[Thaumatology] Setting magic item prices to make economic sense

[Prince Charon]

One of the more common arguments about magic items is that some of the prices are too high to account for supply, demand, or perhaps both. Perhaps the income of an enchanter is not consistent with the prices of items, or it fits the prices just fine, but not the money that could otherwise be made with the sorts of skills that the enchanter needs to have (e.g. standard GURPS enchantment requires a presumably-rare talent, and multiple Hard skills at 15 or higher), so why become an enchanter at all (thus driving prices up due to greater rarity). Maybe the item existing at all save as a unique creation of a mad elf makes no sense because 'who would want to pay for that?!' (id est it's just not worth it in comparison to other things that the prospective buyer would wish to spend money on), when it's supposed to be relatively common, or at least not rare.

So, this thread, where we try to work out how to fit the prices of various magic items into a believable (which is not necessarily the same as 'realistic') economy. We may end up needing different threads for different magic systems, but this is just to get us started.

For our starting economy, let's assume a TL3^ fantasy world that looks kind of like Western Europe circa 1111 CE, and the standard magic system, with standard enchantment, from the Basic Set. I think it's safe to say that healing items are going to be worth at least as much as the costs given in the books, but even that I'm not totally sure about. What do you think?

[Varyon]

I think the main thing that makes the default enchanting system a poor choice as a profession is that, for whatever reason (probably "We don't want PC's getting rich and/or getting massive caches of magic items by making them"), TPTB decided to make enchanting take an obscene amount of time in addition to requiring a great deal of investment in Advantages and skills - or at least have it do so once you have too high of an energy cost for Quick and Dirty to be an option.

Roughly speaking, skill 12 in an Average skill is sufficient to get an Average income. Every +1 to skill is +1 step on the Size and Speed/Range Table (1, 1.5, 2, 3, 5, 7, 10, 15, 20, etc) to income, every -1 is -1 step. Calling for an Easy skill instead of Average is -2 steps (half income for a given skill level), while calling for a Hard skill is +1 step (x1.5 income for a given skill level). Calling for another skill at a comparable level and/or pricey Advantages can potentially justify a +1 or +2 as well. You can see this generally working for the professions listed in Low Tech Companion 3.

Enchant is a Very Hard skill, for +1 or +2. It has a lot of prerequisites - needing at least [10] invested in other spells, having the spell you're enchanting into an item be at 15 or higher, and [25] for Magery 2 [25] - for another +1 or +2. And you must have Enchant at 15 or higher to actually be able to use it, for +3 relative to Average. So being an enchanter should be somewhere between +5 steps (x7) and +7 steps (x15) above Average; let's split the difference and say it's +6 steps. That's 10xAverage income, somewhere between Wealthy (5x) and Very Wealthy (20x). Personally, I'd be more inclined to keep the current pricing, but adjust how much energy the enchanter can provide per day to make it match this higher income, if using the enchantment system from Campaigns. So, rather than Slow and Sure being 1 energy that is worth $25 per day, it would be more appropriate for it to be around 10 energy that is worth a total of $250 per day.

[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.

[Anthony]

I would reverse the process -- entirely delete the rules for energy cost for enchantment, set a money cost for enchantment, and treat it like any other type of crafting (which is to say, unspecified how it works).

[Varyon]

Originally Posted by Anthony

I would reverse the process -- entirely delete the rules for energy cost for enchantment, set a money cost for enchantment, and treat it like any other type of crafting (which is to say, unspecified how it works).

You could adapt the Crafting rules from LTC3, which is what I intend to do for Oubliette (although there mundane craftsmen can create enchanted items if they put in the labor, they don't need spells - in fact, Oubliette doesn't have spells like that). You can use my suggestion from upthread to calculate the value of their labor based on their skill level. For determining the value of the enchantment, you could keep the nominal energy costs and multiply by some dollar amount (and you can maintain a Q&D vs S&S split if you want to, maybe even add some more tiers to it). Whether the enchanter is able to provide all this value simply through labor, or if they need to have special materials (like how a mundane craftsman subtracts out the cost of the raw materials from the cost of the item itself to determine how much of it is labor), would be up to the GM - and you could certainly allow the enchanter to adjust this on a case-by-case basis (sometimes they take less time because they have special materials, sometimes they take longer because they're making the enchantment from scratch). You could also use the guidelines from AtE to determine the "labor" value of sacrificed items/materials based on how appropriate they are.

[hal]

In the original Enchantment rules, A skill 12 enchanter with a skill 12 base spell, could enchant a POWER 16 enchantment using the time for skill bonus. Spending twice as long to enchant some thing allows you to increase the effective skill by +4

The real problem is the income level required per day's enchantment. There is also the same issue inherent with the price of potions - the working class with a struggling income can't afford the potions.

Note that the cost for enchantment is for a POWER 15 item, with each increase in power value increasing the value appropriately.

A relatively simple fix may be to rethink what mages charge for their services.

For example, struggling incomes would suggest that commonly cast spells would be at half the expected income of enchanters. Spells with a heavy prerequisite count are more costly, while spells with a low requisite chain are cheaper...

You're not paying for the spell per se, you're paying for the educational time invested in the spell via all its requisites.

One thing to ask yourselves is this: how many spell fatigue can be cast in a month? What is the target income per month per GURPS rules, and then divide the income per month by the spell fatigue spent per month. Just as a laborer earns income by working a set number of hours per day per month, so too should a mage's income follow that pattern.

It is unlikely the mage will have nonstop customers in the same vein as a ditch digger labors on the ditches - the mage's income should be based upon both the spell cast as well as the energy cost as well as the frequency of the spell(s) being cast. Casting SEEKER to find lost items may be the most common spell cast for poorer people than say, cure disease (just as an example mind you!)

Lower the cost per fatigue and that would be similar in effect to lowering the number of enchantment days for item. It also opens up a job for struggling mages in your campaign.

Another change I'd suggest is this: think in terms of mage weeks for production instead of mage days. 400 days is 57 weeks of nonstop labor. Why not make the enchantment cost be 285 days instead? Maybe 342 days instead? 285 days with 2 days off is 57 weeks. 342 days is 57 weeks with 1 day a week off. The side benefit would be that quick and dirty can be cheaper, and make life more bearable for the enchanter.

[Whitewings]

Originally Posted by hal

285 days with 2 days off is 57 weeks

No, it's not. It's 285 weeks because every day off takes 2 days to make up. 7 days - 2 = 5. 5 days - 4 to make up for the 2 days off = 1 day. Or if you take the more generous interpretation that 1 day off means 2 days to add the next energy point, then it's 285/3 = 95 weeks. Under standard rules, enchanting is a brutally demanding business.

[ehrbar]

The use value of a species-specific Beast Speech item for talking to hedgehogs is almost nothing under most circumstances.

The cost to have such an item made under the standard enchantment rules is pretty high, though. 1,000 energy is 1,000 continuous mage-days of labor under the Slow & Sure rules. Even if you could somehow hire a TL3 enchanter for a Struggling wage and no premium for making him work every single day straight through for 2 years and nine months, it's still going to cost you in the neighborhood of $11,550 to commission a talk-to-hedgehogs item. In a more reasonable case (the mage charges a Comfortable wage and demands extra pay to implicitly make up the lost weekends and then an additional premium), $50,000 is likely.

So, what's the market-clearing price? Frankly, it's usually going to be about $0, since that's the likely place where the demand (nobody wants one) and supply (nobody has ever made one) curves actually cross.

[hal]

Originally Posted by Whitewings

No, it's not. It's 285 weeks because every day off takes 2 days to make up. 7 days - 2 = 5. 5 days - 4 to make up for the 2 days off = 1 day. Or if you take the more generous interpretation that 1 day off means 2 days to add the next energy point, then it's 285/3 = 95 weeks. Under standard rules, enchanting is a brutally demanding business.

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.

[Anthony]

Originally Posted by ehrbar

So, what's the market-clearing price? Frankly, it's usually going to be about $0, since that's the likely place where the demand (nobody wants one) and supply (nobody has ever made one) curves actually cross.

No, it's not $0; while not super-useful, make it cheap enough and someone would buy it. If there's zero trade in a particular product (because at a cost equal to its production cost demand is zero) I'm not sure it has a defined cost.

In any case, that's a different class of problem. There's two general types of problems with enchantment in GURPS:

• RAW pricing doesn't actually make a lot of sense -- powerstones and other sources of transient power would absolutely be used for quick and dirty enchantment (combinations of powerstones and paut beat S&S up to around 1,000 energy, at which point the fact that everyone involved is working a ten hour day becomes problematic) -- and $33 per mage-day is nonsense. Related to that, RAW pricing creates a weird gap in pricing, as it's impossible to have an item that costs between $100 and $3333.
• Energy costs seem to have been pretty much made up by throwing darts at a board rather pricing on either balance or some systematic method.

At the moment, I suspect the easiest option is to use meta-tech as your enchantment system.