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Originally Posted by Pip Boy
I hardly believe it that a Mage with Shape Earth 21, and a lot of Earth school spells at a high level would bother to manufacture stuff at industrial scale just for the money.
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Well, he does have to make a living somehow and you can't go around building castles everyday.
I also tend to think that a mage craftsman would be more like a Johnny One-Spell than an Archmage.
Let's say a guy has IQ11 and Magery(Earth-only) at 1 and he starts out as an apprentice turning rocks into pots with Shape Earth.
Shape Earth has only 1 prereq and he only needs to put 1 pt in that. For 31 pts (not counting any Disads) he has Seek Earth-10 and Shape Earth-12. That's already probably enough to go around making "earthenware" pots and even counting FP recovery time he's working much faster than a potter and not spending anything on having a kiln.
With nothing but On the Job Training his Skill level goes up to 16 in 4 to 6 years (he's a 47 pt character now). He can branch out to Shape Metal now. He can make metal pots and any other simple thing (he's still only a 77 pt character at Shape Metal-16 and he's probably in his early 30s).
He might not get the +4 for "routine task" that a Blacksmith would but making horseshoes with magic takes much less skill than doing it with a hammer. It's more like working with modeling clay.
He can probably make simple armor like helmets without any particular Armory skill but investing just a few pts will give him a professional level with that and he's making expertly fitted suits of plate armor in _days_ instead of weeks or months,
So, if you give him 25 pts of Disads you've got a 60 pt character who can totally upend the armory and blacksmith business on a citywide basis (and he still only knows 3 spells).
Archmages are not needed to change the economy with magic.