The Wish Economy in Eberron

[Ryan_Singer]

Is it just me, or does Eberron seem to be designed to handle switching to the wish economy without a problem. Every Dragonmarked House has two businesses, a common one, and an awesome one:

Cannith:
C: Tinkers Guild - They fix pots and pans for common people
A: Fabricators Guild - They build airships, lightning rails and +4 swords, but only if you pay them in dragonshards.

Deneith:
C: Blademark - Hire as many warriors and fighters of 3rd level or lower as you want.
A: Defender's Guild - Totally have a level appropriate cohort bodyguard follow you around up through a 15th level badass.

Phairlain:
C: The Entertainers Guild - Artists and such
A: The Serpentine Table - Scry and Die. Seriously, that's what they do.

Kundarak:
C: Letter of Credit for your money
A: Letter of Credit for your Dragonshards.

etc.

[Brobdingnagian]

I never considered that. Is it possible Eberron did something right?

[NineInchNall]

Artificers break the wish economy because of Retain Essence. They can wish for a 15,000 gp magic item, and then they drain that item into their craft reserve. Do this enough times and they can make anything, 15,000 gp limit be damned.

[Username17]

There's a couple of core difficulties involved in Eberron's handling of the high-end economies. The obvious one is Artificers, who have the ability to generate unlimited quantities of items of unlimited power at about level 12 (although with the length of time it takes to actually make these items, we're still only talking about like 10 total in the character's lifetime).

But I think the core problem is that the Dragonshards themselves don't really do anything. They are arbitrarily valuable as a plot device, but they don't really do anything. This means that in the essentially barter economies of all D&D land, there's no real reason that a player might want to hold on to a dragon shard - even a ruby or a diamond has more inherent value.

---

So I'm not really sure why anyone chases after dragonshards. The items you can make with them are no better and no cheaper than the ones you can make without. It's a genuine mystery why anyone cares, since as far as I can tell they are a worthless piece of bling that some people put on the outside of their magic items to make them "look pimp". It's like expecting there to be an entire economy in chromed wheels.

-Username17

[Digestor]

"we installed a dragonshard built aquarium where your windshield used to be, now you got dragon snappers and fire elemental fishies who can summon you some phat geat as you pimpin' down da hi-way"

[Brobdingnagian]

Dragonshards in Eberron = Dumb b/c Dragons in Eberron = Dumb

[Cielingcat]

1175574066[/unixtime]]Dragonshards in Eberron = Dumb b/c Dragons in D&D= Dumb

I fixed it for you.

[Brobdingnagian]

That's not necessarily true. Dragons in D&D are generally awesome. It's kinda dumb how awesome they are, and they're awesome in a pretty dumb fashion, but they're still awesome.

Dragons in Eberron are just outright dumb, though.

[NineInchNall]

One kinda has to play one's dragons as one would play one's PCs to get the flavor they're supposed to have.

[Brobdingnagian]

What Dragons bring to the party:

Stabbing things in the face... with a breath weapon?

[Cielingcat]

No, dragons bring "is really small" and "has huge numbers anyway." Srsly, dragons have a size to CR ratio of about 1:5, meaning that at CR 10 the biggest dragons you'll see are seriously only Large. Even at CR 20 they struggle to be Gargantuan. Also, using a dragon causes morons to flock to you and yell about how a dragon should always be a TPK or some bullshit like that.

Dragons in Eberron are actually the ultimate expression of the D&D dragon. They're all powerful, super intelligent, in charge of everything, and basically enough to make any of the dracophiliacs that infest the hobby cream their pants. Goddammit, I want my dragons to be big stupid lizards that breathe fire, not some moron's masturbatory fantasy!

[CalibronXXX]

1175540074[/unixtime]]Artificers break the wish economy because of Retain Essence. They can wish for a 15,000 gp magic item, and then they drain that item into their craft reserve. Do this enough times and they can make anything, 15,000 gp limit be damned.

I thought one of the important aspects of the wish economy was that you couldn't just throw a bunch of gold and experience into some sort of eldritch compost heap and wait for it to ferment into a powerful magic item; planar currency such as souls, concentration, raw chaos, or whathaveyou were actually required to make stuff more valuable than 15,000 gp. Am I wrong about this?

[NineInchNall]

Yes, you are right. That's why Artificer 5 breaks the economy.

[technomancer]

I don't think it would be unreasonable to require that exotics like Planar Currencies would be required to be used to make magic items over 15,000 GP in price.

[Judging__Eagle]

1175583583[/unixtime]]No, dragons bring "is really small" and "has huge numbers anyway." Srsly, dragons have a size to CR ratio of about 1:5, meaning that at CR 10 the biggest dragons you'll see are seriously only Large. Even at CR 20 they struggle to be Gargantuan. Also, using a dragon causes morons to flock to you and yell about how a dragon should always be a TPK or some bullshit like that.

Dragons in Eberron are actually the ultimate expression of the D&D dragon. They're all powerful, super intelligent, in charge of everything, and basically enough to make any of the dracophiliacs that infest the hobby cream their pants. Goddammit, I want my dragons to be big stupid lizards that breathe fire, not some moron's masturbatory fantasy!

I did the opposite in my own campaign setting.

Dragons were smart.

So smart that they created a massive empire under which all reptilianoids thrived.

Then, they decided this was boring and as a whole, plane-shifted to some other Plane; like Ysgard, where they could never die.

Of course, every other draconic creature type still exists; and they're fvckin dumb as bricks. Compared to what dragons are supposed to be like.

A lot of them also have breath weapons and are a bit tougher. So, you've got Gold Wyverns and Black Wyverns; same with Rage Drakes, Ambush Drakes, Sea Dragons, Dragon Turtles, Dragonnes. The reptilianoids are ruled by the half-dragon progeny of the origianl ruling race.

They don't rule the world b/c it's too cold in a lot of other places, or too dry and they have intelligent fiendish or celestial vermin kingdoms all along their border that 'replace' orcs as the typical agressors in that minor continental landmass (an area stretching from the the bottomg of the northern temperate zone to the north of the southern temperate zone in a region about as wide as india at it's widest, split up with a range mountains that run north-south ).

[Ryan_Singer]

1175545826[/unixtime]]There's a couple of core difficulties involved in Eberron's handling of the high-end economies. The obvious one is Artificers, who have the ability to generate unlimited quantities of items of unlimited power at about level 12 (although with the length of time it takes to actually make these items, we're still only talking about like 10 total in the character's lifetime).

But I think the core problem is that the Dragonshards themselves don't really do anything. They are arbitrarily valuable as a plot device, but they don't really do anything. This means that in the essentially barter economies of all D&D land, there's no real reason that a player might want to hold on to a dragon shard - even a ruby or a diamond has more inherent value.

---

So I'm not really sure why anyone chases after dragonshards. The items you can make with them are no better and no cheaper than the ones you can make without. It's a genuine mystery why anyone cares, since as far as I can tell they are a worthless piece of bling that some people put on the outside of their magic items to make them "look pimp". It's like expecting there to be an entire economy in chromed wheels.

-Username17

It seems to be strongly implied in the setting that the gold component to magic item creation is actually mostly the value of the dragonshards you are including.