D&D General Games Economies

[Stalker0]

One of the other common things discussed in how economies get wrecked by PCs is through various magics.

One of the classics....Fabricate. The wizard becomes 7th level, they can now create objects that once took weeks of labor in 10 minutes. No mundane craftsman can compete, and at face value that wizard should just become rich sitting back on the porch, doing a few orders a day with a trivial amount of time and spellcasting, and then going back to living the good life.

How do we prevent that? A few ideas:

1) Its illegal. Simply put, that kind of business is just not allowed in the city legal practices. Its easy to see why various guilds in a city would ensure the laws were kept favorable to them and would prevent that kind of competition from messing with their business.

BUT before we think its all about greed, there is actually a very solid reason that a city would want to do that. Aka so say the wizard starts the work. They completely outpace the competition, businesses go down, more and more of the city's construction or goods are handled by that wizard alone. Skilled craftsmen stop coming and apprenticing in the city, why bother.

So what happens when that wizard dies (either by sword or old age), or simply decides I'm rich enough and retires? An entire industry collapsed because of this wizard, and now there is a massive hole left when they leave. That's a major vulnerability to a city to have so much of its business handled by a single source like that. So its in the city's interest to prevent that through law.


2) Its already done. The other classic idea is, the economies of a decent city already rely on magical support. Druids boost the farms, wizards craft much of the goods. And so a PC wizard adding to the pile doesn't change much.

HOWEVER, this idea has a problem. Either its still incredibly lucrative work (in which case a PC wizard gets massive money over its fellows during its downtime).... or goods have become so incredibly cheap that a wizard doesn't get paid that much, but that means all of the book prices plummet. Plate armor now costs silver instead of gold, etc. So that has an economic "wreck" all of its own.


Of the two I find the first one the simplest and most logical. It both keeps the economy sane and prevents PCs from abusing the system to generate massive monies without adventuring.

 

[Micah Sweet]

Yeah, based on this, I think you’re probably misunderstanding what I mean when I say “RPGs don’t have economies.” Yes, you absolutely can think about how a fictional economy might work and set prices and award treasure in a way that makes sense based on how you imagine that economy to work. It’s just that doing so isn’t simulating an economy. It’s creating an illusion of one.

I can't start a war or launch a exploration of unknown territories either, but I can create an illusion of such. I don't see how this needs to be emphasized.

 

[Stormonu]

@Stalker0

On Fabricate, a few things...

1) "You also can’t use it to create items that ordinarily require a high degree of craftsmanship, such as jewelry, weapons, glass, or armor, unless you have proficiency with the type of artisan’s tools used to craft such objects" - Unless the wizard has a tool proficiency in the sort of item being created, it is going to be of somewhat crude or basic design. It's unlikely the wizard is going to have more than two tool proficiency at that.

2) Rarity of the Wizard - 2E's DM's Option - High Level Campaigns gave some thought to the demographics of how common a character of a given level would be in a standard D&D game world. At a 7th level character class, it notes that for a population of 1 million (quite a high number for "Medieval" world*) there would be 2,080 7th level characters (.208%). With 12 base character classes and only one class able to cast Fabricate (not counting Forge Cleric as that's a single subclass of Cleric, so a singular subfaction), that reduces it to about 173 Wizards out of 1 million (probably less, as only a subset of those would have the Fabricate - there are 23 spells of 4th level in the PHB after all, and a 7th level wizard probably will only have one, maybe two 4th level spells prepared) or .0173% of the population. Factoring in a 2-in-23 chance of having Fabricate, that would reduce it to 86 Wizards in 1 million, or .0086%. You probably have a better chance of winning the lottery.

3) At 7th level, the Wizard can only use this spell once per day, though certainly more at higher level - but the chances of finding such an individual half for each additional class level. That assumes a Wizard who wants to make this a profession (I find it difficult to believe someone whose devoted their life to bending reality to use it just to make "common" items for a mundane populace, but that is just my opinion); there is likely to be a backlog of requests and a commensurate cost for the work due to limited access to the Wizard.

While in theory it looks easy for a Wizard to replace craftsmen, a deeper looks makes it unlikely it would be so. They could certainly supplement such craftsmanship, though.

(As a point of comparison of skilled craftsmen at work, at it's height comparatively in the real world around in the BC era, the city of Carthage could produce two warships per day, though that did involve a labor force and took advantage of shipbuilding standardization.)

* Waterdeep only has a standing population of ~132,000 people, with upwards of ~1.3 million adding in the surrounding lands around the city. If you aren't near a fairly large city ... good luck finding a single Wizard with Fabricate.

 

[GrimCo]

Fair enough. I guess I'm surprised that adamantium is common enough in your setting that it easily be made and used for simple tools.

Golarion and Faerun respectivley. But in general, in 5e, adamantine armor or weapon is uncommon item (weapons are 500gp) and i treati it as such in my homebrew. Also, between having adamantine sword and crowbar, crowbar is no brainer. Sword is weapon. Crowbar is tool and a weapon (essentially a greatclub). And it's an investment that pays dividends manifold when you are striping villains lair of anything that has any value ( floors, doors, windows, furniture included).

Back on topic. It boils down to what kind of stories you wanna run and how interested players are for sidegame of Acountants & ledgers. Mine aren't. I'm not. Also, not interested in domain play, runing imaginary businesses etc unless it's just backdrop and serves for larger, more interesting story. If someone likes that kind of play, great. To each it's own.

 

[Zaukrie]

Golarion and Faerun respectivley. But in general, in 5e, adamantine armor or weapon is uncommon item (weapons are 500gp) and i treati it as such in my homebrew. Also, between having adamantine sword and crowbar, crowbar is no brainer. Sword is weapon. Crowbar is tool and a weapon (essentially a greatclub). And it's an investment that pays dividends manifold when you are striping villains lair of anything that has any value ( floors, doors, windows, furniture included).

Back on topic. It boils down to what kind of stories you wanna run and how interested players are for sidegame of Acountants & ledgers. Mine aren't. I'm not. Also, not interested in domain play, runing imaginary businesses etc unless it's just backdrop and serves for larger, more interesting story. If someone likes that kind of play, great. To each it's own.

This last part for us also. Good for those that do, but it's not for me.

 

[Distracted DM]

Back on topic. It boils down to what kind of stories you wanna run and how interested players are for sidegame of Acountants & ledgers. Mine aren't. I'm not. Also, not interested in domain play, runing imaginary businesses etc unless it's just backdrop and serves for larger, more interesting story. If someone likes that kind of play, great. To each it's own.

I don't think it's about Accountants & Abbacus', it's probably about the GM having high priority on economy with regards to verisimilitude.

One could have a high priority for verisimilitude but not place such an emphasis on economy etc.. i think it basically involves wearing blinders in regard to the topics that you don't want to prioritize. That probably depends on the individuals ability to compartmentalize.

I've definitely vacillated this way and that over time on how much emphasis I've been on verisimilitude, vs just ignoring the stuff that I don't want to deal with.

Am I playing the game for the world, or is the world only there for the game? Both are valid, but if the world/verisimilitude is important and you can't compartmentalize/ignore stuff, economy is definitely going to become a factor.

 

[Stalker0]

@Stalker0

On Fabricate, a few things...

1) "You also can’t use it to create items that ordinarily require a high degree of craftsmanship, such as jewelry, weapons, glass, or armor, unless you have proficiency with the type of artisan’s tools used to craft such objects" - Unless the wizard has a tool proficiency in the sort of item being created, it is going to be of somewhat crude or basic design. It's unlikely the wizard is going to have more than two tool proficiency at that.

2) Rarity of the Wizard - 2E's DM's Option - High Level Campaigns gave some thought to the demographics of how common a character of a given level would be in a standard D&D game world. At a 7th level character class, it notes that for a population of 1 million (quite a high number for "Medieval" world*) there would be 2,080 7th level characters (.208%). With 12 base character classes and only one class able to cast Fabricate (not counting Forge Cleric as that's a single subclass of Cleric, so a singular subfaction), that reduces it to about 173 Wizards out of 1 million (probably less, as only a subset of those would have the Fabricate - there are 23 spells of 4th level in the PHB after all, and a 7th level wizard probably will only have one, maybe two 4th level spells prepared) or .0173% of the population. Factoring in a 2-in-23 chance of having Fabricate, that would reduce it to 86 Wizards in 1 million, or .0086%. You probably have a better chance of winning the lottery.

3) At 7th level, the Wizard can only use this spell once per day, though certainly more at higher level - but the chances of finding such an individual half for each additional class level. That assumes a Wizard who wants to make this a profession (I find it difficult to believe someone whose devoted their life to bending reality to use it just to make "common" items for a mundane populace, but that is just my opinion); there is likely to be a backlog of requests and a commensurate cost for the work due to limited access to the Wizard.

You can actually use fabricate twice a day with arcane recovery (the slots round up so you can get 1 4th level slot).

Based on the 2024 crafting rules, a wizard fabricating plate armor can replace 300 armorsmiths in terms of speed of productivity. That's a pretty sizable chunk of the armorsmith market I would imagine.

Now your point about proficiency is true, and I would assume a PC doing this would build for that idea if this is the thing they are trying to do.

To the point of rarity of spellcasters, on paper I agree with you. But lets be honest, most games once you get to a certain level there are a lot of spellcasters taht are "suddenly out there". The idea that the party fighting a CR6 "mage" from the MM is fighting a wizard that is like 80ish out of 1 million people (aka they are that special and rare)....tends not to fly in the face of encounter design. Imagine they fight two of them....the chances are astronomically small! If you go down that route, you basically have to explain who every NPC of any caliber to fight a PC comes about, because they should all be just insanely rare.


The issue then comes down to, okay the 7th level PC wizard has now replaced 300 armorsmiths. 1) How does that impact the economy? 2) Why isn't the wizard just now stupidly rich?


To create the "real economy" the OP mentioned, those have to be answered.

 

[AlViking]

You can actually use fabricate twice a day with arcane recovery (the slots round up so you can get 1 4th level slot).

Based on the 2024 crafting rules, a wizard fabricating plate armor can replace 300 armorsmiths in terms of speed of productivity. That's a pretty sizable chunk of the armorsmith market I would imagine.

Now your point about proficiency is true, and I would assume a PC doing this would build for that idea if this is the thing they are trying to do.

To the point of rarity of spellcasters, on paper I agree with you. But lets be honest, most games once you get to a certain level there are a lot of spellcasters taht are "suddenly out there". The idea that the party fighting a CR6 "mage" from the MM is fighting a wizard that is like 80ish out of 1 million people (aka they are that special and rare)....tends not to fly in the face of encounter design. Imagine they fight two of them....the chances are astronomically small! If you go down that route, you basically have to explain who every NPC of any caliber to fight a PC comes about, because they should all be just insanely rare.


The issue then comes down to, okay the 7th level PC wizard has now replaced 300 armorsmiths. 1) How does that impact the economy? 2) Why isn't the wizard just now stupidly rich?


To create the "real economy" the OP mentioned, those have to be answered.

If a spell is that problematic for you and causes so many problems ban the spell. Personally I think if you apply significant restrictions it's not an issue. You still need the raw materials, steel doesn't just grow on trees. So a big part of the expense is raw materials needed for the spell.

Becoming someone that makes high quality armor also takes years to really hone the craft which means they couldn't also have been studying to be a wizard. Most wizards could make functional armor. It might do in a pinch, for a while. But it's not going to be worth a lot.

At least that's how I rule. Anything made with fabricate will be serviceable but of low quality for anything truly complicated. That bridge you made out of trees? Did you sink the pilings deep enough? Do you understand the requirements of structural support? Was the correct wood used and since it's green, what happens when it dries out? That armor? Even if you spent years learning to craft armor do you really understand how the raw materials were modified by the forging, hammering, quenching? Because people didn't, they just followed practices they knew worked.

That and, of course, the game isn't meant to model a realistic economy. If magic actually worked I don't think we could begin to guess what impact that would have.

 

[DeviousQuail]

I like how Dragon Age: Origins did it and implement that approach in many of my games.

First, 100cp = 1sp and 100sp = 1gp. I've changed all my 5e prices to match this and it feels a lot better. Mechanically it's no different, but handing a Smith 15gp to make me plate armor instead of 1500gp looks better in my head.

Second, the cheapest items available to the players are a few coppers while the most expensive are around 150ish gp. (That's only player equipment. Not stuff like keeps, ships, and the like.) That range works because the rate of earning money isn't growing at a crazy rate as you level. Something like earning 100gp requires X amount of adventuring to start. Your next 100gp will require .8X. The 100gp after that is .65X. You get the idea.

Third, that price range from the second point is also nice because cheap, expensive, and items inbetween are useful at all levels. That probably goes beyond "economy" and is more a part of game design, but I try my best to emulate it with most games. It makes spending now vs saving a real consideration at any level without having to always resort to "they're out of stock".

Fourth, creating a money sink by donating items that can be found OR bought gives money value even when you've bought everything you need. Ttrpgs will have much more room to implement a money sink, but granting extra xp or allowing you to call on additional allies is pretty neat.

 

[Stalker0]

That and, of course, the game isn't meant to model a realistic economy. If magic actually worked I don't think we could begin to guess what impact that would have.

With respect, this is the ENTIRE point of this thread, to make a more realistic economy for people that want that sort of thing. So I highlighted certain spells that would need special handling, like fabricate, to prevent economy breaks and for dms to decide how they want to handle it.

I recognize it is a difficult task, for some would consider it an impossible task, but it is what we are here to do. So saying "well its not made to be realistic", isn't very productive to this discussion.