Economics of Magic Items

Phoenix said:

Obviously there is a line that has to be drawn in this situation, understandably, but the question still stands. How cheap can somebody make the creation of a +1 longsword before it becomes unreasonable?

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Assuming there's a market for his spells, the 10th-level wizard could simply sell off two 5th-level spells (500 gp each), three 4th-level spells (400 gp each) and a 3rd-level spell (300 gp) and pay someone else to make that +1 longsword.

End of the day, you're not going to get a good answer to that from a message board because it's way too dependent on the campaign and the DM for any reply to be meaningful.

Now, if your 10th-level wizard was a PC in my campaign, he gets 49,000 gp worth of gear. If he has the Craft Magic Arms and Armor feat, he gets a 25% discount off the price of any magical weapons or armor he can create (excluding the cost of the base masterwork item). He can't subsidize the cost of gear for other PCs. If they want magic weapons and armor, they are going to have to pay for it themselves out of their own wealth limit, at full cost unless they also have the Craft Magic Arms and Armor feat.

I do this to short-circuit any creative ideas the players might have of getting extra gear on the cheap because it is not an aspect of gaming that I want to deal with at the table. Naturally, YMMV.

The DnD magic creation system doesn’t make much practical economic sense.
But it works fine and fulfills it’s primary mission: allowing pcs magic items to be measured on a scale relative to PC power.
Accept it and move on or decide you want to balance the situation differently (i.e. use Iron Heroes or something else).

Trying to create some fax-real economic system is confusing a game system (character balance) with fluff.

If the current system really bothers you then tack on some fluff you like (i.e. item creation requires special incense, crystals, ancient dragonbones, souls-of-the-innocent whatever).
But making magic item creation cheap because you can’t think up decent flavor will unbalance your game very quickly.

Phoenix said:

Ok then, keeping that in mind now...

If you were to do much of this stuff yourself (recovering the bladder of a toad, refining the resonant vibrations of the spoon), also keeping in mind this is one of the simplest magical items to be made, how much does it really cost to make?

Is it possible, by putting in the hard yards (even making the blade yourself) to get the cost of the sword below say, 600gp?

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Those costs assume a 0% failure rate. If you are willing to cut corners, i am confident you can save a few platinums. Sure, your chances of making it cursed in some minor way are quite high at 60% completeness, but hey, whats a little bit of risk here and there?

FireLance said:

Now, if your 10th-level wizard was a PC in my campaign, he gets 49,000 gp worth of gear. If he has the Craft Magic Arms and Armor feat, he gets a 25% discount off the price of any magical weapons or armor he can create (excluding the cost of the base masterwork item). He can't subsidize the cost of gear for other PCs. If they want magic weapons and armor, they are going to have to pay for it themselves out of their own wealth limit, at full cost unless they also have the Craft Magic Arms and Armor feat.

I do this to short-circuit any creative ideas the players might have of getting extra gear on the cheap because it is not an aspect of gaming that I want to deal with at the table. Naturally, YMMV.

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Why a 25% discount? If he's making the items then it should be half, yes ? Assuming you start out right at enough xp level for 10th lvl, then the first item he makes is going to actually make him 9th lvl.

I can understand wanting to limit gear somewhat, but if a character is willing to spend xp so everyone else can have a bit more stuff, then more power to him ( personally i'm doing this exact same thing in a campaign, it helps stretch out that pittance of gp you have at the low levels. ) But indeed as you say, YMMV.

I agree with Graf. Remember, it's a fantasy economic system and just like everything else in the game it doesn't have to make real world sense.

darthkilmor said:

Why a 25% discount? If he's making the items then it should be half, yes ? Assuming you start out right at enough xp level for 10th lvl, then the first item he makes is going to actually make him 9th lvl.

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Sorry, I didn't explain it clearly enough. We've house-ruled it so that you don't spend XP when creating magic items, and we've increased the gp costs to 75% to compensate.

I can understand wanting to limit gear somewhat, but if a character is willing to spend xp so everyone else can have a bit more stuff, then more power to him ( personally i'm doing this exact same thing in a campaign, it helps stretch out that pittance of gp you have at the low levels. ) But indeed as you say, YMMV.

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As mentioned, there are no XP costs, so this prevents a single character's item creation feat from turning into a 25% discount for all party members.

FireLance said:

Sorry, I didn't explain it clearly enough. We've house-ruled it so that you don't spend XP when creating magic items, and we've increased the gp costs to 75% to compensate.

As mentioned, there are no XP costs, so this prevents a single character's item creation feat from turning into a 25% discount for all party members.

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Ahh ok. Makes sense . I could even see it going the other way and say making the gp cost 25% but you have to spend more xp.(maybe 1/20'th or 1/15'th)

Infiniti2000 said:

I agree with Graf. Remember, it's a fantasy economic system and just like everything else in the game it doesn't have to make real world sense.

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That is true. It doesn't HAVE to make real world sense. However, I greatly appreciate any thought that is put into a magical economy. That is one thing that bugs me about the Harry Potter books. Why are the Weasley's poor? Sure it can make sense that they earn less than other wizarding families, but why do they have to live as poor as a poor muggle would? Why does traveling cost money? Maybe it does all make sense somehow, but for people with a mind for economics it throws us out of the fantasy world we are trying to immerse ourselves in. We should at least be given a small reason as to why it might make sense for this to occur in the fantasy world.

One idea I had was that creating magic items actually uses your gold as a material component. If the gold was actually used up in the item creation process, we wouldn't have to fabricate excuses for it to be spent on other items and we wouldn't have to explain how those ordinary workers that you bought your items from are making thousands of times more money than their fellow laborers.

Phoenix said:

For a +1 longsword the materials can't possibly be that rare, nor cost that much.

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Right here is your problem. You're talking about a world where a commoner makes about 1 sp a day. A couple thousand gold is an awful lot. Enough for a small town to live off of for awhile. Adventurers with class levels are the exception, not the rule.

Graf said:

The DnD magic creation system doesn’t make much practical economic sense.

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And here is your answer. If you want to start designing a realistic production model for a D+D economy, you're going to have to re-write the pricing on everything from raw materials (you'll have to account for rhe Wall spells, decanters of endless water, fabricate, etc), to labor costs, to spell components, to magic items.

Lamoni said:

Maybe it does all make sense somehow, but for people with a mind for economics it throws us out of the fantasy world we are trying to immerse ourselves in. We should at least be given a small reason as to why it might make sense for this to occur in the fantasy world.

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I don't know their educational backgrounds, but it's quite possible that no game designer has a mind for economics. Or perhaps, some methods were thought up and thrown out because they were too complex or just plain not fun. A great majority of people I know find accounting incredibly boring and the last thing they want to do is count up numbers such that their fantasy world economies make sense. A lot of people gripe and moan about counting up their attack bonuses, I can't imagine they'll want to do that for silver pieces at the fishmongers.