In defense of magic shoppes

[ciretose]

@Mdt - Not according to the examples provided by the setting.

From the gamemastery guide, Sleepy Crossroads Thorp has a 4th level bard, a 4 level expert/1 warrior and a 2nd level expert as the "notable" PCs

The Hamlet had even less.

I would say the norm is that the 1st level PCs are considered on par with the newest wet around the ears town guards and they get to be notable between 3rd and 5th level.

[thejeff]

mdt wrote:

thejeff wrote:

I wouldn't go that far, but I also dislike the idea that the starting PCs are among the weakest people in their village. They should be able to do heroic things even from the start, on a small scale, but still heroic. If they can't take care of any problem the average grandmother couldn't handle, then what do they get to do?

Who says they are?

Let's look at a village, say 30 people? The inn keeper is probably a retired level 8 warrior, and the mayor might be a level 8 noble. The rest of the village is 1st to 3rd level, with a 5th level warrior as the sheriff. Most of them with NPC levels. They have NPC wealth/equipment, a lot of which is tied up in shops/inventory/farms/animals/etc.

If it comes to a flat out fight, the village can kill the average 5 PC 1st level party, but they are going to lose half the villagers doing it, because they are all armed with cheap or make shift weapons, and aren't wearing armor. The adventurer's have at least one spell caster (probably with burning hands to take out multiple people), and so on.

Yeah, they're the weakest in the town. :(

They are the local trouble shooters even at 1st level, or the local trouble makers, depending on alignment. They aren't evil (or at least if they are, everyone else is neutral or evil). The 3 or 4 guys in town who could take them out have no reason to, and the ones who can't don't antogonize them.

As they level up, they are going to find the small town is just a bit too small for them, with no challenges left, and they move on to bigger towns and challenges, with correspondingly bigger groups and bigger npcs. Eventually, they will be respected and known all over (or reviled and hunted). When they hit level 12 or so, they're among the movers and the shakers, and when they hit level 20, they're epic and are known all over the world.

What's wrong with that?

Nothing. Probably about how I'd set it up. Especially if the villagers tend towards the lower end of that. I've seen other people argue that the average should be about 5th level, which is a bit much for me, even if they are Commoners.

[Ashiel]

This is the Absolom we're talking about, and not the Biblical one, right?

[bookrat]

Degoon Squad wrote:

kmal2t wrote:

shallowsoul wrote:

The problem is magic items have become math filler.

Zark: You stated that an 11th level party should have no problem finding a +3 sword. I would say a +3 sword is rare because of how powerful and costly it is. You should have a lot of trouble because there shouldn't be that many +3 swords out there.

Now when we look at it as simply a math filler then yes it should be easy.

This

And ok...if we are to use the RAW on magic items then the rarity of magic items is really proportional to how common adventurers are (magic users) and what their life expectancy is.

are 1:1000 people magic users? 1:10,000 or more?

lets assume conservatively that its 1:10k and 1/2 of those people survive to make items and some people make items some don't so there's an average of 1.5 items made/magic user

In a population of 10 million there'd be 1000..of that there'd be 500 to make items so 750 items made in that given period. I'll even half that to 375 to account for items that are used up like scrolls, potions, etc. now extrapolate that over centuries of magic users and you have a s~@% ton of items floating around

If you don't want to "oversaturate the market" with magic items (and decrease the validity that there'd be Mag-o-Marts) I see two options: change the rules for creating items to make it harder or you can't do it until much higher levels and/or make the ratio of magic-users to others much lower.

I think they are far more common then 1 in 10k, I would say about 1 in 500 is a caster of some sort.

The Majority of these would be Adepts as most large villages and towns would have at least one., They are followed (in my world) by hedge witches and what I call town mages, both who are more likely to know spells to mend items and entertain the masses then spells like magic missile and fireball.
One problem most role playing games have is they concentrate on spell to vaporize other living being,while a spell that enables one to remove wine...

Let's consider which classes can craft magical items: Bard, Cleric, Druid, Paladin, Ranger, Sorcerer, Wizard, Alchemist, Inquisitor, Oracle, Summoner, Witch, Magus, Adept.

And non-casting classes: Aristocrat, Commoner, Expert, Warrior, Cavalier, Rogue, Monk, Fighter, Barbarian, Gunslinger, Ninja, Samurai.

That's a lot of ways to become a spellcaster in order to qualify for the item creation feats. There are even more spellcaster classes than non-spellcaster classes.

Now, what that doesn't tell us is how common each class is. It might be easy to assume that a commoner is the most common class, but is it really? All pickpockets and thieves would be rogue, expert, or something along those lines. Crafters, cooks, etc would be experts, perhaps with a level or two of something else depending on their background. Guards would be warriors, fighters, or some other martial class; but could even have some levels as a spellcaster depending on the area and rank.

Going the the NPC Gallery in the GMG, there are a total of 8 commoners out of a total of 81 examples: Village Idiot (commoner 1), Barmaid (commoner 2), Farmer (commoner 1/expert 1), Beggar (commoner 1/rogue 1), Drunkard (commoner 1/warrior 2), Vagabond (commoner 2/warrior 1), Pilgrim (commoner 5), and Hedge Wizard (commoner 2/wizard 3). Commoners, it seems, aren't very common.

Even with that, though, we could still assume that the majority are not spell casting types - the question would be: "Where do you draw the line?" Is it 60/40? 90/10? It certainly wouldn't be 9999/1. I'm not even sure it would 499/1.

[mdt]

ciretose wrote:

@Mdt - Not according to the examples provided by the setting.

From the gamemastery guide, Sleepy Crossroads Thorp has a 4th level bard, a 4 level expert/1 warrior and a 2nd level expert as the "notable" PCs

The Hamlet had even less.

I would say the norm is that the 1st level PCs are considered on par with the newest wet around the ears town guards and they get to be notable between 3rd and 5th level.

Whoops, should have said '60 people' not 30 people for village. However, Village > Thorp, so yes, I think the 8th level mayor is appropriate for a village. And again, I think even with 60 people, 5 1st level people with class levels are going to be, if not notables (which I never said they were), not the weakest in town (which is what I was responding to).

As to wet behind the ears town guards, considering those guards are all commoners or maybe warriors, while the PCs are Fighters, Rogues, Wizards, Clerics and maybe a Monk or Bard. So someone with no class abilities, or very few, and others with multiple feats, class abilities, backstab... yeah, they're still not the equivalent...

[ciretose]

Ashiel wrote:

This is the Absolom we're talking about, and not the Biblical one, right?

Can't access the Wiki at work (or the guide I purchased since I went Amazon ), but I'll presume that is a correct link to the wiki entry including the limited OGL information about the location.

Is this preceeding the part where you post a 4 screen long "A HA!" post, because I'm not going to be home for a few hours and I really want to pull quotes from the book in my response, given how much it talks about the availabilty of items there and in Katapesh (I have that book too...I actually purchase and own things the publisher sells), but feel free to dig a hole about what you can't get there for a few hours until I get home and post the quotes.

[bookrat]

Absalom has a population of 303,900.

Katapesh has a population of 215,000.

Edit: those are the cities, not the nations.

[mdt]

TheJeff wrote:

Nothing. Probably about how I'd set it up. Especially if the villagers tend towards the lower end of that. I've seen other people argue that the average should be about 5th level, which is a bit much for me, even if they are Commoners.

Nah,

Now, it varies. I usually have the levels of people tend up on average the bigger the city, since a bigger city can support the larger requirements of higher level characters.

Hamlet : 1st to 4th (Avg 2nd)
Thorpe : 1st to 5th (Avg 2nd)
Village : 1st to 8th (Avg 3rd)
Small Town : 1st to 10th (Avg 4th)
Large Town : 1st to 12th (Avg 5th)
Small City : 1st to 14th (Avg 6th)
Large City : 1st to 16th (Avg 7th)
Metropolis : 1st to 18th (Avg 8th)
Megametropolis* : 1st to 20th (Avg 10th)
*2 or 3 times larger than a metropolis

Notice that while the upper limit on the place goes up, the average just creeps up, because while there might be 10,000 more people, most of them are lower to mid level.

[Aratrok]

The only city stat block I can find for Absalom is in the old 3e version of the campaign setting, and it gives Absalom a base limit of 250,000 gp (a metropolis sized city in 3e has a limit of 100,000 gp, compared to the 16,000 gp limit standard in Pathfinder).

So with the same proportions you could give Absalom a base limit of roughly 40,000 gp.

[ciretose]

thejeff wrote:

ciretose wrote:

A metropolis is anything with more than 25,000 people. Absalom has how many people? How about Katapesh?

Selective logical assumptions are selective.

I don't understand your point and since your original "Absalom doesn't exist" post was in response to me, what are you trying to say?

I don't think I ever said metropolises don't exist. I certainly didn't mean to. I think I said "go from one city to another", but you would certainly check metropolises too. Still no guarantee of finding the expensive stuff, but a better place to look.

While there are still caps, the setting books and game mastery guide outline processes where you can get most items if you are willing and able to travel. You will likely need to make some checks, spends some time, but it can be done once you've reached a certain level.

And I'm perfectly fine with this being how players of a certain level get access to certain things. They will have to invest time and energy to detour to X location to aquire X item at X cost (which they will need to protect along the way).

That is, in a way, a quest in and of itself. What I don't care for personally (but don't condemn as wrongbadfun either) is the magic mart being where you are, when you are, all the time because you are high level.

I just personally kind of find that boring.

The setting book lays out there are these wonderful places with ridiculously high gold caps where you can get just about anything if you have the gold and the time.

And then there is the ongoing "The way I read the rules you absolutely can't get access to good things unless you are a caster, they are totally superior to all things and broken based on how I read the rules, anyone who doesn't read them as giving me all those options is wrong, but don't you dare suggest anything to nerf my caster!" argument.

Which, I'll admit is a strawman statement, but I couldn't think of how to explain it without using it. My apologies.

[ciretose]

mdt wrote:

TheJeff wrote:

Nothing. Probably about how I'd set it up. Especially if the villagers tend towards the lower end of that. I've seen other people argue that the average should be about 5th level, which is a bit much for me, even if they are Commoners.

Nah,

Now, it varies. I usually have the levels of people tend up on average the bigger the city, since a bigger city can support the larger requirements of higher level characters.

Hamlet : 1st to 4th (Avg 2nd)
Thorpe : 1st to 5th (Avg 2nd)
Village : 1st to 8th (Avg 3rd)
Small Town : 1st to 10th (Avg 4th)
Large Town : 1st to 12th (Avg 5th)
Small City : 1st to 14th (Avg 6th)
Large City : 1st to 16th (Avg 7th)
Metropolis : 1st to 18th (Avg 8th)
Megametropolis* : 1st to 20th (Avg 10th)
*2 or 3 times larger than a metropolis

Notice that while the upper limit on the place goes up, the average just creeps up, because while there might be 10,000 more people, most of them are lower to mid level.

Where are you getting these numbers from?

[Serum]

ciretose wrote:

mdt wrote:

TheJeff wrote:

Nothing. Probably about how I'd set it up. Especially if the villagers tend towards the lower end of that. I've seen other people argue that the average should be about 5th level, which is a bit much for me, even if they are Commoners.

Nah,

Now, it varies. I usually have the levels of people tend up on average the bigger the city, since a bigger city can support the larger requirements of higher level characters.

...

Where are you getting these numbers from?

I think I found out where.

[Vorduvai]

ciretose wrote:

And then there is the ongoing "The way I read the rules you absolutely can't get access to good things unless you are a caster...

Couldn't say that I've ever seen this from a player, but upon reading this I was reminded of an 'Adventure Time' episode where the Ice King travels to secret 'Wizard Town' to buy a new 'demonic wishing eye' after he lost his old one. So in the Land of Ooo this seems to be supported :)

[Alzrius]

kmal2t wrote:

And ok...if we are to use the RAW on magic items then the rarity of magic items is really proportional to how common adventurers are (magic users) and what their life expectancy is.

are 1:1000 people magic users? 1:10,000 or more?

lets assume conservatively that its 1:10k and 1/2 of those people survive to make items and some people make items some don't so there's an average of 1.5 items made/magic user

In a population of 10 million there'd be 1000..of that there'd be 500 to make items so 750 items made in that given period. I'll even half that to 375 to account for items that are used up like scrolls, potions, etc. now extrapolate that over centuries of magic users and you have a s%!+ ton of items floating around.

No, it's not.

Admittedly, Pathfinder is silent on the issue of demographics, unlike 3.5, which had tables listing the average level of each class per settlements of various sizes. However, if we're willing to use the 3.5 settlement tables and make some fairly baseline assumptions about the game world, we can come up with some reliable figures about how many spellcasters are in the game world, and use that as a platform for talking about the relative rarity (or lack thereof) of magic items.

In terms of the average number of spellcasters in the game world, a few years ago I wrote a lengthy blog post about this, and came up with the following statistics: crunching the 3.5 numbers and making a few basic assumptions about the game world population (of, we'll say, PC races), only 2.85% are divine spellcasters, and 0.95% are arcane spellcasters - the rest of the population has no spellcasting ability.

The above, of course, only takes into account the eleven Core classes and the five NPC classes, but it's still a remarkably small percentage of the population. This shrinks even more when you start breaking it down by specific class, but we needn't go that far.

With that done, let's take a look at the average level of NPCs in the game world. We immediately run into a problem here: there's no method for generating XP for NPCs; they simply have whatever level the GM wants them to have. However, since we're trying to come up with some sort of reasonable basis for discussion and comparison, we'll need to set some sort of value.

A little over a year ago, I wrote about this on my blog, and came up with a conservative method of earning XP by engaging in mundane training; that one day (e.g. eight hours) of training is worth 1 experience point. For simplicity, we'll say that normal work (e.g. engaging in their Craft/Profession/Perform skill check to earn money) also constitutes training - though this is apart from any Craft checks involved with making magic items (since those aren't Craft checks made to earn income over time, but rather measure the value of construction of an object).

So, how much XP will the average NPC earn in their lifetime? Well, let's use a few more presumptions: first, we'll say that NPCs start working at their listed age of adulthood, and retire at their listed old age category (this doesn't have to mean they stop working, just that they're no longer engaging in on-the-job training). Further, we'll say that they work six days out of every seven, which is three hundred thirteen days out of a typical three hundred sixty-five day year.

To summarize, a typical NPC will, over their lifetime, earn XP equal to [313 * {(old age) - (adulthood)}]. Of course, we'll use the medium XP advancement track.

For humans, this is thirty-eight years of working, coming to 11,894 XP, which puts them at 4th level, almost halfway to 5th. To contrast this with elves, the longest-lived race, they'd work for one hundred fifty-three years, earning 47,889 XP, or enough to be 7th level, and very close to 8th.

I want to take a moment to reiterate that these values are all averages. NPCs who, for example, can't work very hard for some reason will have values lower than these, whereas exceptional NPCs - such as those who have an adventuring background or have earned story awards - will be higher, possibly much higher. This goes double for PCs, who most people seem to presume are (very) exceptional.

Given that there are eight item creation feats, two of which (Craft Rod and Craft Staff) are above 7th level, there simply aren't many opportunities for the comparatively few spellcasters in the world to take these feats to begin with, especially compared with so many other feat choices that they could take. The best case scenario would be a 7th level elven wizard who spent all of his feat slots, and his bonus feat slot, on item creation feats, which would (with his free Scribe Scroll feat) let him take all of the remaining six item creation feats.

(It's worth noting that these numbers have remarkable fidelity to what the excellent article D&D: Calibrating Your Expectations says about how many levels people in the real world would have in D&D levels - remember, the above math is for a person who works six days a week, every week from the age of adulthood until they become old; scaling these up for demi-humans - such as the aforementioned old elven wizard - and the numbers are still surprisingly faithful. Perhaps this is why elves seem to be so much more skilled than humans, but not quite so much as to seem god-like in comparison.)

Given the above, and that many if not most of the NPCs the PCs meet will be younger than old age (and thus have less levels than these averages), and that even those who can make magic items are likely to find it an expensive proposition, and how many magic items are going to have been lost, destroyed, used up, or simply not the kind the PCs are looking for, it doesn't seem unreasonable to say that magic items are comparatively rare, to say nothing of magic item shops.

Of course, all of the above math and assumptions are easy to tweak, change, or ignore at the convenience of GMs, but it does help to show that, working within the available rules, and a few not-unreasonable assumptions, there's plenty of room for saying that the game doesn't presume that magic item shops are part of the default.

[Vod Canockers]

shallowsoul wrote:

The problem is magic items have become math filler.

Zark: You stated that an 11th level party should have no problem finding a +3 sword. I would say a +3 sword is rare because of how powerful and costly it is. You should have a lot of trouble because there shouldn't be that many +3 swords out there.

Now when we look at it as simply a math filler then yes it should be easy.

But under the rules, it only takes a 9th level caster 9 days or so to create a +3 weapon. Because of the ways that the rules are written even a +5 sword isn't that rare. And it's rarity is only because of the lack of casters that high a level.

[Ross Byers]

I cleaned up some posts. I think it's time this thread is locked: there are too many people getting themselves too worked up over this topic. If you want to make a new thread to discuss the topic, please do. Just keep it civil.