Logistics And The Wish Economy

[Chamomile]

It seems to me the Wish Economy screws with your Logistics and Dragons something fierce. Why does any army answering to any Wish Economy character ever have any non-magical weapons or armor? Granted, kitting out all your minions with as many lesser magical items as they can hold is a great way to make sure that within a decade or two those magical items have propagated to the general population and plummeted in value, but while that's happening it gives you an edge over your opponents, especially ones who don't have access to the Wish Economy and thus can't hope to likewise equip their tiny men with as many magical weapons as the tiny men can attune. But this isn't how D&D works. You never get your adventurer party turning up at level 1 to the armory for their first adventure and being told to take their pick of any lesser magical item ever because they are basically free, and when you kill a few level 2 warriors of the city watch in a major city, you can't loot a magic halberd and a magic suit of full plate off of each and every one. This is particularly glaring once the players are in charge of a kingdom and can totally use the Wish Economy to do stuff like this even if your NPCs have some kind of agreement not to do so for whatever reason.

Am I missing something?

[Lokathor]

The patched version of Wish can't be used to create things that grant Wish effects.

So all the Wishes from djinnis have to be done with binding a djinni and then getting it to give you a Wish, which takes a non-zero amount of time.

So even if a +1 Longsword will never rust no matter how wet it gets with blood and rain (until a rust monster touches it), you'll still only be making a few every day. If you've got a thousand guys, that's a lot of days just to give your army a +1 to hit over the other army.

[Grek]

Short Answer: It isn't worth the effort to wish for all that crap.

Long Answer: In D&D raising an army is good for 3 things: Killing small time monsters that aren't worth the King's time, enforcing taxation and as a hobbyist sport for bored wizards.

In D&D, the biggest and scariest thing you can expect to be able to kill by raising a big enough army of low level warriors is a chimera. Given that arming your chimera-hunting posse with magic weapons and armor will not meaningfully improve their ability to hunt down pests and that a chimera is not actually a meaningful threat to a Wish Economy character, they probably don't bother with magic of any sort. Instead they have everyone show up armed with slings and pay an alchemist to brew up a vat of drow poison to coat the bullets with. The chimera is hit with a handful of the several dozen bullets being shot every round and eventually rolls a 1 on it's Fort save, causing it to fall first unconscious and then from the air.

As a police force, a +2 weapon is not meaningfully better than regular weapons. Peasants are going to give in or get squashed regardless of the bonus on the tax collector's flail. Anyone who cannot be apprehended by a squad of warriors without magic weapons but who could be apprehended by those same warriors if they had magic weapons would probably be better dealt with by deploying extra squads to deal with them, or by showing up and disintegrating them as an example to other tax-dodgers.

What your players are doing now is #3: hobbyist warrior dress up sport. It's like chess, but for powerful wizards.

[Lokathor]

The majority of the army doesn't even get +2 from the magic items, they just get a +1 because they're 1st to 3rd level.

[Username17]

Long Answer: In D&D raising an army is good for 3 things: Killing small time monsters that aren't worth the King's time, enforcing taxation and as a hobbyist sport for bored wizards.

I would add a fourth thing: they act as an alarm system. Your tiny men on regular patrols will tell you about Formian invasions and zombie uprisings much faster than if you wait for rumors to be spread from nearby villages.

-Username17

[fectin]

They may also prevent bands of plucky adventurers from overthrowing you. At least, they'll reduce how often you have to do your own dirty work.

[Libertad]

@ the OP:

The Tomes make the assumption that the power-gaming of powerful spellcasters are possible, and construct an explanation as to how they can exist in a setting where most people are subsistence-level Commoners.

A large part of it is the Status !uo of a typical fantasy setting. A D&D realm like the Tippyverse would be far too alien and strange, and won't mesh well with the standard "heroic pseudo-medieval fantasy adventure" game that most of us have in mind. Magic must feel special, even though it's a class feature for about 7 out of 11 classes in 3.X

The Wish Economy patches some big holes in high-level shenanigans, but even then it requires the assumption that there's going to be no reasonable exchange rates between the three economies, or that adventurers are for the most part wandering Murder Hobos whose monster-slaying antics almost always produce a drain on the economy (Adventurers Drain the Economy essay) and won't do stuff like train villagers in martial and magical arts, or build things like Decanters of Endless Water in impoverished desert regions. Micromanaging economics and widespread access to magic for the villagers isn't a strength of the game, and so the Logistics & Dragons aspect isn't the primary concern. Even in places like Forgotten Realms, the average peasant hasn't owned a single magic item.

It's supporting the plausibility of Murder Hobos as a career concept with ruins and towns in need of help from rampaging dragons, and a world full of monsters making travel dangerous.

Then there's also the fact that people aren't going to entrust magic items to every green recruit out there. Magic is power, and the people at the top of society don't like to share.

[Ice9]

I feel like the airtight wall between the wish and non-wish economies is actually pretty ventilated. The issue became obvious when I started thinking about non-arbitrary rules for minions, and the idea of paying mercenaries. You get the issue that at some level, people enter the Wish economy - let's say 9th, although there may be shenanigans to enter it earlier.

To a 9th level character, 8th level minions are still pretty damn useful. 8th level spies? 8th level scouts? 8th level utility caster? All things a 9th level character would gladly pay for, with their infinite supply of wishable items. And while some might try to pay the minimum possible, the combination of competition for the best mercenaries, occasional generous people, and the fact that it's not hard to pump out several items a day in downtime means that soon a lot of 8th level people are to a large extent in the wish economy as well. And those 8th level people find 7th level minions pretty damn useful ...

It may not be quite on the level of "the entire army has magic everything", but there is going to be a fair amount of leakage from the wish economy, and a range of levels where characters are in both economies at once.

I think that if you want Dungeons & Logistics, you may be better off just smacking free wish methods out of the game and sticking with the "money is actually worth things" economy. Yes, this has downsides like not allowing use of diamond palaces for aesthetic purposes, but for the case of Logistics & Dragons it works better.

[Username17]

Wish Economy characters do not have "infinite" minor magic items. They have "unlimited" minor magic items, which is importantly different. Between the fact that they can spend some time and just get a new one and the eight item limit, there's not much reason for them to give a fuck about them one way or the other. But they don't actually have infinity of them in pile or even a thousand of them in a pile.

-Username17

[Chamomile]

Okay, so it looks like to make this work I need to know exactly how characters can gain access to the Wish Economy, including how frequently the wishes from any given source can be used and what level it comes online (although if you don't know the details off the top of your head, I can look them up myself once I know how the process of getting the wish functions), so I can figure out what the number of wishes available to a Wish Economy character is and, if necessary, close up the loops. Can anyone help me out? The only one I actually know about is Efreet binding.

[Red_Rob]

Well, there is a lot of variance in what people mean by "the wish economy", which causes some confusion. I did some work on it for my item system so I did some thinking about it then.

The real core of the Wish Economy is that there are some items that people will not, as a rule, trade away in return for gold, or gems, or generally material wealth of any kind. The reason for this is that these items cannot be created or obtained with powerful magic, whereas material wealth can be and is therefore obtainable without any real outlay if you try hard enough. So, really the phrase "in the Wish economy" simply means that you have the ability to be self sustainable when it comes to material wealth. This can be achieved in a number of ways, the classics being Planar Binding to gain access to some number of Wishes each day, Plane Shift to travel to one of the magical lands of diamonds that D&D presents, or even Fabricate to create high value goods from raw materials and becoming rich beyond the dreams of avarice in short order. Now, you might be thinking that these are limited to casters only, and you'd be right. Characters without access to magic have a harder time getting to the stage where material wealth is no biggy, but after liberating a few Dragon hoards or capturing a Diamond castle from a rogue Earth Elemental vizier they are kind of on the same scale.

Now, having "vast wealth" or being able to Wish up 25,000 gp or a Lesser item every day doesn't mean you can equip your whole army with +1 swords and armor. That still takes a hell of a long time, and those Wishes could be doing something else like creating those little pastries you like so much that the chef just can't get right. But it does mean that you personally are going to have whatever low level gear you want for you and your buddies. Which works out quite nicely for a game about a bunch of murder hobos, don't you think?

Now, as an aside, because Medium and Greater magic items are Wish Economy only items a party will pretty soon find itself wanting access to Wish Economy goods even if they are not yet at the stage where money is a formality. This means that at about level 7-8 the party may begin searching out Astral Diamonds or planning a raid on a Pain farm purely as a result of them wanting to upgrade their gear. This is fine, as at this stage they are powerful enough to survive having this level of wealth on them, and once they have obtained a Planar Pearl or whatever they are in a position to bargain with creatures that can provide them with anything they want. So that can be a kind of "side entry" into the Wish economy for characters that want it.

I feel like the airtight wall between the wish and non-wish economies is actually pretty ventilated.

At the lower levels there will always be some bleed through. A party without access to easy wealth creation that obtains some low level Wish Economy goods (Souls, small amounts of Hope) may trade them away for large amounts of pre-wish goods to other parties in a similar position. The fact is, however, that this is firstly quite a rare occurence, given how rare Wish Economy goods are in the first place, and secondly fairly dangerous given that powerful creatures covet these goods and have access to Scry and Teleport. I mean, a Rakshasa is unlikely to be bothered to hunt you down and murder you all because you got a Fire Diamond at level 6, but the more such goods you accumulate the higher the chances will be. And that, more than anything else, is what keeps the good stuff out of the hands of those without the power to earn it.

[Ice9]

Actually, thinking about it more, the problem with the "airtight border" is that there is no specific border. Wizards get Planar Binding at 11th level. Clerics get Planar Ally at the same time, although they need to be the right alignment. Everybody else is fucked. And anything that gets, say, an 11th level Soldier into the Wish economy (scroll of Planar Binding being purchasable, friendly Wizard, special location) can be equally well applied to a lower-level character.

So even without the "bleed through" effect of cohorts/mercenaries, you have a situation where:
A) Some parties don't even get to be in the Wish economy for a long time. Or ...
B) The "border" is 5+ levels wide.

[Kaelik]

Actually Ice, you are conflating two things:

1) There is some stuff that is not wishable, and therefore won't be traded for anything that is wishable.

2) You can get a really large pile of money, possibly arbitrarily large, with Wish.

But see, even though Wish is the sole defining aspect of what falls into 1 it is not the only way to get 1, in fact, it can't get you 1, And while it can get you 2, it is not the only way of getting 2.

A Cleric at level 9 who casts Planeshift to the Plane of Diamonds, and picks up as many diamonds as he wants, and then goes home and buys what he wants with diamonds has the same amount of infinite moneys as a Wizard who casts wish, but he has to buy things that aren't diamonds from the actual economy. He has the same amount of desire for wishable goods.

And anyone who has adventured in Limbo and come back with some Chaos has "entered" the Post-Wish Economy as much as anyone else with some post wish stuff, and more than the level 11 Wizard who only has things he wished for.




For about the billionth time, someone has failed to understand the Wish economy because the correct name for it should be "The Post-Wish Economy."

[Ice9]

I understand how it works, although I may have phrased the example badly. The concept involves two things that I don't think hold up under in a larger context than an individual party:
1) People don't sell post-Wish items for normal money.
2) People do sell wishable items for normal money.

Where #1 breaks down is that - as you mentioned - it's entirely possible to acquire post-Wish items before having access to Wish (or other infinite-gold methods). Or for the pre-Wish retainers of a post-Wish character to be given that character's extra post-Wish items. Now you have people that do have post-Wish items, don't have unlimited gold, and would therefore potentially sell said items for gold.

Where #2 breaks down is this - can that Cleric with a bag of diamonds actually get many magic items for them? Let's see where magic items come from:
1) People with Wish. Who don't care about your diamonds because they already have as many as they want.
2) People with item crafting feats. Who probably will sell them - but to a market that's massively inflated. The presence of non-Wish unlimited money tricks is going to massively devalue those things, to the extent that people are paying 10K of diamonds for a Hat of Disguise, because they have several million worth of gems but there's a limited supply of hats.


#2 is actually the bigger problem here. Since post-Wish items are by definition a limited supply, we can assume that people with Wish end up buying most of the ones that do enter the gold-economy. So it's going to be pretty rare.

But things like "Planeshift to Diamonds" totally crash the gold economy, without even the fig leaf of non-interaction that Wish provides. And as mentioned, non-interaction breaks down even for Wish when you consider buying things beyond personal equipment.

[Kaelik]

Where #1 breaks down is that - as you mentioned - it's entirely possible to acquire post-Wish items before having access to Wish (or other infinite-gold methods). Or for the pre-Wish retainers of a post-Wish character to be given that character's extra post-Wish items. Now you have people that do have post-Wish items, don't have unlimited gold, and would therefore potentially sell said items for gold.

Where #2 breaks down is this - can that Cleric with a bag of diamonds actually get many magic items for them? Let's see where magic items come from:
1) People with Wish. Who don't care about your diamonds because they already have as many as they want.
2) People with item crafting feats. Who probably will sell them - but to a market that's massively inflated. The presence of non-Wish unlimited money tricks is going to massively devalue those things, to the extent that people are paying 10K of diamonds for a Hat of Disguise, because they have several million worth of gems but there's a limited supply of hats.

And what you are failing to see is the scope of the economy in both cases. There are an infinite number of crafters crafting an infinite number of Hat's of Disguise, so you can totally use your infinite money to buy them at a rate that works out to that price in the DMG.

Planeshifting to the Plane of Diamonds totally doesn't effect the economy any more than Wishing for gold and buying stuff, because the economy is huge, and so it barely feels it. Same for the occasional post wish pile that gets sold for gold. It doesn't fucking do much, and quickly finds it's way into the hands of someone who recognizes it's true value, and doesn't sell it for gold.

[RadiantPhoenix]

And what you are failing to see is the scope of the economy in both cases. There are an infinite number of crafters crafting an infinite number of Hat's of Disguise, so you can totally use your infinite money to buy them at a rate that works out to that price in the DMG.

Planeshifting to the Plane of Diamonds totally doesn't effect the economy any more than Wishing for gold and buying stuff, because the economy is huge, and so it barely feels it. Same for the occasional post wish pile that gets sold for gold. It doesn't fucking do much, and quickly finds it's way into the hands of someone who recognizes it's true value, and doesn't sell it for gold.

While this may be true in the grand scheme of things, locally you probably do have a large effect on the economy when you do this.

[fectin]

"Dnd fails as a rigorous economy simulator, news at 11"?

[Ice9]

Depending on what item we're talking, the craftsman may have to be 5th level or even higher. There's not an infinite amount of those guys around and accessible in most settings. And if there are, wouldn't there also be an infinite amount of Clerics bringing back infinite diamonds? Which would just fuck the economy up even more.

[Chamomile]

The direction I'd prefer to see this conversation taken in is "how might D&D be made a rigorous enough economy simulator that players could conceptually interact with it as major political/economic powers?" Which is what a lot of people have been talking about, and I would prefer they not stop.

[Kaelik]

Depending on what item we're talking, the craftsman may have to be 5th level or even higher. There's not an infinite amount of those guys around and accessible in most settings. And if there are, wouldn't there also be an infinite amount of Clerics bringing back infinite diamonds? Which would just fuck the economy up even more.

There are explicitly an infinite number of them in Greyhawk/FR.

And yes, there are also an infinite number of clerics collecting diamonds. And we know those two things average out to a market price that is explicitly told to you in the books.

[Ice9]

[morbo]Infinity does not work that way![/morbo]
Saying that those two things will "equal out", and not have any other effects on the rest of the gold economy, is ... a stretch, to put it mildly.

As for making it an effective economy simulator - that's a good question, and one that I've not had much success with. I don't think that infinite-gold methods are particularly helpful to that goal though, so removing those is probably a good idea.

[zeruslord]

What actually matters in an infinite environment is the relative density of people making hats of disguise to people wanting to buy them, assuming the sets have equal cardinality (probably they're countable, but that's not important). If travel were free, this could theoretically cancel however we wanted it to - see Hilbert's Infinite Hotel - but if the cost increases with distance, there's only so many accessible buyers or sellers.

[Kaelik]

[morbo]Infinity does not work that way![/morbo]
Saying that those two things will "equal out", and not have any other effects on the rest of the gold economy, is ... a stretch, to put it mildly.

As for making it an effective economy simulator - that's a good question, and one that I've not had much success with. I don't think that infinite-gold methods are particularly helpful to that goal though, so removing those is probably a good idea.

Yes, that is exactly how infinity works.

That stupid 10,000gp for a hat number isn't the starting point. I'm not saying the two infinites cancel out to one.

The starting point is an infinite number of hats divided by an infinite number of diamond clerics.

And since infinity over infinity could equal literally anything, the rules specifically tell you that in the case of this specific kind of hat, it cancels to 10,000gp.

The point is that of fucking course trying to run an economics simulator on infinite supplies of a single item is too complex for any ruleset. It is too complex for fucking reality, which is why the rules fucking give you a price that just takes into account all those effects.

[Red_Rob]

Kaelik, I don't really get your point here. It is plainly obvious that the designers of the game, who actually wrote those prices, didn't think that you could get infinite wealth at any level. Just look at the WBL table for proof of that. So you're obviously not saying it is design intent that the prices worked out like they did in light of infinite wealth tricks.

Are you saying it's better to just accept that the prices work out to those in the book and make the logic to fit that, rather than try to work out a whole economic system from first principles and then write all new wealth charts based on that? Because I can totally get behind that.

Also, maybe I'm being dumb but how are there infinite crafters and infinite clerics in Greyhawk? Are you talking about the fact there are an infinite number of prime material planes? Because even if that's true, as long as even 1 prime doesn't have any clerics on it Plane Shifting (i.e. Dark Sun) doesn't that screw up the infinity math? Or am I just showing my math illiteracy?

D&D would be much more sane if every instance of "infinite" was replaced with "really big".

[Chamomile]

Because even if that's true, as long as even 1 prime doesn't have any clerics on it Plane Shifting (i.e. Dark Sun) doesn't that screw up the infinity math?

Infinity-1=infinity, so no. Infinity is really counter-intuitive.