Magic Item Economics
Dec. 15th, 2019 04:37 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
beccaelizabethI know I read an article or post about how there are three very different economies in D&D,
(food, gold, and magic items)
but I'm reading the rules for building businesses and castles and so forth
and it's really making it obvious.
A castle, as listed in Ultimate Campaign, costs 7,390 gp.
Modest sized castle, build it with goods, influence, labour and magic, or buy one ready made for gp.
A decanter of Endless Water costs 9,000 gp.
So you can either have a fully functioning castle
or not quite enough for a single lesser medium wondrous item.
Pretend pulling cards from the Deck of Many Things rolled up a single item worth
128,000gp
That's a lot of castles.
That's more like Build Points, suitable for building Kingdoms with.
1BP is worth approx 4000gp
So that one item is 32 Build Points.
A castle in the Kingdoms section costs 54 BP to build though. Which is. A lot more.
Okay, I need to read more rules, BP are super expensive with the same name buildings.
But then they have effects on the entire kingdom, so probably there's a layer I've not understood.
But! One maguc item puts you in the resource league of a kingdom builder. By a long way.
One.
Measure it in days work paid and a Manager isn't going to see that much money in 70 years. Most people are not making as much money as the manager page people. Captain, Doctor or Guildmaster were who I did the math on. Most people not in that bracket.
Measure it in how many days food you could buy?
even in the form of trail rations, that's between 0.5 and 2gp a day, depending on quality and species.
You could feed 128,000 people for a day with the price of that one item.
And all it does is like epic taser someone.
So, three economies.
Also the Kingdom building rules look cool but I haven't figured them yet.
I have noticed that half of the roles for rulers use their Charisma, not Intelligence or Wisdom.
Today I find that vaguely depressing.
Imaginary kingdoms are still fun tho.
(food, gold, and magic items)
but I'm reading the rules for building businesses and castles and so forth
and it's really making it obvious.
A castle, as listed in Ultimate Campaign, costs 7,390 gp.
Modest sized castle, build it with goods, influence, labour and magic, or buy one ready made for gp.
A decanter of Endless Water costs 9,000 gp.
So you can either have a fully functioning castle
or not quite enough for a single lesser medium wondrous item.
Pretend pulling cards from the Deck of Many Things rolled up a single item worth
128,000gp
That's a lot of castles.
That's more like Build Points, suitable for building Kingdoms with.
1BP is worth approx 4000gp
So that one item is 32 Build Points.
A castle in the Kingdoms section costs 54 BP to build though. Which is. A lot more.
Okay, I need to read more rules, BP are super expensive with the same name buildings.
But then they have effects on the entire kingdom, so probably there's a layer I've not understood.
But! One maguc item puts you in the resource league of a kingdom builder. By a long way.
One.
Measure it in days work paid and a Manager isn't going to see that much money in 70 years. Most people are not making as much money as the manager page people. Captain, Doctor or Guildmaster were who I did the math on. Most people not in that bracket.
Measure it in how many days food you could buy?
even in the form of trail rations, that's between 0.5 and 2gp a day, depending on quality and species.
You could feed 128,000 people for a day with the price of that one item.
And all it does is like epic taser someone.
So, three economies.
Also the Kingdom building rules look cool but I haven't figured them yet.
I have noticed that half of the roles for rulers use their Charisma, not Intelligence or Wisdom.
Today I find that vaguely depressing.
Imaginary kingdoms are still fun tho.
no subject
Date: 2019-12-15 01:35 pm (UTC)Today I find that vaguely depressing.
Ouch. Especially this week.
no subject
Date: 2019-12-15 08:09 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2019-12-15 08:09 pm (UTC)In a Building, you build and own a building. Just the building and the bits ti make it go. Empty, you can use it for adventurers only if you wanna.
In a Kingdom, you have a fully functional defence system, a proper economic unit of its type, with people. That is a very different bar.
Also you dont personally own your things built with BP, your Kingdom can tax them but people live in them. I haven't quite followed that bit. But like, if your kingdom generates maguc items, you personally do not own a magic item, yet. There's ways, but you don't just own it by being King.
So they're different systems for different things.
... so now to wonder which scale a Deck of Many Things was playing on.
... probably the smaller, but...