What is the wish economy?

[Brobdingnagian]

The Dildo of Infinite Energy? Keeps her happy and doesn't have to worry about that frail wizard not lasting long...

Maybe as a graft...

[Catharz]

1175413671[/unixtime]]The Dildo of Infinite Energy? Keeps her happy and doesn't have to worry about that frail wizard not lasting long...

Maybe as a graft...

There's already a graft like that, worthy of a quote from "A Tale of Strange Parts":

But the her eyes, shy until now, fell upon that which lay between his legs, and those eyes widened a little, and she blushed. Her lovely lips framed a question, but he moved forward as swiftly as he could and embraced her again.
"How?" she murmured. "How, Catharz?"
"It is a long tale and a bloody one," he whispered, "of rivalry and revenge, but suffice it to say that it ended in my father, Xympwell the Cruel, taking a terible vengeance upon me. I fled from his court into the wastes of Grxiwynn, raving mad, and it was there that the tribesmen of Velox found me and took me to the wise Man of Oorps in the mountains beyond Katatonia. He nursed me and carved that for me. It took him two years, and all through those years I remained raving, living off dust and dew and roots, as he lived. The engravings had mystical significance, the runes contain the sum of his great wisdom, the tiny pictures show all there is to show about physical love. Is it not beautiful? More beautiful that that which it has replaced?"
Her glance was modest; she nodded slowly. "It is indeed, very beautiful," she agreed. And then she looked up at him and he saw that tears glistened in her eyes. "But did it _have_ to be made of sandstone?"
"There is little else," he explained sadly, "in the mountains beyond Katatonia."

This is, of course, the Maug "shoving arm" graft from Fiend Folio.

[RandomCasualty]

1175411172[/unixtime]]Item creation is funny stuff. You don't get any more for making more powerful items. That is, there's a market for +1 swords and there's a market for +4 swords. And your take-home on making +4 swords is sixteen times what it is on a +1 sword. But +4 Swords also take sixteen times as long to make.

Well, not when you take the wish economy into account. Keep in mind that when +1 swords can be created effectively free of cost, you've got lots of them saturating the market, so supply and demand would bring the cost way down.

+4 swords on the other hand actually have to be created the old fashioned way.

Also, I'm still not really seeing how you control a PC item crafter in the wish economy, it seems like you're just giving infinite gold to the PCs that way. I mean even if you rule that they can't buy such items with infinite wealth, the ability to create those items is powerful enough.

[Fwib]

1175416136[/unixtime]]

1175411172[/unixtime]]Item creation is funny stuff. You don't get any more for making more powerful items. That is, there's a market for +1 swords and there's a market for +4 swords. And your take-home on making +4 swords is sixteen times what it is on a +1 sword. But +4 Swords also take sixteen times as long to make.

Well, not when you take the wish economy into account. Keep in mind that when +1 swords can be created effectively free of cost, you've got lots of them saturating the market, so supply and demand would bring the cost way down.

+4 swords on the other hand actually have to be created the old fashioned way.

Also, I'm still not really seeing how you control a PC item crafter in the wish economy, it seems like you're just giving infinite gold to the PCs that way. I mean even if you rule that they can't buy such items with infinite wealth, the ability to create those items is powerful enough.

Even if the crafters have unlimited gold, their supplies of time and xp are limited (particularly xp, barring retain essence)

[Chuckles]

1175388024[/unixtime]]Chuckles: The 15,000 GP limit comes from the wish spell itself. It can just make any magical item of 15,000 GP or less.

No it's not, it doesn't say that in the PHB or the SRD.

1175388024[/unixtime]]Also, the reason why you couldn't just comission a wizard to make something worth more than 15,000 GP and pay them in piles of cash is because piles of cash are worthless to higher level characters who are interacting with the Wish economy.

No, they can use the piles of cash to buy other magic items, or support their church for the rest of it's existence. A Cleric really wants the 18,000 version of Pearl of Wisdom but is only 5th level, so he creates a Luckstone with the 10 grand he has, sells it buy his Pearl and has 2 grand left over to give to his church. I don't see how wish affects this.

1175388024[/unixtime]]People making magic items worth more than 15,000 GP are going to want more than cash. Planar currencies, like Souls and the like, are going to get you that magic item, as would doing the wizard a favor (re: adventure).

Only if they can't use that cash to buy more stuff. And even if you use some planar currencies, they will need to have some correlation to gold, so all you are doing is calling money by a different name. Besides what good are souls to "good" characters.

[Chuckles]

1175438829[/unixtime]]

1175416136[/unixtime]]

1175411172[/unixtime]]Item creation is funny stuff. You don't get any more for making more powerful items. That is, there's a market for +1 swords and there's a market for +4 swords. And your take-home on making +4 swords is sixteen times what it is on a +1 sword. But +4 Swords also take sixteen times as long to make.

Well, not when you take the wish economy into account. Keep in mind that when +1 swords can be created effectively free of cost, you've got lots of them saturating the market, so supply and demand would bring the cost way down.

+4 swords on the other hand actually have to be created the old fashioned way.

Also, I'm still not really seeing how you control a PC item crafter in the wish economy, it seems like you're just giving infinite gold to the PCs that way. I mean even if you rule that they can't buy such items with infinite wealth, the ability to create those items is powerful enough.

Even if the crafters have unlimited gold, their supplies of time and xp are limited (particularly xp, barring retain essence)

So is the ability to cast wish, significantly more so in fact.

[AlphaNerd]

I expect, Chuckles, that you haven't read the section in the Tome of Fiends being discussed. I'll simplify. Wish can be accessed at like, level 11 by wizards by using the planar binding spell. Simply bind efreet or noble djinni, and force them to grant you wishes.

What the SRD says about wishes and magic items is this:

Create a magic item, or add to the powers of an existing magic item.
...
When a wish creates or improves a magic item, you must pay twice the normal XP cost for crafting or improving the item, plus an additional 5,000 XP.

This means that if you can cast (or have access to) wish as a spell-like ability, and that

A spell-like ability has no verbal, somatic, or material component, nor does it require a focus or have an XP cost. The user activates it mentally. Armor never affects a spell-like ability’s use, even if the ability resembles an arcane spell with a somatic component.

Then you can wish for an arbitrarily awesome magic item.

Frank and K realized this first (that I'm aware of) and thereby probably won a CharOp competition with it (the Wish and the Word). Instead of simply declaring it broken, they worked on some rules to make it work. Those are the rules being talked about now (read the post linked above or the text below). Essentially, magic items of value less than 15K, and mundane currency have no value in the upscale market -- that of expensive magic items, souls, hope, chaos, and concentration. All this is talked about in a section of the Dungeonomicon.





[*] Free Wishes: the following wishes have no XP cost:

• 
  
• Wealth: A character can wish for mundane wealth whose total value is 25,000 gp or less.
  
• Magic Item: A character can wish for a magic item that costs 15,000 gp or less.
  
• Power: A character can wish to increase an inherent bonus to any attribute by 1 (to a maximum of +5)
  
• Spell: A character can wish for the effects of any spell that lacks an XP cost that is lower level than the highest level spell in its spell list (a wizard spell of 8th level or less, or a paladin spell of 3rd level or less, for example).
  
• Transport: A character can wish herself and 1 other willing creature per caster level to any location on any plane.
  

[*] Wishes that aren't Free

• 
  
• the following wishes cost XP or gp or both:
  
• Add to the Powers of a Magic Item: A character can increase the powers of a magic item to anything she could enhance it to with her own item creation feats. This requires 1 XP for every 10 gp increase in magic item value.
  
• Raise the Dead: A character can bring the dead back to "life", even if they were an undead, construct, or other creature that cannot normally be brought back to life. This may even be able to bring back a creature who has been devoured by a Barghest (50% chance of success). This costs 3,000 XP, which can be paid in any combination by the caster or the target. The spent XP for this wish can reduce a character's level, but coming back to life in this manner otherwise won't do so.
  
• Undo Misfortune: A character can wish back the sands of time in order to force events of the last round to be replayed. Time can be reset to any point back to the character's previous initiative pass. This use costs 1000 XP. While the action spent to cast wish in this case is restored, the character still loses the spell slot and XP used to power it.
  
• Turn Back Time: A poorly fated adventure can be averted entirely with a wish. The character expends the slot and pays 5,000 xp, and none of it ever happened.
  

[*] Wishes that are Rituals

• some wishes have much greater costs, at the whim of the DM. Here is an example:
  
• Become a new Creature: A character can wish themselves into being a new creature. This must be done when a character is eligible to gain a new level, and the character makes the wish and takes a level of the new racial class (or racial paragon class) and is now the new race.
  

[Username17]

The 15,000 gp limit is actually a roll back to th 3rd edition PHB when that limit existed. Andy Collins thought it would be awesome if Wish was uncapped... but given the actual effects I have to disagree.

Well, not when you take the wish economy into account. Keep in mind that when +1 swords can be created effectively free of cost, you've got lots of them saturating the market, so supply and demand would bring the cost way down.

Actually... not really. Gold has the problem that every 1000 gp weighs 20 pounds. Even 1000 gp worth of platinum weighs 2 pounds. Pit Fiends really can't carry more than 15k worth of platinum n matter what they do - so they honestly don't just wish for magical trinkets over and over again to sell on the market.

The vast majority of people who can make and sell magic items do so only when there's something they specifically want to purchase - since collecting gold is pretty much impractical for the vast majority of people.

---

Yes. You honestly can do something funky where you perform some money generation scheme, fill a vault with gold and then deal it out to the pleebs to run a society in your image. But that's actually really easy and doesn't involve making small magic items at a workbench or a wish signing.

Seriously, the only reason peope make magic items for sale is if they need a pocketful of spending money - and that usually involves spending a day making a +1 shield.

-Username17

[Aktariel]

It's back to that old saying, "Money can't buy happiness."

Honestly. If you have essentially unlimited money, why would you bother acquiring it?

The prime impetus for adventure would once more be simply that: the adventure.


So where does that leave mercenaries in a wishless low magic high level economy? Would they adventure for land? Prestige? The pretty girls? What?

EDIT: I must confess that this is a situation that I expect to find myself in shortly... Money can't buy happiness [or magic items - well, not many at any rate], but it can buy... Feats? Skill points? Land?

My only problem with land is that I hate settling down.

It removes my impetus to continue playing. I'd much rather hack and slash a dire tiger than a paper tiger...

[technomancer]

But you're still adventuring for money, just not piles of gold.

And good characters have just as much use for bound Souls as evil characters. They could either be recovering the bound Soul of a good guy (for resuscitation or to prevent them from being used up in an evil ritual), or they could be getting an evil soul, to prevent resuscitation or to use up in a good ritual.

[Aktariel]

But there's no magic strong enough to trap souls, and no rituals to use them in, for good or for evil...

[User3]

Are you joking? There is a core spell called Trap the Soul. I'll even link the SRD version.

--
Ryan

[Cielingcat]

He's not going to be using spellcasters in his campaign. However, soul trapping weapons are a staple of the genre, so you might consider giving one of them out.

[Brobdingnagian]

Perhaps the 'gods' could send you on a 'quest' to 'acquire' souls. All you have to do is kill the guy, and the god that sent you could do the rest.

[Catharz]

1175490324[/unixtime]]He's not going to be using spellcasters in his campaign. However, soul trapping weapons are a staple of the genre, so you might consider giving one of them out.

Thinuan, anyone?

[Aktariel]

But what's the point of having souls if a) there are no spells to power them with, b) there is no appreciable diving presence in the world [no clerics, and the paladin may or may not have spellcasting], and c) there's no way to link to the lower planes to sell them? [because there's no gate or portal spells...]

If no one wants or can use them, what's the point of collecting them?

EDIT: Perhaps we could hand out modified thinaun weapons that collect souls which you can then "burn" to do cool things... but this is a low/no-magic campaign and there's not a lot of magic items anyway.

[technomancer]

In low/no magic settings, the Wish economy basically doesn't happen. Nobody does Wish, nobody does Planar Binding. It is based on wish, after all, and wishes are pretty much the difinition of high magic.

You still run into the problem where it's just as efficient to craft +1 swords for money as it is +5 swords, but you have to do less at a time. The consequences of that would be huge -- you basically have to specially commision decent magical gear. Of course, in low/no magic, there isn't anyone who can actually make this gear, unless you re-tune the Craft Magical X feats to work off of ranks of Craft, rather than Caster Level, and do something about spell pre-reqs.

[Immortius]

If you don't have high magic then you can use a non-wish based economy anyway. You will still have the situation where expensive magic items can't actually be bought, but this is more a result it not really being possible to make them - each would have a specific history to it's creation and so forth.

Edit: Curse you!

[Aktariel]

Maybe we'll just give them all the Ancestral Relic feat.

Though what a god [or a sword-spirit, or whatever] would want with all that gold I have no idea...

[Chuckles]

For the record I really like Frank Trollman and K's stuff, and I'm not trying to be argumentative, I just don't understand it. So I have a few more questions.

Why is the economy run by Wish and the Pit Fiend's? It seems to me that there are many more lower level 'things' that can make expensive items that should be more common.

Why do you discount greed in the wish economy? I see people who amasses wealth just to amasses wealth all the time.

Why is weight such an issue? Fighters routinely carry around 30lb suits of armor, and there are bags of holding.

Thank you AlphaNerd for clearing up the 15k limit. I knew about Efreet's, I just didn't think that PC's would be crazy enough to mess with them. You anger an Efreet it's not too hard for him to find a small fire elemental and threaten to pound it into paste unless it says "I wish that x happens to John the summoner," where x equals something very bad.

[Maj]

I see people who amasses wealth just to amasses wealth all the time.

This is a good point, but you have to remember that if money grew on trees, it wouldn't be worth as much. A large part of an economy is controlling the general amount and flow of a currency. If you make something valuable into something semi-common that people can cast spells to get free, not only can you not control it, but it actually loses value.

So piles of gold would be impressively shiny, and probably pretty industrially functional, but not actual wealth per se.

[Brobdingnagian]

Also, Efreet are outsiders. They are always lawful evil. In the MM, it explains "always" as being 99.9% of their population. So, 0.1% of the Efreet population are not lawful evil. Because they're outsiders... there's about... oh... infinite of them. And what's 0.1% of infinity? Oh, yeah. Infinity. So, based on that, there is a chaotic good Efreeti who will grant wishes to your Sorcerer just because he's the same alignment and the Efreeti knows the Sorcerer will use those wishes in a way it would approve of. Candle of Invocation works the same way. Of course, you could just grab a Noble Djinni instead, but that's less fun.

In a low/no magic scenario, the Wish economy simply doesn't exist. It can't.

[Endovior]

The basis of the wish economy is that, since Wish can make items that are *so* valuable, then any item worth less then *so* is a cheap item, suitable for acquiring great heaping piles of and perhaps selling for gold... while an item worth more then *so* is an expensive item, worth nothing less then Planar Currency or other items of equivalent power.

[Judging__Eagle]

Actaully, I recently came up with a very reasonable manner to explain why Efreeti and Noble Djinni grant mortal summoner's Wishes.

Genies need someone else that not a genie to unlock their inplanted infinite wealth engine, right?

[Noe: I use Genies to speak of Noble Djinni and Efreeti as a whole, since both grant 3 wishes per day).

So, they trade off 2/3 of the potential infinite wealth every day and thus can generate their own inifite wealth every day that they're summoned.

So, you summon a Noble Djinni if you're a 'good' Dwarven wizard or an Efreeti if you're a callous Tiefling Wizard.

Then, he asks if you know the rules of Genie-summoning and Wish-Granting. if you don't, he tells you:

"I will grant you two wishes summoner. For the third wish you must wish for "X"and I will perhaps meet with you again to offer you the same deal tomorrow or an other Genie will do the same. Being called to grant wishes is disruptive to our lives, but allows us both to profit.

This is the offer that all Genies offer summoners that desire wishes."

The transaction occurs as lined above and everyone is happy. Genies get all sorts of bonus diamonds or rubies or emeralds every day, their summoners get other stuff.

Of course, if you do something stupid and ask for your 3rd wish, the Genie will round up as many genies that he knows, tell them what happened. Then they round up a local Salamander or small Elemental and get him to ask one of the Genie to Plane Shift the group to the proper plane; then a Greater Teleport by the location of the offending summoner or near enough.

Between a dozen Genies, most adventure 'problems' are easily solved, even most dungeouns.

Then they use a variety of effects to either destroy the offending summoner's dwelling; taking everything he's ever wished for, probably traping his soul to use in a ritual and leaving a massive monolith that tells of his foolishness, greed and the price he paid.

After this, the Genies grant their remaining wishes to the person (or persons) who they were using to "unlock" their 3 daily wishes to complete the task and go home. Alternatively, they wait till a day passes, grant their full wishes (save the ones that they need to go planeshift back home and then greater teleport to the right place).


In any case, the summoners can still loop Wish to get 2 Wishes per summoning to either get candles of invocation or to get two Gate's cast to gate in two more genies.

I'm sure that there are probably lines of Genies that wait to be called and get a free 25,000 gp ruby.

[Crissa]

The Wish economy is just a way of explaining why there are low level magic items and there aren't high-level ones...

...Basically, it's the economy that wizards, fae and demons have always used in literature; and not the economy that humans ever used except for maybe mobsters and kings.

If you don't have wizards, fae, or demons of any sort in your campaign world, the Wish economy doesn't exist. But then again, you don't have anyone who could make +4 swords, either.

-Crissa

PS... How do we know the three wishes model doesn't come from the fact that they actually have four and get one for doing the three?