What does /tg/ think about Tippyverse?

>>51598831
Teleporation Circles will be set up between the City and fellow Cities simply because they are the only remotely safe and cost effective way to rapidly move goods between the cities. Who is going to ship goods by boat when TC’s are faster, cheaper, and safer? Or by wagon train? The fact that TC’s are point to point and have fixed points is going to eliminate the various small villages and towns that tend to dot the path between Cities both in real life and in more traditional D&D settings. The high initial investment of a permanent teleportation circle is also going to ensure that they are only set up between locations that can make them profitable within a relatively short period of time, which eliminates most of the smaller cities and villages as well.
All of this combines to create a self reinforcing cycle that concentrates the vast majority of the worlds population in cities that are linked to each other by teleportation circles, fed by create food and water traps (as farms can’t be defended effectively), and require large standing armies for defense.
You are quickly left with the large cities (most on par with the likes of Sharn, or even larger, in terms of population) that hold upwards of 99% of the worlds non monstrous population and cover (maybe) one percent of the worlds surface and the Wilds between the cities that are filled with the denizens of the various Monster Manuals. The Wilds are also where you will find the small villages and thorps of more traditional D&D, where the population is constantly threatened by monsters, rarely exceeds level 5, rarely sees magic, and is basically subsistence level.

>>51598839
The massive concentration of population and trade in the various cities (I recommend between a dozen and a hundred cities in the average Tippyverse world) is naturally going to lead to a concentration of wealth and knowledge. Securing that wealth requires a military force that can stand off the strongest of attacks and deal with even high level adventurers. The traditional Tippyverse tends to make use of armies of Shadesteel Golems and Warforged for defense, usually with Wizard officers. This kind of military force becomes necessary to defend a City from other Cities and the various powerful denizens of the Wilds, but it also has the side effect of making the initial investment required to defend a city quite high.
Depending on the DM’s decision a City can be everything from a post-scarcity world populated by various spell traps where even Death is a rarity to a relatively normal D&D city. What the cities are is a location for high level political intrigue, high level adventuring, and of high magic. When the cities Guards are Shadesteel Golems led by level 10-15 casters with invisible Warforged scouts linked with Permanent Telepathic bonds flying overhead and hanging out on every street corner, adventurers will not get away with all of the various shenanigans that they can in more traditional D&D
Cities are usually ruled by a council made up of the strongest casters in the city. After all, might does make right in D&D and wars between high level casters tend to end badly for everyone involved making the co-opting of new individuals on this power level a necessity (and those that won‘t play ball get ganged up on by every other high level caster in the City).
Over time cities will fall (be it from the attack of an enemy city, a flight of dragons, a civil war between it’s leadership, natural disaster, or whatever else the cause) and others will rise to replace them. New cities are rarities but they do occur (about as often as cities fall).

>>51598848
The Wilds are the area between cities. Here is where you will find everything from dungeons to Orc armies to small farming towns. The Wilds are a Death World by most standards and most individuals will have a hard time eking out an existence. Magic is rare and largely limited to Sorcerers, Warlocks, Druids, and similar classes. Most individuals are low level and it’s rare to find a PC class.
The Wilds are where you will find most of the more traditional D&D quests occurring (dungeon crawling in the ruins of fallen cities, clearing out various monsters, rescuing the mayors daughter, etc.). You will also find a few “barbarian” kingdoms out here (more traditional D&D kingdoms) where the very lack of high level magic (as those capable of casting it migrate to the cities) keeps the kingdom from reaching that singularity point.

I've heard about tippyverse a lot back in my giantitp days. It opened my eyes on just how much does 3.5 suck.

>>51598899
It's not really 3.5 specific, so much as it is an example of the dramatic impact magic has on a world where can beats can't.

>>51600068
3.5 is the only system I can think of, where such crazy disparity exists and it isn't completely intentional, like in Exalted or Ars Magica.

>>51600568
In any setting with martial/caster parity, can-beats-can't, and high power levels you just get tippyverse but the high level shankpeople are pulling the same shit as the high level spellpeople. It's got nothing to do with 3.5's shit class balance.

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It's a thought experiement, not a setting. That's fine, I like thought experiments. I can see how "given these crazy-ass rules, what kind of society would emerge?" is a fun question to toss around. But I wouldn't try to run a game set there.

>>51598831
It's fucking retarded

>>51601497
You have made a claim! Great!
Please now provide arguments to support your claim, such as disproving OP's example.

>>51598831
It's what happens when you go full autist and weaponize autism.

>>51598831
Tippy's an egotistical cunt who thinks he's oh so clever for noticing that D&D's settings don't mesh well with the rules, so he tries to make a superior, rational setting. Except he then ignores aspects he doesn't like about the setting, like "the vast majority of the populace have only a few levels in NPC classes", "there's only a handful of actual high-level casters and most don't give a shit about the general populace" and "gods actually do stuff".

I'd not hesitate to call him the progenitor of the modern "rational fiction" phenomenon, like that crazy technocultist who wrote a shitty Harry Potter fanfic (and banned discussion of the robodevil because knowing about it meant it would torture simulations of you in the future).

>>51603819
Elizier Yudkowsky is who you're thinking of with that second example.

And yes, Tippy is an ignoramus.

"I broke something broken aren't I clever?! Dohohohoho!"

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My I first saw the Tippyverse and discovered that it ignored the actual rules on NPC spellcaster populations and levels, then declared that it could make infinite food because "ain't no rule against it" despite food creation items already existing, I turned around and decided I never really wanted to look at it again.

If there's more to it than immediately defeating its own premise, I'm not too interested.

>>51598831
Can you have a Tippyverse in version 5? What would be the differences?

>>51606281
An infinite trap of Create Food and Water isn't against the rules.

>>51607967
It's against the rules when you consider that magic item crafting rules (which would, in my opinion, cover magic traps as well) explicitly state that magic items that already exist should not be outdone by magic items that are crafted by players (no rings of free action true strike, when it'd be cheaper than +5 weapons).

>>51608236
>(which would, in my opinion, cover magic traps as well)
Well, that's the thing, they don't.

>>51608236
The entire point of the Tippyverse is that it is all legal by RAW. By RAW traps aren't covered by those rules, which is why it works.

>>51603819
Tippy has said that his verse requires the Gods not to directly interfere. Active Gods would put a stop to his verse pretty quickly.

>>51607967
Neither is mages getting assraped by every god of magic simultaneously the moment they cast demiplane, but you don't see charoppers react too well to this argument when they insist their autistic, less than fluent understanding of english interpretation of the rules is DAH RAW.

>>51608501
>my setting can only exist if you ignore the surefire thing that can shut it down that also happens to be omnipresent

>>51608517
>but you don't see charoppers react too well to this argument
Because it's fucking stupid and has less than nothing to do with the rules.

Incidentally I'd bet money that most of those charoppers have a better command of the rules than you.

>>51608528
There's no rules for triggering divine intervention, so it has no place in the Tippyverse.

>>51608535
>The parts of the rules I don't like are just fluff
Nah

>>51608559
There are no rules against divine intervention and quite a few statements that indicate otherwise about the lack of divine intervention.

>>51608567
You're making assumptions about what gods do that don't hold true in all settings. Go read Eberron you fucking retard.

>>51608579
All of the rules I've seen boil down to "Gods do stuff when the DM decides they do" nothing explicit.

>>51608590
Of course tippyverse and a lot of other theorymancy is entirely white room nonsense that assumes a DM isn't present, since rule 0 is too much of a threat to the nerd power fantasy.

>>51608623
What does that have to do with anything he posted? Oh wait, absolutely nothing, you're just shitposting because mad.

>>51600635
I run a game set in Tippyverse, and I can assure you that it runs exactly like any other D&D game.
The only difference is that the players are extremely afraid of everything in the big cities so they don't go about doing shit... but once they're in the wild kingdoms, ALL THE IMAGINABLE SHIT GETS DONE.

>>51598831
Disgusting name, 3.pf is god damn utter garbage, basically exemplifies the most autistic parts of that trash game DnD.

>>51608623
Tippyverse is a thought experiment, nobody had ever claimed otherwise. I'm not sure why you're so triggered by it

>>51608888
Because mechanics and anything even remotely resembling discussion of them trigger him to start shitposting.

>>51608888
Tippyverse just /sounds/ autistic, even setting aside all the genuine autism that goes into it.

>>51608938
Well it's from the OotS forums, autism is a given

>>51607600
Tippyverse is impossible in 5e.

Post-Tippyverse, sifting the broken ruins of the few actual cities and forming petty kingdoms against the predations of other warlords, would be a pretty fun setting to play.

>>51598831
How does this setting deal with infinite Wish loops?

>>51609796
It accounts for them, in a way. Since the most expensive magic item you can get is limited with wish, only magic items that are worth more have any "real" worth in the setting, IIRC.

>>51610038
But you can wish for infinite GP by accumulating consecutive wishes. There'd be no possible economy.

>>51610107
Yes. That's what I mean. GP, and every item with value under that of whish's max is worthless.

>>51610107
And what do you buy with infinite gold, if anyone and everyone has all the magic items worth less than 25k?
Gold has no inherent value, except in very specialized cases, in this scenario. If I recall correctly, anything worth more than 25k becomes a favor trading situation rather than a buying situation.

>>51610273
What favors can you purchase? There are exceedingly few mortals that could perform any service better than an arbitrary quantity of Solars.

>>51610345
"Go to the elemental plane of earth, get me a few dozen diamonds worth more than 25k so my cleric buddy has some in stock for when he needs to resurrect someone.
The Dao won't deal with anyone but mortals after the last "Unhinged Solar who had been repeatedly bound by less than good caster to do less than good deeds" went on a rampage."

>>51608623
Holy fucking shit you're retarded
>Well it's not RAW but it's not the way -I- would run D&D therefore it's wrong.

Though you have a point for 5e because the rules are explicit about it assuming the gods are active in the setting.

>>51610398
I thought we just established that 25000 GP is the precise value of worthlessness. 25000 GP diamonds, the material component of True Resurrection, is an obvious thing to Wish for.
In fact there's pretty much nothing worth anything in this universe. Nearly everything can be crafted by Gating in an appropriate crafter and supplying them with arbitrary crafting materials, or is already worth less than 25000 GP.
This universe seems meaningless.

Question: what is a Create Food and Water *trap?* I'm only vaguely familiar with spell traps from PF, and I'm not sure how you can make a spell trap that is self-resetting and infinitely reusable.

>>51610510
Are you slow? Each diamond is worth more than 25k, because prestige.
"No, I wasn't resurrected by a simple wish diamond. I was resurrected by a gemstone not created by magic, that couldn't have been created by wish!"

>>51610533
Exactly what it sounds like. Automatic resets imply infinite usability, and there's nothing actually stopping you from making an auto-resetting magic trap that uses non-offensive spells.

>>51610533
You can't, it's just that tippyverse essentially requires on player fiat "nothing in the rules says you can't", because there's no rules for it in the first place.

It's a big part of a lot of the stupider theorycrafting, it's why shit like pun-pun requires cheating to even be doable in the first place (sorry "claiming that there's no rule that my character can't know about this impossibly rare creature")

>>51610533
http://www.d20srd.org/srd/traps.htm
At the bottom of the page are the rules for trap making.

>>51610559
That is pointlessly dull.

>>51610586
Yes you can.

>>51610604
Your opinion has been heard and ignored.

>infinite wish loops allowed
All planes collapse in on themselves as two people try to summon more Solars than the other

>>51610642
By the same measurement, you can believe that the moon is made of cheese.

>>51610691
>alarm specifically called out as a possible spell that can be used for crafting a trap as it would be free
>no guys trust me you can only use spells that are meant for combat i know what I'm talking about

>>51610702
>Alarm is listed as an example
>therefore the devs obviously meant create food and water too
You are functionally retarded if you can't tell the difference.

>>51610733
The point is that the trap-making rules are open-ended you retarded ape

>>51610744
Is "lacks awareness of the no limits fallacy" a common symptom of autism? Just asking questions there.

>>51610770
Have you ever considered taking a step away from your computer, going outside, and sticking your head in a body of water until you begin to lose consciousness?
Because I'm very certain it would be a transformative experience for you.

>>51610770
No limits fallacy isn't just not a fallacy, it doesn't even begin to apply to what I posted. There are straight up no stated or implied limits on the spells you can use for a trap, and even if I did accept your retarded, pulled out of your ass limitations, WotC explicitly printed a helpful trap variant in Dungeonscape. Fuck off.

>>51610601
>http://www.d20srd.org/srd/traps.htm
No Reset: Short of completely rebuilding the trap, there’s no way to trigger it more than once. Spell traps have no reset element.

Oh, but then there are magic *device* traps, and they can reset automatically. But I'm not sure a trap of Create Food and Water would actually be significantly cheaper than a wondrous item that Creates Food and Water at-will.

>>51610917
>Spell traps have no reset element.
Not true, the spell trap rules at the bottom are in addition to the normal trap rules. You can see that from looking at most example spell traps, like the Fireball trap.

>>51608501

>traps not covered by RAW

The fuck they aren't. They're on some page in the DMG.

>>51610938
Nevermind, just noticed that, but magic device traps are pretty much the assumed default anyways so it's not exactly a game changer.

You also can't take off with some dude's magic trap of Create Food and Water, which isn't something you can say of a pair of boots or a rod that does it infinitely.

>>51610586
You absolutely can according to the rules create a trap that do all this. The rules state how to craft the trap, the required material for the trap, and the DC to create the trap.

If you are saying that we can only do things that have mechanical precedent then the only traps, items, and spells that are allowed to be used are the ones in the books, and the rules used to create new ones, in the same books, are null and void then. Either you can have the ability to create new things in a system or you can't. D&D allows a player/DM to create new items in the world using game mechanics. So yes you can create food and water traps.

>>51610733
The point is not what should be allowed, but what is allowed. As >>51610744 pointed out, the trap construction rules are open ended allowing a person to create a trap of create food and water, whether or not that is the developers intention is not what is being debated. Remember the Tippyverse is theory optimization taken to it's most logical, extreme, and autistic conclusion. It's a dumb fucking universe but it runs on RAW and you are saying that RAW shouldn't work in a universe that runs on RAW rather than RAI. So if your point is that the Tippyverse is autistic and retarded you are correct it is, if your point is that these things that happen in the Tippyverse are mechanical impossible according to the rules, then you are wrong. And if your point was to bait me and get a (You) then you also did that.

>>51610969
It's actually a good point that you can't steal a trap of Create Food and Water, but you can deliberately make inconvenient wondrous items that, say, weigh several hundred pounds or more.

There's actually a town that shows up in Pathfinder's Giant Slayer adventure path, that has a magic item that creates rations in case the town come sunder siege, and it weighs several tons to prevent it from being looted.

>>51598831
>no large scale defenses against teleportation magic
Mass-produced dimensional locks?

Everytime this comes up I ask where is this large supply of high level spell casters coming from, and I never get a good answer.

>>51611142
The setting should've been destroyed long ago by the very first person to establish an infinite wish loop, who would kill everyone else before information managed to spread.

>>51611142
Have you seen the rules to generate cities in 3.5? That shit spits out level 20 commoners.

>>51611142
Where do you get any high level Player Classes from?
I'm confused by your question.

>>51598831
The best and most sensible settings and best systems have limits on magic, such as zero resurrection and no teleportation (except maybe through special gates).

>>51611165
>who would kill everyone else before information managed to spread.

What if he was not a psychopath?

What if he didn't do it alone?

>>51601564
If nobody lives outside of the cities where the fuck do all the resources come from? Do they conjure all the wood and stone and gold? You actually need materials to cast all the spells he takes for granted.

Also shadesteel golems and warforged would be exponentially more expensive than an army of angels.

>>51598831
In this world what makes "extraordinary abilities" work? The rules state that they are are nonmagical, though they may break the laws of physics. They aren't divine or psionic either so how do they happen?

>>51611193
>level 20 commoners
>casting spells

>>51611533
Depending on the setting, training.

>>51611555
The point is that it generates a bunch of other high level guys, too.

>>51611562
how do you train to break the laws of physics without magic?

If wish loops are a thing why would you need trade at all? It's a post scarcity world at that point.

>>51611595
Since real life caps at 6th, rather easily.

>>51611612
But that doesn't really explain what makes it possible does it? like how do dwarves see without a light source?

>>51611658
You do realize that physics in fantasy worlds don't work off of real world physics, right?

>>51611675
well they mostly do, with discrepancies mostly explained by gods or magic. Even so surely when they say break the laws of physic they would imply the laws of the world the action takes place in? I know it's mostly just semantics, but if you take the rules at face value it could have some weird implications.

>>51611605
Actually, why would you need warfare? What are you killing each other over? It's not like they have something you don't. If you say it's not based on competition for resources, why risk mutually assured destruction (which is definitely what this scenario is)?

>>51611717
Weirder than a person being able to create a perfectly square area of fire on command between 3 to 6 times a day?

>>51611472
Fabricate traps, or in the event where you specifically need raw materials that Fabricate can't handle, True Creation traps. Material components aren't actually taken into account in magic device traps beyond creation, so you pretty much pay the cost to make the trap and it keeps spitting out whatever you wanted it to make when you created it.

>>51611789
Ok weird may be the wrong word, but magic is magic. Extraordinary abilities represents a number of loop-holes in the very fabric of reality that you can apparently exploit via training. one would think that the laws of physics would have to be amended to account for these instances and yet it is not. This leads to the implication that whatever allows for these extraordinary abilities could overcome anything given sufficient training. Maybe this is why player characters are limited to 20 levels as any more would risk tearing reality asunder.

>>51611719
I don't know but apparently this entire setting is supposed to be people living in fortified cities to avoid teleporting armies except what they'd really be doing was living in the kill zone between two armies of teleporting robots. The one place in the tippyverse where you're guaranteed not to be attacked by teleporting robots is the wilderness. So the premise of war as he views it is fucking stupid.

>>51611675
Which is a nice claim that you are going to prove with mountains of evidence of course.

The reason people reject this setting is it is rational and promotes reasoned invention. In a dumbed down modernity that lauds mediocrity and derides ambition, the idea of someone imagining an alternative is terrifying.

Just the $0.02 of one of the few who recalls what once was, and mourns what has been lost.

>>51598831
Sounds like a shitty setting desu

>>51611895
>Maybe this is why player characters are limited to 20 levels
They are not limited to 20 levels, though.
That's wrong.

>>51598831
How do levels come about in D&D? Presumably people are born without any class levels (except for maybe classes like Sorceror) and will never get any class levels unless they do something about it. What is that something? I always assumed that if a person goes through training or whatnot they get a class, or something along those lines. If somebody fights a bunch of deadly things they'll eventually pick up a level in fighter, or at least warrior or something.

The reason I ask this is because the Tippyverse says the wilderness doesn't have high level people. This seems strange to me because if you primarily get experience by adventuring (ie fighting, looting, questing) then wouldn't most high level people only attain the amount of experience they need by doing stuff in the wilderness?

If every small village is consistently accosted by dangerous beasts then wouldn't their town guards gain experience for repelling them and get tougher over time?

>>51612104
well for any single class you are or am i misremembering somehow?

>>51611263
Agreed, same with wishes.

>>51612194
...I think you should stop posting about things you are completely unaware of.
Epic Level rules, idiot.

>>51611914
Not to mention the fact that he seems to believe civilians are the main target in war.

>don't live in a town because an army might show up!
And promptly leave when there's nothing there.

Teleportation means no supply lines. There's no point in holding territory which had no strategic value. So the ONLY places that'd see fighting would be military installations and places that produce war goods. Your little farming town would be of no interest to the enemy, so why move to the cities that apparently get attacked for no reason?

As for why the cities are always attacked and the population killed, he's probably a retard that runs on 'every army is zombies or orcs' logic.

>>51612313
i think you should lighten up a bit, but yeah i forgot about epic. They don't seem so contain any more class features and thus no new extraordinary abilities so i guess that "theory" goes out the window.

>Teleportation circles are more cost effective than shipping
No. A single circle would reach capacity quickly as you can only load and unload it so quickly. It's not an infinitely efficient means of transportation, and you'll quickly reach the point where loading ships up is actually cheaper than constantly building circles to meet your needs.

>>51612422
Maybe you should stop talking about shit you know nothing about, because you obviously can't contribute to this conversation in any meaningful way.

>>51612468
Would you rather are talk about the specific transport capabilities of teleport circles? Seriously just take a deep breath and ignore what i'm writing if it annoys you so intensely.

With that said: I find it intriguing that most diseases and almost all poisons are described as extraordinary. this coincides with paladin immunity being an extraordinary ability.

>>51612439
The comparison you want to make with teleportation circles isn't with boats, but with docks. You can unload and carry *a* shipment through a teleportation circle quickly. The problem is when you have multiple merchants and only one teleportation circle to pass their good through. It turns out a teleportation circle is fairly cheap, purely in terms of gold, but the XP cost is what really prohibits making entire rows of them.

>>51612946
That's not actually an issue when you enter the realm of RAW, hell, it's actually RAI as this is what it's *intended* for, but that's not the point - Thought Bottle allows you to 'save' the amount of XP you have at the moment, and at any point where you lose a level(this is really easy when you can craft traps that do exactly that), use it to set your XP to what it was saved it at-500.

>>51612946
The Tippyverse relies heavily on using Ice Assassin to create simulcrums of yourself and using them to handle stuff for you. Using stuff like Thought Bottle allows you to create a fully subservient clone of yourself with all your casting power for a tiny amount of xp.

>>51613943
>>51613038
Again, what exactly are we trading in what is essentially a post scarcity society? What are they buying it with?

>>51614135
There's not a whole lot of trading going on. The citadels are pretty much entirely self sufficient. But people may want to visit another citadel.

>>51614135
Things that are above the wish limit in cost?

One good thing that I can see in Tippeyverse is the idea that people will take advantage of shit they can take advantage of. Given a high enough power level of magic, why wouldn't NPCs take advantage of the magic system of a given RPG setting? The knowledge that NPCs can abuse the magic system as well has gotten my players to roleplay a lot more thoughtfully, and a lot less murderhobo-y...mostly.

>>51614205
Having read the original thread, I assure you the setting contains much circlejerk about trade via TC.

>>51614230
Are those common enough to influence the development of trade infrastructure? What's the demand on those items? Who is able to afford them, and with what?

Why isn't the setting ruled by diplomancers?

>>51598831
Okay, there's a very real sense in which this is probably a useless concept, inasmuch as there's no guarantee that closely following the 3.5 rules takes you anywhere interesting. But let's run with it.

I'm not intimately familiar with the 3.5 rules, so I'm at a serious disadvantage here, but I think I see some serious problems with the setting as described, most of which have already been pointed out.

1) Where are all these high-level casters coming from? As postulated, the Tippyverse needs a lot of them, but only a vanishingly small segment of the populace is likely to make to that level of skill.
2) Why are these cities going to war, again? They have all the resources they could ever want and they don't need much land. I don't even know why you need the food and water traps; can't you just create some farms within the city walls and have constructs work them?
2a) If there's no effective defense against teleportation, what's stopping cities from adopting a mutually-assured-destruction stance rather than large, expensive, and likely ineffective standing armies? Wouldn't this setup make a NATO-style alliance immensely valuable— "you teleport an army into one of our cities, the rest of us retaliate"? Is it just down to "we can't trace the origin of a teleport circle spell"?
3) What the heck are these cities trading?

...I swear I'll say something original in the next post.

I have a GM who tried to make a setting that was consistent with the rules of 3.5 (short of things like drowning resurrection anyway), and it was fucking miserable. We had to choose between trying to break the game and being bored, or trying to play like reasonable humans and being unable to move the plot along. I think the premise could work in a sort of "Trapped in an MMO"/Log Horizon sort of setting, but using 3.5 rules would be a huge mistake

>>51616062
>1) Where are all these high-level casters coming from?

One caster uses Ice Assassin to make copies of himself. Note that making Assassins based on yourself means that if they get more than a mile away from you, they start trying to get you killed. Which is another reason for staying put in the City with all your duplicates.

>>51616062
(cont'd)

>Over time cities will fall (be it from the attack of an enemy city, a flight of dragons, a civil war between it’s leadership, natural disaster, or whatever else the cause) and others will rise to replace them. New cities are rarities but they do occur (about as often as cities fall).

In reality, cities rarely die, even after being razed by invaders, bombed to smithereens, or wrecked by natural disasters. Cities in the Tippyverse will likely retain this property. However, cities usually arise as hubs of economic activity, so the post-scarcity Tippyverse is highly unlikely to see many new cities; it'd be much easier to expand existing ones.

>Cities are usually ruled by a council made up of the strongest casters in the city. After all, might does make right in D&D and wars between high level casters tend to end badly for everyone involved making the co-opting of new individuals on this power level a necessity (and those that won‘t play ball get ganged up on by every other high level caster in the City).
In fairness, I don't see a way to get around this one, although diplomancers would certainly dominate the caster councils. But mageocracy creates a potentially civilization-wrecking conflict of interest. Lots of people would want to be mages, because becoming a high-level mage is a surefire ticket to political power; on the other hand, existing mages face a strong incentive to hoard their knowledge, so as to avoid creating competitors to their rule. This suggests the development of a system in which magical knowledge is passed from mentor to student in secret, being incredibly closely guarded under other circumstances... yet the Tippyverse setting depends on a large supply of casters, continuously renewed, to function. A city that doesn't share magical knowledge risks falling apart at the seams, but no individual caster has a strong incentive to prevent this from happening.

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>>51616349
The problem with that sort of thing is that it isn't really consistent with its own rules which indirectly imply that for some reason not as many people are wizards without really explaining why. The DM's guide in particular is completely at odds with a setting like the OP describes, but that's mostly due to 3.5 being a really bad set of rules

Still though I feel like there would be certain undead monsters that just cause some higher HD version of a zombie apocalypse long before bullshit spells or whatever would even matter if we're really taking rules to their logical conclusion

>>51616498
I'm just not sure where all the geniuses are coming from when by RAW he should be using the NPC array.

Hope you like those 5th level spells.

>>51616349
You might be able to solve the conflict-of-interest problem that way, then.

Unstoppable teleportation implies the absence of effective border controls, doesn't it? For that matter, how does the justice system work? Lots of Detect Evil plus Zone of Truth? You'd expect cities to wind up with strong extradition treaties to prevent criminals from escaping justice by hopping cities.

I feel like the real wild card is probably technological progress, actually; casters wouldn't see technology as a threat until it started to get fairly advanced, and it's unclear how far you can press GDP per capita with magic alone.

>Still though I feel like there would be certain undead monsters that just cause some higher HD version of a zombie apocalypse long before bullshit spells or whatever would even matter if we're really taking rules to their logical conclusion
Probably; the D&D world is chock-full of horrible monsters that want to eat you or worse, and it's entirely possible that they'd keep any kind of advanced civilization from getting off the ground. Maybe it could happen in inaccessible areas like islands; perhaps complex societies would arise from some Not!Polynesians.

>>51616498
>certain undead monsters

Wights and Shadows are both CR 3 and, if they slay someone, that person arises as another of the same type under the control of the original undead. Shadows are incorporeal, and thus harder to contain, but wights are Int 11 instead of the shadows' 6.

Either way, a village of a couple dozen people kick-starts an apocalypse nicely.

>>51616932
I was thinking mummies, vampires and bodaks are when the world is truly fucked (nevermind the more obscure ones like a famine spirit)

>>51611142
The Tippyverse, if it were going with "practical" autistic theory op, wouldn't need them. There just needs to be enough mid level clerics/artificers/whatever to make a Candle of Invocation, which allows you to Gate in a Solar with no additional charge, which is your high level caster. It can also cast Wish because fuck you, that's why.

If you want an actually functional-ish version of Tippyverse madness, you might as well read the Tomes.

>>51616498
Seriously, these NPC rules are totally fucking incompatible with the 3.5 rules. I'd consider them less reasonable than the drowning resurrection that OP explicitly calls out as unreasonable.

>>51617083

>mummies
CR 5 minimum, doesn't create more mummies

>vampires
They only create vampire spawn if the victim is under 4 HD, which cannot create further vampires. A vampire kobold would come in at CR 2 or so, though I'm not sure how you'd get one without class levels per the previous requirement. Also, the sunlight vulnerability limits their effective hours, unlike wights and shadows.

>bodaks

Their gaze does indeed create more bodaks, but they're CR 8 and vulnerable to sunlight.

I bring up the CRs with these monsters to show just how little thought went into some of these mechanics. Potentially world-ending undead and medium elementals are given the same CR.

>>51617334
Some of it is probably because of it being about their threat to the survival of small bands of adventurers happening upon them in a dusty tomb and not their threat to the survival of civilizations.

>>51611983
>"The Humble Philosopher"
>That entire post
I think this is an entirely new level of masturbatory pretentiousness.

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>>51600568
>it isn't completely intentional
Let me introduce you to _this_ asshole.

>>51612119
Tippyverse assumes anybody who gets to a meaningful level in a meaningful class will either result in the creation of a new wizardcity, join an existing wizardcity, or get murdered by the higher level people for some vague reason.

>>51616368
Immortality is piss easy in 3.5, so you don't have any concerns regarding caster mortality unless somebody exerts effort to murder them and keep them down.

>>51617933
It isn't really that easy if you don't want to be undead or magically change into some other race

>>51618242
For a solo entity, maybe. For a group?
True Resurrection whenever you die, and once age becomes a factor just transform into a younger you.

>>51618349
There would have to be some pretty extensive diamond mining happening to keep the resurrections coming on a bigger scale

>>51618394
Hmm. Is a magic-using technological base capable of manufacturing diamonds?

>>51618394
You can just wish for diamonds, though.
The GM fiat point for material value is higher than the needed value for TR, so you don't encounter any RAW issues.

>>51616932
>>51617083
Forbiddance permanently creates a 60 ft cube/caster level which deals 6d6/12d6 damage a round (save for half) to anything partially/totally opposed to the caster's alignment. Would be pretty trivial to surround or even cover a settlement in that if you're post scarcity enough to laugh at the material component cost. It'll also kill any any low CR undead easy. If you had to have some sort of different alignment heretic around, you can give them a password (which wights and shadows will be unable to speak).

As a bonus, it also blocks teleportation and planar travel.

>>51618447
I don't think there's a quick and easy way to create valuable things. There's some outer planes that have very common rare stones (mostly good aligned ones), but that brings a whole new set of problems since the powers that be would probably take issue with taking them. On the other hand it would be the sort of setting where a trade agreement with literal heaven isn't impossible I guess

>>51618521
Wish.

>the enemy can teleport to any given location
>so let's put all our shit in the same place to make it easier to attack
>then we'll all live on the battlefield we've constructed
What a novel idea

>>51619057
1) It's easier to defend one location rather than more than one.
2) Given the speed of teleportation, if you aren't already at the thing you're trying to defend, you can't respond fast enough to save it if it gets attacked.

I mean sure, if you lose the fight you're out literally everything all at once, but the whole idea is that with one location you can dump your entire defense budget into making it a proverbial mountain of dicks to deal with to take all your stuff, as opposed to having a collection of smaller dickmountains that are easier to individually knock over one at a time.

>>51619576
Read point 3 again. Imagine you're a merchant, just trying to do your merchant shit.

Well too bad, because an army of fucking demons just invaded your fortress town and you got torn to shreds.

It's not a useful way to protect the people. All you do is turn a conflict into Doom or Dead Space. Even an autist trying to maximize efficiency would aim to reduce the risk of getting their shit fucked up in a conflict. Apparently building more gun turrets is the answer.

>>51619790
Relocating the merchant doesn't save him, because if he's not inside the fortress, he's gonna get his shit raped by demons to either weaken his home fortress, lure out the fortresses defenders so they can hit the fortress with the next wave of attackers, or both. At least if the merchant is inside the fortress the local defenses have a chance of saving him from the demons.

>>51598831

It's more interesting than the corny RenFair bullshit that forms the core of a lot of fantasy settings, I'll give it that.

I think it's also worth remembering that it's just a framework. It just describes the bare bones of the setting, it hasn't had any culture or personality added yet. Those things can make a big difference.

Frankly I don't care if it is explicitly in line with RAW or not. It just plain has more potential to be interesting than garbage settings like Forgotten Realms. I'm going to guess that the detractors posting here break down into two main groups: fanboys of generic Renfair Fantasy settings, and those who disagree with the specific interpretations of RAW that the Tippyverse uses.

>>51619057

You either stand at the walls together and make yourselves difficult to attack, or you get picked apart by a thousand hit-and-run strikes.

>>51608623
>Rule 0

You mean "Golden Rule".

>>51619876

This. You either stand at the walls and make yourself a difficult target, or else the civilized world gets picked apart by a million hit-and-run attacks.

>>51619876
>he's gonna get his shit raped by demons to either weaken his home fortress, lure out the fortresses defenders so they can hit the fortress with the next wave of attackers, or both
No. What the fuck?

Why does everyone in this world suddenly believe in total warfare? Why is murdering merchants suddenly their thing?

Is this some hyper autistically efficient way to wage war? Why not teleport in a magic nuke, kill everyone then send golems to loot their shit?

>>51619914
So it's ok to murderfuck the merchant if he's holed up in the fortress town, but the moment he's in a cottage outside suddenly OH THE HUMANITY WE CAN'T HURT HIM?

>>51619942
No, I'm stating that it's unrealistic for the merchant to be targeted in the first place but if he's hiding in Fortress Cocksleeve, there's a pretty great chance he'll be collateral damage when the two armies of 1 billion Ice Assassin Level 20 Wizards and Donutsteelium Golems clash in an epic confrontation that just happens to take place in Mr Merchant's living room.

>>51619984
This.

In this setting no one is going to give a shit about some random fucking merchant.

Honestly, merchants wouldn't even exist. This setting precludes the existence of anyone of any trade or profession as magic eliminates the need for any type of effort from anyone besides the ruling immortal mages.

Which brings up the point of, why would anyone want to create and rule a city in this setting? the best way to ensure your own survival is to completely isolate yourself and destroy all potential threats. The starting premise establishes that you can not protect any sizable area so the same effort is needed to protect a hold with a population of one as a population of one million.

>>51619984
You're right and you're wrong.
See, one BIG thing tippyversefag forgot about was diplomacy and how states create intricate agreements of "let's not ruin everything forever".
Given that a high level caster can wipe out a city even if opposed, it's less "teleportation means standing armies and hypermobile warfare" and more "everybody has WMDs". You get deterrence policies, not open war.
Any "war" that occurs would be highly restricted, likely consisting of "and we'll both teleport ten thousand soldiers (soldiers as per defined prior) to that empty field and whoever's left standing wins".
And when you do get full, open war, cities or even demiplanes simply cease to exist.

>>51620399
Except it would never get to that point. If you want to go to war with another megacity you will just alpha strike them into oblivion. If you are worried about retaliation from other megacities you will just strike at all of them simultaneously.

Additionally, there is no reason to fear the wilds, as they would have been sterilized as soon as the first megacity formed. Realistically, there is only one megacity in this setting as the best way to ensure survival is to immediately destroy everything else as soon as the ability is realized.

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>>51600610
>>51600568
>>51600068
>>51598899
Honestly I'm partial to AD&D's explanation for its basic setting, and more modern setting's ignoring it is part of why they make less sense.

In AD&D, the world is post-apocalyptic. That is why there are ancient ruins and powerful magic items just lying everything, why high-level Fighters dominate the political landscape, and why magic isn't applied on a broad scale. It USED to be, in the days of Good King John, or in the Mythic Age of the Elves, or when the Dwarf-Lords lived under the Mountain. But those days passed, and now its up to the PCs to carve out their own fortune and, if they please, their own fief in which to revive the Lost Age.

It answers most of the questions of the base setting.

Why don't Paladins make Detect Evil Police States? They did, and they were overthrown by the irreligious after the paladins became more concerned with mortal folly then heavenly virtue.

Why aren't there teleport circles everywhere? There was, in the Kingdom Under the Waves, but the gods punished the magi of that city for their hubris.

Why is there undead industrialization going on? There was, in the days of Duke Fenris, but the Knights of Old cast down his foul domain, and what is left toils away in his Mines, abandoned by time.

>>51611341
>wizard high enough level to literally rewrite reality with a word
>not a psychopath
Completely impossible. Wizards have no sense of right and wrong.

>>51620477
I thought MAD was the most likely outcome because the Tippyverse situation is quite similar to the one we've got. At present, we really can't do much to prevent an incoming thermonuclear warhead, but neither can anyone else. The same goes for an unstoppable teleported weapon/army. So long as you can maintain some kind of retaliatory capability, deterrence strategies apply. If I'm reading you correctly, you think that retaliation is impossible. Why's that?

>>51620939
MAD only works if you have warning and reaction time. A magical attack of the level allowed for in this setting would not allow for either.

The only possible outcome to this setting is the first wizard capable and willing secures his position as absolute ruler of everything by destroying every possible threat.

>>51598831
Man who knew Emperor Tippy posted on /tg/.

I thought he stuck to shitposting the likes of SB.

>>51621169
Ah, but divination mean you have the ability to react before they act.

>>51621229
Maybe SB is too slow for him?

>>51621169
There's an entire school of magic dedicated to detecting and predicting things like that. Diviners are a thing.

>>51608559
Miracle.

CHECKMATE TIPPYTHEISTS

>>51611965
Peasant railgun

>>51620939
Teleportation isn't unstoppable though. There are spells that can stop teleportation. And I still haven't heard anything close to a sane reason for someone who can afford a bunch of teleportation bullshit to be ransacking random shops when they could just conjure wealth.

To put it another way: if you can conjure anything that costs less than 25k nearly at will, why would you ever invest effort in attacking people who didn't possess something worth more than that?

>>51611658
>like how do dwarves see without a light source?

That's a stupid question. Dwarven eyes are, obviously, dwarven work. Of course they're the best.

>>51611895
They should have written "may break the other laws of physics", because they're functionally addenda that modify how physics works so that the ability always works regardless of what the rest of the universe says.

>>51614135
Luxury goods - works of art, status symbols, the acquisition of power and influence, and more advanced wealth-generation capacities. What do people with millions of dollars in the real world spend their wealth on?

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>>51624156
But Anon
the true Miracle was you

>>51620939
You can't retaliate without having two armies

>>51624731
That doesn't work here though because the richest people in D&D world are also fucking super human killing machines. Their power and influence isn't actually a result of their wealth. It's a result of their ability to warp reality.

>>51626420
You can just teleport your army to the place the other army came from.

>>51616062
>Where are all these high-level casters coming from?
City generation rules. You only need a high level Wizard and Cleric to kickstart the process due to the stupid levels of cheese inherent to 3.5.
>2) Why are these cities going to war, again?
Because there's a point in time BEFORE the cities become self-sufficient and can't just point armies of Shadesteel golems towards each other. Pretty sure it's the impetus for improving logistics via Create Food and Water traps, which is really what kickstarts the basic idea.
>from adopting a mutually-assured-destruction stance rather than large, expensive, and likely ineffective standing armies?
That's literally what they do. Why do you think they all have armies of Shadesteel golems?
>3) What the heck are these cities trading?
Whatever raw materials were unavailable whenever the cities started trading, plus magical items that can't be fabricated out of nowhere.

>>51617220
>I don't like those rules because they don't make my power fantasy work
Reminder that the wbl table is, essentially, fluff and not part of the ogl version of 3.5 either.

>>51628534
That's because the OGL explicitly stipulates you can't include WBL or the XP progression, you fucking retard. You might as well say that Beholders and Mind Flayers are fluff because they're not part of the OGL, either.

>>51628414
Then you still have an army wrecking your home. You completely failed your citizens. Good job.

>>51628994
What part of mutually assured destruction did you not understand?

>>51628503
There's also the fact that while the average citizen has their basic needs met by stuff like the food and water traps they likely don't have unlimited access to the more powerful things like fabricated raw materials or extraplanar crafters. There's still demand for materials and goods. Especially artisan goods.

>>51600610
>>51598831
You seem autistic as fuck, bro.

Not as an insult, or as vaguely defined 'you are awkward'. You seem legitimately autistic.

First, the Tippyverse is a direct result of D&D. No but, or 'what if', but simply a direct result of the fact that D&D has Sword and Sorcery magic, but without all the built-in limitations of the S&S genre to prevent magic users from completely destroying the setting.

The Tippyverse only works in D&D. It is tied to D&D's magic, to teleportation spells, to how magician works in D&D. The Tippyverse can't exist in true S&S settings, can't exist in Ars Magica, can't exist in WoD, can't exist in Exalted. It can't exist in the LoTR.

And secondly, the Tippyverse is deeply flawed with numerous issues. People with more time on hand than me have already found or answered them.

>>51629395
>enemy activates their teleport scrambling runes
>your army gets fucked
>your town is still destroyed
Also, good luck convincing your citizens that abandoning then and leaving them to their deaths is a good outcome.

This whole shit pile depends on humans not acting like humans.

Who owns teleport gates? The state? How do you convince citizens who don't benefit that their money is wisely spent? What if private individuals set up their own gates?

Why would wizards all jump on the state bandwagon to set up this paradigm when they could be titans of industry?

More to the point,why do people want to live in an overcrowded slum and eat bland and shitty magical food instead of living in real houses with real meals?

And why has an autist created a setting where the only two values are war and trade when he understands neither?

>>51632784
Do you WANT to get raided by stupid shit like orcs, zombies, vampires, or the 500000 different monster types in D&D?

>>51632784
>teleport scrambling runes
If those are a thing (what item/spell?) then you wouldn't be worried about a teleporting army in the first place.

>Also, good luck convincing your citizens that abandoning then and leaving them to their deaths is a good outcome.
What does a high level caster even care?

>Who owns teleport gates? The state? How do you convince citizens who don't benefit that their money is wisely spent? What if private individuals set up their own gates?
Better question: what claim do you think the "citizens" actually have? A high level caster doesn't need tax money - they practically shit economic value.

>Why would wizards all jump on the state bandwagon to set up this paradigm when they could be titans of industry?
The state is that which has a monopoly on violence. If anyone has a monopoly on violence in 3.x, it's spellcasters. Who else could even reasonably take the position?

They would also be the industry. They would be goddamn everything, at the same time, because they're 3.x spellcasters. Also, who exactly are they selling things to? And in exchange for what?

>And why has an autist created a setting where the only two values are war and trade when he understands neither?
Good question.

>>51635244
>What does a high level caster even care?
Then why the fuck do they run a town? Boredom?

> A high level caster doesn't need tax money - they practically shit economic value
Then why would they bother with enterprise?


>Why would wizards all jump on the state bandwagon to set up this paradigm when they could be titans of industry?
The state is that which has a monopoly on violence. If anyone has a monopoly on violence in 3.x, it's spellcasters. Who else could even reasonably take the position?
That doesn't answer the question at all. Why would wizards all club together to make teleport hubs instead of gaming politics or building a fuck-off gigantic tower and living in the basement? Why build Rapture when you could be a Robber Baron?

No seriously, what fucking stake do they have in all of this?

>>51622168
More they got tired of him constantly posting just one thing over and over.
Seriously though, Tippyverse can never be actually interesting by his RAW. But RAW does not describe a world. The DM does. Since Tippy assumes the DM has no place in describing a world, it therefore falls that Tippy is a bad DM.
And I fixed that problem. Once. Then I wrecked the shit out of it by making all the traps explode in a resonant disjunction cascade.

>>51603819
Tippy also thinks he knows more than lawyers and judges about US law
And also he doesn't care about people's suffering as long as it makes him money
Hes kind of a huge piece of shit all around

>>51598831
It's shit.
5e magic being overpowered in my setting is 'solved' by the fact that there are only a few worldbreakers and using too much magic causes long-term repercussions in addition to certain exploits simply being shut down or backfiring.
For example, attempting to attack during Time Stop doesn't work because you can't, but because of what happens when you try- Death shows up and pins you in place for eternity, effectively removing you from the world for trying to steal his job. He'll let you go... when he feels like it.

I looked up the original thread and whoever said the setting takes wish loops into account was lying. Looks like the sperglord arbitrarily declared certain RAW things as abuse. This is the worst kind of autism - the boring kind.

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>Wouldn't it be oh-so clever to take the rules of D&D and apply them "realistically" to the worldbuilding? Man things would be so weird!

Correct me if I'm wrong, but wasn't this exact observation but less full of itself the basis of Eberron literal decades ago?

>>51611165
>>51611341
Are you familiar with berserker probes?

>>51603819
Rational fiction is great though.

Our group occasionally does 'fling shit at the wall' settings, and it's my turn. I'm honestly fucked on not turning magic into a be all and end all. Low level magic - sure. Limited by birth, very few physical effects, and the only one that does prematurely ages the user really hard. But going above that finds me in fucking tippyverse territory. The best I could think of was something like The Magicians - anyone can learn it if they're smart enough, but they turn into turbo hedonists. Lowering it any turns it into the Elder Scrolls

>>51635304
It only takes one caster to create a Tippyverse citadel.

>>51607600

You can have elements of it. Teleportation Circles, for example.

Just because they stripped a lot of stuff that conflicts with grubby medieval fantasy out, doesn't mean the designers know how to build a setting around what's left.

>>51636327
Tippyverse was contemporary with it.

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>>51636327
But Eberron is genuinely fun and endearing, with a great number of good ideas and a setting that has pop and class.

The Tippyverse has none of that.

>>51646703
That's because Eberron is writeen as a setting and spergoverse is written as a thought experiment. If you handed a writer the tippysperg they could make it just as interesting.

>>51646703
Can I take a moment and point out how unceasingly, unendingly, and always forever retarded the name "Tippyverse" and "Tippy" is?