser is wiped out and the winner advances in position.

And sometimes lords bite off more than they can chew and get themselves and their retainers TPKed, and a promising lower noble gets promoted into their place. (Or just whomever kills the threat that TPKed the previous lord).

But in a lot of ways a lord's position is more stable in this environment than historical. Political favor has less importance because you still have to be able to stab things in the face. And the ruler wants high level adventurers tied into the system rather than outside it, because high level people outside the system are more prone to disrupt it. Ie, power doesn't really extend from title, power is what gets you a title, and that makes a huge difference.

So why do nobles care about peasants anyway?

Fundamentally, it's because food is the root of all value. Food keeps people alive, and if you do a good job protecting the peasants so they can grow the food, you generate a surplus that feeds craftsmen and miners and the like so you can have wealth that isn't food. It also lets you feed more adventurers, so you can have a posse to back you up and lower level adventurers to deal with the little crap you just can't be bothered with anymore. Without people, and therefore food, you can't generate most other wealth.

Nobles (and their clerical equivalent) are also the rockstars of the middle ages. If the peasants could read and had tabloids, they'd be the subject of the headlines. You get groupies, and basically your choice of companion(s) of the opposite gender. Or the same gender. Or both. Basically, power has advantages beyond wealth, and even adventurers with the power of the cosmos at their command are likely moved by such considerations.

And while theoretically you could be a wizard with fabricate and profession (tailor) and have nice threads, you can't have that and profession (cheesemaker) and profession (brewer) and etc... and make all the luxuries you could possibly want. Especially since your primary job involves stabbing things in the face, so you're going to want to spend at least some of your skills being good at that.

That doesn't mean that it isn't worthwhile to specialize in one high-profit industry for fabrication, but if you're going into the wool business, for example, you still want peasants to deal with the animal husbandry end of the business, and probably merchants to deal with the actual selling. It's not worth your time to replace all the peasants, because that's time during which you aren't gaining personal power that you can translate into ruling over more peasants and generating even more income. (Not to mention the swag that typically comes from stabbing monsters in the face).

Refusal to enter the nobility is also worrying for the other nobility. So even if you don't care to rule over peasants, you probably want to sign on as a retainer for someone who does. Because the rulers of the society will likely see refusal to enter the society as putting you *outside* the society. This means they won't care if someone stabs you in the face, they might even encourage it, and society won't even consider it murder. Basically, it would be self-imposed outlawry. And if you can survive on your own in the wilderness, chances are you have a fair bit of swag that'll make stabbing you in the face look attractive.

The Art of War

At some point domains with different rulers clear enough land that you get territories bordering other territories with high level rulers. Chances are 'peace' is not the default state.

Warfare is absolutely not fought with armies in the traditional sense. Those low-level adventurers who mostly protect caravans and deal with kobold incursions? They're next to useless when kingdoms clash for any straight-up fighting.

War is basically a chance for nobles to claim more land to rule over. You get party vs. party type conflicts where what's at stake is title and land and the wealth that comes with it.

Ultimately, this comes down to the ruler and his retainers on both sides, as they're the only ones who can decide the conflict. Either you have a direct combat between the two, and the winner rules both kingdoms, or a proxy fight where the ruler of one kingdom kills a high noble of the other and then gets offered and accepts a position as a lord in the other kingdom, or a detente where both sides fight through proxies because they estimate they're too evenly matched and don't want to risk it. Basically, the only way you actually get multiple kingdoms is MAD or some close approximation thereof.

In the detente situation where there is no immediate or definite conclusion, lower-level actors come in as guerilla fighters, raiding land and merchants in the other kingdom, or possibly more relevantly, stealing magical items. Basically, everyone takes the opportunity to grab wealth where they can because it's legal to do so. Eventually some agreement is made which establishes "peace", but that probably only slows down the raiding.

Summary:
Basically, adventurers and lords are a continuum of an extractive upper class based on merit, where what is meritorious is stabbing things in the face. They extract wealth from society in return for providing protection.

Not all of this is terribly surprising, but it needed to be established so we could even begin talking about adventurer economies at all.

Rough idea of what's coming up, which may not end up getting split this way:
The Adventurer Economy
Campaign Arcs and Story Prompts
Alternative Economies

Also not sure where I'm going to fit it in, but some thinking about alternatives to peasants and what's acceptable behavior from a noble.

[Wrathzog]

Political favor has less importance because you still have to be able to stab things in the face.

Don't get this relationship mixed up... face stabbing isn't an end to itself (usually), face stabbing and the threat of face stabbing are just Political Tools that you use to Force people to do what you want. Politics isn't just about diplomancing people. Intimidation plays a big part (note who's on the UN Security council, for example) and that's backed by your (perceived) ability and willingness to Stab Faces.

So why do nobles care about peasants anyway?

This is a good question and I don't think that Food or other Mundane Services are a great answer. It'll probably come down to more abstract things like "I want to be in charge," or "I want to protect people," or "my god told me to do it," or "I'm a Hedonist."

Ultimately, this comes down to the ruler and his retainers on both sides, as they're the only ones who can decide the conflict.

Which is actually great for the small folk because no one's getting conscripted and no one's getting raped or pillaged by occupation forces in the postwar. In fact, the actual conflict probably happens at such a high level that Joe Farmer doesn't even notice because none of the middle management changed either.
Unless someone runs a scorched earth policy but it's not like Joe can stop that so there's no need for him to worry about it.

The rest of it sounds good.

[Grek]

You forgot to feed his children 3

From age 6 or so, a child in D&Dland can earn their own food as untrained laborers. He has the money to feed them up to that point.

squares and a cot.

We're assuming that he has a house still standing or is able to move in with his neighbors for a while. Asking him to buy a house first thing is unreasonable.

You also did not pay any taxes,

Taxes and business-related expenses are already counted in the Profession skill. Your check decides how much income you personally get from working. Not how much revenue your business takes in or what its expenditures are, only your share of the difference between the two.

or buy anything at all except some food.

Masterwork tools and hiring a party of adventurers is nothing?

[shadzar]

For basically any work to get done, land needs to be cleared of monsters and stay cleared of monsters that would disrupt productive work.

i am not so sure about this. say heard animals that might rampage through an area at certain times or migrate from one valley to the next could be helpful. if they are taking down trees that could be used for tool, firewood, etc. then it requires less labor to fell the tree and less loss of life in doing so and can be MORE productive.

might not let you plant an acre of corn, but the monsters could be of benefit in another way. food source if it is two tribes of orcs fighting each other and you are not against eating orc meat.

so long as the town or whatever is protected from these, and maybe the mosnters protect the town or whatever to prevent unwanted people from coming in. like an outer defense wall you jsut have to defend against if it comes in to close to home.

farming in a monster filled area.. yeah pretty much out

[Username17]

If you try to base economic realities on the outputs of the Profession skill, you have lost the internet.

-Username17

[Grek]

If you try to base economic realities on the outputs of the Profession skill, you have lost the internet.

-Username17

Any particular reason for that? Obviously, it's not an in depth farming simulator, but as a first approximation it doesn't seem to do too badly.

[Nath]

Working fields really happens in spring and fall, so summer is legitimate, but depending on climate it can be a seriously bad time to fight. Anywhere that gets significant rain is going to be a muddy disaster. Winter means the ground is frozen, and thus easier to fight

Battle of Hastings, William army was ready by 12 august, landed on 28 September and fought 14 October. Or, if you prefer Late Middle Ages, try the Hundred Years War. Battle of Crecy, the English army landed in France on 12 July, pillaged Normandy before encountering and beating the French army on 26 August. Battle of Poitiers, the Black Prince began raids on 8 August, fought against the French army on 19 September. Battle of Agincourt, the English army landed in France on 13 August, went to a decisive victory on 25 October... Campaigns take place between early summer and late autumn.

Winter never ever was the season of warfare in Europe. Temperature around or below zero are too much of an issue for an army that must sleep under tents. The only major medieval "battles" that took place in winter either were sieges (often started in late autumn and carried on), or fought during the Crusades in a much warmer part of the world.

[Ancient History]

This entire thread is squirrelloid's personal Did Not Do The Research.

[squirrelloid]

Working fields really happens in spring and fall, so summer is legitimate, but depending on climate it can be a seriously bad time to fight. Anywhere that gets significant rain is going to be a muddy disaster. Winter means the ground is frozen, and thus easier to fight

Battle of Hastings, William army was ready by 12 august, landed on 28 September and fought 14 October. Or, if you prefer Late Middle Ages, try the Hundred Years War. Battle of Crecy, the English army landed in France on 12 July, pillaged Normandy before encountering and beating the French army on 26 August. Battle of Poitiers, the Black Prince began raids on 8 August, fought against the French army on 19 September. Battle of Agincourt, the English army landed in France on 13 August, went to a decisive victory on 25 October... Campaigns take place between early summer and late autumn.

Winter never ever was the season of warfare in Europe. Temperature around or below zero are too much of an issue for an army that must sleep under tents. The only major medieval "battles" that took place in winter either were sieges (often started in late autumn and carried on), or fought during the Crusades in a much warmer part of the world.

I never meant to imply warfare was primarily winter, only raiding. (And you know, I'm happy to be wrong, but the notable viking raids I recall like the Siege of Paris happened, or at least started, in the winter).

I only said warfare respected the productive cycle, which it typically did. You couldn't take the peasants off to war during spring planting, and you really wanted to get them home in time to harvest. (Some of those battles *were* muddy disasters).

[Bill Bisco: Isometric Imp]

This entire thread is squirrelloid's personal Did Not Do The Research.

Hey Ancient. No need to threadcrap. If you don't like it, leave it be.

Squirrelloid: If you could get some rules to go with lords and peasants crafting useful materials to deal with annoying stuff it'd be a godsend. Right now we just handwave the stuff away or enjoy that genre with computer games. We need good rules for that in a tabletop.

[Winnah]

Here is an example of a medieval merchant league. The Hanseatic League

As for raiding in winter, that just makes sense. Winter is when you starve if you have limited food stores.

[sabs]

Except that The original Sack of Paris in 845 happened in March.
The second siege in 885-886, starts in November, but that's basically because it took them all summer to make their way down the Seine, pillaging.

[shadzar]

and how did such things affect D&D economies in 845, etc?

[Winnah]

The economics and politics of warfare differ from the economics of piracy and raiding.

Political leaders have varying levels of involvement with traders. Maybe they just collect taxes from them and seize their goods when needed. Then again, they might offer political and military support in exchange for various promises.

Diplomacy and trade go hand in hand. You're probably going to cease trade with someone if they consistantly allow your caravans or barges to be robbed. Sending a small army along to protect your traders could also be viewed suspiciously. As a result, there are political motivations for protecting trade.

As for warfare, there are a number of economic influences, there is most probably economic motivations as well. Some people can make a lot of money by going to someone else's place and taking all of their shit. Some cultures make a habit of this practice.

It could be argued that the major differences between warfare and raiding is the scale of the conflict and the way that the spoils are distributed among the victors.

It is a lot more complicated than that, of course. I've just been listening to Joe Rogan's podcast, so I felt like rambling.

As for how it effects D&D land...That is where stuff gets really complicated. There are quite a few situations where real-world comparisons are impossible. For example, you could make a comparison of historical Persian cultures and their interations with tribal Slavs to determine how Humans and Elven cultures might interact in a fantasy world. You can make equivocations of how zombie armies, voracious dragons and mind flayers might interact with an economy, but you will be struggling to come up with anything sensible or coherent, especially when you take the sheer number of intelligent cultures and creatures into consideration.

I mean, you could potentially come up with a simple model of how the economy of a single city interacts with the local Kaorti colony, the Wererats in the sewers and the Deva cult in the slums. Trying to do the same on a macro scale, such as a mismatched-jigsaw campaign setting like the Forgotten Realms, would result in an incomprehensible mess.

Personally, my best option would be to keep things on that scale vague and undefined. I can fill in the details as required, on a case by case basis. That way, when players start pulling at threads, they are not going to cause too many issues for me, for the remainder of the campaign.

[Username17]

I mean, you could potentially come up with a simple model of how the economy of a single city interacts with the local Kaorti colony, the Wererats in the sewers and the Deva cult in the slums. Trying to do the same on a macro scale, such as a mismatched-jigsaw campaign setting like the Forgotten Realms, would result in an incomprehensible mess.

Personally, my best option would be to keep things on that scale vague and undefined. I can fill in the details as required, on a case by case basis. That way, when players start pulling at threads, they are not going to cause too many issues for me, for the remainder of the campaign.

Pretty much this. We live in a world with a very high amount of trade and homogeneity of production, where massive amounts of substitution is possible with goods and services and every single economic actor is the same species with quite similar capabilities. And still our "micro-foundations" are so absurd that people put them together to make macro models that are badly wrong all the time. Bill Gross lost a lot of money betting that treasury rates were going to rise.

In D&D land, individual economic actors are wildly different species. Goods and services are made individually and not mass produced or even held to a standard. Neither the producers nor the consumers can really be substituted. Grimlocks are obligate carnivores whose subjective value of "appearance" is zero. They don't actually want anything Dryads produce.

Attempting to build a macro model up from micro foundations in such a world is extremely difficult. Not that I think Rational Expectations or Efficient Market does a particularly good job of presenting an average human's economic psychology, but how much more difficult is it going to be when Maug and Armand have demonstrably different economic behavior?

-Username17

[squirrelloid]

As for warfare, there are a number of economic influences, there is most probably economic motivations as well. Some people can make a lot of money by going to someone else's place and taking all of their shit. Some cultures make a habit of this practice.

It could be argued that the major differences between warfare and raiding is the scale of the conflict and the way that the spoils are distributed among the victors.

It is a lot more complicated than that, of course. I've just been listening to Joe Rogan's podcast, so I felt like rambling.

I think one way that D+D really changes things is that *everything looks like raiding*. Warfare is just officially sanctioned raiding.

You do not have zombie armies. You do not have human armies, or elven armies, or any of that nonsense. Armies are completely obsolete and die to fireball of all things. Chances are that if you gathered all the nobility of a nation together, 99% of the power is the ruler, his posse, and his top tier of nobles and their posses, because *power grows geometrically*. Figure you average a CR jump of *at least 4 levels* between tiers of nobility, and that the posse of a noble of a given CR is about that noble's CR. (Because they are/were an adventuring party!)

So it takes 4 of the top tier of nobility just to match the ruler, but he brings his adventuring buddies (~3 of them), so you need all of the top tier nobility to bring their posses for it to be a fair fight *at all*. And this assumes that you can get 4 extremely powerful nobles to work together.

So, in a warfare situation, the Ruler calls his posse and his top nobles. His top nobles call their posses. If they bother to call their subservient nobles, you get a bunch of Ruler-8 CR dudes running around who go splat all the time because it's like being level 12 when the guys at the top are gating in Solars and casting Blasphemy. You matter so little it's not even funny.

And that means that in any battle that actually matters between two countries we're talking maybe 20-60 guys on a side, and that's the real military might of each kingdom. Sure, you'll have summons flung around like crazy, planar bound greater demons, controlled greater undead, and possibly allies who are obligated to come when you need them, but we're talking at most a couple hundred creatures on each side total, including temporary summons.

Thus the only difference between raiding and warfare in D+D is therefore whether or not it is state sanctioned. And that mostly means that the face-stabber at the top of the heirarchy is involved in 'raiding' when its warfare, and not when its only raiding.

So if the noble from the other kingdom is raiding you, you complain to your Ruler, who complains to the raider's Ruler. If the raider gets sanctioned or otherwise dealt with by his overlord, then it wasn't warfare. If the other Ruler tells your Ruler to fuck off, you're at war.

Of course, this means you have to be able to prove who raided you if you think they're someone who is nominally subject to the law.

Some actors just don't give a fuck about 'peace' or 'war' and will raid you whenever they feel like it and not sign treaties at all. But you don't really have 'war' with a bunch of low-level goblins. You get raided by the goblins and then you hire adventurers to go exterminate them and get your stuff back. Your ruler never gets worried - she can't even be bothered to lift a finger herself unless they manage to summon a pit fiend or something.

[Winnah]

I am not sure I agree with that.

You still need armies, people with weapons and boots on the ground. They might not be able to stand up to a squad of magic wielding psychopaths, or even basic supernatural monsters, but they still have a purpose.

First, squads of elite basasses have their place, but they also have a limited presence. You might have a few wizards on standby, or capable of making reprisals, but most of them are not be in a position to counter every threat or nuisance the moment it appears.

Having squads of ordinary warriors allows you to do things like patrol the streets, collect taxes from ordinary folk and watch over act as a speedbump for the important people while they sleep. When it comes to dealing with ordinary, mundane threats, a normal warrior is probably capable of handling the task in sufficient numbers.

As for warfare, it is not just about killing everyone of the other side. It's mainly about making the other side relent and not want to fight any more, so that they are more agreeable to your point of view. Even if that point of view is "I want your stuff."

Fantasy concepts certainly complicate things, especially in D&D, but the basics of warfare no doubt remain the same, even if the implementation of certain tactics is some crazy, asymmetric shit.

There are obvious exceptions. The guy leading the zombie army has an incentive to create lots of corpses, regardless of their motivations for creating an undead army.

Certain monsters are genocidal (xenocidal?) or require intelligent beings as food. Some creatures are so ridiculously powerful that the fallout of any conflict with them simply can't be predicted, so you end up with plane spanning MAD or asymmetric warfare, assuming you can counter, but not kill them.

You end up with the same issue as economies, of being able to predict how things might operate on a limited scale, but not on a large scale. You may as well use the real world as a point of reference, at least until you have to figure out how Dragon riding Githyakni Wizards will make a mess of the house of cards you have constructed.

It may not be perfect, but at least your fantasy society will operate by a set of conventions that your players will be able to recognise and identify with.

[squirrelloid]

I am not sure I agree with that.

You still need armies, people with weapons and boots on the ground. They might not be able to stand up to a squad of magic wielding psychopaths, or even basic supernatural monsters, but they still have a purpose.

Boots on the ground does not necessarily equal armies. Yes, there's a cottage industry of adventurers who deal with low-level threats. They also guard trade caravans and towns, because there's no reason to get punked by common low-level threats.

But the moment the threat escalates at all they run away or die, because they simply can't deal. So there's absolutely no point in making an army of them, because that's just a big target that says 'kick me' to even moderate level badasses.

First, squads of elite basasses have their place, but they also have a limited presence. You might have a few wizards on standby, or capable of making reprisals, but most of them are not be in a position to counter every threat or nuisance the moment it appears.

You don't have a few wizards on standby, you *are a wizard*, and your posse is a druid, cleric, and Tome Fighter. If a threat appears that you have to take notice of, you deal with it. And the stuff that's several CR beneath you gets farmed out to your vassals because you have more important stuff to be doing.

The elite badasses *are* the nobles. It's their job to stab things in the face. Personally. That is literally the only reason for their existence.

Having squads of ordinary warriors allows you to do things like patrol the streets, collect taxes from ordinary folk and watch over act as a speedbump for the important people while they sleep. When it comes to dealing with ordinary, mundane threats, a normal warrior is probably capable of handling the task in sufficient numbers.

Whether these are warriors or not, I see no reason why this has anything to do with an army. Also, most cities will handle their own street patrol, because the nobles could generally care less so long as they pay taxes.

Speaking of which, the tax collectors are totally low level adventurers hired to handle the job with an expert accountant in tow.

As for warfare, it is not just about killing everyone of the other side. It's mainly about making the other side relent and not want to fight any more, so that they are more agreeable to your point of view. Even if that point of view is "I want your stuff."

You don't kill everyone. You kill their top badasses and then their lesser badasses swear fealty to you because they're totally inconsequential as a military force (and the alternative is they just get killed and replaced).

I mean, that's more or less making the other side relent.

Of course, most of the peasants never even realize there was a war.

Fantasy concepts certainly complicate things, especially in D&D, but the basics of warfare no doubt remain the same, even if the implementation of certain tactics is some crazy, asymmetric shit.

It's not fantasy concepts, its the geometric power scaling which makes low level peons meaningless at the level of kingdom conflict. When just one of the opposition can teleport into the middle of your army and cast Wail of the Banshee before they even know what's going on, you have a serious problem even doing anything with an army.

Lower level adventuring parties can participate in a military conflict by being small and thus harder to notice. They can disrupt trade, steal or destroy resources, and otherwise operate as guerilla forces. But the moment the high level badass conflict gets decided, it's time to stop and accept whatever amnesty terms there are (and there will be a tradition of amnesty terms for most civilized races, or the low-level guys won't even participate at all), because now the winning badasses can spend their considerable divinatory mojo tracking down all the little shits disrupting their kingdom.

(Or the moderate level badasses can do it, now that they're no longer worried about the formerly enemy moderate level badasses. Basically, if a belligerent refuses to surrender after losing its top badasses, you get a cascade effect where the enemy badasses can downshift the power level of the opposition they're going after, and simply wipe them out).

There are obvious exceptions. The guy leading the zombie army has an incentive to create lots of corpses, regardless of their motivations for creating an undead army.

The guy animating a bunch of regular zombies is going to do primarily non-military things with them, because its the only thing that makes sense. The guy who wants to use zombies in an offensive capacity raises a zombie dragon he can fly on.

Certain monsters are genocidal (xenocidal?) or require intelligent beings as food. Some creatures are so ridiculously powerful that the fallout of any conflict with them simply can't be predicted, so you end up with plane spanning MAD or asymmetric warfare, assuming you can counter, but not kill them.

If the world is top heavy with CR 20+ monsters, civilization just doesn't happen, because everyone who can't survive a CR20 monster attack just dies.

There has to be a distribution of threats where CR1 is the most common and the frequency of threats of CR N is decreasing as N increases. So when a CR20 threat arises, the noble tier that is approximately that badass deals with it. (Which might be the ruler, which would imply a CR 20 threat is an *existential crisis for the kingdom* in that case.) Basically, high CR threats are rare enough that civilization has time to grow before one destroys it, or at least rare enough that some monstrous badass who might decide getting paid to protect a kingdom is a good deal can handle all the high CR threats that come along while the humans are building up a heirarchy of powerful nobles. This is an absolutely essential prerequisite to even having civilization in the first place.

It's also pretty essential that explanar shit *can't get to the prime* without someone on the prime enabling that, because otherwise we know that demons and devils just annihilate civilization. Since that hasn't happened, they obviously can't freely move armies of CR10+ evil outsiders to the prime. (There is seriously an infinite number of demons and devils, so there's no way civilization survives if they can enter the prime at will). Planar warfare is thus inherently asymmetric, because the lower power civilizations control all the access.

You end up with the same issue as economies, of being able to predict how things might operate on a limited scale, but not on a large scale. You may as well use the real world as a point of reference, at least until you have to figure out how Dragon riding Githyakni Wizards will make a mess of the house of cards you have constructed.

It may not be perfect, but at least your fantasy society will operate by a set of conventions that your players will be able to recognise and identify with.

You really don't, because one 20th level wizard makes arbitrarily many 1st level warriors irrelevant. That makes it really easy to predict what happens. Heck, a 10th level fighter makes arbitrary numbers of 1st level warriors pretty irrelevant. (Not even a Tome fighter, a regular fighter).

Pretending low level armies matter would be like suggesting you fight battleships with paper airplanes. That's beyond retarded and anyone who has glanced at a 20th level character can see it.

That we can talk ourselves into having feudal lords who rule over peasants at all (and we haven't solved all the difficulties yet) is about as good as we can do to make it recognizable.