The Introduction of magic into a D&D Economy

[kopout]

So... the penalty for hubris is recruitment?

Yes, but then they make you into a tool for their own purposes, and eventual you do the same to a new class of recruits, Welcome to the Unseen university!

[Jack_Simth]

Who said anything about oppressing them? The wizards in charge have no interest in oppressing anyone. Smart wizards, which they universally are by the requirements of high level casting, don't take actions that will weaken them as a whole. It's much easier to just bring any caster who reaches high levels into the fold, and if they won't go along they just gang up on them and off them.

As for XP, these wizards all have their contingent True Res. So daily they just fight each other too the death and then get ressed. Gaining 6,000 XP (if they are both level 20). And the True Res trap means that they don't even have to pay for that. Two level 20 wizards just stand on them and attack each other. Every death counts as overcoming the encounter so they gain XP.

The ECL 1 commoner-1 who triggers and survives the technically CR 2 Endure Elements trap picks up 600 xp. The ECL 1 commoner-1 who triggers and survives the technically CR 4 Create Food and Water trap picks up 1,350 xp. The ECL 1 commoner-1 who triggers and survives the technically CR 10 Permanencied Teleportation Circle gains 10,800 xp. With the Teleportation Circle, being a "spell trap" at CR 10, you can, in theory, farm XP until you hit ECL 18, just by walking through a long series of them (at CR 10, at ECL 17, you get 425 XP by "defeating" a CR 10 Teleportation Circle on your own).

But as that's totally ridiculous, you'll note that the DMG does include a line that notes when you encounter something that's not really dangerous in any way, shape, or form, it's not an XP-worthy encounter. If you're standing on a True Resurrection trap when engaged in a Wizard's Duel, and the opposing Wizard isn't particularly going to prevent you from coming back, you don't necessarily get XP for that fight. You can't necessarily rely on that method of XP gain.

Besides - starting with 9th level spells isn't really the goal of this particular thought-experiment... and the Tippyverse mostly requires 9th level spells to function. Likewise, it pretty much requires the ability to arrange for at-will helpful effects, whether that's from custom items or from "traps" of useful spells - which may not be possible.

There's two three basic parameters on this particular thought-experiment, as stated in the OP, starting with a mundane society:
1) Maximum spell level available (e.g., Cantrips/Osirons only, 1st level spells, 2nd level spells, and so on, up to Epic, which makes everything looks exactly like what the first Epic spellcaster wants it to look like)
2) Amount of spells available (anywhere from the per-day allotment of the one casters available in the entire world to "at-will" from custom items or custom traps that have been spammed to every household).
3) Spell Sources. Mindrape, if it sees use, notably changes a society, and quite quickly at that. However, that's not a Core spell, so it may or may not be permitted under an "arbitrary DM".

There's also a few others: Acceptance of Magic, use level of magic, and Widespread amount of magic, availability of expended resources, and the like, but that can be mostly subsumed into the first two three.

Tippyverse is generally:
1) 9th level spells
2) At-will availability
3) Most WotC sources available

If either of the first two tests fail, you don't get the Tippyverse. You can mostly get it even if three fails, although it's generally pictured with most sources available unrestricted.

[Oslecamo]

As for XP, these wizards all have their contingent True Res. So daily they just fight each other too the death and then get ressed. Gaining 6,000 XP (if they are both level 20). And the True Res trap means that they don't even have to pay for that. Two level 20 wizards just stand on them and attack each other. Every death counts as overcoming the encounter so they gain XP.

It's not an ecounter if it doesn't involve true risk to the participants. A perfectly safe duel where no side has the minimum intention of actually taking anything from the oponent is a test of skills, not an ecounter.

Otherwise players would get experience just by passing by other people and creatures.

[Yahzi]

Why don't they have Tippy Societies? Or even just one Tippy Society? At some point the "elves are lazy" excuse just doesn't cut it.

That's right - you need a real reason for why 17th level casters haven't completely wrecked the world.

The secret is in controlling the flow of XP. At the right rate, you can have a good D&D game. Too much and you get Tippyland; too little and a single mage player conquers your whole world.

XP must be a physical resource, like gold and food, that is metered in such a way as to produce the desired result. This is what I do in my world. I make XP a tangible substance, like gold (1 XP = 5 gold, in fact); XP comes from killing people and eating their souls (thus making it a renewable but expensive resource); and the XP required doubles every level, so as to keep 17th level wizards very rare. Finally, I have a cult of monsters who destroy anyone over 17th level as a threat to their secret rule over the world.

And you can't do any of the XP abuse crap, because XP is a physical substance, not a metaphysical "if it was hard/dangerous suddenly XP is generated!." Nope, the only way to make XP is to grow it, one sentient mind at a time.

I think it's working pretty well so far.

Basically, you can't stop the divinations from getting you, but you can stop them from relaying the answers you don't want relayed simply by not doing whatever it is the diety thinks you might be doing.

That's brilliant - it explains why Gandalf was unwilling to start a fire on Weathertop, because you never know who might be watching! All high-level spells must be cast in secret so the boogie man doesn't get you! Oh wait, that's what I'm doing with my cult of monsters...

[Waspinator]

You know, the "Tippyverse" kind of reminds me of Dragonmech. In that world, there's these huge city-robots that a large percentage of the population lives in and feature wonders of technology and magic. Outside of the mechs, there's hordes of lunar dragons and constant lunar debris raining down making it kind of obvious why people hide in the mechs.

Long story short, Highpoint was your standard, pseudo-medieval-magical D&D world up until about a century ago. That's when people noticed that the moon was in a decaying orbit and had come close enough that the tidal stresses were tearing it to bits. The fact that the moon was populated makes things worse. Literal chunks of the moon rain down constantly, battering the landscape and smashing ecosystems. Plus, there's things like lunar dragons that are big, nasty, and capable of surviving the fall.

However, there are enough reasons to want to go outside occasionally to make a career out of adventuring (enter the player characters). They're the ones who go out into the wilderness of the ruined world and bring things back to the magi-steam-tech city-mechs.

[elliott20]

Tippy, you're making a bold assumption about the effect of a high INT character. Just because a character has high INT doesn't mean he'll automatically perceive your cabal of wizards (or rather, your singular L20 caster when you first get started) as necessarily a good idea. c'mon, "join me or die"? sounds more like a gangster of wizards. And if your logic holds true about high level creatures, ALL Dragons would have banded together by now to create a super-dragon society, rivaling the tippyverse easily in scope and power. And yet they don't. Why?

In the very end, you're just gonna end up with a bunch of wizards with highly questionable moral fibers, which will probably tear the whole apart from within anyway.

But that's all in-game story plot.

one thing that does bother me is the fact that nobody has bothered bringing up the fact that at some point, somebody is going to see the gapping holes that the various spells introduce into their defenses. But instead of say, just researching a spell that stops another specific spell in an area (like say, teleport), they would go ahead and build an entire infrastructure, change the way people live, and have civilization change forever. That just seems like an awful inefficient as opposed to just come up with a new spell that stops teleports. (I mean, they are like, what, int 40 individuals? I'm sure they'll manage to come up with something) and the only reason they don't? it's not in RAW.

seriously people, are we really that married to the RAW that we would go for the long route just to accommodate not expanding upon it?

[kopout]

Tippy, you're making a bold assumption about the effect of a high INT character. Just because a character has high INT doesn't mean he'll automatically perceive your cabal of wizards (or rather, your singular L20 caster when you first get started) as necessarily a good idea. c'mon, "join me or die"? sounds more like a gangster of wizards. And if your logic holds true about high level creatures, ALL Dragons would have banded together by now to create a super-dragon society, rivaling the tippyverse easily in scope and power. And yet they don't. Why?

In the very end, you're just gonna end up with a bunch of wizards with highly questionable moral fibers, which will probably tear the whole apart from within anyway.

But that's all in-game story plot.

one thing that does bother me is the fact that nobody has bothered bringing up the fact that at some point, somebody is going to see the gapping holes that the various spells introduce into their defenses. But instead of say, just researching a spell that stops another specific spell in an area (like say, teleport), they would go ahead and build an entire infrastructure, change the way people live, and have civilization change forever. That just seems like an awful inefficient as opposed to just come up with a new spell that stops teleports. (I mean, they are like, what, int 40 individuals? I'm sure they'll manage to come up with something) and the only reason they don't? it's not in RAW.

seriously people, are we really that married to the RAW that we would go for the long route just to accommodate not expanding upon it?

you make exilant points my friend . I had considered the effect of a "cloister"spell on the emerging Tippyvers and although it would be helpful teas are panicked people . By the end of year 1there would be few of the old cites left and by the end of year 2 there would be little of the old infrastructure left . If teleportation magic appeared in a d&d world that was normal in every way except the non-existent of said magic magic it would be devastating. And ,yes the tippy socites whould probably wipe them selves out but that is not unprecedented over half of all Tippy civilizations fall due to there own actions, I never said other wise.


Edit: and yes their "gangsters" a cabal is NOT a knitting club

[Waspinator]

You know, I have to think of the Warcraft universe during all these discussions of a high-arcane society. You know, this used to be all one continent:

Spoiler

Show

There used to be an elven empire where that big storm is. The problem with that many high-level casters is that eventually, someone's going to be a moron and then you're up to your eyebrows in demons and really big explosions.

[Dervag]

Or rather, someone is going to be a fool. Wizards have high intelligence; they need not have high wisdom.

And may the gods have mercy on a Tippian civilization when the high level sorcerers start reaching levels where they get real power. Those guys don't need to have either intelligence or wisdom to obtain phenomenal cosmic power.

[elliott20]

haven't you heard? Sorcerer magic is illegal and is cause for eugenics!

[Oslecamo]

Or rather, someone is going to be a fool. Wizards have high intelligence; they need not have high wisdom.

And may the gods have mercy on a Tippian civilization when the high level sorcerers start reaching levels where they get real power. Those guys don't need to have either intelligence or wisdom to obtain phenomenal cosmic power.

This would actually explain why Tippyvserse still hasn'st hapened.

Sorcerors level faster than wizards, since they don't need so much time preparing stuff to be effecient and can just go around spaming spells.

Sorcerors reach epic tier first. But since they've got their powers from the rule of cool, the tought of making a super advanced society never ocurrs them.

So they expend their time taking revenge in all the wizards who run around saying lol sorceror are the suckorz wizardz rulez!

The wizard population takes a heavy hit, and Tippyverse never happens, since the few high level wizards are too busy fighting the hordes of pretty boy sorcerers.

[NotMe]

With cities full of citizens / slaves with all physical requirements met and a low level of threats, what is going to stop the population expanding?

If it does expand, then space per person will be reduced unless the city expands or other planes or dimensions are populated. Assuming that people want personal space, then expansion will be necessary and you end up with both the planet and the planes populated by such a society.

If you assume a Tippyesque society where reshaping pretty much anything has a low cost to perform, then I see no reason to assume that their would be large areas of wilderness between cities, when cities could just expand to make use of this space.

[Jack_Simth]

one thing that does bother me is the fact that nobody has bothered bringing up the fact that at some point, somebody is going to see the gapping holes that the various spells introduce into their defenses. But instead of say, just researching a spell that stops another specific spell in an area (like say, teleport), they would go ahead and build an entire infrastructure, change the way people live, and have civilization change forever. That just seems like an awful inefficient as opposed to just come up with a new spell that stops teleports. (I mean, they are like, what, int 40 individuals? I'm sure they'll manage to come up with something) and the only reason they don't? it's not in RAW.

seriously people, are we really that married to the RAW that we would go for the long route just to accommodate not expanding upon it?

Oh, you can stop Teleport, quite cold, with a Core spell that's available (to Clerics) just after Teleport comes into play, level-wise. Forbiddance is a Cleric-6 spell, and Permanently stops incoming teleports - and at a 60-foot cube per level, it gets a pretty wide area, too, although it's a bit pricy, especially with the password you'll need to actually use that in society.

Of course, that requires 6th level spells....

Let's see...
Cantrips clean society up - Cure Minor Wounds means a lot fewer deaths in childbirth. Purify Food and Drink cuts down notably on disease. Prestidigitation means gourmet tasting foods are fairly easy to come by. If they can be made at-will (weather by a widget or by a trap), they do this even better - at-will Cure Minor Wounds means nobody stays injured for long. At-will Create Water means nobody goes thirsty, and all drinking water is perfectly potable. At-will Purify Food and Drink means that food stores don't spoil. Everyone still does work (you still need to grow crops, build buildings, wear clothing, and so on), but you get a situation that looks very similar to a modern society with at-will cantrips... if enough wealth is poured into making it happen. This raises the population considerably, which encourages specialization, resulting in a fairly decent craft society.

1st level spells don't change much, unless they can be spammed to the entire population. An Endure Elements trap obliviates the need for a common man to have a house to sleep in (just trigger the trap and you're good for today). Cure Light Wounds doesn't do anything that multiple invocations of Cure Minor Wounds doesn't. Goodberry at-will would change things, except that it requires *fresh* berries. Without a greenhouse or some such, you'll still need traditional agriculture for winter stores, as the Goodberries won't be around at that time.

2nd level spells don't do much as far as society is concerned - Detect Thoughts does much more for justice than does Zone of Truth - Zone of Truth fails, and doesn't let anyone know it fails, if you beat the save; this means that high-will save crooks can get away with murder if you rely on it. Detect Thoughts, on the other hand, lets you know when you can't make out an individual's thoughts - and knowing what a person is thinking while they're making their case will generally be quite effective at weeding out the liars in court - and as a bonus, it'll also get most of the weasel-types who try to skirt around the facts.

With 3rd level spells, things start to get interesting. At will Water Breathing really opens up your colonization options. Permanent or At-Will Daylight means you have a permanent growing season... for the rich who aren't going to stay with the utterly bland food from the Create Food and Water traps/widgets available at the same resource level. Remove Disease, combined with Cure spells, means almost everyone lives to their racial maximum age. This is where things potentially get interesting - if Create Food and Water is available at will (especially if it includes a Prestidigitation effect for flavoring), suddenly there's a lot fewer farmers. This does, however, cause problems - a Rogue with Disable Device is suddenly a terrorist, as he can cut off the food supply to a very large area very quickly (Create Food and Water traps must be public access, and they are expensive enough and productive enough that there will only be a few of them, but a Rogue can turn them off for good in 2d4 rounds). If there's a lot of external pressure to keep people bottled up in cities, then farming will trickle off and vanish, leaving society very vulnerable to terrorist-rogues. If there's not, people will continue with reliable farming over the newfangled magics. Additionally, this is the point at which the people who own production start choosing what everything looks like. After all, you do need to keep people busy - boredom ferments rebellion. If everyone eats for free, and is immune to the weather for free, suddenly there's little motivation to do anything... and when people get too bored, they tend to get uppity. If you charge for access to the Create Food and Water traps, and the Endure Elements traps, then you have a means to keep everyone working - which also means they won't be rebelling. As a side-effect, as your post-investment costs on food production are virtually nil, you're a money sink - which means you ultimately have to end up employing everyone (directly or indirectly), which means you get to decide what everyone's doing. Society becomes what you want it to look like, if you're reasonably skilled at ruling in this manner. Whether it's art, war, wine, exotic dancers, or material goods, the people that control access to the Create Food and Water traps for the masses control what society looks like after they become common-use.

Beyond that, things are significantly less society-altering for a long, long time. Teleport changes the face of war... until Forbiddance comes into play. Wall of Stone makes housing easy to come by... except that it's not particularly needed, due to the Endure Elements spam from earlier. Fabricate cuts down on the amount of manual production... except that you need to keep people busy. And so on.

[Emperor Tippy]

With cities full of citizens / slaves with all physical requirements met and a low level of threats, what is going to stop the population expanding?

If it does expand, then space per person will be reduced unless the city expands or other planes or dimensions are populated. Assuming that people want personal space, then expansion will be necessary and you end up with both the planet and the planes populated by such a society.

If you assume a Tippyesque society where reshaping pretty much anything has a low cost to perform, then I see no reason to assume that their would be large areas of wilderness between cities, when cities could just expand to make use of this space.

Two reasons. One, population doesn't expand really in post industrial nations (the US is ahead of the curve and is just barely at replacement level, most of the EU is shrinking). And two, security. The reason the people are in the cities is because the land outside of the cities can't be defended and isn't safe (and can't be made safe).

Oh, you can stop Teleport, quite cold, with a Core spell that's available (to Clerics) just after Teleport comes into play, level-wise. Forbiddance is a Cleric-6 spell, and Permanently stops incoming teleports - and at a 60-foot cube per level, it gets a pretty wide area, too, although it's a bit pricy, especially with the password you'll need to actually use that in society.

Of course, that requires 6th level spells....
...
Beyond that, things are significantly less society-altering for a long, long time. Teleport changes the face of war... until Forbiddance comes into play. Wall of Stone makes housing easy to come by... except that it's not particularly needed, due to the Endure Elements spam from earlier. Fabricate cuts down on the amount of manual production... except that you need to keep people busy. And so on.

Forbiddance can not protect a nation. You might be able to cover a city but the price tag runs 252,500 GP to cover a mile of land. And that only provides cover up to 60 feet up. Getting into an area protected by Forbiddance is as simple has having a guy go and rent a room before digging down 10 feet (they are now below the spells level) or just teleporting in above it.

Just for reference it would cost 2,525,000,000 GP (that's 2.525 BILLION) to cover 100 square miles of land to a height of 60 feet.

[bosssmiley]

Waspinator please spoiler that image.

This would actually explain why Tippyvserse still hasn't happened.

The Tippyverse has happened already in D&D, several times in fact. Look up "Dark Sun", "Netheril", "Imaskar", "elven mythal", "Alphatia", "Jakandor" and "ancient Xendrik". There really is nothing new under the sun.

To be honest most of these societies are more interesting as a) thought exercises, or b) ruins to be picked through by your standard issue post-apocalyptic/Dark Ages gang o' four than they are as primary settings.

Utopia is ultimately a boring place to live; scouring the ruins of fallen greatness and attempting to reconstruct a lost utopia in one's own image is awesome.

[Waspinator]

Don't forget Azeroth! As I said, they basically had this kind of arcane uber-society until it literally blew up and took half a continent with it.

[kopout]

Don't forget Azeroth! As I said, they basically had this kind of arcane uber-society until it literally blew up and took half a continent with it.

Yeah, Tippy societies tend to blow up and take their continents with them.

[Asheram]

Yeah, Tippy societies tend to blow up and take their continents with them.

Not that we complain too much. Tippy society go boom! ..and we get to loot the ruins a few centuries later.

[Jack_Simth]

Two reasons. One, population doesn't expand really in post industrial nations (the US is ahead of the curve and is just barely at replacement level, most of the EU is shrinking). And two, security. The reason the people are in the cities is because the land outside of the cities can't be defended and isn't safe (and can't be made safe).

Nothing can be perfectly safe. For every defensive measure, there is a countermeasure. The most you can do is make it expensive to attack you... but that is, in and of itself, very expensive. Ultimately, all of society relies on trust to one degree or another.

Forbiddance can not protect a nation. You might be able to cover a city but the price tag runs 252,500 GP to cover a mile of land. And that only provides cover up to 60 feet up. Getting into an area protected by Forbiddance is as simple has having a guy go and rent a room before digging down 10 feet (they are now below the spells level) or just teleporting in above it.

And you can't defend a shoreline, either. This is a classic beachhead scenario, really. As for your cost references....

Just for reference it would cost 2,525,000,000 GP (that's 2.525 BILLION) to cover 100 square miles of land to a height of 60 feet.

A Tippyverse mostly relies on the ability to make spell effects at-will anyway. While yes, it would cost about that to do repeated castings, a Command-word Widget of Forbiddance, at the minimum caster level (11), would run (by DMG estimates) Spell level * caster level * 1800 + 100 * material component cost. If we set it for a single 60-foot cube per invocation, with the password option, that's 500,000 for the material components. Grand total for the widget: 618,800 gp (market).

Compare to the True Resurrection trap you postulated for dealing with the XP problem, which runs 2,500,000 for the material components, 76,500 for the magical supplies, and 6,120 xp to craft.

[Emperor Tippy]

Nothing can be perfectly safe. For every defensive measure, there is a countermeasure. The most you can do is make it expensive to attack you... but that is, in and of itself, very expensive. Ultimately, all of society relies on trust to one degree or another.

Sure. But most people won't willingly live in what amounts to the wild west without any real hope of something profitable coming out of it.

And you can't defend a shoreline, either. This is a classic beachhead scenario, really. As for your cost references....

True. But you can have your forces meet the enemy forces at sea.

A Tippyverse mostly relies on the ability to make spell effects at-will anyway. While yes, it would cost about that to do repeated castings, a Command-word Widget of Forbiddance, at the minimum caster level (11), would run (by DMG estimates) Spell level * caster level * 1800 + 100 * material component cost. If we set it for a single 60-foot cube per invocation, with the password option, that's 500,000 for the material components. Grand total for the widget: 618,800 gp (market).

Compare to the True Resurrection trap you postulated for dealing with the XP problem, which runs 2,500,000 for the material components, 76,500 for the magical supplies, and 6,120 xp to craft.

Except that traps and trap prices are RAW allowed. Unlike all the other magic items their prices aren't guidelines. Making an at will wondrous item of Forbiddance requires DM approval and is effectively a houserule. Blocking the True Res trap likewise requires a houserule.

And Forbiddance does have the unfortunate effect of killing most commoners of different alignments who enter without knowing the password. And it stops you from making use of teleportation to respond to your enemies beach heads effectively.

[Jack_Simth]

Sure. But most people won't willingly live in what amounts to the wild west without any real hope of something profitable coming out of it.

An awful lot of people left paying jobs to move out west and farm. You don't necessarily have to have a captial "c" City to be able to fend off most of the beasties that will think the locals are a prize worth eating (and a Tippy-city will still have some problems if a few Spectre's walk under the city streets to locate a nice large batch of commoners to eat in relative privacy, even if it's not a completely fatal happenstance). A reasonable wall, cleared land sufficient to give a lot of warning of incoming critters, a system of bells and watchmen, and having everyone go around armed with both ranged and melee weapons will take care of most beasties, unless they get attacked in-mass (which is always a problem anyway). Exactly how disparate the village is from the City in terms of survivability will depend on just how bad things are outside... which isn't well-defined in RAW, and is quite campaign dependent.

True. But you can have your forces meet the enemy forces at sea.

Only if you can see them coming. Have fun watching under the water, or during a storm. For every defensive measure, there is an offensive countermeasure. They just become progressively more expensive. And generally, defense is more expensive to begin with.

The guy who rents a room and digs down to establish a beachhead? You can potentially locate him in advance by way of abusing Contact Other Planes to get info about anyone planning to do something like that. Even if you don't catch him in advance, though, there's a limit to how fast they can move various sorts of soldiers through that beach-head. If you have a way to detect that such an event has occured (Lawful-Neutral, Rebuking Cleric-6's that Commanded Shadows, having them patrol under the city, perhaps), you can then counter with overwhelming force (as you have considerably less limitations on how many of your soldiers you can move - after all, you've prepared for this sort of thing occurring, if not for the specific choice of beachhead).

There's going to be a nasty fight, sure. Lots of casualties, sure. But then, there's also no real way to stop someone nuking a modern city by way of, say, smuggling in a nuke in with a very large shipment of something else, and setting it off in the harbor before (or when) the inspectors get there.

Nuclear weapons have been used as weapons exactly twice in recorded history - Hiroshima and Nagasaki - for the simple reason that nobody wants to face a world where they are used a lot (a variation of trust, if a somewhat twisted version of it). Set things up so that anyone who pulls such an attack may do massive amounts of damage, but won't survive the repercussions, and you can have an amazing amount of peace. Once you've got that set up, all you have to worry about are the people who aren't clever trying it - and they won't generally be the ones thinking about having someone immigrate, rent a room, and dig a pit for a beachhead.

Except that traps and trap prices are RAW allowed. Unlike all the other magic items their prices aren't guidelines. Making an at will wondrous item of Forbiddance requires DM approval and is effectively a houserule. Blocking the True Res trap likewise requires a houserule.

Traps show up in the DMG, not the PHB; it's for the DM's use, first and foremost. All traps are supposed to be approved by the DM, even if it's not explicit. Likewise, the DMG is quite clear the PrC's are supposed to be tightly controlled, but almost everyone pretends like they're normal character building and the players should have easy access to them. You generally don't play strict RAW anyway.

And Forbiddance does have the unfortunate effect of killing most commoners of different alignments who enter without knowing the password. And it stops you from making use of teleportation to respond to your enemies beach heads effectively.

Not really; there's no reason to keep the password secret, so you post the password in common on the wall at each boundary. It's a clerical spell anyway, so the password is something like "All Hail to Pelor". Use the same password each time, and make sure the boundaries are clearly marked. Crossing a boundary becomes comperable to crossing the street at an intersection - either can get people killed, but it'll generally be the stupid people, and even at that, it doesn't happen often.

Likewise, you can build your own beachheads to deal with the reciprocal non-teleport issue. There's several stations spaced every so often, where you've got what amounts to a plug in a hole in the ground, with something set to push the plug out of the hole when a particular event occurs (a Telekinesis trap, triggered by a particular pattern of a Dancing Light spell in the sky). Put a bunch of fake plugs every here and there, make sure your teleport response team is familiar with where the real ones are, and then as soon as a hostile beachhead is discovered, you can drop your troops on them.

[Yahzi]

you still need to build buildings,

Well, until you get a Lyre of Building.

[Dervag]

1st level spells don't change much, unless they can be spammed to the entire population. An Endure Elements trap obliviates the need for a common man to have a house to sleep in (just trigger the trap and you're good for today).

Nitpick: I don't like sleeping in the rain, even if it isn't cold.

[Muad'dib]

Nitpick: I don't like sleeping in the rain, even if it isn't cold.

I'm sleeping in the rain
Just sleeping in the rain
What a glorious feelin'
I'm happy again
I'm laughing at clouds
...

[Oslecamo]

Nitpick: I don't like sleeping in the rain, even if it isn't cold.

I probably wouldn't like to spend the rest of my life holed up in some tiny extradimensional space in constant paranoia, or become an undead unable to feel anything ever again so they can't cause me pain or play tricks with my mind.

However a lot of players seem more than willing to sacrifice every little piece of comfort from their characters in return for moar power.

[Sstoopidtallkid]

I probably wouldn't like to spend the rest of my life holed up in some tiny extradimensional space in constant paranoia,

MMM is a perfectly reasonable place to sleep, let alone what I'd make with Genesis and time. Even Rope Trick is about the size of a dorm room.

or become an undead unable to feel anything ever again so they can't cause me pain or play tricks with my mind.

and never have to eat or sleep again. I could definitely get behind that.

However a lot of players seem more than willing to sacrifice every little piece of comfort from their characters in return for moar power.

We're talking about people who are essentially going boar hunting on a daily basis because if they do it for ~3 years they'll be immortal and rich. It's perfectly reasonable that they'd want to do whatever is necessary to survive.

[Jack_Simth]

Well, until you get a Lyre of Building.

Do note that particular line was in the context of "cantrips" - 0th level spells. A Lyre of Building requires Fabricate (5th level spell) to create.

Nitpick: I don't like sleeping in the rain, even if it isn't cold.

Yeah. But Endure Elements spammed to everyone, constantly, means going from needing a roof, four walls, a fire, and blankets to needing a little cover over your head and a bit of thresh on the floor. There's an order of magnitude difference in how much cover is required there.

[elliott20]

and never have to eat or sleep again. I could definitely get behind that.

the only difference that would really make for some people would just be a lunch break anyway.

[Yahzi]

in the context of "cantrips" - 0th level spells.

Roulette - another victim of cantrips. The game would simply be banned.

[kopout]

Roulette - another victim of cantrips. The game would simply be banned.

i don't get it


also in responds to the people calming that forbidence would negate teliportation . Well, couldn't' they come up with a spell to counter that ? A magical arms race is not unlikely in a Tippyvers.