That depends on the edition and splat books one uses. There certainly have been attempts to create a less static economy with price fluctuations from time to time.
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Buying magic items vs. finding magic items
- Thread starter Quasqueton
- Start date
That depends on the edition and splat books one uses. There certainly have been attempts to create a less static economy with price fluctuations from time to time.
Alzrius
The EN World kitten
Fair enough. I was speaking to the 3.X Core Rulebooks, to be clear.
You're right- it is all house ruling.
But to be fair, I don't think its realistic to expect designers to include rules about economics in an RPG. Because, honestly, nobody* really wants to mess around with exchange rates between the coinage of one country vs its neighbors, price fluctuations based on droughts, wars, hyperinflation and booms, monopolies, transportation costs, taxes & tariffs and the like, just to play a game.
So the designers just give everything a price and be done with it.
* well, beyond Econ nerds like me
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Alzrius
The EN World kitten
Amusingly enough, Gygax did talk about this a little in the 1E PHB or DMG (I can't remember which), noting that the listed prices for equipment and services were for a "boom town"-style area, and would be much less in a broader economic setting.
That aside, my broader point was that if it's house ruling, then you can house rule it whatever way you want to and come up with a reason(s) that simply sounds good on its face, and if it holds up to that level of scrutiny then it's pretty much doing everything it needs to do.
Yup! It was that bit of Gygax I returned to as an adult gamer after getting a formal education in economics. Up until then, I just used the prices as the prices.
So, now I DO have price variability and scarcity in my campaigns, and, if I'm feeling wonky, I even have coin-exchange houses, promissory notes and other stuff you'd find in a real economy. (Most players don't notice, though.)
The point was to differentiate between price and value. Fixed price does not change the value to the consumer.
I don't see how that's relevant to my point. A magic sword takes class abilities, feats, and spells, and so is expensive. A suit of full plate takes a whole load of time, skill, and materials, and so is expensive. Both are expensive.
Your argument was that magic items can be priced out of the market. My point was merely that if magic items are priced out of the market, so is mundane equipment of similar cost. If, as a GM, you say "nobody can afford 2000 GP for a +1 sword - nobody has that kind of money around" but you have a ton of folks walking around in 1500 GP armor, the players are going to look at you funny.
I seem to be implying that GM choices cannot be made arbitrarily without cost of plausibility. I asked the question - where does the wealth come from?
If the PCs adventure in urban environments, well, then they're getting their wealth from people in the society. The wealth, then, is present, and you have a long road to hoe in making the "nobody has the cash" appear valid.
So, let's say you want to keep the "nobody has the cash to pay," but the PCs are still hauling in that wealth per the DMG guidelines for treasure. So, how do you make that happen? Strict dungeoneering adventures, so you can say that all that wealth comes from past civilization? Okay, that's fine.
You know what you call a high-risk environment loaded with valuable resources? A mine. Humans have gone to the risk of digging out mines at great risk to themselves. Maiming, death, permanent disability were all pretty common in past mining operations. So, why don't the locals mine it?
Um... maybe they don't know the stuff is there? Okay, so how do the PCs manage to have an entire 20-level career of finding greater and greater troves that *nobody else* knows about?
Um... maybe they aren't up to the challenge. The PCs are super-special, the only ones around with class levels to do the "mining". Well, then, you have to explain how this group of very special people, the only ones in the world (or near to it), happened to all come together in the same place to adventure. Oh, and you probably can't plausibly use many or any surface-dwelling races as antagonists, or you'll be breaking your own conceit. Oh, and if the dungeon-dwellers are *sooo* much more powerful than the surface dwellers, how come they haven't taken over the surface? They have all this gold and magic to use....
You certainly can make a consistent game world where there really is no market for magic items. But you have to answer a ton of questions in order to do it.
That's another great question! Why aren't the monsters spending the cash? Do you have *no* monsters that make the connection that, "Hey, I have tons of money! Why don't I just buy some stuff to make my life better?"
Well, that's fine. I'm not arguing that. I'm arguing that stipulating no-magic-item economy has a *TON* of repercussions if you want the world to be vaguely plausible. I'm saying that the stipulation implies a whole lot of world-building work on the part of the GM. Given the rules in the book, that stipulation comes out like playing Twister.
Alzrius
The EN World kitten
Except that that's how it works under the Rules as Written. I'm not saying that's logical or illogical, just that that's how it is.
I was expanding the scope of the argument. Insofar as commoners in the campaign are concerned, yes, a suit of full plate mail will be as unavaible as a +1 longsword in terms of their purchasing power being nowhere near enough to afford either.
You keep implying, however, that there's a readily-available economy in expensive non-magical items. Even if we ignore the inconsistency in that train of thought (which is pretty well revealed in towns in 3.X having a gp limit on things that can be purchased), this is explained by pointing out the much greater requirements that are needed for creating magical items versus non-magical ones.
In other words, you can safely presume that there's support for a tiny economic market for luxury non-magical items, presuming that you have at least a few characters with enough money to support it. That's not necessarily the case for magic items of any cost, however, due to issues of specialized creation requirements.
You also do a fairly good job of answering your own questions, here.
I think that this is more of a failure of imagination than anything else. Leaving aside issues of somebody having brought in money from some remote locale (e.g. where adventurers usually go), this is as easy as making the wealth be a reward earned in the context of the adventure itself (e.g. taking it from the bad guys, rather than having it given to you by a sponsor).
This is what I was talking about above regarding answering your own questions. This is a perfectly plausible train of thought, and the answer to the last question is as easy as "the will of the gods" or some other explanation that can be chalked up to providence, destiny, fate, or even chance (which handily explains why it hasn't happened before, or at least not for a very, very long time). PC exceptionalism is nothing new, after all.
It's no problem to not use too many surface-dwelling races as antagonists at higher levels. Besides having a plethora of monsters, what exceptional humanoid villains you do have can be the evil equivalents to the PCs - that is, the one-in-a-million exceptions that are stark contrasts to most of their kind.
Why haven't the monsters conquered the world already? That's a question for pretty much every campaign, but again can largely be laid at the feet of interventionist deities, ancient magics, and the general disorganization (or other inherent hindrances) of most monsters.
Yeah, that's called "world-building." It's part and parcel of the GM's milieu.
Presumably because, being monsters, they can't just walk into a shop and start buying things when people are screaming and running away or pulling out weapons when they approach.
I think that's an overstatement. As I pointed out above, you pretty easily answered most of the questions you posed, showing that this isn't a very hard row to hoe. World-building can be a lot of work, but that's also the fun of it, and there's nothing inherent in the rules that make any of what you laid out any more implausible than any other campaign, while still preserving internal logic and consistency.
That's not what economics tells us. Economically speaking, 2Kgp items a roughly interchangeable.
If a regular suit of plate costs 1500gp, and you're looking at a 2Kgp mundane suit of plate in a store selling a magical sword for 2Kgp, there is something special & rare enough about that suit to warrant the extra 500gp price. Perhaps it was once worn by a noble, and it has some bells & whistles on it (gold-plated epaulets or some such). Perhaps it is the best suit of armor ever made by the craftsman who made it, and he spent extra gold getting "special" materials, like "the finest Krgathian ores purified over a fire of the purest Hrothian anthracite and blessed by the Priest of Ged"...all of which may be hard to come by in that village but may or may not be special as far as the game is concerned.
It may not have the same costs in the sense of game resources, but in terms of the campaign world, the pricey armor and the magic sword are economically interchangeable.
All valid points, and sensible.
But I don't have to answer a ton of questions in order to do it any more than I have to explain the physics of a dragon flying.
Like my examples before, my campaign is framed in such a way to the players that; Most magical items come from loot, and the characters are the few adventurers around. Not many high level npcs around either, so getting the better magical stuff made usually is on commision, not found in a store.
Other people do realize the potential of adventuring on occasion, which is why the infamous dungeons are littered with the bodies of the unlucky or unskilled ones.
/tangent
We can take logic only so far before the story breaks down, and that line is different for each person. For example...haunted castle in a forest of evil? "real world" I would march the kingdom's army and burn it to the ground. But things like that don't happen, because the story is centered around the adventurers.
/endtangent
Where in the rules and by what rulebook does it say that my PC cannot sell you my Longsword +1 for 500GP?
Where in the rules does it say that GM cannot price gouge a PC to purchase a healing potion for 1000GP because the PC is bleeding out and REALLY needs to buy it from the NPC whose shop he happened to get shanked in front of.
The prices in the rulebook have always been a guide, primarily for the initial build of a PC. Unless we're simulating the Catholic Church locking down prices because everything has an absolute worth, once the PCs hit the game table, all bets are off regarding to what a PC may have to pay to buy anything in game. Any player who argues otherwise is likely to get into a surprise with his next new GM.
As to One Wrong Wayism, pointing out something is objectively wrong, is in fact not One True Wayism. Arguing something is subjectively wrong would be One True Wayism. the former is trying to teach somebody facts. The latter is trying to force an opposing opinion on somebody. if you want to make a baby, stuffing cookies into a vagina is the wrong way to do it. It is a fallacy to assume that all ways must be accepted as correct, when in reality, many ways CAN be correct AND just as many ways can be WRONG.
So the way to win the argument, is to demonstrate FACTUAL errors in my analysis. Saying I'm wrong because you don't want people to buy or sell magic items is not sufficient to win a debate. I would advise observing Umbran. He's found some valid points against my argument.
