Because the PF (and earlier D&D) rules specifically don't work like that. That's not AD's assumption. It's the games. Items have prices. Those prices are set for game balance reasons.You can change that, but you're well into house rules at that point.
Yep, exactly correct thejeff.
In fact most who have seen me post regularly know that I an extremely critical of the magic item rules from inception to the latest errata. I find them to be totally insane.
BUT, if you are going to play by the rules, and assume behavior by the world's NPCs is somewhat comparable to human behavior in the real world, it leads to certain logical conclusions. And that's what my posts have been saying.
If I could have the magic item rules totally rewritten to get away from the "Christmas Tree" effect and stop having magic items be "required" for certain builds and make magic items more rare and wonderful, that would be great.
But doing so with the existing rules becomes a herculean task if you don't just hand-wave so much away that it just becomes verisimilitude threatening GM fiat.
So since I play with players who expect the world to work more or less the way the game designers intended, I just go with it and deal with it.
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Commoners typically deal in copper and silver.
A cobbler probably sees 5-10 gold per month. On the higher end, this means 12 platinum coins on an annual basis if they had no other expenses, which they do: they have to purchase tools for their trade, they pay for meals, they have leisure pursuits, dowries for daughters, tithes to their local congregation, clothes they can't/won't make for themselves, on and on. I'd say on average, your typical craftsman (cobbler, blacksmith, farrier, etc.) might net 1-2 platinum pieces annually in savings.
Let's start out by quoting the GMG (Edit: Sorry, this is in the CRB, not the GMG):
Destitute (0 gp/month): The PC is homeless and lives in the wilderness or on the streets. A destitute character must track every purchase, and may need to resort to Survival checks or theft to feed himself.
Poor (3 gp/month): The PC lives in common rooms of taverns, with his parents, or in some other communal situation—this is the lifestyle of most untrained laborers and commoners. He need not track purchases of meals or taxes that cost 1 sp or less.
Average (10 gp/month): The PC lives in his own apartment, small house, or similar location—this is the lifestyle of most trained or skilled experts or warriors. He can secure any nonmagical item worth 1 gp or less from his home in 1d10 minutes, and need not track purchases of common meals or taxes that cost 1 gp or less.
Wealthy (100 gp/month): The PC has a sizable home or a nice suite of rooms in a fine inn. He can secure any nonmagical item worth 5 gp or less from his belongings in his home in 1d10 minutes, and need only track purchases of meals or taxes in excess of 10 gp.
Extravagant (1,000 gp/month): The PC lives in a mansion, castle, or other extravagant home—he might even own the building in question. This is the lifestyle of most aristocrats. He can secure any nonmagical item worth 25 gp or less from his belongings in his home in 1d10 minutes. He need only track purchases of meals or taxes in excess of 100 gp.
Poor people (aka commoners) spend several platinum worth of coin per year just in living expenses (3 gp per month).
Combine that knowledge with Abraham Spalding's wonderful post. His post shows that even a simple farmer nets 240gp per year (or 24 platinum); that's after expenses.
With that, let's go with the Cobbler example. Let's assume that a cobbler has the same stats as a shopkeep. This means his Craft skill is +10.
What's his cost to make shoes? Well, shoes aren't sold in Pathfinder; they're a part of outfits. Let's assume he's making boots for the cold-weather outfit (which costs 8gp); with that, we know the boots costs less than 8gp. Let's assume 2gp. I don't have any 3rd edition books, but my 2nd ed PHB shows that boots cost between 1-3gp, so we're right on track.
2gp = 20sp. 1/3 of that cost is 6sp and 7cp (let's round up up 7sp). A boot is either a typical item or a high quality item. Let's assume the latter. DC = 15. If our cobbler takes 10, he gets a 20 for 1 week's worth of work. Result x DC = 300. 7/300 = 0.023; multiply by number of hours in a week, and we get 3.8 hours to make a high quality boot (let's round up to 4). There are 2080 work hours in a year (for a 40 hour work week; in pathfinder, work weeks are actually 6 days not 5 - according to the Inner Sea World Guide pg 248 - and nothing sets the rules to an 8 hour work day, but we're using it for brevity), so our cobbler can make 520 boots per year. 520 boots sold at 2gp each is 1040 gp per year.
10400sp - 3640 sp (supply costs) - 1200 sp (cost of living) = 5560sp or 556gp per year net profits.
Our average lifestyle non-master craftsman cobbler is making 55+ platinum per year after expenses. That's a little better than the 10-12 platinum per year before expenses.
Edit: This also assumes he can sell that many per year, which is a poor assumption. However, if we use the profession skill instead of the craft still, he makes a bit less (a little more than half that), but with guaranteed income.
repeate speech: randomly generate what magic items are in town, and force players who want specific items to find a caster with the right level to custom craft it for them, and make them wait the appropriate number of days and pay full price
should take care of most problems
Because the PF (and earlier D&D) rules specifically don't work like that. That's not AD's assumption. It's the games. Items have prices. Those prices are set for game balance reasons.You can change that, but you're well into house rules at that point.
Yep, exactly correct thejeff.
In fact most who have seen me post regularly know that I an extremely critical of the magic item rules from inception to the latest errata. I find them to be totally insane.
BUT, if you are going to play by the rules, and assume behavior by the world's NPCs is somewhat comparable to human behavior in the real world, it leads to certain logical conclusions. And that's what my posts have been saying.
If I could have the magic item rules totally rewritten to get away from the "Christmas Tree" effect and stop having magic items be "required" for certain builds and make magic items more rare and wonderful, that would be great.
But doing so with the existing rules becomes a herculean task if you don't just hand-wave so much away that it just becomes verisimilitude threatening GM fiat.
So since I play with players who expect the world to work more or less the way the game designers intended, I just go with it and deal with it.
Help me understand:
1. The Christmas Tree Effect = players getting every magic item they want like it's cristmas? or PCs having so much magic they light up like a christmas tree? or some other definition?
2. Fixes to said effect are meant to either mystify otherwise de-mystified magic items or to make the players less dependent on said items?
Now granted my experience in my game is anecdotal, but I don't seem to have an issue with the bonuses and stacking and item dependence and such in my game. I do however have a major issue with the mystical epicness of the items.
I have these old, 2e magic compendiums. In these are some cool, random charts for adding materials, quirks, flourishes etc to items. I take it a step further and design the few magic items I put into hoards. Maybe not every potion or scroll, but I try and make even the consumables interesting by making them other items like prayer sticks, incense cones or holy wafers.
But even when I do this my players care little. For example I designed 4 masterwork daggers in the first adventure. They were of a steel tinted with vermillion and had these really cool rubies. I named them the Blood Brother daggers and described their history as being commissioned by 4 famous brothers; each took a different path but as long as they held the daggers they would be together. After a couple adventures the fighter literally said "well, now that I finally had my masterwork hammer made, since these daggers aren't turning into anything special I guess I'll just sell mine."
Help me understand and deal with this so I can make a better game.
Most fighters aren't really uber interested in daggers.
How did the PCs find out about the history of the daggers.
From the backstory it sounded like the daggers might have more of an effect than being just daggers?
If you really wanted to, for oodles of fun, perhaps the daggers can't be passed through sale or transfering, but must be found, won, or inherited via the death of a previous owner?
So John Bad the fighter sells his dagger, the next time he's inventorying his gear, there it is... hmmm, looks like I somehow ended up with one of the other guys's daggers. He guys you missing a dagger?
Nope we have ours.
Huh.
So he's up on some gold eh?
Yea, about that. Some body is likely, someday going to accuse him of stealing or double crossing them, if he keeps it up. Maybe he should learn more about this dagger? :>
Mark, the "Christmas Tree effect" is a reference to characters walking around with trinkets hanging off of them like ornaments on a Christmas tree.
One of the fundamental issues I have with magic items in PF is that they become more important than the characters. A character without magic items is not able to handle supposedly level-appropriate encounters. A martial character without magic items is just a really strong commoner. At high levels a fighter with a mundane sword can't even hit the monsters they are likely to face. Without magic baubles to boost AC they would get crushed like bugs by multi-attacking huge dragons.
The game, as written, too frequently makes magic items the stars and the actual characters more like supporting cast members.
Magic items in the "big six" that give numerical bonuses are just factored into the game's balance system anyway, so they are only meaningful if you don't have them. Take them away and adjust the stats of the monsters to compensate and you end up with the same challenge, the same encounters, the same story, just no reliance on +X items here, there and everywhere.
I'd rather magic items DO things than just become required stat boosts to be adequate in an encounter.
People always talk about making magic items "rare, special and memorable." Well in my opinion the easiest way to do that is to get rid of numerical stat bonuses entirely and then magic items would become more unique and flavorful. And at the same time they would become less necessary for characters to become competent in general.
Help me understand:
1. The Christmas Tree Effect = players getting every magic item they want like it's cristmas? or PCs having so much magic they light up like a christmas tree? or some other definition?
If someone uses detect magic you light up like a christmas tree.
2. Fixes to said effect are meant to either mystify otherwise de-mystified magic items or to make the players less dependent on said items?Now granted my experience in my game is anecdotal, but I don't seem to have an issue with the bonuses and stacking and item dependence and such in my game. I do however have a major issue with the mystical epicness of the items.
I have these old, 2e magic compendiums. In these are some cool, random charts for adding materials, quirks, flourishes etc to items. I take it a step further and design the few magic items I put into hoards. Maybe not every potion or scroll, but I try and make even the consumables interesting by making them other items like prayer sticks, incense cones or holy wafers.
Okay.
But even when I do this my players care little. For example I designed 4 masterwork daggers in the first adventure. They were of a steel tinted with vermillion and had these really cool rubies. I named them the Blood Brother daggers and described their history as being commissioned by 4 famous brothers; each took a different path but as long as they held the daggers they would be together. After a couple adventures the fighter literally said "well, now that I finally had my masterwork hammer made, since these daggers aren't turning into anything special I guess I'll just sell mine."Help me understand and deal with this so I can make a better game.
Because the player liked hammers not daggers.
He settled for the dagger because it provided a better to hit (Thaco) than other non-masterwork weapons. And likely because he expected them to have a special effect, but when you hurt his expectation in there were nothing special, he settled for a masterwork hammer.Had you made them masterwork longswords, you bet he might stick with it longer since Daggers are really expected to be used by Fighters but Swords are.
I never had any problems not having the Big 6 or what ever. Well except Shield, Armour, & Weapon Enchantments.
Jeff, this is the argument of every guy with every build that is dependent on Magic item A; that it is 75% likely to just be there. You can't expect to go into town and have a 75% chance of exactly what you are looking for be available without ALL the other things someone MIGHT be looking for also be 75% likely to be there.
Otherwise it's not different than what you are looking for just "happen" to be in a treasure pile.
Another possibility might be that while 75% of the items could be purchased, that doesn't mean that 75% are currently present. Some sellers could also be crafters and could make several possible items. Alternatively, some sellers might have connections and thus can have items transported to the location.
Or the magic item accessibility rules are daft. that could be possible also.
There is another option, that while 75% of the magic items under that gold value are PRESENT in that town, they may not be for sale, they are owned by people who, might not possibly want to sell them. However this goes back to an awful lot of wealth compared to the total value of a city...amd brings us back to DAFT, daft I tell you.
Might be a good way to set-up side quests though...
Ok, so I see what the christmas tree effect is (too much magic at upper levels with the PCs required to carry some of it just to compete) now onto solutions:
Why not just make the characters magical? If this is really an issue, then why not give every PC class a "Ki" type ability? It can scale w/the PC every 4 levels and provide a mystical bonus conferred through weapons, armor or what have you. That way they can hit and damage through DR, survive going toe-to-toe with pit fiends and not have to depend on items.
@ Agast: here's the dagger story - the players took down a band of mites in the hinterlands of a town, where they found the things. The party contained an Expert 1/Bard 1 who identified them with the cool little backstory; she did not know of any magical effects they had however and the party's wizard didn't detect any magic on them.
They took them to town for a second opinion and the dwarven weapon master of the town immediately offered them gold, but only for the set. When asked why a roleplay scene kicked in where the dwarf expounded on the history saying it would be criminal to split up the brothers after years of being scattered. The party at that point felt they were cool enough to keep and held onto them.
Now they are masterwork, and cool, so they could have been enchanted/enhanced, but a couple games in they were basically forgotten about. I tried to encourage them to have them enchanted when some gypsies admired the weapons and offered to "unlock their potential"; this turned out to be a poor choice of words b/cause the wizard proclaimed "I've already checked for magic but they're not enchanted." He and I debated, then later that session that's when the fighter decided he might as well just unload his.
In the end the party's cleric of Erastil (a wannabe ranger) ended up taking possession of all 4. She still liked the story of them so at least I got one player out of the bunch. Now that a few more levels have gone by the blades don't see much action though. More than likely they will be forgotten again...unless I have the Dark Creepers in their current dungeon SWIPE 'em!
@ all: I'm in the Fayth camp; I don't seem to have players chafing at the big 6 or the unrealism of it or whatever. I just have a couple players who say they want more than just Shield +2; they want Sting, Stormbringer, or some other legendary item from fiction.
But it is inevitable in this system as written: all things are eventually reduced to a number, a bonus, a condition. As such all things fade; the dreams of youth become the regrets of maturity. But we all keep trying like fools eh?
... and I still don't have an issue with magic shoppes as long as they don't give the PCs everything they want.