Wizards are supposed to be rich, right?

[Elder-Basilisk]

I don't know. Fabricating alchemist's fire is easy with a half-way decent craft alchemy check and you can fabricate a LOT of it. At a minimum profit (assuming sell for half) of 25gp per six 1 pint vials, you can make quite a bit of money per crafting.

Fabricate is always nice, but not very get-rich quick.

 

[Li Shenron]

Come on gentlemen, D&D is NOT a game of economy!

Characters are supposed to be heroes, not businessmen. They are supposed to go to strange places, travel the world, meet interesting people and KILL them.

There's nothing wrong in wanting something else to do, including starting your own wizardry business, but it is wrong to expect that D&D rules are going to back you up in the process, and that a DM would be able and willing to undertake such an impossible task as matching the DMG market prices for magic equipment with an economy that makes sense.

 

[WayneLigon]

Your GM needs a serious beating. Having a +30 modifier on your Perform skill (And how did you get that, it not being a class skill for a wizard?) should make you a god among men. Kings and merchant lords should beg for your services. People would go to war over you.

Having access to up to 7th level wizard spells should make getting cash a snap. It really should be the least of your worries.

 

[kigmatzomat]

I think the main problem I have, is that I'm 14th level, and we're still doing "gopher quests". We're told to go here, fix the McGuffin, and return home. We're expected to do this for about 500 gp apiece ....... since 10th level, I've gotten around 20K gp. I've just now been able to afford to outfit myself with decent armor, let alone get anything extra to do cool stuff with.

You Sir (or Madam), are boned. The GM has an "idea" of what the world should look like and is more than willing to ignore the default guidelines in the books. Which is fine, except their "idea" appears to be based off of choose-your-own-adventures and older computer RPGs. I mean, even Never Winter Nights can result in you owning an inn that you can hit up for cash.

I'm okay with the notion of low-cash games but it's something that the players should be prepped for and it requires a lot of DM effort to balance out monsters with DR or special abililties. It also tends to nerf the fighters more than the casters, which is an already wobbly relationship.

Unfortunately, the Miser DM is about as hard to retrain as the Monty Haul DM. You might have limited success giving the DM something like Magical Medieval Society:Western Europe by XRP, which has an excellent economic structure that fits reasonably well into the existing D&D expectations. However, this is pretty unlikely to work so your choices are to find another DM or start running yourself.

I recommend you run yourself if you haven't, just to appreciate the effort it takes to sit behind the screen. Plus, you already know what is not fun so you've got at least one lower bound set on your gaming.

 

[gizmo33]

Come on gentlemen, D&D is NOT a game of economy!

Well, to each their own (an old fashioned way of saying YMMV), but consider:

Maybe we can agree that DnD is a resource management game. The way most people play it, equipment/resources are managed by the player. Ie. you keep track of your gold, and when you buy things, you have less gold. Contrast this to a kind of game where you basically assume that your 4th level fighter has whatever equipment a 4th level fighter would have, and the whole issue is abstracted.

And once you start managing resources, it becomes a game of economy. If I decide to sell my potion of invisibility for a pair of boots of elvenkind, that's an economic decision. Further - NPCs are doing the buying and selling, and their perception of supply and demand (among other things) would be implicit in their decisions. (Unless you're from the "because I say so" school of NPC motivation.)

So saying DnD isn't a game of economy is like saying DnD isn't a political game, or an exploration game, and so on. IMO DnD is all of those things, though the degree to which you develop those elements depends on your interests.

Characters are supposed to be heroes, not businessmen. They are supposed to go to strange places, travel the world, meet interesting people and KILL them.

And how is that different from a business man? In fact, the trading companies of the "Age of Exploration" probably each have higher body-counts than most 20th level characters. As someone pointed out on this thread, economic activity in the game can be an adventure hook (the same way politics and curiosity can be hooks).

There's nothing wrong in wanting something else to do, including starting your own wizardry business, but it is wrong to expect that D&D rules are going to back you up in the process, and that a DM would be able and willing to undertake such an impossible task as matching the DMG market prices for magic equipment with an economy that makes sense.

It's no more impossible IMO than making sure that character classes or spells are balanced - which means that it's never going to be perfect but I would think "economic reasonableness" would be a nice quality to have in a game with an equipment price list. The PCs make economic decisions when they buy a 15 gp longsword instead of a 300 gp dagger - so as with spells and such, why not make sure that the options before them make some sort of sense with regards to the campaign world?

 

[painandgreed]

After all, this isn't Sim Fantasy Business. This is D&D.

But D&D is the sim fantasy business, the business is adventuring. How many adventures involve getting something for somebody else so they can make money? How many involve escorting caravans? Most any adventure that doesn't stick it to the PCs by expecting them to do something out of the goodness of their heart, has them working for a patron. That patron is probably making much more money than the players are collecting. However, the jump from working for a patron, and becoming the guy making the money, is a hard one for DM and players alike. Most DMs would rather not have the caravan guarded by the PCs be the PCs investment and business windfall. If it were, chances of the caravan ever reaching its destination or making a decent profit would be much less, I suspect. The adversarial DM shows up much more often in trying to keep the PCs broke than actually trying to kill them off.

 

[Li Shenron]

It's no more impossible IMO than making sure that character classes or spells are balanced - which means that it's never going to be perfect but I would think "economic reasonableness" would be a nice quality to have in a game with an equipment price list.

What I am skeptic about, is that this is possible with a market price system that has a geometric progression and all other rules about crafting items. These were done as a game design choice, not for the sake of realism.

In fact later you have characters who magically manage to find exponentially bigger treasures just because the game sort-of needs it. You have rules and guidelines that tell you that to make a magic item you're burning your life strength (and whatever you describe xp as) and yet the world is full of magic items for sale, so that when you want to sell excess equipment you always find a buyer, and even to find a seller of something you want is not so much more difficult either, as long as the DM hasn't banned the item.

It would be nice if someone made some academic study about what kind of society would exist around these results (the market prices, the crafting rules, etc.).

But I think the results would be very different than the real world, because the real workd doesn't have exponentially increasing prices, but something more linear.

And players are always going to think in real-world terms, they are going to think that if they craft wands there will be always adventurers who buy them. And if you tell them that actually in the real world it's not so easy to choose the right business they are going to complain that the DM is not helping their character concept. So then the DM is morally compelled to let the PC's idea work successfully, and next you're going to have a character that might have more equipment (hence, power) than the others. Maybe it's just going to even out because of the XP cost, it's possible! In fact I didn't say that I wouldn't allow this in the first place. I'm just saying that IMHO the game is not really made for this purpose and I wouldn't be surprised if some problem arises, but in any case I wouldn't even try to spend time to make it more realistic,

 

[Sejs]

Your GM needs a serious beating. Having a +30 modifier on your Perform skill (And how did you get that, it not being a class skill for a wizard?)

I think Thanee nailed it - the character's not exactly a wizard, but a Bard/Sublime Chord.

 

[DM_Matt]

After "Your stories are gay, and elven, so no one wants to hear them." I think I have heard enough to judge the DM fairly well, actually.

Ask the DM if there are any rich gay elves around. They'd wanna hear 'em.

 

[gizmo33]

What I am skeptic about, is that this is possible with a market price system that has a geometric progression and all other rules about crafting items. These were done as a game design choice, not for the sake of realism.

"Geometric progression" IMO is ok. Also, I think it exists for products in the real world. Art and gemstones for example. I can buy a print for $5 at the flea market, or 5 million $ painting at an auction. Actual magic item costs are circular reasoning anyway - if the costs of producing a magic sword are geometric with regards to it's plus, then I would expect the costs of buying one to match that.

What I mean by "internal consistency" is really other areas. For example, there's a note in the SRD that says it's very difficult to find a caster that will cast a spell costing more than 3,000 gp. Almost in the same breath a 25,000 gp warship appears in the equipment list with no such caveat. And a 3,000 gp spell could be a 2nd level spell with a 3,000 gp component AFAICT. Since the buyer provides the material component - why is it's cost a factor in it's availability? I think stuff like that matters to PCs, even though they're not merchants, and they could understandably ask pointed questions that the DM wouldn't have answers for.

In fact later you have characters who magically manage to find exponentially bigger treasures just because the game sort-of needs it.

I think it's reasonable that there is a correlation between power and wealth. If a kobold has a 50,000 gp gem and a dragon has 5 cp, I would expect the dragon to quickly rectify the situation. 3E I think has just gone farther in codifying and recognizing this base reality - which I think has not necessarily been for the better - because they've chosen a certain "wealth per level" guideline and made some people believe that the universe will end if this isn't followed.

You have rules and guidelines that tell you that to make a magic item you're burning your life strength (and whatever you describe xp as) and yet the world is full of magic items for sale, so that when you want to sell excess equipment you always find a buyer, and even to find a seller of something you want is not so much more difficult either, as long as the DM hasn't banned the item.

But the availability of magic items AFAICT is completely in the realm of DM campaign decision. I don't think there's any place in the rules that tells you anything about what PCs should be able to buy and sell - other than very general ideas that a settlement of a certain size can sell an item of a certain XP value. So I don't think there's a mandate about how to do it. However, I think in the absence of guidance, most DMs aren't going to want to think about it - the rules won't help them so the quick and easy solution is to make everything available.

"Burning life's energy" isn't that big of a deal though. DnD characters must understand the effects to some degree. When the DMG decides that XP is worth 25 gp each, that pretty much sets it's value. If everyone agrees on what XP is worth in the campaign world, then that's good enough for me. In the real world gold works the same way - gold has no real value, it's just how much people want it. Internal consistency just means that a 5 lb gold necklace should be worth at least as much as 5 lbs of gold bars. Now to some extent, if the process of gaining 10 xp is 50% likely to be fatal, then charging 250 gp for using that 10 xp in a magic item creation process needs some consideration.

All they would need to do is decide how NPCs can gain XP. There's plenty of room in the rules for them to gain XP for non-combat activities. In that case, using up XP in a magic item creation process is like selling blood - people do it, and as long as they watch how much then everything is ok.

It would be nice if someone made some academic study about what kind of society would exist around these results (the market prices, the crafting rules, etc.).

Yea, but I also think that the reasoning should go in the other direction too - make the rules so that they produce the sort of fantasy world that you want. Make castles, for example, cost-effective enough that people would want to build them.

But I think the results would be very different than the real world, because the real workd doesn't have exponentially increasing prices, but something more linear.

In addition to the art and gemstone situation above, I would think people's salaries would be a big counter-example to this. A CEO is not 1000 times more educated, 1000 times smarter, or working 1000 times as hard as a normal employee, but the salaries don't reflect this. And people's salaries are one of the basic costs at the root of a lot of prices.

So then the DM is morally compelled to let the PC's idea work successfully,

Though I would put this in the same category as all other decisions that a DM makes about player ideas - and in those cases a DM is never under any obligation to make things work. The only difference here is that the DM has fewer rules to back up his decision.

and next you're going to have a character that might have more equipment (hence, power) than the others.

Which is exactly why I objected when you said the game isn't about this because IMO it very much is about equipment and wealth because those things translate as power. And the DM in the OP seems very aware of this too and fearing that the player will some how take advantage of his decisions to gain power. That fear IMO causes the DM to overreact and start saying silly things about elves.

In fact I didn't say that I wouldn't allow this in the first place. I'm just saying that IMHO the game is not really made for this purpose and I wouldn't be surprised if some problem arises, but in any case I wouldn't even try to spend time to make it more realistic,

I don't blame you - the job IMO is really one for WotC and game designers. But as the game evolves, and players ask inevitable questions like "well, if NPC spell casters can charge X gp for casting spells, why can't I?", then it would really help if WotC would take it's decisions seriously. Habit and tradition has caused them to look at some things from an entirely lop-sided perspective - as if the player and NPC roles in a transaction are always going to be consistently one way. IMO in a more developed game, PCs are going to be on both sides of economic transactions and the rules need to make sense in all of these situations.