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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 2192568" data-attributes="member: 4937">Well, I'm not saying that you are wrong, and I am well aware that you have to tailor your book for the general audience rather than one crotchety old grognard's particular concerns, but that explanation still means that your economic system is based on specific assumptions which aren't generally applicable.Not ever campaign world is going to be a high magic world were magical items are available to everyone even if they could theoretically afford it.  I would much prefer myself that the book assumes magic is not available, and then includes a page or two discussing what economic changes you would expect in a society were magic was more or less pervasive.   It's perfectly fine if the system notes that in a high magic society, the costs of production might well be lowered, and hense that manufactured goods would decrease in value, and therefore everyone's standard of living could conceivably be improved.  An overview of things like the effects of druidic magic on food production, healing and disease curing on disease levels, skill enhancing magic on the cost of production, and the potential to magically automation of production.  Certain items - like bags of holding, decanters of endless water, lyres of building, mattocks of the titans, spades of colossal excavation, permenant circles of teleportation - are notorious in their ability to alter economies and might could be mentioned.  Such things would I think enhance the quality of the product.  But there is a big difference between something like Eberron and a gritty low magic campaign.As an aside, I run a skill intensive campaign, and its my opinion that potent magical skill enhancing items are far too cheap.  I think that the prices used are due more to the fact that D&D has typically been skill light in play (1st edition of course didn't even have skills initially), and the designers just didn't really think that skill enhancement was of much value, than the actual benifit that you can get out of them.  I tend to be very conservative with anything that could make having a high skill in something much less relative, and being able to easily increase your skill through magic is one of those things.Back on topic, even if we assume that skill enhancing magic items are widely available, the fact of the matter is that I'm skeptical of whether they are even as presented cheap enough to make a big impact in realistic economies.  Consider the case of the simple wooden chair again.  Suppose every other master joiner invests in a +7 skill enhancing item.  How much is that actually going to lower thier cost of production under your system compared to thier non-magical competitors?  Supposing that it lowers thier cost of production by 25%, how many chairs would they have to sell before they recovered the cost of the item?  Well, 25% of 59 g.p. is about 15 g.p. extra profit per chair.   At 4900 g.p., the joiner has to sell 326 chairs over the course of his career to get back his investment.   How long would that take.  Well, at 4 weeks a chair, that's 27 years.  That's a really long term investment which could very well be stolen, be destroyed in a fire, or simply not hold up to decades of continual use before physically wearing out.  Heck, a joiner might not even attain 4th level (and thense to accummulate enough cash to buy the thing) until his mid-thirties, so he may be ready to retire by the time the bloody thing starts paying off.  Meanwhile, his competition across the street enjoys 27 years of more comfortable living with his 4900 g.p. invested in better food, servants, a better house, and so forth before he ever has to worry about a price war starting up.  Investing all your excess income into mobile magical property might seem like a great idea for an upwardly mobile intinerant sellsword, but it may seem less of a good idea for a settled craftsman.The same economics apply to things like keeping Bards in your employ.  For most campaign assumptions, magic seems to me more useful for producing extremely high quality goods where price is no option than lower the cost of production of ordinary goods.  Some campaign worlds like Eberron (and to a lesser extent Forgotten Realms) might have a different take, but that's more new school D&D than old school D&D.It seems to me that it is easier to add the effects of magic into a system that assumes magic, than it is to take out it out of a system that assumes it.On the positive side, I love your idea of 'enherent properties' of items for making low level magical effects.  I may have to buy the product just to get the full list.</blockquote>

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