[Magic] How Does The Existance Of Magic Items Effect The Economy

[hal]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Back in the day, in GURPS Fantasy, I did a back of the envelope analysis of what could be done with a mage and a hundred villagers using ceremonial magic for a few minutes each morning. It was pretty impressive: double the crop yield on 6.5 acres (which will cover a village's vegetable gardens), eliminate plant diseases in a 99' circle, forecast weather for the next month and a half, remove foreign substances and add nutrients in 1.6 acres, or call rain to fall over 649 acres. No droughts, no plant diseases, no planting crops at the wrong time, and much improved yields at least in all the vegetable gardens . . . you're looking at optimal output nearly every time.

But in each "Cememonial casting" analysis - the issue that is being ignored is that ceremonial participants can't simply be mercenary in their intentions of wanting the ceremony to be successful. Case in point - suppose you have two feuding farmers engaged in ritual spell casting for fertility of their crops. Emotionally, they hate each other and unless both of their lands are being blessed at the same time, each will maybe THINK they want the spell to succeed, but both secretly hoping it doesn't. Original rules for spell backfires is that it affects ALL who participate in a ceremonial casting. How often will you participate in ceremonial castings until something bad happens and you don't even WANT to do so.

When I raised this in a private conversation years ago - the response was that each "ceremonial" group should be treated as an ally group for the spell casting mage. Too many people in my opinion, treat Ceremonial casting as being able to plug into a wall outlet of power with zero consequence. That is why I even bothered to create a reaction roll based mechanism for those who participate in ceremonial spell casting. Using Excel, each person who participates gets their own reaction roll, plus a modifier that the GM can assign as a +/- value in its own cell, and then generate how much energy or negative energy that one individual provides. So, for example, a farming community may very well REALLY want their crops to be blessed and the GM assigns a +4 bonus reaction Roll. Out of 100 people who participate, zero actively oppose it, but maybe 5 don't actively contribute energy. On the flip side, that same community of ceremonial energy participants recently underwent a critical failure that resulted in a HUGE demon that killed their livestock and a few villagers before it was dealt with. They now have a -4 penalty to spell casting - because they're afraid.

But, that's just me.

In GURPS prior to 4e, ceremonial spell casting was NOT supposed to be a way for a mage to have access to cheap sources of power. I was told (again, privately years ago) that the reason for my Alaconius method of creating powerstones was discounted back then and subsequent editions of GURPS MAGIC 2nd edition wrote in the disqualifying limit of magic may not be used to help enchantments - is precisely this:

GURPS MAGIC was not intended for player character mages to have huge amounts of energy for spell casting.

So, I just shake my head, enjoy the irony in all of this and simply go my own way when it comes to GURPS MAGIC.

Quartz is what I use for "gemstone size" limitations in lieu of moonstone. I also use my own one college gemstones for each college, so that a hematite used as a one college powerstone functions differently than a different gemstone (this was before you could create powerstones at 4x the cost using non-gemstone bases).

In all - I encourage people to use what makes them happy (I do!). But when discussing things R.A.W. - that's when I will point out some minor detail here or there.

;)

[Plane]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Since magic can replace labor, there is no need for workers

Could depend on the mana levels and skill of the mages, plus how many mages there are to dedicate time to labor tasks.

In something like Very Low Mana (-10) even though some mages could "Create Servant", it might be so difficult to do so that it ends up being cheaper to just pay someone to do the labor or you, rather than part with the FP it takes to cast/maintain that spell.

Even with tricks to effectively ignore FP costs (Cone of Power, high skill, Very High Mana) we have the maintenance problem for spells (the -1 penalty) needing 'Maintain Spell' topups which requires ceding control.

Many of the spells like Create Servant just don't seem to have "Enchant Versions" unless we use Ensorcel... and Ensorcel seems like something more aimed at "I'm affecting an existing target" spells, not "I'm creating something new" (it is after all countered by Suspend Curse / Remove Curse)

I guess you could view Creation/Illusion spells where the "single being" is the caster themself? You can target the caster rather than the effect when using Counterspell / Suspend Spell / Steal Spell, after all.

"I'm permanently enchanting myself" seems like an interesting situation, should there be some added difficulty for it?

I overlooked "must be a maintainable Regular spell" until now. Create Servant is maintainable but M98 does list it as regular (I guess it's -1 per yard away you want the Servant to materialize at?)

-1 penalties are to the 'subject' of a spell though, so you can't exactly argue the mage is the subject if applying those penalties...

Creation spells might work like "initially there is no subject you're just targeting some hex" but the effect of the spell is to create something new which then becomes the subject of the spell?

Ensorcel seems to require a being exist to begin with though... so while I could Ensorcel a Servant w/ something like Invisibility, it makes me wonder if it's okay to actually "Ensorcel the spell which was already cast to make you alive" or "Ensorcel to create a subject in the first place"

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

and, since all of the wealth will concentrate in the hands of magicians, the economy will be smaller because there will be less people capable of consuming goods.

A magician might be capable of conjuring food, but they will not do so for strangers unless they can receive something of value and, since most nonmages will have nothing of value to trade, the nonmages will starve.

I can see mages wanting to give free items to some people in exchange for a promise to use them.

Like (M89) "hey here is a "Ring of Lend Energy for you to help recover FP for me, this is preferable to me using my Powerstone of Lend Energy because I want that on hand for emergencies".

A "ring of Recover Energy" could help with that (you could even make them the same ring) though that's much more expensive.

M68 Limit might also define "class of users" as "people whose only intent is to use this ring to send FP to me" to prevent it from being used to empower other mages.

Desperate/starving people might be more willing to risk wearing sketchy rings that might turn them into Wraiths who might be even more useful to the mage, of course.

Having loyal servants around able to use a "Ring of Lend Vitality" to help you in case you hurt yourself is also probably a good thing if you accidentally blow yourself up on a critical failure. It's also a great workaround for the usual skill penalty a caster gets for targeting themself.

I guess you could have a Create Servant do that too, it's all about the "cost of human life" I guess. Can you rent a human for less money than you could earn by applying your FP/time to something other than Create Servant?

Human life is definitely going to be less competetive with Int+Mag 45 (reaching 40 in a skill is -6 to energy costs normally, and still -4 even in Very Low Mana) but for big effects you're still not going to have free spells and need a way to harvest FP.

"Lend Spell" also seems like an alternative to "Maintain Spell" if you want to avoid the cumulative -1 issue: hand it off to some human servant to maintain for you (with his FP) instead of spending FP for it to maintain itself. I'm just not sure in that case what happens if your effective skill reduces maintenance cost to 0, if they benefit from that or not. Maintain Spell certainly does...

Originally Posted by hal

we have spells that can actively DESTROY magery with a critical failure per standard GURPS MAGIC spells. Something else to factor into things right?

We might also have mages who have, rather than the usual "Unreliable" in Basic Set (FP cost to re-attempt) the "natural Malf" version in Powers.

P107 is designed for "attacks" but it seems flexible enough to apply to any switchable advantage in general. The results don't seem like they would only make sense for attacks:

• 1) works once, unavailable 3 seconds
  2) doesn't work, unavailable 3 seconds
  3) doesn't work, crippled
  4) doesn't work, crippled PLUS injured

I'd love to see magery work like that. You'd rarely want to risk using it, meaning a lot of the usual passive benefits (feel mana changes, sense items) wouldn't be working for you.

[Anders]

Originally Posted by whswhs

Back in the day, in GURPS Fantasy, I did a back of the envelope analysis of what could be done with a mage and a hundred villagers using ceremonial magic for a few minutes each morning.

They'll also have a critical failure every two months or so. Most of them will be fairly unimpressive, but now and then a demon will appear and start chomping on the villagers... who are all conveniently gathered in one place.

[whswhs]

Originally Posted by Anders

They'll also have a critical failure every two months or so. Most of them will be fairly unimpressive, but now and then a demon will appear and start chomping on the villagers... who are all conveniently gathered in one place.

Only if you assume they do it every day. That's probably more than is needed. Four soil cleansing spells for the vegetable patches and one doubled yield spell; one weather prediction spell at the start of each planting season; a cure disease spell if the crops get infected—you can probably get by with a dozen castings a year. That could be as low as one critical failure per 4.5 years, and thus one demon per 972 years.

And note that the demon won't show up if both the caster and the spell are pure good in intent. Most of the agriculture spells are pretty easy to sell as being pure good.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by whswhs

And note that the demon won't show up if both the caster and the spell are pure good in intent. Most of the agriculture spells are pretty easy to sell as being pure good.

And if I were a demon showing up in response to someone casting bless crops, I wouldn't try to kill the spellcaster, I'd turn the field of crops into man-eating plants, or something similar, with a nice long delay. And to be fair, one crop in 11,664 isn't a horrible rate for industrial accidents.

[TGLS]

Originally Posted by whswhs

And note that the demon won't show up if both the caster and the spell are pure good in intent. Most of the agriculture spells are pretty easy to sell as being pure good.

I'd say it whether it's pure good depends on what they were going to do with the surplus (Give away to the needy, pure good, sell it to pay the wizard, not pure good). On the other hand, I think it's fairer to only throw demons at people who are casting spells in some kind of malevolence (even if it's something like, "Stop the mugger").

[Anders]

It's not a real crop fertility spell unless there is human sacrifice. Or at least two virgins having sex.

[SimonAce]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

The sidhe lived in a different world though and did not have human motivations, so it is not a great analogy. I think modern corporations are a better analogy, they seek to maximize revenue and minimize cost, and their actions are only limited by consumer activism, government action, and owner activism. In the case of the mages, they are capable of overwhelming consumers (they can just Enslave everyone), they do not care about the government, and they are the owners of themselves.

Assuming 1% of the population is magi and most areas are normal magic zones and

Using 15th century France as a template here is what I see

France had 12 million people 3% of the worlds population at that time!

This would mean 120,000 mage born , of which 20k might be dealt out of the picture do to loses.

This would leave 100k mages, not a huge population but if with healing magic they could easily double every 33 years or so within 2 centuries you'd be back to roughly 6.4 million mages.

If normal grow very slowly or not at all pretty soon non mages will become rare as they are out-competed on an evolutionary level by the mage born, After all mages would grow much faster than normal do to much lower infant mortality , hygiene being easy and cure spells being easy and plentiful.

Best of all "healing" magic usually doesn't risk accidental demon summons or the like


Another possibility is a a society is a mage aristocracy and any mages born to normal folk would be nobles. This might resemble Traveller's Zhodani society in a way where the families of mages even if normal serve as a kind of middle class, mundane serfs, 'mage kin' in the middle and pure mage aristocracy. on top.

This probably wouldn't be very stable unless magi don't breed true though as being able to cast spells is a huge reproductive advantage.

However highly prosperous and urban societies tend to low fertility IRL so that is a possibility that could lead to a much lower mage population than expected. Opportunity costs and the mouse utopia problem are liable to effect wizards heavily.

A third option is normal people live in low to no magic areas where wizards don't go. If the higher magic areas are wastelands this could lead to an interesting aesthetic and high and very high magic areas being contested ground to some degree.

[Plane]

We should also think about how magic can influence the diet industry.

"Far-Tasting" might help with a lot of the satiation food might provide (not all of it, of course, doesn't give fullness)

"Fool's Banquet" could let you eat nutritious food but have it taste like junkfood. Broccoli like chocolate!

"Create Food" is normally permanent but you can take a magery lmitation where it wears off in hours. So if you paid to create food from thin air, then it just reverts to air.

So you could have 2 big plates of spaghetti and feel full four hours, then suddenly the carbs are gone.

It's the next best thing to being unable to cancel permanent spells. You basically can emulate any limitation if your magery has Selectivity.

Originally Posted by whswhs

the demon won't show up if both the caster and the spell are pure good in intent.

Most of the agriculture spells are pretty easy to sell as being pure good.

This sounds like a job for the T256 "Celtic Table"

[bocephus]

Originally Posted by scc

So assuming that unlike the authors of Magic we don't retard the creation of magic items and enchanters do things like use Sacred Architecture and stat boosting items to get better skills and Power Stones and the Raise Cone of Power spell for energy, seriously a DF Elf can have a combined INT and Magery of 45 (INT 27 + Magery 9 + Stat boost of 9), no problems and Raise Cone of Power means you functionally have no limits on the amount of energy.

So the basic answer to my question of how does this effect the economy is LOTS, the only real limitations are you're imagination and what the 1% of population that's going to be doing all this enchanting is willing to work on.

So a couple of very specific questions related to a single item: ST boosting items for horses. How does a ST boost for horses effect farming output? And would such boosted ST make horse drawn trams viable?

If you look at adding magic to the world in such a way that it alters economies, then you have to treat it as a dial. Turning it a little bit will have subtle changes, turning it a lot makes it a whole different world. What your talking about above is, to me, a hard turn on that dial. I think the others have more than addressed the changes if you alter the magic system so completely. Which is why most havent addressed the actual question you posed about horses.

I prefer turning that dial just a touch; to single enchanters can commit up to their full points (without going negative, or using stones) each day using "slow and sure". This still makes an Enchanter largely an NPC class but suddenly convenience items become more accessible, and a little cheaper. You can dial it more by allowing groups of enchanters the same rule, and more by allowing use of other mana sources on top of that.

I have a half page or so of house rules that cover costs and times that are pretty simple mods to standard enchanting with the basic magic system. The biggest effect is that basic low level enchanters can do simple work for (up to 300ep) for around $10 a point + materials.

Understand, that I use Gurps DF to create persistent worlds and not the dungeon crawl narrative that is pushed here generally. I like to have more magic items available to adventurers and mundanes than the basic rules of GURPS seem to lean towards, but I find the rest of the GURPS DF setting a great resource for those games. Your horse question actually raised a solution for me in one of my worlds where enchantment follows *my* single chanter rules but I was having some difficulty resolving the price of a Gypsy caravan using fewer animals. I was so stuck on lightening the wagon (a solution I didnt really like) and had never considered a ST enhancement to the horses (I was using Oxen and moving slower to keep the lightening cheaper). Adding a ST enhancement to the harness/horses would be much more efficient use of magic than trying to enchant most of a wagon (also based on my house rule that Lighten works on a per pound basis not a per item and is not restricted to clothing which I always found an overly complex and mostly nonsensical restriction)

I should also mention that my campaigns tend more toward 150-200 points than the 500 or so your elf would need.