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Message: <blockquote data-quote="gizmo33" data-source="post: 4843708" data-attributes="member: 30001">Your construct here seems to make too many assumptions that go beyond the OPs original problem (and that seem to violate basic economic principles).  First of all, you're assuming that you can confine this problem (and the PCs actions) to a certain "region".  And that the region would have some sort of scarcity of trained dogs.  And how does waiting to "replenish" your army of dogs solve the original problem? - because obviously the PCs must *have* an army of dogs to begin with in order for anything to need "replenishing", so the problem AFAICT is not really solved. Or take your alchemist's fire example.  Supply and demand would suggest that *some* quantity of alchemist's fire is available for 10 gp a flask (let's say that's the PHB cost).  Suppose 10 flasks represent the normal "demand".  The PCs buy the 9th flask and the shop keeper decides to sell the 10th for 1 million gps?  (I think we'd agree - no).  But maybe he sells it for 15 gp.  Now the alchemists in the neighboring town discover that there's a market for alchemist's fire at 150% of what they're getting locally.  It's in their interest to ship their goods to this market as long as the price supports the cost of transport.  In the long term this 150% price is going to support the training of more alchemists, procurement of raw materials, etc. until the supply of alchemist's fire meets the demand.  And this assumes that the PCs don't simply walk to the next town and buy it's stock of alchemist's fire. But in fact a "realistic" feeling game world would have already assumed that many NPCs had trod this path before the PCs.  That means the price would have already stabilized to meet the demand/usefulness and the availability of materials.  Local fluctuations are one thing, but PCs aren't typically constrained to a certain region in the game, and they have an inordinant amount of wealth to spend on average.  DMs who assume they can use economics to stop PCs with pockets full of astral diamonds from buying dogs aren't playing the same DnD that I am.    This example IMO illustrates that the suggestion is just not using basic economic principles in a fair and complete way.  It seems that they're only applied in a very narrow way as a way to justify a conclusion that the DM already wants to come to for reasons that have nothing to do with simulation and everything to do with challenging the players (and perhaps wanting to see them use certain technologies instead of others).</blockquote>

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