D&D and the magic economy

[Scribble]

I think even the wealthiest mercenaries don't pay that much for their gear, and they'd probably be more badass than 1st-level heroes if they did in fact exist. Only actual military (eg fighter pilots) might have gear worth that much, but said gear is owned by the military, not them. There's no real-sim basis for these prices. Not a problem for many groups though.

Going with what Umbran was saying about research scientists- My wife is in fact a Molecular Biology Research Scientist, specialized in Breast Cancer, who is now currently a lab manager at U of P- so she's actually in charge of ordering this equipment...

Each lab essentially functions as a separate business within the research hospital/school structure. The labs bring in grant money based on their current research and projects and published papers, and use that money to fund the equipment and salaries within their own labs- The University takes a cut.

Very rarely does the university actually fund anything, with the exception being students, and some start up money...

But if you don't have enough money to survive as a lab, don't expect the university to pay for anything (publish or perish!)

I think this kind of does model pretty well with the adventuring company breakdown.

 

[Dausuul]

I think there's a danger here, which is to assume that the market for magic items is large enough to be treated like an abstract macroeconomic system.

Selling magic items? Sure, you can sell 'em, and probably for a pretty decent price. Every petty warlord and two-bit bandit chief would love to get his/her hands on a magic sword, and would pony up quite a bit of plunder for it. However, those same warlords and bandits would much prefer to kill you and take the sword for free; unless you're willing to settle for a very low price, the process of finding a buyer is fraught with peril.

(And this assumes that the magic items themselves are okay with being sold. That's not necessarily a safe assumption. Magic items are notorious for having strong opinions on who should own and use them, and punishing unworthy masters... which would be another obstacle to finding a buyer, though hardly insurmountable; there will always be folks with more money than sense.)

Buying magic items? This is where I think macroeconomic abstractions are dangerous. I prefer settings where non-consumable magic items are rare and often invested with great significance; they tend to be heirlooms passed down for generations, and the owners won't part with them for any sum of money. Creating a new magic item requires extraordinary skills and exotic, one-of-a-kind components--you can't just build a magic item factory to increase the supply.

It's worth noting that in every pre-3E group I played in, nobody ever sold magic items... not because the DM wouldn't let you, but because it wasn't a worthwhile proposition. Gold was easy come, easy go. A magic item was well-nigh irreplaceable.

As regards the comparison to research scientists/mercenaries/whatever in the modern world, I don't think it's a valid comparison, mainly because D&D typically assumes a medieval or pseudo-medieval setting. The kind of money that gets spent on mercenary gear and research facilities is the product of a society that generates a massive surplus of goods and services, orders of magnitude greater than any medieval society ever produced. If your fantasy society produces surpluses on that scale, it's going to result in drastic changes to the traditional setting, and magic item prices will be the least of it.

(Edited to add: I do grant that even in medieval times, comparatively vast sums were spent to outfit a small cadre of elite warriors. But D&D item prices scale far beyond the level of medieval gear. A 14th-century knight's outfit, including armor, horses, and weapons, might run about 20 pounds sterling; the same source puts a gallon of ale at 1 penny. A pitcher of ale in 4E costs 2 sp, and there were 240 pence to the pound, so we're looking at about 960 gp to outfit a knight. But high-level magic items are priced in the millions, enough to equip a whole army of knights for the cost of a single sword.)

 

[AbdulAlhazred]

If you think about military type gear in terms of a say early Medieval economic model it starts to make good sense. Castles, warhorses, high quality armor and weapons, specialized training, etc. were VERY expensive items by the standards of the time (castles often required decades of labor to construct for instance and high quality metal was hugely rare and expensive). They were restricted to a small segment of the population (less than 1%). Costs were vastly greater than the income of the average person (a peasant farmer). In fact a fully equipped warrior of that period would have several hundred peasants supporting him.

So consider that to be the situation in a D&D campaign. A highly trained elite warrior is maybe a bit of a grade above your 'human guard'. So the guard, with maybe 50gp worth of equipment is the type of guy that a knight might supply a couple of to his lord, plus his own equipment, worth several hundred gp. These guys are about on a par with level 1 adventurers with their 100gp worth of equipment. So if you equate the knight with trained and well-equipped modern military personnel you have the idea. A modern soldier is carrying easily a $100k worth of combat gear. The human guard is more like your average reservist, nothing TOO fancy but still a pretty decent chunk of change to equip and more than normal people could afford on their own.

Your adventurers then at level 1 are basically like veteran soldiers, well trained and equipped but not the very best equipped, like average mercs. By 3rd level they're about like some really elite military personnel and beyond that they are super specialists with equipment that couldn't possibly be afforded by individuals normally but would be within reach of someone who was quite wealthy (tanks, aircraft, artillery, etc). Once the adventurers get much into the top of heroic tier they're probably the best equipped people around, period. There will be an occasional NPC with nearly equivalent gear, but they're not as well trained etc.

I think it works out mostly. Remember, in a less advanced society than our own wealth is pretty rare and restricted to a small segment of the population. There really is almost no 'middle class'. The rich are very rich by the standards of their times and most everyone else is dirt poor, on the order of people today living in Haiti or something like that. Comparing the situation to someone in the US or Europe for example just doesn't really work unless your world has a very different sort of economics and wealth distribution than the presumed model of the PoL kind of setting D&D assumes.

 

[TerraDave]

As touched on by others, the rules as written and very much by desing allow you to remove magic items from the economy. The PCs can disenchant items, then use the residium to upgrade items or make common items. Uncommon and rare remain under DM control and are only found. Its really not a bad system.

Now, going back to the rest of the economy, again the RAW encourages a substantial markup, selling at 1/5th of cost, and buying for more then cost (the DM is actually supposed to have a markup above price). Its a simple way of capturing a thin market, but not that ludicrous, especially given that its linked directly to the rituals needed to make or unmake the items.

Finally, there is the question of relative wealth. A highly uneven distribution of wealth is realistic. Some correlation between that distribution and the ability to spread mayhem is also realistic in the right context. Even in the real world, castles, fancy armor, and skilled mercenaries were extremely expensive and sucked up substantial national wealth, which was almost all nominally held by the arms weilding class. And there are of course modern day equivelents.

But none of this may help you. Lets take this dilema: you think PCs are haddling too much money, so you divide all treasure and magic items values by 10. You can do that. But suddenly you have made magic items even cheaper and more mundane. You make it harder to justify a big mark up or lack of a market. That is, you may have achieved the exact opposite of what you wanted.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

I want to tie in the idea that's been mentioned on this thread of basing new, funky extra powers on what the item has already achieved.

Killing lot of undead with it - maybe it becomes radiant. Hacked through a load of trolls? Maybe it steals some troll regen and gives it to the wielder. Hell, that's a decent weapon - a +3 radiant longsword which gives Regen 5. What's more it's got a reason for being what it is, and one the PCs can identify with.

Combining those ideas, I think the party can stay up to speed in terms of difficulty and will feel ownership of the powers they have developed. And it undercuts the need for a second-hand magic item economy. In my GM-ing brain that looks like a total win.

Which is not unlike Weapons of Legacy...

If that's the world you want, you have to do a couple of things:

1. Durable magic items have to be incredibly rare
2. Such items either could not be made by PCs OR must require components sufficiently rare as to make such a task a quest in and of itself.
3. improving items should require extreme heroism or good fortune, not mere use*
4. Creatures defeatable only by magic must be rare or nerfed

* Such as defeating (or making defeat inevitable) a mighty foe with one shot; delivering a killing stroke in an unlikely or flashy fashion; the item being exposed to incredibly rare forces & energies simultaneously, and so forth.