Wish Economy

[Swordslinger]

But we're talking +1 to +3 swords here - and those just aren't that good. You can hype it up all you want, but at the end of the day, a +1 sword is just +1 to hit, +1 to damage. A mercenary army is actually significantly better than that, even if all they do is give you flanking and "Aid Other". Maybe at some point, people do hit heights of power where literally no amount of non-magical stuff/people is going to help them ... but getting their first +2 sword is not that point.

Well no, the +2 sword isn't that important in itself. The important thing is what level you are when you get the +2 sword. And by that time, you're better off improving a 7th-8th level hero than you are buying a bunch of 1st level grunts, because 1st level grunts are crap. And the fact that mooks don't matter isn't something that has anything to do with economy.

Hell, the wish economy hands them out completely "for free" and doens't even care. There's a reason that nobody is worried about massive (infinite) armies of 1st level guys. That's because they suck.

If you had money to burn, you're better off upgrading Iron Man's suit than you are getting 50,000 soldiers.

Ok, so the king of small kingdom still has "tons of magic gear"? This means a couple things:
1) The whole feudalism thing is pointless. The tiny amounts of chump-change that he gets from taxes are nothing compared to what his backup dagger costs.
2) He's an asshole for opting to have +1 more to hit instead of making massive infrastructure improvements to his entire kingdom.

He may opt for infrastructure if he thinks it will help him make some more money, but the general amount of money you get from feudalism isn't that big.

As far as feudalism being a small benefit, keep in mind, that's a good thing. You want your PCs to be able to be king and not break the system, thus having your profits be comparatively small to the stuff you have at that level is good for the system.

[FatR]

Or you can set it such that that stuff grants a relatively trivial amount of wealth compared to what they want. Okay, so you got some ruined tapestries and a broken elven urn, and some stone off the walls... big deal, you wasted several days trying to sell that crap and ended up with a handful of silver pieces.

If you're tossing priceless relics at the PCs and making ruins made of gold, you're designing adventures with too much treasure.

DSMatikus approaches the problem wrong.

Let me tell you what made me hate WBL in actual GMing. It was not the fact that you can't give PCs uber-treasure. Not even the far more annoying fact that minor thugs tend to carry magical bling and ridiculous amount of gold in published adventures as a result.

I started hating WBL once I realised that it is fucking impossible for PCs to become landed nobles with serious income, or invest their loot into trade operations, or just run a protection racket, in short, to interact with any economic-related aspect of the world as anyone other than murdering hobos, without throwing the game balance out of the window.

Not that I consider Wish economy a worthwhile fix for Weath=Power problem. But Wealth=Power is a HUGE problem once your game makes a single step beyond the boundaries of a straightforward dungeoncrawl.

[Swordslinger]

Let me tell you what made me hate WBL in actual GMing. It was not the fact that you can't give PCs uber-treasure. Not even the far more annoying fact that minor thugs tend to carry magical bling and ridiculous amount of gold in published adventures as a result.

I started hating WBL once I realised that it is fucking impossible for PCs to become landed nobles with serious income, or invest their loot into trade operations, or just run a protection racket, in short, to interact with any economic-related aspect of the world as anyone other than murdering hobos, without throwing the game balance out of the window.

Well yeah, but I'm advocating that you reduce the profits for such endeavors to a manageable level, so you can have them (and have them mean something), but they don't break the game.

The thing I'm seeing is that most people want PCs to be able to be kings and start businesses and stuff, but the wish economy basically forbids that, because there's no damn point at all. In fact, the key component that makes the wish economy work is that Wish level people are disinterested in mundane life, and sort of go form their own economy, their own cities and whatever. No wish economy guy is going to become a merchant or a king, because gold is meaningless to them.

The wish economy granted is pretty nice if you just want to play a basic dungeon crawl game without having to worry about economy at all. Because it's a good way to hand wave away people trying to get more money than they should have. The only currency at all in the setting is currency you explicitly place and magical items. That's actually great from a DM design standpoint, because it puts a lot less work on the hands of the DM. He can go create any kind of random fantastic city of gold he wants confident it won't even matter. The problem is that it also removes any actual interaction with the economy from the PC's standpoint. When the DM wants you find wish currency, you find it, when he doesn't, then you don't. There's no way to operate out of the box in the wish economy.

I don't want to just hand wave away all mundane transactions as being totally irrelevant to the economy.

I'm proposing that you just change the amounts of wealth involved to make it more manageable. Getting a 300% increase in your total wealth because you've got a business is not manageable, but saying you may get 5% or 10% more is something games can deal with, especially if there's some inherent cost there, like you have to spend skills and feats to run the business well. So you burn a bunch of skill points and a feat to gain a maximum of 20% increase to your WBL. Big deal. Even if it was 50% you could probably manage it, since the magic item creation feats do something similar.

But as long as adventuring at your level is always more profitable, you don't run into a huge problem. WBL isn't a straitjacket, and a 25% deviation either way is just not a huge deal, because that shit happens naturally with just basic magic item distribution among PCs.

[Avoraciopoctules]

I don't understand -- how can you be in favour of the Wish Economy and not in favour of high level characters having huge amounts of gold (which is the whole purpose of the Wish Economy)?

I am in favor of high level characters having huge amounts of gold. So much personal gold that they don't bother dismantling dungeons that happen to be made of / covered in gold.

The thing I'm seeing is that most people want PCs to be able to be kings and start businesses and stuff, but the wish economy basically forbids that, because there's no damn point at all. In fact, the key component that makes the wish economy work is that Wish level people are disinterested in mundane life, and sort of go form their own economy, their own cities and whatever. No wish economy guy is going to become a merchant or a king, because gold is meaningless to them.

There are totally countries and businesses people in the wish economy care about. They just need to involve wish-economy stuff. You can farm souls. You can research Efreet psychology and figure out a service they'd pay money for. You can try to become "King" of a country that includes a larvae pit and genie massage parlor (or whatever), and then collect taxes.

[K]

The thing I'm seeing is that most people want PCs to be able to be kings and start businesses and stuff, but the wish economy basically forbids that, because there's no damn point at all. In fact, the key component that makes the wish economy work is that Wish level people are disinterested in mundane life, and sort of go form their own economy, their own cities and whatever. No wish economy guy is going to become a merchant or a king, because gold is meaningless to them.

Gold is not meaningless to adventurers because they can use it to buy things in the gold economy like castles and ships and armies to put in those castles. Heck, it can even be used to buy small magic items like scrolls and potions.

The thing gold can't do is buy game-breaking magic items, so the incentive to constantly greyhawk and act like a miser is vastly reduced. It's the best of both worlds.

[LR]

The thing I'm seeing is that most people want PCs to be able to be kings and start businesses and stuff, but the wish economy basically forbids that, because there's no damn point at all. In fact, the key component that makes the wish economy work is that Wish level people are disinterested in mundane life, and sort of go form their own economy, their own cities and whatever. No wish economy guy is going to become a merchant or a king, because gold is meaningless to them.

The Wish Economy guarantees that a high level character has enough money to be financially independent. It also grants high level characters effectively unlimited capital. It does not give them the power to automagically effect sweeping changes on the campaign setting, which is the end goal of many character archetypes. Real good is all about replacing the status quo with something better, and magic cannot do that. A Paladin doesn't win when he becomes so powerful that mortals quake in his presence; he wins when he kick-starts the Industrial Revolution.

[Swordslinger]

Gold is not meaningless to adventurers because they can use it to buy things in the gold economy like castles and ships and armies to put in those castles. Heck, it can even be used to buy small magic items like scrolls and potions.

Why buy it when you can just create it?

You have infinite money to buy a bunch of crap that's just window dressing anyway, so whats the point really?

The Wish Economy guarantees that a high level character has enough money to be financially independent. It also grants high level characters effectively unlimited capital. It does not give them the power to automagically effect sweeping changes on the campaign setting, which is the end goal of many character archetypes. Real good is all about replacing the status quo with something better, and magic cannot do that. A Paladin doesn't win when he becomes so powerful that mortals quake in his presence; he wins when he kick-starts the Industrial Revolution

But the PCs aren't the first to reach the wish economy, so why hasn't this already happened?

[DSMatticus]

Generating a billion gold pieces does not feed the poor. It raises the price of everything.

More interestingly, being able to wish for mundane (but practical) things does mean a benevolent paladin with infinite wishes and a good transportation set-up could feed lots of people. And do lots of good things. And it is a valid question to ask, "why hasn't this happened?" and this is a problem with dumping the wish economy on top of the broken existing D&D economy.

But all of this, and I mean all of this, does nothing to change the fact that wealth = power is a stupid fucking idea and has to go. Because if wealth = power, no paladin will EVER, EVER, EVER want to set up a benevolent network of food production and transportation to feed the power, and you would punish any character who tried to do that by robbing them of being as powerful as they should be according to their level. And that's the real point of the wish economy: breaking mundane wealth = supernatural power.

The next step, if we were doing a ground-up redesign of the economic subsystem, would be to create two separate economies, one for mundane wealth and one for supernatural power, and let players participate meaningfully in both at once. The first uses gold, and can buy nothing more than minor magic items, and low-level players use it as a way to buy those, and high-level players use it as a way to achieve meta-campaign goals like castles, bling mansions, or feeding a nation's poverty-stricken. Meanwhile, low-level players barely get access to the economy for supernatural power, and high-level players use it to bling themself out with moderate/major magic items.

Actually, I would go a step further, and just tear down the idea that magic items = power, and let them add character options. (Yes, options = power, but you're less dependent on having certain options than you are on having a +5 sword). (Edit: K said this earlier, and I am now stealing it, because I am a bandit of good ideas. You may even be able to re-unify the gold and supernatural economies this way: if you aren't stuck in the eternal upgrade loop of getting a newer, better sword every few levels, then you can probably go back to using gold for everything.)

[Avoraciopoctules]

Gold is not meaningless to adventurers because they can use it to buy things in the gold economy like castles and ships and armies to put in those castles. Heck, it can even be used to buy small magic items like scrolls and potions.

Why buy it when you can just create it?

Why would anyone pay for food when they could just grow their own?

[Swordslinger]

But all of this, and I mean all of this, does nothing to change the fact that wealth = power is a stupid fucking idea and has to go. Because if wealth = power, no paladin player will EVER, EVER, EVER want to set up a benevolent network of food production and transportation to feed the power, and you would punish any character who tried to do that by robbing them of being as powerful as they should be according to their level.

Fixed.

And people will pay out gold so long as it's not a significant amount.

Why would anyone pay for food when they could just grow their own?

Not a good analogy because it takes more effort to go to market and buy the stuff than it does to wish for it. When you're buying a castle you either have to go shop around with people, or you have to hire people to build a new one. Both of which take way more time and effort than just going *Poof* and wishing for one out of thin air.

[DSMatticus]

And people will pay out gold so long as it's not a significant amount.

We've heard your ideas about significant amounts. Your idea was that +5 swords could buy a 100 castles, and then you had the idea +5 swords could be just as common as they were now. D&D economics is already unfeasible, but that's just f'ing ridiculous.

Also, so what you're saying is: "it's okay to punish characters lightly when they spend it on roleplaying, we just don't want to overboard with our punishing roleplaying. Keep it reasonable, and only punish roleplaying a little bit."

[K]

Gold is not meaningless to adventurers because they can use it to buy things in the gold economy like castles and ships and armies to put in those castles. Heck, it can even be used to buy small magic items like scrolls and potions.

Why buy it when you can just create it?

You have infinite money to buy a bunch of crap that's just window dressing anyway, so whats the point really?

It's the same reason that people roleplay: fun.

People spend virtual money in a virtual world because it's fun in the same way they have virtual adventures in a virtual world. I mean, a castle is just a part of the story and setting that the players get to craft that will occasionally be part of adventures.

People want to get a dragon's hoard big enough to feel like a hoard, and then they want to spend it on crap like castles and ships because that makes you feel like an adventurer. They want to own lands that bring in income and spend that income on armies for that castle.

The instant they can't do that because every gold spent is a chance they won't complete their next adventure (and will have to stop playing), then they can't do this fun thing any more. That's bad.

Second, there is no infinite money. There is lots and lots of money coming in at a fixed rate (spell slots mostly). People really would rather be blowing gold from a dragon's hoard from their recent adventure rather than spending twenty minutes explaining to the DM how they are Fabricating fine glassware to sell on other planes over the course of several days or weeks.

[hogarth]

I don't understand -- how can you be in favour of the Wish Economy and not in favour of high level characters having huge amounts of gold (which is the whole purpose of the Wish Economy)?

I am in favor of high level characters having huge amounts of gold. So much personal gold that they don't bother dismantling dungeons that happen to be made of / covered in gold.

Then why are you worried about adventurers retiring once they discover magic weapons? Or high-level adventurers hiring armies of mercenaries to clean out dungeons? I can't tell if you're a moron or just confused.

[Avoraciopoctules]

... why are you worried about adventurers retiring once they discover magic weapons? Or high-level adventurers hiring armies of mercenaries to clean out dungeons? I can't tell if you're a moron or just confused.

I can't tell whether you read my first post carefully or not.

I am worried about the fact that if some other guy in this thread deals with PCs looting the scenery by making a +1 sword worth more than a castle, people will automatically sell the sword (especially when they already have 1), since there are a lot of nonmagical things more valuable than a +1 to hit and damage. Unless magic swords don't show up until level 10+ (where you can easily make weapons better than +1 temporarily using spells and some class features), armies of archers and close-combat soldiers that can take Aid Another actions will be fairly useful in many encounters.

If I was forced to choose between a tiny bonus to attacks with a secondary weapon and the services of a battalion of archers for a year, the choice wouldn't be very hard until upper mid levels.

[Chamomile]

Potential solution to the problem of "why hasn't anyone saved the world already," saving the world might just be really, really hard. If there's some reason that the powers that be want the world to be Iron Age, and all of them will put aside their petty differences to kill whoever made the printing press, everyone who knows how to make it, and if possible everyone who's even seen one in operation, then the only Paladin who'll allow his followers to do any of the things that will lead to an industrial revolution is one who is not only willing but able to fight off the entire cosmos.

The motivation isn't too hard to find, either. The industrial revolution, along with the digital revolution it leads too and whatever other revolutions that will lead to, close the gap between high-level heroes and the populations they control. Most developed nations could totally go toe-to-toe with a level 20 wizard, and wizards are supernaturally smart enough to figure this out before the eve of the day when high-level characters can no longer rule the world with impunity. Also, high-level characters without exception have some method of obtaining immortality, which doesn't really help inspire governments to buck tradition.

And it's totally reasonable to say that the PCs are the first ones to conquer the lower planes, expose every inch of the Nine Hells to the light of Good, and drive the influence of the evil gods from the Prime Material Plane forever, thus bringing about a new age of prosperity and freedom for the world.

[RobbyPants]

Gold is not meaningless to adventurers because they can use it to buy things in the gold economy like castles and ships and armies to put in those castles. Heck, it can even be used to buy small magic items like scrolls and potions.

Why buy it when you can just create it?

You have infinite money to buy a bunch of crap that's just window dressing anyway, so whats the point really?

You're not claiming some Ayn Rand you-can-only-appreciate-something-if-you-worked-for-it crap, are you? The point isn't to make the PCs feel like they earned their castles by the sweat of their brow or to make them feel like they made a meaningful sacrifice to get it. The point is to give them any incentive to have one at all.

The point is you create a character, and perhaps having a castle is really thematic for that character. It's not good when they have to choose between being "true to themselves" or getting a better magic sword.

[fectin]

"why hasn't someone saved the world yet?" is a much better problem than the broken economy. It's also much easier to answer, and when you do answer it, that answer generates plot.

[tzor]

I think the real answer to "why hasn't someone saved the world yet" (well actually they did, and they did, and they did) is the question "why doesn't the world remain saved once saved?"

And I think we sometimes overthink the broken economy. In a world with massive upswings of good and evil, the economy is a lot like living in a place that is both the tornado belt and the hurricane belt. Great days followed by oh crap and holy shit.

Remember that not just adventurer's fuck the economy; mass extinctions also fuck the economy. If an entire region is decimated (oh how I hate that ... the original meaning of decimate was to reduce by 10%, literally take one out of every ten people and kill them) the remainding people now have the combined "wealth" of all those people who had just croaked. This can be seen in the times after the black plague, which were relatively wonderful times.

Thus while the adventurers are like, at times, a economic tornado, their economic damage is mostly limited to where they are currently. Once they pass, the people rebulid their lives and move on, grateful that they were not one of the ones who died when the great evil was in their vicinity and terribly glad that neither the great evil nor the adventurers gave a shit about their turnip crops.

[Swordslinger]

If I was forced to choose between a tiny bonus to attacks with a secondary weapon and the services of a battalion of archers for a year, the choice wouldn't be very hard until upper mid levels.

Well you can set the prices of archers to something higher too.

But you're really missing the point.

The point of the system isn't so much to make armies super cheap, In fact, face-stabbing as a profession is the highest paying in the land. The point is really to nerf merchants, farmers and blacksmiths. That is, you don't get money from playing Sim City compared to stabbing people.

Archers may be rather expensive to hire for their level (relatively speaking of course). You don't have to make them dirt cheap. In fact, the system is based on the fact that adventurers get paid big for what they do, so they can afford all their magic items.

[fectin]

If I was forced to choose between a tiny bonus to attacks with a secondary weapon and the services of a battalion of archers for a year, the choice wouldn't be very hard until upper mid levels.

Well you can set the prices of archers to something higher too.

But you're really missing the point.

The point of the system isn't so much to make armies super cheap, In fact, face-stabbing as a profession is the highest paying in the land. The point is really to nerf merchants, farmers and blacksmiths. That is, you don't get money from playing Sim City compared to stabbing people.

Archers may be rather expensive to hire for their level (relatively speaking of course). You don't have to make them dirt cheap. In fact, the system is based on the fact that adventurers get paid big for what they do, so they can afford all their magic items.

So, lets set aside your advocacy for individually readjusting every cost in the system (which is at least coherent, though not good). Now you're advocating the same balance as before, only with bigger numbers. Why is that good?

[K]

I don't really see how Swordslinger's proposal can work at all. I mean, the instant people can trade a ship or a castle for a handful of potions, they just do that. They don't need castles and ships to survive as adventurers, but they do need potions.

Of course, you could make ships and castles cheaper than potions, but then you get the opposite problem where people don't value ships and castles at all which defeats the purpose of reducing their value in the first place.

All in all, a stupid idea.

[fectin]

I frankly can't follow Swordslingers proposal. I don't think he really has one.

He's suggested a lot of small parts of what could be a coherent whole, but hasn't really explained it. Trying to pass judgement on it is like trying to figure out whether a clock runs fast from looking at two gears and a spring.

[hyzmarca]

I don't really see how Swordslinger's proposal can work at all. I mean, the instant people can trade a ship or a castle for a handful of potions, they just do that. They don't need castles and ships to survive as adventurers, but they do need potions.

Of course, you could make ships and castles cheaper than potions, but then you get the opposite problem where people don't value ships and castles at all which defeats the purpose of reducing their value in the first place.

All in all, a stupid idea.

You need ships and castles to do ship and castle stuff.

Lets face it, an adventure across the sea is going to be pretty darnboring if you don't have any way to cross the sea. And you need some place to put all of your phat loot, a castle is where it's at.

There are plenty of adventures that absolutely require the PC to own ships and castles and which can't be completed if they don't.

[K]

I don't really see how Swordslinger's proposal can work at all. I mean, the instant people can trade a ship or a castle for a handful of potions, they just do that. They don't need castles and ships to survive as adventurers, but they do need potions.

Of course, you could make ships and castles cheaper than potions, but then you get the opposite problem where people don't value ships and castles at all which defeats the purpose of reducing their value in the first place.

All in all, a stupid idea.

You need ships and castles to do ship and castle stuff.

Lets face it, an adventure across the sea is going to be pretty darnboring if you don't have any way to cross the sea. And you need some place to put all of your phat loot, a castle is where it's at.

There are plenty of adventures that absolutely require the PC to own ships and castles and which can't be completed if they don't.

True, but you are missing the point: castle and ship adventures are optional.

The DM really can say "and here is a map to a treasure on an island. Good thing you just got a ship!" and have the PCs respond with "well, we can sell the ship for loot and just do a different adventure. We'll get loot on that adventure too."

The point of fixing the DnD wealth in the first place is to give people reasonable reasons to own ships and castles. The instant they are giving up actual power for those things, they won't have them because that's the reasonable decision.

[Swordslinger]

True, but you are missing the point: castle and ship adventures are optional.

The DM really can say "and here is a map to a treasure on an island. Good thing you just got a ship!" and have the PCs respond with "well, we can sell the ship for loot and just do a different adventure. We'll get loot on that adventure too."

The point of fixing the DnD wealth in the first place is to give people reasonable reasons to own ships and castles. The instant they are giving up actual power for those things, they won't have them because that's the reasonable decision.

The problem is that ships really are useless. By the time you can reasonably afford one that's bigger than a rowboat, you're better off just teleporting or flying somewhere yourself. It's faster and you don't have the problem of having your ship sunk by sea monsters.

The thing is that owning ships is a low level gig, and the price has to match. Owning a pirate ship should be relatively cheap in the economy, such that a 3rd-5th level pirate captain could easy do that while still having money for magic items.

But again, the issue is just that ships are too expensive.