Post/Author/DateTime	Post
Apocalypse_Child 03-27-08, 03:32 PM	So; I made a thrallherd, focused on leadership for my campaign world. 2 thralls, undead leadership, then psicrystal takes leadership and undead leadership all the way down. It's Arcane Erudite based so I don't have to worry about limited powers as much. Now I'm worried about the mechanics of it gamewise and flavorwise. I'm fairly new to psionics as of now, so I haven't figured out all the tricks yet. How can I even feed the billions and billions of followers now at my command? Is there a way not to waste all the psionic potential by not making them all take profession (farmer) and the like? Fabricate only changes raw material; it would still have to be worked for. I was hoping for a sort of communal place where my followers material needs would be taken care of; but I'm not sure even all the high level characters at my disposal can pull something like that off. And are there other ways I can use psionics as a sort of "Technology" for my personal paradise? And the other nagging question; when you have basically everyone in the world working for you, what do you shoot for then? What's something that can drive my character beyond just maintaining everyone? He'd be a pretty boring God Emperor if he just sat around and spammed fabricate all day. What does a society of the mind DO when they don't have to work for a living? Has anyone built a Psionic kingdom/world in their campaign world? What did you do? Anyway, thanks a lot for your help. I know part of this is better off in the campaign development section; but I figured you guys know psionic flavor better than anyone, so I posted here first.
foxtail 03-27-08, 04:16 PM	They wouldn't all have to take Profession (farmer). Designate a subset of followers to produce food for the rest, another subset for building and maintaining houses, another for the military, and so forth. You could even create a class of administrators to organize the rest, freeing up your time from day-to-day minutiae. As long as there's a place for everyone and everyone mind-controlled into their place, you could create a Utopian society (or an Orwellian one, depending on how you look at it). As for what to do once you've conquered the world, well... there's always divine ascension. Or you could branch your control out into the rest of the multiverse.
The_Mess 03-27-08, 08:11 PM	Why feed them? Dead thralls are just replaced. Set them to doing useful things, like building statues in your honor! : - )
Xerj 03-27-08, 09:34 PM	Though technically that works, he feels that he has so many followers that after following that policy for a short time there would be no more people to control!
Tedronai 03-27-08, 11:02 PM	Though technically that works, he feels that he has so many followers that after following that policy for a short time there would be no more people to control! Who ever said Thralls and Believers had to be PEOPLE? Also, supplying for the material needs of your horde is much easier if you manage to get most of your higher level beleivers (5+) as Clerics. This will allow them access to the ever-popular Create Food and Water, providing for at least a portion of your minions' needs. Lower-level divine casting Believers, even Adepts, can cast Purify Food and Drink to preserve stockpiles of such food in times of plenty, or make even the most distasteful foodstuffs at least safe in times of strife. Murylnd's Spoons combined with at-will items of Prestidigitation (for flavouring, colour, and other appetitive qualities associated with suppressing the gag reflex otherwise invoked by the Spoon's product) will feed a surprising number of individuals for a reasonable one-time cost.
Apocalypse_Child 03-28-08, 01:54 AM	...at first i was leery of the cleric idea; mostly because I was going for a total psionic paradise; but it'd fit the pyramid scheme quite well, especially if I made them, say, clerics of Commerce and maybe Craft domains. They'd be the lowest on my get rich quick scheme, and I'd call them "The Providers". I know those domains are crappy for combat but they'd be able to feed a crapload of people with that +10 bonus and the +1 to creation spells. And a couple of million of them thrown out at someone who pisses me off is nothing to sneeze at. It'd at least make his sword arm tired while he bull rushes through the crowds to get to me :D Plus I get a tithe, muahaha. The nature of thrallherding itself is kind of a military chain of command, really, so I was already planning on having overseers in the sense that X person is directly responsible for his thralls, followers and believers and reports to Y person who he's in thrall to all the way up to me. Plus there's little room for dissention in a world where everyone answers to someone they can't help but utterly obey; so you get out of all the politic of running a nation; at least in the sense that no one's opposing YOU directly if you're on top. They probably squabble with each other though. I'm having fun :D
DracoPhoenix 03-28-08, 03:00 AM	I hope you're an elan. Nothing worse than an empire ending just because you do ;) Well, first you want to crack open the PHB2 to the section on affiliations (you'll want racial, with the favoured "race" being "my followers"). Make it all official. And put in something so your followers do the whole first born thing too, then get them playing rabbit. A bit of indoctrination from birth should help sustain your numbers. (Oh, and make it a trade one, and "tax" your followers) As to what to do, give the character sheets to the DM, you've just created a very nice BBEG for your next campaign. ;P The problem you have is too many people to control. If you go the micro manage route on the followers, you're going to get bogged down in logistics and spend almost as much time as the DM preparing what your followers do between sessions I've done something similar (ok, not to the same degree - oh, and no dragon co-hort or landlord feats!?), but basically, reduce the followers to a number on a page and work through the affiliation. (Spy / trade network in my case) I.e. don't worry about how many farmers exactly you have, their names and rolling for gp income every week etc, just that you get X gold / month from labourer followers (eg. 50% of your affiliation) etc. I use mine to gather knowledge (it fits in with my characters back story) and ebezzelment & fraud to fund my operations. I don't get the money directly to spend, but the whole organisation is, financially, self sufficient. (Would help with the Landlord 2 for 1 deal too). I believe I set up a clause to be able to get any mundane item heavily discounted, if not free. And just as soon as I "reverse-engineer" the Elanification process, I'm going to be passing that knowledge on to the dragon & thralls. Depending on your alignment, the whole sacrifice and Baldurs gate thing might work for you... Hope this sparks some ideas for you.
Apocalypse_Child 03-28-08, 03:27 AM	heh, I am the DM, so no problem there. it's kind of more a thought experiment than anything else, really, since it'd destroy 5 years of work to actually play this guy and steal virtually everyone in the world. Or actually, i was thinking he could just come from another plane, or world connected to the campaign world somehow, because arcane magic is nonexistent in HIS world and he wants to steal some juicy wizard spells. mmm. yes. And I can't believe I forgot freaking LANDLORD! I LOVE that feat! Stronghold builders guidebook, once again you bring me joy and sweet sweet moneh. Hilariously, i did take landlord and made an affiliation with my old wizard, once upon a time; did essentially the same thing you did, and just slipped my mind when I got the brain fever from the thrallherd.
Bedeverekm 03-28-08, 04:17 AM	Goodberry. A few people able to cast this spell could maintain a moderate town, with the added advantage that the skills required to maintain a few berry bushes would be class skills for them. :)
DracoPhoenix 03-28-08, 08:37 AM	nearly forgot: Telepath Thrallherd Erudite Thrall And IIRC isn't there a feat / ritual in BOVD that allows sacrifice instead of xp? (might be crafting only) If possible use the sacrifice to pay the xp of the telepath learning all the powers from the Thrall herd (who researches them all :P)
Lycanthromancer 03-28-08, 01:37 PM	Well, given that the thrallherd class ability can pull undead to you, as well as the Undead Leadership feat, they could till the land and do the gruntwork, with the living people living in the lap of relative luxury (just make sure they're either completely skeletal and antiseptic, non-rotting, or you have plenty of clerics that can cast cure disease). That should help you on your way to a utopian paradise.
DracoPhoenix 03-28-08, 02:29 PM	Well, given that the thrallherd class ability can pull undead to you, as well as the Undead Leadership feat, they could till the land and do the gruntwork, with the living people living in the lap of relative luxury (just make sure they're either completely skeletal and antiseptic, non-rotting, or you have plenty of clerics that can cast cure disease). That should help you on your way to a utopian paradise. Hmm, what about warforged? Slightly more active and less chance of falling apart in front of visitors.
deadkoo 03-28-08, 02:53 PM	Yes but warforged are sentient creatures(partly I guess..) where as undead are.. undead. if the undead dies, or falls apart, you just use on of the clerics to "create" it again... simple.. also, don't forget the secret to controling the multiverse. regardless of your leadership/undead LD/thrall stuff you can only control so many... BUT if you have say 20 lvl 4 clerics that each take Death's Domain they can each control 12 HD worth of undead.. Now, say you get 2 6HD vampires to each of them.. have each vampire control a few spawn and so on and so on. undead cohort? a lich. Have IT control a bunch of undead and so on down the line. It'll be like the DeathGate cycle, whenever one person dies, they are raised back into undeath asap....
TheKeyofE 03-28-08, 04:31 PM	they could till the land and do the gruntwork, with the living people living in the lap of relative luxury (just make sure they're either completely skeletal and antiseptic, non-rotting, or you have plenty of clerics that can cast cure disease). OTOH, if you use rotting zombies, when pieces fall off the corpses it's like free fertilizer.
Moosh Nailo 03-28-08, 07:29 PM	OTOH, if you use rotting zombies, when pieces fall off the corpses it's like free fertilizer. Heh. Entire crops saturated with negative energy... "Jimmy, eat your vegetables!" "But Mum, they're killing me!" "Jimmy, don't be ridiculous. I'm not going to ask you again!" Carrots are once again treats for your undead horse! As for my donation to the OP, why not store a number of the living followers/believers/minions/whatevers in stasis? Have some higher level minions spam manifestations of Quintessence, and you're set.
DracoPhoenix 03-28-08, 08:21 PM	So, you have your evil empire, but do you have a cunning (and ironically more successful) but legitimate cover business? (1/2 auto-:cookie: - it's an easy one)
Apocalypse_Child 03-29-08, 02:09 AM	XD That skeletal farmer thing's a great idea! I forgot corpses don't have feelings! Of course they don't actually work faster because they love me so much, but meh, 24/7 works for me. and regarding the cover business, i COULD go cliche and say "ooh, church" but how about I go the atypical route and say "Importer/exporter of vaguely italian olive oil?" ...omg. I could be D&D walmart, except I don't even pay minimum wage and no one complains. Thrallmart! MULTIPLANAR CHAIN OF WHOLESALE PRODUCTS! CANT BEAT OUR LOW LOW PRICES! I can just see them now, in their little uniforms, passing out leaflets until they drop and are replaced... Or I could just have the zombies work the cash register. "What's on sale today?" "Unnnh, braaaaaains..." "Is that in the meat department?" Screw the commune, muahaha!
Bedeverekm 03-29-08, 04:11 AM	So, you have your evil empire, but do you have a cunning (and ironically more successful) but legitimate cover business? (1/2 auto-:cookie: - it's an easy one) Dr Evil, IIRC. When he found out the gross income of his corporation after waking up in the first film, he was astonished. :)
Slagger the Chuul 03-29-08, 10:29 AM	If you can afford the startup cost, the field provisions box (which costs 2,000 gp and can feed 15 people per day) can be paid off by basic workers within a few years, after which they have no further need to spend either money or effort on food.
ninja1 03-31-08, 03:28 PM	If you don't mind going back to 2001... there's a power called: "Channel Power". <found here> (http://www.wizards.com/default.asp?x=dnd/psm/20010928a) Psion Followers could use Channel Power to use Sustanence on non-psionic followers. Psion Followers could also manifest the Sustenance power, sharing from another psionic character's mind that knows it. The Azure Talent and Psycarnum Infusion feats from Magic of Incarnum could mitigate or negate the cost to power Sustenance. If labor (and thus gp) became a non-issue, then the Thrallherd could collect people with specific skillsets. Followers could be sought out with specific classes to use as "trainers". Search for young apprentices with good stats, and use the trainers to give them the right combo of classes and feats for specific roles. Train them to be viable Thralls, then use the Crystallize power to put them into suspended animation. Make a collection as big as you want and as varied as you want. When you need a new Thrall that is optimized a certain way, Crystallize one of your current ones and thaw out one from the cooler. :)
ToastedAmphibian 04-01-08, 11:01 PM	Wouldnt only a VERY small percentage of his "Minions" be thralls/belivers, with the VAST majority being Followers? You wouldnt end up some much with a utpoian society as a fuedal one, with your subordnate mind controleis being the mind controlers of there baronies. Your barons would be directly loyal to you, and there followers would be somewhat loyal to your "barons" but, nothing really says that the "followers" of your minions would get along with his other followers, much less each of step further down the line. Or between followers of diffrent barons followers.... Before i get any more confusing ill jsut sum up my point. Youll still have conflict, hatred, crime, probably war... And im sure the vast majority will absolutley hate you. Most of them arnt YOUR followers, but rather followers of thoes that you have mind controlled. Actually, i dont see why your thrall's follower's followers wouldnt activly seek to KILL you and thus "Free" there master's beloved master.
ninja1 04-02-08, 10:19 AM	I should first note that I don't agree with cascading thrallherd and Leadership pyramids... As a DM, I would say no to that. But for the sake of contributing to this thread, I'll assume it's ok. Thrallherd: hey thrall, command all of your minions to obey me as they would you... command them to obey our laws and not to commit crime. Thrall 1: ...uh, ok. Granted, Leadership isn't mind control like Thrallherds enjoy, but unless the DM decides that they should act otherwise, they will obey their leader. If the society is a Utopean one, then their quality of life is probably soo great that they are just plain happy to be there. Why dissent when every citizen lives blissfully. If the citizens are being "fuitfull" and multiplying, then you introduce uncontrolled lives into the system... but again, if Utopean then... But yeah, there eventually would be some degenerates, sociopaths and/or rabblerousers. (insert adventure here)...
Frozen_Flame 04-02-08, 11:37 AM	As a Thrallherd fan I've got one thing to say: Divine Acension. Not that I personally have the knowledge and/or the access to the info regarding how all that divinety stuff works, but I'm sure it would be fun playing "The Game" with other deities.
Bedeverekm 04-02-08, 01:09 PM	Doesn't leadership preclude the minions and followers from gaining the leadership feat themselves? I'd certianly rule that the same applied to Thrallherd. Minions are not leaders, however you look at it.
Apocalypse_Child 04-02-08, 01:43 PM	Really, really liking the crystallizing point. Though personally, since they're not dead I'd probably rule that they're still part of my mystery cult. And I did think of the "Tell them to obey me as they would obey you" thing, which really means 3/5ths of the population are subject to themselves only. Of course, they can be manipulated through other means...power, money, etc. And it adds flavor, i. e. "We're onto your pyramid scheme and we like it, but if you don't keep us appeased, you're getting a civil war on your hands." Also, I think a leadership chain isn't necessarily cheesy. Would you consider a general not to be a leader? They answer to the president, who is commander in chief, and indirectly control x amount of thousands, though they probably only see a few of them who report directly to them. And so on, down the chain of command until the grunts. Same applies here, really. I'm the president. My thralls are my generals. Theirs are their colonels, and so on and so forth. Also. Trying to run something by everyone; I've been thinking of making this setting attatched to my campaign world; but I'm not sure how balanced it would be. In the time of the magelords, when wizards, sorcerers, and some clerics ruled the world almost completely, there were also psions. The psions, however, decided to begin using their powers to call everyone to them. (The first, epic thrallherds) Big civil war, Exile to another plane cut off from the prime material, and weaveless, which they thought would bind them completely but didn't. Instead of relying on magic, they developed technology. I'm planning on making it, like, Progress Level 6 or so...and implementing a rule that no psion can use their powers and tech at the same time because it shorts them out, like an emp, but only in the radius of the psion, so they can't use it offensively, and you need a power point reserve to use psionic items. Most of the psions are the "Called," under control of the thrallherds. Everyone else exiled with them, their former thralls, and psions too powerful to be called are the "Uncalled." Those without powers are also dubbed the "Ungifted," and have been somewhat despised as an underclass; though once it became illegal to hunt them down a few hundred years ago, their numbers have been growing and they are getting more and more contestable with the rising tech levels being able to stand against the Called. So how unbalanced would it be to have psions....as just psions, not the prestige class and having 9th level powers presuming they have no tech that has electronics in it, versus the d20 modern classes with way more advanced tech, mechas, spaceships, etc? I mean, I know it's unbalanced on a personal level, 1v1 psion 20 vs, like, fast hero/mecha jockey/xxx. But I think widespread tech almost anyone can use that does devastating damage to lower level characters would give the psions pause since it can carve swaths out of their believers. Any opinions?
ninja1 04-02-08, 01:45 PM	Doesn't leadership preclude the minions and followers from gaining the leadership feat themselves? Not specifically, no... but the DMG strongly cautions DM's on even allowing the Leadership feat at all. From the DMG, page 106: "Unlike other feats, this one depends heavily on the social setting of the campaign, the actual location of the PC, and the group dynamics. You're free to disallow this feat if it would disrupt the campaign. Be sure to consider the effect of a PC having a cohort. A cohort is effectively another PC in the party under that player's control, one whose share of XP, treasure, and spotlight time is bound to take something away from the other players' characters. If your group is small, cohorts may be a great idea. If it's big enough that a cohort would be a problem, don't let the PCs have cohorts." ...with this much caution applied for but a single cohort... considering multiple?... yeah... Edit: Apocalypse_Child, while not directly stated, I believe it is acceptable to allow a Thrallherd to sever the link and "dismiss" a believer/thrall much like someone with Leadership could send a follower/cohort away and work on recruiting a replacement. That being said, I think it could be a fun passtime for an old, eccentric Thrallherd... Attract, train, crystallize, dismiss... wash, rinse, repeat... Introduce Fusion (multiple times) and Simulacrum as a Spell-Like-Ability... good times... Using the General -> Captain -> Lieutenant as an analogy, I think you'd be best off considering them Hirelings. Then, as long as you are paying well, then go nuts. I think ToastedAmphibian said it best by using a Feudal society as an example. The chain of command still relies upon favors, tribute, etc... But in this case, the King doesn't need any form of Leadership at all... the lesser nobles can have it (or not). Since governments are typically NPC driven, then there is no game mechanics require at all (DM simply says "this is how it is")... similarly there are not game mechanics required to form an adventuring party (no "PC groupmemeber" feat).
M-bark 04-02-08, 01:53 PM	If you go for a really big Leadership/Thrall tree, have all believers and followers of level 6 and higher take Leadership or Undead Leadership. Also, equal rights for both living and undead people! And once you die, you get one free ticket to undeath! Getting some Elans and Warforged along might be a good idea too.
DracoPhoenix 04-03-08, 03:57 AM	~Amusing anecdote: Last night we were playing an evil campaign, and we're basically doing clean up because some idiot managed to open a portal to some demonic plane and got himself locked in a room upstairs hiding. Well, being L10, the DM didn't expect me to be able to dominate the vrock (luckily I had 1/day cheap base cost) and was able to tow that around for the rest of the "quest". But the funny bit was when we found the noob summoner, opening move: One failed save vs DC ~26 dominate spell on a ~L3 noble (he rolled a 19 fwiw). After finding out what was going on, I caught the DM off guard with : "Ok, and could you just sign this asset transfer, giving me ownership of all your property?" So I now have a ~nice house, a boat and some other bits. Sadly the servants all died in the incursion :(. And I expect to be going up against a lot more critters with high will saves :cry: And for all you mages out there - the reason for the screwed up summons is because the noob stole a wizard's spell book which had a trapped front page that created the portal disguised as a dedication the the owners deity. A little trick I plan on using next time my wizards get to a high enough level. ;)
Apocalypse_Child 04-03-08, 11:40 AM	:D your dm is going to beat you with the immunity stick soooo soon!
DracoPhoenix 04-03-08, 11:48 AM	:D your dm is going to beat you with the immunity stick soooo soon! Yes, the fact that the guy was about to die (LE society that frowned on "unauthorised" magic use quite severely), so there wouldn't be anyone to contest it didn't help. :/