Economics of rogue wizards

[hcobb]

Let's say you've got a wizard who has spent the last several thousand years gaining 600 XP/year and now has 48 total attributes.

He then spends a fortune building and stocking his evil lair so that he can make and sell enchanted items to pay for all of this.

How exactly is that going to work? The Wizard's Guild seems to have intentionally driven all of the margin out of selling enchanted items in order to maintain their monopoly. If anything this fool is selling his items at a loss.

Obviously somebody else must be funding this madness. Hopefully a brave party of adventures will never stop to think for even one moment and figure this all out.

[Skarg]

As an aside, we've agreed in other threads that the Wizards' Guild clearly would charge at least 3x list, even if they did not have a monopoly on magic item creation. We assumed magic items were rare and in demand by wealthy/powerful people who also ended up usually getting first pick and also paying in political currency and/or in kind. So, a rogue magic item salesman would have a margin.

However, I also tend to assume that even 20-something-year-old wizards who know Weapon/Armor Enchantment often do not just have a life purpose of cranking out magic items to sell to people for money. And that the more aged, powerful and interesting wizards even more often are more interested in doing other things with their time and talents, even if many of them do sometimes do that. As there is a market and profit from selling magic items, though, enchanting something can fund quite a bit of down time to do other things.

The wizards we had who were quite powerful and interesting, rogue or not, tended to definitely be interested in more interesting things than raising the numbers at the bottom of their balance sheets.

For those whose plans include a lair and minions, they aren't usually hiring from the Mercenary's Guild, and may prefer minions who (as in the description of orcs) are eager to follow the powerful, and will do things without collecting much/any compensation that's not in-kind or in-vague-promise. And/or they are paying the way other lords do - by collecting from locals whose "protection" or other services (and/or threats/rackets) they offer. And/or, they learn of and scheme to occupy already-existing lairs, and/or take advantage of already-existing minions, and/or become the "court wizard" (and/or just geas master or other convenient arrangement) of some lord or other person with a nice lair/minion sort of arrangement.

[amenditman]

It did say something like that and the 1 in 300 is ringing a bell with me.

New ITL 135 Wizards on Cidri
"one
person in 50 will have some small ability with magic. Fewer than 1 in 300 will be true “wizards” within the meaning of
this game."

[platimus]

Originally Posted by hcobb

Let's say you've got a wizard who has spent the last several thousand years gaining 600 XP/year and now has 48 total attributes.

He then spends a fortune building and stocking his evil lair so that he can make and sell enchanted items to pay for all of this.

How exactly is that going to work? The Wizard's Guild seems to have intentionally driven all of the margin out of selling enchanted items in order to maintain their monopoly. If anything this fool is selling his items at a loss.

Obviously somebody else must be funding this madness. Hopefully a brave party of adventures will never stop to think for even one moment and figure this all out.

Seems like this aged wizard would have the wisdom and foresight to know his business plan was doomed. Unless, of course, he knew something we didn't. If his business is succeeding and he's charging less for magic items, hopefully the WG will hire a brave party of adventurers to investigate.

[amenditman]

The way it reads, wizards will be much more common in Cidri than in most fantasy novels.

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by warhorse11h

Thanks, I appreciate it. I've been thinking about how big the guild would be in a city or in a small town.

I've been making population pyramids which try to estimate the ages and attribute totals of wizards in a population... the main missing link though is how many attribute (or just IQ) points one might expect how many wizards to be at any given age.

[hcobb]

Originally Posted by Skarg

I've been making population pyramids which try to estimate the ages and attribute totals of wizards in a population... the main missing link though is how many attribute (or just IQ) points one might expect how many wizards to be at any given age.

Human wizards are all ST 8, DX 9 and gain 600 XP per year. 10% of their income goes into a +DX charm.

Start: ST 8, DX 9, IQ 15, makes $120 * 50 weeks = 6,000, 10% saved up = $600
2nd year: ST 8, DX 9, IQ 18, makes $200 * 50 weeks = $10K, 10% saved up = $1,600
3rd year: ST 8, DX 9, IQ 19, adds LMIC, makes $300 * 50 weeks = $15K, 10% saved up = $1,100 and a +1 DX charm
4th year: ST 8, DX 9+1, IQ 20, savings $2600
5th year: ST 8, DX 9+1, IQ 20, adds GMIC-ary and a +2 DX charm, 100 XP, $100
6th year: ST 8, DX 9+2, IQ 20, 700 XP, $1600 (This is the year he crafts a 50 point Powerstone, so who needs mana?)
7th year: ST 8, DX 9+2, IQ 21, 300 XP, $3100
8th year: ST 8, DX 9+2, IQ 21, 900 XP, $4600
9th year: ST 8, DX 9+2, IQ 21, 1500 XP, $6100
10th year: ST 8, DX 9+2, IQ 21, 2100 XP, $7600, adds +1 IQ
11th year: ST 8, DX 9+2, IQ 22, 200 XP, $1100, learns Summon Demon, and a +3 DX charm
12th year: ST 8, DX 9+3, IQ 22, 800 XP, $2600
Lucky 13th year: Dusted around his 100th demon summoning.

[Skarg]

Originally Posted by hcobb

Human wizards are all ST 8, DX 9 and gain 600 XP per year. 10% of their income goes into a +DX charm.

In my games, people's attributes aren't a matter of munchkin decisions, and characters don't get a steady salary of XP.

Attribute levels are a combination of inherent gifts, development, and experience. Many people don't ever become above-average characters, hence the meaning of the term "average". Some do, and it does take time to build up the development and experience parts of that.

While wizards do tend to use and develop their IQ more than their DX, and their DX more than their ST, they have no control over their own inherent gifts.

So there's a distribution of attribute levels over age, and it's quite interesting to me to try to break down what it is and then use that to inform what characters are in the world and how many wizards of a certain IQ there are liable to be in Guild chapters of a certain size, etc.

[hcobb]

If it takes three months to learn a 500 XP skill point then this implies that humans can be trained at 2k XP per year. This would cut my maximum munchkin schedule to a third of the listed years.

With one in 300 being wizards and wizards earning around three times the average rate then 1% of your GDP is spent on magic.

Average enchantment is around 100 ST/day so there are three apprentices for every enchanter. (Two at W/A en, Three at LMIC, Four or more at GMIC)

The variable apprentice loads make a great deal of sense for the WG which can assign apprentices around as needed and casts huge doubt on a rogue enchanter who has either a shortage or a surplus as he enchants up different things.

[Skarg]

Fortunately, requiring at least three months to train a talent does not need to imply that everyone can always just gain a talent point every three months.

The question becomes which house rules or guesstimates/guidelines to use to assess how much the NPC population does tend to develop itself over time.