- Location
- USA
Perfectly alright. I prefer to know.
A Sword Without a Hilt: A Song of Ice and Fire/D&D 3.5 Crossover
- Thread starter DragonParadox
- Start date
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- Tags
- a song of ice and fire a sword without a hilt d&d 3.5 dungeons & dragons 100% high octane dragon fuel ave corvidae battle action dragon diplomacy best sister bureaucromancy delicious soul-stuff dragon dreams come true dragon ta'veren greatest uncle hubris is a coward's word in defiance of gods and men mammon's folly mutually assured mage's disjunction qm murderhobo top tier coatl
egoo
Totally Not Creating Problems Where None Existed
- Location
- Russia
Fine thing as Djinn-made MBs are we can also order them from Gith.
Ergo, we can free some of our fantasy on that front.
- Location
- United States
Okay. Well, conquests get very very successful. In addition to other cities, we vassalized Volantis and installed an Archon to rule in our name. The Triarchy of Volantis is effectively defunct and dismantled.
I'd like to get backup psionic Mind Blanks for the Companions in the unlucky event a Mage's Disjunction lands a hit.
- Location
- USA
Oh, I was talking about long before that. I first noticed it when the party first visited Volantis, before Mantarys. And the most recent I noticed it was right after Relath was defeated and Viserys ascended, Azel referred to Volantis having an archon.
egoo
Totally Not Creating Problems Where None Existed
- Location
- Russia
A perfectly valid tactic, and one that DP already approved.
...That it will cover Viserys as yet another shield in event of tug-of-war with a God/Elder Brain is just an added bonus
Only problem being, is that Gith budget is even more limited than Djinn one, we would have to prioritize combat effects (like effective 2-round Timestop gear) with Mindblanks.
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- Location
- United States
This wouldn't be something actively worn, mind you, just in reserve. For Viserys it would be fine having his backup in his cloak or something. Everyone else has Handy Haversacks, too. The problem of limited space for gear is something I'm well acquainted with.A perfectly valid tactic, and one that DP already approved.
...That it will cover Viserys as yet another shield in event oftug-of-war with a God/Elder Brain is just an added bonus
Only problem being, is that Gith budget is even more limited than Djinn one, we would have to prioritize combat effects (like effective 2-round Timestop gear) with Mindblanks.
Ah. Either that refers to governmental changes in the wake of Ymeri's first rampage and the awakening of magic in Volantis, or you can chalk it up to players not being that familiar with Volantis' government and mistakenly calling the leader the Archon.
- Location
- USA
Yeah, I assumed it was a mistake, but I wanted to make sure that I wasn't missing something. Thanks my dude.
Recruit from Vialesk again and then make a trip to one of the other major settlements we haven't gotten crafters from? I'd settle for more "regular" Pearlsteel and othe material crafters.
And for the Medium items? I still want a couple hundred Detect magic items glasses from the City of Glass for the unlimited portion.
- Location
- United States
I think it might be easier to just put out a standing offer to any craftsmen who want to come. We have an established embassy there. We can just delegate to them and come by for a monthly pickup if we really want.
As for items, for magi items I'd like a few more +1 Mithril Soulfire Bracers. The more I find out about have expansive the Void corruption is even in Prime Material the more nervous I get.
- Location
- Australia
So a Glass Golem is about ~33,000 GP.
Meaning if we take 100IM as "life savings of the average labourer with help from his (ridiculously rare and successful) parent that also managed to leave an inheritance" then it alone is equivalent to 6,600 lifetimes of work.
You can see why I say there is an absolutely ridiculous amount of resources in this expedition and they're going to need a miracle to recoup the losses.
The Instant Fortress is very effective but literally can only be repaired with Wish/Miracle is 55,000 GP making it the equivalent of 11,000 lifetimes of work.
In two items alone they have the economic endstate of an entire generation of a small city.
- Location
- Germany
Well, rich merchants do usually earn more than hundreds or thousands of common workers.
Nobody says wealth is distributed evenly in our realm.
- Location
- Australia
Yes but this is a single expedition not a web of diversified interests. (Edit: This is also life savings not a years wages, so times everything by ...10?)
If they were investing in a more traditional manner they'd be sending dozens of ships and many thousands of people. This is a colonisation size force.
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Someone crazy enough to make a well founded expedition to Sothoryos. That sort of thing would draw experienced adventurers like honey draws flies.
Great work @Crake, a very well organized and well founded expedition that still comes with lines like this:
"I am able to bring a partner, though that only aids in the efforts to keep the expedition from dying to looting the wrong cursed idol or agitating a colony of parasitic shapeshifters.
It brings across the danger of Sothoryos all the more chillingly how casually they speak of dangers they can only mitigate and not obviate. Even the beasts without a drop of magic in them are existential threats. The danger also helps underscore just how valuable the prize they are after is, what draws these disparate people to risk life, limb and probably soul in the jungles. In a way they are a microcosm of the empire itself, certainly representative of the spirit of the age.
tarrangar
Fat arctic chicken
We have never sacrificed a Shadow Dragon to Tiamat, we have sacrificed a Nightmare Dragon to her, but the Nightmare Dragon isn't shadow aspected.
Sound more like a Lawful Stupid all evil must die Paladin, there are some Paladins who interpret their mission, as meaning that they should slaughter anything that register as evil, regardless of whether or not said evil beings have ever gotten a choice in being evil.
Then there's the less stupid Paladins, who believe you should give people a chance at redemption, before indiscriminately killing them.
That's how a laborer should consider it now, they should be slowly getting more wealthy though, as our magic allow us to make just about every job more profitable, whether you're a farmer, who is getting access to steel tools and magic rituals to improve their yields sharply, a common crafter(non-magical), who get better tools and materials, and whose customers suddenly have more money to buy his wares, or any of the other mundane worksmen, who are all finding that saving up is becoming easier and easier.
We are entering a magical renaissance and beginning industrial age in the story, and that mean the standards of living are rising sharply, 50-100 IM is probably never becoming a trivial amount of money for a commoner, but a decade or two down the line, it will go from being the result of a commoner spending their whole life being a spendthrift, to being the result of a decade of a commoner being careful with his money.
All dragons start in that situation, or at least all Chromatics start in that situation(a few Metallic parents, might decide to gift their children small hoards to get them started) you are hatched with nothing but the scales on your back, and you set out to gather yourself a mighty fortune, that's how life is for a dragon, it's a very rare dragon, that has so much as a copper to their name on their day of birth.
Luckily hoarding instincts don't fully set in for the first few months, so you have time to gather your starter hoard, before your lack of gold drive to eat dwarves in your depression(there's no better way for a dragon to get drunk)
tarrangar
Fat arctic chicken
I have to ask, do you guys think it would be a good idea, to introduce a system where, the state add X IM to any inheritance, if the dead person put themselves down for being buried in the Fungus Forge?
I think we have enough trust built with our citizens, that they will accept that if we say it will do nothing to their soul, then it will do nothing to their souls, so I think we would get quite a few takers, and it wouldn't cost us much PR with our people.
I think we have enough trust built with our citizens, that they will accept that if we say it will do nothing to their soul, then it will do nothing to their souls, so I think we would get quite a few takers, and it wouldn't cost us much PR with our people.
- Location
- France
Why pay them when we can teach them as children that it's their civic duty, and produce propaganda pieces about Leshies healing the sick that wouldn't have existed if not for the Fungus Forge?
Why not do both?
tarrangar
Fat arctic chicken
Because that takes decades before it pay off, we don't want the young to sign up for this, we want the old to sign up for this, and while older people are also loyal, they aren't as easy to indoctrinate, which mean if we want them to donate their corpses when they die, we need to provide them some form of incentive.
Touting the virtues of what the Fungus Forge do, is of course also a good idea, we could make it, so half of all corpses donated by our citizens, are used for making healers, who will travel though the empire and help our citizens, and donating your corpse to the Fungus Forge when you die, mean the state add 5 IM to whatever you are leaving for your heirs.
But we want a tangible reward to be part of it, because we want old people who will die soon to donate their corpses, not young people who will die in 50 years or more, so they need to think donating their corpse will benefit what they care about, and that most of all are their heirs.
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- Location
- France
Wasting public money isn't great, even if we are rich.
Furthermore, paying them sets a precedent.
We're implying that dead bodies have monetary value, and that they deserve compensation for their use even once they're useless to them.
My main example here is French blood donations policy. In my country, you aren't paid for giving blood or plasma. It's culturally accepted as a thing you do for the good of all (and I do it every 6 weeks or whenever they set up drives near my home, like many people). It's a thing that doesn't cost you anything anyway, it's an easy altruistic act, and they'll give you a ton of snacks and positive feelings when you do it. The idea that they'd pay you for your blood or plasma (US system, AFAIK) is considered immoral.
This wasn't some obvious, natural development : it's the result of a government policy to shape public opinion and establish a cultural paradigm that favored charity instead of starting a blood market and establishing a precedent that will end up costing them a fortune. It still costs money to run (gotta pay the doctors, establish infrastructure, etc) but it's far, far cheaper than a payment system.
That's what I want to do with our funeral policies. A funeral isn't some obvious human right : it's a culturally-determined issue. Now I'm not advocating we make it mandatory (there are issues of basic dignity and individual choice, here) but there's no reason people shouldn't accept it as normal to set your body to rest under the tree, giving a final gift of healing to the community.
Then instead of having a grave (remembrance, family, etc) you have a memorial (or several! Maybe local ones? Something that counts the number and type of Healer Leshies produced by the community the memorial is in, that's updated regularly?) which isn't something unheard of IRL either. Graves are a symbol, an important place to families, but they didn't always exist everywhere. There are IRL cultures without Western-style graves, AFAIK, who make do with other symbols and tools of remembrance. We could make that happen for us too !
Note that the Tree of Lys itself shouldn't do as a memorial, because it's a religious altar and that's not great for the faithful of other Gods who we want to start giving their bodies to the Forge.
I'm fine with it taking decades to really pay off 100%. Let's not establish a fiscally unwise policy just because it brings us a short-term advantage!
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tarrangar
Fat arctic chicken
It's not really a fiscally unwise system, the dead bodies will probably have at least 2HD on average, that's 2/3 of a CR1 creature, that mean we get a CR1 creature for 7.5 IM, that's a great profit for the state, sure getting it for free would be an even greater profit, but I see no problem in rewarding good behavior.
The problem with the US system isn't that it pay for blood, it's that it charge so much for medical help.
A blood drive is part of health care, so if you have free health care it's inevitably running at a loss, the Fungus Forge isn't part of a free health care system, even if some of the beings created in it will be, so we will be turning a profit from those bodies, it's only fair the donaters get a part of that profit.
Aside from that I favor the compensating people for donating their bodies system, because it's a way for us to give the poorer people a little more money, while making a profit, 5 IM isn't going to matter to the rich, but for the poor, it will be a great way for an old person who didn't manage to save up anything, to still leave their children something.
Although we could start a separate blood drive system, as far as I know Human blood is a reagent, even if not a very expensive one, we could start a blood drive system, where you can donate 1-3 HP worth of blood to the Fungus Forge, this system is a repeatable thing instead of a one time donation, so I think running this system as a charity, would have much greater effect on spreading charity.
Before starting the blood drive system, I would of course want to know what the worth of blood as a reagent is, but it's clear that there's some worth to blood as a reagent, so I think it would be worth it to start such a system, the system should of course guarantee, that 100% of the blood go to creating healers for our citizens.
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- Location
- France
Found it !
There a two big Azema level-up plans, IMO :
- Just give her Cloistered Cleric levels. Lower BaB, 6+Int skill points per level, small benefits right now for medium benefits leter.
- Give her Chameleon levels. It's THE infiltrator PrC, it gives her better divine casting than if she just improved Cleric, it has 4+Int skill points, long-term it's significantly more powerful considering her racial HD will probably stop her from ever achieving more than level 14 (otherwise she'd have over 20 levels, and AFAIK we aren't using Epic rules here), in a few levels it lets her have divine casting AND arcane all at once (she'd basically be a level 12 Mystic Theurge with better skills and BaB) or divine AND trapfinding or something, and it's medium benefits right now for medium benefits later.
So you admit we'd we losing money. Good.
That is also a huge problem, yes. However I think that the "pay for blood" is also a problem and unwise policy decision. It means that it's perceived as a "poor people" thing to do, a thing you do out of desperation because you need quick cash. So while the poor and prisoners are more likely to give blood, the rich and middle classes are actually less likely to give blood AFAIK.
The Fungus Forge is the "supply" part of the healthcare system. And donators are getting part of that profit : they're getting free healthcare, aren't they? They're living in a more stable society, reaping the benefits of the Leshies in our institutions and armies, etc.
So choosing a Forge-burial is already improving the lives of their families and communities, but now we should pay them too?
Good in theory, but in practice this means that it's seen as a thing desperate and poor people do, thereby reducing total number of donations by disincentivising other social groups from doing it.
And if the poor desperately need money, that's why we have a welfare state, isn't it?
Furthermore this doesn't seem like a great way to enact welfare for the poor. On a structural level, it does a bad job of being proper help for the poor, it wastes money on the rich, and it has the negative social effects on the number of bodies we get that I mentioned earlier.
If the poor really need money/food/medical care/education/microcredit, we have policies and institutions for that already.
Literally what.
Don't get me wrong : this isn't a bad idea, and blood drives have genuine medical uses taht I'm sure our hospitals would like (unless healing magic replaces them all somehow). However, setting this up doesn't mitigate the problems of the "pay for bodies" issue at all!
Doing blood drives AND not paying people for corpses is good though. We'd need to set up proper infrastructure for both (supply and transport chains, etc) but they're good projects for later.
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Goldfish
Friendly Spider-Fish Abomination
- Location
- Formerly of the Far Realm
Instant Fortresses are not artifacts. Yes, they are difficult to repair, but they're also extremely difficult to damage. They're made out of Adamantine, so they have a Hardness of 20, meaning it will be rare for any creatures to be large and powerful enough to actually damage it. Sure, some of the biggest Dinosaurs can manage it, but if those are attacking the Instant Fortress, the expedition has other problems to deal with.
You're not really taking into account the amounts of money they stand to make, if they succeed. The venture seeks to not only harvest crafting reagents, but also to actively cultivate them as part of a long-term money making project. Just this month alone, we've used about 700,000 IM in crafting reagents, not even counting what was used for spell scrolls or Alchemy. If Baelon's people can get set up within a year and start supplying even a fraction of that per month, they will be rolling in cash.
You're not taking into account the conversion rate here.
1 IM equals 5 D&D gold, so that hypothetical 100 IM would be 500 gp in your example.
There is also a massive gap between the common people and the wealthy on Planetos. Using the average life savings of a peasant or unskilled laborer isn't a good metric at all. It's not much different than comparing the average lifetime savings of someone making minimum wage versus the cost of an F-16 fighter jet. Governments and rich people have different standards.
I don't know what Baelon paid for his Glass Golem, but it was heavily implied that he exchanged major favors to even make it possible. We pay 9867 IM each, which is a 50% markup on the normal 6,600 purchase cost for a traditionally crafted Glass Golem (3300 IM to craft in that manner). The Glassmakers Guild uses special rituals to craft their Golems, though, which have different costs and requirements (namely much lower level casters), so it's safe to assume we're being charged regular markup instead of an extra +50%, which means their crafting price is probably 4933.5 IM. Either way, whether Baelon got a discount for his favors or merely the opportunity to buy, he only paid between 5000 and 10,000 IM. Huge sums of money for a commoner, of course, but nothing in the grand scheme of things.
tarrangar
Fat arctic chicken
I admit that we would get a smaller long term profit, in return for a bigger short term profit, but personally I believe we need more short term profits, more than we need long term profits.
We have a great deal of long term profits prepared already, the Fire Whale gem harvesting for example, stand to make us Hundreds of millions of IM each month, if some day all Fire Whales join in on it, there's estimated to be around a million Fire Whales living in the sea of oil, the average amount of gems a fire whale produce is worth 700 IM, that mean if all Fire whales join, that industry will produce an average of 700 million IM per month, of course the Fire Whales will get their cut, but that still leaves us with a profit in the hundreds of millions.
We have other projects, that will eventually grow into gaining us obscene amounts of money, but they generally are going to be long in working, which mean we need short term profits more than long term profits.
So with that in mind, I think it's better to have a tangible and easily understood benefit of donating your corpse, sure in the long run it will reduce our income, but in the shorter terms it will increase our income, and we need money now, more than we need money in 20 years.
Vote closed.