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What kind of infrastructure can we expect to find in cities and towns on Golarion? Obviously, we have roads, ports, wells, and buildings/fortifications, but what about other infrastructure? For instance, on Earth, Ancient Rome had paved roads and a network of aqueducts (although they also had the VERY BAD IDEA of using lead in the pipe sections of the aqueduct network).
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I would say it varies so widely by region that you probably need to ask about specific regions.
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Also, ironically it wasn't the use of lead pipes that was a big problem for the Roman people. The waters directed through the lead pipes were pretty rich in minerals which provided a protective layer which inhibited the leaching of lead into the drinking water.
The bigger issues were the use of lead acetate sweetened wine and leaded cooking ware, which were the real problems.
With proper management, you could still use lead pipes today. Remember, the leaded drinking water problem of Flint Michigan began because the city changed their water source, ignored advice about the problem before the change was made. Had the new water source been appropriately treated, the lead pipes could have been fine because of the layer of passivated protective coating the inside.
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I'm guessing that sanitation levels are reasonable, mostly because no art depicts waste following in the streets.
Perhaps they have low-level casters who go around using Prestidigitate to clean the streets?
Either that, or there are low-threat monsters that eat waste?
Would not be surprised if it turns out Rahadoum has some concept of germ theory... mostly because they can't rely on Clerics to cure diseases.
Now I'm thinking of, if anyone has read/watched it, "How A Realist Hero Rebuilt the Kingdom".
A few chapters/episodes are dedicated to talking about the protagonist implementing new measures regarding hygiene. Including Aqueducts and cleaning.
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Either that, or there are low-threat monsters that eat waste?
In all seriousness, Otyughs. They like to live in sewers, and eat waste. And are neutral (generally).
I would imagine smart cities would work out deals with Otyughs to help with sanitation.
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The earliest dungeon of proto-D&D was in sewer tunnels. They're a staple in fantasy cities if only to insert convenient creatures. So on that score they're ahead of Earth.
With decent technology and advanced magic, major cities should have superior infrastructure to Earth in other ways too, barring recent wars or visits from a marauding beast. Hospitals, universities, factories, and religious institutions flourish. Golarion scholars know much more about nature and their universe than Earthlings, learned from fey, deities, etc. I'd think sanitation, schooling, publishing, and other services a civil society would want would be present at the hubs at least.
I'd extend this to merchant routes too, so good roads, ferries, tunnels, hostels/way stations, etc. Some wealthy countries have established gates with elemental planes and old gates connect(ed) to other planets. Heck, the Azlanti in Starfinder had developed some way to travel through space before Pathfinder times. So one might find superior examples too.
There's a lot of undeveloped wilderness if one wishes a lack of infrastructure for their campaign. Some adventure sites have featured villages who speak only one language (and not Common/Taldan) or who fear outsiders or creatures of other Ancestries.
But generally I'd say infrastructure's a background issue, pliable to suit one's needs for a story, and seldom in the spotlight to give specifics other than for some oft-featured cities.
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The poop monsters (as one of my tables dubbed them) remind me of how we on Earth have realized the value of beavers building dams; let nature do the labor for us. In a fantasy world with hundreds of sapient creatures with various predilections plus frequent magical breeding, there could be a lot of off-screen infrastructure filled in by such creatures. There should be more to this than just lair & vault security.
There are already fey that enjoy housecleaning (as well as Gremlins ruining things, so maybe it balances). I can imagine others that enjoy tinkering on toys, delivering mail for cookies*, quizzing kids, eating soot, spinning fabrics, nurturing animals, etc. Flying creatures would help immensely w/ towers, bridges, hoists, and repairs. Heck, fire-breathing ones would be quite useful too, as well as those with acid, cold or electricity...on demand. While I doubt they'd have pervaded to household level, corporations and tycoons should have such (as well as automatons & the like).
Which is to say, we should avoid using Earth development as a proxy, and there might be startling exceptions even in rural areas.
*Unintentional mirroring of email w/ computer cookies. :-)
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Either that, or there are low-threat monsters that eat waste?In all seriousness, Otyughs. They like to live in sewers, and eat waste. And are neutral (generally).
I would imagine smart cities would work out deals with Otyughs to help with sanitation.
D&D outright states and the premaster version in PF2 alludes to the problem with that:
- as long as they have food, they multiply
- eventually they will outgrow even the "food supply" of a city
- they starve
- they wander to the surface looking for more food
So you need to tightly control the population and regularly, or you risk a "sewer stampede".
I can imagine that working out a deal with Otyughs would include some sort of provision for overpopulation. Otyughs aren't very intelligent, but they are sapient. They should understand if they're populous and start going to the surface that it's going to require action.
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I can imagine that working out a deal with Otyughs would include some sort of provision for overpopulation. Otyughs aren't very intelligent, but they are sapient. They should understand if they're populous and start going to the surface that it's going to require action.Either that, or there are low-threat monsters that eat waste?In all seriousness, Otyughs. They like to live in sewers, and eat waste. And are neutral (generally).
I would imagine smart cities would work out deals with Otyughs to help with sanitation.
D&D outright states and the premaster version in PF2 alludes to the problem with that:
- as long as they have food, they multiply
- eventually they will outgrow even the "food supply" of a city
- they starve
- they wander to the surface looking for more food
So you need to tightly control the population and regularly, or you risk a "sewer stampede".
Yes, there have been many examples of humanoids taming them, going back decades. Oozes too, though often with the humanoids regretting that.
Question is if they can control their breeding. I believe there's an old example of mates, maybe even a PF1 example w/ the first Sewer Dragons scenario. So they have to choose a chaste life of gluttony or...probably being killed. Where does one even find these guys? How do they migrate to most every sewer everywhere??
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How do they migrate to most every sewer everywhere??
My personal theory is when you get enough magical s*$& (both literal and metaphorical) thrown into a sewer, that just kind of magically spontaneously form. I'm sure someone would come along and say Otyugh's aren't magically created....and maybe that's true. But figuring out how it happens otherwise is....just something I'd rather not imagine.
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How do they migrate to most every sewer everywhere??My personal theory is when you get enough magical s&$* (both literal and metaphorical) thrown into a sewer, that just kind of magically spontaneously form. I'm sure someone would come along and say Otyugh's aren't magically created....and maybe that's true. But figuring out how it happens otherwise is....just something I'd rather not imagine.
Isn't that how a lot of Ooze-type monsters get created?
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Isn't that how a lot of Ooze-type monsters get created?How do they migrate to most every sewer everywhere??My personal theory is when you get enough magical s!&! (both literal and metaphorical) thrown into a sewer, that just kind of magically spontaneously form. I'm sure someone would come along and say Otyugh's aren't magically created....and maybe that's true. But figuring out how it happens otherwise is....just something I'd rather not imagine.
I mean, roughly yeah. But Otyughs aren't oozes.
Of course, as a GM I would consider changing the lore on Otyughs and say they're a kind of "evolved" ooze that has gained sapience and more complex anatomy.
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Now that i think about it, we really need a hardcover "Infrastructure of Golarion."
Follow that up a few months later with "Taxcodes of Golarion."
-Skeld
Don't worry, Adventurers get a discount! They're only taxed on wealth acquired while in country and it's only 50% of that income. And if you don't pay or fail to declare your income, or attempt to obfuscate the amount of wealth you claim....WE. WILL. FIND. YOU. You may also resolve all or a portion of your owed remittance via your soul or other souls you have claim to.
-Cheliaxian IRS
Kind of makes me want to run a campaign where the players ARE the IRS and one where the players are being chased by the IRS.
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Kind of makes me want to run a campaign where the players ARE the IRS and one where the players are being chased by the IRS.
I figure that's how you can position a 1-20 story these days, something like "Catch Me If You Can- Golarion Edition."
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Now that i think about it, we really need a hardcover "Infrastructure of Golarion."
Follow that up a few months later with "Taxcodes of Golarion."
-Skeld
In a Dungeons & Dragons 3.5 game about 20 years ago, I filled out an extended character sheet for my elf archer cleric Glitter that had a line for "Hates." I wrote "Tax Collectors," because I had not fleshed out the character yet and had a silly streak. Many game sessions later, the party had cleared out trolls from an abandoned keep, the local duchy had awarded the keep to us if we would help defend the border, and an encampment of refugees settled around the keep while we were off on an adventure. The party realized we needed a formal government. And because of what I had written on my character sheet, the other players put Glitter in charge of taxes.
By then I had filled in Glitter's backstory. His father was a artisan in gold and silver, which is why he named his son Glitter. The local human authorities assumed that since the goldsmith shop had gold in supply, the shop must be rich. They taxed the business too heavily. The father lost the shop, with the father developing a hate of tax collectors that he passed on to his son. The elf family moved into a traveling caravan, because the father figured that settling down again would leave him vulnerable to idiot authorities again.
Glitter developed a labor tax. Everyone had to contribute a month of labor each year to the new town. This was especially needed because the town was still being built, though less hardy people were assigned less demanding labor than construction, such as cooking, cleaning, or paperwork. A citizen could hire someone else to serve their month of labor. No-one was going to have their property confiscated under Glitter's watch.
This story has an infrastructure element, too. In repairing the keep (before the refugees appeared), Glitter used Stone Shape to rebuild walls and summoned creatures that could burrow through stone to create an underground tunnel that brought in water from a clean mountain stream. The keep already had a sewer outlet with an iron gate, because the party had used that to enter the keep when it was held by trolls.
These days I run the Strength of Thousands adventure path. Its first two modules are set at the Magaambya School of Magic in Nantambu. The Magaambya has a service-based relationship with the city: no taxes on the school in exchange for the services such as civil defense and major infrastructure repairs. Nantambu has a series of canals for internal transport, and the PCs once had the assignment of repairing a damaged canal wall. They also had to clean out sewers and chase down criminals.
The Magaambyan emphasis on service is the source of Nantambu’s strength, with the resident mages ensuring that no invading force has ever managed to come within 20 miles of the city. This protection extends to neighboring villages as well, and despite no formal agreements of fealty, more than a hundred such settlements gladly and gratefully pay tribute to the city.
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Wow, I wasn't expecting this to generate so much interest, given how my posts about music on Golarion largely fell flat.
Also, ironically it wasn't the use of lead pipes that was a big problem for the Roman people. The waters directed through the lead pipes were pretty rich in minerals which provided a protective layer which inhibited the leaching of lead into the drinking water.
The bigger issues were the use of lead acetate sweetened wine and leaded cooking ware, which were the real problems.
With proper management, you could still use lead pipes today. Remember, the leaded drinking water problem of Flint Michigan began because the city changed their water source, ignored advice about the problem before the change was made. Had the new water source been appropriately treated, the lead pipes could have been fine because of the layer of passivated protective coating the inside.
Direct lead poisoninng by lead acetate and close source poisoning by cookware would indeed be extra trouble. But I wouldn't count out slow leaching of lead through the protective minteral layers on the pipe also causing lead poisoning over long periods, as well as the possibility for the same thing that happened in Flint, MI (and Newark, DE) happening to Roman pipes and simply not being recognized among people corrupt enough to use lead acetate to sweeten wine (a practice which continued well after being banned in the 1700s).
{. . .}
The dwarves in Highhelm have some Elemental Plane taps for Water and I think for forge heat? Those options can reduce the need for conventional infrastructure, but do mean elementals might walk in.
{. . .}
If they have the power and wealth to get elemental taps like that, it would make sense for them to get taps for air as well.
Now that i think about it, we really need a hardcover "Infrastructure of Golarion."Follow that up a few months later with "Taxcodes of Golarion."
Now that you mention it, Civil society of Golarion (which would include both of these) could be a genuinely good book.
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While I adore the notion of a Civil Society of Golarion there's a significant hurdle; there's no baseline society. So it'd be societies, which would in turn become an enormous tome on par with a world guide.
Maybe coming at it from the other direction might suffice, exploring the various technologies available. There could be a grid chart showing each country's advancement levels (or ranges thereof what with wealth disparity). The emphasis would be on what's available and some (wondrous) specialty cases.
Or more likely Paizo could interweave more depth re: infrastructure for areas PCs visit in APs, giving us a collection of snapshots one could use, though perhaps they've done this already?
(And I think this thread took off more than the music one because it's more grounded. How does one juggle auditory concepts for music one's never heard? Heck, try describing real world music in just words, now add alien cultures & magical essences. Meanwhile engineering principles have a universal base, even in a world with fantastical extrapolation.)
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Wow, I wasn't expecting this to generate so much interest, given how my posts about music on Golarion largely fell flat.
Direct lead poisoninng by lead acetate and close source poisoning by cookware would indeed be extra trouble. But I wouldn't count out slow leaching of lead through the protective minteral layers on the pipe also causing lead poisoning over long periods, as well as the possibility for the same thing that happened in Flint, MI (and Newark, DE) happening to Roman pipes and simply not being recognized among people corrupt enough to use lead acetate to sweeten wine (a practice which continued well after being banned in the 1700s).Also, ironically it wasn't the use of lead pipes that was a big problem for the Roman people. The waters directed through the lead pipes were pretty rich in minerals which provided a protective layer which inhibited the leaching of lead into the drinking water.
The bigger issues were the use of lead acetate sweetened wine and leaded cooking ware, which were the real problems.
With proper management, you could still use lead pipes today. Remember, the leaded drinking water problem of Flint Michigan began because the city changed their water source, ignored advice about the problem before the change was made. Had the new water source been appropriately treated, the lead pipes could have been fine because of the layer of passivated protective coating the inside.
That's the thing though, with the protective mineral layer there is virtually no leaching of lead because the water doesn't contact the pipe. Though there is definitely a period where the pipes don't have the protective layer, and it likely takes years to develop where the population would be exposed to high levels of lead. And if the water source were changed, you could potentially have the same issue as Flint.
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So a lot of you talk about the disposal via the creatures in the sewers, but I'm going to talk about the creation of the sewars themselves. There are numerous ancestries in Golarion that have a reputation for burrowing and tunnelling. a clever Mayor or other city official can easily work out a deal with the local Kobold nest to create the city's sewer system for for certain concessions. and a reasonably clever Kobold nest would eagerly take the contract to create elaborate tunnels beneath the tall folk's feet... including plenty of tunnels the tall folk are never told about.
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Now that you mention it, Civil society of Golarion (which would include both of these) could be a genuinely good book.Now that i think about it, we really need a hardcover "Infrastructure of Golarion."
Follow that up a few months later with "Taxcodes of Golarion."
The Lost Omens Travel Guide has some of this information. The chapter headings are Introduction, Time & the Calendar, Everyday Life, Festivals & Hoildays, Trade, Cuisine, Fashion, Art & Architecture, Pastimes, Crime & Law, What People Know, Magic, Folklore & Mythology, Religion, Nature & Animals, Weather & Climate, Rare Events, The Stars, and Glossary & Index.
While I adore the notion of a Civil Society of Golarion there's a significant hurdle; there's no baseline society. So it'd be societies, which would in turn become an enormous tome on par with a world guide.
Hence, this was a travel guide, on par with a world guide.
For an example of using the Lost Omens Travel Guide my Strength of Thousands party chased criminals. They captured those criminals alive and turned them over to the Nantambu authorities. I added scenes of the criminals' trials with the PCs serving as witnesses. I looked up culturally appropriate sentences in the Crime & Law chapter of the Travel Guide. Page 64 has a table of Common Crimes and Punishments, such as Robbery: Twenty lashes and/or 1 to 5 years hard labor, and Worship of Banned Gods: 2 to 8 years hard labor and/or a fine equal to 20% of the character’s wealth.
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Come to think of it, does PF2/PF2R have rules for buying/renting properties, cost of living, building/maintaining infrastructures, etc?
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Come to think of it, does PF2/PF2R have rules for buying/renting properties, cost of living, building/maintaining infrastructures, etc?
Some of that, such as Food and Lodging, can be found in the Player Core in the Equipment chapter under Services, pages 294-295. Lost Omens Travel Guide has more details on buying housing in the Everyday Life chapter, page 17:
TABLE 1: HOUSING COSTS, Mortgage is monthly payment over 10 years, Rent is monthly.Thatch hut (poor home) 100 gp or 2 gp mortgage or 8 gp rent
Wood cottage (comfortable home) 300 gp or 6 gp mortgage or 20 gp rent
Stone house (quality home) 2,000 gp or 40 gp mortgage or 80 gp rent
Wood, stone, and metal manse (fine home) 6,000 gp or 120 gp mortgage or 240 gp rent
Villa (luxury home) 15,000 gp or 300 gp mortgage or 600 gp rent
Urban housing on page 21 adds, "Renting an apartment typically runs one-fourth of the cost for renting a home."
I don't see anything about maintaining infrastructure.
The other two tables in Lost Omens Travel Guide are TABLE 3: ANIMAL PRICES and TABLE 4: ANIMAL CARETAKING GEAR PRICES in the Nature & Animals chapter.
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That's the thing, You know the sewer system in a Golarion city is really well maintained if you see a FEW Kobolds (or other tunneling species) walking the streets. Seeing none implies they aren't allowed and are being mistreated or that they aren't there. Seeing a LOT of them implies that for some reason they no longer find the sewers habitable and are being forced above ground (but upside it's an accepting town)
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So, folks over on the Inner Sea War speculation thread seem to think that the war will be modeled on WW I.
So follows a list of technical advancements that were in play at the time on Earth. (Golarion is a magic realm so one can assume that magical versions would have been developed.)
There’s more, but that’s all I can think of for now. Not everything I mentioned is strictly infrastructure.
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If they have the power and wealth to get elemental taps like that, it would make sense for them to get taps for air as well.{. . .}
The dwarves in Highhelm have some Elemental Plane taps for Water and I think for forge heat? Those options can reduce the need for conventional infrastructure, but do mean elementals might walk in.
{. . .}Actually they are using lichen walls grown by druids for that and noise barriers:
Breatherwalls
Air within Highhelm is produced and purified by a variety of cultivated lichen that are grown upon porous latticed walls placed throughout residential areas. Known as "breatherwalls", druids of the city created the lichen to improve air quality and dampen otherwise deafening noises that could echo through the halls of the underground city. These oxygen-creating emplacements are so efficient that it is possible for the entire city to subsist entirely on its produced air, even if every air shaft and entrance is sealed away to defend Highhelm against a potential siege. The practice of growing the breatherwall lichen is a trade secret, inviting many outsiders to try and steal the technique to no avail. This has not stopped spores of the lichen from appearing on the black market, although their legitimacy is questionable.You won't be invading them through a nice Air plane tap. Plane of Water or Plane of Fire - those are the only two backdoors. And they aren't exactly "army sized" backdoors.
They also use Grindlegrubs for organic waste disposal. So no attacking via sewer exit either.
Highelm is the epitome of "we won't run out of necessicities, even if we have to close every tunnel access airtight".
Now I'd like to know how they supply energy to the breatherwall lichen, since producing oxygen takes energy . . . Oh, right -- trade secret. And maybe that's what's keeping others from successfully stealing the technique. Now obvoiusly, with the right kind of magic (which they used to call Evocation magic . . .), you could supply energy to the lichen that way, but it's interesting to speculate what other kinds of energy could be used (like, for instance, if you just can't get enough raw power out of magic).
Interestingly, more than one actual type of metabolism exists on Earth that can produce oxygen and is NOT photosynthesis: Dark Oxygen. The linked article lists water radiolysis (implies serious radon problem, but Dwarves might actually not care), oxidation of surface-bound radicals (which amounts to an abiotic version of what they list for methanobactins later), chlorite dismutation, nitrite dismutation, and what they call methanobactins, which actually use oxidized metal ions to oxidize water (they don't explain this, and the enzyme name is misleading, but if you follow up the reference they give, it actually makes sense). I do see from the article on Highhelm that the Dwarves did go to some trouble to let in sunlight as well, which could be used to power the lichens by standard photosynthesis, although if they don't have a transparent barrier to erect over the sunlight portals, this would be unavailable during a siege.
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So, folks over on the Inner Sea War speculation thread seem to think that the war will be modeled on WW I.No, we really don't.
If there's a sense it models WWI it's less in the "how war was conducted" sense and more in the "entangling alliances get more nations involved in what is essentially a local issue."
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Now I'd like to know how they supply energy to the breatherwall lichen, since producing oxygen takes energy . . . Oh, right -- trade secret. And maybe that's what's keeping others from successfully stealing the technique. Now obvoiusly, with the right kind of magic (which they used to call Evocation magic . . .), you could supply energy to the lichen that way, but it's interesting to speculate what other kinds of energy could be used (like, for instance, if you just can't get enough raw power out of magic).
Interestingly, more than one actual type of metabolism exists on Earth that can produce oxygen and is NOT photosynthesis: Dark Oxygen. The linked article lists water radiolysis (implies serious radon problem, but Dwarves might actually not care), oxidation of surface-bound radicals (which amounts to an abiotic version of what they list for methanobactins later), chlorite dismutation, nitrite dismutation, and what they call methanobactins, which actually use oxidized metal ions to oxidize water (they don't explain this, and the enzyme name is misleading, but if you follow up the reference they give, it actually makes sense). I do see from the article on Highhelm that the Dwarves did go to some trouble to let in sunlight as well, which could be used to power the lichens by standard photosynthesis, although if they don't have a transparent barrier to erect over the sunlight portals, this would be unavailable during a siege.
I'd strongly suggest you don't try to apply too much science to Pathfinder. It will cause things to breakdown.
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^Hey, I like finding truth stranger than fiction.
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So, folks over on the Inner Sea War speculation thread seem to think that the war will be modeled on WW I.
So follows a list of technical advancements that were in play at the time on Earth. (Golarion is a magic realm so one can assume that magical versions would have been developed.)
** spoiler omitted **
There’s more, but that’s all I can think of for now. Not everything I mentioned is strictly infrastructure.
The funny thing is that all of that, as in the non-magical version, can exist on Golarion because there are a bunch of Russians from 1918 in Irrisen. we know at least Irrisen has modern rifles one of the images in one of the pathfinder society adventures has a Mosin-Nagant rifle mentioned explictly. So the rest can be presumed that they might know about, plus the whole stassian technology queen Anastasia is creating.
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It's been 12 years since Reign of Winter though and someone is smuggling stuff from a portal between Irrisen and Earth, so they have access to better guns than the ones they would have had. Like Anastasia could get her hands on a Browning M2 or a Besa MG.
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The non military aspect is what interests me more. Full scale magic war seems like it would near the same destruction potential as conventional warfare as pursued in 1914.
But do they have reliable methods of crossing the oceans? Enough crystal balls to equal the telegraph system? (A crystal ball system would be more like Skype though, wouldn’t it?)
After Russia withdrew from the war, the Germans piled their Eastern Front troops into rail cars and shifted them west very quickly. Does Golarion have a similar transport system?
It’s kind of fascinating for me to speculate on this because of the existence of magic changes the development. Kind of gives me a headache though.
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Well, an "army" might be five high level killers who can teleport together, such is the imbalance of power.
Sheer numbers and meat-waves matter less on Golarion (even with Troop rules) where a single warrior can routinely face a thousand veterans at once and come out healthy, perhaps unharmed after being topped up w/ a Heal spell or Medicine. As well as Earth's usual determiners of military might, Golarion adds magic, extraordinary creatures (often w/ AoEs), and level-advancement which IMO shift large-scale battles beyond recognition though for narrative purposes authors tend to stick to extra spicy Earth-like combats.
Sending out a nation's champion for single combat makes more sense there. They might represent a good portion of one's power, and you could skip the devastation of war itself. If one nation assassinated another's elite individuals, the end would seem inevitable (excluding outside or extraordinary factors).
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Honestly, I've always thought that war as we think of it/historical know it wouldn't exist in a world with D&D and Pathfinder style magic.
I would honestly expect a lot of magic fueled assassination attempts and sabotage taking place via a small number high level agents. The logistic of moving hundreds of men is challenging...why bother when you can send 5 through a magic portal to cripple a city's infrastructure and stop them from producing things to continue the war.
While Golarion has high magic, that high magic is very "concentrated" in a small number of people. I don't think there is any kind of widespread magical transportation system getting large quantities of people between places similar to a railway system.
A lot of this stems from the concept of game mechanics though. Wherein you can be shot by a gun, stabbed by a sword, and still be ready to fight. While in our reality, pretty much anything like that means you're out of the fight and taking months to recover.
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I think the thing that the high-level PC party is bad at (and is still important in war) is "holding territory for as long as it takes" since that basically requires the PCs to stay in one place and that means they can't go solve problems elsewhere.
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I think the thing that the high-level PC party is bad at (and is still important in war) is "holding territory for as long as it takes" since that basically requires the PCs to stay in one place and that means they can't go solve problems elsewhere.
That is true. And we actually see that play in the real modern world today. Holding territory is hard, especially if the people in that place don't agree with your presence.
You wouldn't put your high level PCs on such duty, because honestly they're bad at it. High level PCs are good at destruction. But when you have 1000 random unimportant peasants...killing some or all of them probably doesn't help the situation. In fact, you likely want those people alive, at least as many of them as you can keep.
If your goal for war is purely territorial gain, that's hard to actually achieve. If you goal is political maneuvering, forcing certain deals, etc that's more achievable.
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why bother when you can send 5 through a magic portal to cripple a city's infrastructure and stop them from producing things to continue the war.
Can you send 5 adventurers through a magic portal? If these adventurers are powerful enough to cripple your rivals, they're probably powerful enough to ignore your attempts to compel them, or to consider your concerns beneath them.
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Like I imagine that the reason that most nations do not wish to engage high level PC types in matters of state, is that you do not generally wish to attract their attention since they could just as easily take over *your* nation as defeat your enemy. They might even do both, in deciding the former is part of the most efficient path for the latter.
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Honestly, I've always thought that war as we think of it/historical know it wouldn't exist in a world with D&D and Pathfinder style magic.
I would honestly expect a lot of magic fueled assassination attempts and sabotage taking place via a small number high level agents. The logistic of moving hundreds of men is challenging...why bother when you can send 5 through a magic portal to cripple a city's infrastructure and stop them from producing things to continue the war.
While Golarion has high magic, that high magic is very "concentrated" in a small number of people. I don't think there is any kind of widespread magical transportation system getting large quantities of people between places similar to a railway system.
the Magic thing is concentrated, thus "rare", but it is usually well known and countermeasures do exist, and Magic doesn't come with infinite uses.
But maybe we should avoid derailing the thread further.
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It’s kind of fascinating for me to speculate on this because of the existence of magic changes the development. Kind of gives me a headache though.
Keith Baker and WotC have done quite a bit of work on this topic for the Eberron setting.
1st-3rd level magic is available on the battlefield most of the time.
4-6th level magic is expensive and rare.
7th+ rank casters were not concerned with the war.
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Like I imagine that the reason that most nations do not wish to engage high level PC types in matters of state, is that you do not generally wish to attract their attention since they could just as easily take over *your* nation as defeat your enemy. They might even do both, in deciding the former is part of the most efficient path for the latter.
That remains true regardless of what you do, the only thing is by involving them you garner their attention. And depending on their inclination, that could be helpful or harmful.
why bother when you can send 5 through a magic portal to cripple a city's infrastructure and stop them from producing things to continue the war.Can you send 5 adventurers through a magic portal? If these adventurers are powerful enough to cripple your rivals, they're probably powerful enough to ignore your attempts to compel them, or to consider your concerns beneath them.
You're not wrong, but they might also want to help, as is often the case with adventurers.