Calculating net present value of draconic slaves

[strange7person]

I'm running a hybrid GURPS/Pathfinder game, mostly tech level 4 but with esoteric medicine that's functionally equivalent to TL 6 , and various types of necromancy, golems, or magic-assisted clockworks providing the equivalent of TL 9^ robotics and cybernetics. An international conspiracy of dragons manipulates the banking system to prevent the development of gunpowder, or anything else that would allow peasants to kill armored vehicles with minimal training, as well as various existential risks hidden deep in the thaumatology tech tree, and incidentally to prevent needless atrocities or economic inefficiency.

Dragons in general aren't well known for their benevolence or empathy. This system is perpetuated from one generation to the next because it keeps them safe from heroic assassins while providing easy access to gold and other nesting materials. One of the many ways they can acquire quick cash while reinforcing the system is by selling their eggs. Newly hatched dragons can be legally owned, bought and sold as slaves, up until approximately age 50 when they're automatically emancipated. Since they're so valuable, they won't just be peeling potatoes all that time; they'll probably be working closely with some of the richest non-dragons, interacting with the same economic and social power structures they'll need to deftly manipulate when they're older.

So, given that stats are being adapted as much as possible one-for-one from here http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/mon...ragons/dragon/ with Wisdom representing both Perception and Willpower, and one Pathfinder skill point being roughly equivalent to 4 character points worth of GURPS skills, what sorts of work could an enslaved wyrmling-through-juvenile dragon be doing? How much more productive would they be in such roles than a typical human? What would that mean in terms of market price?

Incidentally, everything with "true dragon" stats is female, and can survive on a diet of rocks and ambient mana with no more trouble than a human on bread and water. Males use the http://www.d20pfsrd.com/bestiary/mon.../pseudodragon/ stat block, but with IQ 6 or below unless bonded as a caster's familiar. Historically the draconic reproductive strategy resembled that of spiders, or pollen-shedding trees. In the modern day, male dragons often occupy a domestic role hunting exotic vermin - things like jellyfish, slimes, carnivorous plants, or anything else whose paralytic natural weapons housecats or hawks would be helpless against.

[AlexanderHowl]

Humans cannot survive on bread and water for more than a month without major difficulties. At the very least, fruits and vegetables are also required for proper nutrition, though the addition of dairy and meat is even better. On just bread and water, a human will die within three months due to malnutrition.

[Varyon]

One issue is just how much dragons vary from color to color. Going off of memory (from 3.5 DnD, which may be different from Pathfinder), I think the most extreme is comparing White vs Gold. Pulling up the relevant pages, and just looking at Juveniles (when you'll be getting the most use out of them), we see something like the following, in GURPS terms. Note here I'm assuming each size category in Pathfinder represents a +2 to SM, and each +1 bonus from a score represents a +1 to the corresponding stat in GURPS (so Str 14 or 15, which gives a bonus of +2, means a GURPS ST of 12, while Str 20 or 21, which gives a bonus of +5, means a GURPS ST of 15). I'm mapping Str directly to ST, Dex directly to DX, Con directly to HT, Int and Cha (which are fortunately the same for a given dragon) to IQ, and Wis to Per and Will. This understates a dragon's melee combat abilities (in Pathfinder, Str gives a bonus to melee attack rolls), so it may be appropriate to give them extra points in their melee combat skills.

White Dragon
SM+0
ST 15
DX 12
IQ 10
-Per 11
-Will 11
HT 14

Gold Dragon
SM +2
ST 18
DX 11
IQ 14
-Per 14
-Will 14
HT 15

And that's just stats - in terms of special abilities, the gold dragon can shapeshift (taking a wide range of forms - animal, elemental, or humanoid - ranging from SM-4 to SM+2) and magically detect nearby gemstones, while a white dragon can... function in snow really well for a lizard. A juvenile white dragon would be useful to bring along for arctic explorations, while a juvenile gold dragon would excel at just about anything to ask it to do (and thanks to shapeshifting, isn't terribly hindered by the lack of fine manipulators), and can also be used to find valuable gems. As if that weren't enough, they're also natural spellcasters.


I'm also curious about the male dragons. Are they sold for slavery as well, and also emancipated at age 50? Do they even have comparable lifespans to the female dragons?

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

Humans cannot survive on bread and water for more than a month without major difficulties. At the very least, fruits and vegetables are also required for proper nutrition, though the addition of dairy and meat is even better. On just bread and water, a human will die within three months due to malnutrition.

I... have no idea what this has to do with this thread.

[Maz]

In general it often makes more sense to translate D&D Str directly to GURPS ST. But keep all the others at "stat bonus = GURPS increase". Else large creatures generally tend to have too low ST.

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Also saying 1 D&D skill point = 4 GURPS points will NOT generate sane results.

Take a Juvenile Black Dragon. It has Stealth +21, Swim +26 and Know (Arcana) +14.

This would then translate to 84 pts in Stealth, with DX:12 this would be Stealth-33 or so. I don't know about your games, but that waaaay too high a skill in my opinion. If you really want a formula, I would instead say that D&D skill points = GURPS points put in skill.

So those +21 stealth means 21 points in stealth witch still give it Stealth-16 or 17. Which fits "really good at this skill" but is not insane.


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btw. the comment about bread and water was from the comment that dragons could live on "rocks and mana" like a human could live on "bread and water".

[strange7person]

Originally Posted by Maz

Also saying 1 D&D skill point = 4 GURPS points will NOT generate sane results.

Take a Juvenile Black Dragon. It has Stealth +21, Swim +26 and Know (Arcana) +14.

This would then translate to 84 pts in Stealth, with DX:12 this would be Stealth-33 or so. I don't know about your games, but that waaaay too high a skill in my opinion. If you really want a formula, I would instead say that D&D skill points = GURPS points put in skill.

So those +21 stealth means 21 points in stealth witch still give it Stealth-16 or 17. Which fits "really good at this skill" but is not insane.

I was referring to skill points, by Pathfinder rules where they're linearly proportional to Hit Dice, NOT final skill modifiers, and I did qualify that with "roughly." That being said, the example Young Black Dragon from the Pathfinder Bestiary has 8 ranks in Stealth, meaning roughly 32 pts, even without taking Skill Focus into account. Yes, that's a lot. A creature with only five hit dice is on the same near-mythic level as Einstein or Mozart or Miyamoto Musashi, and the given dragon has eight. http://thealexandrian.net/wordpress/...expectations-2 (I'd also say 50 GURPS character points is roughly equivalent to one D&D/Pathfinder class level, with the same zero, but I'm much less confident in that approximation.)

The problem I'm having here is, how can productivity curves based on real-world skill levels be extrapolated out to quantify the insane hypercompetence this would so clearly imply? I have discussed this problem elsewhere, but the official GURPS forums seem like my best hope for a serious and well-thought-out answer to such a ridiculous question.

Originally Posted by Maz

btw. the comment about bread and water was from the comment that dragons could live on "rocks and mana" like a human could live on "bread and water".

And accurately so! This sort of dragon cannot subsist indefinitely on such a diet without supplemental trace nutrients, physical and otherwise, and they certainly won't be happy if forced into such conditions, but neither are they anywhere close to being obligate carnivores.

[swordtart]

Is the "Net Present Value" in the title of the thread, just puff, or are you actually trying to calculate the appropriate investment price for the overall payoff you will receive over the useful life of the dragon?

If you are trying to do that then you'll need to factor in the riskiness of the payoff not being as anticipated (dragon dies early, dragon decides to escape bondage, dragon is less capable than predicted, dragon gets injured and is devalued). This risk analysis is a thread in itself.

In the real world this would be near impossible (notwithstanding the non-existence of dragons) as the variables are too... well variable. At least as DM you can precisely specify those parameters. You can decide for example that there is a 1% chance of a dragon dying each year from unavoidable causes and that will feed your risk profile. In the real world, that would have to come about through analysis of mortality rates of dragons (which are probably not documented in your source material). In the game this is an absolute fact because you have decided that it is. You can have as many risk factors as you like, with whatever value you like, but it will all be somewhat arbitrary and could as readily be bundled up into a transparently arbitrary value for overall risk.

Then you need to factor in the inflation in the economy in general (affecting the value of money) and the dragon specifically (a dragon egg is just cost, but at age x it can do some useful work and at age x+n its value increases/decreases as it gains a special power that increases its value or it's maintenance costs increase). You basically need to know all revenues expenses and capital costs in owning a dragon.

By the time you will have done all that though you will have just arbitrarily developed a mechanism to generate a number that you could have just chosen arbitrarily in the first place with far less complication.

You could spend weeks developing tables and formulae to determine the price of a dragons egg that has no more validity than you just saying that "it's 500 coins". If you go the former route you are tied to all the factors you used to generate your arbitrary number which may have undesirable consequences, but gives an illusion of structure, if you go the latter you can change it when game balance goes out the window without affecting anything else, but it's transparently arbitrary.

Don't get me wrong, generating formulae can be diverting, but unless your group of players are investment bankers, you might be better off developing other aspects of the game world that players might actually see and understand.

Any discussion of the actual value of a specific dragon is just one variable in what is liable to be an exceptionally complex calculation that will be largely driven by guesswork and assumption.

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Maz

In general it often makes more sense to translate D&D Str directly to GURPS ST. But keep all the others at "stat bonus = GURPS increase". Else large creatures generally tend to have too low ST.

I suppose 18 is a bit on the low side for an SM+2 creature, but 27 is a bit on the high side. Granted, this is a freaking dragon, so having ST roughly on par with a creature 1 SM larger may be appropriate.

Originally Posted by Maz

btw. the comment about bread and water was from the comment that dragons could live on "rocks and mana" like a human could live on "bread and water".

I read the original post three times to make certain, and still didn't see the "bread and water" comment, until you pointed me to the rocks and mana part. We all roll 18's sometimes, I suppose...

Originally Posted by strange7person

That being said, the example Young Black Dragon from the Pathfinder Bestiary has 8 ranks in Stealth, meaning roughly 32 pts, even without taking Skill Focus into account. Yes, that's a lot.

[32] in Stealth (which, fortunately, is one of the skills that's pretty much the same between Pathfinder and GURPS) puts it at DX+8, or roughly skill 20. This is just a touch lower than you'd expect of a 5th level rogue built with the "Elite Array" (stats of 15, 14, 13, 12, 10, and 8), as he'd probably have Dex 16 (having placed his +1 from level 4 into Dex) and 8 ranks in Stealth, for a +1 bonus over the dragon (ignoring the bonus from skill focus). The Thief in Dungeon Fantasy only has stealth at DX+3, but part of that is because he has a really high DX for point efficiency, so he ends up with skill 18. The typically-suggested equivalency for DF vs DnD (and by extension Pathfinder) is that DF characters are roughly 5th level characters in Those Other Games. So, here we see something like +21 in Pathfinder being roughly equivalent to skill 18 in GURPS. That's implying something like being able to divide the Pathfinder bonus by 2.5 to get the "bonus" relative to 10 in GURPS. In fact, that may work better - and faster - than trying to make some sort of point equivalency.

EDIT: Oops, got some wires crossed there and added an extra +10 to the Pathfinder bonuses - a Dex 16, 5th level Rogue would have a +11, not +21, to Stealth. Division by 1.5 may be more appropriate. If we instead assumed a DF Thief is roughly equivalent to a Pathfinder roll with some lucky rolls (or higher point buy, or whatever), and backcalculated his stats, he'd have Str 11, Dex 20, Con 12, Int 16, Wis 18, Cha 16, and would end up with Stealth +13... which is still right around a division by 1.5.

[ericthered]

Lets not make this harder than it needs to be.



Lets assume that a dragon's earning potential is entirely from "mental" tasks. Its described that they will be used as trusted underlings in almost an apprentice system, and this is a technological society. So we can only look at IQ and skill values. Magic ability may also be worth looking at, but we'll see.



The real trick is to convert IQ scores and piles of skill points (piles and piles, the minimum is 96) into wealth ratings. I suspect only the weakest will have average wealth, most will start at comfortable, and most Young dragons will be Wealthy. Justifying the next jump to Very Wealthy is hard: being more useful than 20 people is a hard task. I'd reserve it for truly exceptional stats. Which higher end Juvenile dragons probably have. (IQ 14 + 680 skill points for a juvenile gold)


You have to pay for upkeep, but gurps makes cost of living easy. With 10 months of work and upkeep, you get starting wealth. If we drop two months of the year for risk, that means you can calculate approximate value by multiplying starting wealth by the number of years you have the dragon. So if we are selling a juvenile gold worm at 25 years old, it is worth 25 (years worked) x 20 (wealth level) x starting wealth, or 500 times starting wealth for the setting. By contrast, a juvenile white would be worth 5x25 = 125 times starting wealth.



There is an argument for only calculating juvenile value. both to keep things simple and because it sounds like these dragon eggs have pesky rights that make the first 25 years a wash.



I hope this at least provides a starting point.

[Pursuivant]

I propose that the "sweet spot" for economic value is age 25.

Before that you've got small size, training costs, etc. associated with raising a [smart, scaly, very dangerous] baby or small child.

After age 25, you've got the actuarial tables working against you, since any further investment in providing training, etc. is automatically lost on the dragon's 50th birthday.

Figure out the value of the dragon's advantageous traits at Age 25, assume that they follow a linear scale from Age 1 to 50. That's your price.

Alternately, figure out the cost at each stage of growth, put a price tag on them, and then subtract [2% x Dragon's Age].

[Rupert]

Originally Posted by Varyon

I suppose 18 is a bit on the low side for an SM+2 creature, but 27 is a bit on the high side. Granted, this is a freaking dragon, so having ST roughly on par with a creature 1 SM larger may be appropriate.

SM+2 starts at 5 yards long if human-proportioned. That corresponds to ST25. SM+3 starts at 7 yards and ST35. Thus a SM+2 creature's ST should be in the ST25-34 range, roughly. ST27 is fine.