[Thaumatology] Setting magic item prices to make economic sense

[scc]

Originally Posted by cvannrederode

I would just like to point out that there's a section in Magic 4E about just this topic. It's titled Economics and Enchantment, and it starts at page 21.

It goes into all the gory details of how the $1 per point for magic items up to 60 points, and then $33 per point after that was figured out.

It also refuses to account for Enchanters deciding buy extra FP or use Powerstones to increase the amount of energy they have at hand. Since Magic even more sources of energy have become aviable that break the assumptions made about Enchanting even more.

Now I use a variant rule for Quick and Dirty Enchanting because I mis-remembered the actual rules and my rate of Enchantment is 10 energy per hour per Mage. I also have some story irons in the fire that use the GURPS rules as the behind the scenes mechanics, so all workings below are real world USD, NOT GURPS dollars.

The survivors of a DF-like world are forced to flee to our world circa 2019. After a week of snooping around the members of the Mages Guild get together and elect a new Guild Master and set a new price per point of Energy used in casting spells at $15 per point. Why? Because in their snooping around they found out that's where the minimum wage per hour and Enchanting normally use the Raise Cone of Power spell and you need to hire people for that, preferably dancers.

Note that the Guild has no interest in keeping prices low as demand for magic items always outstrips supply and that this also sets the pricing of regular spell casting.

Note too that the Mages also expect to be paid no top of the calculated energy cost, and for a rank beginner with only Recover Energy-15 who gets 6 energy an hour they expect $90 an hour, whilst those with Recover Energy-25 plus an ER who recover 60 an hour expect $900 an hour, Witches and Wizardress who can recover 3 and 4 times as much (variant schemas to explain striperic costumes) expect 3 and 4 times as much and then some have unusual abilities, access to power boosting artifacts, or simply aburdly high skill (like Enchanting-50) that cost even more to hire, meaning they can expect wages of like $5,000 an hour and they might be no more then 20 years old and have a life expectancy measured in millennia.

EDIT:

Originally Posted by hal

400 non-stop days rules as written: 400-365 is 35. 35/7 = 5.

There are 52 weeks in a year, nearest time then, in weeks for 400 days are 52+5 or 57 weeks. 57 x 5 days per work week or 57 x 6 days per work week depends on whether you as GM want the enchanter to be able take off 2 days per week or 1 day per week as a CHANGE to the rule that says you may not take any time off from enchanting without penalty.

This permits the enchanter to work a more normal work schedule as compared with non magical jobs.

Yes, it changes the required "mandays" of slow and sure, and it no longer imposes a penalty against "resuming" an enchantment after either one day of break, or if the worlds building GM prefers, 2 days of a break. The GM can impose the rule for breaks in the enchanting process to apply for breaks of 2 days (assuming the GM wants their world to permit no more than a 24 hour beak, or for breaks of 3 days (assuming the GM as a world builder, wants to permit up to 48 hours of permitted breaks without penalty).

Either way as suggested above, the final enchantment time is still 57 weeks. The suggested new way still takes as long as far as slow and sure will as the original rules. It WILL impact on the quick and dirty enchantment time, but that too will reduce the overall cost of the enchanment.

How many people in real life work 7 days a week nonstop who aren't farmers tending livestock? Again, my suggestion was a variant of the rules as written, nothing more, nothing less.

WRONG
The Slow and Sure Enchanting rules, as currently written, DO NOT give you weekends off. The effect on team morale of taking weekends off would be insane, given that times already stretch into the years.

Now I have a spreadsheet at hand for size 60 teams doing S&S and modifying them for size 6 teams +1/+2/+3 Swords would take the following time, in days: 42/167/834, subtract 4 and you get the number of WEEKS it would take to make them at your proposed rate. And +6 Swords are a thing, expect at the rate you want they'd take over 1,200 years to make.

Basically if Enchanters can't get weekends off because if they did S&S Enchanting wouldn't be practicle