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

[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?

[Tyneras]

There will be neither horses nor farms, everything will be conjured as needed. There will not be anything resembling an economy in short order because the 99% will have nothing of value to offer at all, beyond maybe themselves as blood sacrifices.

[AlexanderHowl]

Originally Posted by Tyneras

There will be neither horses nor farms, everything will be conjured as needed. There will not be anything resembling an economy in short order because the 99% will have nothing of value to offer at all, beyond maybe themselves as blood sacrifices.

Unfortunately, that is the truth. Since magic can replace labor, there is no need for workers 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.

[Aldric]

This is if you assume all mages are 500+ points DF characters. For those that can't really get unlimited energy and don't reach those level of proficiency there might still be a reason to trade with non mages.

Also, even if all mages live in sky castles and have all their needs taken care of by magic, then there is the other 99% of the people who might not want to starve, and you end up with a non magical society anyway.

[AlexanderHowl]

With that cheap of magic, magicians are capable of flooding the market with magically produced mundane goods. Whatever an individual can produce, a magician can produce it cheaper, so it is likely impossible for an independent economy to evolve. Magicians will likely want more wealth, so they will chase any potential market, as long as the marginal cost does not exceed their anticipated revenue.

[Tyneras]

This is a situation where the gulf between the groups is effectively unbridgeable.

On one side you have wizards who can have virtually anything they want at effectively no cost. Since they are 1% of the population, they also have enough members that they will be able to provide themselves with peer companionship and social circles. They are unlikely to give the mundanes any thought at all.

On the other side you have mundanes, with nothing to offer, not even wealth (gold means nothing when you can conjure it by the cubic yard) or companionship. They may very well treat the wizards as a force of nature, not people.

The two groups may as well exist on separate planets.

[ericthered]

Originally Posted by Aldric

This is if you assume all mages are 500+ points DF characters. For those that can't really get unlimited energy and don't reach those level of proficiency there might still be a reason to trade with non mages.

I think the premise of the setting is that mages are completely let loose. I think that also means that the 1% of the population that are mages are functional mages with 200+ points each. Which is a fine

Also, even if all mages live in sky castles and have all their needs taken care of by magic, then there is the other 99% of the people who might not want to starve, and you end up with a non magical society anyway.

With Cone of power, the mages probably aren't all that hungry for land, so you probably do get "wild" non-mages living outside of the magical cities.

I'm thinking if there is a demand for services: to be waited on hand and foot for instance. Create servant and create warrior don't have magical items, and they're very expensive with a short duration as well, so I don't think they short out demand.

Undead can do some serving, but are unsuitable and distasteful for other tasks. I suppose those bones have to come from somewhere, so you could end up trading your dead for a small amount of magic. Or your Wizard overlords could just call it a tax.

Golems could fill the hand-and-foot role, if we let them be human and flesh-like enough. Of course, then you just have an alternate race of not-humans.

Summoned entities last longer than created ones, but unless you're using a rule that lets you specify the exact characteristics of the summoned being, its not much better than summoning a human to serve you. Maybe mages live on other planes and summon the peasants to do their bidding. Its very weird that this spell doesn't have an associated magic item though.

I think elementals would make poor servants for pampering and flattering.

So maybe they use wild humans as servants and flatterers, or maybe they build their own race of humans.

The one thing the wild humans could provide is more mages. And they could very well have sentimental ties to their homes. Though a cold calloused immortal wizard might just isolate them in a tower to study magic for a century until everyone they know has died and then set them free.

[Aldric]

Originally Posted by AlexanderHowl

With that cheap of magic, magicians are capable of flooding the market with magically produced mundane goods. Whatever an individual can produce, a magician can produce it cheaper, so it is likely impossible for an independent economy to evolve. Magicians will likely want more wealth, so they will chase any potential market, as long as the marginal cost does not exceed their anticipated revenue.

They wouldn't have any use for whatever money the mundanes use, and the services mundanes could offer would be served just as well by magically conjured/created/controlled entities.

As someone has already pointed out, they might as well exist on different planets (or planes) altogether.

[hal]

Hello SCC,
The question you asked in your initial post is a world building issue more than a GURPS MAGIC question - at least in my mind it is.

Let's take a hypothetical world build "Creation" analogous to the original Yrth back before Magery 0 was introduced, and back before the philosophical "Yes, you can improve magery" by means of simple character point expenditure was at least semi-approved as an option.

In this "hypothetical" we have 2% of the population who are mageborn at all. Now, let's go with the idea that Magery is not a sex linked situation. Hypothetically speaking, that splits the demographics of genders for mageborn to about 52% female, 48% male. Let's further stipulate that at any given time, roughly 1/3 of the general population is under the age of 15, while the remaining 2/3rds are distributed amongst the remaining age brackets.

Next, you have to decide what mageborn belongs in what social class, and their relative magery levels in conjunction with their intelligence levels (all factors contributing to successful mages being a part of society).

Where are we heading with all of this? Let's say, using Yrth as an example, that each level of Magery is 10x more prevelant over its next higher level. Let's even go the route of saying that we have Magery 0 in the mix.

Where does this end up working out for our hypothetical society? Just for giggles, let's use a population number of 2 Million people (about the population of England circa 1200 AD (ish). If we have 1 in 50 who have the mageborn talent, that works out to 40,000 people who have the mageborn talent at all. 1/3rd are under the age of 15, so we now have 26,667 (rounding up) adults aged 16 or higher. Of that, we have about 13,867 women, and 12,800 adult male mageborn.

How many of those who are mageborn are discovered? How many are born into the ruling class. If you assume roughly 2% of the general population is the ruling class, then that gives you a general ball park of the overall demographics of your NPC mageborn.

Now, if magery 0 is 10x more common than magery 1, which is 10x more common that magery 2, and in turn, is 10x more common than the limit of Magery 3 - what do you have for actual percentages for your mageborn levels of 0 through 3 in said population. For every 1111 people who have mageborn as an advantage, there will be 1000 magery 0, 100 magery 1, 10 magery 2, and 1 Magery 3 individuals.

So- let's divide our earlier numbers of mageborn by 1111 to get the actual breakdowns. Magery 0 is 1000/1111 or 90.009% of the mageborn population. Then there will be 9.0009% magery 1, .90009% magery 2, and .09% magery 3.

All told:

Ages 16 to 60 adult males:
Magery 0: 11521
Magery 1: 1152
Magery 2: 115
Magery 3: 12 (rounded up)

Ages 16 to 60 adult females:
Magery 0: 12482
Magery 1: 1248
Magery 2: 125
Magery 3: 12

Now comes the issue of their IQ. If the AVERAGE human being is IQ 10, and the breakdowns on IQ tend to be based on some statistical deviation, the bulk of your NPC mages will be IQ 10, with the ranges of IQ 11 on up to say, a max of IQ 15 for NPC mages (which per the GURPS TEMPLATE TOOLKIT 1 Characters, is "Amazing" - then you begin to see how this is going to work out...

Now, here is something that a lot of people ignore - but has a MAJOR Impact on spell instruction and learning in a stock standard GURPS game universe.

Using the time for study rules, at 200 hours of instruction equals 1 character point for skills/spells - how long does a "Student" have to spend in school to get the spells they have for use in spell casting? Pssst - hate to spring the surprise on you, but prerequisite based training is a REAL eye opener. First, you have to learn the basic requisite spell before you can study the next requsite spell right? So how long does it take a student to learn enchantment? 10 spells plus the enchantment college right? But it gets worse. You can't use on the job training for enchantments until you can get your skill to 15 in both the enchantment spell itself, and the spell that is being enchanted into an item.

So, here is the challenge for you or anyone else interested in the problem. How long does it take to train an IQ 2, Magery 2 Mageborn to where he can enchant magic items? Pick any SINGLE magic item you want to have be an enchantment being produced by this singular enchanter mage - and then determine how long it will take to actively learn his spells to the requisite levels.

Now, let's be honest here. Take any single person who lives a real life. The person spends time being involved with their social circle. That's time not spent learning new spells or improving existing spells during non-adventuring time. (That is why I am limiting this to strictly self-training or On the Job Training - Zero adventure based experience points). What you will find will amaze you. More in the next post.

[Anders]

Originally Posted by Aldric

As someone has already pointed out, they might as well exist on different planets (or planes) altogether.

It will look like the sidhe in traditional Celtic myth. They will basically be living gods who intervene for their own fun and otherwise leave the ants alone.