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The thing is, you don't have to engage the economy at all. Fifteen thousand gold worth of goods really can be enough grain to feed your fortress for ten years. It really can be masterwork weapons for your whole army, or tapestries, or diamonds, or magic lanterns for your town.
Then it becomes an issue of supply, I guess, but the issue are different but real. Would peasants give up tilling the land because there is no point tilling if a guy can wish a harvest into existence? Something of a deathknell to the agrarian economy. This may not be that bad a thing, but the character of the people you meet would change majorly. Some would prosper, but what if you can't sieze the opportunities in the new, wish economy - your skills are made redundant, and you can't retrain. You could end up with a serious underclass problem, unemployment, "welfare dependency", and all sorts of stuff like that. I guess my point is that the wish economy isn't as simple as it might seem.
The problem is not that wealthy people can sway the local economy, its that they don't even have to be part of it. I mean, how is the barkeep of a large city going to even know that you are swimming in cash when he charges you for ale? The fact that you could buy the entire block isn't stamped on your forehead.
Only if you go in disguise. If you are the guy who wishes stuff into existence, they will know. You are the mainstay of the economy. And it is a drag having to put on a disguise to go and have a pint with your pals.
While the above few lines are a somewhat facetious response, I would suggest that inflation doesn't just occur when you walk in the room. If you are stimulating the economy or disrupting its normal workings in some way, then it will affect the broader economy even if you, personally, never set foot outside your gold-plated castle.
You can just pay people the prevailing wage for their services and they can take it or leave it. Generally, they'll take it, and rampant inflation won't happen.
Well, the English tried that and got the Peasants' Revolt. Market prices are not simply set by what someone is willing to pay for it. If you try to buy something at below the cost of production, they will say no. And the wish economy could have a big impact on prices.
The two-currency economy works on the very simple principle that watching every copper is not fun. If you steal a pirate ship, you want to sell it and not have the DM burn it because it represents too much wealth for you level and he's afraid you'll buy +5 swords.
The wealth for magic model, at its very essence, prevents a huge number of stories from being told. Here is a short list, off the top of my head:
-seagoing adventures
-adventures with awesome architecture like metal walls or crystal caves
-caravan adventures
-merchant prince-type adventures
-Rogue adventures (robberies where there is a chance to recover the goods, pickpocketing the wealthy, breaking and entering, etc).
-war adventures(both from the "looting the dead" to the "raising an army" angles)
-adventures with nobles
-adventures with a chance of finding/taking/getting a fortress
-adventures in mines (ooo, uncut diamonds...)
-any adventure with villains with common magic items (see Drow).
-gate-based adventures (see 2e Forgotten Realms).
-any other adventure where some aspect of the adventure might be worth more only than the DMG says you must have.
Considering that these are just the adventures that I've had before 8th level in our system, I think I've actually had better adventures than anyone else playing 3e DnD. I've dabbled with powerful gates and run around with a pocket of uncut diamonds and piloted my own ship and captured magical fortresses and I did it before 8th level. I've worn finery to bargain with nobles, opened vaults of jade and burned magic items that had an evil taint. I've raised armies and sponsored promising acolytes and resisted the temptations of powerful and corrupt artifacts and overthrown an empire.
Well, I've said it before, but I don't think the current model precludes any of this. I can see how the two currency model makes some aspects of it easier to handle, but at the expense of verisimilitude. Not the verisimilitude of having an accurate economy, since very few people (including me, and you) really give a damn about that. It just looks like a deus ex machina fix (more obviously so than the model in the DMG) - which it is - and a bit lazy, frankly. Moreover, as a PC, what exactly is my motivation to do all these cool things, when the rewards are pointless - "The king wishes to show his appreciation, my lord." "S&$&, more f%#&ing gold - throw it in the well with the rest." I appreciate that that is not a very heroic attitude, which is a consideration not to be ignored, but what if your character is materialistic? Once he enters the wish economy, his interest in anything going on outside it disappears. That does, actually, preclude quite a lot of stuff, if the patrons do not have access to the new currency.
The system is merely a formalised system of DM fiat, dressed as a rule. There is nothing wrong with that from a purely formal, rules-based perspective. I personally think it is more fun to actually come up with more plausible reasons why certain aspects might not work, or to come up with something workable in the context of trade that doesn't upset the applecart, but I accept that it might be harder work than the two currency model and some people find that solution easier (and maybe fairer, if the solution is simply to take the PCs toys away). But it isn't really superior, as such - they both break down because some of the basic tenets (especially, you only want to allow PCs so much stuff at certain levels) don't mesh with economics.
I'm not denying that the two-currency model has its strengths, and addresses certain key concerns. But I don't think it is the only solution, albeit that I haven't actually thought one out myself (beside shrugging and accepting the absurdities of the DMG model).
And I did it because we decided as a group that buying magic items with money was lame.
Well, yeah, I don't particularly disagree with that - it is more fun, and flavourful, to yank it from the hoard of the dragon you just slew.
The thing is, you don't have to engage the economy at all. Fifteen thousand gold worth of goods really can be enough grain to feed your fortress for ten years. It really can be masterwork weapons for your whole army, or tapestries, or diamonds, or magic lanterns for your town.Then it becomes an issue of supply, I guess, but the issue are different but real. Would peasants give up tilling the land because there is no point tilling if a guy can wish a harvest into existence? Something of a deathknell to the agrarian economy. This may not be that bad a thing, but the character of the people you meet would change majorly. Some would prosper, but what if you can' siexe the opportunities in the new, wish economy - your skills are made redundant, and you can't retrain. You could end up with a serious underclass problem, unemployment, and all sorts of stuff like that.
Why?
You are just the guy in the castle that never seems to buy anything in town. They go about their lives, and you are OUTSIDE their economy. Once in a while you come down and buy a beer. They don't know how you feed your soldiers, or put dishware on the table, or arm and equip your man-at-arms, and they don't have to know.
There is no reason for you to give them anything. Even heroes know that there is a price for trying to give someone a perfect world.
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Unless you are suggesting that the guys in the fields operate on a purely subsistence basis, then the guy in the castle will be quite an important market. If he suddenly stops buying anything, that could impact one them. (And if it is a purely subsistence economy, the guy sitting in the castle in the lap of luxury and ignoring them will not be a popular guy, though what they could do about it is debatable.) And the guys hirelings will want some gold to spend - that will just be created presumably by wishing, and so would add to the local economy.
That said, you are right - the wish dude could calibrate his wishing to avoid overstimulating the economy. That isn't, however, the typical human response to overabundance of wealth, and assumes a level of economic understanding on behalf of Throngar the Barbarian and his captive demons which might not be entirely justified.
Unless you are suggesting that the guys in the fields operate on a purely subsistence basis, then the guy in the castle will be quite an important market. If he suddenly stops buying anything, that could impact one them. (And if it is a purely subsistence economy, the guy sitting in the castle in the lap of luxury and ignoring them will not be a popular guy, though what they could do about it is debatable.) And the guys hirelings will want some gold to spend - that will just be created presumably by wishing, and so would add to the local economy.
Hey, the guy in the castle keeps manticore from eating the peasant's babies. I'm sure they'll cut him some slack, especially since he doesn't tax anyone and the lord next kingdom over does.
As for spending gold, I'm sure that the soldiers would rather spend it in the master's Stuff I Wished For Shoppe than with the dirty peasants. I expect they'll hit town once in a while for beers, but I'm not calling that serious economic activity.
That said, you are right - the wish dude could calibrate his wishing to avoid overstimulating the economy. That isn't, however, the typical human response to overabundance of wealth, and assumes a level of economic understanding on behalf of Throngar the Barbarian and his captive demons which might not be entirely justified.
Maybe, but considering that luxuries would come from far away lands, the local economy should be safe.
I personally think that once peasants tried to sell him a chicken for a gold (or some other outrageous trade), he'd just respond with "at those prices, I'll just hire a guy to raise my own chickens and avoid this petty bargaining."
You really can have more money than you can spend in any reasonable economy. Once that happens, doing anything for more gold is just foolish.
In D&D, yes. As JRM hinted, in actual medieval times, you could NEVER have enough gold, because you constantly needed to be expanding your territory to grow more food for the ever-larger armies you needed to keep your neighbors (who were doing the same thing) from taking ALL your gold away, and your life, too.
Actually, in actual medieval times there was a profound limit on how much you could purchase with gold. The entire economy just didn't have enough fungibles in it to permit people to spend as much gold as it was possible to acquire.
The result was that many people took piles of gold and made it into hats or chairs and such.
-Frank
There's always a limit to how much you can purchase in your neighborhood... but are you talking a peacetime economy, in Venice or London? In the frontier areas (like most of Golarion, or 4e for that matter), and especially earlier in the period, most available wealth was spent on importing things -- usually soldiers, military advisors, and siege engineers -- faster than it could be accumulated. Your peasants never saw gold -- they paid you food as their rent for you allowing them to work your land. The merchants might have fancy hats, but more likely you'd tax going out and tax them coming in, and spend it all, because peace was uncommon and fragile. (One of the longer lulls in the constant warfare was after the development of the "War Wolf" -- a state-of-the-art catapult that could lob a sandstone ball through a 10-ft.-thick castle wall. After it was demonstrated in actual battles, inevitably everyone ended up with one, and a period of detente followed, from what I've read.)
So we should probably settle on a more specific campaign-world time and place equivalent, before making general statements about a gold economy.
No. The problem is not that a 5th level Prince would have substantially more money than everyone else. That's fine. But the idea that he could take that pile of money and turn it into Rings of Three Wishes and conquer heaven instead of having a really cool looking velvet couch and an awesome hat - that is a problem.
I completely agree with you on this point. Equating raw economic wealth with magical power invariably leads to these kinds of situations. It was a problem that existed in 3.X that will be further exacerbated if Paizo decides to make their magical item creation system wholly dependent upon the expenditure of raw currency.
That being said, I don't believe either the purchase and creation cost listings or the character wealth by level tables should be eliminated. We still need to have an idea of what items fall above and below the 15,000 GP limit of the Wish Economy, how much it will cost to create items that fall below that limit, and the average GP value of magical items a character higher then first level can expect to possess.
The big question is: how does one determine the equivalent GP value of something that would be used to trade or create items within the Wish Economy? Even if you make the assumption that these items or favors are almost completely unattainable via a direct expenditure of coinage, we need to have an idea of how much a given item or favor will go towards the overall creation cost of a magical item.
Let's say that you have someone that wants to purchase a +5 magical weapon. The current base price for purchasing such an item right now is 50,000 GP. If you set out to purchase such an object, how much of the cost of the item is going to be material wealth, and how much of it is going to be in terms of Wish Economy Currency?
For the purpose of this example, let's say that 50% will be accepted in material wealth, and the other 50% would be comprised of WEC. What's the going price on a pair of faerie wings? A stack of 20 Primal Waters? Freeing a Noble Djinn from an Astral prison? A human soul? How do you turn these various favors and items into an equivalent amount of hard currency for the purposes of magic item creation costs? And even if you would never be able to give someone that would be creating or selling these kind of items any amount of money in lieu of those items, how do these various forms of commodities compare to one another in value?
I do agree that the Wish Economy can become a real issue, but how do you standardize the relative GP value of Wish Economy Currencies against both each other and the costs of obtaining and manufacturing magical items? I'm open to suggestions.
People should have a pile of wealth that they can be assured of turning into strongholds, temples, public works projects, fancy parties, and the other extravagant displays of wealth which tell us that our characters have "made it." They should not be assured of being able to turn that wealth into bigger bonuses on their magic swords, because if they can, then they will.
And then characters won't do awesome things like erect statues to their gods, and they will use the inherent unfairness of economic systems to break the gamist elements of the game.
-Frank
I've been playing RPGs since the D&D Basic Set came out, and I must say that 3.X has done a great deal to discourage players from putting their wealth to work in the world at large and instead encourages them to "live like hobos" and spend every copper on magical items to boost their power. I'd like to see Pathfinder structured in such a way that it promotes this kind of expenditure of funds.
I've been told that Frank doesn't post here anymore, but I thought that this thread was quite fascinating and brought up a number of excellent points, especially in regards to dropping to a silver standard, changing how Profession skills work, and introducing a standard wage that is paid to a worker on a weekly basis depending on their job role as opposed to the results of a weekly skill check. I do hope that the designers have been paying attention...