Wish Economy Trickle-Down Theory

[Foxwarrior]

Here are my assumptions:

1. It's possible to bind Efreet to get wishes for magic items worth 15000 gp or less.
2. Some fraction of the population (0.01% is quite sufficient) is capable of binding Efreet.
3. Permanent magic items last until destroyed.
4. The world has been around for thousands of years.
5. Many of the Efreet-binders don't hoard their items for thousands of years.

If Efreet-binders composing 0.01% of the population bind an average of one Efreeti per day, there are going to be a number of cheap magic items in the world equal to the number of people in it after 27 years. After a thousand, each person will have an average of 36 magic items worth just under 15000 gold. Since many of the efreet-binders will be slain by marauding kings or make their items and give them to the minions that use them most, most of these items will enter circulation a few decades after they are made.

Certainly, the wealth will be heavily concentrated on powerful individuals, but in societies that aren't completely top-heavy, dirt farmers would complain about only having one decanter of endless water.

Therefore, in the pre-wish economy, the major currency is items worth almost exactly 15000 gold, and the only reason a +1 weapon or +2 armor would exist is because Giant Frog.

tl;dr: Saying that you haven't "entered the Wish economy yet" in a Wish economy setting because you can't bind Efreet is as reasonable as saying you haven't "entered the Communist economy yet" in a Communist country because you haven't bough a government official.

Edit: Revised Set of Assumptions

1. It's possible to bind Efreet to get wishes for magic items worth 15000 gp or less.
2. Some fraction of the population is capable of binding Efreet.
2. b. Not all of those people are lazy assholes who can't see the merit in equipping their friends, minions, or mansion with freaky magical gewgaws and powerful weaponry. About 0.01% of the total population being extravagant/philanthropic/warlordy binders should be sufficient.
3. Magic items tend not to be destroyed, ever.
4. Efreet-binding has been around for thousands of years.
5. Many of the efreet-binders don't hoard their items for thousands of years.
6. Population growth is fairly negligible.
7. Wishing for an item usually creates that item, rather than simply teleporting it from somewhere else.

[hogarth]

The official explanation of the pre-Wish economy is LALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU LALALA.

[Foxwarrior]

I find it slightly ironic that the massive profusion of cheap-ish magic items means that you should sometimes find +1 Keen daggers in the stomachs of Quill Rats.

[Red_Rob]

Firstly, just because you can bind an efreet to make a magic item every day, doesn't mean you will. Binding an efreet is a fairly time consuming and precise activity, if you draw the magic circle a little wonky or mis-word your wish all hell could (quite literally) break loose. What does the average Wizard living in a tower need hundreds of items for anyway? Once you have enough items to fulfill all your needs and desires there is little incentive to make more. Also, a proportion of your potential wishes are going to be spent on summoning sex demons, wishing for more Con (for the sex demons) and wishing away Hell Gonorrhea(you get the gist by now). Then there's the Genie protection rackets we discussed in the other thread to worry about if the efreets feel you're taking liberties.

However, all that does is keep levels down to about 1 item per person in the world. And you know what? That's actually a pretty good fit for D&D as printed. Fairly low level characters have literally more items than they know what to do with, and they all have to come from somewhere. Sometimes it seems that every lost tomb and wandering monster has something magical hidden somewhere, so if there weren't several thousand years of magic abusing wizards popping this stuff into existence, where the hell did it all come from?

[Foxwarrior]

Certainly, the precise number of items changes depending on the age of the world, and the number of proactive Efreet-binders, but I also said "the only reason a +1 weapon or +2 armor would exist is because Giant Frog." Even if there are several times fewer Wished items than I said, the D&D cheap magical treasure charts need to be restructured a bit to account for everything being worth 15000 gold.

[Kaelik]

There are, after X years, 40 magic items per person in the world.

Of course, most of those are buried in tomes, or belong to various non humans, like Bearded Devils.

There is also an equilibrium point where, the more items in the world, the less people will want to wish for items, and once they reach that point where items are being destroyed or lost to a society as fast as they are being created, any amount of time can go by without you being able to assume there are more items per person.

[Foxwarrior]

Oh yeah, I remembered another assumption.

6. Population growth is fairly negligible.

You can safely disregard magic items made back when the world's population was several times smaller, if it follows an exponential progression.

[Ice9]

The "Wish economy" has always been rather leaky. The assumption is that since pre-Wish characters have little to offer Wish-economy characters that they care about, that they won't be getting the benefit of said wishes. But by the same logic, if 15K items are literally chump change, why wouldn't you give them out for trivial reasons?

Much like the "rounds in Epic combat are hours/days long" thing, it has useful features, but putting any kind of hard dividing line gives you border issues.

[Kaelik]

Because Minor Magic Items are not chump change. They take a 3rd, 4th, and 6th level spell slot or two on an off day. They take a fair amount of time.

It is assumed that every member of the party has whatever minor items they want to use. It is assumed they all get +5 to all their stats from inherent bonuses.

These are assumed because we can see the obvious concrete benefit to the Wizard to spend his time and spell slots doing this when it makes him more likely to keep living.

That does not mean that they are chump change.

It takes me almost no time or effort to add large numbers in a calculator. Far less than casting at least 3 spells and spending over ten minutes drawing a diagram.

Yet I don't do it almost ever. Because I don't do things for no reason.

So yes, powerful Wizards who already have all eight of their minor items don't actually want more, and don't just make more for shits and giggles.

[DSMatticus]

Saying that you haven't "entered the Wish economy yet" in a Wish economy setting because you can't bind Efreet is as reasonable as saying you haven't "entered the Communist economy yet" in a Communist country because you haven't bough a government official.

Saying that you don't have access to wishables in a Wish economy is kind of like saying that you don't have access to giant truck fulls of cash in an economy with rich people. If your hypothesis is that magic items will trickle down, that would imply trickle down made any sense to begin with. But we know that isn't the case.

More seriously, items leave the economy; into ruins, into disasters, into the hands of outsiders, so forth and so on. And the idea a bunch of farmers could keep their hands on a decanter of endless water is kind of silly. There are plenty of mid-level people who would want that item and can't wish for it.

But by the same logic, if 15K items are literally chump change, why wouldn't you give them out for trivial reasons?

You're confusing incentives and ease, which is a little strange. It would be easy for me to go out and start punching people in the face, but I don't do that because I have no incentive to do so. I have a non-incentive to do so, in fact. A wizard has no incentive to throw minor magic items at the world, and it's not even easy for him because Tomes tries to close most of the major power loops so it actually takes a little bit of time to make a magic item this way. Now if you go full on chain-binding + wishable items, yeah, you get crazy results. As in making a planet-sized ball of minor magic items crazy. If you allow chain-binding, your world is an unpredictable, incoherent mess anyway because a whimsical wizard can scorch the entire surface of the planet with fireballs given a downtime measured in days.

[Foxwarrior]

Saying that you don't have access to wishables in a Wish economy is kind of like saying that you don't have access to giant truck fulls of cash in an economy with rich people. If your hypothesis is that magic items will trickle down, that would imply trickle down made any sense to begin with. But we know that isn't the case.

I suppose that this version of trickle-down theory has very little to do with real trickle-down theory: the real one is figurative. My Wish Economy of trickle-down theory takes a longer view, with objects: When the flying palaces of god-kings are destroyed, items trickle down from the sky.

More seriously, items leave the economy; into ruins, into disasters, into the hands of outsiders, so forth and so on. And the idea a bunch of farmers could keep their hands on a decanter of endless water is kind of silly. There are plenty of mid-level people who would want that item and can't wish for it.

If decanters of endless water were rare in any way, I would agree with you. Ruins and disasters could definitely reduce the number of items in circulation, but once you reach a saturation point, amateur archaeology becomes a worthwhile hobby for level 1 commoners.

[DSMatticus]

Most of the people who take these magic items places and lose them, though, are going dangerous places. That's why they died in those places. In D&D, the Mummy's Curse is an actual thing that will kill you when you try to loot his shit. And if it doesn't, the mummy will wake up and try to kill you himself. Archaelogy is an impossible hobby for level 1 commoners.

Edit: And even if you succeed, there are people more powerful than you but not powerful enough to wish up efreeti who will just take them when they see you with them, because a level 1 commoner does not have rights or protection in any meaningful sense of the word. The lowly commoners have no reliable, safe ways of acquiring magic item wealth. And the magic item wealth they do acquire is going to naturally go upwards to more powerful people who take it from them. Those magic items are going to trickle up.

[Red_Rob]

Ruins and disasters could definitely reduce the number of items in circulation, but once you reach a saturation point, amateur archaeology becomes a worthwhile hobby for level 1 commoners.

Have you ever played D&D? Have you any idea of the sheer number of things wandering around your average ruin that could not only kill any "amateur archeologists" that go poking their nose in, but if they followed them back home could quite easily wipe out everyone they ever knew or cared about?

The question with D&D isn't how come peasants don't all have +2 swords from abandoned wizards towers, its how do towns survive at all when the wizards various experiments break free and rampage across the countryside.

[TarkisFlux]

Assumption 4 is problematic, an old world doesn't mean shit in and of itself. It's probably better expanded upon in the following way:

4a. The magic required to bind efreeti has been well understood for thousands of years.
4b. There have been no cataclysms that either disenchant or destroy substantial portions of existing items for thousands of years.

Plenty of settings reject assumptions 4b and/or 6. Hell, every setting where a young race like humans moved in and multiplied and pushed the elves back is a rejection of 6. In those settings, the wish economy really does exclude people who do not have personal access to it, because the throw aways from the post-scarcity economy aren't sufficiently large.

There's also another unstated premise that you're using:

7. Wished for items are largely, if not exclusively, imported from outside of the economy, rather than simply redistributed within it.

If you assume that wishes can and do fill their requests with lost, forgotten , or even unattended items then you don't have a sufficient number of items to pass down to people. Things don't get rediscovered as often because someone wished it out of the hole it was in unintentionally.

But even accepting those premises, I still don't see how the default currency becomes the "14,999 gp item" instead of the "minor magic item". It's not like those items are created by preference (except where you can make a better version of the same item). Decanters are 3/5s of the cap, anklets of translocation are cheap, healing belts are cheap, and so on. Are these things not wished for? Are you also presupposing that people only wish for the largest value item they can, and so combine or otherwise enhance functions?

[Foxwarrior]

Sure, amateur archeologists tend to die like flies, but if all of these many, many magic items are buried in ruins, finding just one is going to make you set for life, so long as you can find yourself a city where killing people and taking their stuff is frowned upon.

The town guard ride on Bronze Griffons and snipe the horrifying monster with Fireballs stored on a Necklace. Both of which were provided to them by heroic Wizards who were fed up with spending a day stuck in some backwater after using up their last Teleport to save the town.

Edit: this was directed at Red Rob

[TheFlatline]

Most of the people who take these magic items places and lose them, though, are going dangerous places. That's why they died in those places. In D&D, the Mummy's Curse is an actual thing that will kill you when you try to loot his shit. And if it doesn't, the mummy will wake up and try to kill you himself. Archaelogy is an impossible hobby for level 1 commoners.

Edit: And even if you succeed, there are people more powerful than you but not powerful enough to wish up efreeti who will just take them when they see you with them, because a level 1 commoner does not have rights or protection in any meaningful sense of the word. The lowly commoners have no reliable, safe ways of acquiring magic item wealth. And the magic item wealth they do acquire is going to naturally go upwards to more powerful people who take it from them. Those magic items are going to trickle up.

Possibly, but at the same time you're talking about a setting where "adventurer" is a completely legit career, AND said adventurers make a cottage industry of selling off vendor trash and weaker magical items. So basically your archeologists are your adventurers, putting magical items back into the economy.

Unless you rule in your setting that wizards basically wish 15k in gold into existence twenty or thirty times in order to set up MageMart and buy up magical items to keep them out of the open economy.

[Foxwarrior]

True Tarkisflux, there are items worth much less than 15000 gold for which there are no equivalents worth just under 15000 gold, although it's sort of supposed to be possible to tack additional magic effects onto an item for 1.5 times the normal price.

4b is just an alternate, and probably better version of 3.

The idea that wishes simply steal items from other places is certainly in line with the "move creatures" option of wish.

Also, I realize I have to amend assumption 2: I only care about the people who can bind Efreet and aren't lazy assholes who can't see the merit in equipping their friends, minions, or mansion with freaky magical gewgaws and powerful weaponry.

[K]

Like most trickle down models, this one is flawed by a lot of assumptions and missing facts.

For example, why would a Wizard go Father Christmas and spend his days handing out magic items for other people when magic is the thing that makes him special and powerful? I mean, not only is it like a farmer who gives away his crops, but it's like a king who makes sure the populace is well armed and trained and capable of overthrowing him.

Why wouldn't people destroy magic items they couldn't use or items they consider dangerous when there are literally items like Holy swords that can kill peasants and turn them into community-destroying wights simply by trying to pick them up? Wands of Fireball are capable of killing dozens of people at a time and if you aren't strong enough to keep it from criminals, it's in your best interest to destroy it so that someone with Pick Pocket and a level of Sorcerer doesn't end up the new warlord of your village.

As a Wizard, it's in your best interest to destroy magic armor and weapons you find so that there are fewer people in your community who can punch through your spell that turns you incorporeal or dodge your rays.

Magic items are literally power in object form, and expecting people to expend extra effort to freely share their own power or allow others to keep it when it can be easily taken from them is just insane. Expecting people to not poison the well or steal from peasants is equally insane.

The DnD model of "magic items are only found in dangerous old ruins and monster lairs" is really the only model that works because it means that those magic items left their owners and didn't get put back into an intelligent community who had to deal with the threat they represent.

The real question is: why are there any magic items at all?

Clearly, Wizards are going to trade items to powerful people for various considerations and favors, but that's the Wish economy right there.

[Swordslinger]

The "Wish economy" has always been rather leaky. The assumption is that since pre-Wish characters have little to offer Wish-economy characters that they care about, that they won't be getting the benefit of said wishes. But by the same logic, if 15K items are literally chump change, why wouldn't you give them out for trivial reasons?

Because wish economy people don't have any reason to interact with the non-magic dudes. All their stuff, be it food, clothing, shelter or even sex comes from magic and not the lower economy.

[Foxwarrior]

K:
I hoped that since I tried to state my assumptions, those would no longer be a flaw of the model.

The thing is, at the level a character enters the post-wish economy, the items they can make with it are not particularly threatening to them personally. If a specific item is, that might not be among the items they want to make.

A 1st level sorcerer with a wand of Fireball can be trivially assassinated by approximately four Commoners with Crossbows standing more than 40 feet from one another, or by the sheriff or deputy, who each have their own Wand of Fireball. It's only slightly more extreme than having the police be armed with guns when almost everyone else isn't.

If the world is filled with gigantic flesh-eating monsters, gnoll armies, and ghosts, why are you most afraid of the other members of your society?

[TheFlatline]

Like most trickle down models, this one is flawed by a lot of assumptions and missing facts.

For example, why would a Wizard go Father Christmas and spend his days handing out magic items for other people when magic is the thing that makes him special and powerful? I mean, not only is it like a farmer who gives away his crops, but it's like a king who makes sure the populace is well armed and trained and capable of overthrowing him.

Why wouldn't people destroy magic items they couldn't use or items they consider dangerous when there are literally items like Holy swords that can kill peasants and turn them into community-destroying wights simply by trying to pick them up? Wands of Fireball are capable of killing dozens of people at a time and if you aren't strong enough to keep it from criminals, it's in your best interest to destroy it so that someone with Pick Pocket and a level of Sorcerer doesn't end up the new warlord of your village.

As a Wizard, it's in your best interest to destroy magic armor and weapons you find so that there are fewer people in your community who can punch through your spell that turns you incorporeal or dodge your rays.

Magic items are literally power in object form, and expecting people to expend extra effort to freely share their own power or allow others to keep it when it can be easily taken from them is just insane. Expecting people to not poison the well or steal from peasants is equally insane.

The DnD model of "magic items are only found in dangerous old ruins and monster lairs" is really the only model that works because it means that those magic items left their owners and didn't get put back into an intelligent community who had to deal with the threat they represent.

The real question is: why are there any magic items at all?

Clearly, Wizards are going to trade items to powerful people for various considerations and favors, but that's the Wish economy right there.

Wizard has a small army of minions. Wants to protect himself better. Gives out +1 swords & armor. Wizard finally dies/elevates to another plane, there's 50 +1 swords & armor floating around now.

Why don't you destroy magical items? I could be mistaken, but wasn't breaking magic items considered a Bad Thing(tm)? Like breaking that wand of fireball (if you can break it over your knee) makes bad things happen?

Asking why are there magical items is akin to asking why are there guns floating around in the civilian population.

Finally, for a wizard that has access to Wish, is someone with a +1 sword *really* going to be that big of a threat? I suppose if you're an arrogant wanker mage you'll destroy magic that you come across, but that's like slashing paintings painted by other people because they're not *your* paintings. Or killing any animal that is capable of physically harming you because it *may* harm you some day.

[TheFlatline]

Hell let's take K's argument a step further logically.

If magic is your greatest threat as a wizard, and magic only comes from those who are magically trained, why on earth would a wizard EVER train someone? After all, given time that pupil will grow in power to where they could threaten a wizard.

Why don't you have arch-wizards purging the lands of level 1 sorcerers & wizards? After all, they might grow up to *make* the magic items you're saying wizards should be performing search & destroy on.

[K]

K:
I hoped that since I tried to state my assumptions, those would no longer be a flaw of the model.

The thing is, at the level a character enters the post-wish economy, the items they can make with it are not particularly threatening to them personally. If a specific item is, that might not be among the items they want to make.

A 1st level sorcerer with a wand of Fireball can be trivially assassinated by approximately four Commoners with Crossbows standing more than 40 feet from one another, or by the sheriff or deputy, who each have their own Wand of Fireball. It's only slightly more extreme than having the police be armed with guns when almost everyone else isn't.

If the world is filled with gigantic flesh-eating monsters, gnoll armies, and ghosts, why are you most afraid of the other members of your society?

It's not going to be "a 1st level Sorcerer," but a gang of toughs who have a level 4 leader wearing plate with a single level of Sorcerer and a Wand of Fireballs. Hell, maybe they Pick-pocket the wand off the Sheriff before they torch a few houses and demand the village women line up for sex-slave selection.

There are lots of threats in DnD land, and that stuff is far away and being handled by higher-level characters. The average peasant has never seen a ghost and never will, so giving him a Wand of Fireballs is just asking for him to try to become a petty dictator.

That being said, magic items really are the only threat that low-level people can use against high-level people, even really weak magic items. There is a knowable number of magic missiles that it takes to kill a 10th level Wizard and it's in the Wizard's best interest to make sure that there aren't enough scrolls and wands out there for someone to field test for that number.

[K]

Finally, for a wizard that has access to Wish, is someone with a +1 sword *really* going to be that big of a threat? I suppose if you're an arrogant wanker mage you'll destroy magic that you come across, but that's like slashing paintings painted by other people because they're not *your* paintings. Or killing any animal that is capable of physically harming you because it *may* harm you some day.

You do realize that every large predator on our planet is almost extinct because people kill them because they might hurt someone? It's totally human nature to destroy potential threats even when they aren't meaningful threats (like the US wolf population that in two centuries has so few documented cases of attack that you can list them on a wiki).

That being said, a +1 sword is literally the difference between "can cut through incorporeal" and "completely powerless," right? Lots of magic items are dangerous to high-level characters with a little creative thinking, and the fact that a posse of peasants might pick that sword up and keep attacking after you kill the guy with it is a potential threat.

I'm not even go into other minor items like potions of invisibility.

Wizards don't teach every person with an Int of 10 to cast magic because it's dangerous and because you can't be nobility without an unfair advantage. They probably only teach children, lovers, and other people they trust implicitly and would otherwise share rulership with.

[DSMatticus]

If magic is your greatest threat as a wizard, and magic only comes from those who are magically trained, why on earth would a wizard EVER train someone? After all, given time that pupil will grow in power to where they could threaten a wizard.

People share power with people with aligned interests all the time, because they expect a return on that power they can't get by not sharing that power. If you're the only wizard in the world, you've got a pretty unique advantage over everyone. If you're one of two wizards in the world, you want to find a like-minded apprentice and suddenly you now have a significant advantage over your only competitor.

Blacksmiths will take apprentices because they do work, and the increased productivity means more money for them. In this case, the productivity we're talking about is "having magical power," but the principle is the same.

A 1st level sorcerer with a wand of Fireball can be trivially assassinated by approximately four Commoners with Crossbows standing more than 40 feet from one another, or by the sheriff or deputy, who each have their own Wand of Fireball. It's only slightly more extreme than having the police be armed with guns when almost everyone else isn't.

I don't think arming police with grenade launchers would make a good standard operating procedure for any society. Nor does the civilian populace having easy access to grenade launchers make for good times.