Paying for Casting a Spell

[stilleon]

i see plenty of rules for how much it costs to enchant an item, but what are the general costs to hire someone to cast a spell on you. Like to get a didease removed, or the like?

Thanks

[Harald387]

Generally, it's the GM's discretion; that said, the guidelines for Quick and Dirty enchantment are pretty good for this. For spells that go over your campaign's Q&D threshold, though, it's possible they could go far higher in price than enchantments - it may be very expensive or simply impossible to get a circle of people large enough for a Resurrection, for instance.

In Dungeon Fantasy, a group In Town with an expensive enough power item would likely charge $10/energy point - that's $5 to cover the cost of charging it plus $5/point for the caster's time.

[Blood Legend]

Interesting question. What's the cost of top-line instant medical treatment?

What would you pay to become a hercules?

To become fertile again.

To feed your family, move across continents, see the world. Climb the tallest mountains and shallow the deepest trenches of this Earth and the next? What WOULD you pay for such spectacular feats of grandure and wonder?

[chris1982]

Originally Posted by Blood Legend

Interesting question. What's the cost of top-line instant medical treatment?

What would you pay to become a hercules?

To become fertile again.

To feed your family, move across continents, see the world. Climb the tallest mountains and shallow the deepest trenches of this Earth and the next? What WOULD you pay for such spectacular feats of grandure and wonder?

Depends if nearly everyone can provide me with this or only a handful of people that may dictate prices...

Demand and Supply I guess...

[Bruno]

Originally Posted by Blood Legend

Interesting question. What's the cost of top-line instant medical treatment?

I'm not sure it's any more "top-line" than healing potions, and in some game worlds (such as a DF world) healing potions are pretty widely available.

There's no "cure disease" or "regrowth" potions in DF-land, but there's a universal cure for poison and lots of HP recovery potions.

I expect that in a DF-world, prices for comparable spell casting efforts will be marked competitively compared to alchemical cures.

The spell casters can undercut the alchemists because the alchemists are selling the added features of portability and convenience, and the ability to prepare in advance for an accident without having to hire a healer to hang around at stare at you until you get injured.

The minimum I could see a spell casting healer in a DF game going down to would be $5 per energy, the cost to recharge your Power Item. In a standard Magic game, I'd set the floor at whatever the hive mind figured it costs per point of energy out of a power stone. This is a non-profit bottom end, appropriate for an operation run by a charity, religious organization, private do-gooder, or the local public health office. Private practises might charge up to 75% to 90% of what an alchemist would charge for an equivalent potion, depending on what other services are offered (attractive nurses, clean offices, a half-hour appointment and a chance to consult at length with a religious official in private, hot coffee...)

Originally Posted by Blood Legend

What would you pay to become a hercules?

Again, we can compare to alchemy, where potions of Strength, Lifting and Carrying, and various other physical feats are available.

Originally Posted by Blood Legend

To become fertile again.

More unique, unless you're importing the elixirs from Technomancer. Reversible, convenient, fail-safe, magical birth control (Strike Barren) will have a market too, from both sexes.

Originally Posted by Blood Legend

To feed your family,

Magically created food is not likely to compete with normally farmed food - a meal of freshly prepared food is about a pound and can be had for a dollar (or significantly less, depending on what variety and quality you're willing to settle for).

Originally Posted by Blood Legend

move across continents, see the world.

Even today, where these things are at their most possible of all times in human history, they aren't terribly popular. Many people, even in the rich western world, don't travel across their own continent, let alone leave it. Inside the EU and between the USA and Canada travel for pleasure or to relocate permanently is pretty simple, paperwork wise, but even now there are still bureaucratic hoops to jump through. In most time periods it was way more inconvenient and magical transport won't eliminate that - this reduces your market and demand.

Originally Posted by Blood Legend

Climb the tallest mountains and shallow the deepest trenches of this Earth and the next?

Most people don't want to do any of that. Not many people even go snorkling in protected, shallow water. Adventurers are a small market.

Originally Posted by Blood Legend

What WOULD you pay for such spectacular feats of grandure and wonder?

[hal]

Originally Posted by Blood Legend

Interesting question. What's the cost of top-line instant medical treatment?

What would you pay to become a hercules?

To become fertile again.

To feed your family, move across continents, see the world. Climb the tallest mountains and shallow the deepest trenches of this Earth and the next? What WOULD you pay for such spectacular feats of grandure and wonder?

Then "What can you afford?" enters the picture.

Generally speaking, as GM, you need to address the issue of "support" in addition to "availability". For example, the market size in a given region for mages who provide health care services might potentially be 1 in 500 (ie 500 customers for 1 provider) if the costs are within the realm of what the general population can afford. If however, the prices are twice as costly, the market size might shrink to as little as 1 per 2,000.

Putting this in perspective? Using strictly GURPS cost of living rules only, a poor individual in the city (the bullk of the population) has to pay $300 a month for cost of living. Since the general income per month in a TL 3 campaign is 700, and struggling income is treated as 1/2 that, income per month is $350. Less the cost of living and you have a $50 surplust IF you are strong willed enough to save that surplus. An item that costs $6,000 (fertility potion for example) to purchase will result in the struggling individual changing their "montlhly cost of living" from $300 per month to $350 per month for the next 10 years (and that doesn't include interest payments!). Now, were that family one that wanted to purchase a Fertility potion, it is already living at the edge of what it can afford, having a child will drain that families discretionary spending even more. Clearly - the "what would the market be willing to pay" is held in check by "what would the market be able to afford to pay".

[Kromm]

I'd go for $1-5 per point up to about 10 FP, making things like full-strength Major Healing a mere $4-$20, depending on the setting. After that, you get ceremonial . . . use the same rate, but multiply by 10 for the extra time and inconvenience. So a 300-energy Resurrection might be $3,000-$15,000. If a spell is illegal, of course, you can expect to pay a lot more.

[mlangsdorf]

Building on Harald's and Bruno's general comments, here's some math:

GURPS assumes that people work roughly 22 days a month, 8 hours each day. Even an incompetent mage who doesn't know Recover Energy can recover 6 fatigue points per hour, which means he can cast at least 40 fatigue points of magic per day (this doubles to 80 or more if the mage knows Recover Energy-15). So the $ cost of casting a spell should be on the order of (mage's monthy salary)/880 (22 days/month * 40 fatigue/day) per point of fatigue required, as long as the mage can cast it from his own fatigue pool or in a circle with a few other mages*. Halve costs for mages that know Recover Energy-15. If the spell needs to be cast ceremonially, or has a long casting time, there will be less time to recharge. This will generally double prices.

GURPS Magic assumes that enchanters make $700 month and have Recover Energy-15. Quick and Dirty spells run close to $1/point of fatigue under this analysis.

I would suspect in practice there's going to be surcharge for the less common spells and for spells that are more difficult to learn. I also suspect that most mages should make at least Comfortable wealth - a moderately talent mage is going to have a lot of people bidding for his services, and that will raise prices.



* Spells that can't be cast out of a mage's fatigue pool need Powerstones or whatever. Estimating the surcharge for those is tricky business, but the DF guideline of $5/point isn't unreasonable for most GURPS Powerstones and Power objects. Really big castings (like Resurrection) require a lot of capital invested in the Powerstone or Power object, and the cost per point should probably double.

[Brandy]

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

Building on Harald's and Bruno's general comments, here's some math:

GURPS assumes that people work roughly 22 days a month, 8 hours each day. Even an incompetent mage who doesn't know Recover Energy can recover 6 fatigue points per hour, which means he can cast at least 40 fatigue points of magic per day (this doubles to 80 or more if the mage knows Recover Energy-15). So the $ cost of casting a spell should be on the order of (mage's monthy salary)/880 (22 days/month * 40 fatigue/day) per point of fatigue required, as long as the mage can cast it from his own fatigue pool or in a circle with a few other mages*. Halve costs for mages that know Recover Energy-15. If the spell needs to be cast ceremonially, or has a long casting time, there will be less time to recharge. This will generally double prices.

GURPS Magic assumes that enchanters make $700 month and have Recover Energy-15. Quick and Dirty spells run close to $1/point of fatigue under this analysis.

This assumes that there's sufficient demand for the mage to be constantly "working" (casting spells or recovering). So, if there's always a queue at the clinic, then that cost will keep the mage compensated appropriately, but for more esoteric disciplines the mage would have to charge a higher rate to maintain that lifestyle.

In addition, a minor nitpick: the amount of FP that a mage can use in a workday isn't merely his recovery rate/ hour times the work hours in the day. You should also add the mage's FP total to that, because you can assume that he'll come in fresh and can go home tired.

(You also can't ignore that the mage will charge more if the market will support it, but those are hard factors to quantify. Working backwards from the income you want such an individual to have is a very workable way of doing it.)

[mlangsdorf]

On the one hand, you point out that he probably can't cast spells as fast as he can recover fatigue, because he can't guarantee he'll have customers coming for all those spells. On the other, you point out that he has a larger fatigue pool than I estimated. Which is it? =)

They're both valid points, and if you look at my math, you'll note I fudged the numbers (40 fatigue/day instead of 48 + fatigue pool) to account for some of these factors. There's still enough slip to do it however you like, though.