The Definitive Guide to the Tippyverse, By Emperor Tippy

[Emperor Tippy]

In a world where food/shelter/health care/goods was provided for with no real cost to those who made it, what would that do to trade/currency?

Supply and demand would destroy these Cities economies.
Precious metals would become non-precious (magic traps making currency/ anything) and thus worthless. (Gold is weaker than iron/steel/mithral/admantine etc). magic items would abound (once again with the traps), so they would be just as worthless. What would be considered precious then?, If any item could be manufactured with relatively little cost (once you can wish in anything the initial cost doesn't matter because it pays for itself).

I imagine people would just hand out ubermagic enchanted whatevers like candy on Halloween. except everyday would be halloween.

I also see knowledge being the only thing precious. Knowing how many entrances/exits/TC spots into a City would be worth far more than a couple billion +1 swords to a City that wanted to invade. But how could you transfer that into currency?

See the OP. And magic items aren't exactly as easily produced by traps as is commonly suspected. The only way to produce a magic item directly with a trap is to use a Wish trap. And each trap can only produce one type of item. Given the costs involved in producing such a trap (unless you use Gate Abuse for XP free wishes you are looking at a price tag of several million GP), they aren't exactly common.

[A Ladder]

See the OP. And magic items aren't exactly as easily produced by traps as is commonly suspected. The only way to produce a magic item directly with a trap is to use a Wish trap. And each trap can only produce one type of item. Given the costs involved in producing such a trap (unless you use Gate Abuse for XP free wishes you are looking at a price tag of several million GP), they aren't exactly common.

Ahhh. I see.

But wouldn't inflation by creating those coins at the rate in the OP make them worthless unless there was a cap on how much coin was being generated?

[Emperor Tippy]

Inflation isn't that bad.

14,400 coins per day works out to 5,256,000 coins per year. For a city of 13 million people that's an inflation rate of less than 1 GP per person. From a trap that costs over 2.5 million GP per copy.

[Qwertystop]

And, of course, the government could put a limit on it, same as real-life does with real money (I think).

[Emperor Tippy]

And, of course, the government could put a limit on it, same as real-life does with real money (I think).

Well it's not so much a government limit as it is that no one else can really afford the initial expenditure/has access to the needed spells.

If you don't allow Solar Abuse traps (and I recommend against them) then creating a Coin factory is hideously expensive and takes a very long time. It's rare enough that the government doesn't even have to bother to regulate it (especially as most everyone who could create one is already a part of the governments ruling body).

[Qwertystop]

Well it's not so much a government limit as it is that no one else can really afford the initial expenditure/has access to the needed spells.

If you don't allow Solar Abuse traps (and I recommend against them) then creating a Coin factory is hideously expensive and takes a very long time. It's rare enough that the government doesn't even have to bother to regulate it (especially as most everyone who could create one is already a part of the governments ruling body).

I meant that they don't have to keep the trap running 24/7. They could keep it running at a reduced rate (activate it once every 5 minutes, for example), or just turn it off to change the rate of inflation (in case of some sudden change in the general scheme of things that adds a lot of money to the system, such as a breakthrough that allows the hostile takeover of another city, or a partial invasion by another city that reduces the population and therefore increases the amount of money per person).

[Emperor Tippy]

I meant that they don't have to keep the trap running 24/7. They could keep it running at a reduced rate (activate it once every 5 minutes, for example), or just turn it off to change the rate of inflation (in case of some sudden change in the general scheme of things that adds a lot of money to the system, such as a breakthrough that allows the hostile takeover of another city, or a partial invasion by another city that reduces the population and therefore increases the amount of money per person).

Oh yeah, misread what you meant I guess.

[jseah]

How soon would you expect Tippyverses to discover physics and advanced mathematics? (more advanced than calculus I mean)

Tsiolkovsky rocket equation would be hilarious.

EDIT:
Heck, even standardized units and measurement principles would push the usefulness of magic through the stratosphere.

[Retech]

Well if everything was broken up into 5 foot squares instead of continuous motion, lots of calculus becomes obsolete or just plain wrong.

[The Gilded Duke]

I'm a fan of the Astral Plane myself. Swift action spell casting, subjective gravity, no time trait. Once did a similar setting revolving around a floating island of imported matter. The main focus was on an arcane spell casting university like Hogwarts gone wrong, with power shifting back and forth between the University (and its various sub factions) the Church of Ioun and the Nomad's Guild.

With of course the Nomad's guild providing the most affordable inter-planar transportation and shipping.

How does the Tippyverse interact with other planes of existence, and other Primes? Is there some convenient form of inter-planar travel like the Teleportation Circle?

[sonofzeal]

If you want a weirdstone gone you can always just Wish a disposable minion right next to one and have them break it.

It seriously saddens me that you, with all your imagination and creative RAW expoitation, can't think of an effective way to protect the Weirdstone, especially given the laundry list of things it already blocks all by itself. Any power that can forge a City must surely be able to do something... especially since even sending a single infiltrator in requires a 9th lvl spell. No Mass Teleport traps, no TCs, just single assassins.

I'd start by having not one but several overlapping Weirdstones, and a few backups that can be activated if enough go down. They'd be encased it in Russian-Doll style adamantine spheres, to block a single or even multiple Disintegrates. The squares immediately outside the spheres would likely all be occupied with powerful guards of various kinds - Shadesteel Golums perhaps? I'm sure you could come up with something.

(edit) Looking at the price, it seems like it'd be cheaper for a post-TC culture to make one and protect it with even basic protections, than it would be for attackers to destroy them. Attackers have to spend a Wish, plus arming and equipping and training whoever they send through, and unless there's a one-size-fits-all attack method that can destroy every Weirdstone regardless of defences, then all I have to do is vary my game a little bit, and have backups ready for the few Stones that do go down.

[Psyren]

especially since even sending a single infiltrator in requires a 9th lvl spell. No Mass Teleport traps, no TCs, just single assassins.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't every city equipped with resetting traps of that "9th level spell?" Casting it really shouldn't be a big deal in this verse.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Still waiting on why Forbiddance doesn't solve this problem entirely. Considering you have resetting Wish traps, the price tag involved is not a major concern.

[jindra34]

Still waiting on why Forbiddance doesn't solve this problem entirely. Considering you have resetting Wish traps, the price tag involved is not a major concern.

Teleport one Warblade to the edge. Warblade walks in and IHS's the forbiddance away. Or teleport anyone with the ability to use disjunction near the edge. Anything defense that exists as a spell is going to be highly frail, and thus not likely to be used without a mass of support troops, which once you have placed to cover every entry (in all three dimensions) it starts to get redundant.

And then there is the whole you need to give out the password to most everyone you want to let in the city. Kinda makes keeping it secret hard.

[Gavinfoxx]

So I wrote up a post a while back about how societies like this could generate wealth or items or get work done. I'm going to put an edited version of that post in spoiler... I think I got some things you missed, Tippy! ;) Also, could someone explain in detail how the Fabricate traps don't actually need raw materials put into them every time? I couldn't quite figure that one out!

Spoiler

Show

For repeating spells, there are several options:

1.) Eternal Wands, from Magic Item Compendium. They have a little bit of an extra surcharge on them from the DMG formula, but gives 2/day casting of spells levels 1-3.

2.) Magical traps using the DMG rules for recharge and stuff. Note that if you want precedent for magical traps that are beneficial, look at the Boon traps in Dungeonscape.

3.) Drow House Insignia sorts of items, explained in the book Races of Faerun, pg 175. They were updated to be more pricey in Drow of the Underdark. This gives a specific form, 1/day limitation, and certain spell levels, I think 1-3.

4.) Minor Schema, from the book Magic of Eberron (A way to cast spells lvl 1-6, once a day. Further, these work better for Artificers, who can apply their class features to this. If An Artificer makes a Schema of Wall of Iron, and he has a Lesser Rod of Invisible Spell, he could -- for example -- make Invisible Iron...)

5.) Generic wondrous items that cast spells, per the DMG rules for custom magic items. ESPECIALLY go for infinite use, use activated ones once you have the money.

6.) Spell Turrets, from Dungeon Master's Guide II

7.) Spell clocks, from here: http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x...cmp=ILC-RSSDND

Of course use as many of the Cost Reduction techniques as is viable, especially from the Cost Reduction Technique Handbook.

An Artificer could, of course, use techniques to get spells more cheaply, perhaps using the Bargain bin list, perhaps.

Of course, a traditional Wizard or Cleric or Archivist could simply use scrying techniques to seek these sorts of people out, and pay them to help cast their cheaper spells into the devices (or the prayerbook, for the Archivist). Remember, people can work together to craft!

Here are some of the spells you use to put in things, or to just cast yourself, depending on how you use it:

Wall of Iron
Wall of Stone
Wall of Salt
Stone Metamorphosis
Greater Stone Metamorphosis
Clearstone
Permanency
Plant Growth
Ironwood
Transmute Rock to Mud
Transmute Mud to Rock
Transmute Metal to Wood
Transmute Stone to Sand
Transmute Sand to Stone
Transmute Sand to Glass
Transmute Metal to Wood
Transmute Rock to Mud
Transmute Mud to Rock
Soften Earth and Stone
Move Earth
Unseen Servant
Hardening
Unseen Crafter
Shape Metal
Metal Melt
Stone Shape
Greater Stone Shape
Fabricate
Nature's Rampart
Magecraft
Planar Ally
Planar Binding
Lesser Planar Ally
Lesser Planar Binding

Also use Decanter of Endless Water, Decanter of Endless Sand, Lyre of Building, planar bind or planar ally things all the way from Lantern Archons for infinite continual flame to Djinn for infinite of ANY plant based items (soarwood, serrenwood, darkwood, densewood, fey cherry wood, duskwood, livewood, bronzewood, other plant based things things like lacquer, deisel, rubber, resin, glue, paper, cardboard, cumin, silphium, coffee, saffron, tobacco, pepper, oil, chilies, paprika, cacao, anise, poppy, marijuana, etc. etc.), to efreeti or noble djinn for full Wishes (which get 25k worth of mundane stuff or 15k worth of magic stuff a pop). Of course you will want to Simulacrum some of them, especially the 'Ha ha you're screwed' Efreetis and Noble Djinn's.

Of course if you don't want to do the full Wish Economy, then you might want to research custom spells to do work, using the rules in the DMG to do so. Unseen Laborer (a Profession variant of Unseen Crafter; profession: Miner, perhaps? Profession: Lumberjack?) would be useful. Also a few more 'Transmute' spells perhaps, to get better metal than low quality Iron. I would suggest trying to research a Transmute Iron to Greensteel (fiendish codex 2), the closest thing D&D has to a very high quality modern steel that is actually functionally different than Iron. This is something that could conceivably be used on, say, breech loading cannon and firearms (it's strong enough for it).. And once you get your truly modern machine shop (see later parts of this post) set up, it would be FANTASTICALLY easy to make firearms that are at least as good as the Winchester Rifle. Remember that lots of spells can be stacked to improve knowledge checks, should you need an epic knowledge check in order to bypass several hundred years of real world firearms design in a few days worth of design and writing down ideas with alchemy, mechanics, etc.

Remember, D&D material science is potentially better than the material science in our real life world, so take advantage of that fact (check out the Crafting Handbook for lots of ideas for mundane crafting).

Create several perpetual motion machines, make advanced machine shops (I have a design for one that uses a simple repeating trap of a blockade spell, a LEVEL 1 SPELL, that looks like a Ferris wheel, and is about as powerful as a V6 engine at high RPM). Get repeating traps of things that help quality of life and productivity, like:

Endure Elements
Prestidigitation
Create Food and Water
Purify Food and Drink
Good Hope
Make Whole
Lesser Restoration
Panacea
Low Light Vision
Superior Darkvision
Mount

Another good trick to get wayyyyy more work than a Decanter of Endless Water or that Blockade Ferris Wheel is a Ring Gate. Put one in a big pool of water, the other shooting back into that big pool of water. Put a turbine next to the output one... bam, infinite power. If you haven't figured out capacitors or electricity or batteries or generators yet, just put it into flywheels. Now you're thinking with portals and all that!

Also for cheap and easy birth control, set up a trap device of 'Bestow Curse - Infertility' and one of 'Remove Curse', if your population boom from all the free food threatens to overwhelm your infrastructure creation.

Use an Elation / Good Hope / Distilled Joy (make sure to get someone like a Factotum to cast the Distilled Joy into the trap as a SLA) to extract infinite amounts of Ambrosia for crafting. Alternately, an Artificer who gets access to a 1/day item of Ironwood or a Boon trap of Ironwood could simply create magical Ironwood breastplates and drain those for crafting XP. Or you could just get the Wood Shape / Wall of Iron / Transmute Metal to Wood / Ironwood combo going for unlimited +1 Ironwood weapons and armor for your entire civilization -- that's always nice and useful.

Of course if you are gong to be doing the crafting YOURSELF, you will need Craft Construct or Craft Homunculus to make hosts and hosts and hosts of mass Dedicated Wrights to do all of this work,what with your unlimited wealth and supplies and infinite XP. This opens up constructs to be a large part of the area you are uplifting as well. Use the ideas from the Mechonomocon handbook to figure out how to do construct crafting most effectively!

Generally, Effigies work really well, even if you don't go insane with the Mr. Roboto trick. Also, Homunculus can have customized skills, so you could make one which could perpetually play your Lyre of Building and just get huge massive amounts of labor done wherever that creature goes. Of course, there are several ways of giving constructs intelligence; my favorite is simply to embed an intelligent item into the construct, and tell the construct to do what the item says.

Basically, what you have with all of this set up is the ingredients for basically no one to ever need to do manual labor, and an economy where no actual 'things' are scarce, and everyone has lots of built things and magic items and stuff, and there is no disease or illness and no one needs to sleep if they don't want to, etc. etc. -- you know, a civilization that has more in common with Star Trek than the Middle Ages...

[Douglas]

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't every city equipped with resetting traps of that "9th level spell?" Casting it really shouldn't be a big deal in this verse.

Yes, but each trap only casts a single specific Wish. You can't take a Trap of Wish For Coins and use it to Wish for transporting your infiltrator. You'd have to make a whole new Trap of Wish For Infiltrator Transportation To X Target Location. While this would work, it would be absurdly expensive overkill for such a limited application.

[Emperor Tippy]

Sure, there are ways to protect the Weirdstone but there are ways around all of them.

Have a caster create a Prismatic Sphere inside the city before heading home. They can now teleport into the Sphere as it blocks the Weirdstone. Load whatever army you want to bring in into nested Bags of Holding and have the wizard port them in that way.

Sure, you can make attacking the Weirdstone more difficult but it still remains possible in numerous ways.

[Psyren]

Still waiting on why Forbiddance doesn't solve this problem entirely. Considering you have resetting Wish traps, the price tag involved is not a major concern.

Wish ignores Forbiddance by RAW:

Transport travelers. A wish can lift one creature per caster level from anywhere on any plane and place those creatures anywhere else on any plane regardless of local conditions. An unwilling target gets a Will save to negate the effect, and spell resistance (if any) applies.

You can also port your army underground and tunnel up, onto a floating platform and fly down, etc.

[Emperor Tippy]

Yes, but each trap only casts a single specific Wish. You can't take a Trap of Wish For Coins and use it to Wish for transporting your infiltrator. You'd have to make a whole new Trap of Wish For Infiltrator Transportation To X Target Location. While this would work, it would be absurdly expensive overkill for such a limited application.

Yes, but that's what you have a Wish for Ring of Three Wishes trap for. They can't produce magic items for free but they can do all of those other nice things Wish can do.

And I assure you that every city has at least one such trap (although access is highly restricted).

[jseah]

Gavinfoxx:
Your magic wheels aren't going to be able to compete with the energy output of a wall of fire.

At minimum CL, I have estimated the power output of a full-sized wall of fire to be somewhere a bit more than 1GW.
This was calculated from the energy from burning 3.5 pints of oil, being equal average damage to a 5ft square section of a minimum CL wall of fire.


Of course, that requires the technical expertise and physics knowledge to build a heat engine.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Teleport one Warblade to the edge. Warblade walks in and IHS's the forbiddance away.

No. Morbo says IHS does not work that way.

Or teleport anyone with the ability to use disjunction near the edge. Anything defense that exists as a spell is going to be highly frail, and thus not likely to be used without a mass of support troops, which once you have placed to cover every entry (in all three dimensions) it starts to get redundant.

MDJ won't drop a Forbiddance. Cannot be dispelled unless caster level of the caster exceeds the caster level of the spell. With Nightsticks + Divine Spell Power, that ain't happening.

And then there is the whole you need to give out the password to most everyone you want to let in the city. Kinda makes keeping it secret hard.

Who cares about the password being secret? Make it 'Friend' and write it on the door, for all I care. Having the password won't let you teleport into town. That's the important thing.

Wish ignores Forbiddance by RAW:

So now you're limited to a very few individuals... the Shadesteel golems are more than sufficient to deal with them.

You can also port your army underground and tunnel up, onto a floating platform and fly down, etc.

And again, you're missing the point.

Yes, you can do that. It's fully expected. BUT it takes TIME to do so. It prevents the 'ambush and destroy in the surprise round with Port n Pwn tactics' problem which TC makes so easily viable.

In every situation, you have to teleport outside of the city. At that point, you can be effectively responded to. You can't send in NI minions directly into the city. They have to start somewhere outside the city. Which means they have to deal with the city's defenses. Which are both numerous and powerful.

Forbiddance prevents you from bypassing those defenses. Which means needing a smaller standing army, and port n pwn tactics won't work.

[Douglas]

Yes, but that's what you have a Wish for Ring of Three Wishes trap for. They can't produce magic items for free but they can do all of those other nice things Wish can do.

And I assure you that every city has at least one such trap (although access is highly restricted).

I was about to say the XP cost to craft such a thing would be insurmountable (assuming that XP cost negation methods aren't in use), but it appears the official trap cost rules convert it to a pure gp cost for some reason despite having a base XP cost for using a spell at all. Odd.

At eighteen and a half million gp, though, that's still one hell of an expensive project. It would take slightly over 100 years to make. It would take an impressively long-sighted and patient planner to commission such a thing, sufficiently so that it strains believability a bit for every city to have done it.

[jindra34]

No. Morbo says IHS does not work that way.

Why wouldn't IHS work on it, considering it is a spell, has duration, and effects everything in its area?

MDJ won't drop a Forbiddance. Cannot be dispelled unless caster level of the caster exceeds the caster level of the spell. With Nightsticks + Divine Spell Power, that ain't happening.

Can't be dispelled by dispel magic, and MDJ ends as though by dispel magic but doesn't dispel.

Who cares about the password being secret? Make it 'Friend' and write it on the door, for all I care. Having the password won't let you teleport into town. That's the important thing.

Point, though in that case any access to the area is going to be from outside and will take time.

[Psyren]

You can't send in NI minions directly into the city.

Nonsense, of course you can. Pack them into non-dimensional storage. A single infiltrator breaking LoE to the stone (Prismatic Sphere was the example used I believe, but there are lower-level ways) can then turn his bag of holding inside out, each other defender does the same etc.

[ShneekeyTheLost]

Why wouldn't IHS work on it, considering it is a spell, has duration, and effects everything in its area?
Can't be dispelled by dispel magic, and MDJ ends as though by dispel magic but doesn't dispel.

Sorry, but that is incorrect, due to the wording of MDJ:

(ending the effect as a dispel magic spell does)

Which means you need to beat the CL with your MDJ. Not gonna happen.

Point, though in that case any access to the area is going to be from outside and will take time.

Considering you're saving weeks, if not months, and making it impossible for the caravans to be lost... the price of waiting an hour or so is trivial by comparison.

Nonsense, of course you can. Pack them into non-dimensional storage. A single infiltrator breaking LoE to the stone (Prismatic Sphere was the example used I believe, but there are lower-level ways) can then turn his bag of holding inside out, each other defender does the same etc.

What stone? We're talking Forbiddance here.

[Emperor Tippy]

I was about to say the XP cost to craft such a thing would be insurmountable (assuming that XP cost negation methods aren't in use), but it appears the official trap cost rules convert it to a pure gp cost for some reason despite having a base XP cost for using a spell at all. Odd.

At eighteen and a half million gp, though, that's still one hell of an expensive project. It would take slightly over 100 years to make. It would take an impressively long-sighted and patient planner to commission such a thing, sufficiently so that it strains believability a bit for every city to have done it.

When many cities have been around for over a thousand years? And most of their leadership is immortal for one reason or another?

A hundred years isn't a real concern. Sure, the PC's aren't going to get them; but it's not a real problem for the cities.

And yes, the lack of XP on traps is stupid.

[sonofzeal]

Sure, there are ways to protect the Weirdstone but there are ways around all of them.

Have a caster create a Prismatic Sphere inside the city before heading home. They can now teleport into the Sphere as it blocks the Weirdstone. Load whatever army you want to bring in into nested Bags of Holding and have the wizard port them in that way.

Sure, you can make attacking the Weirdstone more difficult but it still remains possible in numerous ways.

Any invasion against an Un-weirded City (UC) could be launched far more easily, far more cheaply, and far more rapidly against a Weirded City (WC). Additionally, the defensive advantage WCs grant allow true turtling - it should be concievable to make them a true "bottle city", entirely self-contained unless they choose to make forays beyond their walls. With the Weird effect projecting a mile or two outside their walls from multiple stones, and a sufficient population base inside, there would be (as you admitted yourself) little practical reason to ever seek contact with outsider... unless conquest became interesting.

And I'm still not sure an UC could ever adequately protect itself. Rapid deployment of something akin to adventuring parties could easily cause far more damage than they take, and create ample opportunity and distraction to move an even larger force in elsewhere. Any resources a City could bear down on attackers, the attackers could bring to bear right back... and in far greater concentration. Given the population sizes you've given for cities we're talking about huge things. And while the defensive forces would be relatively concentrated compared to a kingdom, they'd be exceedingly sparce compared to the compact strength of the attackers. I do believe a determined attacker could expect to win in detail, if nothing else. And once someone has two Cities under their command, and can bring twice the force together against the next...

Fragile mutual-defence accords might help, but introduce their own host of complications. What if one of the "assisting" forces was intent on helping the attackers? And even without that, the confusion of multiple forces battling through the UC, confused further by illusions and enchantments, would almost be certain to completely debilitate the defending UC.

The UC system could work temporarily, but I do believe it would be highly unstable in the long run. A campaign showing the breakdown of the UC network might still be interesting though....

[Emperor Tippy]

Sorry, but that is incorrect, due to the wording of MDJ:

(ending the effect as a dispel magic spell does)

Which means you need to beat the CL with your MDJ. Not gonna happen.

That's why you use Truename Dispel. No check needed.

[Gavinfoxx]

Gavinfoxx:
Your magic wheels aren't going to be able to compete with the energy output of a wall of fire.

At minimum CL, I have estimated the power output of a full-sized wall of fire to be somewhere a bit more than 1GW.
This was calculated from the energy from burning 3.5 pints of oil, being equal average damage to a 5ft square section of a minimum CL wall of fire.


Of course, that requires the technical expertise and physics knowledge to build a heat engine.

Yea, but there are lots of losses in a heat engine. And heat engines mostly just turn turbines ANYWAY... the lake or ocean or huge amount of water for a ring gate one can make a goodly amount of energy on its own, ya know?

[jindra34]

Considering you're saving weeks, if not months, and making it impossible for the caravans to be lost... the price of waiting an hour or so is trivial by comparison.

It presents a weak point unless your being isolationist, as you either have to expend more troops to defend the point of arrival (as well as the boundaries of your forbiddance) or risk some one else ambushing and capturing each one of them. And each defense post has to be able to stand up to a potential rush of a couple hundred attackers per round for an unknown duration. That will get unfeasible very quickly.