Quote:
Originally Posted by Steve Plambeck
As a player, I had a wizard (starting 32 point wizard, and a commoner) who rose to become a "special assistant" to the Court Wizard of one of the larger, richer, and more powerful military empires in our highly detailed and developed campaign world....
...I don't think it would have been nearly as much fun if everyone had been packing enchanted armor, fine weapons and all that.
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I don't think it would have made much difference to be honest, gear level is relative. Better equipped PC's means better equipped enemies or slightly stronger enemies. The campaign would have been as fun either way.
What would have been better most likely would have been the consistency of the world. Either you changed prices implicitly or you handwaved a bunch of stuff. Either way, if you didn't do explicit changes then you muddled through. And that is what I want to avoid. I want to know what is what, so when I tell my players that a magic +1 sword enchantment costs about X$, then that will be the standard price. When they have saved up X$ and want to buy it, I don't want to tell them, oh but that is the listed price, but no one ever gets to buy it at that price, in reality, it is 10 times as high. Or even worse, when they are about to buy it, they realize the price is half that, so they could have bought it a long time ago, or the waiting list is ten years.
Sure I can always give reasons as to why the price of that sword is much higher temporarily, or locally or at this time of the year, etc. But as soon as the price change is permanent, then it should be reflected in the official price list. And if I devalue the silver pieces, then that also means that wages and living expenses should be different, and not just certain prices of certain things that bug me.
Let's make an example:
Assumption; for every 10 armorers there is one master armorer.
A master armorer spends half of his time making master-crafted weapons.
This means that an armorer can make 60 sabers per 20 weeks.
A master armorer makes 1 very fine Saber per 20 weeks and also 40 normal sabers.
(Armorer can make 150$ worth of weapons and armors per week, A m.armorer 200$ including the very fine Saber at 1000$ instead of normal price of 50$.)
This will give us a ratio of 640 sabers to one very fine saber in the world.
Are the assumptions reasonable?
Are the rules reasonable?
Is that the ratio I want in my world?
Maybe master-crafted weapons are so important that no Master Armorer would ever have to craft normal weapons, since he is only 33% faster than an ordinary armorer and they are 10 times as plentiful. So we get the ratio of 1 very fine saber for every 300 normal ones, if the master crafters only do the good stuff.
Maybe a 1 point talent is not a big investment at all, at IQ 10? It is about as cheap as a 1 point mundane talent. Isn't Armorer more important than a handyman? If so, maybe Armorer is more of a normal blacksmith, and they usually do a lot of stuff besides weapons. Sure they could make a saber, but it wouldn't be especially good. So maybe Blacksmith sabers, or shoddy sabers made in bulk by a Master Armorer (still not a costly talent - 2 more points and IQ 12, comparable to business sense that almost all shopkeepers and traders have according to the rules) are not the standard armament of better soldiers.
Maybe the ratio of people who makes weapons are more 50/50, half are made by blacksmiths and are considered conscript basic weapons and practice swords. But real soldiers bring a real weapon to the field.
So we have a 50/50 ratio of armorers and master armorers. Most armorers are making horseshoes for a living after all.
Now we have a ratio of 1 to 30. Is that reasonable? OR should it be 1:1 because the demand is such that most people won't buy a basic and shoddy saber when most sword-carrying people have better weapons? That would mean that most blacksmiths spend almost no time making sabers, because most people that need them want the best they can afford, and other people think the sabers are too expensive since they don't even know how to use them.
What about a castle lord with a garrison of 50 soldiers. How long would it take to give all of them a balanced saber (price x10)? Taking into account that the castle smith probably has an apprentice that helps out with the easy stuff, you probably could make it a little more efficient if you make the sabers 5 at a time and so on. And another apprentice helps out with the horseshoes and the blacksmith stuff?
He could complete that task in 1 year. So after a year's time, he would have improved every soldier's efficiency in combat by about 15%. I would say that is a pretty good investment. Sure, a soldier's worth is not just his combat effectiveness, but it is a permanent investment. And those swords will last for many years. And then they would probably have a couple of barrels of normal low-quality sabers in the armory, so they can arm the levy if they have to call upon them to fight.
So what is a reasonable baseline?
Many castle garrisons with a real smith have master-crafted weapons and or armor and only poor castle guards or militia have basic weapons.
Or, for every master-crafted weapon, there are hundreds of normal ones?
And do prices, wages, crafting times, efficiency improvements, etc reflect this?
Help me with the assumptions, the baseline if your will.
I will adjust it to fit my world.
We have Henry's opinion that about 10% of a person's wages is reasonable to have invested in gear.
Any other opinions?