Psion said:
Typing a hundred lines of code cost me "nothing" as well. But I get paid pretty well, because I have knowledge and skills that are valuable and the product of my services are valuable.
Wizards have experiments to finance. Think of them using an "expensive consultant" model. What they provide isn't turning an expensive raw resource to a refined resource, but it is very valuable.
But compare the spell cost per level to the daily wages of pretty much every profession listed. If spellcasters really charged that much, they could only ever cast spells for adventurers, because nobody else could afford them. Rich nobles wouldn't have to, because they could just hire/keep as a retainer a "pet spellcaster" to cast spells for them all the time.
And its nothing like your hundred lines of code. Your hundred lines of code get big bucks because there is constant for your hundred lines of code at that price, mostly due to a modern, global economy, which D&D wouldn't have.
A spell costs a wizard fifteen minutes of quiet preparation, and six seconds to cast it. And yet the cost is caster level x spell level x 10gp. If I'm a fifth-level wizard, my second-level spells cost 100 gp. That's insane.
Who's going to pay for that? Barristers and Alchemists, the richest hirelings listed in the DMG (table 4-1) get 1 gp per day. Even a first-level spell from a first-level wizard costs 10 gp, and that's ten days' pay for the D&D equivalent of a well-paid professional. That'd be like that spell costing over 2,000 dollars (assuming a lawyer gets something like 70k per year). For a first-level spell cast by a first-level wizard.
And there's no internet, no yellow pages, and small cities with unreliable transportation. Sure, that wizard will make a little cash maybe when adventurers come through, but here's hoping those adventurers don't already have a wizard, cleric, druid, whatever that can cast that same spell four times per day for them for free. How many spells per day do you think that wizard is going to be able to cast at that price? There's only so much wealth circulating in the town, city, or even metropolis. Laborers get 1 sp/day. That level one spell costs him over three months' wages. He'll just have to do without. So who is paying all this money for spellcasting?
It's silly, and exists only as a game-balance emchanic to keep PCs from just being able to go out and get an NPC spellcaster to do their dirty work. But with the kind of obscene wealth that PCs accumulate every level, "just hiring somebody to do their dirty work"
should be easy.
Until the market becomes flooded with adventurer-gold, but then suddenly prices skyrocket, wages have to be increased, and inflation takes the bottom right out of the value of a gold piece.
On the other hand, what if a wizard charges spell level times 5 sp (except charge 1 sp for zero-level spells), straight across the board. There's no need to charge more for a higher spellcaster level; the higher-leveled spellcasters will have a better-product advantage at no greater cost for themselves, so they'll make more money anyway (their spells are more potent, and they can sell more of them per day). 5sp is a week's wages for a laborer. Half a day's pay for a barrister. It's expensive, but you can come up with the money in a pinch.
If one wizard in town charges like that, I'd say you could bank on him suddenly selling all available spells per day (that he wants to cast), making more money than anybody else in town anyway (a second-level spellcaster could conceivably make up to 1gp not counting zero-level spells, a third-level spellcaster could make double that, and a fourth-level spellcaster could
and would make 3gp, 5sp per day). You could probably even charge more than that. 1gp per spell level would still probably sell, doubling those daily profits for that spellcaster-for-hire.
So one wizard in town does this, and suddenly he's making megabucks, and nobody else in town is pulling in anything at all. They're still sitting around, hpoing an adventuring-party will show up with serious spellcasting needs (how often does
your party hire NPC spellcasters for spellcasting at all, anyway?). Then they get wise, and drop their prices, too. And the'll probably sell every spell they can as well. And all the wizards, even the crappy first-level ones, are among the richest people in town still. And a lot more business is being done. Everybody is probably richer than they would have been charging those steep prices.
The same thing would happen with magic items. When you're selling a Dagger of venom that you crafted yourself, the market value is 8,302gp. It only cost you 4,151gp and eight days' work. Now, supposing you sell that Dagger for 6,000 gp instead. Holy crap, you've sudenly undersold your competitors by more than 25%! Who's going to buy from them, when they could buy from you instead. You're still making over 230gp per day, and that's 230 times what that Barrister is making. That's be like making over 40k per day. It's a fnckload of money. And you could drop the price even more, have a guranteed sell, and still make mad profit. Suppose I sell my Dagger of Venom for 4,271 gp. That's so low it's silly, but I'm still making a profit margin of 15 gp per day, which is opulent riches, and I'm going to be the only one selling Daggers of venom, at least until my competitors get wise and do the dame thing.
"But guilds will regulate prices!" you say. Guilds are associations of craftsmen, and their primary concern is making money. Charging 10sp per spell level will make spellcasters a
whole lot more money on a
much more regular basis than caster level x spell level x 10gp.
It only makes sense.
You don't get 100,000 dollars for every hundred lines of code, do you?
