D&D Society requires Fabricate.

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D&D Society requires Fabricate.

Post by Username17 »

Assumption: all the races exist somewhere in the world.

Assumption 2: all of the races and subraces are sufficiently insular as to allow them to continue being genetically distinct in the next generation.

OK, that means that the population of any particular societ is going to be really, really small. Even if the world population is absolutely titanic, say eight billion people, that still has to get divided up many many ways.

Consider the basic races in the world from the monster manual:

Aboleth
Aranea
Athach
Beholder
Blink Dog
Bugbear
Centaur
Chuul
Cloaker
Delver
Destrachan
Doppelganger
10 different flavors of Dragon
Dragon Turtle
Dryad
5 flavors of Dwarf
6 flavors of Elf
Ettin
6 flavors of Giant
Giant Eagle
Giant Owl
Gnoll
3 flavors of Gnome
Goblin
Grimlock
Hag
3 flavors of Halfling
Harpy
Hobgoblin
Kobold
Kuo-Toa
Lamia
Lammasu
Lizardfolk
Locathah
Medusa
Merfolk
Mimic
Mind Flayer
Minotaur
3 flavors of Naga
Nymph
2 flavors of Ogre
Orc
Pegasus
Phasm
Pseudodragon
Roper
Sahuagin
Satyr
Sphinx
3 flavors of Sprite
Ent
Troglodyte
Troll
Umber Hulk
Unicorn
Will-O-Wisp
Winter Wolf
Yuan-Ti

There are 85 different kinds of separate true breeding people in the Monster Manual! The population base of each one has got to be really small. We haven't even thrown in the similar count of people in the MM2 or the Fiend Folio or the FRCS stuff.

What does this mean?

It means that the population base of every organization is so low that it can't support a metal using technology base. Which means that the technology has to come from somewhere else.

Wizards.

Wizards have fabricate, it only takes one wizard to keep an entire region from fading into neolithicism. And since the population is carved up so very many ways, that's pretty much what has to be happening everywhere.

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Re: D&D Society requires Fabricate.

Post by Count Arioch the 28th »

Well, the Eberron has an NPC class called the magewright that has access to fabricate as well.

But yeah, I always thought that was assumed, that whenever feasible, things were done magically.
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Re: D&D Society requires Fabricate.

Post by RandomCasualty »

I don't think it's necessarily unbelievable that you can't have metalworking socities of different races, because you have to figure that metalworking technology is going to most likely have been stolen by everyone. The dwarves may well have been the first to figure out how to make steel or adamantine, but then everyone else stole the process and now does it themselves. And it doesn't take a huge population to have a few blacksmiths and some miners to get the metal.

And of course, you've got trade. Many races may simply buy things they need if they don't have the resource themselves. If they don't have iron mines, they'll trade for iron, and so on.

I don't really see how you'd need fabricate for the world to make sense.
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Re: D&D Society requires Fabricate.

Post by Username17 »

And it doesn't take a huge population to have a few blacksmiths and some miners to get the metal.


Yes, actually it does. In the modern day, peasant economies have 75-80% participation in food production. And that's with access to mechanization for food transport and distribution. In an ancient setting, the peasant economy requires an even higher participation rate.

The remaining people have to be split up between people mining iron, people mining coal (you can't work steel with firewood!), people making tools required for mining iron and coal, people making clothing, people administrating, people protecting the people working menial labor, etc.

Noe of these jobs can be handled by one person, and they all have to come out of a pool which is itself less than 10% of the population.

Ouch. So each individual racial state would itself have to be tens of thousands of people - which since there are multiple continents and hundreds of races is flat impossible.

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Re: D&D Society requires Fabricate.

Post by Sma »


I´m not sure where you´re going with this, butt I´ll try to play along

Assumption 1: OK
Assumption 2: Insular ? Why ? Some of your examples don´t make sense in any kind of insular setting, Doppelgangers catch the eye as being dependent on other civilisations to keep the population up. Mind Flayers are the perfect slavers they are portrayed to be. Crossbreeding bettween races is a utterly rare thing. Subspecies like the 1001 flavors of Elf are the ones that must fear genetic death, in a homogenous society. Bovines and Minotaurs will not breed each other out of existence.

But, I cant argue with an assumption, so going with your two will lead to:
Yes the world will be utterly utterly vast, to support all those empires of men Dragon and Nymph.
or,
No the world is as small as you wnat it to be, but there are some so-called DM-Penis NPC´s going round and righting things ;p

Not all of those races you mentioned are tool users, or in need of tools to support their civilitation. (Pegasi, Winter Wolves come to mind)

Elaborate please,

Sma

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Re: D&D Society requires Fabricate.

Post by Crissa »

Frank has a great point...

...But alot of those races have no need for various technologies, and therefore don't support them. Other races trade the food production of their race for the technology production of another. And many of the flavours are 'protected' because they only breed one way or the other...

And a few, like nymphs, etc, don't need technology or society at all to continue living.

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Re: D&D Society requires Fabricate.

Post by Username17 »

Races not involved in the hustle and bustle of technological production make the problem worse, not better.

Consider: an Ahuizotl is a true breeding type of person which doesn't produce anything. They use their remarkable talents, not to entertain people in exchange for a cut of the excess production of society - but to trick other people to their deaths.

That means that the entire Ahuizotl population's production is counted negative against the output of the neighboring peoples - because their only net export is crime. This means that if the kobolds were attempting to mine enough coal to purchase the halfling food excess to a degree necessary to allow them to survive and simultaneously gain material goods - they have to produce enough more coal to compensate for the fact that sometimes a kobold or halfling gets whacked by an Ahuizotl and all of their stuff gets taken to the bottom of a pond.

No, people who don't produce anything don't make it any easier to have a specialized economy. Quite the opposite.

---

How much coal is mined in the Theocracy of Pale? How many acres are given over to the bleaching of linen? If you said zero, you're spot-on correct. And the only explanation is that people are bypassing these basic needs with magic.

Which means that when people are saying "Fabricate is destroying the economy!" they are wrong. Without Fabricate, there wouldn't be an economy.

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Re: D&D Society requires Fabricate.

Post by RandomCasualty »

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1085379227[/unixtime]]
Which means that when people are saying "Fabricate is destroying the economy!" they are wrong. Without Fabricate, there wouldn't be an economy.


Well, not really Frank.

The problem here is that the world changes in so many ways when you take fabricate into account. First and foremost, everybody is going to end up unemployed. When you can just spontaneously create swords, horseshoes and so on instantly, you have no need of smiths.

The average commoner serves absolutely no purpose at all when everything is magically created, so he ends up starving. Especially when you factor in wall of iron, which replaces the need for mining, there is no need for a peasant class at all, because you don't have any work that needs to be done.

About the only thing that may give his life some meaning is as a follower to some temple, assuming your world has gods. The need for followers would drive gods to feed the masses to get more followers. Otherwise the peasants starve, and "civilization" is a bunch of wizard's towers and temples.

Fabricate either moves civilization towards pure theocracy or destroys it altogether. It's natural selection extended to a ridiculous extreme which eventually destroys the gene pool of your race and drives it into extinction.
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Re: D&D Society requires Fabricate.

Post by Username17 »

Why would anyone be unemployed?

It's a serf/peasant economy, there is no unemployment! As long as you have a patch of dirt, you grow weeds on it for eating and aren't allowed to leave. That's feudalism for you.

Just because all forms of industry have been replaced with automated factories in wizard towers doesn't mean that anyone else goes unemplyed. Under feudalism it is literally impossible for anyone to be unemployed so long as there is land available.

Think Czarist Russia - if you are born into Serfdom there's nothing for you to aspire to being except a serf or a bandit. There's no jobs above "serf" which are officially open to you, and if you want anything more out of life you're going to have to take it.

But at least all of the equipment you need is cheap or free.

---

D&D worlds seem created on the Confuscianist model. There are people growing food and maybe mining on the bottom, and then there are lords controlling them, and maybe heaven above that. That model doesn't actually work unless somehow you manage to pull craftsmanship, resource distribution, and fuel out of your ass via magic. That's why real historical Imperial China kept having problems - but D&D worlds actually do have magic to pull that stuff out with.

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Re: D&D Society requires Fabricate.

Post by RandomCasualty »

But you don't need serfs. You don't need farming, because clerics and druids can create food. If you're creating everything else magically why not food too?

In medieval societies you needed those serfs and peasants to do stuff like farm your land, outfit your horses with shoes, help mine you iron to make your weapons and so on.

In a magical based society they're useless. You cast wall of iron and fabricate to make your weapons, you cast create food to make your food, and have druids magically do the farming, and you just don't even really care about peasants. About all you'd need them for is stuff you can't create normally, like mining gold or adamantine, but then you could probably do the same cheaper with specially built spells for doing just that.

But supporting huge populations of peasants in such a world just doesn't make sense, because they're not good for anything. Why pay a smith to make a sword when you can just make one yourself for free in a fraction of a second?
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Re: D&D Society requires Fabricate.

Post by Lago_AM3P »

Using just the PHB, there's no way druids and clerics could feed everyone with just spells.

However, in medieval times, especially with the current craft model, building crap like weapons and castles generated a lot of work and used a lot of resources; with the current spells available, a cleric and a wizard working together in concert can create a castle out of thin ass (thanks, Oberoni), hook all of their soldiers up with mithril breastplates, and then use a decantaur of endless water and a couple of choice spells to have a rich harvest.

The only simulated medieval activity spells DON'T do well (unless we're getting into polymorph any object brokenness) is food-creation. But this is actually no big deal, since most of the people are supposed to be tilling the damn soil.
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Re: D&D Society requires Fabricate.

Post by Lago_AM3P »

Actually, wait, I never noticed how much food the Create Food and Water spell makes.
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Re: D&D Society requires Fabricate.

Post by Essence »

Frank wrote:It means that the population base of every organization is so low that it can't support a metal using technology base.



Frank wrote:
Aboleth
Beholder
Blink Dog
Chuul
Cloaker
Delver
Destrachan
Dragon Turtle
Giant Eagle
Giant Owl
Lammasu
Mimic
Pegasus
Pseudodragon
Roper
Sphinx
Ent
Umber Hulk
Unicorn
Will-O-Wisp
Winter Wolf


That's at least 21 out of that list of 85 -- and none of them have any use for metal-based technology in the first place.

Furthermore, if you want to count things like Blink Dogs, Unicorns, or any underwater race (there's lots), you have to start counting the populations of dogs, horses, and large fish toward the malthusian limit of D&D worlds. At a very conservative estimate that's twenty billion people. That's more than double the population base Frank's taking into account.

Between the larger population base, and the simple fact that a quarter or more of the "people" that exist out there simply don't have a need for metal-based technology, it's fully possible -- not damn likely, but at least possible -- for each populace to support it's own needs for steel, etc.

But, beyond even that, steel isn't necessary for every society. The Romans got by on bronze for a thousand years. Any society that's largely Druidic literally has to get by on wood, stone, and hide, for religious reasons. That gets Lizardmen off the list above, and I'm sure there's a few more that fit in that category.

Fabricate is badass, and certainly changes the world in the areas where it becomes commonly available -- but it's certainly not necessary to explain the world as it is.
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Re: D&D Society requires Fabricate.

Post by Lago_AM3P »

Assumption, you have a 9th level cleric with a wisdom score of 22, after magical items and all that jazz. We're using a 9th level cleric, because anyone past that are DM-installed NPCs.

He dumps all of his third-level and above spells, not counting domains, into food creation.

Each spell creates enough food to feed 27 people, not including work and food animals, for one day. He can cast this spell 9 times per day. So, per day, 243 people get fed. As I said, this is actually going to be less because the damn food decays within 24 hours and you also have to feed the animals, too. The amount of food that this spell can create has a practical upper limit, due to the casting time of the spells, the decay time of the food, the time when people eat, and the fact that the cleric can't just be creating food all day. If a 20th level cleric spends 6 hours sleeping, 1 hour for other business, and 1 hour for praying so that he spends the rest of the 16 hours making food (and people ate on a perfect shift schedule to go with the cleric), he would be able to feed a little over two-thousand, five hundred people on his own efforts.

This doesn't even come close to feeding the population base consistently. You can't even horde with this spell. Apparently, people are going to have to farm their asses off.
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Re: D&D Society requires Fabricate.

Post by User3 »

Actually, people and DnD monsters don't really need Fabricate to give them the swords and horse shoes and the like. What they need is food.\

Take the Underdark, for example. Unlike our world, your average DnD world is honeycombed with like four times as much living space in the form of caves, underwater lakes, etc.

Now, the reason that people, even clever people, don't live in caves is the fact that caves suck for food production. Even fungi and blind cave fish need something to eat, and your average dwarve hold cannot exist underground without some kind of magic(as the amount a normal person needs to eat would require underground oceans to produce the required amount of food based on the low energy input in an underground environment). People really underestimate just how much energy we get from the sun.

Now, one can posit the existance of some uber-fungi that ignores the basic laws of physics about conservation of mass and energy, and bammo, the base of an entire ecosystem can then exist. You can get grazers, and then predators, and then human-like types on top. But without this essential cheat, no underground ecology works.
---------------

But, DnD monsters have even more problems. Look at your average forest. Just how food does it have to produce to feed the family of owlbears, the enclave of fairies(from sprites to satyrs), the worg, the dire animals(mostly predators), the dragonne and any other damn thing that happens to call the forest home. How can they all live on the small amount of game provided.

We all know that dragons were given the cheat that they can eat inorganic materials to live, but the rest of the monstrous ecology was given no such dispensation. How are all those monsters supposed to get fed?

------------------------------

Peasants actually have it easy. Plant Growth increases the yield of your average field, and is a low level spell. Bascially, that spell is the green revolution of the DnD world. I bet that it could single handedly free up 40% of the population. One 5th level druid/priest could take a one week tour of his province, and hit every field with it.

Add to the fact that dwarves have the whole "ecology cheat" necessary to make them exist at all, and the fact that they trade with the surface, you can easily see how there would be a proliferation of metal weapons and craftworks in the world.

Fabricate is a neat trick, but I don't see it taking over the world. There are just too few 9th level wizards in the world to base an entire economy off of their works. Sure, they probably have the market on cheap glass and silks, but as a wizard i am not going to waste my time making horse shoes(which need to be fitted to the horse) when I can make something really valuable and go back to the business of being a wizard.
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Re: D&D Society requires Fabricate.

Post by Username17 »

The Romans got by on bronze for a thousand years.


No they didn't.

Supporting Evidence to the Contrary.


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Re: D&D Society requires Fabricate.

Post by User3 »

PS

Plant Growth is also an instanteous spell. Even assuming that its effects stack linearly, instead of geometrically, that still means that a lot of food can be produced over the course of a year by one 5th level druid and a single family of farmers.
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Re: D&D Society requires Fabricate.

Post by Username17 »

Plant Growth doesn't stack at all.

It raises the potential yield to "one third above normal" - which means that if you cast it a second time it goes to one-third above normal - which is the level it was already at.

Plant Growth is impressive, but doesn't even begin to cover the losses due to uncontrolled banditry that the D&D world supposes. You are still looking at needing well over 90% of your population growing food. The rest of the population is going to mostly be in the military, because the defense needs of society are going to be a lot higher when you are having to support constant raiding by Orc Hordes that don't farm at all.

D&D has no need or room for traditional craftsmen, land-based shipping, or fuel collectors. There are no coal mines in Greyhawk, and that's the bottom line.

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Re: D&D Society requires Fabricate.

Post by Desdan_Mervolam »

This confirms one thing I've believed for a long time. There are too damned many sentient monster races in the default D&D setting.

I'm also grateful because it never actually occured to me to put mining into D&D beyond your classical Snow White dwarven gem/silver/gold mines. That's something I intend to correct forthwith. As I think about it, I dunno what I was thinking, since apparently coal and iron sprang into being or something ;)

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Re: D&D Society requires Fabricate.

Post by User3 »

[counturl=3]Here is a link about medieval farming.[/counturl]

Since this book clearly says that 80-90 of the people were farmers, and we know that they did have metalworking, and mining, and all the other stuff, I don't see why DnD can't have it as well. If you read on about the section on the Plague years, we can guess that DnD is under constant Plague conditions(more farmland than necesary to feed everyone).

A dragon flies by, and a village falls. Next year, a few new families move in and take over the farmland.

In fact, the constant attrition is probably a reason why DnD settings have histories of thousands of years, but little technological progress. Skilled workers are killed off and hoarded knowlege is lost. Trade routes are dangerous. Entire civizations are wiped out by disasters.

Frankly, the military is a poor choice for the commoner. A single DR creature can rip through your average platoon of soldiers. Culturally, most people are going to leave the monster fighting to hereos(since only heroes have the mojo necessary to fight 95% of the monsters out there). Normal people are going to invest in watchtowers and stone houses, not expensive full time military units that get eaten the first time a Yeth hound sends them running.

In fact, the whole "adventurers guild" is perfectly acceptable. Like any profession of highly skilled artisans, they will gather, set rates, and trade lore.

If you really want to get technical, tell me why that 9th level wizard isn't using Lesser Planar Binding(same level as Fabricate) to rule entire cities with his hoard of demons, instead of making shoes with Fabricate?

How do dwarves exist at all? Unless they have a magical food source, the Underdark is going to be pretty hard to live in. Since they live underground, they can be assumed to do most of the mining.

Since the Underdark exists, its also far easier to access mineral deposits, meaning that you need fewer miners to get the same output. Locate Object also does wonders for mining.

Basically, your entire proposition is based on a oversimplified analysis. You've left out dozens of factors. I've only listed a few.
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Re: D&D Society requires Fabricate.

Post by Username17 »

Actually, I think you'd find a better match in wartime agricultural production levels in places with high levels of internally displaced peoples - such as modern Guatemala. Which is to say that you have a large number of people not working during all important planting times because they are busily running for their lives.

Which is to say that conflicts reduce agricultural yield. Alot. And the D&D world has a lot of conflicts.

If you really want to get technical, tell me why that 9th level wizard isn't using Lesser Planar Binding(same level as Fabricate) to rule entire cities with his hoard of demons, instead of making shoes with Fabricate?


Because, as has been previously noted, the people he could (probably) rule with an iron fist can't actually make him shoes that he would want to wear. They don't have any coal, they can't make shoes with metal fastens on them. He could certainly enslave all the commoners, but then they'd make him weird lumpen chunks of wood to wear on his feat. That sucks ass.

He'd be more popular and more rich if he just made stuff and became the richest and least hated citizen in the county.

How do dwarves exist at all?


Answer 1: Trade with the surface.
Answer 2: Magical radiation comes from below the ground which allows underdark flora to fix organic carbon that underground creatures can use as an energy source.

Take your pick. This hasn't been satisfactorily explained to my knowledge. The Tolkien dwarf was able to subsist entirely on rocks, being descended from elemental spirits. The D&D Dwarf is more traditionally biological, and thusly needs to have a source of organic carbon to use as an energy source.

Since the Underdark exists, its also far easier to access mineral deposits,


Um... no it isn't. Mineral deposits are exactly the same amount difficult to get at. You can only find a mineral deposit if it is within a certain distance from you. In the real world, that means that standing on the surface we can only find mineral sources within reach of the surface. The underdark races can only find mineral deposits near the surface of the underdark, which puts them in exactly the same situation.

Actually, of course, underdark races are screwed when it comes to mining, because cutting hols in the ground necessitates taking liberties with the stability of the underdark - which is bad. To put this sort of thing to the test, go down to the beach and dig a hole - that's what mining is like for surface dwellers. Now go to one of the caves by the beach and dig a hole just as large in the ceiling.

Better yet, don't, because we'd sort of rather you lived to see tomorrow. But you can kind of imagine what would happen, neh?

Mining is much more difficult once you are already under ground. That might seem counterintuitive, but it's true. That's why sooner or later it becomes impractical to continue any particular mine and people make a new mine somewhere else. It's not because they've necessarily run out of ore down there - it's because the more the ground has been excavated the more dangerous and expensive it is to excavate any more.

The underdark, being an excavation larger than the sum total of all excavations ever made in the entire history of the world would logically be far too expensive and dangerous for anyone to sanely suggest mining in.

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Re: D&D Society requires Fabricate.

Post by Maj »

Frank wrote:There are 85 different kinds of separate true breeding people in the Monster Manual! The population base of each one has got to be really small.


Assuming eight billion and divided evenly, each race has approximately 94 million people. How small is small and how big is big? For comparison, the world's population around the year 500 BC is estimated to have been about 100 million. And that's just one race - humans.

I obviously don't get it.

Frank wrote:Yes, actually it does. In the modern day, peasant economies have 75-80% participation in food production. And that's with access to mechanization for food transport and distribution. In an ancient setting, the peasant economy requires an even higher participation rate.


This is an ancient, magical setting... With druids that can cast spells like Plant Growth. Supporting larger numbers ought to be feasible. I mean, come on... Fabricate is a fifth level spell. If there are enough wizards that can support the economy with Fabricate, there's plenty of druids who can support the food supply with Plant Growth.

Better yet is the spell Create Food and Water. I think perhaps that in the ancient world of Earth feeding the world may have required 80% of the population, but in D&D, they can conjure food from nothing. Why bother to work the land when you can get fed at the local temple? There's no famine - Druids can control the weather. With spells that create daylight, places underground can even be made to support greenhouses. You don't ever need to actually see the sun.

Essence wrote:But, beyond even that, steel isn't necessary for every society.


From what I can ascertain, steel was first created in India around 250 BC. The world's population around that time was approximately somewhere between 150 million and 235 million. Now, I don't know how many people were limited to India, but even if it was half of the world's population, that means that a society of 75 - 120 million was able to develop steel. Damascus steel was popular around the 1000s. The world's population is estimated to be between 254 - 345 million at that time. I'm still not seeing the impossibility of people developing good technologies.

In order to make the numbers come close to making sense, Frank's civilizations would have to have nothing to do with each other at all... Thus hoarding all technology and information so that all civilizations have to invent the wheel. And, there's absolutely no accounting for the history of the world and the development of magic in the same way that technology evolves. It's not like some guy woke up one day, realized that he was 9th level and spontaneously cast Fabricate.

Essentially, it's up to the DM. If s/he gives enough of a damn to worry about whether or not Fabricate makes sense in the world, congratulations.


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Re: D&D Society requires Fabricate.

Post by Desdan_Mervolam »

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1085463994[/unixtime]]
If you really want to get technical, tell me why that 9th level wizard isn't using Lesser Planar Binding(same level as Fabricate) to rule entire cities with his hoard of demons, instead of making shoes with Fabricate?


Because, as has been previously noted, the people he could (probably) rule with an iron fist can't actually make him shoes that he would want to wear. They don't have any coal, they can't make shoes with metal fastens on them. He could certainly enslave all the commoners, but then they'd make him weird lumpen chunks of wood to wear on his feat. That sucks ass.

He'd be more popular and more rich if he just made stuff and became the richest and least hated citizen in the county.


Well, there's also the fact that this game is predicated on the idea that whenever someone raises a demon army to conquer a kingdom, heros emerge to hand the wizard his own head and return his army to hell.

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Re: D&D Society requires Fabricate.

Post by RandomCasualty »

FrankTrollman at [unixtime wrote:1085463994[/unixtime]]
Because, as has been previously noted, the people he could (probably) rule with an iron fist can't actually make him shoes that he would want to wear. They don't have any coal, they can't make shoes with metal fastens on them. He could certainly enslave all the commoners, but then they'd make him weird lumpen chunks of wood to wear on his feat. That sucks ass.

He'd be more popular and more rich if he just made stuff and became the richest and least hated citizen in the county.


Why? Who is going to buy his goods?

The wizard economy is innately flawed. Part of the basis of economics is give and take, it's the only way economies work. Unfortunately with fabricate and spells like wall of iron, you really don't need anything. Under this system you've got producers and no consumers. Because to consume, someone's gotta be paying them something, but we already established they'd be useless.

So you really can't become rich in this scenario because the peasants got no money, because what they end up doing doesn't matter much. About all they're good for is token followers of gods, and that doesn't require they ever have any money.

So sure you mass produce all these items, but who is there to buy them? By having fabricate in the first place you've killed most of the economy as you know it anyway. It ends up where you're just giving your free armor away to your guards.

The only one with the money are going to be wizards or temples who engage in mining operations. But considering you actually can't buy anything with the money, because there's no merchants, it becomes rather pointless. Wizards and clerics have all the gold, ironically they can make all their stuff anyway, so have no real need of trade, so money becomes useless too.

Fabricate would much sooner cause the collapse of civilization long before lack of it would. It's much like the problem of having a cheap robot worker in a high tech society. All the factories/buisnesses/whatever replace their human workers with bots. They now can increase their profits. Unfortunately, when everyone uses robots, the working class becomes out of work and nobody has any money, so the huge influx of cheaply created goods can't be purchased by anyone. So the economy collapses and civilization with it.

User3
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Re: D&D Society requires Fabricate.

Post by User3 »

I think the biggest issue is not that wizards CAN make lots of goods, but if they WILL make lots of goods. First, we know that wizards, unlike NPC classes, only get XP by risking their lives. To get to level 9, that wizard has had to fight ogres, thwart slavers, battle demons, dispatch rival mages, avoid traps, impress nobles, and all in all be an extraordinary guy.

So, how many skill points is he going to put into Craft(Crockery) and Craft(Blacksmithery)?

A wizard who is adventuring and putting mass skill points into crap skills is not going to adventure for long. As some point he’s going get killed because instead of learning Knowledge(Arcana), he learned Knowledge(Pretty Patterns for Dresses).

According to the DMG, there are four Wizards and four Sorcerers capable of casting Fabricate in a major Metropolis, two and two in a large town, and the potential for up to two an two in a small town. There are zero in farming communities and hamlets. Basically, at best we are looking at one per 1000 people. At worst, one in 10,000 or higher, since the majority of people are going to live in the country, and farm.

Take all those spellcasters, assume how many skills are needed to run a society, and even if each spellcaster had Fabricate and three skills, you’d still never keep up with demand.

And you’d never make it to ninth level.


Second point: How difficult will it to be to ruin the professional reputation of a Wizard? He already wields unearthly powers. A little bad PR, and no one will buy his stuff, no matter how cheap.

And do you think that the hundreds of guys in trade guilds will let one or two wizards destroy their livelihood? A little poison in his wine will stop that little problem.

Since we already accept that dwarves has some kind of magical food source, we know that they can be crafters and miners.

Underdark mining is FAR easier than normal mining. Like normal mining, you need to build supports, check for stability, and dig new shafts. The time savings comes in the miles of pre-dug shafts. Rather than waste time digging exploratory shafts, 90% of the work is already done. A single wizard with Locate Object can find all the ore that you want in by casting the spell once or twice a week.
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