Still reading it, but I must say, I am pleased by his Playing With Fire Negative Energy material, because its basically what I've rolled with for a long time. Same with a lot of his resultant undead material.
I see this as a gold mine for house-rules I already had but was too lazy to type up.
I've also noticed that many things in the BOVD were kinda broken and get nerfed when and/or if they were reused or represented in some later fashion; however I don't have the BOED, since it's a bunch of good stuff it didn't seem that useful to me as monster supply, so I couldn't tell anything about the BOED.
A lot of the spells from Libris Mortis seemed to get nerfed in later incarnations as well;...
BoED is more broken than BoVD. The spells are as ridiculous(powerful) as the BoVD spells.
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See, I loved his negative energy source of all evil stuff and thats where I've been leading my games for a while, but I had never thought of zombies and skeletons the way he put it, but then thinking about it, I love it. If a zombie or skeleton is created but uncontrolled, all it does it unthinkingly destroy living things, plant, animal, sentient, it doesn't matter. You create a skeleton and teleport away the skeleton will start pulling out the grass, then rip up plants, any creature that gets too near will be chased down and killed. etc. etc. until the thing is stopped.
It also helped me to flesh out the two planes by his line that it was worse than the hells, which made me think that instead of representing it as a stand alone plane the positive and negative energy planes are actually ephemeral planes to the hells and heavens in the same way that the plane of shadow and the etherial plane are ephemeral planes to the prime material plane.
Here's a question...
(real life) When is gold worthless?
When basics are scarce and your starving, gold becomes just shiny unhelpful metal.
Edit: When someone wants something more then they want gold, then gold becomes worthless when compared to that thing.
Never heard of it, got a link? or do you just want to mail me your copy?
Maybe after 6th edition is out.
Basically it was a way to allow the exceptionally skilled to accomplish feats boarding on the supernatural. Mechanically, they were powers, but with appropriate limitations and tied to Skills.
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Never heard of it, got a link? or do you just want to mail me your copy?Maybe after 6th edition is out.
Basically it was a way to allow the exceptionally skilled to accomplish feats boarding on the supernatural. Mechanically, they were powers, but with appropriate limitations and tied to Skills.
heh I wish Regdar's repository wasn't gone, I had a whole article up right before they closed it on allowing players to do the things feats allowed through a series of skill and ability checks. then feats removed the necessity of those checks.
[ramble]
I've read some of Mr. Trollman's theories of D&D economics as they've been presented on these boards over the years (though I haven't had time to go through the PDF linked above to any great degree). Regarding supply and demands, and his apparent disregard for it, my response (though I am in no way an economist nor student of economics) would be that it depends on the supply.
Let's say we're talking about a known variety of magic sword, the Sword of Wonderfulness. Before we start talking about trade and price and all that, we need to ask ourselves, how many Swords of Wonderfulness exist? Thousands? Hundreds? Dozens? A few? One? The fewer there are, the more likely it seems to me that one can ignore the law of supply and demand. Let's say a dozen of these swords exist. Sure, it's conceivable that someone out there would sell it for X price. But will any of the current owners actually do that? Depends on the owner. Emotional attachment may prevent them; if it was handed down through seven generations, it becomes more likely the owner will not sell it for any price. Need may prevent them; if the owner is an active adventurer or warrior, he's not likely to give up his Sword of Wonderfulness for any price. Duty may prevent him; if the owner is conscientious and believes the sword would be perilous in the wrong hands, he's not likely to sell it for any price.
Consider the modern world and atomic weapons. To my knowledge, there is no legal trade in atomic weapons. Sure, there are those who will obtain and sell them; but this is highly illegal. It's one of the most globally illegal things which can be done by anyone, anywhere. To my knowledge, although the construction of an atomic weapon has a cost, countries do not trade them for anything because of the nature of an atomic weapon.
Likewise with the Sword of Wonderfulness, or other such items. What happens to economics when things of such power and danger, not the mere matter and resources of the real world, exist? What happens when dragons exist? What happens when demons and the undead exist? What happens when gods exist? What happens when Inevitables exist and might come after you for using magic in a way they don't like? Perhaps the answer can be modelled in modern economic terms; but perhaps the answer lies in some other economic model entirely, whether it ever has actually existed or not. Is Mr. Trollman's model the right one? Dunno, it's not my field.
I suppose the essence of my thoughts is that I can certainly agree that modern, current, conventional, etc., economic wisdom can be applied to many forms of magic in D&D. However, there are some which, because of it's rarity, it's nature, and the natures of those who interact with it, I have no trouble believing "realistic" economics do not apply. But then again, maybe it's because I don't like spending time on economics in my games beyond thinking up the bare minimum of a plausible explanation for the world to be the way it is.
[/ramble]
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I thought agriculture is not that profitable (in itself) but controlling distribution is.
Estates
If you can establish, maintain, and hold estate from all commers, it can be worth millions of gold a year. Consider a 6&1/2 acre vinyard that produces 7 tuns of white wine. 7 x 216 gallon tun = 1512 gallons. If that is cheap wine, it is worth 36cp/gallon and equates to 544.32gp/year. A wizard with such a small vineyard might well have wine to drink for a year or enough money to employ a dozen mercenaries to subgugate your Village and extract a produce tax.A real estate like the Bordeaux region has Vinyards covering 300 square miles divided between 54 Vinyards, each 547 times the size of our wizard's little vintange. A potential income of 297,743.04gp for each vinyard - not the estate. The wine value for the whole estate is in excess of 16 million gp.
Even after the ArchBishop of Bordeaux has flogged that cheap wine off for 1.6 million gp (10% value) it's income is still sufficient to maintain the estate, and employ an army of mercs to defend it from a sky full of Dragons while retaining a million GP income for the Archbishop. Wines from Bordeaux however are considered fine wines...and at 4266cp/gallon the income is insane - such a Bordeaux would be worth 190 billion gp. For 1% that the ArchBishop of Bordeaux could employ every trustworthy 20th level wizard alive to build a fleet of flying ships and go to war with the world...and that is just from the CY134 vintage.
As for the Wizard with 6&1/2 acres? If he was producing fine wine instead of drink-vinegar for the poor, it would be worth up of 6.45 million gp (An annual income of 64,500 gp from the vinters of Waterdeep)...
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Here's a question...
(real life) When is gold worthless?
Money (in this instance, gold) exists to make barter more efficient (or, actually, get rid of it for a monetary system). The problem with barter (and also, to some extent, Arclich's favours system above) is that in order to get something done to the two parties need something from one another. "I'll do/give you X if you do/give me Y." Unfortunately, in a barter system, there is the chance that the person you are dealing with doesn't want X, but wants A, B or C instead, and you don't have that. Hence, you don't get Y, even though you have something of value, namely X, because it isn't valuable to them.
In a monetary system, this problem is obviated because you don't need X or Y - instead you can give them money, and they can exchange that later for A, B or C with someone else. This means that it is much easier to trade, because you don't need to have something they want in order to do the deal - they can get what they want with the money you give them from someone else.
Gold is intrinsically valuable because it is shiny, a nice colour, doesn't rot or tarnish, it is relatively portable, and you can make jewellery out of it. Also, there isn't that much of it going around naturally so supply is limited. So you can bury it in the ground to store it and be fairly sure it will still be valuable if you dig up up again several years later.
Of course, in primitive societies it might not be valuable because they operate on a barter system and they can't use discs of yellow metal for anything. Money is, arguably, a good in and of itself and both parties have to agree that it is valuable and a valid means of exchange. Hence dollars are more or less a universal currency (certainly in developing countries) because the US is held to be a very strong currency backed by an extremely powerful economy (no jokes - it is still true) whereas the Malaysian ringgit (for example) isn't and is only usable in Malaysia.
OK, so we've had gold and wine.... there's something missing from this economy for adventurers...
Ah, yes. Whores.
Is there a grand unified theory of Whores, Gold, Wine?
Tch. Rolls on a table...
Ah,a brazen strumpet.
How much gold does she have? And what is her wine-growing capacity. These questions need to be addressed.
Hey. Does anyone want to pull my teeth out with a pair of pliers?
I'll do it. I am closest, after all. Just pop over the straight, and bring the pliers.
Here's a question...
(real life) When is gold worthless?
There are lots of cases in real life where gold is worthless (e.g. if you're lost in the wilderness).
But I can't think of any cases in real life where a person or organization would consider gold to be worthless and valuable at the same time! (E.g. the church of St Cuthbert is desparate gold to build workhouses for wayward boys, but at the same time the Archbishop is part of the "wish" economy and can swim around in an Scrooge-McDuck-style money bin.)
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If you are interested in this work I suggest you checking out the Gaming Den (the above link) where these topics and more are discussed in a thoughtful and serious way. But be warned it is not a place for the thin-skinned, if you think the tone of the pdf is troubling than the tone of that forum will give you a bad feeling. The denizens are not bashful about calling a dumb idea a dumb idea (and often the person issuing said idea), though they will usually explain why the believe this to be true if you ask.
I like the Gaming Den, although I don't dare post there.
The key word is "usually" - I have seen innocent questions being answered with "We've debated this endlessly in the past; do some ***** research and look up the earlier threads (but we aren't going to tell you what they are called or give any clues where they might be)"
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Here's a question...
(real life) When is gold worthless?
There are lots of cases in real life where gold is worthless (e.g. if you're lost in the wilderness).
But I can't think of any cases in real life where a person or organization would consider gold to be worthless and valuable at the same time! (E.g. the church of St Cuthbert is desparate gold to build workhouses for wayward boys, but at the same time the Archbishop is part of the "wish" economy and can swim around in an Scrooge-McDuck-style money bin.)
The Incas believed that gold came from the gods, so it had a religous/spirtual worth.
However, they didn't use gold in their economy, you couldn't buy anything with it.
Different kinds of worth.
(lol) I just got the C'thulhu Mesoamerica book a few weeks/months/strange aeons ago;...the Maya considered gold to be the excrement of the gods, valued jade more, and thought the Spaniards were whackoes for their adulation of the metal.
The Incas believed that gold came from the gods, so it had a religous/spirtual worth.
However, they didn't use gold in their economy, you couldn't buy anything with it.
Well, unfortunately there aren't any ancient Incans around my neck of the woods, so I can't ask one "If you were starving to death and you found a gold nugget, would you give it to the high priest in exchange for a bushel of potatoes?"
A fair portion of the mechanics seem good...but well..other than that..damm
Alot of the fluff is poor and inconsistant
Appearently conjuring a combat focused creature is evil...so that's most of the Summon Monster/Nature's Ally spells changed.
And well...if some gamers think the paladin is anal, htey should try his knight, who can't even accept aid from allies.
To summerize: Nice mechanics, bad fluff, and awful langauge. Seriously, does he think acting in such a condensending manner make's his work more appealing? If it's putting alot of people off (which, by the sounds of it, it is) then what's really the point?
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OK, so we've had gold and wine.... there's something missing from this economy for adventurers...
Ah, yes. Whores.
Is there a grand unified theory of Whores, Gold, Wine?
WHORES AND PROSITUTION
"He...lo Dawln! Wana have sum Seis? Bum...I jus swalud me denturs."A CIVIL SERVICE
"...most towns and cities had some sort of brothel, often an official one that was actually publicly owned..."
Basically the MERCHANT GUILD or the LOCAL GOVERNMENT.
THE PRIVATE SECTOR
"...women were only allowed to sell their "wares" on certain streets or in certain neighborhoods..."[/i]
Mostly FREELANCE and where these streets and neighbourhoods were controlled by criminals undoubtably the GUILD OF VERY BAD PEOPLE.
PROSTITUTION IN A LAWFUL COMMUNITY
"...sumptuary laws (i.e., laws mandating that prostitutes should dress in a manner different from other women) were passed in order to make whores immediately distinguishable from respectable women."
INCOME FROM PROSTITUTION
They probably service 20& of the population once a week minimum. This equates to somewhere along the lines of 2sp-10sp (determined by social class of whore) x 20% of city population.
example: the Port town of Wathfksthasml with a population of ten thousand might spend a minimum weekly income of 400gp-2000gp.
I admit defeat.
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INCOME FROM PROSTITUTION
They probably service 20& of the population once a week minimum. This equates to somewhere along the lines of 2sp-10sp (determined by social class of whore) x 20% of city population.
example: the Port town of Wathfksthasml with a population of ten thousand might spend a minimum weekly income of 400gp-2000gp.
And here I've had players tip the barmaid a couple of gold just to keep their mugs filled for the nights repast, still paying full price for each mug to boot. If they only knew what they could've gotten instead.
Of course, I've advocated legalized pros for years. Had a roughly outlined social service proposal for years that could make any leader the first Pimp in Chief.
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THE PRIVATE SECTOR
"...women were only allowed to sell their "wares" on certain streets or in certain neighborhoods..."[/i]
In post-occupation France, my grandmother worked for the Paris police, rounding up the streetwalkers for their weekly shots (which were supposed to help prevent STDs), as required by local regulations.
They were only allowed to 'work' on one side of the street, so that people who weren't interested could walk on the other side of the street unmolested by their advances (although they would still holler across the street and hike up their skirts to flash their legs at passersby, among other things).
Makes for fun family gathering stories. "Your grandmother was a seamstress? Wow, my grandma rounded up hookers for the cops."
I can see why temple prostitutes of Calistria would be preferred to random people on the street, as the temple prostitutes would have regular access to remove disease...
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THE PRIVATE SECTOR
"...women were only allowed to sell their "wares" on certain streets or in certain neighborhoods..."[/i]In post-occupation France, my grandmother worked for the Paris police, rounding up the streetwalkers for their weekly shots (which were supposed to help prevent STDs), as required by local regulations.
They were only allowed to 'work' on one side of the street, so that people who weren't interested could walk on the other side of the street unmolested by their advances (although they would still holler across the street and hike up their skirts to flash their legs at passersby, among other things).
Makes for fun family gathering stories. "Your grandmother was a seamstress? Wow, my grandma rounded up hookers for the cops."
I can see why temple prostitutes of Calistria would be preferred to random people on the street, as the temple prostitutes would have regular access to remove disease...
Now you get to Dress in a dirty macintosh, one hand under the coat, and walk over to your gran and ask: "You want buy filty picture?" and hand her a mud covered photo of Eiffel Tower.
Speaking on an individual level with regards to economics and prostitution:
I spent most of my money on wine, recreational drugs and hookers.........the rest I sqaundered.