I don't know if it is Deus Ex Machina for NPCs to have items that might be explicitly useful in their given environments. The point of awarding potentially useful consumables is that it might allow the party to realize that there is more that they can do in a given dungeon than is just determined by their character abilities and items they can expect to purchase at their level. The consumables don't have to be in the room where the hazard or challenge is, but if the party remembers they found an appropriate item that could be useful, it feels like it is still playing into player agency for them to decide to use it rather than insist on having to sell it.
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putting a consumable in a module, that is the only solution for a challenge, is imo one of the worst module designs one can do. If it's not the only solution, then the players best course of action is using an alternative method to bypass the challenge and still sell the consumable. Since again, the cost:value is ridicusly low.
I agree with you if it is the ONLY solution to moving the entire story forward. That is bad adventure design. But seeding a dungeon with interesting consumables that do things like fly, passwall, teleport (especially in a setting where teleport is rare), detect scrying, some form of polymorph, and then having places in your dungeons where these kind of spells create opportunities to find even more valuable treasure (but not essential to the story) or to bypass or make easier certain difficult challenges is not "the worst module design one can do." Players assuming that their skills and abilities will always allow them to access everything in a dungeon is what feels like boring design that never pushes the players outside of their comfort zone. I much prefer dungeons that contain party killing threats that require careful and often times resource draining solutions to bypass. Refusing to ever use a consumable is a choice that a team can make, but it is also a choice that should have consequences in play.
Having the cost be too high on them will discourage players from feeling like it is ok to use there items, which is why I have a bit of a problem with the current pricing scheme, but I also see how, if making them is too cheap, then you recreate the wizard with every spell ready to cast off of a scroll problem of PF1, where finding consumables was nearly a waste of time because you already had one of each of them, or what they could do for you, at the ready anyway.
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Staves are lackluster
Agreed, though the one good use for them I've seen is to be a True Strike battery. Low-end staff of divination, spend a slot to double the charges, and go ham with attack roll spells. Not much other value in them for a prepared caster, but I guess one spell slot per day is nice.
Houseruling away the one staff limit seems like a viable solution, at least partially.
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Since neither one of us mentioned the level 2 wand of longstrider in any of our last several posts, we should probably move this thread. Asking about the price points on consumables, what kind of economy that is supposed to create in Golarion and what to be cautious of in house ruling changes seems like a great topic for a pathfinder friday twitch stream.
And as for alchemists and consumables... Yeah, the consumable pricing is just absurd. The only reason to ever use any higher level alchemical items is if you have an alchemist in the party making them for free. Non-infused alchemical items are just a waste of money.
It's been mathematically shown that there is no such thing in P2E as free crafting.
You still have to pay half. And even if you worked the full length of time to not have to pay the other half, the money saved vs time spent is exactly equal to the money earned and time spent earning an income.
That bard spending his downtime singing on the street? He's "saved" just as much money during his downtime as the artificer who used one of his skill feats just to be able to craft magical items in the first place.
Except the bard didn't have to spend a feat, didn't have to hunt down a formula to get the "savings," and can spend his earnings on the exact same magic item the artificer spent his time crafting or on something else of his choosing (unlike the artificer, who only gets to "spend" his money on his one item).
So yeah, Paizo cracked down on these known "abuses" kinda' hard.
The only benefit that I can see to crafting magical items yourself is that you can potentially obtain one in a situation where you are unable to buy one (such as when you're stranded on a desert island)--provided of course you are somehow still able to get the crafting supplies and formula first.
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This assumes the PF1 standard of all items can be purchased everywhere and everyone is always willing to buy your leftover junk. While this may still be the case in PF2, I'm not 100% sure that it is.
The only benefit that I can see to crafting magical items yourself is that you can potentially obtain one in a situation where you are unable to buy one (such as when you're stranded on a desert island)--provided of course you are somehow still able to get the crafting supplies and formula first.
If the GM is going to stop you from buying a magical item due to setting or scenario, there's nothing stopping him from blocking you from getting the components or formula. Ergo, there are very few practical reasons to waste time with crafting.
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That bard spending his downtime singing on the street? He's "saved" just as much money during his downtime as the artificer who used one of his skill feats just to be able to craft magical items in the first place.Except the bard didn't have to spend a feat, didn't have to hunt down a formula to get the "savings," and can spend his earnings on the exact same magic item the artificer spent his time crafting or on something else of his choosing (unlike the artificer, who only gets to "spend" his money on his one item).
Non-crafters of higher level are often going to outlevel their money earning opportunities. A 12th level Bard can probably find a decent 12th level performance opportunity in Abasolom or Oppara, but not in a fly speck village, where he might only have level 2 or level 3 audiences. The crafter always earns his level in income towards crafting costs no matter where he is.
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If the GM is going to stop you from buying a magical item due to setting or scenario, there's nothing stopping him from blocking you from getting the components or formula. Ergo, there are very few practical reasons to waste time with crafting.This assumes the PF1 standard of all items can be purchased everywhere and everyone is always willing to buy your leftover junk. While this may still be the case in PF2, I'm not 100% sure that it is.
The only benefit that I can see to crafting magical items yourself is that you can potentially obtain one in a situation where you are unable to buy one (such as when you're stranded on a desert island)--provided of course you are somehow still able to get the crafting supplies and formula first.
There's a feat to craft formulas and crafting materials are just a spend money and get them thing by the rules. It's usually not the GM houseruling by fiat that limits item availability in settlements, it's the settlement rules themselves, which bizarrely contemplate that it's hard to find someone able to sell you a Luckblade or buy 200,000 gp in surplus magic items in a hamlet of 80 people.
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There's a feat to craft formulas and crafting materials are just a spend money and get them thing by the rules. It's usually not the GM houseruling by fiat that limits item availability in settlements, it's the settlement rules themselves, which bizarrely contemplate that it's hard to find someone able to sell you a Luckblade or buy 200,000 gp in surplus magic items in a hamlet of 80 people.If the GM is going to stop you from buying a magical item due to setting or scenario, there's nothing stopping him from blocking you from getting the components or formula. Ergo, there are very few practical reasons to waste time with crafting.This assumes the PF1 standard of all items can be purchased everywhere and everyone is always willing to buy your leftover junk. While this may still be the case in PF2, I'm not 100% sure that it is.
The only benefit that I can see to crafting magical items yourself is that you can potentially obtain one in a situation where you are unable to buy one (such as when you're stranded on a desert island)--provided of course you are somehow still able to get the crafting supplies and formula first.
Exactly! People ITT seem to be forgetting (or choosing to ignore) that the Rarity rules exist. This isn't PF1, item and formula rarity is a big deal now-- you can't just buy and sell fabulous magical items freely any more. Even in places like Absalom you still have to know the right people, and out in the sticks you might be plain SOL. Want to sell that Potion of Tongues you found and put the money toward a Wand of Tongues instead? 320gp is more than the richest merchant in the county earns in a year, and he's not interested in it anyway...
ITEM RARITY
Like many other aspects of the rules, items have rarities.
Player characters might find uncommon magic items for
sale, but only infrequently and often by private sellers
or in clandestine markets. Their formulas are often
guarded and not readily available. Unless the GM decides
otherwise, a character cannot purchase rare items, and
their formulas are lost to time.
...
If a character wants to sell an item, they can sell it
for half its Price (or full Price, if the item was made on
commission), assuming they’re able to find a buyer. The
GM determines whether a buyer is available.
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It always comes back down to "Mother May I?"
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you do understand that forumlas are equally rare to the the items they produce.
AND that you can't invent uncommon/rare recipes any more than you can find them in a city.
In fact, it's called out that recipes have the exact same rarity and availability as the products.
and uncommon/rare recipes need direct GM approval to be invented, exactly like buying those items from the market need direct GM approval.
So, really now, Rarity has exactly 0 things to do here. it's 1000% exactly the same for either crafting or finding/buying the items.
Um, that's exactly my point... just because you happen to find a Potion of X, doesn't mean you can also find
a) a buyer for said Potion,b) a Wand of X to buy instead, or
c) a formula to Craft such a wand yourself.
Those things are all equally rare, so the odds of having access to several of them at once should be quite slim.
Which is why the assertion "Potions are dumb, everyone will just sell them and buy/craft a wand of the same thing for only 4-5x more" isn't valid. Most magic items simply aren't fungible like that.
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It always comes back down to "Mother May I?"
It comes down to the story, and what makes sense in the current context. The relative usefulness of Potions vs Wands could look very different if the party is in Absalom or Katapesh as opposed to Sandpoint, or the middle of the Fangwood.
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there's simply no reason why a crafter, would choose to craft a potion over a permanent item unless he wants to lose money for no apparent reason.
What if the crafter only happens to have the formula for a potion and not a permanent item? That's the point, the techniques to make magic items aren't commonly known. Any given crafter would be lucky to have access ONE high-level formula, he doesn't have dozens that he can swap between at will to get the most $$$.
You seem to be envisioning a sort of modern, globalized capitalist economy where wealth is liquid, goods are fungible, and markets are efficient. That's not how Golarion works-- especially not PF2 Golarion. There aren't Magic Item factories churning out Potions and Wands and Rings, setting production targets based on market conditions to maximize shareholder ROI.
Potions and wands aren't consumer goods mass-produced for sale on the open market, they're mystical artifacts created for specific purposes by powerful magic-users poring over dusty tomes and such. Sometimes a magic item outlives its creator (if a reclusive Wizard's tower gets sacked by a mob of superstitious peasants before he can use that Invisibility Potion he brewed to spy on his rival with, or whatever), and such items might survive and end up among a specialty merchant's wares or abandoned in a ruin for adventurers to find.
That's where your Wand of Longstrider comes from, not MagiCorp's offshore manufacturing plant in Tian Xia. The fact that Pathfinder stories are about mighty heroes rather than the daily lives of peasants tends to obscure the fact that even mid-level adventurers are fabulously wealthy and powerful by the standards of the common folk who form the backbone of the feudal, agrarian economy.
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What if the crafter only happens to have the formula for a potion and not a permanent item?
He curses the gods for having a formula that's not worth making...
It always comes back down to "Mother May I?"
That is one of the key conceits of this edition. If you are unwilling to accept it you might want to consider playing a different game/edition. Complaining about it constantly is going to achieve exactly nothing.
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you do understand that forumlas are equally rare to the the items they produce.
AND that you can't invent uncommon/rare recipes any more than you can find them in a city.
In fact, it's called out that recipes have the exact same rarity and availability as the products.
and uncommon/rare recipes need direct GM approval to be invented, exactly like buying those items from the market need direct GM approval.
So, really now, Rarity has exactly 0 things to do here. it's 1000% exactly the same for either crafting or finding/buying the items.
Um, that's exactly my point... just because you happen to find a Potion of X, doesn't mean you can also find
a) a buyer for said Potion,
b) a Wand of X to buy instead, or
c) a formula to Craft such a wand yourself.Those things are all equally rare, so the odds of having access to several of them at once should be quite slim.
Which is why the assertion "Potions are dumb, everyone will just sell them and buy/craft a wand of the same thing for only 4-5x more" isn't valid. Most magic items simply aren't fungible like that.
not really when it's dumb to craft potions in the first place.
there's simply no reason why a crafter, would choose to craft a potion over a permanent item unless he wants to lose money for no apparent reason.
Are the merchants in the setting set on losing money for some reason?
and since magical items don't grow in trees, you expect all of the crafted items to actually be the ones that are easier to craft and more valuable and easy to sell. And all require the same investment and expertise as well.
so, if we follow rarity rules and economics, potions/consumables should really be "extremely rare" simply due to how unprofitable they are and due to their very limited longevity even IF someone made them.
So, really now, in a city you should expect around 10 times more permanent items rather than potions.
since only "dumb" npc's actually bother to craft...
Have you considered that when your PC was taking the time to learn how to cast powerful spells, take an Attack of Opportunity and create potions om the fly in am emergency, that perhaps an NPC was taking the time to learn how to craft things at a much more economical and faster rate? Naaaah. That could never happen. Consumables just dont exist.
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how do you "seed" a dungeon with consumables when crafting the consumables in the first place is, economy-wise, a TERRIBLE decision by the crafter.
Not specifically consumables, but I've always had a similar issue. There are a lot of items that are just bad, so who is making them? Where are these Rods of Wonder coming from? There can't be any significant demand for them, they're useless items that only gets printed because it's iconic and produced a few chuckles back in the 70s. Or my favorite punching bag for this edition, the Bracers of Missile Deflection. They're crap, a mundane shield is much better, who would want one? So who's making all the stuff that your party immediately says "It's useless, sell it," and who's buying it?
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there's simply no reason why a crafter, would choose to craft a potion over a permanent item unless he wants to lose money for no apparent reason.What if the crafter only happens to have the formula for a potion and not a permanent item? That's the point, the techniques to make magic items aren't commonly known.
The entire rarity system would beg to differ.
The crafter simply goes to the local blueprint shop and buys the wand formula. It's common, so anyone can find it easily enough.
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That sounds awful. Who fantasizes about being the Wizard who carries around a barrel full of staves? That's what you'd expect from a parody, not an actual game.Staves are lacklusterAgreed, though the one good use for them I've seen is to be a True Strike battery. Low-end staff of divination, spend a slot to double the charges, and go ham with attack roll spells. Not much other value in them for a prepared caster, but I guess one spell slot per day is nice.
Houseruling away the one staff limit seems like a viable solution, at least partially.
I suppose I'd prefer to be the wizard who has enough spell slots and a wide variety of prepared options. Running out seems pretty lame. If that means a barrel of staves, so be it.
Staves now are kind of like what pearls of power used to be. An extra spell slot or two. Not my fault it's a big stick instead of a tiny gem now.
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how do you "seed" a dungeon with consumables when crafting the consumables in the first place is, economy-wise, a TERRIBLE decision by the crafter.Not specifically consumables, but I've always had a similar issue. There are a lot of items that are just bad, so who is making them? Where are these Rods of Wonder coming from? There can't be any significant demand for them, they're useless items that only gets printed because it's iconic and produced a few chuckles back in the 70s. Or my favorite punching bag for this edition, the Bracers of Missile Deflection. They're crap, a mundane shield is much better, who would want one? So who's making all the stuff that your party immediately says "It's useless, sell it," and who's buying it?
Game designers trying to "balance" are the ones making the items. As for who's buying? not many people. Gotta see things from a gamist standpoint for these.
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I don’t agree that common rarity in items means they’re common and ubiquitous for NPC crafters. PCs don’t use the same rules, NPCs have the abilities that are necessary to drive the story (and not ruin it), PC abilities are there to provide a consistent framework to build and run heroes who are better than anyone else.
It’s absurd that a PC can craft anything with Crafting or play any instrument, sing, dance, and act with Perform. But it helps build heroes for the game, so I understand why they work that way. I do assume they work the same way for NPCs, and it’s perfectly legitimate for crafters and even crafting guilds not to have access to every common formula or for a gifted NPC Bard to be unable to play more than one type of instrument.
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If [NPCs] are better than making stuff, then they are also better at making permanent items.
That's a pretty strong assumption you've made with absolutely no foundation in anything. Now sure, you COULD say that. And then you'd have an excuse to post for days on end about how awful the system is and how it should be set on fire and thrown into the bin.
OR... and this is going to sound a bit crazy. But you could choose to NOT make that assumption. Now admittedly there is nothing in the rules that say you have to assume one scenario over another. The choice is completely up to you. One assumption lets you b&~!% and moan about how awful the game is. The other one let's you run a game where the fiction, as presented in the book, makes sense.
Which assumption are you going to choose to make?
No ingame justification can keep such an extremely terrible (value wise) market alive.
Hmmmm... I could buy this lesser potion of healing. It can revive someone from dying to fully healed with one drink. And it costs 12 gold pieces, which is a lot. But it could literally save the life of someone I care about. Or I could buy this 1st level wand of heal. Now I don't know how to use a wand of heal. But my local church could teach me and the course only takes a month. Of course this wand costs 60 gold pieces. Sure I could use that wand multiple times, but rent is due at the end of the month and I've got that wedding to attend in the other village and frankly I don't have 60 gold pieces on me, let alone to spare.
I guess for now I'll buy this potion. And look, my father owned one of these and he waited ten years to have to use it. 12 gold pieces every ten years is pretty reasonable. I mean sure by the time I'm sixty I would have been better off buying the wand. But that's forty years down the road. This is a good choice for now
Your right. Consumables make no sense from an in game perspective. You might as well rip out those pages from your CRB. Your not going to need them.
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Where are these Rods of Wonder coming from?
In the real world we have people who think playing a pyromaniac who burns every book and scroll they see, sings annoying songs and spends their time chasing dogs and horses and trying to kill them is a good way to spend the evening. In the world of Golarion those people also exist within the setting itself.
Now I'm not talking about goblins. I'm talking about humans who think that sort of behaviour is fun. Because some of these people will spend years studying how to make magic items and will then choose to spend all their spare time crafting a rod of wonder. Not because it's useful. But because it's "wacky" and "funny" to give these stupid things as gifts to people. They're the kind of people who have a few friends who tolerate them and keep them company, but ultimately find them really annoying whenever they get started talking about their little hobby and think they would be much more interesting human beings if they would just STOP going on about frigging rods of wonder and make something useful.
I've actually met an NPC in an AP that was like the person I've described above. It was pretty surreal.
No. I did learn into that type of person with Horace, but I played him a bit more Doc Brown then creating rods of wonder annoying. I think it was Strange Aeons but I cant remember for sure.
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I will admit to being a little confused by exactly how magic items work in Pathfinder 2 because I haven't read the entire magic item chapter in its entirety yet (saving that for when I am running a game that gets to higher level play) but isn't there a 10 item investment limitation on permanent items? Having a bandolier of wands or a bucketful of staves is pretty much giving up on a lot of other essential magic items.
This thread is largely about identifying the much fewer number of spells that can give really great long term benefits from having as a wand, but whether a caster has it memorized or is carrying it in a wand, any non-consumable is taking up valuable space in the party's total limit of daily resources.
Consumables make sense for parties because of the convenience factor of having a way to do something without having to commit much to it in terms of character build. Wands, scrolls, staves, require casting ability or a skill feat, which might not really be that useful for a martial character that plans on having 10 specific magic items that are going to be their daily bread and butter.
The decision to price consumables out of the "cheap enough to keep one of everything" was clearly intentional and is probably also tied to getting rid of resonance. Yes the playtest had both, but resonance was always considered something that was a pretty far out there test and they probably didn't want to deal with the backlash of dealing with angry players if the consumable cost was low (due to resonance) and then spiked up after they decided to can resonance.
EDIT: Well apparently I am totally wrong again about wands and staves. I guess I will have to read the whole chapter in detail because I don't really understand how weapons and staves are not invested items. PF2 items definintely feel like a more confusing thing to wrap your head around if you are trying to do more than just understand how the one item you just found works.
Whether you like it or not, the developers really wanted to get a way from the Wizard who has a scroll/potion/item for that situation of PF1 that made them such overwhelming powerhouse characters.
And if you don't like it, and you want your magic item economy to work a different way, it is probably one of the easiest things to home brew for your table. As many folks have said, the rules suggested in the CRB are for helping players primarily make characters balanced with each other and adhering to expectations of power that the GM can generally anticipate by knowing the level of the party and trusting that their equipment falls close to those level based expectations. Changing those expectations can be fine as long as everyone is aware of it.
This thread has actually helped me realize that I am much more fine with the cost of magical items and consumables than my initial gut reaction led me to believe and convinced me not to mess with the numbers that the developers spent much longer honing in on then I want to reexamine. If they errata some specific items that slipped through the cracks, I'll keep an eye out for that, and if something feels really, really off, I'll probably ask about it on these boards, but I am pretty comfortable with the overall system, even if there are some wands that will basically work like all-day buffs, and the general approach to consumables will be to hold on to them with the hopes of selling them unless they are really needed before that can happen.
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Investment is for worn items exclusively. You can have as many wands as you want, limited by price and availability.
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i'm assuming exactly as much as you.
Ding, ding, ding! You get it. Now you have a choice. You can:
(1) assume something that makes absolutely no sense and makes the entire fantasy world in which you play in seem like a silly bit of nonsense that completely invalidates the point of consumables. OR(2) you can assume a scenario where things operate in a way that the pricing of consumables makes perfect sense.
You said it yourself. Both assumptions have equal basis in the core rulebook. You can assume one scenario as easily as you assume the other scenario.
So I ask you again: Which scenario are you going to choose to be the case? Because it is a choice you get to make. What will it be?
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I confess I kind of skimmed the second half of this thread, but I think noone has seen the point here:
Everybody seems to argue from the POV of somebody well-off. But that's simply not the assumption behind those prices.
Actually that's the precise point I made. A lesser potion of healing is only 1/4 the price of a 1st level wand of healing. Now potions have the benefit that ANYONE can use them with no training required. But more importantly, they're 1/4 the price of the price of a wand. But if someone doesn't even know they'll need 4 uses of a potion of healing and are keeping it on hand for an emergency, that's a savings of 48 gold pieces that they can use on something else. IRL people buy things that are more expensive long term because they're cheaper short term. For an adventurer who uses a 1st level wand of heal every single day, of course the wand is the better investment. But for all the NPCs who don't go into dangerous situations on a daily basis? Makes perfect sense not to shell out for an expensive wand.
Now you might argue like shroudb did that a healer can be called for. But of course that assumes a healer is always on hand. Out on a farm a healer might be an hour's ride away or even a half day's ride away. There's plenty of situations where a potion can be worth the investment over a healer.
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It's got nothing to do with rarity shroudb. It's got to do with profitability.
Here is the system I choose to go with, it is 100% supported by the rules:
NPCs get specialised training that lets them make consumables at a cheaper rate then PCs. NPCs who have even more specialised training are capable of creating permanent magic items at a cheaper rate then PCs.
When applying a similar markup to both items, the amount of profit that can be generated is better with permanent magic items, but it takes greater training.
Most people in the world don't need to gain the effects of a consumable multiple times in a year and instead keep the items on hand for rare situations. Those who do need the effect of a consumable on a regular basis and aren't so wealthy as to be able to throw money away, buy the permanent magic item version and learn how to activate it.
There is enough demand to keep magic item shops stocked with both as outlined in the rarity system in the CRB.
Now you can assume the quote isn't true. But that's a choice you're making.
Here's a question: How is assuming the economics in the book make zero sense working out for playing an enjoyable game?
I expect another tirade from you and more shouting about strawmen. But just remember: Your choosing to react that way. The ability to change your situation and enjoyment of the game is in your hands.
Making wands invested was a genius idea that was proposed by some of us during the playtest. It solved a lot of problems, but unfortunately wasn't picked up by Paizo.
My own idea was giving wands like 5 charges and requiring resonance investment for the first use everyday; this would probably work quite the same with 1 charge/day and eating up a "permanent item slot".