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[MrRoboto75]

the big problem is the afterlife is awesome

[sambojin]

It works for d&d style game-worlds, but there's plenty of others where the afterlife isn't as concretely good/bad/divine, and people get resurrected in them all the time.

From a societal standpoint, it's heartbreaking for the ones that aren't ressed, yet didn't necessarily have a better or worse place to go, due to their deeds in life. Or if there is, heaven sometimes has a hero/lvl cap, where you have to be really damn good to not just become a part of some wibbly wobbly "nice" thingamajig. So having another crack at not only becoming "good soul slushie" would be worthwhile.

Heroes get constellations. Peasants get, ummmm, nice stuff?

And if there's just nothing after, or nothing worthwhile not living for, wouldn't you want to remain living? Especially if the only chance of paradise you have, is in the place you live, with death simply being a finality of existence unless you're resurrected.

Worthwhile another crack at it if you could be ressed, imo. Constellations, floating to the top of the slushie, or a "heaven on earth" for the effort. Especially when some are being ressed, and some not, you'd revolve your life around being one of the "haves", rather than the "dead".


Even from the D&D perspective (a horribly broken and stupid gameworld, but simply well known), a low level druid can feed plenty of people with goodberries. You literally shouldn't be able to have a story of starvation in the game world. Yet the peasants still toil in their fields, and sometimes starve due to famines, instead of having a quality of life unsurpassed. And they work, live and die, all while the uncaring deities, magicians and kings look on and ponder whether resurrection is "right for them". All things considered, a horribly dystopian world, and any afterlife world look better to a peasant, knowing what they could come back to. Or even a cessation of existence as a reasonable blessing for their toils.

[Mephisto]

Even from the D&D perspective (a horribly broken and stupid gameworld, but simply well known), a low level druid can feed plenty of people with goodberries. You literally shouldn't be able to have a story of starvation in the game world.

Most people are commoners. There's literally nothing to back this up besides "I did some research" but I've heard things to that effect so I'm assuming it's somewhat true. So now you've got one druid per hundred villagers. Keeping in mind the higher levels are much rarer than lower levels, let's be super generous and say a small village of 100 people has a level 10 druid. That comes out to 16 slots a day for goodberry and nothing else. That, in turn, gets us between 32 and 64 goodberries a day. And now the starvation rules begin to take effect.

This is, of course, ignoring the elephant in the room - how did the druid get to 10th level if all this particular individual did was hang around the village casting goodberry all day?

[Fniff]

Maybe he had his adventures then retired to his home village to feed the peasants.

[Criptfeind]

The DMG actually has guide lines for demographics based on class and town size. It's some pretty interesting stuff, and although of course one doesn't actually use it alone when making towns, it at least can help with some conceptual understanding of the spread of power and how the  D&D economy works. Suffice to say, it makes a lot more sense (with a pretty glaring exception for small towns having a chance to spawn a massively op druid) then a lot of people seem to think. The book points out that the typical hamlet has only a single level 1 druid, who's also the only character capable of creating food. They can probably cast two good berries a day, getting 4d4 meals, enough to feed about 1.5%(assume 3 meals a day, which in retrospect is a bit of an assumption for peasants.) of the population. So. Yes. Farming is still a thing in most cases.

[sambojin]

Unless you're running 5th edition, where good berries are a flat 10 berries per cast. They also feed you all day.

So a first level druid is happily taking care of the needs of 20 people a day (including himself), which is a reasonable portion of a 100 member village. At second level it's 30 people, and maybe 40 if you're a land druid. The village can have an awesome hunter/livestock protector if he happens to be a moon druid instead. They also tend to come with the guidance cantrip, which makes anyone better at any skill, giving yokels a better chance at not being stupid or incompetent. He can also tell you what the weather will be like that day, which is handy for a farming village to know, or insta-bloom many crops, even if it would take a while for an entire field to be done, with his Druidcraft cantrip.

If you want to be generous and give the village a lvl3 land druid, he can feed 80 people by himself. That's a pretty good chunk of the population, and lvl3 people aren't entirely uncommon (though it's unlikely that every village has one). I could make up some decent multi-classed variations that could pump this figure up higher, or have other benefits, but a lvl1 druid is still feeding 20% of the population by himself, while doing other druidy things for them too. And 5th is the most recent edition, so I'm using that as source, even if 3.5ed is more popular.

A tenth level "oddity" could feed 150 people, 200 if he was a land druid, or make the land more fertile in general as well. At great need, that's two entire hamlets taken care of, within a few minutes. If you want to be even more generous, multiclass him with lvls of sorcerer, and the font makes those numbers skyrocket. But you don't really need to. A lvl1 druid is fine for the sake of the argument.


At worst, not everyone starves. At best, the relief on the food stores of the community makes farming easier or more profitable (or more taxable I guess). Or those 20 people can occupy themselves in entirely different trades, providing a far higher quality of life for the entire community. I'm not saying farming doesn't occur, just that magic makes everything easier. Including not starving.

[Egan_BW]

Huh. If people did the math, and designed their culture around it, I could see one in every 80 people being a lvl3 Druid. Maybe that's how DnD multiverse industrializes...

[Aoi]

This actually brings to mind a few interesting not-death mechanics I've seen, the most interesting of which actually belongs to an old NES game: Nightshade.

Basically, you're a standard private eye in a modern, real world setting. Whenever you "die", you end up being dragged by SPECTRE (not really) to some kind of elaborate death trap where, with appropriate ingenuity, you can escape and go back to whatever you were trying to do. After doing this a few times though, they end up doing... something that permanently kills you. Either an inescapable trap, or they just killed you outright instead of going through the elaborate death trope.

[Mech#4]

Huh. If people did the math, and designed their culture around it, I could see one in every 80 people being a lvl3 Druid. Maybe that's how DnD multiverse industrializes...

I see dark factories spewing smoke. Druids chained to wooden tables from 5AM to 9PM. A heavy set supervisor, whip in hand, travelling the hunched lines as the druids are forced to mete out another goodberry. One is brought before the factory head, they were caught with two goodberries in their pockets, apparently to feed their family that night.


Anyway, I think the peasants would get sick of eating only goodberries long before they would starve from lack of them.

[Fniff]

I see dark factories spewing smoke. Druids chained to wooden tables from 5AM to 9PM. A heavy set supervisor, whip in hand, travelling the hunched lines as the druids are forced to mete out another goodberry. One is brought before the factory head, they were caught with two goodberries in their pockets, apparently to feed their family that night.

This is a really good basis for a campaign. Dishonored crossed with D&D... Mind if I steal this?

[Mech#4]

I see dark factories spewing smoke. Druids chained to wooden tables from 5AM to 9PM. A heavy set supervisor, whip in hand, travelling the hunched lines as the druids are forced to mete out another goodberry. One is brought before the factory head, they were caught with two goodberries in their pockets, apparently to feed their family that night.

This is a really good basis for a campaign. Dishonored crossed with D&D... Mind if I steal this?

Sure.

As an aside, I have wondered what D&D would be like if there was more motion in the world history. Countries conquering each other, borders shifting and some countries disappearing, cultures changing and maybe even technology advancing. Of course, that may very well happen. I'm not read up on the history of the Forgotten Realms at all.

[MrRoboto75]

I see dark factories spewing smoke. Druids chained to wooden tables from 5AM to 9PM. A heavy set supervisor, whip in hand, travelling the hunched lines as the druids are forced to mete out another goodberry. One is brought before the factory head, they were caught with two goodberries in their pockets, apparently to feed their family that night.

This is a really good basis for a campaign. Dishonored crossed with D&D... Mind if I steal this?

Sure.

As an aside, I have wondered what D&D would be like if there was more motion in the world history. Countries conquering each other, borders shifting and some countries disappearing, cultures changing and maybe even technology advancing. Of course, that may very well happen. I'm not read up on the history of the Forgotten Realms at all.

One guy on the order of the stick forums had D&D society diverge massively once someone created permanent trade routes out of teleportation circles.

Basically the world became isolated city-states with pure wilderness in between, with a vague cold-war feel as anyone could just teleport an army right into the middle of an offending city.  The whole thing was theoretical, though.

[Fniff]

*furiously taking notes*

[Hanzoku]

I see dark factories spewing smoke. Druids chained to wooden tables from 5AM to 9PM. A heavy set supervisor, whip in hand, travelling the hunched lines as the druids are forced to mete out another goodberry. One is brought before the factory head, they were caught with two goodberries in their pockets, apparently to feed their family that night.

This is a really good basis for a campaign. Dishonored crossed with D&D... Mind if I steal this?

Sure.

As an aside, I have wondered what D&D would be like if there was more motion in the world history. Countries conquering each other, borders shifting and some countries disappearing, cultures changing and maybe even technology advancing. Of course, that may very well happen. I'm not read up on the history of the Forgotten Realms at all.

The god of technology doesn't let that happen (Gond stops gunpowder from working, and the substitute is rare and not as effective, so very few guns and cannons.) Also, I thought that various normally Good organizations like the Harpers are willing to go and kill people experimenting with things like steam engines, but for the life of me I can't find a supporting link back.

Also, relating to the factories thing, there was mention prior to the Spellplague that one of the desert nations managed to support their capital city through magical food creation from divine casters, and arcane casters opening dimensional doorways to farming towns to import food in. When magic went haywire and it wasn't possible anymore... it wasn't pretty.

[Culise]

*furiously taking notes*

If you want to know more, the Tippyverse is your search point. It doesn't just include teleport circles, though; it includes such marvels as infinitely-resetting "traps" of Create Food/Water, other similar traps to create various mundane and low-wonderous objects, even more Permanency shenanigans, and so forth.