Plausible Social/Political Structures in D&D Land

[Anguirus]

Vebyast: except even that's wrong. You're saying that a wizard can use his human capital to produce physical capital. Which is of course true. And it's actually really cool if the capital he creates doesn't depreciate. But it's still just capital. Technology is stuff that improves productivity by being known, rather than being a physical infrastructure that exists somewhere.

Another way of looking at it is the old line that "information wants to be free." And it does; sharing information is free. In contrast, sharing a wand of "wall of stone", or a plow, is expensive; if I give you mine then I don't have one any more. Technology is "productivity-enhancing stuff that wants to be free," and capital is "productivity-enhancing stuff that doesn't want to be free." For gamist reasons, D&D has basically no technology, because they don't want your characters getting anything for free. And that makes sense. But it makes the whole setting kind of anti-technological.

But we have Wizard academies and the like. We have an infrastructure in place with the explicate goal to technologize magic. And for good reason. If you are the ruler of a nation in a magic enriched world you would be out of your fucking mind not to do everything in your power to advance research into both magical theory and effective teaching methods for magical learning. By making magic a natural law of your universe (even an extremely complicated series of natural laws that not everyone could possibly understand) you have made it, if not a technology, at least technologizable. Let me put it this way, there are a great many sciences that have "intelligence" barriers in the technologization process. Nevertheless, we have bio-tech industries on a massive scale because the utility of technologizing science is such that it would be completely unthinkable not to do that. How much more so in a magic enriched world.

If there were reason to, as a society, figure out how to effectively teach people how to ride without stirrups we would try to do that and "horse riding" would become a technology.

[Vebyast]

DND is technology-unfriendly, but not technology-free. Even if it takes an eleventh-level spellcaster to render every iron smelter in the world obsolete, any eleventh-level spellcaster can do it once someone realizes that it can be done. The fact that only 0.5% of the population can take advantage of the technology doesn't make it not technology. It's just like any other technology with a huge cost of entry or which requires multiple advanced degrees to use.

To give a concrete example, I know generally how most of Windows works. Given a few dozen years I could probably write it myself. I don't have that time, but that doesn't mean that it's not technology. In the same way, even though random farmers can't actually make items that cast sixth-level spells, the idea that those items exist is still technology.



Additionally, consider Honda versus Hondini's Expeditious Shoemaker. Even though both of them are clearly selling capital, I'd argue that both are fundamentally technological companies. They both have an idea (cars, boots of expeditious retreat) that lets them produce a piece of capital that other people will buy.

[jadagul]

Vebyast, you're right of course that D&D isn't technology free. Things like "the knowledge that it's possible to become a 9th-level wizard and start casting "wall of iron"" are technology. But the ability to do that is a--very expensive--form of human capital.

Which brings us back to Anguirus's claim, that magic is technologizable. And really, by the rules, it isn't. We have wizard academies, which are institutions designed to create more wizards. And to the extent that someone finds a way to make wizards more efficiently, that's technology. But by the rules of the game, that's not possible. You get high-level wizards by taking low-level wizards and sending them out to break into people's houses, stab them in the face, and take their stuff. That's not technologizable, at least within the current rules of the world.

A good analogy is, say, musical performances. There are lots of people who can play piano really well. And we know how to get people who play piano really well. The answer is to have them practice (in the right way) for a couple hours a day for several years. This is known, and this is understood. Our knowledge of efficient ways to practice is actually a technology. But that doesn't mean we're up to our ears in Rachmaninoffs and Van Cliburns. Fundamentally, the human capital is expensive.

Now, what I keep wanting to say is "this doesn't mean all our music is played by this sort of pianist." But it is. And that's because we have a completely different technology, called, roughly, "music recording," that allows one very talented pianist to play piano for like everybody in the world. That's technology.

The equivalent in D&D land would be, say, if someone came up with a much cheaper way of making that "infinite walls of stone" wand. Invent a method of making such a wand that takes three moderately skilled but totally mundane craftsmen a week and 50 gold. Then you can scale that up, and everybody has tons of stone and all the miners and masons go home, and some of them get jobs learning to make wands and the others can get a job mining diamonds and rubies and other things that we can't make cheap wands for. That's how technology works in the real world.

But D&D specifically bans that, because it wants to put relatively firm limits on character power--it'd be a really stupid game if the first level wizard rolls an intelligence check to invent a want of fireball that costs 20 gold and does 10d10 damage per hit. For that matter, it'd be stupid if a 15-th level wizard could do that, because then one would have and your first level fighter could buy the damn thing. So the game doesn't allow that. And that's probably a good choice. But it means that everything is very tied into human capital, and none of the characters can really do anything other than leveling that will increase their productivity.

[MGuy]

@Fuchs: For profit, power, influence, because its "right", tradition, there are a whole spectrum of reasons to spread your power amongst others. To allow others to ply your trade with yoru tutelage. As I said when I first brought it up, becuae people are so varied there is no REAL reason to question what reasoning would drive someone to improve the lot of those that are not themselves. If you're going to save the world, a world which you can leave behind for some place better, why not teach others to save themselves?

Vebyast: except even that's wrong. You're saying that a wizard can use his human capital to produce physical capital. Which is of course true. And it's actually really cool if the capital he creates doesn't depreciate. But it's still just capital. Technology is stuff that improves productivity by being known, rather than being a physical infrastructure that exists somewhere.

Magic then is a technology and by being known it improves the lives of everyone, their productivity, and their survivability.

Another way of looking at it is the old line that "information wants to be free." And it does; sharing information is free. In contrast, sharing a wand of "wall of stone", or a plow, is expensive; if I give you mine then I don't have one any more. Technology is "productivity-enhancing stuff that wants to be free," and capital is "productivity-enhancing stuff that doesn't want to be free." For gamist reasons, D&D has basically no technology, because they don't want your characters getting anything for free. And that makes sense. But it makes the whole setting kind of anti-technological.

Building a computer is not free. It was much more difficult before than it is now. Same can be said about crafting a sword. It used to be nigh impossible for someone to make one. However as the information spread so did the methods to produce it. Magic being a natural phenomenon that has clear, evident, and repeatable effects in the world would naturally be very common amongst those above the lowest set. It would be naturally more common amongst those civilizations that have public education. It would be saturated amongst the people in a society that holds magic as some kind of tradition/cultural thing. People know that magic exists. Naturally people will want to do whatever they can to harness it because knowledge of it increases productivity and survivability.

[Anguirus]

What is the highest level that one might expect to reach from wizard school? Why is this the level cap? Is there a way around this problem?

It is clearly more efficient for the individual to go adventuring, however, there are also an awful lot of reasons why you wouldn't do that if you are just a dude that wants a good job. If any dude with an int of 12 can learn whisper wind as a profession you seriously have a crazy efficient (by assumed D&D standards) communications network.

If I understand correctly you are saying that not everyone can learn magic and those that can can't learn high level spells without adventuring. My question is why are we assuming this? Rules mechanically I have no idea how you gain xp from schooling or how these things are even remotely translatable but conceptually it is very hard to swallow that the world's greatest physicists are the dudes that go out and murder people with physics and not the ones that stay home and read books about that shit. As to your musician analogy, I'm not sure that it is appropriate to compare people that learn how to interact with the laws of their universe to musicians in that there is a subjective nature to aesthetics that is just not there with science. You could totally just say that all casters are innately gifted like sorcerers or whatever and I would have no issue with that but if you have magic as demonstrable, repeatable and understandable (at least by a minority of people) then it is technologizable in a way that musicianship isn't.

[K]

DND is technology-unfriendly, but not technology-free. Even if it takes an eleventh-level spellcaster to render every iron smelter in the world obsolete, any eleventh-level spellcaster can do it once someone realizes that it can be done. The fact that only 0.5% of the population can take advantage of the technology doesn't make it not technology. It's just like any other technology with a huge cost of entry or which requires multiple advanced degrees to use.

It doesn't render every iron smelter obsolete. It probably won't even render the local iron smelters obsolete.

People will still need iron, and it'll take years, perhaps centuries, of work to build enough wands to equal the output of a single nation and even then there is going to be people who will simply want to not deal with your nation to get their iron. In fact, the cost of making the wands might not even be worth it in the lifetime of a single mage because it'll be cheaper to buy iron from another nation than make the wands. The money you spent to make the wands might have been better used to fund a war against a neighboring nation and more profitable because then you get all their resources.

That capital is also vulnerable. If a neighboring nation wants to sneak in a agent he can destroy centuries of work with a ball-peen hammer and remove all of that productive capacity. Worse, he can grab this stack of wands and teleport out and now your enemies have all the productive capacity.

Actual mines are a far less risky proposition and cheaper in the short term. You also aren't tying up a powerful spellcaster that might be needed to prevent the collapse of your civilization.

The devil is in the details. Always.

[jadagul]

Mguy: that's all true. And honestly, the "is it technology" thing is kind of a red herring; among other things we can define the word to mean whatever we want it to mean. I was just trying to explain why that phrasing came up the last time around.

The real point is that very few people can actually use magic. Well, I mean, you can hypothesize a society where the top twenty percent of the population has a wizard level or something, but that's not really supported by either the rules or most people's conceptions of what they want the game to look like, so I'm not sure why you would. But given that few people can use magic at all, and very very few can cast spells above third level, the fact that "one guy can make more bricks in a day if he uses a 5th level spell than he can if he uses a pickaxe" is basically irrelevant, because the real point is that anyone who has 5th level spells isn't going to go into masonry.

Placido Domingo could go into busking. He'd be really good at it. But he doesn't, because he's Placido fucking Domingo. Lance Armstrong could make a living as a bicycle courier. He'd be really good at it. He'd be better than anyone else currently doing it. But he doesn't, because why the fuck would he? Elminster could be the greatest mason in the world. Or he could be, you know, Elminster.

The real question is what things can magic do that it's actually worth having mages do. I think in the other thread Frank crunched some numbers and concluded that Wall of Iron is a big enough deal that iron production would probably be mostly magical, and Wall of Stone isn't big enough that masonry gets taken over by wizards. Because they all have better things to do.

Edit for cross-posting: Anguirus, you're asking the questions we need to ask. The fight in the other thread was over MGuy's refusal to do that.

Though I think musicianship is precisely the right analogy--we understand how to make really good musicians really well. The point I was trying to make is that even though we understand that, it takes a lot of effort and practice and it's a craft. And that really does seem to be the way D&D wants us to think of spellcasting.

K: as I said above, I think Frank ran the numbers and "Making every iron smelter in the world obsolete" takes one wizard working full-time (on directly casting the spell, not on crafting), or something like that. So that's not implausible.

[K]

What is the highest level that one might expect to reach from wizard school? Why is this the level cap? Is there a way around this problem?

It is clearly more efficient for the individual to go adventuring, however, there are also an awful lot of reasons why you wouldn't do that if you are just a dude that wants a good job. If any dude with an int of 12 can learn whisper wind as a profession you seriously have a crazy efficient (by assumed D&D standards) communications network.

Whisper Wind is super inefficient compared to things like mirror towers or even smoke signal towers, or even just riders carrying messages. I mean, a 1st level spellcaster is not going to be a telecommunications hub with his ability to send just a few hundreds words per day.

[K]

K: as I said above, I think Frank ran the numbers and "Making every iron smelter in the world obsolete" takes one wizard working full-time (on directly casting the spell, not on crafting), or something like that. So that's not implausible.

I think that was one of those "if a 20th level wizard spend all his 6th and above slots could equal the output of a big mine" rather than "an 11th level could outproduce the world."

I mean, even outproducing the world is not a real feat. There will be a point where sending the iron over the mountain to the next nation costs more than that nation simply mining their own iron.

[jadagul]

K: as I said above, I think Frank ran the numbers and "Making every iron smelter in the world obsolete" takes one wizard working full-time (on directly casting the spell, not on crafting), or something like that. So that's not implausible.

I think that was one of those "if a 20th level wizard spend all his 6th and above slots could equal the output of a big mine" rather than "an 11th level could outproduce the world."

I mean, even outproducing the world is not a real feat. There will be a point where sending the iron over the mountain to the next nation costs more than that nation simply mining their own iron.

This is all true. On the other hand, while we're assuming every high-level spellcaster has an infinite gold loop and so we don't ask the player to actually play that out, each actual wizard in the actual game world has to have an actual infinite gold source. And "Outproduce a typical mine by casting Wall of Iron a couple dozen times every year" seems like a reasonable one. Not saying that will happen, just that it's not obviously dumb the way "Elminster, professional mason" is.

[Anguirus]

Whisper Wind is super inefficient compared to things like mirror towers or even smoke signal towers, or even just riders carrying messages. I mean, a 1st level spellcaster is not going to be a telecommunications hub with his ability to send just a few hundreds words per day.

That really depends on how many 1st level spellcasters you have. I could easily see one 1st level caster being as useful as one message carrier (on horseback) given that the speed and security of his messages would be, at least situationally, worth far more than the increased capacity of the riding messenger. But that, of course, is complicated by how literate your society is (that is, if it costs less to hire a mage to send your message to the town over than it does to hire a scribe to transcribe your letter and a riding messenger to take it over there and the mage's message gets there right now, who would hire the messenger) and also, by what your messenger is riding (does your world have hippogriff husbandry?) In either event, people seemingly ought to be more connected than the pre-railroad era US. That is amazingly less insular than medieval fantasy would imply.

[Spike]

It might be interesting to compare some of the commentary here to the setting of Eberron.

While that setting totally gives humans limited superpowers...er...spells... as racial abilities, you see the 'magic as technology' in the setting. You see a guild formed around people who can just talk over long distances with magic a couple times a day, making money... talking over long distances a couple times a day.

The best animal handlers are the guys who can... wait for it... talk to animals. And they totally have a guild.

[K]

Whisper Wind is super inefficient compared to things like mirror towers or even smoke signal towers, or even just riders carrying messages. I mean, a 1st level spellcaster is not going to be a telecommunications hub with his ability to send just a few hundreds words per day.

That really depends on how many 1st level spellcasters you have. I could easily see one 1st level caster being as useful as one message carrier (on horseback) given that the speed and security of his messages would be, at least situationally, worth far more than the increased capacity of the riding messenger. But that, of course, is complicated by how literate your society is (that is, if it costs less to hire a mage to send your message to the town over than it does to hire a scribe to transcribe your letter and a riding messenger to take it over there and the mage's message gets there right now, who would hire the messenger) and also, by what your messenger is riding (does your world have hippogriff husbandry?) In either event, people seemingly ought to be more connected than the pre-railroad era US. That is amazingly less insular than medieval fantasy would imply.

Considering a 1st level mage is sending 25 words per casting and the message is traveling at 6 MPH (a brisk walk), an actual messenger on a horse is probably faster.

The range of of 1 mile a level is also pretty limiting. The spell is second level, so it's actually the work of an expert adventurer so it's not like you can make training schools to make them (and magic items of Whispering Wind are going to be expensive).

And that's above and beyond the fact that a messenger can take an entire bag of mail.

[Anguirus]

The range of of 1 mile a level is also pretty limiting. The spell is second level, so it's actually the work of an expert adventurer so it's not like you can make training schools to make them (and magic items of Whispering Wind are going to be expensive).

And that's above and beyond the fact that a messenger can take an entire bag of mail.

This is where my confusion is coming from: if second level spells are reserved for expert adventurers how is it remotely plausible that 20th level spells even exist. I don't know how to begin to theorize what a world in which that sort of power differential exists would look like. You're right, of course, that D&D pretends like there is this enormous barrier to entry on learning magic but this is not satisfactory in that 1.) it contradicts that constantly by having magic fucking everywhere and 2.) a world with that sort of power disparity would likely implode. It seems that a more coherent magical world (that is, one in which magic is meaningfully present) would be one without such barriers. But, I'm also frequently wrong.

[Vebyast]

K: as I said above, I think Frank ran the numbers and "Making every iron smelter in the world obsolete" takes one wizard working full-time (on directly casting the spell, not on crafting), or something like that. So that's not implausible.

I think that was one of those "if a 20th level wizard spend all his 6th and above slots could equal the output of a big mine" rather than "an 11th level could outproduce the world."

I mean, even outproducing the world is not a real feat. There will be a point where sending the iron over the mountain to the next nation costs more than that nation simply mining their own iron.

That's one way to do it. A much better way is to enchant a command-word item. At 11th level, this would cost 60650gp to create (8 level-appropriate encounters), and it would produce just over ten tonnes (10220 kg) of iron per activation. At 12th level it would cost 66050gp (less than 7 encounters) and produce 16.7 tonnes per activation. Being activated once every six seconds around the clock (trivial if you have a few peasants sitting around somewhere), the 11th-level version would produce 5.3713e+07 tonnes per year and the 12th-level version would produce 8.7894e+07 tonnes. It would take about twenty thousand of the 11th-level version or ten thousand of the 12th-level version to equal modern steel production. I haven't been able to find any sources for medieval steel production, but I wouldn't be surprised to find that we make way more than ten thousand times as much steel as we did in 1500. According to the USGS , we produce more than twenty times now as we did in 1910, and that's after the industrial revolution and after US Steel kicked off.

(Side note: a 20th-level version would produce one-five-thousandth of the modern world's steel, and would cost 109250gp to produce, or about 1.3 level-appropriate encounters).


VVVV Phantom Steed has a base move of 20ft/CL, so a min-level casting (5th) would have a base speed of 100. It runs at 400ft/round (45 mph, 72 kph), or 230 miles per casting (Washington DC to New York). Also, Animal Messenger is way better than real carrier pigeons, because carrier pigeons have to be trained to a single location (and are therefore surprisingly difficult to deal with).

[Grek]

Considering a 1st level mage is sending 25 words per casting and the message is traveling at 6 MPH (a brisk walk), an actual messenger on a horse is probably faster.

Having an actual mage casting Whispering Wind is a terrible idea and you'd never do that. Instead, you'd have a magic item made that casts it at will, and have a clerk who makes 1sp a day send your messages for you.

Whispering Wind costs you 12000gp and goes 3 miles. Pricey unless your head of state can bitchslap them out of an efreet, in which case it is free. And your head of state probably can do that, or he isn't going to be head of state for long.

Animal Messenger costs you a mere 2000, so that's the poor king's option. Infinite carrier pigeons for free out of any city big enough to have them at all? Sure.

Even if you do use the pony express, he's going to be riding a Phantom Steed and going 160 feet a round (a bit over 18 MPH, or three times faster than the whispering wind). Each one costs 7200, and he can go for 218 miles in a day by magic horse and rides 12 hours a day. If it's super important, he can take two magic horse items and go twice that.

[K]

Considering a 1st level mage is sending 25 words per casting and the message is traveling at 6 MPH (a brisk walk), an actual messenger on a horse is probably faster.

Having an actual mage casting Whispering Wind is a terrible idea and you'd never do that. Instead, you'd have a magic item made that casts it at will, and have a clerk who makes 1sp a day send your messages for you.

Whispering Wind costs you 12000gp and goes 3 miles. Pricey unless your head of state can bitchslap them out of an efreet, in which case it is free. And your head of state probably can do that, or he isn't going to be head of state for long.

Animal Messenger costs you a mere 2000, so that's the poor king's option. Infinite carrier pigeons for free out of any city big enough to have them at all? Sure.

Even if you do use the pony express, he's going to be riding a Phantom Steed and going 160 feet a round (a bit over 18 MPH, or three times faster than the whispering wind). Each one costs 7200, and he can go for 218 miles in a day by magic horse and rides 12 hours a day. If it's super important, he can take two magic horse items and go twice that.

You know, for 56 gold a year I can rent a guy who is completely replaceable (as long as I assume he only travels 25 miles a day by walking there), unlike all this wicked expensive equipment that we assume is going to be guarded by low-level mooks.

As messages go, Whispering Wind kind of sucks since it doesn't even find the person you need to sent it to.

I think that's the whole point. A lot of the magical solutions aren't that useful for society. I mean, you can bind demons with planar binding to teleport mail pouches, but since you could just bind those same demons to bring resources from other nations or even dimensions I don't really think it's a good use.

Heck, for the price of an At-will Wall of Iron item I could buy a couple of Wish scrolls or a huge pile of True Domination and Greater Planar Binding scrolls to get my own army of Wish-casting monsters. At that point, who even cares about iron because I can make any kind of resources or goods.

[Grek]

Honestly, you could do even better than that using Marvellous Pigments, since those are limited by volume rather than value.

The items described above are only valuable on the mundane scale of things, and have the threat of retribution by the local lords (who can find you with magic and kill you without even thinking twice, or even set up a contingency to do it for them). These things wouldn't need guarded for the same reason that public waterfountains and statues do not need guarded. Anyone that tries to walk off with one is going to have their asses handed to them by the powers that be of society.

[K]

Honestly, you could do even better than that using Marvellous Pigments, since those are limited by volume rather than value.

Marvelous Pigments have a GP limit of what they make which is not coincidentally equal to their cost to make (2K), so that's a zero-sum game.

The items described above are only valuable on the mundane scale of things, and have the threat of retribution by the local lords (who can find you with magic and kill you without even thinking twice, or even set up a contingency to do it for them). These things wouldn't need guarded for the same reason that public waterfountains and statues do not need guarded. Anyone that tries to walk off with one is going to have their asses handed to them by the powers that be of society.

Waterfountains and statues don't get stolen because they are too big to easily steal and have no value. Even then, they get vandalized pretty regularly.

Things of value do get stolen. For example, banks get robbed.

Heck, the latest and greatest urban crime right now is to steal the copper wire in the ground that we use for power and internet. In England, it's gotten so bad that they are installing dye packs that explode when someone messes with the underground wiring.

[MGuy]

@Jadagul: There were several things I pointed out in the last argument I made about this. That low level magic makes everyone's life easier. That there is no "real" reason everyone can't learn magic. Assuming they can why shouldn't they? Why wouldn't someone set up a way that they could? Adepts (specifically non heroes) can apparently harness magic and there are any number of ways to do it (learning, demon pacts, faith, devotion to nature, bloodline, binding, etc). I believe its in Eberron where they not only have Artificers but also Magewrights (NPC artificers) that can create magic items without even being a mage. Then there is psions and psicraft. There are so many wondrous affects that permeate the world in general it seems natural that at least 40% of everyone you meet would have a connection to it. You don't even need a mega mage to start teaching everyone else the basics.

However, beyond this, I sternly believe that magic is a science. It is not like music where you need to produce a certain sound that may or may not tantalize listeners or move their hearts (because lets be honest not everyone likes/cares about the same music). By the virtue of it being a (super)natural phenomena with observable and replicable affects it must be something that can be observed and codified with science. It seems as though that magic, at least the kind wizards learn, is more like chemistry or engineering maybe. While not everyone will have the mind for the high end stuff there are plenty of simpler tricks you can teach the more common man that will improve everyone's lot should the educational climate of the setting allow.

[Grek]

[quote="K]Marvelous Pigments have a GP limit of what they make which is not coincidentally equal to their cost to make (2K), so that's a zero-sum game.[/quote]
Not once you're wishing for the pigments. Then you're getting iron in any shape/size you care about by spending 1 minutes painting. Even presharpened swords, suits of armour and so forth. It lets the magelord of the town hand it over to a trusted retainer and tell him "Make whatever the village needs" without that retainer needing to personally have any magical powers.

Heck, the latest and greatest urban crime right now is to steal the copper wire in the ground that we use for power and internet. In England, it's gotten so bad that they are installing dye packs that explode when someone messes with the underground wiring.

Stealing these wires does not involve walking into a wizard tower/feudal castle/temple, beating up the servants of the wizard/king/cleric, and then dealing with the fact that, even if there isn't contingency magic in place to summon demons from hell to kill anyone that tries to take the goods off the premises, there is now an entire political and military power who you have personally offended and who can track your every move with magic. And that's not even getting into the trouble that comes from trying to sell the items to people that know it belongs to the witch-king and know that he intends to kill whoever took it.

If it did involve all of that danger, people would not steal wires out of telephone lines.

[kzt]

If it did involve all of that danger, people would not steal wires out of telephone lines.

People steal electrical power lines. From substations running tens of thousands of volts. Yes, people regularly get turned into charcoal briquettes doing this. They still do it.

http://www.thisisscunthorpe.co.uk/news/ ... ticle.html
http://www.wbtv.com/Global/story.asp?S=13795114
http://www.kitv.com/r/26379974/detail.html
http://www.thestar.co.uk/news/66000-vol ... 6692596.jp
http://www.myvalleynews.com/story/53438/

[Grek]

I suppose I am a bit too much of an optimist, then. I assumed people couldn't be that stupid.

[Anguirus]

People steal electrical power lines. From substations running tens of thousands of volts. Yes, people regularly get turned into charcoal briquettes doing this. They still do it.

Yet, somehow we don't stop using power lines. Also, you don't regularly see people stealing tanks. Either magical items are a big enough deal that they are protected like a tank is or they aren't that big a deal and their occasional theft doesn't meaningfully affect their production. The situation that you've described is a false dilemma.

But I think we're getting ahead of ourselves here. The relevant questions, as I see them, are:

How much magic can your average person learn?
What are the barriers to entry into the "magical economy"?
How literate is our society?
How globalized*?
How egalitarian**?

*This is likely dependent on how much magic you have lying around to create and maintain communications and travel networks.

**This is, at least in part, likely dependent on the degree to which interracial coupling results in offspring as well as how "scientific" the society is. As I argued before, I think that the maintenance of a distinction between wizard and cleric suggests there was a scientific revolution at some point.

Once we have an answer to those questions we might begin to imagine what the industrial applications for magic would be but as it stands there are just too many variables floating around to confidently come to an answer.

[K]

[quote="K]Marvelous Pigments have a GP limit of what they make which is not coincidentally equal to their cost to make (2K), so that's a zero-sum game.

Not once you're wishing for the pigments. Then you're getting iron in any shape/size you care about by spending 1 minutes painting. Even presharpened swords, suits of armour and so forth. It lets the magelord of the town hand it over to a trusted retainer and tell him "Make whatever the village needs" without that retainer needing to personally have any magical powers.[/quote]

Ummm, you do understand what a zero-sum game is, right? The pigments make 2K worth of stuff, and they cost 2K to make. If you use a wish to make pigments to make stuff, you are actually getting less stuff than if you just wished it into existence directly.

So if you are getting free and unlimited wishes, you just wish for the stuff you want. The pigments are an unnecessary step.

Heck, the latest and greatest urban crime right now is to steal the copper wire in the ground that we use for power and internet. In England, it's gotten so bad that they are installing dye packs that explode when someone messes with the underground wiring.

Stealing these wires does not involve walking into a wizard tower/feudal castle/temple, beating up the servants of the wizard/king/cleric, and then dealing with the fact that, even if there isn't contingency magic in place to summon demons from hell to kill anyone that tries to take the goods off the premises, there is now an entire political and military power who you have personally offended and who can track your every move with magic. And that's not even getting into the trouble that comes from trying to sell the items to people that know it belongs to the witch-king and know that he intends to kill whoever took it.

If it did involve all of that danger, people would not steal wires out of telephone lines.

For the kind of wealth that sets up people for life, they are willing to go through all those troubles. People rob banks all the time with much the same problems. Even in a fantasy world, the power of authority is not absolute.

I mean, your whole "summons demons and has divination" can be defeated by magic as low as 2nd level. For a group trying to steal hundreds of thousands of gold pieces worth of stuff that is supposed to be everywhere, that minimal investment is worth it.