Magical Birth Control

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

Basically, who gets paid more, the magical physician or the magical construction engineer/plumber?

Pay rates should normally scale with difficulty to learn (and rarity of prerequisites), because if I'm someone with the potential for a mage, I'm going to decide on my course of study based on (1) how hard is it, and (2) what does it pay. Obviously, this will price some jobs right out of the market and mages won't do them.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Pursuivant

First of all, to even become an assistant enchanter you need IQ 13 [60], Magery 2 [25], Enchant (VH) IQ* [8] - 15, one other spell (H) IQ* [4] - 15, and a minimum of 9 other spells (H) IQ-2* [1 x 9] - 11 (+2 for Magery). Also, add Wealth (Comfortable) [10] since that's the minimum level of Wealth built into enchantment pricing. That's a minimum 116 point character before you start adding other traits.

Nope. Basic enchanters are assumed to be average wealth (I think it's too low, but that's the baseline assumption). IQ10 + Magery-2 is 20 + 25 = 45 points, and it could be less for some kind of limited Magery (and Ceremonial Only is not a major impediment to a commercial enchanter). Ten spells at 1-point each, costs another 10. Enchant-15 costs 20 points. Most other spells cost 16 points to get to Spell-15. Thus the basic enchanter costs 91-points.

Now, if they branch out into a 2nd spell to enchant, they should invest in more Magery instead of raising the spells' level directly. At four spells + Enchant, IQ becomes a sensible option instead.

Thus a good, well rounded Enchanter becomes more like (assuming Magery is trainable): IQ 11 [20] + Magery 4 [45], Enchant-15 [8], 10 spells at Spell-15 [40], for a total of 113 points, plus a few more spells they got after learning Enchant, so say 125-points total.

Note that the basic enchanter has a point value in line with star athletes (usually fairly well-paid to very well-paid, depending on what they're doing), and seasoned cops (pay poor to quite good, depending on when and where), according to B487. There's no guarantee that such mages get more than a living wage, based on how rare or talented they are.

The good enchanter has the points to be a SEAL, top-flight scientist, or successful millionaire. Pay ranges therefore from quite average to really exceptional (but the latter requires lots of points being sunk into being rich).

Again, points do not reflect pay or wealth.

If you want cheap magic items for simple spells, you could come up with some sort of enchanted item which allows lesser mages (or even non-mages!) to enchant items. Let's call it an "enchanter's forge." That would allow a Status 0, 35-point "mage worker" to enchant simple items at a much lower cost once the considerable cost of the magic item is paid off. IIRC, it would be a bit like the "Industrial Enchantment" rules from GURPS 3E Technomancer, but on a slower scale.

Or you could just assume that Magery with limitations that restrict it's use to non-adventuring pursuits or simply to making enchanted items is quite common. Or that people won't pay more than enough to support enchanters at average to comfortable (for circle leaders) wealth. The latter would make enchants cost as Magic assumes, but would make them rare if mages could find other, more lucrative work.

I actually think that the biggest oversight is not adding extra fees to spell casting and enchanting for how tiring it is. A manual labourer finishes work each day tired and weary. A Q&D enchanter spends most of their working day recovering from having drained themselves to exhaustion, which has got to be somewhat traumatic.

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Anthony

Pay rates should normally scale with difficulty to learn (and rarity of prerequisites), because if I'm someone with the potential for a mage, I'm going to decide on my course of study based on (1) how hard is it, and (2) what does it pay. Obviously, this will price some jobs right out of the market and mages won't do them.

Some people will also consider "is it fun or interesting', and 'does it mean doing filthy and/or smelly work', which will adjust the supply of mages in certain fields, and awful jobs don't tend to pay better to compensate for being awful either. They just get landed on those not in a position to refuse the work.

[AlexanderHowl]

The problem with underpaying mages in one area is that the mages will then go to an area that pays them well (a magical brain drain). For example, if country A pays enchanters $1400 a month, but country B pays them $3500 a month, pretty soon country A will be importing enhanced items from country B or doing without, OTHC. Of course, that will not happen with battle mages, it is not like battle mages have a monopoly of effective ways to kill people, but it will happen with practically every other specialty of magic.

One thing to consider is that mages are force multipliers, so they are valuable for more than what they can do with their spells. A mage using ceremonial magic can do amazing things with just 100 normal folks, stuff that is worth paying people to just be a ceremonial assistant. Such an arrangement can do 4800 energy points worth of magic a day, which is an amazing amount of power.

[hal]

Ever get one of those "huh" moments where you look at the rules as written in one section of the books, and then look at the rules as written in other sections of other GURPS books and end up having to scratch your head?

This is a definite side tracking of the original post, and I apolotize, I did NOT expect it to get this far off from the original poster's initial comment. As such, this probably should be split into its own thread discussion. That having been said...

GURPS MAGIC indicates that the cost per enchantment energy is $33 per 1 point. (See GURPS MAGIC page 20)

When you get right down to it...

A month's income at 4 weeks per month, gets you between $675 per month (TL 2 value) to $700 month (TL 3 value for status 0) and $800 per month (for TL 4 status 0 income). In other words, wages for a TL 3 campaign for status 0 should be between 675 per month to 800 per month, with $700 being more common than the other.

Now, do the math. One month at 4 weeks per month is 700/4 or $175 per week. Dividing that by 5 work days a week, and you get $35 per day.

An enchanter technically ALREADY gains what amounts to Status 0 income per day's enchanter work.

So what would the status be for a "Journeyman" mage? What should his income be per day?

If an Apprentice is a "Bonded" individual, but is paid as a Poor worker, he would be status -2. If a Journeyman is 1/2 the way between the apprentice and the enchanter, he would be status -1.

Spells should be paid per day, at a rate that is about $17 per day (half that of an enchanter). The apprentice should be making half that of the journeyman, or about $9 per day.

The moment you get a Fee for "per fatigue spent casting the spell", is when you divorce the income from an hourly rate to something that will generally be more costly. If the mage gets paid per "spell cast", and can cast say, 8 spells per hour - his income per spell at $17 per day's income, should be roughly $2 per SPELL cast.

A comfortable mage at status 0, should be making around DOUBLE that income of an enchanter, which means - $66 per day. If you cast 8 spells per day, then each spell should on average, be worth about $8.25 per spell.

Just running the math here. ;)

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

One thing to consider is that mages are force multipliers, so they are valuable for more than what they can do with their spells. A mage using ceremonial magic can do amazing things with just 100 normal folks, stuff that is worth paying people to just be a ceremonial assistant. Such an arrangement can do 4800 energy points worth of magic a day, which is an amazing amount of power.

Absolutely, though you won't actually get that many castings a day. The time taken to ensure that everyone knows their role, that all hundred assistants are ready, and so on will mean you'll be lucky to manage four castings an hour, maybe five if they're all the same, so you can do them back to back, and then let people rest. I'd assume at least a struggling pay rate, as you can't afford resentment in your assistants.

Assuming an extra 10% assistants and a few guys on the door and managing pay that get average pay, the crew costs about $240/day. At 3600 energy a day that's about 7c per energy.

[AlexanderHowl]

The overall pay of mages is absurd when you consider the general utility of mages. For example, a mage with Continual Light-15 is capable of casting 'bright as lantern' on a small object twice an hour, each of which can be put in a hooded lantern. Assuming an average duration of one week, they will be able to maintain 80 such castings per week, replacing the equivalent of 560 pints of oil per week. Since oil is worth $2 per pint, they are doing an average of $4480 worth of work per month.

Even if mages capable of doing such work are common enough that they are only capable of charging 1/4 of their equivalent value in oil every month, that still gives them an income of $1120 per month. That translates to a freelance job paying $700 per month, adjusted by margin of success, which is Average income and capable of supporting Status 0. For Magery 0 and two spells (one at '15'), a mage should receive a reasonable income.

At Continual Light-15 and Recover Energy-15, the economics get very interesting. The mage actually becomes much more useful if he or she employs two mundane assistants though, as he or she can triple her output to six castings per hour with ceremonial magic, generating $13,440 worth of work per month. If the value of their labor is again actually 1/4 that of the equivalent value in oil, that translates to $3360 per month. If we assume that her assistants are unskilled labor (since they require no training), they can be paid $560 per month (Struggling income and Status-1), so the mage is capable of earning $2240 per month. That translates to a freelance job paying $1400 per month, adjusted by margin of success, which is Comfortable income and capable of supporting Status 1. For Magery 1 and four spells (two at '15'), a mage should receive a respectable income.

[hal]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

The overall pay of mages is absurd when you consider the general utility of mages.

On one hand, you make a decent argument for higher wages, but you neglect the possibility of another event. With the advent of cheap electrical power, it was noted that only the rich would use candles.

What gets lost, in my opinion, is the fact that mages are specialist whose livelihoods depend upon the discretionary spending of the population they serve. Today, if a family can barely afford health care, and an individual requires some service that is too expensive to pay for - the service is unaffordable regardless of how needed it may be.

Take any potion listed in GURPS MAGIC, and see how long it takes to be able to afford ONE potion on discretionary income (safe per month less cost of living per month).The potions wouldn't be affordable by any but the rich.

If spell casting rental costs are unaffordable for the poor, the mageborn won't be paid by the poor. If the struggling can't afford their sevices, the mages won't be supported by the struggling. If even the relatively few middle class individuals can't afford the wages of a mageborn, that leaves you with only 2% of the entire population able to support the specialist mageborn class, regardless of how "useful" said specialists are.

if the "light casting" mages are that useful, chances are, less oil will be sold, or the price of oil drops ( or both). Either that, or the mages will earn less money than might be suggested. Look at doctors who service the poor. Their earning potential is theoretically high, but the disposable income of their clients insures those particular doctors do not earn what they potentially could.

[malloyd]

Originally Posted by hal

if the "light casting" mages are that useful, chances are, less oil will be sold, or the price of oil drops ( or both). Either that, or the mages will earn less money than might be suggested.

Somebody is already buying the oil. Sure if there are enough light mages, the price of oil will start to drop. But magic can compete with lots of products, and if there start to be enough mages to saturate competition with all of them, then you're back to the old problem of magic should utterly transform the economy.

Fundamentally it's not really solvable - adventurers are cool in large part *because* they can do stuff ordinary people can't. And if you can do stuff ordinary people can't there will be lucrative stuff you could be doing that is much less risky than going on adventures.

Your options are basically either ignore it (adventurers don't all retire to do those safer jobs for incomprehensible reasons), or make the adventurers not particularly cool by allowing lots and lots of other people to do the same thing. Since one of those is generally more fun, and if you opt for the other you're going to transform the economy in ways you can't possible predict accurately enough to plug all the possible holes in your setting from people determined to nitpick it anyway, well, there's a reason game settings usually don't dwell much on the economics of magic.

[AlexanderHowl]

A third option is that Mage Guilds require indiviuals to be journeyman for a period of time before allowing them to take lucrative jobs such as a master healer, lightbringer, road builder, etc. If journeyman mages have to wait seven years to become masters, they will probably want to do something more lucrative than be an assistant with Average income and Status 0. The promise of adventure and wealth would be more appealing to some than the safe comfort of being an assistant healer for seven years.