The Economics of Enchanted Items

[Railstar]

Originally Posted by hal

Unfortunately, rules as written, the more an enchanter enchants, the easier it is to increase his skill due to the skill growth rules...

;)

Isn't that the same with every other skill in existence though?

And if it's the skill-growth rules I know about, the math amounts to 2-3 points (not skill levels, points towards the skill) for a year of on-the-job training.

[hal]

Originally Posted by Railstar

Isn't that the same with every other skill in existence though?

And if it's the skill-growth rules I know about, the math amounts to 2-3 points (not skill levels, points towards the skill) for a year of on-the-job training.

Half the time spent enchanting goes towards the spell enchant, the other half towards the spell being enchanted.

The liberal skill increases for player characters is one thing, but normal people aren't adventurers, and in theory, grow that much more slowly. In trying to discuss relatively realistic NPC growth, the GM almost had to divorce normal experience growth rules for game play from the NPCs. But that becomes a discussion on its own right in a new thread.

As might be expected, RAW spell descriptions for spells like SHAPE EARTH, EARTH TO STONE, ESSENTIAL EARTH, BLESS PLANTS, and others - many have issues associated with them that are troubling. Doubling the yields of plants also doubles the labor required to process the food. Mass ceremonial spell casting involving spectators result in massive critical failure issues if BANE STORM back stories are to be believed. Simply surviving a crit failure with five mages and 100 spectators is potentially going to instill fear of massive spell castings, potentially altering how supportive those spectators will be in the future.

If enchantment can be halted and resumed without penalties, then the wages of enchanted could/would be more in line with other jobs. Otherwise, the personalities involved with even WANTING to enchant may be the real bottleneck as to how many enchanted might be available at any given time.

My suggestion to world building GMs out there is this:

Go through GURPS MAGIC spells carefully with an eye towards "does this need to be fixed or no?"

in my GURPS MAGIC games, BLESS PLANTS improved yields by 2% per point of success involved during casting. EARTH TO STONE does not include metal, and cost for permanent transmutation is per cubic foot, not yard. The other version lasts 12 hours, can be maintained for half cost, and affects volumes of cubic yards.

After looking at energy costs to move comparable mass in other spells, shape earth or stone spells in my opinion, are too cheap.

Just as Dungeon Fantasy strives for a given genre based goal, there should be a Medieval Fantasy book that rewrites GURPS MAGIC with an eye towards making any spell in that book, conservative enough to avoid the total destruction of a plausible TL3 society that MAGIC works. I largely suspect this skill never come to be (hence a private project at my end)

For now? Discussing the implications of RAW GURPS MAGIC in a real world can be fun, but there are issues or problems involving how to apply spells initially designed for tactical play, not strategic level play and realizing that there are glaring issues involving transmutation style spells and their energy costs involved

[weby]

Originally Posted by Railstar

Essentially, I think a huge setting issue is whether your "average" wizard is as skilled as an upper level field surgeon or ace pilot or commando, or if the "normal" person with magery is IQ 10, Magery 1, learning new spells with a beginning skill of 9.

It might change the scenario if you don't treat skill 15 as "normal" for a spellcaster, but instead view it as "extremely high."

Just some food for thought on the dedication needed to reach skill 15.

Very much this

I would assume that in a setting where magery is common the most likely people doing wizardry as a job have high intelligence and have magery more than 0 but not exceptional levels of either. There would obviously be the exceptional people with higher abilities but they should be a small percentage and not the "normal".

Thus the normal would likely be something like IQ 11-12 and magery 1-2. They would then start at skill 10-12 with one point. Thus they would need 1-4 points/spell to get the base professional level of 12 and 8-16 points/spell to get 15 and get an energy discount.

And if it's the skill-growth rules I know about, the math amounts to 2-3 points (not skill levels, points towards the skill) for a year of on-the-job training.

And it should be noted that those points should likely go towards more than a single spell, as they are meant to also be other work related skills, thus some of them would likely go towards other things like thaumatology.

[mlangsdorf]

Originally Posted by Railstar

I think an issue to be aware of is "only need a '15' in a second tier spell".

Skill 14-15 represents commandos, field surgeons, ace pilots, or the equivalent. Particularly in a Hard skill. To have a skill like that is not the kind of thing one takes for granted. It would make sense for people with that level of magical skill to be as rare or as impressive as commandos, field surgeons, or ace pilots.

Essentially, I think a huge setting issue is whether your "average" wizard is as skilled as an upper level field surgeon or ace pilot or commando, or if the "normal" person with magery is IQ 10, Magery 1, learning new spells with a beginning skill of 9.

My concern would be that Continual Light-13 is no harder for an IQ 11, Magery 0 to achieve than it is for that same character to achieve Engineering (some specialty)-13. And being able to cast 3 moonlight level Continual Light spells every hour is already enough to make a spellcaster Comfortable or possibly Wealthy (see http://noschoolgrognard.blogspot.com...ch-should.html). This is same level of skill as a modestly successful engineer, not an ace pilot/SEAL/brain surgeon.

The idea that journeyman mages are of Average wealth is a sop to players, who want to play wizards in modest point games without having to buy Wealthy and Status 2. And that's a reasonable goal. But it breaks world-building because it's very hard to justify that someone who can cast even a single useful spell isn't fairly wealthy, and a typical PC or enchanter level mage who can cast two dozen spells at skill 15+ should be continuously employed for serious money.

[weby]

Originally Posted by hal

As might be expected, RAW spell descriptions for spells like SHAPE EARTH, EARTH TO STONE, ESSENTIAL EARTH, BLESS PLANTS, and others - many have issues associated with them that are troubling.

That is very mildly put.. :) I would say "world breaking".

Doubling the yields of plants also doubles the labor required to process the food.

But there are spells to assist that too.

Mass ceremonial spell casting involving spectators result in massive critical failure issues if BANE STORM back stories are to be believed. Simply surviving a crit failure with five mages and 100 spectators is potentially going to instill fear of massive spell castings, potentially altering how supportive those spectators will be in the future.

Yes it obviously depends on the setting switches. But by the basic magic assumptions and the normal spell fail table: it is fairly easy to get about 120 points for a master mage(required as leader due to the 15 skill requirement)+assistants(mages with lower skill)+spectators. That allows for fairly large effects.

As for failures:
the success rate is 95%
the critical failure rate is: 1.85% of those:
-only rolls 13,15-16 are basic bad by doing reverse effect. Thus in 0.32% castings you do things like curse fields.
-The things where it is cast on wrong things or the doing of 1 point of damage or similar are kind of minor for most spells.
-The rolls of 18 are bad. It happens 0.0085% of the time. Thus if you work for 20 years casting 2000 rituals/year(higher than likely) you will on average be attacked 3.4 times during that time.

Thus if you took basic precautions like making sure you and your helper mages also know attack+defense spells and maybe have a few guards around, the risks seem fairly low compared to many other professions.

[AlexanderHowl]

Given the horrifying consequence of having incompetent people using magic, the practice of magic naturally lends itself to skill 15+. A person with a skill 9 will try twice as much for the same effect as skill 15, meaning that they will have magical critical failures twice as often, meaning that they will accidentally summon a demon twice as often. A skilled magician will also be able to afford guards to help drive off said demon, which an inexperienced mage will not, so inexperienced mage tend to get dragged to Hell more frequently than experienced mages. To add my own spin to the old saying, there are old mages. there are unskilled mages, but there are no old unskilled mages.

[weby]

Originally Posted by mlangsdorf

My concern would be that Continual Light-13 is no harder for an IQ 11, Magery 0 to achieve than it is for that same character to achieve Engineering (some specialty)-13. And being able to cast 3 moonlight level Continual Light spells every hour is already enough to make a spellcaster Comfortable or possibly Wealthy (see http://noschoolgrognard.blogspot.com...ch-should.html). This is same level of skill as a modestly successful engineer, not an ace pilot/SEAL/brain surgeon.

Except that is not really how economies work unless there are heavy entry barriers. If magery is common then the mages will drive out the candle makers from business and then the price will start to drop, eventually reaching whatever level enough mages are willing to work at.

The thing said in the blog only applies if there are not enough mages so that the candlemakers are still needed to cover part of the need.

The idea that journeyman mages are of Average wealth is a sop to players, who want to play wizards in modest point games without having to buy Wealthy and Status 2. And that's a reasonable goal. But it breaks world-building because it's very hard to justify that someone who can cast even a single useful spell isn't fairly wealthy, and a typical PC or enchanter level mage who can cast two dozen spells at skill 15+ should be continuously employed for serious money.

How wealthy you are for being able to cast spells depends on how common spell casting is. If mages make up 10% of the population then you are likely only average wealth as a low power mage, if 1% then you may be comfortable, if 0.1% then likely wealthy, if 0.01% then likely very wealthy. A very good mage would likely be one wealth level higher.

[weby]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Given the horrifying consequence of having incompetent people using magic, the practice of magic naturally lends itself to skill 15+. A person with a skill 9 will try twice as much for the same effect as skill 15, meaning that they will have magical critical failures twice as often, meaning that they will accidentally summon a demon twice as often. A skilled magician will also be able to afford guards to help drive off said demon, which an inexperienced mage will not, so inexperienced mage tend to get dragged to Hell more frequently than experienced mages. To add my own spin to the old saying, there are old mages. there are unskilled mages, but there are no old unskilled mages.

That have to try twice as much only applies if you want to only produce a given number of a product and then be lazy the rest of the time. But if you want to make as many as possible of something in a given time then you are FP limited.

And when you are FP limited the situation is actually opposite, the skill 15 is much more likely to summon demons than the skill 9 person.

Lets take any cost 3 spell as example with both working 2000 hours/year.

The skill 9 person will have 12000 FP available and will thus try 4000 times. That will summon a demon average of 34% of the time over the course of the year.

The skill 15 person will have 24000 FP available and with the reduction will thus try 12000 times. That will summon a demon average of once/year.

[Dalillama]

Originally Posted by weby

Thus the normal would likely be something like IQ 11-12 and magery 1-2. They would then start at skill 10-12 with one point. Thus they would need 1-4 points/spell to get the base professional level of 12 and 8-16 points/spell to get 15 and get an energy discount.

12 isn't really a professional level in a spell though. The 'skill 12 to make a living at it' rule assumes positive TDMs for routine tasks, which spells don't get.

Originally Posted by weby

And it should be noted that those points should likely go towards more than a single spell, as they are meant to also be other work related skills, thus some of them would likely go towards other things like thaumatology.

This is a fundamental issue with the basic spells as skills paradigm: Learning to cast Fireball takes as much study as nursing school. (Diagnosis, Physician, Biology, and Chemistry, while Fireball has three prerequisites plus the spell itself.). This is one reason I prefer variants like Ritual Magic (IIRC that's the name and I can't be bothered looking it up; the one where you buy colleges as skills and spells as techniques.); It makes more sense to me that 'Fire magic' is a discipline on the same level as 'Biology' or 'Anthropology', whereas 'lighting a fire' feels awfully weaksauce for that level of study.

[AlexanderHowl]

I tend to agree. In addition, Enchant is wickedly difficult when using Ritual Magic, so enchanted items should be very rare and very expensive. For example, a character with IQ 12 and Magery 3 needs to spend 8 points to get Ritual Magic to 15, 8 points to get College of Enchantment to 15, 8 points to get another College to 15, and 11 points to get Enchant to 15. With those numbers, an enchanter needs to make a minimum of Wealthy income just to make it worthwhile to learn everything needed to make any magical item.