Fantasy economics and other planes... unworkable?

[Calico_Jack73]

Honestly if I were a Wizard powerful enough to jaunt around the planes material wealth would probably not interest me too much. Functional magic items still would interest me but the lowly gold coin wouldn't.

 

[mmadsen]

Why farm when you just need a bunch of clerics?

Comparative Advantage -- which holds between individuals or between countries:

In Portugal it is possible to both produce wine and cloth with less work than it takes in England. However the relative costs of producing those two goods are different in the two countries. In England it is very hard to produce wine, and only moderately difficult to produce cloth. In Portugal both are easy to produce. Therefore while it is cheaper to produce cloth in Portugal than England, it is cheaper still for Portugal to produce excess wine, and trade that for English cloth. And conversely England benefits from this trade because its cost for producing cloth has not changed but it can now get wine at closer to the cost of cloth.

Clerics are even more valuable doing something peasants can't do.

 

[Kaodi]

...

There is no such thing as economics in D&D. Only arbitrary costs. I'm sorry, it's a simple truth, hehehe . A casual glance through the equipment section of the PHB coupled with the entries for Craft and Profession shows it plainly.

 

[RangerWickett]

Of course, a cow or chicken will buy (via barter) as much as before

Unless we open a portal to the plane of chicken.

Almost as bad as a dimension full of shrimp.

 

[mmadsen]

Honestly if I were a Wizard powerful enough to jaunt around the planes material wealth would probably not interest me too much. Functional magic items still would interest me but the lowly gold coin wouldn't.

That would make more sense if "the lowly gold coin" couldn't buy magical power so easily.

 

[Hand of Evil]

To me this has happened, it is why gold and gems can be found in every empty room of a ruin.

If the basics become common, the uncommon become valuable. This means items you could not easily get would bemand a higher price, it also means the harder or longer it takes to make an item would effect its cost, mostly hand crafted items would cost more than manufactured.

To control it in game? This is why you have gods, they can step in and control events in their domain if they see issues. You also have guilds, one of their task is; they control conduct.

 

[mmadsen]

If the basics become common, the uncommon become valuable. This means items you could not easily get would bemand a higher price, it also means the harder or longer it takes to make an item would effect its cost, mostly hand crafted items would cost more than manufactured.

Why would an influx of gold make hand-crafted items more expensive compared to manufactured items?

 

[Hand of Evil]

Why would an influx of gold make hand-crafted items more expensive compared to manufactured items?

Time equals money. Cost of work per hour.
Inflation, what use to cost one GP now cost 5 GP. Cost of living would also increase, unless you have vast tracks of poor.

 

[BiggusGeekus]

Comparative Advantage -- which holds between individuals or between countries:
(snip)
Clerics are even more valuable doing something peasants can't do.

In News Ideas From Dead Economists there's a great write up of Compartive Advantage using Gilligan and the Skipper as examples. It not only explained comparative advantage, it exaplined why the Skipper kept Gilligan around on the island.

Determining the economics of a fantasy economy is crazy hard. Simple goods and base commodities have their costs almost vanish and skilled labor (either from powerful spellcasters or craftsmen) become the driving force.

However in most games this is pretty much ignored. My "favorite" moment in game economics took place in Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil when the St. Cuthbert people were charging us 100gp/spell level for curing spells even though it was established we were the big save-the-world guys. I told the DM that in my spare time I was going to kick back and sell my cleric spells for 10gp/spell level. I got a nasty look for suggesting that.

Which brings me to the "no wizard/cleric would stoop so low as to be a common spell peddler" argument. Of course they would. They'd do it in a heartbeat. You think a 9th level wizard wouldn't want to cast a Wall of Steel once a day for the local blacksmiths and spend the rest of his day drinking cold beverages in the shade rather than go into some horrible dungeon filled with monsters that have names he can barely spell much less pronounce? Come on!

 

[BiggusGeekus]

Time equals money. Cost of work per hour.
Inflation, what use to cost one GP now cost 5 GP. Cost of living would also increase, unless you have vast tracks of poor.

Or unless you had some low level clerics make magic items of create food and water that were readily available. So cheap food would be pretty cheap (magic items stay in the economy a long time) but anything beyond the capacity of create food and water would be a luxury.