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In a reality that worked by PF/D&D rules, the high level people wouldn't be adventurers, they'd already be running the kingdoms. Possibly openly, possibly as advisors behind the throne.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.
You're not wrong, but they might also want to help, as is often the case with adventurers.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.
Likely true, but it's kind of a weird situation where in over the course of a year or less (typically) you have characters going from level 1 nobodies to the absolute rock star heroes.
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Tying it back to infrastructure, highest-level heroes (a squad of which pop up every year or so) would also bend infrastructure. Somebody's paying their wages when they Earn Income doing a Legendary task. But somebody has to protect against all those mid-teen level monsters preying on rural victims, neither of which have the treasure to be AP material. I find it odd how many monsters are described in a folksy way as if a village could stand up to them. Nope. So maybe it's the former AP PCs, perhaps downplaying their abiities?
I'm reminded of Marvel Comics where the god Ares (stronger than any construction equipment ever) was working construction or Damage Control swept in repair super-fight damage. Golarion would also have adapted to uber-beings. A high-level caster devoted to developing infrastructure could put in their hour and a half of work (counting morning prep) and have accomplished more than dozens of workers could do all week. And Kineticists, even lower-level ones could do the work of a corporation or major utilities building. I imagine governments (et al) would dedicate a lot to harnessing them somehow. Bidding wars would ensue, and assassination or abduction of rivals too. A lot of gold would be at stake, more if you get extradimensional interests involved.
Oh, my, now I'm imagining an extradimensional Wal-Mart which drives out local competition by undercutting them and dominating market share only to show their true unholy faces after there's no one else who can provide their goods and services. Or maybe drug suppliers or simply unique fads from other worlds. How well would Golarion markets & cultures compete with angelic creations? Hmm.
I imagine there'd be aqueducts and dikes made of Walls of Stone. D&D used to have more terrain-altering magic, and one would think there'd be a lot of high-level spells developed for non-adventurers, an unusual amount geared toward libraries and education. :-)
"This spell sends books."
Unless, like Planescape somewhat addressed, there were guilds and unions that opposed such methods (& centralization/consolidation too). They'd need their own high-level forces to exert any influence though.
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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.
The Ironfang Invasion adventure path is a war story. The Ironfang Legion is trying to conquer a corner of Nirmathas and a corner of Molthune to form the nation of Oprak. The 1st module has the PCs as refugees from a conquered Nirmathi town, the 2nd module has them solving the mystery of why Nirmathas's Chernasardo Ranger defenders failed, but the 3rd module, Assault on Longshadow, is outright war as they defend the city of Longshadow from an Ironfang army.
Technically, the holding-territory issue can be handwaved, because the territory is returned to its original inhabitants. But my players were not satisfied with that omission. And their answer was infrastructure, both physical and social.
In the first two modules, they regularly defeated Ironfang patrols. They look the weapons and armor from the patrollers and gave them to civilians. Assault on Longshadow had a section were the PCs repaired the city walls of Longshadow, a physical infrastructure activity. They trained Longshadow civilians to help defend the city. And after that battle, they re-established the Chernasardo Rangers from the surviving rangers that they had rescued in the 2nd module.
The Chernasardo Rangers were descended from a group of revolutionaries who had fought for independence from Molthune rule about 60 years beforehand. They lived hidden in the forest so that the Molthune troops could not find their bases. That became a weakness in Ironfang Invasion because the Ironfang Legion had taken them down before their main invasion without any village or town getting word of the incursion. My PCs re-established the Chernasardo Rangers in the villages and cities, both for easier recruiting of new members and to more directly defend the villages.
Another piece of social infrastructure they created was a mail service. One of the PCs, gnome rogue Binny, had a backstory as a messenger. When the PCs retired after defeating the Ironfang Legion (the nation of Oprak did not get founded in my campaign world), Binny returned to messenger duty, but now she was a 20th-level rogue/mammoth lord with a Jubjub Bird animal companion. She inspired others and they formed the Monster Rider Messenger Service.
The PCs also founded a standing army. They had to do something with the Ironfang invaders still alive. The PCs had no problem with the hobgoblins and other so-called uncivilized species settling down in Nirmathas. Their objection had been to them taking land from Nirmathi residents and enslaving those residents. The government of Nirmathas is best described as cooperative anarchy: groups would volunteer for traditional government duties such as the Chernasardo Rangers volunteering for civil defense. The PCs formed the surviving Ironfangs into another civil defense group to give them a place in Nirmathi society. The monster-handlers in the Ironfang Legion mostly joined the Monster Riders instead.
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Yeah, a mail/messenger service is a a good example of infrastructure. Which brings us to roads. Some places would have roads built by the old Taldan Empire, I would imagine. Of course rivers are trade lanes as well.
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In terms of cost-effectiveness to transport pretty much anything, the following methods haven't changed much in millennia (most cost-effective to least): ships (ocean or sea), boats (river or canal), roads (actual roads, not beaten down paths that are essentially wider trails), trails. Rail (if developed) is in between boats and roads, as it can carry heavier loads of cargo than roads can handle. Air transport is less cost effective than roads and some trails (although it's faster). Magical transport would be even faster than air, but likely more expensive (IMO, reserved for small, low bulk goods where speed and security are the most important considerations).
Of course, canals and roads are very expensive to build and maintain (as are rail systems).
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Of course, when you have a lyre of building (not sure what the PF2 name equivalent of if there is one) in your world, you can magical construct a lot of roads and canals. You can get like 3600 man hours of labor per week from one person playing the instrument. It's not even like a crazy high level item, so you could potentially have multiples of them at a kingdoms disposal.
Something like that is insane for creating infrastructure.
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In terms of cost-effectiveness to transport pretty much anything, the following methods haven't changed much in millennia (most cost-effective to least): ships (ocean or sea), boats (river or canal), roads (actual roads, not beaten down paths that are essentially wider trails), trails. Rail (if developed) is in between boats and roads, as it can carry heavier loads of cargo than roads can handle. Air transport is less cost effective than roads and some trails (although it's faster). Magical transport would be even faster than air, but likely more expensive (IMO, reserved for small, low bulk goods where speed and security are the most important considerations).
Of course, canals and roads are very expensive to build and maintain (as are rail systems).
On Earth.
-Golarion seas have aggressive megafauna and sapient inhabitants, so I'd move them a notch down. They're terrifying enough on Earth where we only imagined nearly all such creatures.
-Rivers and canals can be lined with Walls of Stone (at least at key junctures) and managed (along with locks) with water spells/Kineticists so maybe a notch above Earth depending on local fey & Druid opinions.
-Earth Kineticists make roadwork & repair simple, but even without them low-level casters can clear out obstructions and install drainage in quick bursts for tougher spots. And Disintegrate works better than dynamite on granite. These advantages over Earthlings would be amplified dealing with slopes and cliffs.
-Tunnels would be much more prevalent given how Burrow speeds work plus Dwarf and Kobold know-how. And there's Adamantine, though expensive it doesn't wear down (that I know of).
-I think Golarion lacks rail, but it has mechanical air transport on the wealthier end. Even a Strix or civilized Gargoyle makes a huge difference in rougher terrain for key items like medicine, components, messages, etc., but there are also dragons, tamed Rocs, and other critters that can carry heaps of goods for who knows what cost to feed and appease. Think Dinotopia.
-Bridges would be much more common IMO, if there aren't antagonists.
Kineticists skip so much engineering development, their population is a significant statistic re: infrastructure (see Korra, though I hadn't been thinking of that). And then there are genies, elementals, fey, and a list of other sapient creatures that can work magic all day, including Cantrip casters. Telekinetic Projectile light debris away. :-) Maybe magic schools lend out their students who can practice.
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I don’t think dragons would willingly perform mundane shipping tasks. Too proud.
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Today I attended a celebration of the 200th anniversary of the Erie Canal. The Buffalo Maritime Center built a replica of the first canal boat, the Seneca Chief, to traverse the Erie Canal and is sending it down the canal from Buffalo to New York City. My wife and I visited it in Baldwinsville, New York.
I will know more about building canals in 1825 AD after I read the books I bought.
I once added a canal with a lock system to my Ironfang Invasion campaign. The 3rd module Assault on Longshadow says that Longshadow has a significant river shipping industry on the Marideth River. It also has a smelting industry for the ores mined in the Mindspin Mountains and the Hollow Hills, and since its road system is minimal, shipping the refined metals by river would make the most sense. Unfortunately, the text description of the Marideth River om the 1st module describes it has having waterfalls, and the endpaper map of the region found in all six modules shows a major waterfall downriver from Longshadow. Upstream is only sparsely inhabited mountains. I described this problem in my thread River Shipping from Longshadow, but no-one had an answer.
The reason for the problem is that most maps of the Marideth River are on a scale where all rivers are flat blue squiggles with no details, so no-one knows the location of the waterfalls. They could be in the mountains upstream of Longshadow. The artist of the endpaper maps chose to put a waterfall where the uplands of the Hollow Hills ended, which is downriver from Longshadow. That artist probably did not see the article on Longshadow, and the writer of the article probably did not see the detailed map.
My PCs had already visited the waterfall, so I kept it. I put a canal alongside the waterfall with a system of locks. These canals were in disrepair because the Ironfang Legions monster handlers had released three bulettes to destroy the locks and isolate Longshadow from reinforcements. After the siege of Longshadow, the PCs fought the bulettes so that the city could repair the locks.
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I don’t think dragons would willingly perform mundane shipping tasks. Too proud.
Appeal to greed for stereotypical ones. But there are lots of dragon options other than the hoard-sitting proud ones. Just a few dragons would make an impact so look for exceptions.
Maybe appeal to their unique talents, how non-mundane their labor (truthfully) is. Maybe they're the ones who own the business, or it's for allies/higher goals, or maybe they're dumb/animalistic/controlled. Community-minded ones might see it as a way to contribute that's rather easy for them, yet bestows great benefit. Golarion has shied away from domesticated dragons, but it's feasible; and because you can reason with many it's maybe more so than the Rocs, mammoths, and dinosaurs which are available.
And dragons are just a handy example among the many large flying creatures out there. Not saying they'd be a given in any city, rather where they did show up they'd function much like helicopters.
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If Paizo hasn’t made it specific, it’s kind of up to the GM to decide if dragons are interested in the shipping business or not, I suppose.
@Mathmuse: The canal era is kind of cool I always thought. There’s a canal in Scotland that took too long to build and ended up being undersized for the ships of the time. England has an extensive network of canals as well.
Of course, unloading the cargo and portaging it past the falls is also a possibility.
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In terms of cost-effectiveness to transport pretty much anything, the following methods haven't changed much in millennia (most cost-effective to least): ships (ocean or sea), boats (river or canal), roads (actual roads, not beaten down paths that are essentially wider trails), trails. Rail (if developed) is in between boats and roads, as it can carry heavier loads of cargo than roads can handle. Air transport is less cost effective than roads and some trails (although it's faster). Magical transport would be even faster than air, but likely more expensive (IMO, reserved for small, low bulk goods where speed and security are the most important considerations).
Of course, canals and roads are very expensive to build and maintain (as are rail systems).
On Earth.
-Golarion seas have aggressive megafauna and sapient inhabitants, so I'd move them a notch down. They're terrifying enough on Earth where we only imagined nearly all such creatures.
-Rivers and canals can be lined with Walls of Stone (at least at key junctures) and managed (along with locks) with water spells/Kineticists so maybe a notch above Earth depending on local fey & Druid opinions.
-Earth Kineticists make roadwork & repair simple, but even without them low-level casters can clear out obstructions and install drainage in quick bursts for tougher spots. And Disintegrate works better than dynamite on granite. These advantages over Earthlings would be amplified dealing with slopes and cliffs.
-Tunnels would be much more prevalent given how Burrow speeds work plus Dwarf and Kobold know-how. And there's Adamantine, though expensive it doesn't wear down (that I know of).
-I think Golarion lacks rail, but it has mechanical air transport on the wealthier end. Even a Strix or civilized Gargoyle makes a huge difference in rougher terrain for key items like medicine, components, messages, etc., but there are also dragons, tamed Rocs, and other critters that can carry heaps of goods for who knows what...
You're missing the point.
When it comes to logistics, the cost-effectiveness is primarily determined by the amount that can be transported per trip by a given conveyance unit. Yes, flying creatures can make delivery of small, low bulk goods more common than in real-life history; however, they aren't going to be very effective in transporting literal tons of building material, food, metal, etc. needed for any sizable community.
There's a reason we still transport most items in large cargo vessels to major ports, where most of it's broken down for rail to rail hubs and then to trucks; with air transport reserved for those willing to pay the extra cost for the speed.
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Did I miss the point that flying would be expensive and involve smaller items when I explicitly wrote that flying would be expensive and involve only key items plus mentioned their major difference would be in rougher terrain? Hmm.
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Maybe Golarion has such large stretches of wilderness even after thousands of years of civilization because it's so difficult to establish trade routes. Magical cataclysms don't help.
Reminds me of a PFS1 scenario with beetles that could destroy any local merchant and challenge the strongest village factions. But the beetles were incidental, just normal fauna (though an excuse for PCs to rescue an info source, with a good chance of failure). Saving villages is a common enough PF/RPG theme, which would suggest a reason trade routes struggle; they're even harder to defend than a village (plus intrude in areas other creatures might call their own).
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What's the infrastructure like for undersea empires? Mainly, what interactions with surface dwellers would naturally occur? Absalom interacts somewhat, but I'd think with seas being so important to trade that there'd be much more commerce, i.e. fish & underwater crops for forged items. And given that swim speeds are typically high (fittingly), I wonder how large the niche might be for aquatic couriers who'd be faster than horses and harder for land enemies to track and ambush, even if stuck to water routes.
That seems a setup for a scenario, PCs meeting/intercepting aquatic couriers.
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Logistics part 2: Operating costs.
You mentioned using a roc for transportation. What do you feed it? Probably the equivalent of a team of oxen every couple weeks. When you could just keep two teams of oxen to draw a pair of wagons, replacing them every 5-10 years, instead of going through 25 teams of oxen every year.
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Back in comment #28 I mentioned that the Lost Omens Travel Guide had some information on infrastructure. Page 34 has a map of the major international trade routes near the Inner Sea and page 36 has a text description of them. For example, the North Tack is the ship route that follows the north coast of the Inner Sea and the South Tack follows the south coast of the Inner Sea. The Path of Aganhei goes over the northern ice cap to connect Avistan and Tian Xia. The Sellen Passage is the River Sellen through Taldor and all its major tributaries further north.
Most of these trade routes do appear to rely in sea or river transporation, with portages to connect headwaters of separate river systems.
Concerning Castilliano's comment #60 Dragonchess Player replied,
Logistics part 2: Operating costs.
You mentioned using a roc for transportation. What do you feed it? Probably the equivalent of a team of oxen every couple weeks. When you could just keep two teams of oxen to draw a pair of wagons, replacing them every 5-10 years, instead of going through 25 teams of oxen every year.
This thread has repeated reminded me how much my players care about infrastructure and logistics, because I keep finding examples related to this dicussion.
In Fangs of War, 2nd module of Ironfang Invasion, the 7th-level party had to fight three Ironfang rangers with fledgling roc animal companions. These rocs were only the size of large owls, but I felt that calling a bird a roc required a bigger size. I changed them to Large and gave them enough strength to carry a humanoid in their talons but they had to drop the person at the end of turn. The party killed two of the rangers though the 3rd escaped. And the stormborn druid Stormdancer adopted one of the orphaned fledgling rocs, Roxie, as an animal companion, on a promise to gain Animal Order via Order Explorer on her next level-up. I declared that Stormdancer's Stormwind Flight order spell could be applied to Roxie so that she was able to carry Stormdancer as a rider for ten minutes, at which time Stormdancer would have restored a focus point to recast Stormwind Flight. This mitigated a logistics problem that the 7-member party was too large for most transportation spells, so the sorcerer typically had to summon six Phantasmal Steeds/Marvelous Mounts with six spells (the monk was fast enough to run instead of ride). Roxie reduced the necessary number of Marvelous Mounts to five.
Stormdancer tried to give the other orphaned fledgling roc to an NPC ranger, but the ranger passed the roc Rocko to a teenaged girl Menolly.
In the 2nd module of my Strength of Thousands campaign, I had Menolly enroll at the Magaambya Academy as a druid student assigned to the same dormitory as the PCs. She showed up two weeks early before the Academy was ready to feed Rocko. The PCs immediately sprang to action, making a deal with some farmers that they had once helped to care for a flock of sheep that Rocko could eat. Back in Nirmathas Menolly and Rocko hunted in the wild forest to feed Rocko, but near the city of Nantambu animals were property.
A Large fledgling roc is much easier to feed than a Gargantuan adult roc, which are known in folklore for eating elephants. But a Str +8 gargantuan Roc that can lift an elephant and still fly would be great for transporting container-sized loads over impassable terrain such as a mountain pass and might be worth the cost to weekly feed them oxen, especially if the roc and its handler could sometimes take a day off to hunt wild monsters for free food.
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A Master in Survival w/ Forager can feed 16 people per Subsist. In a forest or jungle with an easy DC, one could take the -5 to do it in 8 hours (and maybe hire extra help too, noting that these people would likely be needed as handlers & bodyguards anyway). And as Mathmuse mentioned, even paying for its food would pay for itself if crossing mountains as well as other treacherous terrain. It'll bypass earthbound monsters and deter most airborne ones who'd likely prefer to attack that team of oxen over there stuck in the swamp. :-)
The harder part IMO is getting a Roc, though in other campaign worlds they have been for sale, at least as eggs or fledglings. Don't know their lifespan. Probably quite long based on size (and longer w/ magical healing and curing).
Looked up Create Food and boy does that change the math! It implies a Gargantuan creature eats 1000x as much food, so one might settle for a Huge creature at 100x as much. But standard feed x1000 is only 10 g.p./week which is affordable (and that's the cost of 20 pigs or 5 horses/week so it's not a loophole IMO).
A Druid might offer these services, keeping that many more people from disturbing nature.
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I'm reminded of one troublesome AP re: trade routes, Jade Regent, where I've heard the amount of gold earned was in no way commensurate with the costs. That raises questions, as do many economic issues if examined with too much rigor. We don't want trade to be lucrative enough to impact PC wealth curves, but then again we often want PC-level people/threats/allies involved in trade scenarios. Hmm.
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If Paizo hasn’t made it specific, it’s kind of up to the GM to decide if dragons are interested in the shipping business or not, I suppose.
@Mathmuse: The canal era is kind of cool I always thought. There’s a canal in Scotland that took too long to build and ended up being undersized for the ships of the time. England has an extensive network of canals as well.
Of course, unloading the cargo and portaging it past the falls is also a possibility.
. . . And that is a lead-in for railroads, since some of the very early railroads were portage railroads, with a subset of those using cable haulage since suitable locomotives were not available at the time and/or the track had a slope too steep for wheel adhesion on rails and cogwheel railways were not yet up to the task(*). Cable haulage on Earth usually used a steam engine or in later instances electric power, but water power could be used, and has occasionally been used for powering cable haulage on Earth.
(*)Technically, one of the very first locomotives was a cogwheel engine (made by John Blinkensop, it was made that way just to get more adhesion on level ground before heavy-duty rail was available for the running of locomotives heavy enough for good friction adhesion.
One potential problem with rails or anything else made of metal on a large scale: Rust Monsters. Or are those about to undergo Spontaneous Massive Existence Failure?
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Lol, Rust Monsters.Who know what society might have achieved without them.
I think of them as underground dwellers, but yeah, if there was a long line of food/railway, it'd only take one (or gasp, a breeding couple) to derail the next car. Heck, sentient scavengers of many types might not even recognize a railway's purpose (much like happened in rural Japan w/ telegraphs and Eastern Europe w/ internet wiring!).
Pretty sure they're out of the spotlight, but still exist. I think only the Drow disappeared, but out of the spotlight does kinda mean they won't factor much in determining what's what & what's possible.
With Walls of Stone I wonder how viable stone railways might be, not so much on a regional scale, but local in a city, mine system, or port. Again the Kineticists would do even better here. They're so game-changing.
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I don’t think dragons would willingly perform mundane shipping tasks. Too proud.
Take a look at Shadow Run. Because Dragons are exceptionally long lived, in that setting they end up running megacorporation after accumulating a lifetime of wealth and power trying to pursue whatever grands scheme ancient beings do.
I think, a young dragon might do it, just to accumulate wealth and contacts early in their life. Older dragons who already have deep scheme and plans likely wouldn't. It also likely varies based on kind of dragon and even individual dragons.
I don’t have a powerful need to defend my statement about dragons. If it furthers the plot, why not?
This thread is about infrastructure. I’d rather mention corduroy roads. Something one might see crossing boggy areas. A very rough ride, no doubt.
^Those are even suitable for boggy areas on Earth, and on Golarion, would have the added benefit that things like Will-O-Wisps wouldn't be able to destroy them very easily and would have a hard time misleading travelers on a corduroy road from straying. (And Rust Monsters can't easily destroy them either, and would have no urge to do so.)
I don’t have a powerful need to defend my statement about dragons. If it furthers the plot, why not?
This thread is about infrastructure. I’d rather mention corduroy roads. Something one might see crossing boggy areas. A very rough ride, no doubt.
I wasn't asking you to defend your statement, just providing a different point of view about what could happen.
There are lots of ways to justify nearly anything happening in a story.
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"There are lots of ways to justify nearly anything happening in a story."
-Claxon
This is the heart of any answer re: Golarion infrastructure, more so given how Paizo regards narrative as more the driver of the setting than vice-versa.
In the older policy re: submissions (which I'm unsure Paizo even accepts anymore, rather contracts out), Paizo gave PFS authors the freedom to introduce new concepts into Golarion lore...as long as the geographical impact was limited. So you could have a rural village with a unique deity with its own holiday, a lost valley with bizarre physiology/evolution, or on this topic, as backward or forward a sense of infrastructure as one needs for one's scenario in its distinct space.
Broad-scale infrastructure like postal systems and road networks would still be left to setting devs (who in turn might upgrade/downgrade infrastructure as suits a major project like an AP). But if a scenario required a unique dam built by a genius in the remote wilderness, that might be a marvel of Golarion tech surpassing Absalom's best (though perhaps not Numberia's unless set nearby). I imagine if said scenario involved the collapse or destruction of said infrastructure, all the better to explain why such ideas don't impact Golarion in the future (until desired). And then there all the Vaults underground where you could introduce continent-level infrastructure and have some authorities like in Numeria who contain their knowledge to themselves.
So Kineticist construction companies, dragon delivery, and...well, there's already steampunk and Wild West tech broadly available. Couple those with magical creatures and one can stretch pretty far, with little off the table (your group's table) if it suits y'all. It's a bit reminiscent of how superhero tech usually works, where earthshaking advancements shake only a manageable portion of the earth.
Writing this brought to mind dogfighting dragons with Gatling guns on their backs. Dunno why, they'd probably be better wielding them. :-)
^. . . I can imagine they wouldn't be too fond of the noise made by such things as well as the risk of shooting yourself. Although for the former, permanent hearing damage from loud noise seems to be a mammalian thing, so maybe they would be able to put up with it.
^. . . I can imagine they wouldn't be too fond of the noise made by such things as well as the risk of shooting yourself. Although for the former, permanent hearing damage from loud noise seems to be a mammalian thing, so maybe they would be able to put up with it.
Dragons can probably cast silence (or use "earplugs"). That plus some dragon sign language or telepathy could do wonders.
^Technically this would work, but I don't think they would like to blank out their hearing during a whole battle, since that might be important for knowing what's going on that they can't see. Now on the other hand, if they had some way to switch Silence on and off, now you're talking . . . .