Buying magic items vs. finding magic items

[Umbran]

Looking back over things, it probably would have been better to presume that the costs of buying magic swords for the army would have been part of the outgoing expenditures drawing off of the gross revenue, rather than being something to spend the kingdom's net profits on. However, that wouldn't necessarily change the bottom line all that much, in terms of how feasible it was to buy magic swords for the army.

Doing for the *entire* army, most of whom are relatively unskilled, wouldn't make sense, no. But officers and knights, who in your typical pseudo-Medieval world are of noble rank? These are guys who are in full plate armor, the cost of which is comparable to a +1 sword. These types may not all have such weapons, but they're all going to want a shot at them.

The only presumption I made was that, for commoners, 30 gp per month goes to the costs of living. You can shift the ratio of how much of that are taxes versus the costs of buying things like food, housing, healthcare, and necessity items to any ratio you want.

The d20 SRD lists "meals, poor" as being 1 sp a day. I started from there.

Let's leave aside for a moment the issue of having a standing army at all times versus pressing the citizenry into armed service in times of need; so we'll assume an army of 10,000 and a civilian population of 10,000.

We don't need to posit a standing army. We need to posit that the army, however it is formed, needs to be paid. We can quibble about how much, but figure you're paying for the guy to risk life and limb. You figure a year's worth of peasant wages is somehow off base?

Certainly the army isn't going to be the same size as the population. That's lunacy, unless your population is *amazingly* productive. England, in 1086 had an estimated population of 1.5 million people. In 1300 it was more like 4 million. A kingdom of 10,000 has the population of a smallish modern town - it'd be one third the size of, say, today's rather sleepy suburb of Lexington, Massachusetts.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Side note: an army need not be paid in cash if the other benefits are good enough.

Modern soldiers don't necessarily make more money than persons doing comparable work in the private sectors, but benefits like cheaper healthcare, housing benefits, shopping for items tax free, educational subsidies, etc. can definitely sweeten the pot.

In a medieval/fantasy setting, you could have analogous benefits like being able to openly carry arms within city walls, being given the vote, the right to actually own land, and so forth.

 

[Derren]

And don't forget, in medieval times payment for the army very often came from the cities they captured and plundered.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

That was more like bonus pay.

 

[Janx]

I always try to have my players find the better magic items in quests.

I might consider that a valid quest might be to FIND and BUY (or steal) a better magic item.

So instead of randomly finding what they want (a gift from the GM), they specifically research and find somebody who has one.

On the point of the King with 20K gold, why would you leap to the extreme of the king needing to buy a magic sword for every one of his men. A. that would create the absurdist excessive-magic availability that anti-magic shop people tend to hate. B. A kind does not put his best equipment on every soldier. He puts his best equipment on his best soldiers.

As King, I only need to buy 10 Longsword +1's and hand them out to my 10 lords who command my troops and are excessively skilled at using them. Now I just earned gratitude from my men, and they stand out among the troops as being favored by the king.

Since their title is hereditary, I don't need to do that every year. So they'll pass it on to their son who will take over their position.

Furthermore, when this practice started, I didn't have 10 lords to grant magic sword to, I had one or two. They got my old +1 weapons when I graduated to a +2 back when they were just henchmen. Several generations later, as the kingdom expanded, we acquire more magic swords, we hand them out.

One of the key things to consider about "price" is that it doesn't always mean money. Once I am a 3rd level Adventurer and I get my first Longsword +1, there may be nobody around who can afford the book price for it. But there likely is a thief who can take it from me, and a man who can pay him 500 gold, who is also better protected than I am or the thief is. So the thief can make 500 cold and be better off, than he can if he steals the sword and keeps it (and becomes a target) or if he were to attempt to steal 500GP from the man who offered him the job.

This is also an economy. A "priceless" item still has a price as practical people will reset the price to THEIR economic level.

I think the key lesson I am trying to convey from my year of Economics in college, is do NOT assume there is no such thing as a magic item economy. Where there is Supply and Demand, there is an Economy. It most likely will not be as blatant as a Magic-R-Us store. But somebody is trying to sell a magic item, and somebody is trying to buy a magic item.

 

[Umbran]

Side note: an army need not be paid in cash if the other benefits are good enough.

True. But those benefits either directly or effectively cost money. Ain't no such thing as a free lunch. So, for these purposes, we might as well talk about them as if it was just money.

And don't forget, in medieval times payment for the army very often came from the cities they captured and plundered.

Which is plunder the crown doesn't take for itself, so effectively a cost to the government. Just here it is terms of reduced revenue instead of payments.

 

[Alzrius]

Doing for the *entire* army, most of whom are relatively unskilled, wouldn't make sense, no. But officers and knights, who in your typical pseudo-Medieval world are of noble rank? These are guys who are in full plate armor, the cost of which is comparable to a +1 sword. These types may not all have such weapons, but they're all going to want a shot at them.

That's a more reasonable interpretation, but still supports the larger point, which is that such a comparatively small pool of potential customers could be reasonably cited as insufficient for making up a market for purchasing magic items.

The d20 SRD lists "meals, poor" as being 1 sp a day. I started from there.

I'd have gone with "meals, common" for 3 sp per day, but that's a minor point.

We don't need to posit a standing army. We need to posit that the army, however it is formed, needs to be paid. We can quibble about how much, but figure you're paying for the guy to risk life and limb. You figure a year's worth of peasant wages is somehow off base?

Certainly the army isn't going to be the same size as the population. That's lunacy, unless your population is *amazingly* productive. England, in 1086 had an estimated population of 1.5 million people. In 1300 it was more like 4 million. A kingdom of 10,000 has the population of a smallish modern town - it'd be one third the size of, say, today's rather sleepy suburb of Lexington, Massachusetts.

Most high fantasy worlds have the trappings of medieval European customs and technology, but given the existence of magic, monsters, and interventionist deities, there's really no reasonable parallel that can be drawn in terms of population or social customs - that we do so for most game worlds is largely a matter of shorthand to present an easily-understood backdrop.

I mention this because it undercuts your point about the examples cited being "lunacy," as compared to historical Europe.

All of that is, however, just a subset of the larger point that I stated earlier - you can make fairly easily justify whatever numbers you want, since the details are so lacking. If you want a small kingdom with a standing army equal to the population, no one can say that's any less plausible than any other society that you make (just give them a strong military tradition, for example, and that's reasoning enough).

 

[Umbran]

That's a more reasonable interpretation, but still supports the larger point, which is that such a comparatively small pool of potential customers could be reasonably cited as insufficient for making up a market for purchasing magic items.

I think the "comparitively small pool" is larger than the pool of people who want full plate armor, which costs about as much. So, is there insufficient demand to make up a market for purchasing the armor? Before you answer, remember that the enchantment process takes on the order of days, when armor construction takes weeks or months.

I mention this because it undercuts your point about the examples cited being "lunacy," as compared to historical Europe.

If the economics of D&D are also to model something vaguely like historical Europe, then it is, economically speaking, lunacy (unless you've got some simply fantastic productivity). The arms, armor, food, other supply, and livestock required by an army cannot generally be produced on that basis. It is equivalent to having all the arms, armor, food, and so on for each solider to be produced by a single person, on top of that person making enough excess for their own wages and the soldier's. That's just not going to happen.

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

True. But those benefits either directly or effectively cost money. Ain't no such thing as a free lunch. So, for these purposes, we might as well talk about them as if it was just money.

Some moreso than others: the right to be armed within the city costs the crown effectively nothing, but it could be a very beguiling perk for a would-be soldier.

Tax-free shopping more obviously costs money, as does the right to own land.

Political voice may or may not- there's a lot of x-factors there, boiling down to the internal dialog of loyalty vs enlightened self-interest.

Other factors may have an economic cost, but may still be cheaper than actually paying a hihger salary because of the economies of scale..or in this case, power: the crown can buy things more cheaply than the individual by buying in bulk, and may even have a supply chain for such items that skips many middlemen...and their markups.

 

[Janx]

I think the "comparitively small pool" is larger than the pool of people who want full plate armor, which costs about as much. So, is there insufficient demand to make up a market for purchasing the armor? Before you answer, remember that the enchantment process takes on the order of days, when armor construction takes weeks or months.

Would it be fair to say, everybody who uses a sword regularly probably wants a better sword. Separate from whether they can afford it. Demand is inherently obvious.

And from what you're saying here, by the RAW, it may be faster to make a magic sword than a regular plate armor.

So, depending on the magic item (the cost/availability of supplies and time), somebody is going to have a Eureka moment and start fulfilling the Supply. After all, it's risky to get them from monsters and evil NPCs. it is much more reliable to make them and sell them, probably through a trusted intermediary, who can shield you from thieves. Don't want people to know you are running a factory in your tower, or they'll think you have inventory to steal.

The trusted intermediary doesn't carry stock. that would make him a target to thieves as well. He takes care to protect his suppliers and his customers.

Deals for any kind of expensive good, magic or not, are going to be handled more like an illegal arms deal than like a visit to Kay Jewelers, with the main difference being "Every Kill begins with K"

Pre-industrial age (before mass production, repetitive building, etc), expensive things were probably custom orders, commisioned works. I'm not sure when the concept of having lots of product on shelves would have happened, but barring cheap/abundant items like produce, there's too many factors against having a store full of expensive items, subject to shoplifting, burglary, and just plain upfront expense to buy excess product to display.