The economics of Continual flame

[Ancalagon]

Lord I hope not. Or we will end up with utter stupidity like Dragon Lance, where a suit or armor is composed of more steel than it costs in steel to make. "Hey DM, I go buy as many suits of full plate as I can for 400 steel pieces each. Then the dwarf and I melt them and mint them into 1200 steel coins each..."

That kind of sloppiness drives me bonkers.

 

[Ancalagon]

I've had this issue with the spell since well before 3rd edition. Any spell with a permanent effect needs to be looked at carefully with regard to how it impacts the D&D society.

In my homebrew, I did not want every city to have continual light spells at every street corner, every home lit by them, etc. That's just too magicky for me. So I changed the spell to last for a long time, in dungeon delving terms, but not forever.

in my 5e world, the continual flame spell lasts 1 month, and if it is cast continually for a year (i.e. once per month for a year), it becomes permanent. This allows the spell to act as a longterm light source and even a permanent one for the nobility and wizards, without being trivial or commonplace.

That is a perfectly reasonable solution

 

[Tony Vargas]

I've had this issue with the spell since well before 3rd edition. Any spell with a permanent effect needs to be looked at carefully with regard to how it impacts the D&D society.

Yep. Back in 1e, Continual Light was just a 2nd level spell, any 3rd level magic-user who learned it could, given enough time, light up a whole city. I was fine with that: those cities that were more accepting of magic were lit up.
There were myriad continual lights shenanigans back in the day, the scroll case flashlight, the continual light copper piece (or just rock), continual light on your grey ioun stone, put the continual light coin in a clay jar, and you have a 'light grenade,' continual light on a sword to make it seem 'magical,' etc...

in my 5e world, the continual flame spell lasts 1 month, and if it is cast continually for a year (i.e. once per month for a year), it becomes permanent. This allows the spell to act as a longterm light source and even a permanent one for the nobility and wizards, without being trivial or commonplace.

Reasonable solution. Some 4e rituals worked that way, they cost a surge, and if you kept them going (did without a surge) for a year, became permanent. That'd keep a lid on things...

 

[LordEntrails]

google soccet iirc.

it was a systematic effort to deploy a cheap kinetic powered electric storage soccer ball that would enable kids to play and charge up a battery that could run cheap low watt led lights in certain environments.

see many other examples of finding cheap ways to get a few hours of cheap lighting to same - including "brick on a pully" type solutions which proved quite effective and low tech.

I'm not sure if you are agreeing with me or arguing against me... so about all I can say is something like;
Yes, if light wasn't important, people wouldn't work so hard to make it available to even the poorest and most remote of peoples.

 

[5ekyu]

I'm not sure if you are agreeing with me or arguing against me... so about all I can say is something like;
Yes, if light wasn't important, people wouldn't work so hard to make it available to even the poorest and most remote of peoples.

Was agreeing that value of light after dark is tremendous and pointing out more modern day projects that emphasize.

 

[Ancalagon]

First, the numbers are all made up for gamist reasons. . How do we know that a skilled worked makes that much? Because the game says so. Because it is divorced from a real-world economy, we can't really say much about it,

I somehow missed this. This is the most wrong you've ever been on this forum. This is "squaredancing with gnomish paladins wrong".

The cost of living is *the central economic value* of D&D. Everything else is centered around it.

If you don't know the cost of living, and you're being offered 50 gp for a dangerous quest. Is that a lot of money? Who knows!?! The cost of living informs you how much that 50 gp is worth.

It's also the foundation on which other prices are built, or at least hopefully. Cost of living is 10 gp/day, swords are 2 silvers.... doesn't make sense.

Plus it's based on research Gygax did about the salary of a laborer in ancient Greece I believe, so it's not entirely without foundation.

(further reading https://slugsandsilver.blogspot.com/2018/08/your-economic-yardstick-laborer.html )

 

[S'mon]

1 or 2 silver pieces a day was a living wage for thousands of years (in areas with a monetary economy), and yes Gygax did base his 1e DMG hireling wages off that. However he did not base his PHB gear costs off historical values; he says himself that they are wildly inflated.

5e says a skilled worker makes 2gp/day, which is ahistorical but tallies better with the 5e PHB prices.

If you wanted something that looks historical you'd need to divide most 5e PHB prices by 10 (ie gold > silver), pay skilled workers 2 sp/day (1 sp if unskilled), and have a silver piece be worth around $20* purchasing power parity.

*I did some research on Roman bread prices etc and it works out as a typical low-end working class income in the Roman empire was around $20/day. The $2/day you see as subsistence living in modern 'Developing' countries is not historical, at least not in anything resembling a D&D world. A Chinese peasant might get by on $10, but with a notably lower standard of living and a greater likelihood of famine.

Edit: Personally I tend to do a Gygaxian-style bodge where I base the economy off 1 sp/day subsistence and use the PHB prices as the inflated amounts paid by adventurers. They are really all over the place though - eg a wagon is only 35 gp, which looks like it's based off the sp economy, but a pony is 30gp which looks like it's based off the x10 standard. In my Sunday game the PCs bought a wagon & 2 draft oxen, I charged them 30gp per ox but felt a bit guilty about that - should probably have been more like 8gp*. Still the PCs weren't spending their own money so they didn't mind being ripped off.

*Just found ox on very badly laid out PHB pg 157 - it's under "Trade Goods" and is 15gp!

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[jayoungr]

I could see the reverse - ruby miners promoting Continual Light as status symbol - to create market for their scraps.

It would be interesting to have the availability dependent on how close to a ruby mine you are. If there's only one place in the world where you can mine rubies, then maybe continual flames get less common the farther from that part of the world you are. Whereas in the country where the mine is located, virtually every household has one.

 

[Ancalagon]

So, a few things.

First, I resent the comment that this is the most wrong I have ever been on this forum. I pride myself not just on my wrongness, but on the magnitude of my wrongosity. You, sir, take that back. Even assuming, arguendo, that this is wrong, this is not even in the top half of wrong comments I have made. I aspire to, and achieve, a higher level of complete and total incorrectness than this particular comment!

Well, I must confess that I wrote that in part to get your attention (success!), and that since I have not read all you posts, I cannot be absolutely certain that this was your wrongest post. Perhaps you claimed that Tiny Servant was a bad spell, for example.

Second, that wasn't my point at, all. I mean, the entire point of my post is that the economy in D&D is completely made up- which is true by definition, since it is static, and it presumes that it is worldwide, and it ignore supply and demand (but that's what the rest of the post you excerpted from said), but let's dig deeper on just the point you quoted, using your post and your linked-to blog that you wrote in.

We don't know if it's static. It's what the prices are *at the start of the campaign*. If you feel that prices must go up or down, then it is up to you the GM to do changes.

Now, the most interesting thing is that you state that it's based on research Gygax did on being a laborer in ancient Greece, and that it's plausible because the going rate in ancient greece was half a drachma to "provide" for a poor citizen (4.3 grams). Now, let's see what Gygax actually did in OD&D and 1e.

1 coin = 1/10th pound = 45.36 grams
Unskilled Labor comes from, inter alia, the standard hireling table, p. 28 DMG, bearer/porter, 1 s.p. per day.

So the unskilled laborers in Gygax's world were making approximately 10x the amount that research would show.*

Of course, how do we know that Gygax most likely didn't do full research and, instead, was pulling numbers out of his posterior gor gamist reasons?

Well, Gygax certainly didn't research the weight of the drachma (from the top of my head, aprox 4.5 gram, which is conveniently close to 1/100 pounds). 10 coins to the pound is ridiculous.

Well, let's see. PHB . 35- "Your character will most probably be adventuring in an area where money is plentiful. Think of the situation as similar to Alaskan boom towns during the gold rush days, where eggs sold for one dollar each and mining tools sold for $20, $50, and $100 or more. Costs in the adventuring area are distorted because of the law of supply and demand - the supply of coin is high, while supplies of equipment for adventurers are in great demand."

How interesting. Why is the demand high? Are there so many adventurers all of a sudden?

Anyway, the gist of all of this is that AFAIK, it really was without foundation. I don't happen to agree with S'mon that 1 to 2 SP per day was the "living wage" for thousands of years in places with a monetary economy (again, source). Wages (including in-kind contributions such as food and lodging) varied in different areas and over time; notably, issues such as war and disease (the black death, for example, was a major driver of wages in Europe, and similar population issues had similar effects throughout history) would drive wages, while relative wealth between areas also mattered a great deal.

Yet it's a value that seems roughly correct over a period of time. It's a usable value.

Finally, the idea of static pricing would, of course, preclude any kind of trade, as there would be no opportunity for profit from carrying the rubies from the countries that have them to the countries that don't (Spice Road, etc.).

See above re static

In the end, my argument in this thread has been, and always will be, simple and two-fold.

1. TTRPGs won't model economics very well- use whatever works for your immersion.

2. This is even moreseo the case once you introduce magic into the economy; you know the old standby of "Any sufficiently high technology is indistinguishable from magic?" Well, magic (assuming there aren't countervailing forces, like hunting down all people and items that use it) would end up having similar effects to technology, and while we could try and model some effects (total difference in tactics for armies due to area effect spells, massive increases in spying and espionage and countermeasures between nation-states, and so on) it would be impossible to understand the effects on the economic system, so most people either don't bother, or just make it a cool feature (Eberron).

But yeah, like bathroom breaks and sanitation in cities, the underlying economy is something that is not really worth the time in the TTRPG to model. IMO.

It is usually *not* worth it. BUT sometimes it is worth doing a specific economic calculation to get an approximate value of things. And at that point, having a firm yardstick is rather useful.

*Assuming that this is where he got the figures. Could you cite a source for this? It's sounds like something he would totally do, "Eh, Ancient Greece, close enough, who cares about the weight ...." but I don't remember seeing this contemporaneously sourced out before. Would love to see it!

I can't remember... and I'm not even 100% sure if it's something I discovered or "guessed" now that I think about it :/