Core Principle: Your Fantasy Economy is Bullshit

General questions, debates, and rants about RPGs

Moderator: Moderators

User avatar
CatharzGodfoot
King
Posts: 5668
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
Location: North Carolina

Post by CatharzGodfoot »

Lago PARANOIA wrote:
CatharzGodfoot wrote:I'd expect early agrarian cultures to form around druids and Plant clerics.
Err, why? Druid and cleric magic sucks for agriculture. They don't get any tricks better than what a TFC wizard would get or could be replicated better than a few farmers with a plow, saws, and pickaxes. Seriously. Even the sort-of-good exclusive tricks druid/cleric magic get like Plant Growth and Move Earth pale in comparison to what you could do with Fabricate, the Planar Binding line, Minor/Major Creation, Wall of Iron, Command Undead, Teleport, Permanency + Wall of Fire, Prismatic Wall, Permanent Image, and so on. If you trust the hell out of your diplomacy check, bribe skills, or slavery abilities you could also just plain get a coven of sea hags (three CR4 creatures) to spam Control Weather for you three times a day.

Hell, just the fact that wizards have fabricate and command undead should shoot them to the top of the list. 3rd level wizards ordering around colossal skeletons?



The sad fact of the matter is that D&D magic is and was designed to be used in a narrow dungeon crawl. Even spells that look like they'd be awesome on paper generally suck because of their limited range. For the most part you'll want to look for spells with open-ended effects like command undead or planar binding. Or for spells that are lackadaisical towards weight/volume/mass/energy input. Like wall of iron or fire. Or sometimes both, like fabricate or minor/major creation.
Right, so agrarian societies form around druids and Plant clerics, and then rulers of other classes sometimes take over and leave you with a priesthood and a temporal authority. Because druids and plant clerics get the key stuff at low levels, and then other folks can start matching their tricks at mid-to-high levels.
The law in its majestic equality forbids the rich as well as the poor from stealing bread, begging and sleeping under bridges.
-Anatole France

Mount Flamethrower on rear
Drive in reverse
Win Game.

-Josh Kablack

User avatar
OgreBattle
King
Posts: 6820
Joined: Sat Sep 03, 2011 9:33 am

Post by OgreBattle »

are rogues a class that only evolved when society reached a point where people kept things in locks and pockets?
User avatar
CatharzGodfoot
King
Posts: 5668
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
Location: North Carolina

Post by CatharzGodfoot »

OgreBattle wrote:are rogues a class that only evolved when society reached a point where people kept things in locks and pockets?
Presumably they were around to sneak after and flank woolly mammoths.
The law in its majestic equality forbids the rich as well as the poor from stealing bread, begging and sleeping under bridges.
-Anatole France

Mount Flamethrower on rear
Drive in reverse
Win Game.

-Josh Kablack

Lago PARANOIA
Invincible Overlord
Posts: 10555
Joined: Thu Sep 25, 2008 3:00 am

Post by Lago PARANOIA »

CatharzGodfoot wrote:Right, so agrarian societies form around druids and Plant clerics, and then rulers of other classes sometimes take over and leave you with a priesthood and a temporal authority. Because druids and plant clerics get the key stuff at low levels, and then other folks can start matching their tricks at mid-to-high levels.
No. They don't. Seriously, look at the plant cleric/druid spell list. Take a good, hard long look at it. There is nothing on the spell list, especially at low levels, that will buttress an agricultural society. If all of the plant clerics/druid went on strike and refused to offer any additional services until they got their strange demands met, people would not cave in for anything more than a pittance.

Their low-level spells and features aren't useless, mind, especially the clerics' ability to command undead. Soften Earth and Stone is faster than what a laborer could use to plow fields/soften bedrock. But it's not faster than five laborers. Plant Growth would be pretty good, except if we're talking about medieval crop yields we're still not doing very good. In modern times, sure. And nothing can really replace being able to cast desecrate at all if you're going to be making an undead labor force.

Command Undead, a second-level wizard spell, allows a 3rd level wizard to command up to a 20HD skeleton of up to colossal size for three days with no saving throw allowed. Having that thing go loose would be pretty awful, and you'd have to find an appropriate corpse in the first place, so you'll have to be careful with storage and shifts. But you get an incredible amount of labor and power.

Minor Creation, a 4th-level wizard spell, lets a wizard create at least 7 1-foot cube of vegetable matter for at least 7 hours. That is a shit-ton of herbicide, pesticide, and fertilizer. And wizards can do much better than minor creation. Permanency + Wall of Fire w/Maximize Rod for instance is enough on its own for the water and power needs of a steampunk city. So is Permanency + Animate Objects if you can scrounge up the caster levels for a colossal-sized electric motor. Or you could just have the most badass hydroelectric dam ever. Wall of Iron, as noted in this thread, can seriously replace an entire iron-making industry, that's how much iron it makes.

What plant cleric/druid-exclusive spell do they get that, pound-for-pound, tops that as far as bootstrapping D&D agriculture goes?
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
User avatar
Chamomile
Prince
Posts: 4632
Joined: Tue May 03, 2011 10:45 am

Post by Chamomile »

Okay, so maybe I'm doing some math terribly wrong here. A lot of people here are better at math than me, so that's certainly possible. But it seems to me like +33% crop yields actually would make a ginormously huge difference.

Google tells me the average medieval peasant had two acres of farmland with which to feed himself. One of those acres is used just to replant according to posts made earlier in the thread, while the other is used to actually feed himself. We will assume, despite how bizarre an assumption it is, that he has no family and does not have to give up any of his food as tax to the lord who actually owns the land he's working. With the help of Plant Growth, he now has effectively 2.6 acres of production, but still only requires one of those acres' produce to replant. That leaves an extra .6 people fed per two acres. Plant Growth affects all fields within a half-mile radius, so for simplicities sake I just went with 1 square mile per casting, which is a nice even 640 acres. At .6 extra people fed per two acres, that's 192 (320*0.6) people fed for every casting of the spell.

If the Druid has a 2X2 block of farmland to work with and casts 4 days out of the year, he's creating enough surplus food to feed 768 people. If we expand that out to 4X4, the Druid is working two weeks out of a year and has to travel about two miles at the most to get the job done, and is now feeding an extra 3,072 people. Ramp that up to 6X6 and we're at enough to feed the lower end of a Small City, the Druid works about one day out of every ten, and is traveling no more than about three miles. To feed a Metropolis on nothing but the surplus, the Druid would need a 12X12 block, which will leave him traveling and casting about once every other day, and sometimes going out 6 miles, which means he will need a horse to be able to do that (or else more magic). However he is making enough food to feed 27,000 people. He's also going to need access to a 12X12 block of pure farmland, so that is a nuisance.

Still, 5th-level Druids and Plant Clerics are, by these numbers, easily capable of solving food shortages so long as you can get the excess food from where they live to where it needs to be, which is where the fact that Team Monster owns practically every forest on the continent comes in.
User avatar
Whipstitch
Prince
Posts: 3660
Joined: Fri Apr 29, 2011 10:23 pm

Post by Whipstitch »

I haven't looked at your math but right away I think you're missing an important point: proper "blocks" of farmland didn't happen back then. One of the biggest issues with medieval farming is that they couldn't just grow shit anywhere in nice contiguous areas. They didn't know jack about proper crop rotation, fertilization or other methods of taking shit terrible land and converting it into something halfway useful. That's why people would still straight up feud over a half acre strip of land--population density was hilariously low but that often didn't matter because at any given time much of the land was basically worthless. There's some old records of feudal lords divvying up land into weird patchwork plots and then assigning peasants good land and shitty land. That was necessary just so people would actually start planting things at all rather than fight over the bit that wasn't a glorified mudhole.

Seriously, the middle ages sucked.
User avatar
Chamomile
Prince
Posts: 4632
Joined: Tue May 03, 2011 10:45 am

Post by Chamomile »

Alright, so roughly what percentage of the land is going to be usable as farmland, then?
User avatar
Whipstitch
Prince
Posts: 3660
Joined: Fri Apr 29, 2011 10:23 pm

Post by Whipstitch »

I can't really answer that. Things were contiguous in that they'd try to work things in a 3 field system--basically, the practice of using 1/3rd of the land for summer crops, 1/3 for winter crops and leaving a 1/3 fallow--but you'd still end up with big chunks of the land they worked yielding rather little due a variety of factors.
Lago PARANOIA
Invincible Overlord
Posts: 10555
Joined: Thu Sep 25, 2008 3:00 am

Post by Lago PARANOIA »

And of course there's worries like, oh, pesticides and weeds.

I'm not kidding when I said that you needed to raise the productivity of Plant Growth by 30% before a 5th level druid/plant-cleric becomes a reasonable investment.

Plant Growth would be awesome in modern times when humankind is already pushing its nose to the grindstone with the Green Revolution. But considering how incredibly disorganized and underperforming medieval farming techniques are, you'd get way more than a paltry 30% increase in productivity just by having workshops of wizards using minor creation to create farming chemicals. Not by casting minor creation directly on farmland of course (though if you rule that if it doesn't work that way because it only lasts for >7 hours it raises interesting questions on feeding yourself through such magic) but as a catalyst for more permanent and scalable reactions.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
User avatar
CatharzGodfoot
King
Posts: 5668
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
Location: North Carolina

Post by CatharzGodfoot »

Lago PARANOIA wrote:And of course there's worries like, oh, pesticides and weeds.

I'm not kidding when I said that you needed to raise the productivity of Plant Growth by 30% before a 5th level druid/plant-cleric becomes a reasonable investment.

Plant Growth would be awesome in modern times when humankind is already pushing its nose to the grindstone with the Green Revolution. But considering how incredibly disorganized and underperforming medieval farming techniques are, you'd get way more than a paltry 30% increase in productivity just by having workshops of wizards using minor creation to create farming chemicals. Not by casting minor creation directly on farmland of course (though if you rule that if it doesn't work that way because it only lasts for >7 hours it raises interesting questions on feeding yourself through such magic) but as a catalyst for more permanent and scalable reactions.
If an agrarian society can feed themselves with the output of their fields, a 30% increase is huge. If they can't, they're not an agrarian society.

To create fertilizer and pesticides, you have to know that those things exist. If you do, you probably have a fairly advanced knowledge of agriculture, and will benefit more from a straight percentage yield increase than having more manure or arsenic to put in their fields.
The law in its majestic equality forbids the rich as well as the poor from stealing bread, begging and sleeping under bridges.
-Anatole France

Mount Flamethrower on rear
Drive in reverse
Win Game.

-Josh Kablack

hyzmarca
Prince
Posts: 3909
Joined: Mon Mar 14, 2011 10:07 pm

Post by hyzmarca »

Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane
Conjuration (Creation)
Level: Clr 0, Drd 0, Pal 1
Components: V, S
Casting Time: 1 standard action
Duration: Instantaneous
Saving Throw: None
Spell Resistance: No

Dichlorodiphenyltrichloroethane creates a thin cloud of insecticidal mist with a radius of 1/2 mile per caster level centered on the caster. This insectice settles onto anything that's out in the open and remains on any plants, animals, and non-porus objects until washed away. Any living Diminutive or Fine creature that comes into contact with this insecticide must make a fortitude save at DC 20 or die. This save only needs to be made once per exposure.
Last edited by hyzmarca on Mon Aug 13, 2012 3:17 am, edited 2 times in total.
User avatar
erik
King
Posts: 5861
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by erik »

Bah. Medieval Europe for D&D is lame anyway.

Go Incan!

Have casters turn a mountainside into awesome farming. That's what casters should be doing. Stoneshape them mountains into roads and sophisticated terraces with drainage to lower levels. Summon birds to use their crap as fertilizer. Control weather for favorable conditions. The Incans did all this without magic, except for the weather control (duh), but irrigation really helped balance things out to defray the worst effects of variable moisture and temperatures.

That sounds a lot more like a society where magic is used in a sensible manner. Instead of using skilled labor to cleverly plan and quarry and precisely carve the rocks, holy figures actually perform miracles and earn the respect they commanded.

Craft wondrous items of at will activation Heat Metal and you basically have nuclear fuel rods that never run out and never cause radiation problems (or do they!). Power!

Or hit the easy button. Planeshift to the elemental plane of bacon and bring back the goods. I imagine the tuning fork should have a bit of syrup on it.
Lago PARANOIA
Invincible Overlord
Posts: 10555
Joined: Thu Sep 25, 2008 3:00 am

Post by Lago PARANOIA »

CG wrote:If an agrarian society can feed themselves with the output of their fields, a 30% increase is huge. If they can't, they're not an agrarian society.
But when a population is capable of feeding itself, it increases, especially when we're talking about pre-post-industrial societies. That 30% extra crop yield is beneficial at first. Then half a generation or two comes along and then puts pressure on the available food supply all over again.

At that point you'll have to resort to some other food production method. If no one else is able to rise to the challenge industrially or magically, then sure, the druids and plant clerics can use their power to finagle leadership positions. But the agricultural industry is already drastically underperforming. People could seriously double their grain yields just by distributing better plows. And guess which class provides the iron for the plows?
CG wrote:To create fertilizer and pesticides, you have to know that those things exist. If you do, you probably have a fairly advanced knowledge of agriculture, and will benefit more from a straight percentage yield increase than having more manure or arsenic to put in their fields.
People knew about fertilizer and pesticides back then. Not in Dark/Middle Age Western Europe, but civilizations before and concurrent with this population did.

A lot of the problems with pre-Enlightenment agriculture is just straight-up ignorance but a substantial amount of it stems from wars, a depressed economy, and lack of an industrial base.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
Lago PARANOIA
Invincible Overlord
Posts: 10555
Joined: Thu Sep 25, 2008 3:00 am

Post by Lago PARANOIA »

erik wrote:Craft wondrous items of at will activation Heat Metal and you basically have nuclear fuel rods that never run out and never cause radiation problems (or do they!). Power!
1.) CWI for at-will items is the stupidest idea ever. Yeah, a lot of spells would be awesome if you could have an operator just keep using them over and over again. But it's completely broken and overpowered. If very few DMs will be willing to let PCs do this for artifacts of personal power, why would they be willing to do this for campaign setting fixtures? So let's never talk about it again.

2.) Heat Metal will not transfer enough heat to water to run anything more than a tiny engine and only if you have a lot of them. Even at its peak it only reaches a max temperature of 2d4. You could put it next to a strip of wood or lagging and it will never catch on fire.

Wall of Fire could barely manage this trick with a caster of high enough level and/or using a metamagic rod who was able to sit on their ass and concentrate on a spell for several hours while you forced a medium to flow through it. I recommend using Permanency instead and giving the wizard a fat succubus ass/fat sack of cash/fat cache of crack for the experience point down payment and stock in the power plant.
Last edited by Lago PARANOIA on Mon Aug 13, 2012 12:40 pm, edited 1 time in total.
Josh Kablack wrote:Your freedom to make rulings up on the fly is in direct conflict with my freedom to interact with an internally consistent narrative. Your freedom to run/play a game without needing to understand a complex rule system is in direct conflict with my freedom to play a character whose abilities and flaws function as I intended within that ruleset. Your freedom to add and change rules in the middle of the game is in direct conflict with my ability to understand that rules system before I decided whether or not to join your game.

In short, your entire post is dismissive of not merely my intelligence, but my agency. And I don't mean agency as a player within one of your games, I mean my agency as a person. You do not want me to be informed when I make the fundamental decisions of deciding whether to join your game or buying your rules system.
User avatar
erik
King
Posts: 5861
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by erik »

Lago PARANOIA wrote:
erik wrote:Craft wondrous items of at will activation Heat Metal and you basically have nuclear fuel rods that never run out and never cause radiation problems (or do they!). Power!
1.) CWI for at-will items is the stupidest idea ever.

2.) Heat Metal will not transfer enough heat to water to run anything more than a tiny engine and only if you have a lot of them.

I recommend using Permanency instead and giving the wizard a fat succubus ass/fat sack of cash/fat cache of crack for the experience point down payment and stock in the power plant.
1) It's legal. It's not like this is campaign breaking. Just a fluff thing to justify a magic society with free power. It's not like the player characters are needing or wanting the heat metal rods.

2) Read the full spell description. It sets water to boiling when cast on metal in water. Non-specific about the quantity. 1 Cubic meter is 1000 liters. Seems a reasonable amount to heat up. You could make heat-water vats that were much larger I suppose.

Assuming room tempterature water, 21 celsius, you are heating up water to 100 celsius minimum. 4187 Joules to heat up 1000 liters one degree. So 330,000 Joules for that single heating.

Assuming that it takes the whole 42 second duration to bring it to a boil (unlikely since it starts cooling after 30 seconds and doesn't even hurt after 36, but hey), you are producing 7,876 Watts with a single use. Not enough to power a city, but that's just heating one big pot of water.

Depending upon caster level you get to heat 1 object for every 2 levels, so in the vein of a plant-growth caster economy, you could have a 6th level caster doing 3 rods at once with a single casting to create 23.6 kW.

Now you won't be able to translate this heat into energy with perfect efficiency. Power plants work at about 40-50% efficiency off that heat energy. So call it 40% and you get 9.45 kW per casting at your power plant. If it can be automated somehow via magic itemry, boom, easily done.

Yes, you can also do a permanency wall of fire, but heat metal is cool too. You don't need to use power for lighting as light spells are easy, mostly just for heating water, which means you don't even need to worry about efficiency loss if you're gonna use it for a hot water supply.
John Magnum
Knight-Baron
Posts: 826
Joined: Tue Feb 14, 2012 12:49 am

Post by John Magnum »

Describing it in terms of Watts per casting is bizarrely useless, since you already figured out the more relevant measure and then converted it using speculation to Watts. Watts would only even be slightly relevant if this were a continuous source of power, but it very clearly isn't, so just list the Joules. Especially since you need to let the water cool back down to use the spell again.

In any case, assuming that it can boil arbitrarily large volumes of water by spewing out arbitrarily high quantities of energy is daft. At most "surrounding water" would be up to the range of the spell, which is Close. Except, wait, that's way way way MORE than what you're suggesting--it's 7500 cubic meters of water for a level 6 caster. Which, okay, that is fucking ridiculous and idiotic. So why are we to believe that "the surrounding water" means "absolutely all water in the same container as the heated metal"?
Last edited by John Magnum on Mon Aug 13, 2012 4:22 pm, edited 1 time in total.
-JM
User avatar
erik
King
Posts: 5861
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by erik »

It was sort of a stream of consciousness post so I figured the kW and then realized afterward that the main use would probably be non-electrical... so yes, that calculation was useless other than as an illustration of what amount of power is in play.

As for needing to wait for it to cool before going again, you can either have multiple boilers, or if just heating water, well, it is going to be flowing and replaced anyway so that's no issue.

I have no idea how much water is supposed to boil since there really are no explicit guidelines. That's why I went with what I considered a conservative estimate of one cubic meter (which made the math easier). If it boils the water around a person wearing full plate when submerged in a larger body of water, that's some serious energy being created. I presumed that the area is equal or less than 5 cubic feet since otherwise it would make mention of boiling water scalding everyone else within range in the water.
User avatar
deaddmwalking
Prince
Posts: 3460
Joined: Mon May 21, 2012 11:33 am

Post by deaddmwalking »

CapnTthePirateG wrote:Silly question.

Due to Frank's comment about the Aztecs being better farmers than the Europeans...in settings like the Forgotten Realms which are mash-ups of Fantasy Counterpart cultures, could we safely assume that the Aztecs' non-shitty farming techniques make it over to fake Europe?
Interesting question. Probably. Most default settings, and Faerun included, are much more productive than real-world medieval equivalents.

It should be noted, however, that the crops the Aztecs had available to them were not particuarly good. Guns, Germs, and Steel has an excellent discussion of how naturally occurring plants resulted in a different 'package' of domesticated plants that was superior in nutritive value in some places (Eurasia) than others (the Americas).

Also, crops that travel from one region of the world to another can have a major impact. The potato doesn't get the recognition it deserves for helping to pull the world into the modern age (and it gets blamed for the Irish Potato Famine). But potatoes grow below the ground, making them highly resistant to being trampled by passing armies. In Ireland, dependence on the crop did lead to starvation - but largely because the population exploded due the availablity of the calories. Between 1670 and 1770, the population of Ireland roughly tripled. In the next fifty years, it at least doubled again. The population increased from around 1 million in 1670 to over 8 million in 1830. After the famine, where almost 1 million died, large numbers emigrated, and the population now is still around 5 million, roughly unchanged since 1870.

So farming techniques matter, but so does crops available. Since most games seem to have ubiquitous potatoes (didn't Tika serve spiced potatoes in the Inn of the Last Home), the medieval world may not provide the best comparison for a 'standard' game.
User avatar
Prak
Serious Badass
Posts: 17340
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Prak »

On the subject of Heat Metal steam power, I would say that probably the best way to use it is actually just so you don't have to wait for your vats to heat up. For ease of use, one could just assume that the water heated is treated as metal, thus allowing you to heat up to 25# water/Caster Level (minus weight of iron container). So... using this cauldron, 7.25 gallons of water can be heated (7.25 gal=58 #, plus 55# cauldron=113#). You then move your preheated cauldrons of water into place over the permanent wall of fire, and under your steam turbine/engine/whatever.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
Surgo
Duke
Posts: 1924
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Surgo »

With all this discussion of the Walls of Fire energy engines etc., I can't help but be reminded a bit of smart people who grow up in African villages and build electric turbines there and whatnot. While it's undoubtedly improving the quality of life for that village, it's not really solving anything on a macroscopic scale. Which is what I thought the whole thread was about.
User avatar
erik
King
Posts: 5861
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by erik »

Heated water and the ability to easily cook do improve quality of life. Likewise light spells.

There's any number of ways you can heat up water. The reason I didn't default to Permanency-Wall of Fire was because it requires a 12th level caster rather than a 5th level caster as necessary for Plant Growth, Stone Shape, Heat Metal/Craft Wondrous Item, Soften Earth and Stone and the various healing measures.

Once you start crafting items and making technology that everyone can use, you really ramp up the scale of benefits. Then instead of 1 caster blowing his load daily, he can just craft some items and things are done by many hands in addition to his daily load.

Man, I don't remember what all was said over the last 16 pages of this thread and am kind of loathe to plow through it all again. I wonder how much of this is a rehash.
Last edited by erik on Mon Aug 13, 2012 9:54 pm, edited 1 time in total.
User avatar
Prak
Serious Badass
Posts: 17340
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Prak »

Well, the problem with magic item creation is that there's very, very little reason for a person to want to just start tossing his xp into baubles and handing them out. Conceivably you could get a handful of altruistic mages willing to give it up for the greater good, but outside of that, there needs to be a huge incentive (or a steady stream of vaguely level appropriate challenges for them to stomp).

I suppose you could have one or two cities that have giant thought bottles, taking small amounts of commoner xp as a form of taxation to fuel permanent walls of fire and rods of heat metal as a form of magic public works.
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
User avatar
CatharzGodfoot
King
Posts: 5668
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm
Location: North Carolina

Post by CatharzGodfoot »

Lago PARANOIA wrote:
CG wrote:If an agrarian society can feed themselves with the output of their fields, a 30% increase is huge. If they can't, they're not an agrarian society.
But when a population is capable of feeding itself, it increases, especially when we're talking about pre-post-industrial societies. That 30% extra crop yield is beneficial at first. Then half a generation or two comes along and then puts pressure on the available food supply all over again.

At that point you'll have to resort to some other food production method. If no one else is able to rise to the challenge industrially or magically, then sure, the druids and plant clerics can use their power to finagle leadership positions. But the agricultural industry is already drastically underperforming. People could seriously double their grain yields just by distributing better plows. And guess which class provides the iron for the plows?
CG wrote:To create fertilizer and pesticides, you have to know that those things exist. If you do, you probably have a fairly advanced knowledge of agriculture, and will benefit more from a straight percentage yield increase than having more manure or arsenic to put in their fields.
People knew about fertilizer and pesticides back then. Not in Dark/Middle Age Western Europe, but civilizations before and concurrent with this population did.

A lot of the problems with pre-Enlightenment agriculture is just straight-up ignorance but a substantial amount of it stems from wars, a depressed economy, and lack of an industrial base.
Lago, what exactly are you arguing? That wizards will introduce all of the innovations of modern agriculture (or at least knowledge of dousing crops with arsenic and lead), but clerics and druids won't?
The law in its majestic equality forbids the rich as well as the poor from stealing bread, begging and sleeping under bridges.
-Anatole France

Mount Flamethrower on rear
Drive in reverse
Win Game.

-Josh Kablack

User avatar
Prak
Serious Badass
Posts: 17340
Joined: Fri Mar 07, 2008 7:54 pm

Post by Prak »

As far as insecticide goes, a community aided by a grotto of druids actually doesn't really need it. A group of druids can just go in, cast Animal Trance over the crops, and then use Wild Empathy on the fascinated pests to convince them to move somewhere less invasive, possibly even having a specific area as a "pest preserve." If that fails to take care of things, the druids can just send in insectivores to eat the bugs, maybe some cats to eat any rodents. Being able to talk to and easily influence animals would actually be remarkably helpful for farming. For weeds, you're pretty much relegated to manual weeding, or use of animals that eat only the undesired plants (or convinced to do so).
Cuz apparently I gotta break this down for you dense motherfuckers- I'm trans feminine nonbinary. My pronouns are they/them.
Winnah wrote:No, No. 'Prak' is actually a Thri Kreen impersonating a human and roleplaying himself as a D&D character. All hail our hidden insect overlords.
FrankTrollman wrote:In Soviet Russia, cosmic horror is the default state.

You should gain sanity for finding out that the problems of a region are because there are fucking monsters there.
Grek
Prince
Posts: 3114
Joined: Sun Jan 11, 2009 10:37 pm

Post by Grek »

Yeah, generally speaking, the correct response to "magic isn't enough to fix that problem" is to use more magic.
Chamomile wrote:Grek is a national treasure.
Post Reply