Famine in the world

[RUMBLETiGER]

Have traps of Create Food and Water been mentioned in this thread yet?

my link on post 19.

 

[James the Newbie]

If food is reduced by half, (Roughly) Then why not reduce farmers to 1 silver every other week instead of one silver a week (5 copper a week), to represent this based on that D&D economy, and until the effects end, well you can use the supply and demand rules on food, meaning there is an 'unreasonable price' (Granted players could avoid this) Add DC 2 to DC 5 for survival checks on food, and play with that kinda simple system?

 

[Greenfield]

Loonook, at this point I get the feeling that you really, *REALLY* want to "win" this discussion.

For example, I never mentioned True Creation, but you're arguing against it.

You somehow presume that Bags of Holding would be used to transport grain on the Italy/China route, and used that in your profitability calculations. (I have no idea where you got that from.)

You're arguing about how easily a Bag of Holding can be destroyed, while ignoring the fact that Fireball can destroy the person carrying it too, a fact that would be a lot more problematic for most people. (Note that the bag isn't harmed at all by said Fireball unless the person carrying it rolls a natural 1 on their Save, and then the magic dice of chance says that that is the one item being affected, out of all that's being carried. And since D&D has no rules for accidentally damaging gear in battle, I'm not too worried about the odd arrow either.)

I suppose I could ask why you think a trade mission has to pay for capital investment all in the 1st trip, but it hardly matters. By your logic you couldn't afford to ever get into the trade business in a mundane way either, since your first venture won't pay for the cargo ship, or even a master worked cargo wagon and draft animals.

You're nit-picking the logistics of Teleport, and acting as if the price of a spell (scrying) was somehow being charged to the person casting it. (If that were the general case, very few spell casters could afford themselves for very long. )

Still, if "winning" is that important to you, okay. You win.

 

[Loonook]

Loonook, at this point I get the feeling that you really, *REALLY* want to "win" this discussion.

For example, I never mentioned True Creation, but you're arguing against it.

You somehow presume that Bags of Holding would be used to transport grain on the Italy/China route, and used that in your profitability calculations. (I have no idea where you got that from.)

You're arguing about how easily a Bag of Holding can be destroyed, while ignoring the fact that Fireball can destroy the person carrying it too, a fact that would be a lot more problematic for most people. (Note that the bag isn't harmed at all by said Fireball unless the person carrying it rolls a natural 1 on their Save, and then the magic dice of chance says that that is the one item being affected, out of all that's being carried. And since D&D has no rules for accidentally damaging gear in battle, I'm not too worried about the odd arrow either.)

I suppose I could ask why you think a trade mission has to pay for capital investment all in the 1st trip, but it hardly matters. By your logic you couldn't afford to ever get into the trade business in a mundane way either, since your first venture won't pay for the cargo ship, or even a master worked cargo wagon and draft animals.

You're nit-picking the logistics of Teleport, and acting as if the price of a spell (scrying) was somehow being charged to the person casting it. (If that were the general case, very few spell casters could afford themselves for very long. )

Still, if "winning" is that important to you, okay. You win.

The cost-benefit you're drawing here is what is the issue. You're using spells in such a way as to be 'game changers' in the economics of your setting.... And they're not. They assist when you get to higher necessity, true, but the costs inherent to your hauls is going to be high.

I'm choosing grain as an example due to the fact that you're transporting it in our first example. Of course transport of other goods via Bags of Holding is going to be cheaper... However, you're also believing that an individual is going to invest in nested Bags of Holding to transport trade goods long distances and not charge for their carriage in said bag of holding. In essence the Bag of Holding serves as a very fast moving keelboat with the mule being your mage du jour.

I'm presenting that your ideas of wealth are quite high for what the items can do. Would a trade consortium decide to hire such a courier to transport valuable spices, they're going to be paying a lot less.

But most of all you have to figure that logistically you're greatly reducing the yield per unit as you trade.

Let us say that your 3000 miles away from a kingdom which is going to war in one week. They are in desperate need of longswords, to the point that they have gone up to triple their normal cost. You can produce them at 5 GP for your standard sword plus hireling costs . . . you hire 100 lvl. 1 Int. 12 Expert smiths to start pumping out swords. With a maximum benefit of +10 (+4 ranks, +1 Int, +3 Focus, +2 Apprentice Aid) you can produce 100 longswords in 5 days making daily checks at a total cost of 700 GP. You scoop up as many cheap longswords as you can purchase using your tradesmen in the various areas by using simple foot and hoof. You get 300 from an armory somewhere near for normal 'trade' price of 7.5 gp... Not the best, but still worth it at the market price you are getting for them. We'll consider your cohorts to be making side deals, just 'scouting' your needs, and you're calling in a favor so no charge for your merchant contacts beyond the initial Gather Information check (lets put it at 10 GP for a couple made over the 5 days).

400 overall swords, at a price of 2950 gp, for a total overall profit of 15050.

Now you need to hire your Spellcaster. The cheapest Teleport option to get you there on time is going to be to have the spellcaster take along 2 horses and you... This means a 15th level spellcaster is needed to cast the spell is 1500 one way for Teleport with another 1500 to retrieve your satchel of swords after bargaining... Oh, and per SHBG the cost of a PC hireling 1st level is 30 GP/month (the rate of an Acolyte 1). Extrapolating from other listings we'll give you level*30 GP rate/month. Now you don't know WHEN everything will be coming in and have to wait down to the wire for your others so figure 5 days of 'keeping' money along with your 2 days out to the wilds of the world + spellcraft. This isn't a hazardous situation so he probably doesn't qualify for additional... We'll keep it at 105 GP. The horses are just a feint as you pay for the use of the mage's bag of holding Class IV. He'll charge you 2% of its overall cost or (off the top of my head, I may be wrong) 320 GP as it has to be 'out of use' for him for 7 days, roughly 1/50 of a year.

The mage casts his spells, gets you to where you're going, comes back. You've made 7175 off of your swords. The swords sell for what amounts to 24 gp/a piece. Of course this doesn't include taxation in the kingdom that would probably have an import tax on steel implements, greasing palms, etc. that got you to the knowledge you have. I'd personally consider the overall sales price of the blades right around 21/blade after finder's fee to the guy who sent you the information from abroad. With the dangerous of Greater Creation present the crafty merchant may even spend a few days in town, making sure that his gold doesn't just disappear when he gets heading back home, costing him even more.

Business is NOT easy. If you follow a loose model of how business works in your game (no taxes, no excise, loose spell interpretation) makes the very problems you discuss about the D&D economic model not functioning. That 21 gp/blade post-cost is double what a smith gets off a new blade (5 gp cost of products), and triple what a reseller gets off the same blade. Throw a couple of Masterwork blades found during your crawl (good Gather check,for instance) and you're making even better scratch. 7175 GP could be invested in increasing your business, purchasing goods, etc.

Most of the denizens of the board seem to believe that businesses just sort of click their fingers and make profit. The Mage who did that gig is probably having to pay off debts he has gained during his time adventuring or even reinvesting into his apprentices or Guild hall. He probably lives much better than a 'hand to mouth' existence, but a mage has plenty of expenses he has to put on his books also. Golems and staves don't come cheap, nor do those new spells he is researching to build a better mousetrap on that hop from Kingdom A to Kingdom B.

The economy works even at such large scales because the numbers exist for it. At first blush the costs of various items makes no sense... Why not just do X and make millions? Because XP and Supply and Demand exist. When we have these large-scale global catastrophic events like your famine there ARE ways to alleviate through magic, and even allay the fear of starvation... But how much does the average commoner carry in liquid assets?

That's kind of the point that I was trying to make. Adventurers and high-level NPCs operate in a realm that few normal humanoids understand. They have costs far beyond the scope of a normal household, and that accumulates in higher risk versus exponentially higher reward. The mage charges for use of his Bag of Holding because there is that 1/20 chance of damaging the item if they face damage from a spell or other effect, theft, etc. They may even pay an insurance group a large sum per year for protection of their goods... The mage may even be part of such a group hired by the merchant for their services and a guarantee of delivery of goods.

There are a lot of great resources I would suggest looking into including a few old ENWorld books (EN Guilds: Banking and Merchant Guilds are a solid start though not great at looking at ALL of the numbers). I think they will definitely help understand why merchants can enter business (through loans from the local Grange or Merchant Guild with heavy interest), insure their cargo, etc. This wasn't uncommon during the periods of the banking houses, and is really a good thing to understand to add a certain amount of verisimilitude to your game.

Slainte,

-Loonook.

 

[Greenfield]

Do businesses click their fingers and make profit? No, in the game world it's done with Profession points, and the occasional dice roll.

Consider the "trade consortium" you mention. They would invest in a ship, either to hire or to buy outright. Possibly several ships, as that improves the chance of all their ships getting through. Then they'd invest in a captain with the skill and experience to navigate the harsh storms around the Cape of Good Hope, and the long voyage. (i.e. not a 3rd level Commoner, or even a 3rd level Expert.) Then they hire a crew and buy provisions for them. Then they'd invest in a cargo, and hope that they'd picked goods they could sell profitably in the Far East.

Then they cross their fingers, hold their breaths and wait three years. Maybe four. Maybe forever, as not all ships completed that voyage.

Alternately, they invest in a few cargo devices, such as Portable Holes, and a higher level spell caster. Then they invest in a cargo, albeit smaller than a ship would carry.

Then they wait a few days.

After a week the spell caster is back, along with the master trader that went with him, and they reap their profits. (Higher gross profit margin because no product was lost in transit.)

Then they take what they've learned about marketable cargo, perhaps fill some custom orders, and send the spell caster off again. With more accurate assessment of the demand, and without having to invest in more magical containers, the net profit goes up this cycle.

Now we compare the net profit from 50 cycles of the spell caster with one cycle of the ship. (And that's presuming one trip per month.)

The cycle speed can be accelerated if the spell caster is hired simply for transit, and isn't required to stick around while things are bought and sold at each end. Even using Teleport (not even the Greater variety), you could speed that up to 150 times around v once with the ship. And that multiplies the profit. Bump to Greater Teleport and you could transit several times a day.

You see, this is a lesson that modern retailers understand (at least, the successful ones): The profit you can make on any individual item or line of product isn't as important as one might think. What matters is how much profit you can make with that, per day. The faster you can turn your money, profitably, the better.

The trade group could start with a smaller capital investment (one or two cargo items, a trade representative and a porter, plus the spell caster's services, plus trade goods ) and turn their money in a few days time.

Smaller risk, easier to arrange, quicker turnover and a higher percentage of goods arriving safely? Much bigger profits.

And as the profits accumulate, maybe they invest in more Portable Holes, to multiply their cargo capacity. Each is a one time investment, and all their other costs are fixed.

Question: Do you know how many trips the Polo brothers made, and the impact those trips made on the world?

And yet, you continue to argue that this sort of thing isn't a "game changer".

But you must be right because, like I said, you win the discussion.

Now, back to my original topic: Presuming a worldwide event or condition that caused a decade+ of declining food production, what impact would you see it having on the game world?

What good plot or story hooks could we develop from this?

 

[Loonook]

.
Now, back to my original topic: Presuming a worldwide event or condition that caused a decade+ of declining food production, what impact would you see it having on the game world?

What good plot or story hooks could we develop from this?

150 trips... Impressive.

Now our spellcaster's overall travel expenses? 1900 GP for the cost of the spells, the week of spellcasting, 320 gp for the caster's time, and 200 GP/trip for costs of a portable hole.

363000

Carry 60000 swords at the rate we established for the swords (38 GP before expenses)
1917000 GP earned.

Now, let's use magic meant for large cargo:

3000 miles across the sea.

60000 for a Galley (carries 75000 swords). Can be piloted by any number of individuals. We also buy a 9000 GP Wand of Metamagic (Persistent, 9000gp) and a set of Sails of Speed... That's a bit rough on the math, but I believe they're around 30k.

99000 GP outlay.

Crew for the Galley (160 unskilled laborers for rowing, 10 skilled for the Watch requirement): 2 gp/day.
Captain: Lvl 5 Expert (Sailor), 10 gp/day.
Ship's Mage: 264 GP 24 gp/day, (240 GP), cast Favorable Wind.
Cost/trip over the period of a trip... Well we need to know how long our trip will take.

With Sails of Speed (2x normal speed) with a Favorable Wind on a Galley we are dealing with an overall speed of around 6 mph 24 hrs/day. We have more than enough men to cycle out as the ship will not be 'under oar' save for when we get to the area around the docks. 40 days to deliver what you can deliver 1.25x more than you deliver in 150 weeks of trips... And cost

2850000 - 110040 = 2739960.

26 trips in the same time... The Consortium is clearing more than 50 million GP. Again, Teleport is not a viable trade spell in the sense that the overall cost of the items is quite high. If I provide for losses at sea due to attrition, feeding and quartering everyone, paying import taxes, bribes, sending agents out to the populace to garner goodwill, etc. my expenses will be even further cut into. I'm also going to be paying 10% of my ship's overall value and good's value for insurance/voyage... With reinvestment into the new community, complete replacement of the ship and its accouterments, provide for losses, pay my men 5x more to make their lives a bit more bearable in port I can still cut into my profits.

Teleport is good for 'urgent' shipments. Your methods would be used by the trade consortium for the reasons I listed previously. Travel magic is a brilliant method for large infusions of cash, trade in high-end items, and emergency shipments with extreme markups in a business setting.

For your specific setting you have eliminated an entire core class from play from my suggestions... I think my work is done.

Slainte,

-Loonook.

 

[Greenfield]

I notice that you keep using low profit examples, with no accounting for losses at sea.

They also ignore the fact that your longsword cargoes can and will be competing against local production.

Why would you waste magic hauling heavy, low profit items on a short, low risk journey? (Your original example was what, a week away? That's under 300 miles by horseback, or 150 miles by wagon.) The only reason I can think of would be that someone *coughcough* is trying to come up with bad business models. Why not haul sand? You could make the numbers look even worse.

For your sea voyage you account for level 1 Commoners for a crew. Try sailing with a green crew around the Cape and you'll increase that transit loss above the 30% average. And of course, if it's your ship that founders in the waters off the Cape, it's pretty much a 100% loss.

The spice trade alone along the trade route I'm using in my examples, yielded a 4000% profit margin (I'm not exaggerating) v the price of the cargo sent in exchange, even accounting for water damage and ships lost at sea in both directions. That's 40 to 1, as opposed to your less-than 3 to 1 trade in swords.

You say that magic isn't a "game changer". I agree. It's already there, the game is already changed. We pretend that it isn't, that a typical medieval economic model would remain in place. We lie to ourselves for the sake of good story.

Or haven't you noticed that pretty much every game group has a "genius" player who acts like he's the first person to ever think of ways to make a fortune using magic?

Also, if we do it like our players and drop the "trade consortium" idea and just look at the spell caster as entrepenure, your whole model comes apart. Just because a caster could possibly get paid book rates to cast a spell doesn't mean that he's employed doing that all day, every day. Most of his spell casting is for his own benefit, not being paid for by anyone. So what's to keep him from investing in trade goods with his own money and getting rich? Blip to China, do a bit of business and return in a few days.

The economic impact of such actions on society would be pretty much the same as if it were a group of investors setting up a trade route. Just faster and far more profitable for the individual.

It's amazing that you haven't once considered that model, which presents itself in pretty much every campaign. And which we have to find a way to squash every time, if only to keep the PC wealth levels in check.

What's more amazing is that you keep arguing, trying to "win" a discussion that I've already conceded, twice. You "win", remember? If only by attrition. I can only refute your bad examples and poorly concocted models for so long. You win.

Yet more amazing is that, at the same time, you've ignored my not-so-subtle attempts to derail the conversation back onto the original topic.

Maybe we could try talking about that for a while, hmm?

 

[RUMBLETiGER]

Would a single, entrepreneurial caster consider building constant use portals that spanned great distances?

Think Stargate.

 

[Loonook]

[MENTION=6669384]Greenfield[/MENTION]: Again, your entire campaign hinges on the removal of every member of a core class over level 5 to work completely (and no 12th level Rangers or 5th level Clerics of harvest deities either). All of my math follows guidelines laid out in source books for what we're working with and I cited where needed... I don't believe it is some secret that being able to move 100x more cargo in 5% of the time you're claiming it is going to take with an appropriate crew (only need a mid-level captain to deal with normal weather and even poor weather, included cost of replacement and insurance)... But again my ideas are unbalanced for pointing out the flaws. You have a specific way you want to play your game which is incongruous to basic economics and that is fine... I just prefer Civilization over The Sims.

[MENTION=6674868]RUMBLETiGER[/MENTION]: Countries would be more than happy to place blind teleportation circles between their capitals and centers of trade... Indeed you could move lots of units through in a few minutes... That wouldn't cause any troubles .

Again, just gonna throw out that teleportation circles are extremely hazardous to keep open, and any nation state that allows for a giant back door into their major hubs of trade would be, at best, ignorant of the spellcraft they requested and, at worst, negligent to the point of treasonous to their people.

Slainte,

-Loonook.

 

[RUMBLETiGER]

@RUMBLETiGER : Countries would be more than happy to place blind teleportation circles between their capitals and centers of trade... Indeed you could move lots of units through in a few minutes... That wouldn't cause any troubles .

I know exactly what sort of trouble that could cause in the long run. But as in real life, I'm offering a short term solution that might be grasped at by desperate and greedy men in an attempt to solve a problem, while opening up all sorts of future crisis plot hooks for years to come!