Game Economy

[knightofround]

You know, I've always thought that it was a mistake for WOTC to use gp values for magic items. I mean, we already have residuum, which is what the currency for magic items should be.

Attaching a link from gp to residuum is annoying because magic items fill such niche needs. Remember in 3E that container of everlasting water? Utterly worthless in a campaign with ample water supply, which is why it's so dirt cheap, but on Dark Sun it would be the most heavily-sought after ever.

The same goes for magical weapons. A +5 regular broadsword might be pretty, but the rich are going to be much much more likely to buy 2-3 mansions to show off. And even if you sell it at 20%, that's still going to be enough to buy an entire city. You could lower the price even further...but that removes the whole point of making magic items that have a unique need. You're never going to find an magic fullblade because of the few people who can even afford it, fewer are going to be able to use it effectively.

I'd much rather that there would be a fixed amount of residuum in the world at any given time. And then lower the cost to transfer enchantments (and things that increase item cost, like additional abilities) immensely. Nobody can buy "new" residuum, they have to go out into the world and take whats already out there. Because its so incredibly rare it would be very unlikely for residuum to have an exchange to gold. Even if it did, I think thats something a DM to decide.

Really, the main reason why we have gp values for magic items is to make it easy for DMs to balance how much magical items a player needs at any given level necessary to achieve balance vs. NPCs. Units of residuum (with a +1 sword base) would serve the same purpose, and mathematically be easier to deal with compared to the high level million+ gp items.

This way party advancement would be linked to the amount of residuum the party has. Not the gp value. Otherwise you get ridiculous scenarios where epic level PCs become millionaires just for killing one minion with something ridiculous like cloud of daggers.

And this way players can have fun with a "magic item economy" and yet still have to worry about "normal" stuff like paying for food, family, shelter too.

Also, I am very amused that so many of us Minnesotas are interested in ingame economy. Probably because we understand very well how much it sucks to be on neither east nor west coast, or as badass as the south

 

[karolusb]

Really, the main reason why we have gp values for magic items is to make it easy for DMs to balance how much magical items a player needs at any given level necessary to achieve balance vs. NPCs. Units of residuum (with a +1 sword base) would serve the same purpose, and mathematically be easier to deal with compared to the high level million+ gp items.

While I can see what you are saying, I am not sure I agree. The specifics of the math aren't perfect in my mind, but I don't hate the scaling in most cases.

Items have a gold value because items exist, and things that exist will end up having a value (that value may not be as neatly predictable as a game system price list would indicate).

Assuming a fairly advanced renaissance agricultural yield (required for the idyllic fantasy kingdoms with mega-cities), a farm family with generous acreage will produce excess food to the tune of ~15 man years. Given a(n unrealistically) stable economy, and a 400% farm to inn markup the family would make ~1300 gold a year, lets imagine they pay 50% gross taxes/rents, 900 a year, for a total "profit" of 400 gold. Depending on management half of that is probably disposable income. This model doesn't produce the grubbing for coppers view of farmers that many have, but it works well with the setting presented.

Arms makers are harder to make sense of but using medieval price and wage charts from England we can assume that an armorer makes 6 suits of chainmail a month (5-8L gross sale, ~18L a month income), assuming the materials runs 50% of total cost, we come up with armorers making 1400 gp a year with D&D prices, (a bit low, but they probably pay lower taxes than the farmer, the (journeyman) armorer makes most of the profits though his productivity is heavily based on apprentices).

If we convert GP to SP we end up with price lists that, barring a few real outliers (leather armor and wagons come to mind), looks pretty good compared to medieval prices. Is this realistic? No, medieval farm yields were much lower than most heavily urbanized D&D settings filled with specialized labor would indicate. If farmers had the money listed above it would lead to a lot of general inflation. Renaissance farm yields were higher, but I don't have good prices from that era. Even so, it's pretty good for a game not based on economics.

Given a word where people have disposable incomes from 200 (head of household farmer) to 1000 (skilled artisan) 360-5000 gp for magic items doesn't seem all that absurd.

The seemingly ridiculous scaling goes with the scaling of the game. At Paragon you are the movers and shakers of the world, petty lords, ranking members of the church etc. You don't sell +4 swords to a village merchant, you exchange them with the royal treasury.

At epic you are the next generation of Gods. To relate the expenditures of demigods with pre-industrial farmers makes about as much sense as you would expect. You live in a world of gods, sell and buy from merchants of the gods, you aren't destroying village economies because you never interact with them (but like warren buffet, you could if you wanted to).

The 20% sale price of items doesn’t sit well with me. I envision agents working in out of the way areas with high magic concentrations, with accumulated items being transferred to auction houses in major cities, with the rest going to local consignment shops. The cottage industry concept doesn’t work (as people who describe it with it’s long delays and uncertain nature have pointed out). The 20% value is the scrap value, so it would be the equivalent of cash for gold scams.

I don’t know if this helps anyone conceive of the D&D economy, but it isn’t as bad as it seems. I would prefer if they converted GP to SP given the nature of prices. I don’t love it, but most people aren’t the kind of geeks that I am. And even I can live with it without much hand wringing.

In my homebrew there are 16 common local denominations, put out by competing interests, ranging from the massive 29.16 gram gold Meina (about the size of an Eisenhower dollar) legal only for use as approved by the church, to the tiny Tirger, 3.5grams of Copper, what a non-local would expect to pay for a pint of stout. Oh and my players could care less <sigh>.

 

[marli]

Oh and my players could care less <sigh>.

yeah, leant that the hard way

 

[Stalker0]

Probably the number one problem with a magic item economy is that magic items don't follow the rules of normal goods.

In our economy the vast majority of goods either:

1) Break or wear out with time (machine parts)
2) Get consumed (food)
3) Have limited availability (land).
4) Become obsolete (electronics).

Magic items break all 4 aspects. So to introduce a "reasonable" economy, we have to undo at least one of those aspects. Some ideas;

1) Magic Items lose potency with time. When players go the ancient dungeons, commonly they still will only find +1 swords because the +3 swords have decayed down.

2) Magic Items lose potency with different users. This is the "attached player" idea. Magic Items form attachments with the people that use them, and when the item is exchanged with someone else it loses strength. This helps to explain the 20% sale argument.

3) There is only so much magic in the world. In order to create more magic items, you can't just use gold...you have to use ressiduum. That means other magic items have to be destroyed to make new ones.

 

[karolusb]

Probably the number one problem with a magic item economy is that magic items don't follow the rules of normal goods.

In our economy the vast majority of goods either:

1) Break or wear out with time (machine parts)
2) Get consumed (food)
3) Have limited availability (land).
4) Become obsolete (electronics).

Jewelry does none of those things, and yet exists in our world. You need some concept of scarcity for this argument to work, but it doesn't need to be a straight jacket. Nor do we have any reason to assume scarcity doesn't already exist (other than the problematic 20% sale price).

I like, and have used, minor variants of all of your offerings though.

#1 Allows the myths of the ancient magic empires to be true. Since there is little inherent benefit to that in most campaigns I wouldn't use it as a stock mechanic. In a game with fluctuating magic levels this works well though, as powerful items could only survive the fall of magic by being in places where the magic remained strong. Other items may have the potential to regain thier former glory, but have to be awakened or re-empowered.

#2 I have always liked the heroes sword being just that, the sword you use to kill a dragon is magic, as opposed to you use a magic sword to kill a dragon. This is more literary and less literal than the system presented in D&D (any edition).

#3 Is close to what I used in my last campaign. You don't need to have a hard zero sum game though. Items must be made from residium, but residium does not only come from items (if it did the amount of magic would be decreasing in the world at an astronomical rate). Residium could be a rare natural find, or perhaps it can be made from gold or other mineral wealth, at the cost of destroying them, I had ruled that perfect quality gems could be destroyed to create residium. Perhaps in another game it comes from sqeezing faeries or harvesting the organs of dragons.

All that said none of it is a problem unless you want it to be. Even without residium you have to use arcane components, (the aforementioned dragon ichor and pixie dust perhaps) which is as scarce as the GM declares it to be. At the end of the day the GM doesn't need to me more aware of the scarcity of residium then he does the scarcity of diamonds. And the lack of a hard mechanic for diamond scarcity doesn't impact the game.

 

[Fredrik Svanberg]

#3 Is close to what I used in my last campaign. You don't need to have a hard zero sum game though. Items must be made from residium, but residium does not only come from items (if it did the amount of magic would be decreasing in the world at an astronomical rate). Residium could be a rare natural find, or perhaps it can be made from gold or other mineral wealth, at the cost of destroying them, I had ruled that perfect quality gems could be destroyed to create residium. Perhaps in another game it comes from sqeezing faeries or harvesting the organs of dragons.

This is what makes most sense to me to explain "D&D Economy" - it's a magic-standard economy instead of a gold or silver standard. Except it's possible to convert magic into precious metal or gems, and vice versa.

That's what alchemy is for: to take magical energy and turn it into something that can be easily carried around and traded, i.e. money. For some reason magic is easily converted into gold, platinum and gems, and these metals and minerals are also easily converted back into magic.

Peasants and other people who don't trade in magic use copper and silver coins. These simpler metals aren't easily converted into magic and nobody would bother converting magic into copper or silver coins - nobody needs that tiny fraction of magical power.

It really is two separate economies, one for the mundane and one for the magical. However, since some mundane things are still useful even for the magical people, some trade happens across the economies. Gold coins can be exchanged for silver, to pay for the mundane services of an inn or whatever a village may provide.

I imagine gold coins stamped with the seals of magical academies, possibly with faintly glowing magical runes or security marks visible only under certain light to prevent forgery. Silver and copper coins would be issued by the mundane seats of power, the local lord or a city, or a bank.

Of course none of this prevents the problem of adventurers causing rampant inflation in a small village when they dump their magical items and gold and gems all over the place, but at least there's an explanation for why gold and magic is tied so closely together.

Maybe there are magical merchants scouring the countryside for those magical items and gold coins, buying them from the villagers in exchange for things that they can actually use, or perhaps magical services. Ten healing potions that can save your life or the life of your kid in exchange for a magical wand that an adventurer gave you for your horse and a free stay at the inn seems like a good deal to me.

 

[Primitive Screwhead]

Technically its four economies:

- gold
- magic
- village level barter
- noble fealty and land

I think the difficulty is translating our modern economy ideas backwards into the featly/barter methods of pre-"money" economies.

In the end.. its really question of how much the players are enjoying the world anyway... but I prefer more detail.

 

[Grimgrin]

I love this. As a GM I have always found economics and financial crimes as a unexpected "adventure" for fantasy campaigns.
1. Forgery/Faerie Gold/Debased Currency.
2. Tax Collectors/Charieties/Tithes/Desperate Relatives
3. Money Changers
4. Guilds/Monopolies/Price Fixing
5. Ransomers/Blackmailers/Muggers/Grifters/Credit Fraud
6. Investing/Banking/Gambling

The often overlooked aspect of 4e is that coinage is "weightless" is 3e/4e. This makes sense in "game logic" but I always thought is hilarious is my AD&D days the "crisis of success" the PCs had in haulling off their dungeon booty.

Obviously 4e makes many assumtions. No inflation, standardized currency, and no "capital gains tax". Magic adds a new wrinkle to money. "Fools Gold" spells, money/equipment curses, and "ever full" purses were all financial gimicks of previous editions.

Has anyone read "Spice & Wolf". This would be an excellent reasource for anyone that wants to incorporate mercantial adventures into a fantasy campaign.

 

[TerraDave]

Now, maybe I did not understand the OP or the thread...(its possible).

But I would think that the market for magic items would be its own thing mostly outside the rest of society. Artisans don't make +2 swords, ritual casters do, and the cost comes from the ritual. Artisans don't sell (or buy) +2 swords, magic shoppes, magic users (maybe in colleges or guilds), churches, or some elite group do. The 80% mark up on the used end of the market reflects inventory (which in turn reflects a market were matching supply and demand should be hard), security costs, and the market power of whatever group controls the trade.

 

[yeloson]

D&D pretty much ends up swinging in one of two directions- either magic is commonplace (perhaps not for commoners, but still), or it's rare.

If it's commonplace, then you have a magical item economy- people are making magic items, selling them, and buying them (ditto with casting spells for gold). It makes for drastically different settings than history, since a lot of expected laws of physics can be broken - cure spells, creating water, talking to the dead, etc.

If it's rare, then there isn't a market - in which case the prices shouldn't be seen literally, bur rather as an idea of equivalence if you were to give such an item away (such as to nobles or wizards, etc.). What such an item would be worth, you're unlikely to find someone willing to trade for it ("Hey, here's a magic dagger! Wanna trade your sailing galley for it?").

I generally prefer keeping gold and magic separate without space for conversion. Otherwise you end up with a magic based economy as noted above ("I spend the month we're resting up making scrolls and selling them"). There's also the reverse issue ("We'll take the 3000 platinum we pulled from the dungeon and equip everyone with Elven Boots of Silence!").