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But it IS the one you cited, I'm just pointing out that there are things that make Sandpoint quite unrepresentative of a generic town of it's given size. Enough to actually put it on the map in the literal sense.
Sure, you're totally right (though I still say that noting a town as big as Sandpoint could afford one is vaguely relevant)...but that's sorta immaterial to the argument at this point given I have additional references for small towns with schools.
Well, it might not be a single gene, if it has a genetic component at all, but rather a combination of genes. Or it could be a recessive gene(s) as well. It's been a while since genetics, but anything involving more than 5 or 6 genes, you start to run out of room for your Punnet Squares.
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OOHHhhh, look! Ever-chill FÄRGRIK beer tankards! Only 5gp!Crafting Requirements: Caster Level 1, prestidigitation
Or ray of frost.
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One day, Paizo will publish the Golarion's version of The IKEA catalogue, which will include many magical conveniences and items. Stuff that won't fit in books meant for adventurers.
OOHHhhh, look! Ever-chill FÄRGRIK beer tankards! Only 5gp!
In seriousness, there is a lot of possibilities for 'mundane' magical items that adventurers, governments, and other big spenders would have no interest in, that are within reach for middle-class families or lower-class villages. A water bucket at the well that casts purify food and drink on the well-water. Washboards that make for cleaner laundry. Drink mugs that are always cold. Kettles that boil themselves.
It's not that they don't exist, its that they are low-cost and low-value, so adventurers don't care, so they don't get space in rulebooks.
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One day, Paizo will publish the Golarion's version of The IKEA catalogue, which will include many magical conveniences and items. Stuff that won't fit in books meant for adventurers.
OOHHhhh, look! Ever-chill FÄRGRIK beer tankards! Only 5gp!
In seriousness, there is a lot of possibilities for 'mundane' magical items that adventurers, governments, and other big spenders would have no interest in, that are within reach for middle-class families or lower-class villages. A water bucket at the well that casts purify food and drink on the well-water. Washboards that make for cleaner laundry. Drink mugs that are always cold. Kettles that boil themselves.
It's not that they don't exist, its that they are low-cost and low-value, so adventurers don't care, so they don't get space in rulebooks.
except that, correct me if I'm wrong, but the cheapest of these items that is usable by a non-magic user-- say, washboard that magically cleans better, 1/day, is still 100 GP to make and normally worth 200 GP for purchase price. (.5x1x(1000/5)), aka, cantrip (.5),caster level 1(1),usable once per day is 1/5 of the usable at will price, which is base of 1000 x (caster level x spell level) for cost, half of that for materials etc to make. It's 500 to make, 1000 to buy, for something that's always on or at will. So for ordinary folks, these items are still nearly completely out of reach-- but the rich folks running around can afford these little luxuries for their own private use...
I like having these little things in the game world, and I presume they exist-- but under the current magic item rules (and their implications even for simple things), they aren't low cost.
You're ignoring the fact that magic items don't wear out under the rules.
That magic washerboard could be around for 300 years, passed down the family line. A magic item every year or two adds up across the generations.
==Aelryinth
One day, Paizo will publish the Golarion's version of The IKEA catalogue, which will include many magical conveniences and items. Stuff that won't fit in books meant for adventurers.
OOHHhhh, look! Ever-chill FÄRGRIK beer tankards! Only 5gp!
In seriousness, there is a lot of possibilities for 'mundane' magical items that adventurers, governments, and other big spenders would have no interest in, that are within reach for middle-class families or lower-class villages. A water bucket at the well that casts purify food and drink on the well-water. Washboards that make for cleaner laundry. Drink mugs that are always cold. Kettles that boil themselves.
It's not that they don't exist, its that they are low-cost and low-value, so adventurers don't care, so they don't get space in rulebooks.
except that, correct me if I'm wrong, but the cheapest of these items that is usable by a non-magic user-- say, washboard that magically cleans better, 1/day, is still 100 GP to make and normally worth 200 GP for purchase price. (.5x1x(1000/5)), aka, cantrip (.5),caster level 1(1),usable once per day is 1/5 of the usable at will price, which is base of 1000 x (caster level x spell level) for cost, half of that for materials etc to make. It's 500 to make, 1000 to buy, for something that's always on or at will. So for ordinary folks, these items are still nearly completely out of reach-- but the rich folks running around can afford these little luxuries for their own private use...
I like having these little things in the game world, and I presume they exist-- but under the current magic item rules (and their implications even for simple things), they aren't low cost.
Theoretically it would be cheaper. You quoted the price of an item that can perform all functions of prestidigitation. Cleaning is just one of many things. There's no RAW calculation, but 500gp seems too expensive.
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The CRB gives a commoner (hireling, untrained) a wage of 1sp per day. After you deduct cost of food, clothing and housing from that meager amount, there wouldn't be much left over for them to spend on magical appliances.
Also since it only costs 35gp or so a year for a full-time housekeeper, then there doesn't seem a need for the wealthy to invest in really expensive magical housekeeping equipment.
Don't underestimate the wealthy. Not all of them is going to tightfisted or rational about the use of their money.
Many a times its also about social status and prestige.
Given the chance to own, brag and show off an expensive magical device can improves one's social standing in the eyes of one's peers.
Otherwise why do you think there is such a market for luxury products?
Or the creation of famous brands?
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Also since it only costs 35gp or so a year for a full-time housekeeper, then there doesn't seem a need for the wealthy to invest in really expensive magical housekeeping equipment.
Hmm. A thought occurs to me. It might seem that way to a human, but a member of a longer lived race could see it differently. An elf, for example, could have to shell out several times what a human would for a given service over the course of a lifetime. Looking at it like that, it might make sense to have to shell out money once and sit back and let it pay for itself. It would cost more at first, but it would be cheaper in the long run.
I think that the humanocentrism of Golarion shows in how this topic is handled. Humans are by far the dominant race, and humans rarely live longer than 100 years without some kind of artificial prolonging of the lifespan. Humans can have grand vision, but on the whole we tend to be focused on the here and now. In Eberron, by contrast, you have a culture where humans are not nearly as dominant, and where the demihumans are much more closely integrated (at least in some cases). Cultural osmosis can go in more than one direction. The demihumans of Khorvaire can be almost indistinguishable from humans culturally speaking, but it appears that they have taught the humans the value of long-term thought.
Also, as Ross suggested, even poor villages could come together to buy such things.Its hard to imagine how an economy would function with a glut of permanent magical items accumulating over the centuries replacing the jobs of unskilled laborers.
I think it would create a counter-culture of Luddites who go around smashing magic items, just to recover jobs to earn money to feed their families.
In my own Kingmaker kingdom, my king - a mage and craftsman - is not only introducing such high-quality limitless use magical items into the kingdom, but also funding massive (voluntary) self-re-education programs to train anyone who wants a job to find a new one.
The fact that these educational programs have a slightly good bent (and an ever-so-slightly lawful one) is mostly just icing; they get preached at about the benefits of being benevolent and honorable, and, in exchange, they get to live a life of luxury and a life spent doing what they love.
(And, in so-doing, is trading out NPC class levels for PC class levels, using the re-training rules.)
Generally the new job is as similar as possible to the old job, with the exception of those that hated their old job, in which case the new job generally aligns with the character's long-term interests (something determined by exceedingly thorough psychological, emotional, and personal testing).
Thus, anyone who decides to become Luddites are, by default, not only causing anarchy, but are, by default, being both lazy and selfish, and actively harming their own over-all lifestyle in a foolish, pointless act of rebelliousness.
Also illegal (because they're destroying public and private property).
We have dealt with them, and most were persuaded by diplomacy, but a few were all, "<bleep>-no! We don't want your dogmatic agenda! We want to do what we want to do and no one can tell us otherwise!" in which case they were informed that, for the safety of themselves and others, they could:
1) enjoy time in prison
2) enjoy time in mind-altering re-education processes
3) enjoy being turned out of the country with no option to return
4) become a useful member of society in any way they desired whatsoever - there is always need for folk who want to be useful, just not necessarily in the job they had before
5) establish a small, local, colony without said innovations, that they could live in by themselves, lacking the conveniences of the rest of the country
The few who resisted chose some combination of the above.
Those who went through number one eventually became members of the thieves and assassins guild (which is, secretly, controlled by the king, who only rob things controlled by the king, and who funnel the money the steal... to the king).
Those who chose number two came out healthy, happy, and productive.
Those who chose number three tried to sneak back in, but found that, weirdly, they kept heading south and along the borders of the country, no matter what they tried. (Later a few genuinely repented and just wanted to see their family again. Suddenly, they found themselves on the road leading to their family's homes. How strange. They ended up much like those who chose number four.)
Those who chose number four ended up healthy, happy, and productive, for the most part - those few who were still discontent ended up sounding more like grumpy old granpa characters, "Back in my day..." type things. They were still (outside of stupendously stupid lifestyle choices) healthy, however.
Those who chose number five ended up mostly abandoning their social experiment after a year or two. It just wasn't as nice as the areas that had the innovations and conveniences.
The choice to enter into any of those was entirely voluntary. They were not forced to do anything, and permitted to live in the way that they wished to live... but not at the expense of others'.
That said, I could understand the frustration... but not all situations have to result in that.
Cold mugs.
Self-purifying wells.
These kinds of things can be crafted regardless of the general populace' skill-set, and won't put anyone out of business.
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The CRB gives a commoner (hireling, untrained) a wage of 1sp per day. After you deduct cost of food, clothing and housing from that meager amount, there wouldn't be much left over for them to spend on magical appliances.
Also since it only costs 35gp or so a year for a full-time housekeeper, then there doesn't seem a need for the wealthy to invest in really expensive magical housekeeping equipment.
That's completely untrained labor, from someone with no craft/profession skills. A middle class household, with an income based on a Profession skill and Skill Focus (Profession) has a vastly improved income. (Even if they're a level 1 commoner with a 10 Wis.)
1sp/day is 'minimum wage'. It doesn't represent an average.
What do you do when a gaggle of busy-body priestesses of Milani show up and start meddling with your (quite unfairly misunderstood) "mind-altering re-education processes"?
Heh. They can try to find it...
But mostly love them - they're adorable! and great! - and utilize as much Diplomacy as they can hold, and summoning the agents of the their goddess to display that it was submitted to willingly and with no compulsion prior to the process itself. Also submitting to multiple truth-proving elements to prove that such is accurate.
It's funny how respecting people's decisions means even those you don't agree with...
(That said, there's quite a thriving church of Milani that is publicly and privately supported by said king. Hope and Devotion are both concepts that are critical to the success of the kingdom.)
If they respond to neither diplomacy nor the emissaries from their own goddess, they have become heretics by their own religion. EDIT: They will then be turned away.
It helps that he's actively supporting Liberthane, as he's been a fan for quite some time.
:)
EDIT: Oh, yeah, I forgot! He also hosts a rather large temple-area, around one full city block, devoted to followers of Milani who need a place of refuge. He works on finding those who would otherwise be martyrs and rescuing them, if they allow it.
That said, he doesn't have the resources to research all of this, so he helps encourage their growth and careful application of freedom from unjust rule in Cheliax, Taldor, and Galt, where he can. It's not a terribly popular move with all of his citizens - many think he's expending too many resources for assisting needs abroad rather than at home, but, considering the average lifestyle value of every single person who lives in the kingdom is already several steps above anywhere else - guaranteed healthy food and water, clean facilities to sleep in and expunge other bodily functions, and the freedom to live in wilderness areas instead of cities at their leisure, or even to congregate into areas without those same benefits, again, at their option - it's hard to say anyone's being oppressed (except, perhaps, the Thieves guild, which formed initially without his input, and was later co-opted for the purpose of channeling the efforts of those who just wanted easy money or a place to belong to have one, even though they don't generally get along with the rest of society).
Harathia (the kingdom) is very much about freedom of choice within its borders, although that freedom is sharply curtailed whenever it runs up against the value of someone else's life, liberty, basic dignity. Which is kind of a no-brainer, really: you kill, oppress, or otherwise actively harm innocents, you no longer engage with the society on that society's terms.
The only ones who reject that simply don't accept the very real (and fully funded) non-mind affecting reeducation opportunities supplied freely by the king of his own funds and efforts before they go around breaking other peoples' things.
I love how often people on these boards skip every other voluntary option the people were given (including what amounts to, "stop being dumb and harming others, and go home and be happy") and focuses exclusively on the "MIND AFFECTING!" thing, when it's entirely voluntary.
Understandable, perhaps, but amusing. It never goes without challenge.
I mean, I get more flak for offering to raise my slain foes from the dead - slain in fair combat in the course of the adventure... because, despite doing so for no price, the king insists on the cost of being mentally conditioned so that they value mortal life and dignity. It is a bargain they are offered while dead, and known to them before they accept resurrection: accept and, if Pharasma permits (which she is petitioned for), they are raised and neither they nor their loved ones ever need pay a cent, become citizens, or otherwise owe anything; however, should the offer be refused, he will use every power he owns to ensure they stay dead. They murdered his people once, or did their best to do so, and he won't give them that opportunity again. (And, yeah, killing folk - or its equivalent - is the only way to earn a death sentence to date.)
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That's completely untrained labor, from someone with no craft/profession skills. A middle class household, with an income based on a Profession skill and Skill Focus (Profession) has a vastly improved income. (Even if they're a level 1 commoner with a 10 Wis.)
1sp/day is 'minimum wage'. It doesn't represent an average.
The 1sp per day (hireling, untrained) is "the typical daily wage for laborers, maids, and other menial workers" (CRB).
The 3sp per day (hireling, trained) is "the typical daily wage for mercenary warriors, masons, craftsmen, cooks, scribes, teamsters, and other trained hirelings."
110 gold or so per year still doesn't seem like much for the skilled types, especially after living expenses are deducted.
A commoner with a rank in a profession has a profession bonus of +4. Taking 10, he earns 7 gp a week, or 1 gp a day. If he spent his feat on Skill Focus (Profession), his bonus is +7, and taking 10 earns him 8.5 gp a week.
This creates a contradiction. There are a few ways to reconcile it.
- 3 sp hires a skilled hireling for a day, but isn't exclusive. If a 'hireling' averages three clients, there's a day's wage.
- The true cost of a hireling is 3 sp plus room and board: this can account for some of the discrepancy.
- The game is not an economic simulator and it is best if we don't look at it too hard.
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but under the current magic item rules (and their implications even for simple things), they aren't low cost.
Those formulas are guidelines more than hard rules: the best indicator is to compare against existing items and figure out which a generic character would prefer. For cosmetic items with no mechanical benefit, like the self-chilling mug, that's kind of undefined, since a PC is unaffected by it. The price can be as low as your GM feels is reasonable.
The purifying well bucket, casting a 0 level spell with a defined mechanical benefit might cost a decent amount, but its a community investment and is still probably easier to create than a water treatment plant. It's the kind of thing a church might produce at-cost for the local parish.
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In theory there can be quite a few magical items that are purifying buckets, or chilling mugs with Master Craftsmen spread through the world.
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There was something in a previous edition (I forget which one) that basically said that items that produced one prestidigitation effect at will (self-cleaning pan, everchilled beer mug, etc) cost 50GP. Seems very reasonable to me.
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The CRB gives a commoner (hireling, untrained) a wage of 1sp per day. After you deduct cost of food, clothing and housing from that meager amount, there wouldn't be much left over for them to spend on magical appliances.
Most people aren't "commoner (hireling, untrained)." If you've got even a single rank in a Craft, Profession, or Perform skill you can take 10 on a skill check and make about a gold piece a day.
If half of that goes for cost of living (at an "average" lifestyle), that still leaves you with something like 100gp per year in spendable money.
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Wizards are taught to respect and fear it, and to treat the proliferation of its secrets as an exercise in catastrophe control. They select apprentices and accept students carefully, weighing their ambition and morals alongside their aptitude. Wizard academies exist to educate, but they also serve to monitor and control, to secret away dangerous spellbooks, to keep war mages loyal to the crown, to preserve an air of rarity, and to guide necromancers away from being the next Adventure Path villain. A free exchange of magical learning would start an arms race, a collapse of sovereignty – or just summon a world eater – that no sane, well-educated wizard wants.Enter the sorcerers... and the wizards collectively cast Arcane Hand of Facepalming (aka Bigby's Facepalm).
This could be a good reason to have friction between wizards who are properly trained in responsible use of magic and wild card sorcerers who can run the whole spectrum of responsibility.
I can easily imagine the average sorcerer constantly pointing out that all the time the wizard was putting into mastering magic, the sorcerer was getting laid (high CHA + Charm Person + teenage hormones).
Why would a sorcerer with a 20 charisma need to use charm person?
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Flight still renders castles pretty stupid.Not necessarily. Enough guards and the occasional flying monster is perhaps a minor problem, but the castle is still relatively useful against opposing armies.
More importantly, a castle is useful against the local peasantry. The King's personal wizard will defend against any wandering sorcerer; but castle walls still keep out the commoners.
The truth? Because that's the setting people want.
But in fairness, a person of average intelligence (10) can't even learn to cast 1st level spells.
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I was doing a little wiki walking tonight that made me think about this thread and the sub-discussion about heredity and sorcerers.
Sorcerers are very common on the island of Hermea,[3] where pervasive social engineering by the gold dragon Mengkare nurtures the development of arcane abilities.
I don't have the books referenced, but following the links to Hermea, Mengkare and the Glorious Endeavor, it sounds like there is at least a way to nurture the growth of sorcerous talent to some degree through a breeding program(!). I'm still processing what I read, so I can't say just how much bearing it has on the discussion here, but it sounded interesting.
Ooh~! Is that what they're calling "eugenics" these day! Wink-wink, nudge-nudge, say no more, eh?
Suddenly Mengkare's interest in humanity makes more sense!
Also, in-canon, it's noted that on Golarion magic items and effects have decayed.
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Actually, magic may not be ubiquitous on Golarion, but it is common. Reign of Winter #1 has two examples of middle-of-nowhwere one-horse villages with populations of less than two hundred, and notably both have the services of a Cleric, an Adept (or other spellcasting class), and one additional PC class (Alchemist and Ranger, respectively); as well as a descent number of Adventurer-level magic items(just over half a dozen each, including scrolls and potions). That suggests to me that magic use in most places (unless stated otherwise) is considered somewhere around the "Skilled Craftsman" level, where at the very least, basic services are easily available, but nothing real flashy.
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This is a related thing, but I have to ponder: what are the conditions supposed to be on any given world where magic could flow in abundance or be completely non-existent? Earth, for example, had a period in its history, long long ago, where magic was at least as common as it was on Golarion, but by the present day it is all but extinct. You also have the culture that created the starship that crashed in Numeria. As far as we know, the Androffans were completely unaware of magic (given the reaction robots give to spellcasters in Iron Gods).
Which leads me to another train of thought: does magic actually hinder a civilization in terms of technological and, perhaps, cultural progress? See it like this:
Golarion: its history is bathed in magic, from mighty spellcasters to arcane and divine scars on the land. Most of Golarion is largely in a pre-industrial age, even if socio-economic conditions are somewhat better than it was in Medieval times in Europe. Still, most of it is dominated by monarchies or theocracies and slavery is legal or at least accepted in much of the Inner Sea region, even if it is frowned upon by many people.
Earth: Magic was once a powerful force but has vanished. Advances in technology by World War I is light years ahead of what most of Golarion has access to. Many nations are advanced forms of government like republics or have some system of parliament.
Androffa: No magic at all, the Androffans are capable of utilizing nanotechnology, interstellar travel, artificial intelligence, mind uploading, and so on. Government type is unknown, but we can assume some sort of federation of worlds.
Maybe pure coincidence, but it's an awfully interesting one. Also note that
Androffans are humans, and humans are the dominant race on all three worlds.
Sometimes I wonder if Paizo actually has this all figured out or not.
Well that's embarrasing, the spoiler I posted above is not only revealed, I spoiled the title that says "Iron Gods spoilers". Welp that's what I get for sleep deprivation :P
This is a related thing, but I have to ponder: what are the conditions supposed to be on any given world where magic could flow in abundance or be completely non-existent? Earth, for example, had a period in its history, long long ago, where magic was at least as common as it was on Golarion, but by the present day it is all but extinct. You also have the culture that created the starship that crashed in Numeria. As far as we know, the Androffans were completely unaware of magic (given the reaction robots give to spellcasters in Iron Gods).It could be that magic is a finite resource like coal or iron. Plentiful on some worlds, rare on others.
So Golarion is rich in magical-energies which casters can tap into, Androffan has none or its supply was exhausted in the distant past, and Earth had some but its supply has nearly run dry.Or else rivers of magical energy could flow through the Material Plane. Some planets like Golarion sitting permanently in a stream, others like Androffan in the magic-dead area beyond, and a planet like Earth drifting out from the shallows towards the magic-dead area.
Magical energies may now have become so thin on Earth that only skilled existing casters (like the PCs on Earth in RoW) can tap into them. In the same way there is not enough ambient magic left to support magically-powered creatures like dragons.
That's how I explain the rather touchy question of, "so if gods directly channel their will through their servants on Golarion, what about the current religions of Earth in 1918?" I tend to say something among the lines of "all deities of the Pathfinder's Earth exist in some form, but because magic is so thin there they can't directly channel their power through priests."
Also, I think it also helps that Golarion is the cage of Rovagug, therefore eliciting a lot of divine attention. This probably factors (but is by no means the only factor) into why magic has existed so strongly in Golarion for so long.
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Magic isn't strictly a force for stasis, but it isn't democratic.
Spellbooks aren't standard: they need expert conversion and translation by the person using them.
Powerful magic is used by a tiny minority of high-level people, who can't easily share their knowledge with each other (and even if they could, that doesn't mean that a first level wizard could cast fireball.)
Magic items can be used by anyone, but are prohibitively expensive for even minor benefits. And magic items can't really help with making more magic items in the same way as using machines to create more machines: they can't be made in an assembly line, just by that small pool of powerful magic users.
In a world where every automobile had to be made by hand by a guy with a Ph.D. in engineering (an not even by a technician or underling with blueprints) there will be a lot fewer cars. (In this analogy, an airplane could only be made by the CEO of Boeing, by hand.)
And since you have to level up to use things, it is impossible to skip ahead: an apprentice wizard has to learn how a steam engine works before building a combustion engine before building a turbine. (As opposed to technological specialties, where the people who can design turbines in their sleep would probably fail at trying to make a working steam locomotive, at least on the first try.)
That's not so much stasis (where some force is actively holding progress back) so much as 'When you reach the limits of the potential there is no where else to go.'
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Look at it this way. We live in a world where if a genius works for their entire life, they can make a small improvement in human abilities. They get Nobel prizes or have scientific principles named after them. Marie Curie. Louis Pasteur. Alan Turing. Werner Von Braun. Newton. Einstein.
But in a world of magic, a genius working for his entire life can teleport or raise the dead. Two things mankind might not EVER be able to do in the world of science.
Sure, science might pay off more, for the masses and in a thousand generations. But for the guy who could actually generate progress, re-discovering the same arcane principles certainly holds more allure.
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Magic itself might be a destabilizing factor, to a far greater extant than technology is.
Planar rips, berserker constructs, immortal despotic wizard-kings, interfering dieties, marauding monsters, undead outbreaks...
All possible at relatively low levels of technological development, which create the potential to constantly set back or inhibit technology
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magic gives power to unique individuals who master it.
Technology gives power to large groups of people who can use and benefit from it.
They address very different things. That's probably why Tech is always seen as an instrument of Law and Magic is usually seen as part of Chaos.
==Aelryinth