[Thaumatology] Setting magic item prices to make economic sense

[Pursuivant]

Originally Posted by scc

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

Enchanters are obviously not subject to union work rules and operate on very different assumptions about what constitutes a proper work-life balance. They operate on work schedules better suited to energy drink- and modafinil-driven Silicon Valley tech startup coders or medieval craftsmen.

If you accept that it takes x amount of energy delivered at a steady rate over exactly 56 hours per 7 days and ignore exact work schedules, it becomes possible for enchanters to have one or more days off each week without breaking the basic assumptions for enchantments. Mages have the choice of a ~8 hour x 7 day grind, a ~10 hour x 6 day 19th century-style workday, or a ~14 hour x 4 day "modern flex time + commute" or "medieval summer + holidays" workday.*

*TMI Regarding Historical Work Schedules

Spoiler:  

The concepts of "The Weekend," the "8-Hour Workday," and "Overtime Pay" are late 20th century notions, brought about by decades of labor union efforts. Before the 1930s, such notions would have been considered radical by most people, perhaps dangerously so.

For pre-modern people, who lived without clocks or decent artificial lighting, an honest day's work ran from sunrise to sundown, but with lots of breaks - often involving food and alcohol - to recover from sessions of heavy physical labor. For medieval workers, Sundays were a mandatory day of rest and the Church or the local craft guilds might also forbid work on certain holidays.

This meant that, during the Middle Ages and Renaissance, work hours were much shorter during European winters and much longer in the summer, but the workday was much more relaxed (not to say, downright soused) and the number of nominal work hours each year probably worked out to about ~3,500 (averaging 12-hour days, minus Sundays and 14 days of holidays).

The notion of a "commuting to work" was also alien to most medieval people. Farmers and other rural folk might walk for several hours to get to far distant fields, but crafters either lived over their workshops or within short walking distance, effectively allowing most tradesmen to "work from home." Wives and children might also perform errands or support duties for the business and its workers, meaning that family members saw each other throughout the day.

These notions persisted until the late 19th century, although the Reformation did away with the observance of all but the most major Christian holidays. Most workers still lived within easy walking distance of their workplace. Once factories dominated the economy, factory workers began to agitate first for 12-hour, and then 10-hour days, in addition to other demands. The notion of taking Saturdays and all but the highest Christian holidays off would have just too wild, except maybe for the most wild-eyed IWW anarchists. The 40-hour work week was a product of the Great Depression, adopted in part to create more jobs and to forestall more extreme labor demands.

The idea of spending hours traveling to work and living far distant from your place of work is also very modern, dating to the early 20th century when interurban railroads were common. It became commonplace after WW2 once everyone had cars and suburbs developed. Before the 20th century the idea of separating housing from all but the dirtiest industries, much less having entire communities with just housing, would have been considered ridiculous.

[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.

[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.

[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.