A complete N00bz first try at world-building...

[Eldest]

If you want, you can give me a description and I can make one...
Sometime. Although not until after this week, but soon after hopefully.

[Wyntonian]

I'll give this a shot before I foist it off on you. If nothing else, it'll give me a more concrete idea of what I want it to be.

[Wyntonian]

One thing that's been bugging me... I don't see this setting as being very high-magic, but on the other hand I get the "well, why isn't it?" question floating around my head. The priests of the God of Soleh, for example, would work great as Red Mages, with their prophets as Mageborn. But if there's a large caste of casters (ha), why isn't everything more magicky? Having torches and streetlights made of Continual Flames is a bit too Tippyverse for me, so I suppose the priesthood would confine it to their temple districts... A lot of these problems solve themselves with a little though case-by-case. For example, why disease still exists if anyone can cast Cure Disease. I assume that casters are few and far between, plus the lack of clerics meaning no spontaneous healing. (Should this be a feat? Maybe? I think yes.)

So, that's kinda a rant, and not even one that's particularly individual to this setting, but I think it mostly warranted posting. Thanks for reading.

[Eldest]

They believe that magic is precious, because every spell you cast takes a small amount away from the world? It can grow back a little, but cast too much and there will be no world...
If this is true or now is up to you.

[Yora]

The solution is: Do not have lots of high level NPCs.

For my campaign, I capped everyone at 10th level for a start.

Let's say 1% of all people have PC classes (or are adepts).
Of those people, 10% are spellcasters.
Of which 70% are divine casters.
For a total of 0,07% of the whole population, or one in 143 people.

Now assume that there are twice as many 1st level characters of a class than there are 2nd level characters, and so on. This does not get you exactly 100% of course, but even at 8th level you pass 99% to make that difference insiginificant.
In that case, 6,25% of all divine spellcasters are 5th level or higher and able to cast remove disease. That's 0,044% of the population, or 1 in 2300 people.

Then you have druids who live in isolation and clerics who actually have to do priest stuff as well, as well as people living spread over very large areas, and the number of people a single character with the remove disease spell is responsible for becomes very large. And even if they sell the potions under production cost, the cost of making them soon becomes huge. And disease has the bad habit of affecting multiple people at once, which large spans of time during which nobody is suffering from something serious.
And I think the numbers I've been using here are quite generous. They could also be much lower, which summs up a lot when you multiply them.

[Wyntonian]

Both good suggestions, but I think I like Yora's in general. This world would work fine in E6, but either a soft NPC cap at 10 or just assuming that this is meant to be run using the E10 ruleset helps clear up a lot of problems. Thanks, Yora. Always good to see a new face in this.

[Yora]

E6 is actually only neccessary if you expect the campaign to progress quite far beyong 6th level. If you play mostly games that rarely reach 8th level or beyond anyway, setting NPCs at lower levels is enough. It's an approach used by Eberron.

[Wyntonian]

That works. It's not really a major issue at this point. By the way, does anyone have any homebrewed base or prestige classes they think would fit the setting well? Note that this excludes things with obvious ties to other planes, for the most part. It's hard to have a warrior of hell without a hell. I have a couple good ones, like the Sagittarius, Plague Doctor, Brawler, Kensei of Five Rings, and a couple others, along with a couple Jirku-fixes. So, link me to anything you really like for this world, and I'll take a look.

[Byzantine]

Life, oh glorious, tedious life.

I like Yora's suggestion. There's also another bit to consider, which worked well for myself and other DMs in my posse in the past: Not all priests are casters.In fact, only about 15% of all priests in the world are casters. 10% of those are adepts, who have only a tentative connection to their deity. The other 5% are clerics, favoured souls, druids, and whatever else you allow for divine casters/characters. They would have high positions in their church, and often times wouldn't have the time to see a lowly peasant for a cough.

Plague coming through town? The highest level casters would be tending the wealthy and powerful first, since they have the money to pay for their services. Unless you have a god like Illmater in your world, money tends to trump needy.

[Wyntonian]

Well, there's actually no difference whatsoever between divine and arcane magic in this setting. Priests can really be of any class, arcane or divine. But yes, I think I'll go with pretty much everyone being fairly low level, sub-10 at least.

[Byzantine]

Makes sense. Don't forget the idea that not all priests would be casters. Some of them may be apprentice casters, but not enough to make a difference.

[Eldest]

This is starting to sound like there will be almost no casters available to the normal folk...
As long as that's what you want, though, it's ok.

[Yora]

By the way, does anyone have any homebrewed base or prestige classes they think would fit the setting well? Note that this excludes things with obvious ties to other planes, for the most part.

I like the oracle and witch from Pathfnder. Unless I am mistaken they can be used as they are in a 3.5e game without any modification and they are free in the SRD with all their special spells.

[Wyntonian]

Makes sense. Don't forget the idea that not all priests would be casters. Some of them may be apprentice casters, but not enough to make a difference.

Duly noted. That's what I was going for anyway.

This is starting to sound like there will be almost no casters available to the normal folk...
As long as that's what you want, though, it's ok.

That's not what I'm going for. Casters will be uncommon, but not an upper-class occurrence. It's only in the one example I gave, the priests of Soleh, where a certain color of Mage is selected for, and that's based on the religion. In other parts of the world, low-level casters are pretty common. Middle-level (like, past fourth) casters are rarer, and those trained for combat even more so. Being able to fart lightning doesn't mean that you can use in in a battle any more so than the next guy.

I like the oracle and witch from Pathfnder. Unless I am mistaken they can be used as they are in a 3.5e game without any modification and they are free in the SRD with all their special spells.

I thought about those, but I'd like to avoid outrightly divine magic as much as possible, as well as too much back-porting. Those are a decent option, though.

[Wyntonian]

You know.... I'm starting to like my use of urgals less and less. How do you folks feel about switching to Goliaths from RoS? They fit a little better, I think. I won't have to jack a halfway-maybe-decent author's work for my own haphazard homebrew, and I won't risk copyright infringement. Best of all, I like them a little more.

Thoughts?

[Eldest]

I actually like the idea of Urgals as a savage but still completely playable and (more importantly) just as civilized race as humans. But if it bugs you, go ahead and change it. I would recommend reskinning the Goliaths, though, just because I like the idea of a big horned fellow for that spot in your world.

[Wyntonian]

I was going to keep the culture, role, everything else the same. Just changing the name, and taking away the horns. I suppose I could leave the horns, though. They'll still make periodic raids against the Human countries, occasionally try to enslave gnomes, and have a bitter, drawn-out turf war with the dwarves. I just like the name better, really.

[Wyntonian]

If you're looking for something to do, I've revamped the OP. I'm currently listing all the homebrewed PrC's and Base classes I found that work well here. If you have something you'd like to add, let me know so I can take a look.

[Eldest]

Perhaps, if a DM wants to play E6 with this world, recommend them to Gnorman's classes?

[Wyntonian]

Ooooh.... that's a good idea. I'll put in a note to that effect.

[Wyntonian]

Another note: I've pretty much decided on the cosmology. Material plane, Vestige/Spirit realm, the Hedge (which is more of an extradimensional Escher painting than anything else, but whatever.). And that's it. No Celestia, no Far Realms, no place to summon demons from, just "stuff that's here" and "stuff that isn't, really".

[Yora]

You really only need lots of planes for a planescape style setting where having dozens of worlds is the entire point of everything. Other settings can do with much less.
I also only got material plane plus 3.

[Eldest]

I noticed in the revised OP. Now, anything you need help with for now?

[Wyntonian]

Yeah... the map. I have decided to have a funeral for any artistic ability I may have possessed at younger ages, so the map is a torch that must be passed onwards. If anyone here is willing to give it a shot, great. If not, I can go bug the Arts and Crafts forum, or try to get someone from the cartographer's guild.

[Eldest]

Conveniently, I need something to do in art...

[Wyntonian]

Sounds perfect! Would you be willing to do something for this? You understand where everything is, as far as I can tell, and I'm not overly picky about the details. I'd like to see the four countries, some space in the north (I'm thinking giants) past the Vallheim, some islands to the south, and land stretching off the edge of the map. Lastly, nothing that someone could look at and go "Oh, look, it's the US. I live about...there.", regardless of what the inspiration was. Does that work for you?

[Eldest]

I'd need some more specific stuff, but sure. Also, I'm close to going on winter break, so if I don't get it finished in the next week it's going to be stuck in place until school resumes. I don't have Illistrator at home yet.

[Wyntonian]

The more specific something becomes, as a general rule, the less I actually care about it. Are there any specific questions you'd like to ask?

[Yora]

What kinds of environments do you want included? Are there cities that require specific places, like at the base of mountains, along a river, or at the coast? Do you want a single main island devided between the four countries, or is it just one part of a larger continent? Do you want the land shown on the map to be completely divided among the four countries, or do you want lots of unclaimed wilderness between and beyond them?

[Wyntonian]

They're one part of a larger continent, which was originally planned to be a direct port of North America.

Here' what the earliest attempt of a map I had looked like:

Spoiler

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