What does Veeky Forums think about Tippyverse?

What is the “Tippyverse”?
At it’s most basic the Tippyverse is nothing more than a setting where the D&D 3.5 rules as written are largely taken at face value and as the basic rules for a world. More specifically, the existence of magic and magic items is integrated into the setting from the start and not tacked on.

Basic postulates:
1. Epic Magic does not exist, it’s way too game breaking to try to make any setting that can work with it.
2. The deities are mostly silent
3. Everything else is pretty much as RAW (excluding some of the truly screwy things like drowning resurrections)

D&D is a setting where there are no large scale defenses against teleportation magic. It is impossible to prevent an enemy from dropping his entire military right into the middle of your nation with teleportation circles whenever he chooses to do so. The only viable way to defend yourself is to concentrate all of your vital military infrastructure in a relatively small area and concentrate your forces on that area; meaning that you will always have forces on hand to deal with a potential enemy attack. The traditional D&D towns and villages simply can’t be defended because your enemies can drop thousands of troops into them in under a minute and then evacuate back out the next minute.
The concentration of vital government and military infrastructure in a single location is going to naturally lead to trade and other economic activity being focused on that area (large population usually paid in cash, very high security). This concentration of people is going to open the City up to attacks on their food supply, fortunately this problem can be solved by Create Food and Water traps.

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Teleporation Circles will be set up between the City and fellow Cities simply because they are the only remotely safe and cost effective way to rapidly move goods between the cities. Who is going to ship goods by boat when TC’s are faster, cheaper, and safer? Or by wagon train? The fact that TC’s are point to point and have fixed points is going to eliminate the various small villages and towns that tend to dot the path between Cities both in real life and in more traditional D&D settings. The high initial investment of a permanent teleportation circle is also going to ensure that they are only set up between locations that can make them profitable within a relatively short period of time, which eliminates most of the smaller cities and villages as well.
All of this combines to create a self reinforcing cycle that concentrates the vast majority of the worlds population in cities that are linked to each other by teleportation circles, fed by create food and water traps (as farms can’t be defended effectively), and require large standing armies for defense.
You are quickly left with the large cities (most on par with the likes of Sharn, or even larger, in terms of population) that hold upwards of 99% of the worlds non monstrous population and cover (maybe) one percent of the worlds surface and the Wilds between the cities that are filled with the denizens of the various Monster Manuals. The Wilds are also where you will find the small villages and thorps of more traditional D&D, where the population is constantly threatened by monsters, rarely exceeds level 5, rarely sees magic, and is basically subsistence level.

The massive concentration of population and trade in the various cities (I recommend between a dozen and a hundred cities in the average Tippyverse world) is naturally going to lead to a concentration of wealth and knowledge. Securing that wealth requires a military force that can stand off the strongest of attacks and deal with even high level adventurers. The traditional Tippyverse tends to make use of armies of Shadesteel Golems and Warforged for defense, usually with Wizard officers. This kind of military force becomes necessary to defend a City from other Cities and the various powerful denizens of the Wilds, but it also has the side effect of making the initial investment required to defend a city quite high.
Depending on the DM’s decision a City can be everything from a post-scarcity world populated by various spell traps where even Death is a rarity to a relatively normal D&D city. What the cities are is a location for high level political intrigue, high level adventuring, and of high magic. When the cities Guards are Shadesteel Golems led by level 10-15 casters with invisible Warforged scouts linked with Permanent Telepathic bonds flying overhead and hanging out on every street corner, adventurers will not get away with all of the various shenanigans that they can in more traditional D&D
Cities are usually ruled by a council made up of the strongest casters in the city. After all, might does make right in D&D and wars between high level casters tend to end badly for everyone involved making the co-opting of new individuals on this power level a necessity (and those that won‘t play ball get ganged up on by every other high level caster in the City).
Over time cities will fall (be it from the attack of an enemy city, a flight of dragons, a civil war between it’s leadership, natural disaster, or whatever else the cause) and others will rise to replace them. New cities are rarities but they do occur (about as often as cities fall).

The Wilds are the area between cities. Here is where you will find everything from dungeons to Orc armies to small farming towns. The Wilds are a Death World by most standards and most individuals will have a hard time eking out an existence. Magic is rare and largely limited to Sorcerers, Warlocks, Druids, and similar classes. Most individuals are low level and it’s rare to find a PC class.
The Wilds are where you will find most of the more traditional D&D quests occurring (dungeon crawling in the ruins of fallen cities, clearing out various monsters, rescuing the mayors daughter, etc.). You will also find a few “barbarian” kingdoms out here (more traditional D&D kingdoms) where the very lack of high level magic (as those capable of casting it migrate to the cities) keeps the kingdom from reaching that singularity point.

I've heard about tippyverse a lot back in my giantitp days. It opened my eyes on just how much does 3.5 suck.

It's not really 3.5 specific, so much as it is an example of the dramatic impact magic has on a world where can beats can't.

3.5 is the only system I can think of, where such crazy disparity exists and it isn't completely intentional, like in Exalted or Ars Magica.

In any setting with martial/caster parity, can-beats-can't, and high power levels you just get tippyverse but the high level shankpeople are pulling the same shit as the high level spellpeople. It's got nothing to do with 3.5's shit class balance.

It's a thought experiement, not a setting. That's fine, I like thought experiments. I can see how "given these crazy-ass rules, what kind of society would emerge?" is a fun question to toss around. But I wouldn't try to run a game set there.

It's fucking retarded

You have made a claim! Great!
Please now provide arguments to support your claim, such as disproving OP's example.

It's what happens when you go full autist and weaponize autism.

Tippy's an egotistical cunt who thinks he's oh so clever for noticing that D&D's settings don't mesh well with the rules, so he tries to make a superior, rational setting. Except he then ignores aspects he doesn't like about the setting, like "the vast majority of the populace have only a few levels in NPC classes", "there's only a handful of actual high-level casters and most don't give a shit about the general populace" and "gods actually do stuff".

I'd not hesitate to call him the progenitor of the modern "rational fiction" phenomenon, like that crazy technocultist who wrote a shitty Harry Potter fanfic (and banned discussion of the robodevil because knowing about it meant it would torture simulations of you in the future).

Elizier Yudkowsky is who you're thinking of with that second example.

And yes, Tippy is an ignoramus.

"I broke something broken aren't I clever?! Dohohohoho!"

My I first saw the Tippyverse and discovered that it ignored the actual rules on NPC spellcaster populations and levels, then declared that it could make infinite food because "ain't no rule against it" despite food creation items already existing, I turned around and decided I never really wanted to look at it again.

If there's more to it than immediately defeating its own premise, I'm not too interested.

Can you have a Tippyverse in version 5? What would be the differences?

An infinite trap of Create Food and Water isn't against the rules.

It's against the rules when you consider that magic item crafting rules (which would, in my opinion, cover magic traps as well) explicitly state that magic items that already exist should not be outdone by magic items that are crafted by players (no rings of free action true strike, when it'd be cheaper than +5 weapons).

>(which would, in my opinion, cover magic traps as well)
Well, that's the thing, they don't.

The entire point of the Tippyverse is that it is all legal by RAW. By RAW traps aren't covered by those rules, which is why it works.

Tippy has said that his verse requires the Gods not to directly interfere. Active Gods would put a stop to his verse pretty quickly.

Neither is mages getting assraped by every god of magic simultaneously the moment they cast demiplane, but you don't see charoppers react too well to this argument when they insist their autistic, less than fluent understanding of english interpretation of the rules is DAH RAW.

>my setting can only exist if you ignore the surefire thing that can shut it down that also happens to be omnipresent

>but you don't see charoppers react too well to this argument
Because it's fucking stupid and has less than nothing to do with the rules.

Incidentally I'd bet money that most of those charoppers have a better command of the rules than you.

There's no rules for triggering divine intervention, so it has no place in the Tippyverse.

>The parts of the rules I don't like are just fluff
Nah

There are no rules against divine intervention and quite a few statements that indicate otherwise about the lack of divine intervention.

You're making assumptions about what gods do that don't hold true in all settings. Go read Eberron you fucking retard.

All of the rules I've seen boil down to "Gods do stuff when the DM decides they do" nothing explicit.

Of course tippyverse and a lot of other theorymancy is entirely white room nonsense that assumes a DM isn't present, since rule 0 is too much of a threat to the nerd power fantasy.

What does that have to do with anything he posted? Oh wait, absolutely nothing, you're just shitposting because mad.

I run a game set in Tippyverse, and I can assure you that it runs exactly like any other D&D game.
The only difference is that the players are extremely afraid of everything in the big cities so they don't go about doing shit... but once they're in the wild kingdoms, ALL THE IMAGINABLE SHIT GETS DONE.

Disgusting name, 3.pf is god damn utter garbage, basically exemplifies the most autistic parts of that trash game DnD.

Tippyverse is a thought experiment, nobody had ever claimed otherwise. I'm not sure why you're so triggered by it

Because mechanics and anything even remotely resembling discussion of them trigger him to start shitposting.

Tippyverse just /sounds/ autistic, even setting aside all the genuine autism that goes into it.

Well it's from the OotS forums, autism is a given

Tippyverse is impossible in 5e.

Post-Tippyverse, sifting the broken ruins of the few actual cities and forming petty kingdoms against the predations of other warlords, would be a pretty fun setting to play.

How does this setting deal with infinite Wish loops?

It accounts for them, in a way. Since the most expensive magic item you can get is limited with wish, only magic items that are worth more have any "real" worth in the setting, IIRC.

But you can wish for infinite GP by accumulating consecutive wishes. There'd be no possible economy.

Yes. That's what I mean. GP, and every item with value under that of whish's max is worthless.

And what do you buy with infinite gold, if anyone and everyone has all the magic items worth less than 25k?
Gold has no inherent value, except in very specialized cases, in this scenario. If I recall correctly, anything worth more than 25k becomes a favor trading situation rather than a buying situation.

What favors can you purchase? There are exceedingly few mortals that could perform any service better than an arbitrary quantity of Solars.

"Go to the elemental plane of earth, get me a few dozen diamonds worth more than 25k so my cleric buddy has some in stock for when he needs to resurrect someone.
The Dao won't deal with anyone but mortals after the last "Unhinged Solar who had been repeatedly bound by less than good caster to do less than good deeds" went on a rampage."

Holy fucking shit you're retarded
>Well it's not RAW but it's not the way -I- would run D&D therefore it's wrong.

Though you have a point for 5e because the rules are explicit about it assuming the gods are active in the setting.

I thought we just established that 25000 GP is the precise value of worthlessness. 25000 GP diamonds, the material component of True Resurrection, is an obvious thing to Wish for.
In fact there's pretty much nothing worth anything in this universe. Nearly everything can be crafted by Gating in an appropriate crafter and supplying them with arbitrary crafting materials, or is already worth less than 25000 GP.
This universe seems meaningless.

Question: what is a Create Food and Water *trap?* I'm only vaguely familiar with spell traps from PF, and I'm not sure how you can make a spell trap that is self-resetting and infinitely reusable.

Are you slow? Each diamond is worth more than 25k, because prestige.
"No, I wasn't resurrected by a simple wish diamond. I was resurrected by a gemstone not created by magic, that couldn't have been created by wish!"

Exactly what it sounds like. Automatic resets imply infinite usability, and there's nothing actually stopping you from making an auto-resetting magic trap that uses non-offensive spells.

You can't, it's just that tippyverse essentially requires on player fiat "nothing in the rules says you can't", because there's no rules for it in the first place.

It's a big part of a lot of the stupider theorycrafting, it's why shit like pun-pun requires cheating to even be doable in the first place (sorry "claiming that there's no rule that my character can't know about this impossibly rare creature")

d20srd.org/srd/traps.htm
At the bottom of the page are the rules for trap making.

That is pointlessly dull.

Yes you can.

Your opinion has been heard and ignored.

>infinite wish loops allowed
All planes collapse in on themselves as two people try to summon more Solars than the other

By the same measurement, you can believe that the moon is made of cheese.

>alarm specifically called out as a possible spell that can be used for crafting a trap as it would be free
>no guys trust me you can only use spells that are meant for combat i know what I'm talking about

>Alarm is listed as an example
>therefore the devs obviously meant create food and water too
You are functionally retarded if you can't tell the difference.

The point is that the trap-making rules are open-ended you retarded ape

Is "lacks awareness of the no limits fallacy" a common symptom of autism? Just asking questions there.

Have you ever considered taking a step away from your computer, going outside, and sticking your head in a body of water until you begin to lose consciousness?
Because I'm very certain it would be a transformative experience for you.

No limits fallacy isn't just not a fallacy, it doesn't even begin to apply to what I posted. There are straight up no stated or implied limits on the spells you can use for a trap, and even if I did accept your retarded, pulled out of your ass limitations, WotC explicitly printed a helpful trap variant in Dungeonscape. Fuck off.

>d20srd.org/srd/traps.htm
No Reset: Short of completely rebuilding the trap, there’s no way to trigger it more than once. Spell traps have no reset element.

Oh, but then there are magic *device* traps, and they can reset automatically. But I'm not sure a trap of Create Food and Water would actually be significantly cheaper than a wondrous item that Creates Food and Water at-will.

>Spell traps have no reset element.
Not true, the spell trap rules at the bottom are in addition to the normal trap rules. You can see that from looking at most example spell traps, like the Fireball trap.

>traps not covered by RAW

The fuck they aren't. They're on some page in the DMG.

Nevermind, just noticed that, but magic device traps are pretty much the assumed default anyways so it's not exactly a game changer.

You also can't take off with some dude's magic trap of Create Food and Water, which isn't something you can say of a pair of boots or a rod that does it infinitely.

You absolutely can according to the rules create a trap that do all this. The rules state how to craft the trap, the required material for the trap, and the DC to create the trap.

If you are saying that we can only do things that have mechanical precedent then the only traps, items, and spells that are allowed to be used are the ones in the books, and the rules used to create new ones, in the same books, are null and void then. Either you can have the ability to create new things in a system or you can't. D&D allows a player/DM to create new items in the world using game mechanics. So yes you can create food and water traps.

The point is not what should be allowed, but what is allowed. As pointed out, the trap construction rules are open ended allowing a person to create a trap of create food and water, whether or not that is the developers intention is not what is being debated. Remember the Tippyverse is theory optimization taken to it's most logical, extreme, and autistic conclusion. It's a dumb fucking universe but it runs on RAW and you are saying that RAW shouldn't work in a universe that runs on RAW rather than RAI. So if your point is that the Tippyverse is autistic and retarded you are correct it is, if your point is that these things that happen in the Tippyverse are mechanical impossible according to the rules, then you are wrong. And if your point was to bait me and get a (You) then you also did that.

It's actually a good point that you can't steal a trap of Create Food and Water, but you can deliberately make inconvenient wondrous items that, say, weigh several hundred pounds or more.

There's actually a town that shows up in Pathfinder's Giant Slayer adventure path, that has a magic item that creates rations in case the town come sunder siege, and it weighs several tons to prevent it from being looted.

>no large scale defenses against teleportation magic
Mass-produced dimensional locks?

Everytime this comes up I ask where is this large supply of high level spell casters coming from, and I never get a good answer.

The setting should've been destroyed long ago by the very first person to establish an infinite wish loop, who would kill everyone else before information managed to spread.

Have you seen the rules to generate cities in 3.5? That shit spits out level 20 commoners.

Where do you get any high level Player Classes from?
I'm confused by your question.

The best and most sensible settings and best systems have limits on magic, such as zero resurrection and no teleportation (except maybe through special gates).

>who would kill everyone else before information managed to spread.

What if he was not a psychopath?

What if he didn't do it alone?

If nobody lives outside of the cities where the fuck do all the resources come from? Do they conjure all the wood and stone and gold? You actually need materials to cast all the spells he takes for granted.

Also shadesteel golems and warforged would be exponentially more expensive than an army of angels.

In this world what makes "extraordinary abilities" work? The rules state that they are are nonmagical, though they may break the laws of physics. They aren't divine or psionic either so how do they happen?

>level 20 commoners
>casting spells

Depending on the setting, training.

The point is that it generates a bunch of other high level guys, too.

how do you train to break the laws of physics without magic?

If wish loops are a thing why would you need trade at all? It's a post scarcity world at that point.

Since real life caps at 6th, rather easily.

But that doesn't really explain what makes it possible does it? like how do dwarves see without a light source?

You do realize that physics in fantasy worlds don't work off of real world physics, right?

well they mostly do, with discrepancies mostly explained by gods or magic. Even so surely when they say break the laws of physic they would imply the laws of the world the action takes place in? I know it's mostly just semantics, but if you take the rules at face value it could have some weird implications.

Actually, why would you need warfare? What are you killing each other over? It's not like they have something you don't. If you say it's not based on competition for resources, why risk mutually assured destruction (which is definitely what this scenario is)?

Weirder than a person being able to create a perfectly square area of fire on command between 3 to 6 times a day?

Fabricate traps, or in the event where you specifically need raw materials that Fabricate can't handle, True Creation traps. Material components aren't actually taken into account in magic device traps beyond creation, so you pretty much pay the cost to make the trap and it keeps spitting out whatever you wanted it to make when you created it.

Ok weird may be the wrong word, but magic is magic. Extraordinary abilities represents a number of loop-holes in the very fabric of reality that you can apparently exploit via training. one would think that the laws of physics would have to be amended to account for these instances and yet it is not. This leads to the implication that whatever allows for these extraordinary abilities could overcome anything given sufficient training. Maybe this is why player characters are limited to 20 levels as any more would risk tearing reality asunder.

I don't know but apparently this entire setting is supposed to be people living in fortified cities to avoid teleporting armies except what they'd really be doing was living in the kill zone between two armies of teleporting robots. The one place in the tippyverse where you're guaranteed not to be attacked by teleporting robots is the wilderness. So the premise of war as he views it is fucking stupid.

Which is a nice claim that you are going to prove with mountains of evidence of course.

The reason people reject this setting is it is rational and promotes reasoned invention. In a dumbed down modernity that lauds mediocrity and derides ambition, the idea of someone imagining an alternative is terrifying.

Just the $0.02 of one of the few who recalls what once was, and mourns what has been lost.

Sounds like a shitty setting desu

>Maybe this is why player characters are limited to 20 levels
They are not limited to 20 levels, though.
That's wrong.

How do levels come about in D&D? Presumably people are born without any class levels (except for maybe classes like Sorceror) and will never get any class levels unless they do something about it. What is that something? I always assumed that if a person goes through training or whatnot they get a class, or something along those lines. If somebody fights a bunch of deadly things they'll eventually pick up a level in fighter, or at least warrior or something.

The reason I ask this is because the Tippyverse says the wilderness doesn't have high level people. This seems strange to me because if you primarily get experience by adventuring (ie fighting, looting, questing) then wouldn't most high level people only attain the amount of experience they need by doing stuff in the wilderness?

If every small village is consistently accosted by dangerous beasts then wouldn't their town guards gain experience for repelling them and get tougher over time?

well for any single class you are or am i misremembering somehow?

Agreed, same with wishes.

...I think you should stop posting about things you are completely unaware of.
Epic Level rules, idiot.