[Path/Book Magic] Monsters as Magicians... or vice versa

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

The vast majority of billionaires have personal assets much less than their investment pools. If you want though, think of the investment fund as bonds rather than stocks, with their value being heavily discounted if they are sold.

What do you think 'personal assets' means?

In GURPS, Wealth gives characters a certain amount of starting resources. Most rich characters will be settled and abstract away 80% of these.

If a character has to go on the run, the total value of everything he owns if he sold it is equal to his starting money. This includes real estate and investments, if any. Note that bonds that yield a steady income will realistically be no harder to sell than any other possession of a character if he suddenly needs to liquidate everything.

Independent Income does not carry with it ownership of more valuable possessions than a character has with Wealth. The trait just gives what you pay points for, i.e. the income.

Originally Posted by mr beer

Bonds aren't generally heavily discounted if sold though. Depends on exactly what we're talking about but IIRC on the secondary/open market their price will usually fluctuate according to their issued interest rate vs. the interest rate paid by similar bonds on the primary market.

Just so.

[AlexanderHowl]

Alright, how was should we explain an individual with $48 billion worth of wealth ($20 billion in GURPS $) at TL8? According to the non-investment argument, they should have Multimillionaire 4 and 80% if their wealth ($38.4 billion) would be non-adventuring investments, property, etc.. The issue with that argument is that even Independent Income 1 generates $480 million a month ($5.76 billion/year). Even if all of their non-adventuring wealth was investments, they would require an annual ROI of 15% to account for their income, which is much more unrealistic than having large amounts of stocks that they are loathe to part with. They would also end up making $6.24 billion per month ($78.4 billion per year) at any job of their income level, which does not happen in real life. Independent Income is just an easier, simpler, and arguably more relatistic representation of wealthy people.

[Icelander]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Alright, how was should we explain an individual with $48 billion worth of wealth ($20 billion in GURPS $) at TL8? According to the non-investment argument, they should have Multimillionaire 4 and 80% if their wealth ($38.4 billion) would be non-adventuring investments, property, etc.. The issue with that argument is that even Independent Income 1 generates $480 million a month ($5.76 billion/year). Even if all of their non-adventuring wealth was investments, they would require an annual ROI of 15% to account for their income, which is much more unrealistic than having large amounts of stocks that they are loathe to part with. They would also end up making $6.24 billion per month ($78.4 billion per year) at any job of their income level, which does not happen in real life. Independent Income is just an easier, simpler, and arguably more relatistic representation of wealthy people.

Remember, the 80% of their starting Wealth is abstracted. It's worth $38.4 billion if they need to liquidate it quickly to go on the run. Logically, this means that the nominal value, estimated by Forbes, would be higher. The difference isn't as extreme as with your 'Investment Wealth', but it's easy to believe that liquidating all immediately would yield only 20-50% of the 'real' value. Thus, while this is explicitly abstracted in GURPS, we can still rest easy that someone with Independent Income 1 is receiving a RoI that is fairly plausible. A higher level of Independent Income is possible for some Wealth levels and character types, but never represents ordinary investment income.

And it should be pretty obvious that in most campaign worlds, including ones based on modern Earth, Multimillionaire 4 Jobs do not exist. At a certain point, salaried employment tops out and higher Wealth levels do not magically create Jobs that do not exist in the setting. Even a Job that involves managing a character's Wealth probably tops out at a certain Wealth level, as at a certain point, it makes little difference to the income of someone ultra rich whether they are working themselves or have to pay a highly skilled professional to manage their assets.

Hence, at higher Wealth levels in realistic setting, the income would usually be similar whether the character works or not, and the 1 point value of Independent Income is for not having to work.

[Apollonian]

Interesting thread on monsters as magicians, here. I'll see if I can contribute something relevant to the topic later today. Maybe a vamp. Or even a vampire.

[AlexanderHowl]

Vampire magic would be good. Some of the rituals fro. Path of Forms would be a natural fit for Vampies, as would some of the rituals from Path of Nature.

[Prince Charon]

Originally Posted by Apollonian

Interesting thread on monsters as magicians, here. I'll see if I can contribute something relevant to the topic later today. Maybe a vamp. Or even a vampire.

Thank you. Seriously, I look forward to it

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Vampire magic would be good. Some of the rituals fro. Path of Forms would be a natural fit for Vampies, as would some of the rituals from Path of Nature.

I should be very happy to see more posts that are actually relevant to the topic in this thread, rather than the more-than-a-dozen posts about the mechanics of finance in GURPS, which I would rather see either deleted due to not being relevant to the thread by any reasonable standard, or more preferably moved to a thread where they actually would be relevant.

I know I occasionally go off-topic myself in other peoples' threads, but this is pretty ridiculous, and I've been rightly called on that when I do.

EDIT: For clarification, I was literally shaking with rage while typing up parts of the above, induced by the irrelevant finance mechanics discussion (which made correcting typos more necessary than usual). Anastacios is decently well-off, and doesn't have to work. Since this has game effects, I threw in a couple of wealth-related advantages that seemed to fit well enough, and then stopped caring because the specific details are utterly unimportant to the character beyond the fact that he can afford stuff, and doesn't have to work, so he can focus on his insane hobby. If I didn't have to think about game effects, I would have just put something like 'he can afford stuff, and doesn't have to work' in the Notes section. In this context I. Do. Not. Care. About. The. Details. They are not important to the character. They are background so that I didn't have people asking things like 'how does he support himself?' - in other words, they were put there in the hope of avoiding a completely irrelevant discussion about money!

OK?

Much Later EDIT: Well, that edit was a bit over the top. If the derail gets moved, I'll probably just delete the struck-through section.