Expiring date for potions

[Ace]

Re: Accumulation

Simple. Every year a few more get made. People die, but the stones live on. Eventually, it starts to really impact things. Think about the cost of a modern car. No one could afford one 100 years ago, but they made so much economic sense that eventually nearly everyone has one. If these things can block out the possibility of famine entirely, magi will start working on getting that price down. There are a couple of possibles:

1) No one knows how to make them anymore. So the number that there are, that's the total and the price is whatever the market will bear. Like the price of collectables or old art.

2) They don't last forever. At 5000 GP, if the things only last 100 years, well, there will be a limited number of them. I actually price that item at 300 GP and it lasts 1 year.

Thats solid thinking. I am going to have to look up Ioun stones and the effects they might have for my game. You see I use a cumulative magic effect and during the "fourth era" play period there is a lot of magic. Basically nearly a milleniums worth of permenant items have accumulated and well, things are different.

 

[Shirt Guy John]

I think that everybody here caught the point. In terms of "economy of magic items" there should be a sort of balance, because the most of the time a magic item survive to his owner if he's defeated by someone. After centuries of creating magic items the world we'll be filled by ioun stones, farmer's pick +1 that cast control weather, fire elementals trapped in cages where water flows so they can heat entire castles.

Hey! That's the backstory to my campaign world that I'm working on (Rampant Magic Screwed everything up) and I know it's got to be an idea that is used in many campaign settings.

Anyways, what if all of the excess spindle ioun stones gather together once per millenium and bond together to form an entirely new plane?

On topic here, why should potions go bad? Especially when used as treasure, this would screw the PC's up a bit. I'd just leave them alone.

 

[Steven McRownt]

On topic here, why should potions go bad? Especially when used as treasure, this would screw the PC's up a bit. I'd just leave them alone.

Milk go bad, even coke go bad Chemicals and herboristic mixture have a tendance to -in someway- degradation. Of course we're talking about magic stuff. But a 11th character will create a potion that will last for 121 years... not too bad! My problem was when the group entered in Myth Drannor: there were an old lab with potions, some of them very, very old; just the ones created by a true archmage lasted, the other ones had become useless. I am not saying that a magical sword became useless, but some of the ingredients used for making potions simple become out of date. It is not all this evil after all. And my group finally understood and agreed that in someway there should be a "limit" to minor magical properties, even in terms of economy of magic items...

Steven McRownt