"Realistic" D&D Setting Brainstorm

[Xeviat]

Hello Guildies. My current project is collecting and balancing my house-rules documents for D&D into a finalized form, to potentially be my home group's go to system. It is going to be some melding of D&D 3.5/Pathfinder and D&D 4E, since my group is pretty split down the middle when it comes to which game they like better. But, since my own setting has evolved just enough past typical D&D so as to not really be usable with it, I decided I wanted to start working on a new setting. It's not going to be terribly detailed, and it is going to embrace cliches warmly like an old friend.

As my group is getting older (the first of us are entering our 30s), we are fully aware of the necessity for suspension of disbelief. But I have found that avoiding the need for extensive suspension facilitates good roleplaying. Also, this project just tickles my fancy and makes me want to dig my teeth into it. I know I have had a thread in the past which questioned the affects of D&D magic upon a world, but I wanted to discuss it just a little.

I will be making firm use of http://www222.pair.com/sjohn/blueroom/demog.htm, and I have already started working on modifiers for the other races (which will be a thread of its own soon). Here's some demographic information that comes of it:

In the proto-setting, Kingdom A is a large kingdom with plenty of arable land, lets say like France. Heck, lets just make it the same size as France. That means it's largest city ends up having 76,573 people living in it. The DMG3.5 calls this a Metropolis, but those start at 25,001 people; this is a very big Metropolis. I'm tempted to use the Epic Level Handbook instead ... but we'll just leave Epic and it's world destroyingness out of the equation. So, our city, Metropolis, is pretty big. There is a pretty good chance, 60% if I did my math right, that there will be a level 16 Wizard in that metropolis (the four highest level wizards in the city is determined by 1d4+12 rolled 4 times). Heck, lets just do the rolling:

16
14
13(2)
8(2)
7(2)
6(4)
4(4)
3(12)
2(8)
1(40)

There are 76 wizards in town. There is someone with level 8 spells under their belt in town. Someone who can cast 2 or 3 level 8 spells each day for free; sure, they might want to charge for them, but the fact is that they CAN cast them. I haven't even done the math for adept, bard, cleric, druid, and sorcerer ... but all will be very close (there will be a few more adepts, bards, clerics, and druids in town, and the same number of sorcerers). Even just assuming I roll low for the 1d6 classes, there are 456 people in town, or 0.6% of the population, capable of casting legitimate spells (this isn't even looking at the rangers and paladins ... may raise it to closer to 1%).

So almost 1% of the population can cast spells. What are the ramifications of this? Will disease have been wiped out (Remove Disease is a 3rd level spell to Clerics, Druids, Rangers, and Adepts, and Paladins can do it on a weekly basis; it's also a free spell to cast; there are about 40 people who can cast it at least once per day)? Also, it seems, with those percentages, not everyone with an Int of 12 goes out and becomes a Wizard (or even not everyone with an Int of 10 picks up a cantrip feat), so obviously something else limits one's ability to learn magic; heck, not everyone with a Cha of 12 becomes a Bard or Sorcerer ...

Then there will be some discussion on monsters: how much land does a great wyrm need as their range? It's obvious why great wyrms haven't taken over the world, because metropolises have level 16+ NPCs walking around, so there are powerful people to leverage to face threats like dragons and such.

I'm catching myself rambling, so please, just post issues that you think should be tackled when trying to make a realistic D&D setting. Perhaps try to include an issue as well as a possible solution to someone else's issue in each post. They don't have to be fully formed thoughts. Thanks all.

[Xeviat]

Leetz has their meatloaf setting thread, so I'd like to take this in a different direction. More technical perhaps, focusing on the rules over the fluff. Sort of a weird inside-out approach.

[Xathan]

Ecology is going to be the toughest one to cover and the one I'd like to see the most just for the sheer difficulty. Hell, ignore a great wyrm dragon - they have spellcasting abilities and the intelligence to not depopulate a region - but instead imagine was a solitary Purple Worm would do to the local ecosystem, never mind a mated pair and their young.

From a rules perspective, permanent magic items have huge implications.:

A ring of sustenance (2500 gp to buy, half of that to make) "Continually provides its wearer with life-sustaining nourishment. The ring also refreshes the body and mind, so that its wearer needs only sleep 2 hours per day to gain the benefit of 8 hours of sleep. The ring must be worn for a full week before it begins to work. If it is removed, the owner must wear it for another week to reattune it to himself" would become a common wedding ring, and since the magic never goes away, a typical family would need 6 - 2 for each grandparent, 2 for each parent, 2 for each child - that would always be in use.

Hand of the Mage (900 gp) provides relatively affordable telekinesis.

Unguent of Timelessness (150gp) makes food storage even safer than modern times.

Hat of Disguise (1800gp) makes it impossible to be sure who you are talking to - everyone is a doppleganger.

Immovable Rods (5000gp) completely redefine construction - supporting a floating castle with them would be fairly cheap compared to the security.

I'd love to see realistic incorporation of what would be fairly easily made items like these - and that's not even counting limited use items like wands and scrolls. (With the relative inexpensiveness of scrolls, I think remove disease could easily eradicate most illnesses, for example.)

EDIT: Also, don't forget to consider what a properly secured "Decatur Of Endless Water" set to geyser could do.

[Xeviat]

Hmmm ... my counter to the magic item issue is going to be examining the economics of the setting as implied by the DMG. A common laborer earns 1 sp a week, or 5 gold and 2 silver a year. I'm assuming this is profit, in addition to what is required for sustenance, just to be simple. Here's the chart for hirelings (per day):

Alchemist: 1 gp
Animal tender: 15 cp
Architect/engineer: 5 sp
Barrister: 1 gp ...

I don't really need to go further than that. The highest paid hireling is the alchemist, and that's pay for retention, not the prices to create specific items. Paying for a spell to be cast, sans material components, cost Caster level x spell level x 10 gp (0-level spells count as 1/2). I'd assume, just for fairness, that high level warriors and such are paid something akin to the value of spells cast by a caster of their level, but less than adventurers can be expected to gather (lest there be no profit in adventuring).

So, it looks like money won't be hard to come by for anyone with a PC class, or anyone higher than level 1. There's likely going to be a huge divide between level 1 commoners and everyone else ...

Perhaps we need to discuss how fast people level? I remember reading an article that proposed the notion that living 1 month in a rural environment was an EL 1 encounter, and it extrapolated experience from there. If that is the case, these NPCs will cease gaining xp at 9th level ... and will only get there after 2.63 years; slower if you assume most people marry young and thus help each other overcome those encounters. Maybe each year is an EL 1 encounter, or each winter; it depends on how lethal rural life is, what with an EL 1 encounter being a 50% shot at life or death for a level 1 character ...

As for those items in general, I'm impressed. It seems affordable counters would need to be made. I suppose another thing to question is how socialistic or commercialistic the societies would be. I could see a very socialistic society filling the city with beneficent magic items, like lining the city with everburning torches and creating endless public fountains; heck, even Rome had a lot of public luxuries. Even a deeply commercial society is going to find a way to get its populous to spend money on things, so clean food and water and life-easing magic items could become common.

Today, not many know how to build a computer (likely as complex as learning to cast magic, relatively speaking), but almost everyone has one. Hmm ...

[Xathan]

Also, what those statistics assume about income is without adventurers. With adventuring being the fastest, albiet most dangerous, route to wealth, the economics of the world are going to shift dramatically: you have an entire group of people who have incomes that are not paid from within the community but comes externally, yet infuse the community with money on a regular basis - money that, as far as the average person is concerned, magically appears.

What I'm trying to say.

Then there's another facet - magic items do not decay. Barring destruction (and excepting limited use items), a magic item, once made, is permanent - with 1% of the population able to produce them, even at the high initial cost the wealth will spread. "Oh, bronze rings of sustenance are so last season, silver is all the rage now" a wealthy socialite might say to her friend. So the friend purchases a silver one. But you can't use 2 at once. So the other one gets locked away (assuming greedy) or given to a younger sibling/favored maid (assuming generous). Then next season it's gold, and then the next its platinum, then bronze with a diamond, then...you get the point. And each of these items will exist for the rest of time. Even in the most capitalistic societies, eventually supply will get so high for an item you will never need another of, ever, you're set for life.

Perhaps we need to discuss how fast people level? I remember reading an article that proposed the notion that living 1 month in a rural environment was an EL 1 encounter, and it extrapolated experience from there. If that is the case, these NPCs will cease gaining xp at 9th level ... and will only get there after 2.63 years; slower if you assume most people marry young and thus help each other overcome those encounters. Maybe each year is an EL 1 encounter, or each winter; it depends on how lethal rural life is, what with an EL 1 encounter being a 50% shot at life or death for a level 1 character ...

And then people breed rats.

Put a commoner in a room with a rat with nowhere for the rat to hide, give them a club. Assuming a strength of 10 (so no BAB), it will take that commoner an average of 20 seconds to kill that rat. According to this: encounter calculator that 1/8 CR rat is worth 38xp. Assuming it takes 1000xp for level one, and a commoner only does that once a day, that commoner will be level 2 in under a month. If living in a rural environment for a month is an EL 1 encounter, you would be a good bit of the way to level 2 if you kept doing this. Or you could be level 2 in a day - you'd only need to spend 10 total minutes in a room that day killing rats. (A smart commoner would kill rats until one bit him and then wait till tomorrow to resume again, since that one bite would heal completely overnight) Best of all, the dead rats could then be fed to breed weasels (or some other CR 1/4 carnivore), which would get you to level 3 reasonably fast at minimal risk. (Especially since weasels, like rats, can only do one damage on a bite, and at level 2 you could take two weasel bites before needing to rest to be in top shape for the next day with no magical healing). Even if all your levels were in commoner...a level 3 commoner with 10/10/10/10/10/10 for ability scores would have a BAB of +1, an average of 8 HP, and 2 feats (3 if human). After killing rats for a couple months, a level 3 commoner is almost on par with a level 1 fighter (2 HP short). If people knew they could get stronger this way (even if we ignore them knowing about meta concepts like levels, it wouldn't long to equate killing with gaining strength) it'd be viewed like a gym membership.

4 level 3 commoners with the right feat selections (Someone would have had to take cross class ranks in heal as well) would be a level 1 adventuring party, so long as they were very careful about when they rested.

Just a thought. :P

NOTE: Just wanted to add I'm not saying this is a bad idea or knocking it. I'm saying you could develop some really weird and interesting cultural institutions around this.

[sparkletwist]

I think that any society with a decent influx of D&D magic items is probably not going to look like D&D-society for long. There is the distinct possibility that beneficial magical items will elevate the lot of life of the common people, in ways that have already been addressed, but there's also the possibility that harmful magic items will completely destroy the society. Someone who gets hold of a wand of fireballs and doesn't know how to use it might end up blowing up the town. For that matter, even an "elevated" society might end up destroyed, because there are horrible monstrous beings from both "here" and all kinds of bizarre extraplanar realms running around and they'd probably be interested in looting a society full of shiny magical goods. Some elder dragon would just want to put all of that stuff into his giant pile of treasure that he sits on, for example.

So, it'll be Eberron (or even beyond, D&D magic is crazy) or a smoking crater (which is sort of how it ended up anyway after the Last War...) but it won't be D&D-land.

With adventuring being the fastest, albiet most dangerous, route to wealth, the economics of the world are going to shift dramatically: you have an entire group of people who have incomes that are not paid from within the community but comes externally, yet infuse the community with money on a regular basis - money that, as far as the average person is concerned, magically appears.

I'm not sure. I think it depends on how "globalized" your D&D-land is. Adventurers also buy up the best and most useful items in the town-- by virtue of being flush with cash from adventuring, they can pay the best prices, so they'll almost always be sold to first-- and this means the townspeople don't get whatever it is that is being bought. Powerful magic items can improve life in various important ways, but they are essentially spot-fixes. At least canonically, there is no "ring of logistics" that would allow a D&D town to import what it needed after all of the best food, weapons, magical items, and such were all bought up by adventurers who then take all that stuff and leave the town. This means that the people will have lots of gold, sure, but they won't actually feel any benefit from it because there is no longer anything worthwhile to buy. In the long term, all adventurers would really create is inflation, by pumping a bunch of gold into what was otherwise a static economy.

[Xeviat]

Wow, about rat breeding. I think PETA just became your mortal enemy. So, even without putting in some rules for when you gain XP and when you don't, people should be leveling fast. Those hordes of level 1 commoners filling a city are only level one because life is so comfortable and safe in the city they aren't gaining XP naturally, nor do they have the drive to go out and gain it (sounds so elitist ...).

Though, since you stop gaining xp from CR 1 opponents at level 9, one would think you'd stop gaining it from CR 1/2, 1/3, 1/4 ... 1/8 even sooner. Though that only delays the problem. People aren't going to stay low level for long. There's enough XP going around to fuel magic item creation. So it seems the economics of magic item creation aren't going to really be an issue. Heck, remember that a Metropolis has a GP limit of 100,000 gold; this means anything under that price can be found; the DMG says "anything having a price under that limit is most likely available, whether it be mundane or magical".

So you're right. Magic items are going to be cheep. A wondrous item that can create endless water can be as cheep as 2,700 gold (wondrous item, command word, create water at caster level 3, the minimum to take craft wondrous item; if you can reduce the caster level, it would be 900 gold); Every six seconds, as long as you have someone there next to it saying the command word, it creates 6 gallons of water (if caster level 1, 2 gallons of water). Taken to it's logical conclusion, either Wizards and other casters are going to have to closely guard their secrets (and that's going to be hard with Adepts and possibly that arcane npc class from Eberron around), or the world is going to feel very modern.

[Xathan]

 that Decantur of Endless Water, when set to gyeser, can produce even more - all the city has to do is pay some people to take shifts saying the same word every 6 secords. Or, you know, create an even cheaper level 0 item that uses ghost sound to do it.

And yeah, that's why I stopped the rat fighting from getting you past 3 - though in theory, you could simply add more rats to up the CR. Or use some other animal, though people would get squeamish about killing things other than rats and monsterous vermin (and why risk fighting something with posion when you don't have to?) So long as it's not restrained and in a room and therefore could in theory pose a threat, it's worth CR. I chose rats because the MM says they rarely actually attack - they'd mostly try to run away, and if the room was full of pipes that led back into the room, they'd keep trying and failing to flee and rarely attack. And since mechanically, there's no reason a commoner can't kill rats for a month and suddenly become a sorcerer or a wizard or a cleric or...well, any core class, if the "Rodenticide Method" is discovered, there's going to be a lot of people with class levels running around. Demographics would get horribly skewed - even if a farmer has no intention of ever being anything but a farmer, getting the benefits of level 1 spells for helping around the farm would be totally worth it.

The one thing keeping magic item costs high would be supply - not of the magic items themselves, since they always exist, but of the materiels needed to make them. If you want to keep the setting from being somewhat closer to classic fantasy, a De Beergs cartel scenario artificially keeping the cost of magic item compenents high would be the only way I can see to do it - and pressuring kingdoms into outlawing rat fighting.

[sparkletwist]

I'm not sure if it's productive to assume that regular people are going to be out power-leveling, or to assume that they even can. The D&D experience point tables are kind of designed for PCs to be able to tell larger than life zero to hero tales. I really don't think everyone in the land uses these tables... nor should they.

[Velox]

So almost 1% of the population can cast spells. What are the ramifications of this? Will disease have been wiped out (Remove Disease is a 3rd level spell to Clerics, Druids, Rangers, and Adepts, and Paladins can do it on a weekly basis; it's also a free spell to cast; there are about 40 people who can cast it at least once per day)? Also, it seems, with those percentages, not everyone with an Int of 12 goes out and becomes a Wizard (or even not everyone with an Int of 10 picks up a cantrip feat), so obviously something else limits one's ability to learn magic; heck, not everyone with a Cha of 12 becomes a Bard or Sorcerer ..

I would take into account the nature of people as evidenced in the real world. The ability to magically remove disease is an incredible boon and therefore a resource; there always seem to be, throughout history, certain people that make it their business to control and leverage resources. Unless there were some "humanoiditarian", not-for-profit organizations doing charity healing, I imagine that spellcasters would be employed by the ruling class as a means to generate income. I mean, how much would you pay to remove any disease? Especially a debilitating, disfiguring, or fatal one? That's a cash cow.

NOTE: Edits/additions are in italics. Lofty ideas need some editing, neh?

[Xeviat]

At the very least, a casting of Remove Disease costs 150 gold, and a level 5 cleric can probably do that twice a day. Nice work if you can get it.

The decanter of endless water is more expensive than an item of create water, no?

And as for common folk power leveling, I'd say it should get them as much xp as doing anything else worthwhile. There has to be more to gaining experience than surviving. Also, maybe PCs get an XP multiplier in relation to everyone else.

As for making material components more scarce, I could see that. I mean, making a magic item costs materials equal to half the cost; that's pretty rare stuff if it's worth hundreds or thousands of gold pieces.

[Xathan]

I admit the commoners power-levelling got a bit absurd - I was just kind of thinking of "if the rules of the universe are the Core Books, what would happen realistically?" and then going to a logical absurdity of it. I think arguing that the lack of real danger in my rat scenario makes sense - unless the person fighting the rat had no escape himself and no one to heal him if it got bad, there's no danger (or, arguably, whoever provides his escape/healing ups the party level, making the encounter no longer xp worthy.)

Then again, I may have misunderstood the purpose of this thread - I'm looking at every nitpicky rule for brainstorming, but maybe I should take a broader approach. Let's look at some things that would change form that:

1) Continual Flame spells would give people a day/night cycle similar to what we have here. I imagine they'd still look like laterns so they could be shut to turn off the light. This means people could work long into the night - in short, people's sleep cycles would become much more like the modern worlds.

2) Detect Lies/Zone of Truth would be very, very popular. A one use item that could produce one of these effects would go beyond simply used by interrogators or police. Imagine you think your spouse is cheating. Now you can prove it. Conversely, imagine your marriage is suffering because your spouse thinks YOU are cheating and you're not - how much would you pay to prove beyond most doubt you weren't?

3) Rogues (or adepts or experts) trained in use magic device would be very common in the military. Sure, they wouldn't replace normal troops...but a wand of magic missle is not too expensive when you're talking in terms of military budget, any of those classes could reliably set it off, and even if it's made by a level 1 caster...well, imagine how much a bow that shot arrows that never missed and ignored armors and shields would have been worth.

4) Expensive as it is, imagine a single magic item with unlimited uses that could create food and drink every round...I imagine these would actually be most popular in charitable churches, since they'd only need to gather the donations to fund getting one such item as opposed to constantly getting funding to make more. Assuming the food is bland and just nutritious enough to keep a body going it wouldn't replace traditional agriculture...but it would alleviate some of the crippling starvation of the impoverished AND help support larger communities.

[Xeviat]

Great suggestions Xathan. That's the sort of stuff I want to talk about in the thread. Tomorrow, I'm going to spend some time going through the quick description spell list to flag things that I think will be particularly interesting.

The notion of a group of "wand of magic missile" wielding experts sounds really dangerous on the battlefield. Train them in stealth and use magic device, then send them out to assassinate enemy commanders. Granted, enemy commanders won't be low level ... makes me think "potions of shield" will be very popular too.

[Kindling]

The notion of a group of "wand of magic missile" wielding experts sounds really dangerous on the battlefield. Train them in stealth and use magic device, then send them out to assassinate enemy commanders. Granted, enemy commanders won't be low level ... makes me think "potions of shield" will be very popular too.

Yeah it could be a group, but I would imagine wands might be employed by infantry in DnDland in much the same way light machine guns are employed in modern armies - one for each section/fire team/squad/whatever, which light infantry doctrine emphasizing the correct placement and protection of the wandman to bring maximum firepower onto the enemy.

[Xeviat]

But a caster level 1 magic missile wand isn't really heavy firepower. It deals 1d4 guaranteed damage, enough to take out a level 1 commoner or wizard with a 10 con or less. Wands of fireball and such are getting into the realm of very expensive; I don't have all my books to compare them to the cost of mundane siege engines.