This is an entry I'm considering for my houserules compilation. I'd like some critique of it - does it make sense? Is it reasonable? Did I miss some huge holes?
One crisis is that all items are literally measured against the gold standard. The problem is, supply and demand of one material, compared to the supply and demand of gold, would be in flux for any given region, of any given world, on any given plane of existence. When an epic wizard could conceivably conjure a mountain of gold from the Elemental Plane of Earth, or capture an Efreeti once a week and wish up a trio of 15000gp diamonds 50 times a year, it really tests one’s suspension of disbelief when such things make no impact on the region’s economy and relative worth. This problem infects questions such as “how much diamond dust is 5000gp?” which is of vital concern to spellcasters, especially when they want to have tea with their dead friends. Would the shift in the value of diamonds mean that now a cleric needs more diamond dust for the same spell as he did last week? If so, how does one keep up to speed on the commodities market without a laptop and the internet?
The most common way to mitigate this issue is to ignore it altogether, pretend that everything balances out somehow, and move on. But ignoring the issue also ignores what a powerful spellcaster can do with a year off (“how much can I sell a wall of stone for in this swamp town?”), thus ignoring one problem only to be faced with another issue: spellcasters would not only have all the power, but all the money too. If a market could be saturated by inflated supply of iron, causing value to drop, then this issue can work itself out. But now we’re right back at the problem of comparing worth... especially since the low, low value of iron would affect the price of swords and armor thanks to the rules around the craft skills.
To keep a GM from pulling out their hair or handing out ultimatums to players in the form of barred activities, there is a nice, easy solution that makes both problems go away: A table to convert listed cost of materials in the books, to mass, and set an arbitrary atomic value for wealth. Since the “gp” is the common listing, it’s a good value to use, and say that it now means “global product” or something similar (to make yourself sleep better at night, “sp” could be “subsidiary product”, “cp” could be “coarse product”, and “pp” could be “prime product”). It’s especially warm and cozy because one copper piece is “0.01gp”... which is effectively a penny, which traditionally was made of copper.
So copper is 0.50gp per pound, Silver is 5.00gp per pound and Gold is 50.00gp per pound and platinum is 500.00gp per pound. We go into spells which require a costly component... Bless Water requires “25gp” of silver per casting, which we convert to 5 lbs. Done. No matter what happens to the economy of silver, it will always take 5 lbs of it to make a pint of holy water. Rejoice.
Similar things should also be said for other materials, such as diamonds, iron (for craft skills) and the like. All you need is a table converting “gp” book listing to mass, and then you can quickly convert the amounts required for practical use. From there, the commodities market can fluctuate and dance like it does in the real world. Spellcasters and high level characters can hatch quick moneymaking schemes and be cut short by functioning economic realities, without ruining anything but that little corner of the economy that they curb-stomped. The listedValue-to-listedMass table sets all the material needs as masses, so you can play with trade issues to your hearts content, without causing serious harm to gameplay.
The question is, why? The reason people ignore this kind of stuff isnt just because it's hard, but because most of the time, you dont WANT it to matter. I am not rpging Acounting 101. Im rpging fighting a friggan dragon. I cant imagine how many dms are going to be interested in tracking commodities prices or exchange rates. Heck I work in the financial industry, i dont want my LEISURE time to be hemmed in with that stuff.
That said, this only sort of solves the problem, but not really. The real problem in my opinion is that wealth == power. Magic items cost money, money gets you items, players are expected to have x value of items in their possession at certain levels, and it effects their power mechanically. THAT needs to be changed. Then the money making schemes can go on all the players want and the dm doesnt HAVE to stop it (though they still can obviously if they so choose).
If you detach mechanical power from wealth the overwhelming majority of players will stop trying to do it. Its what I have done in my current campaign, and I couldn't be happier. Players wealth has completely been divorced from magic items (they cant be bought, crafted or sold). And most of what a player would get from magic items is replaced with abilities they get as they level. So now, sure the players can use money to maybe bribe a politician, or hire a mercenary, but they cant change the mechanical power of their character, money has become an RP tool, not a vital resource to survival in game.
I just denote that gold converts into magic at the rate of 1000 gp/day maximum. Gold is CONSUMED by being converted into magic items.
Intrinsically valuable things like gems are valued by their conversion ratios vs gold. A 5000 gp gem is 5000 gp, regardless of type, because it can be converted into 5000 gp of magic items.
Gold thus goes from a variable commodity to the only thing with an absolute value...it can be converted at 1000 units a day into magic. a 'gold peice' is 1/1000th of this amount, rendered as a coin.
Silver and copper convert pitifully, platinum is 5x better, and gems are better yet...but they all get consumed if used to make magic items.
Thus, objects of art, furs and other stuff are actually being priced vs magical items and the conversion ratio.
The variable part of making magic items should always be the level of the magic-user involved. Only a high level caster can make high level magic items. Naturally he'll want to maximize his dollar value by ONLY making high level magic items.
But if the limit on production is 1000 gp/day in gold, where does the value of a mage's time fit in? A level 5 wizard making +1 swords can, by the current system, make the same amount of money per day as a level 17 caster making a staff of Power.
Thus, if you want realistic pricing, you should tack on x gp^2, where X is the level of the caster required to make the item. A magic item taking up the time of an archmage should be paying dearly for the rarity and power of the man's time, and 25 gp/day for the time of a level 5 churning out the low level goods is likewise an extremely good wage. You may even want to do lvl-4 or something, if casters are common enough...this devalues rote items to 1 gp/day of labor, still not a bad working wage, but it means that the work of a master craftsman, that could take literally weeks to accomplish, actually gets paid as much or more then someone making magic items.
This turns magic items from something that can make people a lot of money, to just a craft with extremely expensive ingredients.
It doesn't require an overhaul of the WBL rules, either. Those are just based on 2x cost. Whatever they actually spend, adjust the 'actual' number to twice the cost. 289 gp/day for the services of an archmage is cheap, and will still be cheaper then just doubling to make market value.
==Aelryinth
Ah, armchair economist -- fun times.
Ah, haughty forums commentators.
We are a dime a dozen aren't we?
As a DM it's your job to answer the question why your epic wizard NPC's don't take such seeminly easy dodges. I can come with such answers for my campaign, any DM worth his or her salt should be able to do the same.
Many are able to, but prefer not to. I bet you could have said the same thing sans the veiled claim of incompetence, but you chose not to. See the similarity?
I'f you're interested in this topic, don't miss Frank and K's commentary on the Economics of D&D and the "wish-based economy."
You mean this? LINKYLINKLINK
Actually, this is topic partly based on that very article.
As an aside, I made a homebrew 3.5e setting where things like HD and XP were known quantities in the world, thanks to various spells which can literally measure HD, and experiments can be run involving combat and spell progression. Basically, when a world has enough high level casters, they can get together and form a "scientific community" and use magic & scientific trials to figure it all out, and then proceed to devise in-game H4X based on those game mechanics they expose. This is ancient history in my world, and findings have been leaked, published and improved upon over thousands of years.
It ended up separating the world into the "have" and "have not" communities in a big way. Keep in mind that something caused the Gods to turn their backs on the world as well. So now LE Devil worshiping Dwarves, CE Demon-bound Elves, and NE insane Gnomes invaders from the Far Realm are the "haves", while everyone else is the "have-nots". Humans, who are rediscovering the Gods, are slowly on the rise.
The point of it is, such a world was so violated by rules knowledge that ideas from the "omicons" saturated the world. 15000gp magic items were incredibly common, as were entire armies with +5 to every stat (from wishes). Any material which could be conjured into perpetuity (Iron, Stone, Shadow-conjured iron & stone, permanent illusions, undead laborers etc.) were so prolific that their value was negligible among the elite, and extremely low even among the have-nots.
People have odd notions of what gold is worth.
Ah, haughty forums commentators.We are a dime a dozen aren't we?
How much does it make in gold? And what's the price of 1 pound of nickel? ;)
But seriously, when it comes to epic wizards doing epic money-making schemes, I'm not convinced it has a huge impact on the economy other than provide a reason to explain the economics of magical items; which is already out of whack economically speaking but provides a good platform for the game.
Epic wizards would skewer a country's economics if they provided a whole nation with food for the next 12 years, but they usually don't do that. They usually don't even buy the food required to sustain their army of minions, which could also make price skyrocket from the perspective of commoners. But epic wizards are too paranoid to depend on commoners to sustain their army. I don't blame them, really...
Epic wizards usually don't employ a nation of commoners to built castles and towers over a period of 3 or 4 generations (never mind 3 or 4 weeks), giving them outrageously high salaries. They usually don't donate bridges, built highways and cater to foreign ambassadors. When they figure out how to mint their own money so to speak, they don't even need to maintain a merchant consortium, finance business ventures and sponsor ships and caravans. As a matter of fact, epic wizards are usually rather disconnected from any economy other than that of magical items.
So why is a +5 sword so damned expensive? My guess: because high epic wizards have the money to pay for it, jacking-up the prices. Conveniently, this provides us with a ready-made reason to price magical items according to a nice and (economically) artificial algorithm. So the way I see it, stinking rich epic wizards are not an issue; they're a feature!
'findel