[Fantasy, LT] To Outfit a Knight

[ShdwWolf7]

Originally Posted by ErhnamDJ

That's not the way it works. Those people are the rulers. They have political might backing them up. It doesn't matter whether they trust the knight or the baron or the duke or the king. Those people are in charge because they have the force of arms to back it up. If we're assuming a quasi-medieval feudal-type society, then we're already assuming the parts that make this possible.

So who's in charge in this world, the noble or the mages? My assumtions are based on the nobles ruling, with the mages using magick for profit. This creates two forces, one of which is smaller, with more individual quantifiable power (and yes, in a magickal world, magick is as quantifiable as a sword), the other is slightly larger, with the less quantifiable power of political power. Yes, nobles were in charge because thay had the might. How many fell when their subjects, whether lesser nobles or commoners, got fed up?
And what kind of society are you proposing? In your hypothesis, it must be the mages in power, enslaving everyone who works for them, and letting their magickally-held slaves control the rest. Human nature CHAFES at slavery! Eventually, the slaves will fight back. If only one percent of the population is a free-thinking mage, not a magically bound slave, and even if another five percent (the "ruling class") is the magickally bound slaves, 94 to 6 (just under 6-1) is still nasty odds, especially given that people this nasty probably won't work together, at least well...
Not a bad world, though. The Heroic PCs gather together the Rebellion to overthrow the Evil Mages enslaving the world, nation, whatever...

[ErhnamDJ]

Originally Posted by ShdwWolf7

So who's in charge in this world, the noble or the mages?

The nobles, obviously.

To be a successful ruler, you need to spend a considerable amount of time learning how to do boring ruling stuff. Area Knowledge, Strategy, Public Speaking, Diplomacy, Finance, Law, and so on. That stuff takes a long time to learn and master. But, unfortunately for the mages, so does learning magic.

Those mages already have to take the equivalent of a triple doctorate to even cast useful spells. There's no way they're going to be able to put in the effort to also become effective rulers as well.

Division of labor, man. The best use of a wizard's time is casting spells, not ruling or learning to rule.

And we can't assume that these mages have a high IQ. That's important to keep in mind. The guy born with Magery 3 is most likely going to have IQ 9, 10, or 11. It's going to take him an incredible amount of work to get his spellcasting going. He's going to have to focus on one spell and spend years getting its prerequisites and then finally getting it up to skill fifteen so he can get that amazing discount. He wouldn't have time for ruling. All his time is going to be spent casting spells or enchanting spells. These mages are expensive capital goods. They require a pretty extreme investment to become useful. That's why they're so easily controlled. It's not like someone wakes up knowing the more powerful spells. The prerequisite system ensures that these people can be controlled through political means.

Now, nothing stops a large portion of the ruling class from being magicians. The favored sons (and daughters) are the ones born with Magery. There's nothing stopping kings and dukes from having thousands of children and then only caring about the ones born with Magery. Or they can adopt the children born with Magery. Familial bonds are strong. This has a lot of advantages. It aligns the ruler's interests with the mage's. Or it could be done through marriage. The king might have a lot of wives who are mages, or something like that.

Assuming you don't just have the royalty directing those mind control spells on his subjects. The Geas can be that they have to be loyal to the king. And they can have false memories of his glory, or whatever.

What we would really need to do is go through the whole spell list and prune the spells that destroy the world. Maybe I'll start a new thread for that.

And what kind of society are you proposing? In your hypothesis, it must be the mages in power, enslaving everyone who works for them, and letting their magickally-held slaves control the rest.

Not really. The mages have the physical power, but they're controlled by their rulers.

Human nature CHAFES at slavery! Eventually, the slaves will fight back.

Not with spells like Great Geas, Loyalty, and False Memory.

[Godogma]

Yeah EDJ, I'm certainly very glad that Kal and I don't have to use ANY of your assumptions to run games.

None of them have ever come up and we've quite happily been running HIGH fantasy games as best as we could with GURPS Magic for years.

[ErhnamDJ]

Originally Posted by Godogma

Yeah EDJ, I'm certainly very glad that Kal and I don't have to use ANY of your assumptions to run games.

What I'm doing is trying to apply the understanding of the spells I got from playing DF (where I allowed all the spells and the players tried to use them as effectively as possible) to a setting where not everyone can get Magery, and where there's no correlation at all between someone's IQ and their level of Magery.

You're just not going to end up with your Aristotle being accidentally born with Magery 3. That's so incredibly unlikely to happen that I think it's best to assume that those people are born with IQ scores in the normal range.

None of them have ever come up and we've quite happily been running HIGH fantasy games as best as we could with GURPS Magic for years.

I don't know the specifics of your games. But in DF with the players trying to exploit the spells like real people would, the effects are comical. Even if you turn the power dial way down, it's still not going to resemble high fantasy.

Look at these spells like they're technologies. They'll have more effect on society than the existence of atomic bombs or radio or television or the internet.

If you want them to have those spells and still look like they're TL 3, then there has to be something acting as a limiting factor on those spells. You have to have for magic what Banestorm has for technology. Or you're going to be TL 12^.

[Godogma]

Spells aren't technology levels, and the idea behind gaming is to get enjoyment out of doing so. Unless people abuse the spells system to try and break the game (the proper advantages do it all too easily in any case) the GM doesn't need to come up with your TL based on magic crap.

I certainly doubt based on your assumptions on how fantasy knights should work and the stuff you've been spouting in the thread that anyone would enjoy playing a fantasy game with you.

The quickest fix to stop all that crap is... Halt Aging doesn't work and Youth exists but only at the behest of the gods or as a legendary spell - if you want it go find it or try to find it.

Great Geas doesn't exist or happens only at the behest of the gods if you **** them off... (Defiling temples etc)

A few simple spell removals and then none of your assumptions ever show up.

[ErhnamDJ]

Originally Posted by Godogma

Unless people abuse the spells system to try and break the game (the proper advantages do it all too easily in any case) the GM doesn't need to come up with your TL based on magic crap.

I certainly doubt based on your assumptions on how fantasy knights should work and the stuff you've been spouting in the thread that anyone would enjoy playing a fantasy game with you.

I'm not talking about running a game with these assumptions. I'm pointing out the consequences of assuming that all these spells and magic items exist.

The quickest fix to stop all that crap is... Halt Aging doesn't work and Youth exists but only at the behest of the gods or as a legendary spell - if you want it go find it or try to find it.

Yeah. Those are the first ones I'd get rid of. I'm pretty sure the next thing I would ditch is the Power enchantment.

Great Geas doesn't exist or happens only at the behest of the gods if you **** them off... (Defiling temples etc)

I don't like mixing in deities, since that seems like nothing more than GM fiat (while still allowing for the possibility of abuse). Rather than do that, I would just not allow those spells.

[Sunrunners_Fire]

Originally Posted by ErhnamDJ

I'm not talking about running a game with these assumptions. I'm pointing out the consequences of assuming that all these spells and magic items exist.

... while not actually answering the question asked by the thread. The poster didn't ask for an analysis of its' chosen parameters. It asked for a gear loadout within those parameters.

[ErhnamDJ]

Originally Posted by Sunrunners_Fire

... while not actually answering the question asked by the thread. The poster didn't ask for an analysis of its' chosen parameters. It asked for a gear loadout within those parameters.

All right. What's most important to a knight? The ability to communicate over long distances.

He's going to want a hat of Communication. $16,000. That's usable only by mages, which are one person in fifty. That particular item is so incredibly powerful that its existence means I'm going to assume that all knights are mages. No one would dare go to war without one of these things, or something similar. You just make sure that your one person in fifty is trained for combat, however you want to do that.

That gets us part of the way to WWII combat. Next we need either stormtroopers, a tank, or a fighter plane. Body of Wind or Body of Metal would be best, but we can't afford those. What's the closest we can get on $184,000? A Flying Carpet takes two thousand energy. Let's go with that. It has none of the weaknesses of a horse and can, in fact, be made in the shape of a horse.

Let's say a big Essential Steel Flying carpet horse costs, what, sixty grand?

That drops us to $124,000. Now we need personal defense and we need offense. We need to be able to survive metabolic hazards and spells (including Mystic Mist) and we need to be able to detect invisible foes and illusions.

I almost think it would be worthwhile to get an item of Sense Danger with Power 3 for $48,000.

For defenses, we'll go with an item of Missile Shield with Power 2 for $28,000, bringing us down to $96,000. And we need some armor. Mail and Plates plus a nice helmet. Call it three grand, plus enchantments (which I don't care to figure, since they're not going to matter). For additional defense, we'll take an item of Illusion Disguise for another three grand. I'll say that with the enchantments on the armor that drops us to $50,000 remaining.

The big problem with finding an offensive ability is that those items cost considerably more than the defensive ones, but their existence invalidates just about everything else. Our guy would be insanely powerful with a fully enchanted Concussion item. But he can't afford it. I'm pretty sure Skull-Spirit is the best we can get, but it costs twenty energy. They only cost $40 each, though. You can buy some wands of Lend Energy for your buddies and cast a ton of Skull-Spirits. That's pretty cheap. So I'll assume there are common countermeasures that make that tactic undesirable.

I don't know what kind of offensive abilities to go with. It might be best to ram things with the bronze flying horse. I'd probably spend most of the money on making that thing as heavy as possible. Put like a plow on the front or something. The offensive abilities are much less powerful than the defensive ones. I just looked through the entire book and I'm not seeing anything. If it weren't for Missile Shield, we'd have a lot to work with. I guess that's another one to get rid of.

Edit:

Thinking about this, I think it makes the most sense to make enchanters Multimillionaire 2 and to multiply the prices of all the magic items by two thousand. Then that flying motorcycle costs eighty million dollars instead of forty thousand. Then Crassus can still afford it, but not every knight on the planet has a barn full of the things.

[Godogma]

Or for those of us who actually like high magic games and think the prices on magic items are a little off already in the too high spectrum and rather limited to boot who came to this system from things like AD&D and Pathfinder and actually prefer high fantasy (which involves lots of magic) to low fantasy (which generally only involves magic in the hands of the badguys/the occasional npc sage or something)...

We can just ignore your assumptions and play the game how we like.

Personally I dislike the class and level system of the other games and though I dislike the GURPS Magic book and think it needs serious revision I don't think that as soon as you include it you have to completely skew your game world one way or the other like you do.

Since you obviously dislike the idea of magic and knights and castles and dragons and stuff all being in the same place why don't you just give it a rest?

MOST People like playing games to have fun; not modeling economies or trying for ultra realism.

[ErhnamDJ]

Originally Posted by Godogma

Since you obviously dislike the idea of magic and knights and castles and dragons and stuff all being in the same place why don't you just give it a rest?

That's not what I dislike. I dislike everyone having the magical item equivalent of cellular telephones while flying around in Flying Carpet helicopters. That's not knights and castles any more. A flying carpet costs the same as a Prius. And it doesn't use any fuel or deteriorate over time. That destroys the world.

You don't have anything medieval there. The game turns into fantasy Vietnam. I have run fantasy Vietnam. If that's what you want, then that's fine, and that's what you'll get if you allow those spells and at those prices.

I seriously doubt there's any price for something like Communication that won't destroy a TL 3 world. You can't give that thing to Genghis Khan and still end up with a world that has knights and castles.

MOST People like playing games to have fun; not modeling economies or trying for ultra realism.

And then what happens when the players start using these spells. Then they start destroying the world. I've seen it happen. If they're the only ones using these high-tech equivalents, then they can run roughshod over the world. And if everyone is using them, then the world doesn't look like a medieval fantasy world. It looks like something very different.