What is the wish economy?

[Judging__Eagle]

b/c if they did, we'd have heard about it.


Then again. The classical 'Wishing' genie gave an infinite amount of wealth to Aladdin.

Literally, infinite.

It could give him all the gold he wanted, but couldn't get a Roc's egg. It was also a genius.

Of course, I'm basing this off my reading Burton's translation of the 1,001 Arabian nights.

[Chuckles]

I'm still not getting this.

I've heard people say that the wish economy represents literature, but in books, its dangerous to bind demons to grant wishes. So it certainly wouldn't have occurred on such a scale as to change an economy.

It costs more exp to get to 11th level, then to create an item. Besides 11th level doesn't always grant access to wish anyways, so I don't get exp being the limit on item creation.

A Pit fiend may be only able to teleport with 50lb's, but a fighter is probably carrying that just in armor, not to mention shields and weapons, and a light horse can carry 150lb's as a light load. So while massive amounts of gold are not pocket change, we can look at horse and carts as the credit cards of the medieval world. And again, a wizards greater teleport will carry significantly more weight that a pit fiends.

Planar currency doesn't mean much to most of the world, while gold does. So a 5th level cleric can't do much with Raw Chaos for his Lantern of Revealing, but with the 30k he would get, well that could be useful.

Plus the fact that 17th level wizards still need cash, because 9th level spells as scrolls are still for sale.

[virgil]

The basic idea is that you can summon an efreeti with Lesser Planar Binding, and then have it grant you wishes. If it resists your spell and attacks, it's a CR 8 creature against a party of readied level 9 characters. You have all the time in the world to get it or the next summoned efreeti to do your bidding.

Also, the rules of the Wish spell don't allow for vindictive interpretations unless you wish for more than what's on the list. Because it's a spell-like ability, it costs the efreeti no experience points, and can thusly create anything the wisher wants.

Heck, if you feel uncomfortable doing such things with an evil efreeti, summon a noble dijinn. It's a good creature, and Planar Binding is capturing as far as I can tell, yet you still get your three wishes.

[Brobdingnagian]

Wish doesn't disrupt the economy on the Material Plane, because almost everyone on the Material Plane is a commoner. Unless you're playing in Forgotten Realms, in which case, a good 25% of the population is high-level wizards, and you'll never find an NPC without at least 3 levels in a PC class, because Forgotten Realms is dumb.

Point being, since people who have reached a high enough level can just get as much gold as they want, and they're the only people who can make items worth more than 15,000 gp, gold is worthless to them, and so buying items worth more than that would take something other than gold.

[Artless]

The wish economy also makes any item below that 15,000 gp threshold trivial to obtain. So you could just say that every 15th level adventurer has a wand of cure <blank> wounds hidden away in their pants, instead of requiring them to keep track of stupid crap like that.

[Cielingcat]

1175629718[/unixtime]]Wish doesn't disrupt the economy on the Material Plane, because almost everyone on the Material Plane is a commoner. Unless you're playing in Forgotten Realms, in which case, a good 25% of the population are author self inserts, and you'll never find an NPC without at least 3 levels in a PC class, because Forgotten Realms is dumb.

Fixed it for you.

[Brobdingnagian]

Thanks.

[Judging__Eagle]

I hate the FR.

B/c it screws with my simulationist, narrative and gamist tendancies.

[Nihlin]

1175697013[/unixtime]]I hate the FR.

B/c it screws with my simulationist, narrative and gamist tendancies.

Wait, so it screws with your ability to have any kind of creative agenda at all?

...actually, yeah, I can see that.

[Brobdingnagian]

It also lacks any kind of interesting concept. Except maybe the "enough high-level characters to make a football league, and then still enough high-level characters to make a football league out of that football league". Blargh.

[Judging__Eagle]

No, it screws with my concept of logic, player flexibiity of choice and sense of mechanical cohesion.

I mean, seriously, the FR is an area the size of.... spain, or france; with more nations than Europe ever had.

It has 'supposedly' enough lvl 20 NPCs to run a professional footall league, but still needs adventurers?

It's 'created' material is so unoriginal that even a single one of Frank's "made up" societies have more new ideas than almost any collection of FR books; making it really limiting for someone who doesn't want to play "lets pretend we're in a medieval land, only there's lots of magic everywhere; but we'll pretend it actually does nothing to change the way people live."

And, of course, b/c you have about 200-500 lvl 20 PCs, you have any number of lvl 5 PCs to spook the players at lvl 1.

Which means that FR is a good campaign setting for weak DMs. =/

[Brobdingnagian]

You think maybe our Eberron DM would like to run FR?

[Chuckles]

1175629718[/unixtime]]Wish doesn't disrupt the economy on the Material Plane, because almost everyone on the Material Plane is a commoner.

So unless you have high level wizards getting whatever they want, you don't need to worry about 'wish and the economy', is that what I'm hearing?

[Judging__Eagle]

1175707943[/unixtime]]You think maybe our Eberron DM would like to run FR?

As soon as he brought in the lvl 5 and 10 NPCs we were playing FR.

Lvl 10 in Eberron is bloody Epic and whole power groups know your name.

Lvl 20 means everyone has heard of you in Eberron.

[Judging__Eagle]

1175708457[/unixtime]]

1175629718[/unixtime]]Wish doesn't disrupt the economy on the Material Plane, because almost everyone on the Material Plane is a commoner.

So unless you have high level wizards getting whatever they want, you don't need to worry about 'wish and the economy', is that what I'm hearing?

Well, Wish can't disrupt the economy b/c the people who use it aren't going to lower th prices of stuff that they can sell and the people who want something can't afford it.

Supply and Demand only works if the people who Demand can afford what is supplied.

Sixth level PCs can't really afford anything more than a +2-+3 armour and a +1-+2 weapon; if they could buy better gear, they could, but they need more cash. Cash that is really useless in the greater scheme of things.

Actaully, a good analogy of this would be Diablo 2.

Gold is literally the crap you use to repair your hot-shit gear.

It has no other use after a certain point.

You can get better gear than what the NPCs can sell you by going and slaying a major demon a few times.

It's the same in D&D. At first gold is useful to buy equipment (magical or at least superior) that might be better than what you can currently find (broken, worn out, rusted gear).

After you've gone around and killed some very tough monsters, you tend to find better gear by going on difficult missions.

Eventually, the best that the people in town can do for you is to help you replace your 'rations' (potions/town portal scrolls/identify scrolls), sell stuff that you don't want and use the resultant gold to bring your damaged equipment up to full, so that you can go back out and fight some more to find better gear.

Of course, D&D replaces the "killing monsters" with a few more options such as: "Killing monsters or champions of evil"; "harvesting extraplanar currency" (which, could very well be a result of killing monsters); "creating magical items"


There is also the fact that higher level characters don't want competition from lower level characters (b/c they might kill you, some day); which is why 'free' items to a lvl 11 PC aren't given away to lower level PCs. So the people at the top have a vested interest in not selling for less.

On the other hand, sneaky PCs can finangle a way to get access to Wish at very low levels. At which point the DM should tell them that they can't tap into their secret method of getting into the Wish economy unless the whole party can as well.

On the other hand, a crafty DM will make Wish valueless, by awarding custom items that are worth more than 15,000 gp and have wierd restrictions (to prevent their being stolen by higher level characters).

That, or charge the PCs 50-100 xp per candle of invocation that they Wish for. Nah, 200+ xp per candle.

Genies don't like to have to give out "free tickets" to more Wishes, so they charge extree for them.

[User3]

If you're playing normal D&D, Candle of Invocation should not exist. It is *by far* the most broken item in the entire game, because (in normal D&D) you can never set a price for it where it isn't worthwhile to just put all your monies in a pile and trade everything your entire party has for one of these. The only item that even comes close is the Thought Bottle. Just excise it from the game.

If you're dealing with the Wish economy already, you can instead go ahead and make it 15,001 gp. That's still too low (chain-Gate Titans for the win!), but at least it isn't wishable.

[Brobdingnagian]

Actually, I prefer to make the Candle of Invocation exactly 15,000 gp, so that it is still accessable under the Wish economy, but only when the PC's are at the level where the Wish economy isn't game-breaking, simply expected wealth.

[technomancer]

That would allow everyone pretty much equal access to the wish economy, because you can either cast planar binding yourself, or buy the candle.

[Brobdingnagian]

Of course, if people find the Wish economy to be truly disruptive for whatever reason, the solution is simple and only requires these two easy steps on the part of the DM.

Step 1: Genies don't exist.

Step 2: Nothing gets Wish as a spell-like or supernatural ability.

Problem solved. I don't see it would be a problem, myself, but there you have it.

[Username17]

I mean, seriously, the FR is an area the size of.... spain, or france; with more nations than Europe ever had.

I don't know that that's true. Let's consider the countries in Europe in 1453:

1. 
   
2. Albania
   
3. Alsace
   
4. Aragon
   
5. Athens
   
6. Austria
   
7. Auvergne
   
8. Avignon
   
9. Baden
   
10. Bavaria
    
11. Bohemia
    
12. Bosnia
    
13. Brandenburg
    
14. Bremen
    
15. Brittany
    
16. Brunswick
    
17. Burgundy
    
18. Candar
    
19. Castille
    
20. Catalunya
    
21. Cleves
    
22. Cologne
    
23. Connacht
    
24. Corfu
    
25. Cyprus
    
26. Dauphine
    
27. Denmark
    
28. England
    
29. Flanders
    
30. Foix
    
31. France
    
32. Friesland
    
33. Gelre
    
34. Genoa
    
35. Granada
    
36. Hamburg
    
37. Hannover
    
38. Hesse
    
39. Hungary
    
40. Karaman
    
41. The Knights of Malta
    
42. Leinster
    
43. Liege
    
44. Lithuania
    
45. Lorraine
    
46. Luneburg
    
47. Mainz
    
48. Maldive
    
49. Mantua
    
50. Mazrovia
    
51. Mecklenburg
    
52. Milan
    
53. Modena
    
54. Moldavia
    
55. Montenegro
    
56. Munster
    
57. Münster
    
58. Naxos
    
59. Northumberland
    
60. Norway
    
61. Novgorod
    
62. Oldenburg
    
63. Orleans
    
64. The Ottoman Empire
    
65. The Palatinate
    
66. The Papal State
    
67. Pommerania
    
68. Portugal
    
69. Provence
    
70. Pskov
    
71. Ragusa
    
72. Riga
    
73. Salzburg
    
74. Sardina
    
75. Savoy
    
76. Saxony
    
77. Schweiz
    
78. Scotland
    
79. Serbia
    
80. Sicily
    
81. Silecia
    
82. Sweden
    
83. The Teutonic Order
    
84. Toulouse
    
85. Transylvania
    
86. Tuscany
    
87. Tyrone
    
88. Urbino
    
89. Urbino
    
90. Venice
    
91. Wallachia
    
92. Wurtenburg
    
93. Wurzburg

You know, unless I forgot one or two...

-Username17

[Judging__Eagle]

You're talking city states for a lot of those power groups though.

However, that is an impressive list.

What if we added 100+ lvl 20 PCs? (or how many lvl 20 PCs exist in FR).

Plus, even larger areas of Europe have been amalgamated in the past by different power groups, without modern technology or magic.

The forgotten realms just seems like no one considered what lvl 20 wizards are capable of. Especially ones that want to take over the world. Since there are such characters at that high of a level.

[Catharz]

1175745374[/unixtime]]Actually, I prefer to make the Candle of Invocation exactly 15,000 gp, so that it is still accessable under the Wish economy, but only when the PC's are at the level where the Wish economy isn't game-breaking, simply expected wealth.

Because once you hit mid levels, everyone should cast as a cleric 20.

[User3]

Frank, should I be impressed I can place most of those on a map? (Also, you have 2 repeats: Munster and Urbino).

[Username17]

1175826001[/unixtime]]Frank, should I be impressed I can place most of those on a map? (Also, you have 2 repeats: Munster and Urbino).

Urbino is indeed doubled up. However Munster and Münster are totally different. Munster was a Monarchy in southern Ireland and Münster was a theocracy in Western Germania. Not even related.

Also, I forgot Armanac (Basque land), Luxumburg, and Pskov & Crimea (both of which are in fact in eastern Europe though they feel more like Central Asian nations).

-Username17

[Brobdingnagian]

I also prefer to simply take away the cleric casting boost. That was a dumb idea to begin with.