How do Wizards pay taxes?

[Irda Ranger]

I'd imagine it would be with spells.

Wall of Stone for rudimentary construction
Wall of Iron so they don't have to mine the stuff
Continual Light to keep the streets lit

I could also see having some cantrips made into magic items or made permenant. The exp loss would be minor.

Well, with the 50 GP material component for Wall of Iron, I think it would be just cheaper to mine the stuff.

Assuming, though, that you have the choice if Continual Flame or using Oil Lamps for the streets, CF has a big up-front cost. 50GP worth of Ruby Dust. An Street Lamp costs 1 GP? (10x the cost of a Table Lamp?) and 2 SP/ night worth of Oil. Yeah, Continual Flame pays for itself in 248 nights, less than one year. Not bad.

As for Wall of Stone, there's no reason why you wouldn't make an entire Palace (or at least, all the visible parts) made out of pure Alabaster and Royal Blue Marble, since you only need a pebble of the original. Remember, if you're being cheap on the Magic, you can make your Castle "old fashioned style", and then "reface it" with a real pretty 1" thick Wall of Stone that fuses in place.

For both spells (and others), just cast it into the National Spell Pool at the end of the day. That way only one Wizard has to be "on location" for construction projects.

Irda Ranger

 

[Scorch]

Infrastructure for the Spell Pool System

Wizards and civic duty have been rattling around in my brain since I took my character into T&B's Mage of the Arcane Order in Wizardru's Story Hour. Mostly I see them as a bunch of arguing misanthropes who resemble the wizards of Vance's "Rhialto the Marvellous". Now that my character is approaching Epic levels I need to think about how a wizard of his level would fit in the grand scheme of National/Wizardly politics.

One thing that has sprung up in my mind is the infrastructure needed for the National Spell Pool. What kind of artifact is powering it? Is there a gigantic spell stone buried deep underground or on a demiplane somewhere guarded by all manners of traps and creatures? To absorb and cast spell levels in the numbers being thrown around here, how much would such an item cost? How long would it take to construct? I assume that it would have to be a very wealthy nation that could afford to construct and maintain such a network. Who would be the System Admins of such a system? A bound diety/demon? A shadowy cabal of epic level wizards and sorcerers? What checks and balances would be in place for them to not turn around and tell the government to go to hell?

Scorch

 

[SurgicalSteel]

Inpired by the Taxes & Tithes Thread


How would you, as a King of Fantasy land, go about collecting taxes from Wizards and Sorcerer?

Unless mages were rare, I don't think it would work.

All of those mages and their henchmen retainers (which they would unquestionably have) would turn the idea to mincemeat, by doing one of two things.

1) Leaving, ultimately just making you poorer.
2) Charming the fools you send, then killing the ones that follow, then blowing up an entire village in the process of fighting to the death.


The only way a scheme like this would ever really work is within the context of a magiocracy, where everything was designed to tax mages, from the ground up.



Actually of course, what would happen is all of the mages, regardless of alignment or along alignment lines, would get together, form their own army, and establish their own kingdom.


It has always been the ludicrous assumptions that made me think much of modern fantasy is crap.

In medieval worlds, women do not have equal rights.
In medieval worlds, people do not believe in civil society.
In medieval worlds, those in power do not rule by the consent of the governed.
In medievalworlds, people follow strength because strength is safety, and maybe even prosperity.

Medieval societies were ruled by fear and need.
Take away either of those two, and everything changes.
At best, the commoners supported tyrannies because they offered predictability and safety (from banditry, rape and death), at the price of exploitation, which at its kindest was merely taxation.

But no-one would stand for it if they could do otherwise...and mages and retainers would, in fact, kill the lord and become the new lord, since the previous lord got his position in exactly the same way.

The game which comes closest to doing mages realistically is Ars Magica, and even that implementation is not great.

 

[herald]

Traditionally, in Feudal Europe, taxes were paid with goods and services. You're a baker? You owe 13 loaves (Hence the phrase, a baker's dozen).

Ok, I gotta coment on this one. This has nothing to do with taxes. I does have something to do with an old English law that would punish bakers if the sold something as a dozen and turned out to be less than twelve.

Bakers soon realized once word got out that people could soon threaten them with baseless accusations if they didn't do some thing about it. So they created the baker's dozen, with equals 13.

To this day a baker's dozen always equals 13.

 

[KnowTheToe]

Say 1 in 200 people have arcane knowledge and can cast spells.

How many do you think do it full time?

There are many expert drivers, but how many race drivers? Everbody can play baseball but only a few conceded asses make it to the majors. Get my point.

There would be very few mages who would be paying magic tax and those with enought ability could conceal there trade.

 

[BiggusGeekus@Work]

Well, with the 50 GP material component for Wall of Iron, I think it would be just cheaper to mine the stuff.

Eh. Depends.

A port city that wasn't near an iron mine would probably love 10+ cubic feet of iron produced. As for the cost, this is a tax after all.

I never thought about using a Wall of Stone for resurfacing. Clever.

Spellpools ... I dunno. I'm not terribly fond of them. They make perfect sense for a fantasy economy, I'll grant you. But it strikes me as basically handing over a lot of power to the sorcerors (perhaps a subject for another thread).

 

[herald]

In medieval worlds, women do not have equal rights.

In our world, no. But when gods decide to manifest themselves directly into the day to day affair of mortals, this can go many differant ways.



In medieval worlds, people do not believe in civil society.

Wrong! The Church not only teach how to act in society. They inforce it.

In medieval worlds, those in power do not rule by the consent of the governed.

This is a little misleading. There were representative forms of government in parts of Europe. The Isle of Man has the oldest consistant form of Parlement in the world.


In medievalworlds, people follow strength because strength is safety, and maybe even prosperity.

People followed the nobles because christianity told them it was natural law. Kings ruled because God hand picked them.

Fear is not the reason they followed. Many felt free to form rebelions. If life was good, they didn't have much reason to rise up. If life was bad... you get the picture.

The medieval world existed as it did mostly because of the posistion of the chuch. Given the fact that most game worlds are panthestic, its had to really get a hold on what might happen.

 

[Irda Ranger]

Re: Infrastructure for the Spell Pool System

Wizards and civic duty have been rattling around in my brain since I took my character into T&B's Mage of the Arcane Order in Wizardru's Story Hour. Mostly I see them as a bunch of arguing misanthropes who resemble the wizards of Vance's "Rhialto the Marvellous". Now that my character is approaching Epic levels I need to think about how a wizard of his level would fit in the grand scheme of National/Wizardly politics.

I really need to read some Vance.

Hmm, where would a person who could level cities with a blow fit into politics? The same place I imagine a 500 lb Gorilla would But seriously, I liked one of the answers "Elminster" gave to why Epic spellcasters don't do a lot. It was something to the effect of "Because the other Epic spellcasters might try to stop me." Basicly, when you're that powerful, you don whatever you want without alerting/ alarming your peers as to what you are doing. Elminster and Blackstaff are cancelled out by Manshoon(s), and the Simbul is cancelled out by Zsass Tam. Status quo is most effectively altered by the people who can fly under the radar (PCs).

As I am sure you have read before, read Piratecat's Story Hour for some great "How do High Level PCs fit into the world" stuff.

One thing that has sprung up in my mind is the infrastructure needed for the National Spell Pool. What kind of artifact is powering it? Is there a gigantic spell stone buried deep underground or on a demiplane somewhere guarded by all manners of traps and creatures? To absorb and cast spell levels in the numbers being thrown around here, how much would such an item cost? How long would it take to construct? I assume that it would have to be a very wealthy nation that could afford to construct and maintain such a network. Who would be the System Admins of such a system? A bound diety/demon? A shadowy cabal of epic level wizards and sorcerers? What checks and balances would be in place for them to not turn around and tell the government to go to hell?

Scorch

Unfortunately, these are all details that Tome & Blood failed to address. I would be very interested in knowing. Personally, I am not sure where I would even begin. It seems like it would have to be a Major Artifact. It wouldn't be as powerful as the Mythal in Forgotten Realms, but nothing to sneeze at either.

As for someone stealing it, I think that would be like stealing a Nuclear Reactor. It just ain't something you can walk off with.

As for the SysAdmins of the system, I imagine that they would be the government. Most fantasy realms aren't democracies you know. You just can't "vote" someone into be a 20 level Sorcerer. You either have worked at it for decades, or you haven't. In a Kingdom like Thay, there are no checks and balances. The Zulkirs do whatever they want, so long as they don't so somethting so nuts the other Zulkirs all gang up on them and kill them.

In Waterdeep, the Masked Lords are led by a Paladin. In fact, the only thing I imagine that would keep a cabal of Sor10/GldMg10's in line would be a deity. A loyal cabal who acknowedges and honestly swears fealty to a non-Mage king would be rare, and I think, not long lasting.

Ever wonder why in the Realms Cormyr was about the only Kingdom not ruled by a Magic User? And even then, it couldn't happen without the loyal War Wizards.

Irda Ranger

 

[tarchon]

There was almost always an option to pay in coin as an alternative to paying in kind. This became more and more prevalent as economies shifted from barter toward a monetary basis.
Probably wizards would be subject to some sort of periodic corvee, some stint of service to the local lord or crown, though again there would probably be a way to buy out of it, roughly however much it would cost to employ another wizard in his place. Typical corvee duties involved maintaining roads and other bits of infrastructure, which wizards could undoubtedly be useful for. I can see them casting Continual Flames a lot.
Different societies developed vastly different ways of doing it though, so experiment. Grossly unworkable systems of taxation were also common enough, since many rulers didn't have the vaguest idea how their economies really worked.

 

[jasper]

err.... I might be wrong but I thought a "baker's dozen" being 13 is because he bakes 12 to have 1 dozen (of whatever, for whatever reason). While he's at it, he bakes 1 more for himself. Thus a baker's dozen is 13.

As for collecting taxes from wizards, I have no idea.

Another story is since they could be flogged, whip, caged, stoned, pieces removed etc, for short weight they added one to make sure it was over weight.