Levels beyond 14 vs demographics/economics

If one decided to allow leveling beyond 14, what effect (if any) would that have on the economics of the system? Other than the X level = Y per Domain needing to change…is there any other deep impact on the math, or would an emperor beyond 14th simply be richer and more established than one at 14?

My vote? Diminishing returns. I mean, is an 18th level Emperor really that much better than a 14th level one? :wink:

Well, doing a little extrapolation…
Five empires per planet → 15th-level Planetary Emperor
Five habitable planets per star system → 16th-level Lord Solar
Five star systems per cluster? → 17th-level Emperor Ascendant?
Dunno, I’m running out of material. I was really hoping to be able to use “Galactic Overlord”, but even scaling exponentially that’s going to be an absurdly high level.

Really the problem is that with ancient technology, it would be mighty hard to coordinate an empire much larger than what ACKS classifies as “Empire”-sized. If you’re going to go larger than that, you’d need some additional boost, either technological or magical, in order to hold things together, I think.

Or perhaps follow the Persian model of regional governors.

As I said in the OP, the table of what the levels mean would have to change. There is no precedent that says you couldn’t just say level 20 is Emperor and go down from there.

What I’m asking is, would there be any effect on the maths for wealth and all that, or would characters at various levels simply be richer?

Caligula probably didn’t care how much cash he had to hand, so - it’s beyond being richer, you are a force of nature fated for godhead in the eyes of lesser men.

One of the principles for the math is that 4/5ths of experience points come from coin. So if it took more XP to reach 15th level, you'd expect them to have a proportionally larger domain.

Thanks Tavis. Ok, so the only ‘issue’ is they’d have bigger/stronger domains/sanctums/etc.

I can live with that.

Oh, something I’ve meant to ask… I’ve seen the 4/5ths equation not just in reference to ACKS but with other OSR groups and games. Where did this equation come from? I don’t remember ever reading it in any of my old books (though it’d be easy enough to miss) and reading old school modules, a lot of the ones I’ve dug up don’t seem to really follow that (though maybe that’s because so many were tournament things, I don’t know).

Anyway, just curious about this old school lore.

It can be found in the Basic Set by Moldvay on page B45 under "PLACED TREASURES". The sentence reads "The choices [of treasure] should be made carefully, since most of the experience the characters will get will be from treasure (usually 3/4 or more)."

 

 

Cool. Yup I’ve missed that for literally years…or forgot it I don’t remember.