Higher Level Economy? [Archive] - Giant in the Playground Forums

imp_fireball

2009-07-12, 09:35 PM

Or you could simply modernize the world and include a banking system that offers blank cheques that can be signed as an 'promise to pay' with an additional fee for transfer of funds.

There's no additional system that needs to be established - just rule it at your discretion.

Yes, there's a heck of a lot of stuff that isn't covered in RAW, but all of the other stuff can be combined to cover any sort of setting if you're really into that sort of thing. Hope I helped.

Arcane Notes that are extremely difficult to forge and represent an imaginary sum of money.

But could be forged anyway.

You could also implement mundane notes that are only useful for non-conventional purposes. If one of the players is making a big purchase, then likely the seller (probably already wealthy as hell if he could acquire something like this) is familiar with 'worldly economics' and knows about the special note system provided by banking guilds. Most common folk that sell cheaper wares are ignorant of this system, so it still justifies the use of GP.

Also, notes can be forged with a forgery check and time, like everything else. And if your caught, then the rogue in question is tried with fraud. Adds more suspense to a gaming session, so don't get angry if the players ever try to do that sort of thing.

Finally, you can't make everything magical. Eventually it ruins the suspension of disbelief that magic offers and it gets really old. Magic is no longer as fantastic as it's supposed to seem.

Good enough?

RoninFrosty

2009-07-12, 09:38 PM

I've thought about the banking system...maybe have some Mages' Guild run it so they can arcane mark the banknotes?

imp_fireball

2009-07-12, 09:40 PM

But what if there's a guild (out of tradition and trust for their own mundane methods) that hates magic and declares war on the mages?

Oh hey I just spontaneously created a setting.

RoninFrosty

2009-07-12, 09:46 PM

Certainly a hook I can see exploiting. I've already got a pseudo-political mages' guild that regulates the use of magic in the empire...maybe this is something I should consider adding to their portfolio?

elliott20

2009-07-12, 09:53 PM

that's kind of like people who don't trust modern banking systems because they hate the technology.

sure, they can exist, but then they are intrinsically at a disadvantage since magic usually does trump the mundane.

the most important thing about this sort of thing though, I'd guess, is that whoever is issuing the notes need to be able to command confidence in the value of their notes. If a single rogue wizard with a pal who has ranks in forgery can undo the whole system, then said note would be instantly worthless. So the ability to verify the validity of the note would probably be one of the most important aspects you have to work on.

In order for this kind of thing to work though, said mage guild would need to command an incredible amount of political clout and have a large enough institution to support this kind of operation.

There are several components you need to consider

1. the ability to create documentation/notes that is extremely hard to forge. (i.e. some kind of "arcane mark" variant spell that is really hard to replicate)
2. the ability to control the amount of money that is out there. With physical cash, the limit is pretty much based on the supply of physical coinage. But with the use of notes, procedures need to exist to control how much money is out there or else you'll get hyperinflation. So said money guild would need the ability to create and destroy notes at their discretion. They would need to find ways to distribute and collect notes.

Jane_Smith

2009-07-12, 09:59 PM

Do not forget trade bars - they were used in Nwn2, storm of zehipr or whatever. Each one is worthless in its own right - but their stamped/etc just right they are used for dealing with large quantities of gold for buisness's, etc. I forgot the fine details, look it up! :P

RoninFrosty

2009-07-12, 10:01 PM

These are good examples! Anyone else?

Cybren

2009-07-12, 10:10 PM

+5 swords are the basis of any adventuring economy

RoninFrosty

2009-07-12, 10:11 PM

"Ah, yes...I've got plenty of land, but I've no stone to build my keep. If your crew can supply the raw materials and the labor for the keep, I'll pay you in +5 swords!"

*twitch* No thanks :D *twitch*

Cybren

2009-07-12, 10:14 PM

Why not? Magic items are valuable and relatively portable, as well as durable but still able to be destroyed and thus slowly removed from the economy.

RoninFrosty

2009-07-12, 10:17 PM

Because I think it'd be relatively difficult a.) to accurately price (in game) a magic item and b.) maintain suspension of disbelief in a mid-magic game when people are trading magic bucklers for armies.

Icewalker

2009-07-12, 10:58 PM

Yeah, one of the main problems with a 'magic items as barter currency' systems is that magic items can't be easily standardized, and if you make them, what's the point of not just making it some other standardized currency in the first place. I suggest putting together a significant banking setup with history and the like.

I would look at the Knights Templar, who at least to some extent, helped to create banking as a system on a large scale.

Djinn_in_Tonic

2009-07-12, 11:24 PM

Hmmm...

What about raw magic? Flavor magic as a limited resource...there's only so much around at any single point in time. Mortals, with their little spells, take up very little of this resource...but the machinations of powerful outsiders? Well, their schemes require large amounts of it.

Actually, you could say that the more powerful mortal spells require it as well...it might help to limit casters somewhat.

elliott20

2009-07-12, 11:45 PM

that's a neat idea Djinn.

You could standardize magical energy in the form of gems. A gem with a certain amount of magical energy can be used to power a spell of a certain level, but then in itself costs a bundle.

the problem is then you have to figure out how magical energy supplies can be finite in the world.

Milskidasith

2009-07-12, 11:58 PM

Magic items as currency can be easily standardized (in the economicon, you can essentially create infinite amounts of any magic item worth less than 15k gp.)

But really, good resources would be anything that can't simply be created by magic. Raw magic is a good idea, or souls of powerful creatures, or anything else that you could theoretically find in a dungeon with a little flavor.

Why did the lich have a dungeon built in a particular spot? It's a source of raw magic (and giving him a hidden +10 to caster level checks from his focusing crystal in the throne room. :smallwink:).

Why would anybody care about killing that random dragon that wasn't terrorizing anybody? With a few simple items, you have an extremely powerful raw soul to sell to the archmage who creates the magic items; depending on his personality, he might make an item for you using the souls power, or give you an item of lesser power; he can't just give away all his best items.

Just think about it (and read the economicon that was linked, it has better ideas than I can think of) the power of raw magic or things used to create magic are much better things to base an economy composed entirely of magic items off of.

I_Got_This_Name

2009-07-13, 12:02 AM

Elemental Stones could work. World of Warcraft already did something like that, where you have the elements as crafting components in various grades. Of course, they can be bought and sold for normal cash because they don't have Wish utterly destroying their normal currency.

The important thing is that you have something that cannot be counterfeited, even with Wish (Tome version, not SRD version). This means some magical object of intrinsic value. Banknotes don't work because 1) they have to stand for something; they just move the problem away, and 2) Arcane Mark is a cantrip. Wish is 9th-level. One of these things can pretty clearly imitate the other, even for forgery. The alternative here is to completely revise Wish and everything that touches it (i.e., wish-granting monsters), so that you can trade a ton of gold for a sword upgrade.

Using piles of gold has another problem, though, where the world can't have adamantine towers, or solid gold bridges, or whatnot, because those will get traded for sword upgrades; separating your high-level and low-level currencies solves that problem. The tower made of adamantine is made of a parts that can be made with Wish, and so can be traded for gold, but you cannot trade it to upgrade your sword to +3.

You can still actually use all of the ones listed in the Dungeonomicon, just stripped of planar associations. Raw Chaos doesn't come from any plane at all, but from the void between the planes. Concentration can be gathered in special stills on the Prime. Hope materializes spontaneously and randomly. Souls can still be harvested in the normal way. You don't have to, of course; your alternative just has to have the above properties.

There's some other material in that series: the latest stuff is here (http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=35813), and the only other thing they've done after the Dungeonomicon (and so not linked from it) is Here (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Races_of_War_(3.5e_Sourcebook)). The first link has some discussion on re-doing magic items and wealth, which is relevant to this discussion (see the section heading: Wealth by Level Has Got to Go), but it's a very early draft, and been that way for a couple years now.

Milskidasith

2009-07-13, 12:09 AM

Also, I figured out something; some people (IE: most people who give it a good bit of thought) would realize that an economy that relies entirely on the souls of defeated high level creatures is... well, pretty nuts. You could either make all magic items intelligent and have them all wish that they were destroyed to free the soul (which still has the problem that it seems really freaking evil to be using magic items), or just change it to be something like "essence" so you don't have to deal with the moral problems of a LG paladin wielding items that were forged from the eternally bound souls of his fallen foes, never letting them get their proper rest. (Souls would, however, let you recycle party members without ressurections; goodbye, ranger, hello +6 headband of intellect. :smalltongue:)

Djinn_in_Tonic

2009-07-13, 12:12 AM

that's a neat idea Djinn.

Thanks!

You could standardize magical energy in the form of gems. A gem with a certain amount of magical energy can be used to power a spell of a certain level, but then in itself costs a bundle.

Sure. It would need some sort of storage device, after all.

the problem is then you have to figure out how magical energy supplies can be finite in the world.

Not really. Apply basic laws of conservation to them...you can't just generate magic without an opposite reaction...removing magic from somewhere else. There. Mission accomplished. :smallbiggrin:

elliott20

2009-07-13, 12:47 AM

Wouldn't it just be more intuitive to fix the wish spell?

I mean, we said arcane mark, yes, but that's just a brain storming idea. You could always have an improved version of the arcane mark that in order to overcome you need to beat the CL on the note. if you can fulfill the first premise of having a large institution that controls the money supplies, you can be pretty damn sure that the CL on those things are going to be fairly high. (I'd say as high as the highest level caster available in the guild)

Milskidasith

2009-07-13, 01:03 AM

The problem with that is to create such a high level arcane mark, you would require a wizard so powerful there would be no reason for him to not create tons of super powered magic items.

elliott20

2009-07-13, 03:40 AM

The problem with that is to create such a high level arcane mark, you would require a wizard so powerful there would be no reason for him to not create tons of super powered magic items.

just because a wizard is of high level doesn't automatically mean he would sit around creating power magical items. I mean, these things STILL cost XP to do, you know.

you guys have to remember, the person sitting here creating currency could in essence control the entire economy. Such an individual carries an immense responsibility.

Djinn_in_Tonic

2009-07-13, 06:17 AM

The problem with that is to create such a high level arcane mark, you would require a wizard so powerful there would be no reason for him to not create tons of super powered magic items.

Additionally, if even ONE unreliable caster learns the spell, it's over. Most people can't detect caster level, and have no way of telling a high arcane mark from a low arcane mark. Forgery is pretty easy in such a system, and I'd find it unlikely the the most powerful beings in the multiverse would use a monetary system so easily forged.

Things that are guaranteed to be both constant and reliable seem more their style.

Milskidasith

2009-07-13, 10:29 AM

Or, better yet, things they actually care about that are also powerful and reliable. Trading in +5 shortswords is something that is powerful and standardized, but it isn't exactly the kind of thing a high level wizard would want (except maybe as a trophy). So magical essence and the like are good currencies, while gold makes sense for low levels when the items only really cost a few pounds of gold.

Arcane notes also have a problem because why the hell would anybody care about them? One high level wizard could forge notes, and since the notes are basically promises that the high level wizards running the show would let you use them for money... one higher level wizard takes over the place (a common occurance) and the entire economy collapses. Bank note systems, even magical, aren't a good idea in a world where being the strongest person in the world literally means you could kill everybody else in the world if they didn't obey your whims (or get together a ton of wizards specially trained to beat you in initiative and hope you roll a natural one on your save or suck spell. >_>)

Cieyrin

2009-07-13, 01:03 PM

Got to this party a little late but my favored items of high economic values come first from the Sovereign Stone setting, in which they deal in gold and platinum bricks for massive transactions. It's done more or less by weight, so I believe the bricks were 5 pounds a piece. With 50 coins to the pound, a gold brick is 250 gp and a platinum brick is 2500 gp. They're slightly harder to misplace or lose than a bag of coins and it builds off the current monetary system, so it's not that much of a stretch.

The other is the concept of Residuum from 4E. Though I don't like the exchange rate they enforce, but, as described, a pound of residuum is worth 500,000 gp. There isn't much of a way to fake the stuff and it has direct value to arcanists, who could use it perhaps as an XP replacement, if a 3.5 Disenchant spell was created from the 4E ritual. Again, it sticks pretty closely to the high arcane economy of a normal D&D world and can be measured out in terms of weight by non-magical sorts. Sure, someone could try to forge some fake residuum with Nystul's Magic Aura but you probably couldn't hork the stuff off on small transactions and it'd only be accepted for major transactions with fairly big merchants with magic dealings and arcanists. By dint, such would have the know-how to Identify the stuff first to ensure it's legit before the transaction was completed.

Them's my 2 copper pieces worth of residuum (It's legit, I swear! :smallbiggrin:). Take as you will.

urkthegurk

2009-07-13, 01:12 PM

Well. The thing with forgery is that you don't have to eliminate it, you just have to minimize it. People forge modern currency all the time thats why they have those little blacklights at banks and tons of stores. Hundred dollar bills are of course the worst. You just have to punish 'em when it happens, and take precautions to limit it.
Minting dollar bills is probably a lot more complex a process than waving your hand and casting arcane mark on 'em. What yo have here is a mint and it has a hella lot of complex artifact-type machines, and the blueprints for those machines are very secret. And the mint is more well-protected than the armory
Sure, you have the occasional forger, but work a clause into your spell that tags the bills if anyone tries to make a copy of it, and perhaps invisibly arcane marks their hands as well. And if they're high enough level that they can get past all that, well you gotta cut your losses and be happy that they're not using their wish-level spells and all that xp to summon cthulhu or rain fire down on the material plane.
I think if they're high enough level to be pulling this off, then they probably don't go to the ATM anyway. I imagine gods and devils function pretty much on the barter-for-favors system, and only use gold and things to bribe mortals with, since yes, they pretty much have and infinite supply.

PairO'Dice Lost

2009-07-13, 02:21 PM

I_Got_This_Name

2009-07-13, 06:37 PM

Even if they can't be counterfeited, banknotes still don't do everything that a high-level currency should do, not just because you won't find valid banknotes in ancient ruins, but because they still encourage PCs to take the doors out of the dungeons and stick them into portable holes to take back and sell (if it has enough hardness to be a meaningful obstacle, it's worth money, whether it's magically augmented stone or iron or normal adamantine). If they are rewarded with to-hit bonuses for doing so, the PCs will rip the marble facing off the Great Pyramid. The Fire King's castle what is made of solidified fire? Junked for parts and sold to buy saving throw bonuses. Bridge made of black opals and woven shadows? Sold to feed their Heroism Potion habit. The gold facing on the walls of King Steve's castle? Ripped off and spent on arrows.

So, if you want to be able to place fantastic architecture in your world without the PCs stealing it, you need a high-level something entirely separate from, and not interchangeable with, gold. Then, once they're leveled enough that they can carry around fantastic architecture to sell, they don't have any need of it anymore.

You can have one of two things:
1) Merchants who will take any amount of gold, in any form, for high-level items.
2) Fantastic and expensive architecture.

The following list is also mutually exclusive:
1) The ability to spend gold to buy powerful magic items.
2) The ability to have a day job.

Pure rules as written, you can just play an elf and use Profession (Farmer) or (Commodities Speculator) for 100 years before the campaign, for instance, or bind Lantern Archons and have them make huge piles of Everburning Torches to sell, and break Wealth by Level over your knee. Stepping outside pure RAW for a bit, you can sell spell slots and do the same thing. Player characters deciding to interact with the economy in any way other than going into dungeons to get loot to sell and trade for better stuff breaks WBL, so WBL has got to go if you want a consistent world.

Seriously, using the Tome of Fiends fix for Wish, and making it a huge pile of free money, then making you stop caring about gold, is actually good for the game, and the best fix that can be done.

Also, if banknotes only stand for actual money in the bank vault, then they make the bank a target for wild west bank robberies. Bank notes, as your currency for high-level characters, have enough fundamental problems as to be unworkable.

------
High-end magic items can work, not as a currency, but in a barter economy. If the world doesn't have enough level 10+ people to sustain a real cash economy there (it probably doesn't), this would be the best option.

Remember, money has no real value. When you sell something for gold, or notes, or diamonds, or gold-pressed latinum, you are trading it for something essentially useless to you (barring spell component uses), in the hopes that you will be able to trade that money for something you can use, before someone takes your money from you by force. If you're not likely to meet someone who wants to sell you what you want, and will take what you got quickly, you are disinclined to take it. There's a minimum overall population density (dependent on travel speeds and communication) below which currency economies are just not feasible.

So whatever high-level characters are using will probably not only be impossible to replicate with Wish, but will also be something of use to them. Raw magic stored in gemstones, Primal Elements, Souls, Primordial Chaos, and so on meet all of these requirements. So do magic items, although at that point you're in a pure barter economy, as opposed to one with a standard medium of exchange (or several, valued against each other).

elliott20

2009-07-14, 01:41 AM

The simplest way to avoid forgery would be making the items that create the currency minor artifacts or other non-duplicable items. Perhaps some ancient empire used these items as banks, mints, and economic forecasters all in one, but all modern folks have been able to do is make it spit out money if and when the device deems more is necessary (and consume deposits if needed). Or maybe the device is simply a creator of unique identifiers from some sort of universal ID system the ancients had (maybe an empire run by transmuters and illusionists wherein it would be essential to verify identity with perfect accuracy), making the currency absolutely unforgeable if you know what to look for.

Now, this wouldn't completely remove the prospect of forgery (you could probably fool someone who isn't trained in the requisite skills) but it would ensure economic stability beyond "we hope the wizards doing this for us don't go rogue" and would add some internal consistency and mystique at the same time.
this I like.

of course, I would switch the idea of "ancient artifact" to something more like a piece of magical machinery that requires a lot of magical power that you need more than just one really powerful magic user to power it. Maybe a piece of machinery that requires a whole department of mages to run it.

And then, to increase accountability and adding some checks and balances, have a separate guild of diviners whose sole job is to sit around and try to perform audits for the amount of currency in existence. If large bank notes themselves are forged with a unique kind of magic, and you somehow figure out a way for diviners to do aggregation of how much of this unique magic is out there, they can keep a pulse on the total supply of money. When it goes out of whack, (like when a PC starts making his own money left and right) the diviners will pick this up, and notify the proper authorities that a crime might have just been committed and requires investigation.

As for really high level currency, you're right. Past a certain point, you need to have more than just bank notes. the really powerful people in real life might not deal with actual money anymore, but rather objects of immense value and all they do is try to assign values to these objects themselves.

I_got_this_name's idea would then kick in, as adventurers now start carrying around objects of power.

However, I do believe that it is only a matter of time before the institution that wants to keep tabs on the economy would try to find ways to figure out the exact value of these items, with probably more documentation than numbers in a Hong Kong phone book to reflect it.

Jane_Smith

2009-07-14, 02:00 AM

Last, but not least...

You could also do like mexico's currency - 15,000 'gold' to buy a cheese burger. >.> What? Apparently gold is the most common material in the world in dnd... Just make gold peices smaller, like dime-sized to help. :smallbiggrin:

Or do the -reverse-; lower the gold value of everything in exsistance. Magical weapons have their enchantment costs halved, armor halved, shields halved, magical items halved, etc. Ise Item Creation values as their normal market value - it helps to some degree, thats "Half" the wagons of gold you need to buy that +5 magic longsword of vorpal right?

elliott20

2009-07-14, 02:05 AM

well, once you start talking about price adjustments, you start talking about supply and demand and all that jazz and I'm not sure if it would be worth effort after a while.

Cieyrin

2009-07-14, 10:48 AM

What I'm wondering about all this is why we're worried about near-epic characters using wishes to counterfeit whatever money they want. If they're that powerful, they probably a) already have more than enough money invested in property and other monetary intangibles that they don't have to counterfeit and b) if they do counterfeit, whose going to catch them? Reasonably, as you get into the higher levels of play, there are less high level characters around than lower level ones. Most people in a campaign probably retire from the adventuring life well before that point to take responsibility for what they've already achieved. The few characters running around the campaign world capable of granting their ownwishes probably have better things to do than try to break the world economy or, if they are interested in it, have dug their hands into the economics and politics of powerful countries already through just their sheer influence as high level characters with reputations for heroics or nefariousness and probably make enough for it that, again, they don't have to counterfeit. We don't see all-powerful dragons chuckling in their lairs as they wish for their own gold, they go out and maraud, taking it from those unable to hold it for themselves or forcing tribute from their conquered territories and getting it that way. The relatively few high level characters running about is a natural balance to having to worry about such, really.

Them's my 2 coppers. Take as you will.

imp_fireball

2009-07-14, 01:26 PM

If a single rogue wizard with a pal who has ranks in forgery can undo the whole system, then said note would be instantly worthless.

Well of course, but then think of how many times that's happened in real life and how they've fought it. It won't break the system. Heck, it's another adventuring opportunity.

Either the rogue is a PC or he is part of a counterfeight syndicate the PC's are hunting.

Also, it wouldn't be 'instantly' worthless. The rogue can still bluff people into giving it value. He can also undo a nation. It also depends on how quickly the economy moves and how up to date people are.

I'm sure that given that these notes in a typical D&D setting would be quite rare and intended for 'big purchases', then exploitation would probably provoke capital punishment. They might deem the rogue a national threat and then entire armies will be out for his head. :smallsmile:

And on that train of thought, who hasn't ever had a rogue seek somebody to craft gold coins out of 'fools gold' or some other cheap metal? Trade in a silver pieces for a hundred 'gold coins'. Wherever there's value there's always counterfeight. :smallbiggrin:

And Cieyrin also just offered some common sense on the level of what the original creators of D&D must have been thinking. I'd listen to it.

well, once you start talking about price adjustments, you start talking about supply and demand and all that jazz and I'm not sure if it would be worth effort after a while.

That's why it's easier to just allow PCs to haggle with merchants and for different nations to have different prices - sometime's it's assumed that they use a different currency and that an exchange rate is factored in. Gold pieces are actually used because of the gold standard in real life - gold is universal. I imagine any number of gold pieces that travellers carry along would have the symbols of many different kings or queens from different regions of the world.

Milskidasith

2009-07-14, 01:33 PM

The thing is, there is a difference between real life counterfeiters and D&D wizards counterfeiting money only they know how to make. The difference is, IRL, you can reasonably expect to send a legion of "level" 1 cops to get the guy, and you'll probably win in the end. In D&D, if a wizard decides to start counterfeiting the money he controls anyway... well, he's going to kill everybody, ever, who gets in his way.

The reason bank note systems work is because of a high population density and the fact that nations are strong enough where if somebody high up is crazy, it won't ruin everything. In D&D, the population density is low enough bartering is a better idea and any level 20+ wizard can probably take out an entire nation for the hell of it, ruining your money's value.

imp_fireball

2009-07-14, 01:35 PM

The difference is, IRL, you can reasonably expect to send a legion of "level" 1 cops to get the guy, and you'll probably win in the end.

It also takes months or years to fully expose a crime ring. That sort of thing is actually huge in real life.

well, he's going to kill everybody, ever, who gets in his way.

Ok seriously, the mafia does that too. It's just that they use guns and bats and cigars and shineboxes. How different are these two things, really?

The reason bank note systems work is because of a high population density and the fact that nations are strong enough where if somebody high up is crazy, it won't ruin everything.

I never mentioned mass scale. This would be for 'big purchases' where lugging around 100,000 GP is unreasonable; even if you have a bag of holding, dumping out all of that would take hours and fill up a room... and the seller in question would need to sacrifice at least a dozen slaves to carting it off.

And somebody high up would ruin everything. Somebody high up is likely rich enough to pull the strings or force people to submit to him with a weapon/spell of mass destruction. Population density doesn't factor into the matter. Also high population density and the overturn from middle ages to the next period over was really all that guaranteed the mass-scale use of bank notes - not every peasant had gold either.

It wasn't why people began using bank notes... it's just that banks pretty much ran things by then and it proved more convenient that way.

As for really high level currency, you're right. Past a certain point, you need to have more than just bank notes. the really powerful people in real life might not deal with actual money anymore, but rather objects of immense value and all they do is try to assign values to these objects themselves.

I imagine they already do do that. Ever heard of territory claim? Such a concept is ancient. These people wouldn't stop using bank notes. Only if there was a law imposed that said 'bank notes MUST be worth this much', unless they over rid that law. Also, you can still allow them to write cheques - that's where the spirit of bank notes came into use in the first place.

Iferus

2009-07-14, 03:55 PM

I even included some fluff. How about that.

Throughout the world, there are sources of raw magic. Raw magic just sprouts in areas underground, at the surface or even in the sky. Raw magic can be harvested, but without proper care it simply radiates its energy to fuel flora and magical fauna alike. In its harvested form, it is a highly valuable trade good.
Raw magic is available only on the material plane: it is generated by the slow collision with the shadow plane (which will be complete in about three hundred million years). As-is, it is a swiftly evaporating substance, that may only be absorbed by biological matter. Foetuses that happen to absorb raw magic are born with sorcerous talent. Harvesting raw magic is done by completely engulfing the source with algae – when saturated with magic, these algae start glowing slightly. After having been dried, these algae turn black. Hard as rock, a standard unit of raw magic is about the size of a piece of rabbit dung. Often it is made to resemble said dung, because of security reasons.
A standard unit of raw magic (“one SU”) is worth about a thousand gold pieces. Raw magic is the main component (the gold price) of virtually all magically crafted items, which is why it is such a popular good.
Like cells formed from stem cells, raw magic can never be supernaturally created. Products of raw magic, such as magic items, can.

Yakk

2009-07-14, 04:38 PM

TSED

2009-07-14, 11:45 PM

So 4e has "astral diamonds" and "residuum".

I like to think of them as the same thing. "Astral Diamonds" are residuum crystals that form naturally in the astral plane. The crystals are always of exactly the same size, which makes them useful as a form of currency.

Residuum, of course, is the raw magical mojo that can be used to create magic items.

Turning Residuum into a magical item, then breaking the magic item down, results in 80% of the Residuum dissipating. So while Residuum has an inherit use (making magic item), turning it into a magic item for temporary use is a quite silly thing to do. So there is sufficient incentive to leave it as an un'used' currency.

Well, I've never heard of this stuff before, but it was what I was about to suggest.

Some material that isn't gold that has some crazy property that prevents it from being magically recreated - at all. And then a coin of this stuff is worth, I don't know, 10,000 gold pieces? Because it's really bloody rare and takes a lot of effort to rip from the earth and then process and refine?

That's basically what the gold coin is supposed to be, only for high levels. I'd suggest adamantine, but, well, in D&D...

Milskidasith

2009-07-15, 12:01 AM

It also takes months or years to fully expose a crime ring. That sort of thing is actually huge in real life.

Huge, yes. But unlike in D&D, you can reasonably expect to stop the forgery from a crime ring at some point, and they have to be subtle with it. A wizard really wouldn't; if anybody tried to stop him, he could just kill them.

Ok seriously, the mafia does that too. It's just that they use guns and bats and cigars and shineboxes. How different are these two things, really?

Are you being serious? The mafia fighting police officers is the equivalent of two opposed groups of level 1s fighting each other; none of them are superhuman by any means. The mafia couldn't just blow up the entire city while all the cops were shooting at them; a Wizard could kill everybody in the city while all the archers were (failing to) shoot him.

I never mentioned mass scale. This would be for 'big purchases' where lugging around 100,000 GP is unreasonable; even if you have a bag of holding, dumping out all of that would take hours and fill up a room... and the seller in question would need to sacrifice at least a dozen slaves to carting it off.

There's still the trust issue; why would anybody trust a wizard running the show with their gold if the wizard was so strong it could kill everybody, and why would anybody trust a group of less powerful wizards to run the baking for them when anybody decently powerful could still steal their hard earned gold?

And somebody high up would ruin everything. Somebody high up is likely rich enough to pull the strings or force people to submit to him with a weapon/spell of mass destruction. Population density doesn't factor into the matter. Also high population density and the overturn from middle ages to the next period over was really all that guaranteed the mass-scale use of bank notes - not every peasant had gold either.

That's the entire problem I've been telling you! Either the high level wizard really doesn't get much benefit from running the show (though I can see them doing it just so that the military would take care of "distractions" like, say, attacks by goblins), and if lower leveled people are running the show, a high leveled person could easily ruin the whole thing with a few spells.

Cieyrin

2009-07-15, 11:21 AM

Your argument for the wizard simply killing everyone who crosses him makes little sense, as why bother with money if you can just kill the guy and take his stuff? If your arcane badass ignores the rules anyways, what's stopping him from being fair to those less powerful than him at all? Either he'll threaten whoever he wants and take with little consequence, demand tribute from those he has cowed or any number of other things.

The wizard you describe is exactly the type of person you send adventuring parties after to deal with, either to get him back in line or send him on to the great waiting room in the sky, where there are clipboards with fresh character sheets ready for the creation of a new persona. He's an adventure hook in the making, the source of a good campaign arc at best, an encounter at worst.

Them's my 2 coppers. Take as you will.

Oslecamo

2009-07-15, 11:47 AM

Iferus

2009-07-15, 03:03 PM

Ok, someone explain me, why do people keep insisting that one million of pieces of gold aren't worth one million more times than a single piece of gold?

At high level, you can make infinite items of a certain value. Supply and demand tells you that that makes it effectively worthless compared to more expensive items. No-one in their right mind would trade a rare item for a couple of common items, even if the rare item is 15001 GP and the common items are 15000 GP.

The prices below 15000 gold pieces, however, are a market by themselves. That may still function.

RoninFrosty

2009-07-16, 12:15 AM

Wow, lots of good suggestions! Thanks guys, I'll let you know what I come up with.

I_Got_This_Name

2009-07-16, 01:16 AM

Ok, someone explain me, why do people keep insisting that one million of pieces of gold aren't worth one million more times than a single piece of gold?

This is, just grab an economics newspaper. Big companies deal with billions every day. Even in paper money, that's literally tons of cash. And the economy seems to worck just fine. Despite the fact that cash can be replicated. When a government nowadays has lack of money, they print more money to pay their own bills.

That's modern economics. D&D worlds do not have modern economics. They do not have the population, the philosophical advances, or even the social stability to advance it.

Also, it's not that a million GP together aren't worth a million times a single GP, it's that there are some things that GP can't buy, because GP can be created with Wish for free (this fix is actually the simplest and best one. Really. Otherwise you have to rewrite a whole mess of monsters. Besides, it's the fix that the article we're discussing (http://www.dandwiki.com/wiki/Dungeonomicon_(DnD_Other)/Economicon) uses), and those items can't. You can buy a hundred torches, two person-days of trail rations, or an ordinary dagger for a GP, and you can buy a hundred million torches, two million person-days of trail rations, or a million daggers for a million GP (assuming that you can find a place where your mass purchases won't drastically change their economy). But no amount of gold will buy you a +3 sword, ever, because you can get any amount of gold you want by binding as many Efreet as you are willing to, but you can't ever get a +3 sword by doing so.

The thing is, currency isn't really worh the cost of the material it's made from, it's worth whatever it's creator can enfforce it to be worth. A powerfull nation's currency will be more valuable because it can force others to acept it as payment, and can afford to only acept said currency when doing business with others. A weaker nation has trouble enforcing their own money in other countries, and when dealing with someone more powerfull they may be forced to acept other currency, making their own less valuable.

Not entirely true in the real world, but close enough. In a D&D world, though, currency as we understand it doesn't even really exist.

A gold piece is a standardized lump of reasonably pure gold, labelled with a fairly trustworthy label as such. You take it in exchange for food or spears or spell components or whatever you're selling because you think you can trade it to someone else for something you actually want before either someone takes it from you by force or you starve to death. This is actually the way money worked for thousands of years; fiat money is a fairly recent invention, and is the current stage (possibly culmination) of a trend that begun at about the Enligtenment.

Forget everything you know about a modern world. D&D is set in a dark age where a society is considered "stable" if it takes more than one bad drought to cause a famine, and a government is considered especially stable if it lasts for more than a generation without a civil war, peasant revolt, coup d'etat, or violently contested royal succession.

So if you wanted a "realistic" economy, high level adventurers would decide whatever is used as coin, because they can indeed leverage your country if you don't agree with them. And if anyone tried to replicate said currency whitout permission, well, they would either face the adventurer's wrath(not pleasant) or get hired if they proved good enough.

High-level adventurers do not have the stability for a fiat currency. Money loses value if you can't be sure that it will have the same value tomorrow.

Suppose you're King Daxall, a high-level adventurer. You decide to print "Daxall Dollar: 10,000 GP" on a bunch of pieces of paper. Even if you actually have gold in your treasury to back them, people still will prefer actually having gold in their hands Daxall Dollars, because they'll have to go to someplace that takes Daxall Dollars for gold, and it will still have to have the gold in there, and there's no guarantee that you haven't been robbed by a roving gang of masked Balors. If people are taking them as though they were 10,000 GP because they're scared that you'll Fireball their family if they don't, then Daxall Dollars don't actually represent money, but instead are threats of armed robbery.

Now suppose you don't have anything backing your money at all. Unlike in the real world, where people are justified in having faith that the government that issued the money will still be there in a few decades (in the developed world), backing it with "King Daxall wants his taxes paid in these and guarantees their stability" means absolutely nothing, because a bunch of illithids might eat King Daxall's brain tomorrow in a teleport ambush, or a higher-level group of adventurers could decide next month that Daxall's kingdom would be a good place to set up their own empire. There's no guarantee that Daxall will even still be there when taxes come due, nevermind that he'll have any stability to give to the money. You're then back to backing your money with armed robbery, and at that point it's not really money in the modern sense of the word.

If the rules apply (or even pretend to apply) even in the absence of PCs, no D&D world has the stability to support even a banking system where every note is fully backed. If the rules only apply in the presence of PCs, then any such system built in a D&D world can be destroyed by the PCs.

The basis of a stable society is that any rogue element can be brought down by the weight of the society; the only thing any one of us is guaranteed to lose to is all of us. In a D&D world, there are enough differences in individual power that this isn't true. If you narrow down to the world's most powerful adventurers building a society, each member is a significant fraction of the total world population, so it becomes harder to bring them down with weight, not to mention that they are able to block magical detections well enough to give them the whole world to hide in, or, of course, hide off-plane. This means that you can't actually even have a stable society.

Then, also, the ranks of high-level adventurers have fairly rapid turnover compared to the general population. Someone levelling full-time with no days off could go 1-19 in 60 days if you use the standard EXP rules and they get the encounters they need. Even if you slow it down significantly this comes out to a few years for an adventurer to rise from being utterly insignificant to a full member of the society: a level a month is less than two years; a level a season gets to 20 in under 5 years, one encounter/week, or one full adventuring day a month, takes 5 years to 19, and if you want to level faster you can always seek things out. That's still less than the 18 years warning that we have between birth and adulthood for real society. High-level adventurers have to be leaking out at the same rate, otherwise the population is continually increasing, and it shouldn't be because that makes your world even less stable, with them killing eachother off for room. So a generation of high-level adventurers is somewhere on the order of five years or less, with ridiculous ranges of variation, because you can have a few who were levelling in 60 days and a few dragons who took a thousand years. You don't have the ability to take an accurate census of what's coming in to your population, and any rogue elements have significant chunks of your population, so you don't have any stability in this society. Without that, you can't have modern economics

Oslecamo

2009-07-16, 09:21 AM

then Daxall Dollars don't actually represent money, but instead are threats of armed robbery.

Exactly my point! Like you pointed out so well, the D&D world is too unstable for there to be any stable universal system, because if there was, then there would be no need for adventurers in the first place. An angry dragon or a group of evil adventurers can literally pop out of nowhere and leverage entire nations on a whim. People can be mind controled, cloned, brainwashed, zombified, ect, ect.

So, in the end, it becomes a matter of who has more power.

That would be the supreme entity known as the "DM".

And the DM says that powerfull(but mortal crafteable) artifacts can be exchanged for gold and vice versa. And woe befall anyone who tries to go against him. The DM never shows up personally, but has many agents to do his biding, like the Inevitables. An infinite army of robots dedicated to bringing stability to the universe no matter what the cost.

Seriously, adventurers aren't the only thing on the D&D universe. There's dieties, and there's outsiders wich are the living embodiments of concepts, and they just love to try to boss everybody else. It's a world where divine punishment is not only possible, it's to be expected.

Look at the drow. They should have anihilated each other by now with their style of life, but their diety, Lolth, intercedes to stop them from hurting themselves too much in order to keep going. And then demands them to kill each other again. And then stops them. All for her twisted plans (and pleasure).

Iferus:At high level characters can become gods or/and create their own planes. They're too far away from normal mortals to bother with them anymore. It's like saying that the world should be destroyed by now because there are some countries with thousands of nukes that would wipe out all civilization. But they don't. They have the nukes, but they don't shoot them because they don't have anything to gain from it.

This is, an high level wizard could breack the economy as easily as he could destroy the world, but why would be do that? What does ge gain from it? If anything, he'll atract the atention of another party of adventurers that will try to stop him, at best, or the atention of some mighty entity (cough Mechanus cough Inevitables).

Also there's the matter of fair play. Want to make infinite items of under 15000 gold? Then you're dead. No, no save, nothing. The BBEG just destroyed you all with his infinite supply of scrolls of time stop, so you didn't even get to roll for iniative.

Lamech

2009-07-16, 09:51 AM

First: arcane mark is a personal mark. To fake it a different permanent illusion spell would be needed. I don't think any of those exist in core so the DM can just say nothing can fake it. Problem solved.

Two: Efreets could enforce a high level economy. They are lawful and therefore trustworthy. They can back up their economy. (Hey slave, wish this guy into the sun.) They can see into the future with commune and similar spells. (Aww.... that guys planning on foraging some brass coins. Free trip to the sun.) And they can always produce what ever you want when you redeem your money. (A 100,000 gp magic item and 5000pp: sure.)

Three the economicon? Really, beating up Efreets? They have slaves and commune contacts deities. Deities can see into the future. Divination explicitly does so, so yes they do get to see the future. And they can kill you from anywhere. The economicon's replacement IIRC is souls. Good thing you can no longer get all your money by planar binding creatures and abusing them. Oh wait...

PairO'Dice Lost

2009-07-16, 02:05 PM

Three the economicon? Really, beating up Efreets? They have slaves and commune contacts deities. Deities can see into the future. Divination explicitly does so, so yes they do get to see the future. And they can kill you from anywhere. The economicon's replacement IIRC is souls. Good thing you can no longer get all your money by planar binding creatures and abusing them. Oh wait...

Problem is, by the time someone would be able to bind an efreeti they can...well, bind an efreeti--any efreeti they sent would either get trapped or banished, and their slaves would be too since they're less powerful than the efreet themselves. It's basically like an army trying to stop people from kidnapping their soldiers by sending their soldiers in unarmed to negotiate.

Lamech

2009-07-16, 09:13 PM

Problem is, by the time someone would be able to bind an efreeti they can...well, bind an efreeti--any efreeti they sent would either get trapped or banished, and their slaves would be too since they're less powerful than the efreet themselves. It's basically like an army trying to stop people from kidnapping their soldiers by sending their soldiers in unarmed to negotiate.
Oh wish (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/Wish.htm) makes a GREAT spell to kill people with.

Transport travelers. A wish can lift one creature per caster level from anywhere on any plane and place those creatures anywhere else on any plane regardless of local conditions. An unwilling target gets a Will save to negate the effect, and spell resistance (if any) applies. Anywhere includes places like: The heavily warded demi-plane of Mr. Wizard. Also, includes "not the plane the Efreet is on". It also includes places like a sphere of annilation. Regardless of local conditions means no wards for you. Efreets should have no trouble buffing there caster levels to innane scores with Ioun stone abuse, or consumptive field or some such, so SR can be bypasses. Efreets don't have to leave their city. Oh yeah, if the DM is a total jerk he can say the Efreet can wait as long as it wants between granting the wish and the wish being made. (Or has a kobold in a bag of holding.) And a binding circle? Local condition: watch the Efreet leave, and SoD Mr. Wiz three times on the way out.

The slaves simply wish for things the Efreet wants. They don't actually fight.

PairO'Dice Lost

2009-07-17, 08:18 AM

Oh wish (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/Wish.htm) makes a GREAT spell to kill people with.

[...]

The slaves simply wish for things the Efreet wants. They don't actually fight.

1/day—grant up to three wishes (to nongenies only)

So let me get this straight--the efreet are going to base their defenses on the assumption that, when some powerful people on other planes are whittling down the efreet's numbers and weakening them, the slaves are going to help their lawful evil masters against their liberators? I mean, them not helping directly results in their master(s) being summoned away (i.e., unable to hurt them) on a regular basis, so why would they help? Not the smartest idea.

Hell, it only takes a few minutes where all of one efreeti's slaves are together to screw it up; one of them says "My friends, if we resist we may be freed; if one of us is punished and killed, the others may live" to make them steadfast against wishing as ordered.

Lamech

2009-07-17, 11:04 AM

So let me get this straight--the efreet are going to base their defenses on the assumption that, when some powerful people on other planes are whittling down the efreet's numbers and weakening them, the slaves are going to help their lawful evil masters against their liberators? I mean, them not helping directly results in their master(s) being summoned away (i.e., unable to hurt them) on a regular basis, so why would they help? Not the smartest idea.

Hell, it only takes a few minutes where all of one efreeti's slaves are together to screw it up; one of them says "My friends, if we resist we may be freed; if one of us is punished and killed, the others may live" to make them steadfast against wishing as ordered.
It takes exactly one slave helping the Efreet to gain control of the rest by say geas. More importantly, the Efreet have above average int and wis, they are not dumb; they would be highly remiss if they didn't keep some sort of mind control magic on at least a few slaves.

Also one selfish slave is all it takes to screw the "rebellion" over. The Efreet can just threaten that one. Sure they may all agree at the start. But later? Maybe not.

Yes, this would be difficult to set up in respose to an attack, but if the Efreet have defenses set up (Are you arguing a planar metropolis with increadible wealth wouldn't?) the wizard will probably have attempt caught before he prepares the spells.

P.S. They can also have simulacrum's to defend them. Dragons make great creatures to copy.

PairO'Dice Lost

2009-07-17, 11:17 AM

Yes, this would be difficult to set up in respose to an attack, but if the Efreet have defenses set up (Are you arguing a planar metropolis with increadible wealth wouldn't?) the wizard will probably have attempt caught before he prepares the spells.

My point is simply that having wishes doesn't make the efreet competent or powerful in and of itself, because they can't use them for other efreet. So they geas a whole bunch of slaves--when some LG adventuring party comes through and mass-dispels, they're not going to be able to reestablish the geas because even the most selfish slave is going to be pissed off at being used.

Any defensive establishment reliant on wishes would have to deal with mutually-beneficial agreements, in which case you have the possibility of betrayal without the assurance of control that owning the other party grants...and anyone who would ally with the efreet to get wishes would most likely find a way to simply bind them in the first place!

Lamech

2009-07-17, 11:45 AM

My point is simply that having wishes doesn't make the efreet competent or powerful in and of itself, because they can't use them for other efreet. Look random american citizens aren't powerful. If say South Africa started killing them, South Africa would be nuked. Because the other American's would retaliate. Samething here: If a wizard binds an Efreeti, the other Efreet will have some slaves, a simulacrum or just a random elemental (in exhange for a wish or five) wish the wizard to his doom.

It doesn't matter that the Efreet need help to brutally murder the PCs, if they have time to set up defenses they will:
1) Know the god damn future. There are spells that do this. Divination does so explicitly
2) Have legions of powerful simulacrums. Yes the Efreet can increase their caster level.
3) Be able to kill just about anything with out needing to hunt it down.
4) Have lots of mind controlled slaves to wish for them, those simulacrum's work too.
So they geas a whole bunch of slaves--when some LG adventuring party comes through and mass-dispels, they're not going to be able to reestablish the geas because even the most selfish slave is going to be pissed off at being used. Yeah... geas isn't dispellable enmasse. By dispel magic at least, disjunction might work though.
Anyway this is how I see the senario going:
PC: Disjunction
Efreet: Oh noes all of my slaves who weren't in the 30ft around me wish for these maraduers to be cast into a sphere of annilation.
DM: Role 108 will saves.
PCs: Err... crap.

Any defensive establishment reliant on wishes would have to deal with mutually-beneficial agreements, in which case you have the possibility of betrayal without the assurance of control that owning the other party grants...and anyone who would ally with the efreet to get wishes would most likely find a way to simply bind them in the first place!
Efreets are lawful, they won't lie. Pick another lawful outsider, or something similar. An imp for example. And how would say, an imp bind an Efreeti, or would they not want the wishes? Or just use slaves to wish for you, or simulacrums.

P.S. You realize in the city of brass there are 200,000 Efreet? And a million slaves? And the city is MILES wide, and even longer?

imp_fireball

2009-07-17, 12:08 PM

Huge, yes. But unlike in D&D, you can reasonably expect to stop the forgery from a crime ring at some point, and they have to be subtle with it. A wizard really wouldn't; if anybody tried to stop him, he could just kill them.

Just as you can 'reasonably expect' a crime ring to be stopped. In fact, you're just proving how rogues are terrible compared to wizards. There's still a million ways to stop wizards. I mean, really.

What if a nature deity that detested civilization decided to meddle with mortal affairs on a daily basis (turning gold pieces to zinc, sending millions of treants to stomp on towns and banking institutions)?

Better yet, how do simple humans survive in a world where CR 20 dragons abound? It's all the same question.

Are you being serious? The mafia fighting police officers is the equivalent of two opposed groups of level 1s fighting each other; none of them are superhuman by any means. The mafia couldn't just blow up the entire city while all the cops were shooting at them; a Wizard could kill everybody in the city while all the archers were (failing to) shoot him.

Are you being serious? A fight is a fight, supernatural or not. If you want to look at it in D&D terms, the city would be hiring super powered adventurers to stop the wizard. So the wizard could undo a nation? So could the mafia if they were big enough. It's the same thing.

There's still the trust issue; why would anybody trust a wizard running the show with their gold if the wizard was so strong it could kill everybody, and why would anybody trust a group of less powerful wizards to run the baking for them when anybody decently powerful could still steal their hard earned gold?

Why would anyone trust the wizard? Because he'd kill them otherwise? Problem solved.

Why would anyone trust a group of wizards? Because there's no other inherent system and the gradual uplift of civilization resulted in this regardless (just like banking in real life)?

Likely, the wizards are also a monopolizing corporation with government support, otherwise they wouldn't have the influence they'd have, and, like you said, a bunch of evil dudes would kill 'em right off the bat.

Really, it's just a matter of comparing it to real life. When banks first came around, there was a massive trust issue. There still is.

Heck any genius hacker can steal your money right now. Do you still trust the bank?

How many high level characters really occupy a world? A typical setting isn't really supposed to have all that many, although a lot of GMs are liberal about this (inevitably resulting in the whole, 'adventurers always kick ass' mindset).

The world isn't perfect, and neither would a D&D world be - that way, there's more problems than what the GM railroads the players with and more fun.

That's the entire problem I've been telling you! Either the high level wizard really doesn't get much benefit from running the show (though I can see them doing it just so that the military would take care of "distractions" like, say, attacks by goblins), and if lower leveled people are running the show, a high leveled person could easily ruin the whole thing with a few spells.

So... what's your point? If banking is so hard in the world of D&D and perhaps more hard than it being conducted in real life (as you so claim), then it's reasonable to assume that only the most powerful nation has a trusted bank (likely an evil, monopolizing one). That's material for yet another setting.

Also, why wouldn't the wizard deal with the goblins or any other number of things simultaneously? You seem to be imagining something rather omnipotent and epic here. There's also the matter of everyone being enslaved by said wizard - a high level person always ruins the show no matter who or what it is or what the matter concerns. I still say banks stand.

Exactly my point! Like you pointed out so well, the D&D world is too unstable for there to be any stable universal system, because if there was, then there would be no need for adventurers in the first place.

So why do people need adventurers to begin with? Because some dude's got a problem he can't handle himself! Even with a stable universal system, people would still be asking for adventurers because everyone would have problems.

Do you expect a stable universal system to result in pure harmony on a scale that results in total world peace? Seriously, read another book (or study up on political science; the sheer volume of epic problems is never in short supply).

I'm sure in real life, we could use a few adventurers.

Cieyrin

2009-07-17, 12:20 PM

imp_fireball

2009-07-17, 12:30 PM

Also, since when does Lawful Evil == Trustworthy? Lawful Evil follows the rules to where it serves its purpose and when it doesn't, it warps the rules as it can so that they then, once again, serve its purpose. So they're trustworthy only some of the time, which doesn't sit well with me in all of my money management needs. Trust otherworldly fire beings to run my society? Not just no but hell no!

Well it depends on the person really. If the LE guy is a manager, then he'll likely fire you because you weren't working hard enough, even if you have a family to feed and you're looking at being thrown on the street. But he's still going to do whatever he can to keep his own job.

He won't care if coworkers are abusing one another (he might even join in on the fun, much like that character from the british version of the office), as long as the higher up doesn't get on his back.

Some LE people love rules. Sure, they do it to benefit themselves, but it also depends on their faith, smarts, etc. They could be the most helpful, loyal, trustworthy employee out there, but they'll also beat their friend to the much awaited raise/promotion and break up his family... a mafia guy would also whack his best friend if told to.

Really, they're no less trustworthy then an LG or LN, if they know what's good for them. Just like people in real life. Matter of fact, most sapient races are much like humans for the sake of convenience. It's all the same.

PairO'Dice Lost

2009-07-17, 01:49 PM

Look random american citizens aren't powerful. If say South Africa started killing them, South Africa would be nuked. Because the other American's would retaliate. Samething here: If a wizard binds an Efreeti, the other Efreet will have some slaves, a simulacrum or just a random elemental (in exhange for a wish or five) wish the wizard to his doom.

This isn't like South Africa killing random citizens, this is like the US special forces kidnapping Russian special forces--sure, they can nuke the US, but the US can nuke back, and it still has the Russian people. Asking the efreet's subjects to wish the wizards dead is like Russia asking the former Soviet bloc to help Russia gets its troops back--the answer's probably going to be "Thanks, but we hate you, and if they win, you die, so...."

It doesn't matter that the Efreet need help to brutally murder the PCs, if they have time to set up defenses they will:
1) Know the god damn future. There are spells that do this. Divination does so explicitly

None of which they can use without wish or outside help. They can't innately cast divinations.

2) Have legions of powerful simulacrums. Yes the Efreet can increase their caster level.

None of which they can use without wish or outside help. They can't innately cast simulacrum.

3) Be able to kill just about anything with out needing to hunt it down.

Which they can't do without wish or outside help. They're CR 8.

4) Have lots of mind controlled slaves to wish for them, those simulacrum's work too.Yeah... geas isn't dispellable enmasse. By dispel magic at least, disjunction might work though.

None of which they can use without wish or outside help. They can't innately cast enchantments.

Sure, they can start with a few mind-controlled slaves by using others to mind-control them, but that leaves them beholden to other creatures and/or wouldn't happen because they don't want to see the efreet in charge.

The City of Brass is a trade city. Beings of all sorts come there to trade in a (relatively) neutral zone. Don't you think if the lawful evil efreet had legions of slaves willing to wish for them, they'd own everything by now? I mean, if the Efreet gets one mind-controlled slave, he can take over every other slave in the City of Brass for infinite wishes, and then it's game over.

Anyway this is how I see the senario going:
PC: Disjunction
Efreet: Oh noes all of my slaves who weren't in the 30ft around me wish for these maraduers to be cast into a sphere of annilation.
DM: Role 108 will saves.
PCs: Err... crap.

If you're going up against a being with tons of slaves and wishes on its home turf, it would probably happen like this:

PC Cleric: move to efreeti, antimagic field
PC Wizard: forcecage
PC Cleric: "I can survive a few rounds, get the slaves out of here."
Efreeti: "...crap."

P.S. You realize in the city of brass there are 200,000 Efreet? And a million slaves? And the city is MILES wide, and even longer?

Yes, and they mostly keep order because there are 200,000 efreet, not because they have tons of slaves to wish for them. As I said, if you get even one slave mind-controlled, the efreet get infinite wishes and everything else loses, which obviously hasn't happened yet.

Lamech

2009-07-17, 03:04 PM

This isn't like South Africa killing random citizens, this is like the US special forces kidnapping Russian special forces--sure, they can nuke the US, but the US can nuke back, and it still has the Russian people. Asking the efreet's subjects to wish the wizards dead is like Russia asking the former Soviet bloc to help Russia gets its troops back--the answer's probably going to be "Thanks, but we hate you, and if they win, you die, so...."There are quite a few free people in the city too. Some of them are also outsiders, who probably won't be fond of wizards binding outsiders.
Also it would be more like Russia saying to its former Soviet block "If you don't help us we'll nuke you, and if you help us we'll make you a wealthly productive country." Oh and instead of making the pitch to the country as a whole it is being made to each individual person. And it takes one person to win for Russia. And Russia is known to be 100% honest. And its being made before any known threat to Russia.

Now if slaves would rebel in the face of death and suffering, slavery wouldn't have worked. As shown by human history, even though slavery would break down if all the slaves decided to just not work, it never happened. Exact same thing here.

None of which they can use without wish or outside help. They can't innately cast divinations.

None of which they can use without wish or outside help. They can't innately cast simulacrum.

Which they can't do without wish or outside help. They're CR 8.

None of which they can use without wish or outside help. They can't innately cast enchantments.

Sure, they can start with a few mind-controlled slaves by using others to mind-control them, but that leaves them beholden to other creatures and/or wouldn't happen because they don't want to see the efreet in charge.Or they can start by threatening a few people, trading wishes with someone who doesn't quite think things through (I remember a poster who used that as a wish loop, so yes I'm sure out of a million people they can find one), a devil who thought everything through and made sure it won't get screwed, or a mind control someone with a magic toy or spell. For crying out loud the ruler is a level 20 sorc, he could mind control someone.

It takes exactly one person to screw it all up. One. Out of millions of a million its probably going to happen. A lot.

And how would it leave them beholden? They would just need to keep the slaves around. Or the simulacrums.

The City of Brass is a trade city. Beings of all sorts come there to trade in a (relatively) neutral zone. Don't you think if the lawful evil efreet had legions of slaves willing to wish for them, they'd own everything by now? I mean, if the Efreet gets one mind-controlled slave, he can take over every other slave in the City of Brass for infinite wishes, and then it's game over.Depends on the motives of the Efreet. Sure you could argue there all morons who won't try to get there own wishes, but... that seems to me far more contrived than saying the Efreet aren't planning on waging war on anyone. Especially since they are small change when compared to the infinite armies of the heavens and the lower planes.

If you're going up against a being with tons of slaves and wishes on its home turf, it would probably happen like this:

PC Cleric: move to efreeti, antimagic field
PC Wizard: forcecage
PC Cleric: "I can survive a few rounds, get the slaves out of here."
Efreeti: "...crap."
Err... if the Efreet is in the anti-magic field forcecage doesn't work. So it goes like this. Efreet: err... I'm going over there. And what makes you think his neighbors won't help. Or are you claiming a lack of guards? I think killing off bands of roving Efreet killers would be a good idea even if you didn't have a mutual defense agreement with someone. Even if you weren't an Efreet. For example the salamanders who live in the brass city might see a group of "heroes" killing off other evil outsiders as a threat.

Yes, and they mostly keep order because there are 200,000 efreet, not because they have tons of slaves to wish for them. As I said, if you get even one slave mind-controlled, the efreet get infinite wishes and everything else loses, which obviously hasn't happened yet.
First its three a day per Efreet or 600,000 der day. And everything else loses? Huh? I mean maybe if we assume that the Efreets WANT to take over everything. They're outsiders; the DM can give them what ever motivation he wants. And what ever code of conduct they want. If he wants them to be the merchants of the economy he can say, "the Efreet don't kidnap people, but try to get people to make contracts that they have to default on and then enslave them. They also act as the merchants of everything expensive to keep the economy under there control." Sure its kind of "unrealistic", but so is every single Efreet not thinking of how to get its own wishes or every single slave be willing to pass of freedom and give there life.

More importantly if you are arguing 600,000 wishes per day = auto-win, we have an even bigger problem. Namely those infinite numbers of pit fiends and solars. That comes out too... a lot more wishes. I think infinitely more.

Thrawn183

2009-07-17, 07:12 PM

I have dragons run the banks in my setting. You don't mess with dragons, if you're lucky they'll only kill you.

PairO'Dice Lost

2009-07-17, 09:56 PM

Err... if the Efreet is in the anti-magic field forcecage doesn't work. So it goes like this. Efreet: err... I'm going over there.

Like wall of force, forcecage is unaffected by an antimagic field.

And everything else loses? Huh? I mean maybe if we assume that the Efreets WANT to take over everything. They're outsiders; the DM can give them what ever motivation he wants. And what ever code of conduct they want. If he wants them to be the merchants of the economy he can say, "the Efreet don't kidnap people, but try to get people to make contracts that they have to default on and then enslave them. They also act as the merchants of everything expensive to keep the economy under there control." Sure its kind of "unrealistic", but so is every single Efreet not thinking of how to get its own wishes or every single slave be willing to pass of freedom and give there life.

Well, if we're assuming that efreet can use as many wishes as they want via slaves, then if there exists at least one, singular, efreet who wants to take over somewhere, they can. Give him one, singular, mind-controlled slave, and he has 3 wishes per day for as long as desired to do whatever he wants.

The thrust of my argument is this: If we assume that the efreet defensive and military plan is based on their wishes, and that they will use that power to go after anyone who tries to bind an efreeti, the setting breaks in half because all it takes is one megalomaniacal or vengeful efreeti to grab a slave and start taking over (unless he's stopped by other efreet, which is of course possible, but the binding that causes the problem most likely would make the others agree with him). If, on the other hand, we assume that efreet use their merchant connections and other deals to provide for the defense of their holdings, and can't simply wish-nuke any wizards using planar binding, the setting makes more sense. I don't deny that the efreet would use wishes on their own behalf occasionally, by whatever means, but using them on a large scale causes major problems.

More importantly if you are arguing 600,000 wishes per day = auto-win, we have an even bigger problem. Namely those infinite numbers of pit fiends and solars. That comes out too... a lot more wishes. I think infinitely more.

The pit fiends are using them in the Blood War and the solars are...well, let's face it, too pathetic and wishy-washy to ever do anything unless the fiends attack them first, since they don't seem to care about the Prime or the Blood War. The efreet have no such checks on their power, either a major opposing force or an inconvenient conscience.

TSED

2009-07-17, 11:46 PM

Couple of solutions:

1) Don't ENSLAVE people. Get lovely, horribly good contracts for people. "Serve us for one year, wishing for anything we tell you to. You get 1,000 gold pieces a day, room and board and food are completely covered, and as a bonus you get 3 wishes at the end of your term. You are absolutely guaranteed safety, after all, we have this huge net of other slaves wishing and any damages incurred during your year of service (including but not limited to: death) will be fixed within the day. 2 weeks of paid vacation a year. You ARE free to end your term, but we require two weeks notice of this - you forfeit your three wishes, but keep any money you've earned. 'Quitting' without the two-weeks notice will result in wish-powered retribution to take back our gold."

Are you going to tell me that you wouldn't sign up for that deal with a LAWFUL outsider? Not even a devil, or anything. Just. "Here are the terms. Safety. We use you as a source to unleash our incredibly overpowered racial ability. You get the benefits of this."

Still no? How about when you think that a commoner gets 1 silver piece a day? Signing up for this job LITERALLY increases their wages by 10,000%. Would you take a job that increases your wages by 10,000%, has absolutely complete medical coverage, and THREE WISHES AT THE END?

Now, do you know anyone who wouldn't sign up for that? Maybe a priest or a paladin, or a wizard locked in study, but everyone else? Bam. That's 365,000 gold pieces in one year. Possibly with increased wages for continuing the job after the first year.

Frig, I want that job now.

2) One efreet with enough levels in a spellcasting class to change form so that he's not an efreet any more. Temporarily, of course. Bam. Don't even need to outsource.

Starscream

2009-07-18, 12:01 AM

Ever read Terry Pratchett's book Making Money? In that story the protagonist is trying to get the city he lives in away from the Gold Standard.

Through a series of events too complicated to explain, he winds up in possession of 4000 golems. Each could do the work of 20 men, and their mere existence could lead to economic ruin as everyone is put out of a job.

So he buries them and makes the economy Golem Based. After all, if a certain amount of currency is worth a certain amount of gold (even if you never actually exchange it for the gold), than it is also worth a certain amount of labor (even if the labor never gets done). You can base the value of money on how much potential work from a golem it would be worth.

Not sure how relevant this is to what you're doing, but it's interesting nonetheless.

Cieyrin

2009-07-18, 11:33 AM

The reasons the Efreeti haven't taken over is probably similar to why the Drow haven't. 1) They don't exist in a vacuum, where no one else is doing anything or reacting to the actions of the fire genies. There may be a finite number of high level characters on your campaign world but that's only one planet in the Prime Material, where there's essentially infinite worlds with their own powerful characters, factions and power struggles, not to mention the various races running about the multiverse, whether it be the Githyanki with their Lich Queen, the Overmentals of the Inner Planes, the various lords of the Nine Hells and the deities in their homes across the outer planes with their servants and allies. Finally, if the Efreeti start wish-spamming, they're probably gonna draw the ire of the Inevitables of Mechanus down onto the City of Brass and then where will they be? They'll end up a hole in the ground or at least besieged till the natural order of the multiverse is restored.

As for reason the second, much like the Drow, the Efreeti, as evil creatures, are led by self-interest and betterment of their own situation before considering that of their fellow genies, often at odds in their plots and political maneuvers and ruining each other's plans in their efforts to advance in the social structure of the City of Brass. I mean, look at the lord of the Efreeti, the Efreeti Sorcerer 20. He's probably more concerned with keeping an eye on his servants and supposed 'allies,' ensuring his position and control. He most likely has the power and ability to wish-spam if he wanted but will he? Probably not, as he has to ensure that he's not screwed over by running out of power for the day and needing to use a wish when he really needs it. Plus, he probably wants to carefully word each of his wishes, which requires thought and time, even with being a highly experienced wisher, as one overlooked loophole and you could end up screwed in ways you couldn't imagine.

Them's my 2 coppers. Take as you will.

Lamech

2009-07-18, 11:40 AM

Like wall of force, forcecage is unaffected by an antimagic field.Hmm... I don't actually see that anywhere. That would make sense, but why are we applying LOGIC on he INTERNET to DnD. If we did that we wouldn't have CharOp.:smalltongue:

Well, if we're assuming that efreet can use as many wishes as they want via slaves, then if there exists at least one, singular, efreet who wants to take over somewhere, they can. Give him one, singular, mind-controlled slave, and he has 3 wishes per day for as long as desired to do whatever he wants.

The thrust of my argument is this: If we assume that the efreet defensive and military plan is based on their wishes, and that they will use that power to go after anyone who tries to bind an efreeti, the setting breaks in half because all it takes is one megalomaniacal or vengeful efreeti to grab a slave and start taking over (unless he's stopped by other efreet, which is of course possible, but the binding that causes the problem most likely would make the others agree with him). If, on the other hand, we assume that efreet use their merchant connections and other deals to provide for the defense of their holdings, and can't simply wish-nuke any wizards using planar binding, the setting makes more sense. I don't deny that the efreet would use wishes on their own behalf occasionally, by whatever means, but using them on a large scale causes major problems.
Well, you would have to give them all the same code to prevent them from doing this, meaning there are no rogue Efreet. I think it would allow the current system for buying magic toys in DnD to make more sense, kind of. It basically has to be enforced by powerful entities, and these entities have to be able to produce things like scrolls of wishes en-mass. Efreets can, assuming we don't nerf the magic item creation part too much.

In a way I'm trying to justify the non-sensical system of economics in DnD. I'm saying a wizard Efreeti did it.

P.S. And why is a rogue Efreeti a bigger problem then a wizard binding Efreet? A lot would be a problem of course of either. So as long as rogue Efreet are very rare (as high level wizards)

The pit fiends are using them in the Blood War and the solars are...well, let's face it, too pathetic and wishy-washy to ever do anything unless the fiends attack them first, since they don't seem to care about the Prime or the Blood War. The efreet have no such checks on their power, either a major opposing force or an inconvenient conscience.
Solars are probably nuking the crap out of stuff too. At least I always assumed they were. (Also prevents people from gating in Solars for wishes.) Anyway thats not the point, the point is while the Efreet could launch the smack down on a say the prime or what not they are still bit players when compared to the armies of the heavens or the hells. Sure they could grab some real-estate anywhere there isn't a lady of pain type person hanging around, but they can't rule the multiverse. And I thought the prime had a bunch of worlds floating around too, so the Efreet would probably be only able to grab X number of planets. The Efreey just have the real estate they want already.

It really only becomes a problem with rogue Efreet, the DM basically has to say they don't exist. Also I would like to say I was wrong when I said Efreet not getting their wishes would be more unrealistic; I'm arguing they all act the same way, so saying they all act a differant same way is no worse.

@TSED: I want that job now...

rxmd

2009-07-18, 12:04 PM

That's modern economics. D&D worlds do not have modern economics. They do not have the population, the philosophical advances, or even the social stability to advance it.
Actually I don't think that is much of a problem. You'd be surprised what kind of complex financial transactions people were capable of in early human societies. We had the first insurance systems in ancient Greece and the eastern Mediterranean, the first system of cashless property transfers between state-owned granaries in Ptolemaic Egypt, the first long-distance cashless private money transfers between Jewish settlements in the Mediterranean and along the Silk Road into Central Asia in the 7th/8th century, and the first printed paper money in China in the 11th century. This was already completely consolidated at the beginning of the modern era. I remember reading the diary of a 17th century Armenian merchant who travelled and traded between Iran, India and China, and he basically had all the modern instruments in place except double-entry bookkeeping.

The most stable institutions in D&D campaign settings are gods and their churches. Those are usually more stable than the societies around them. Thor Dollars would be a pretty safe currency, I guess.

In a world with high-level clerics another base anchor for value would be human life. Elsewhere in the discussion thread on OOTS #669 we've been discussing the idea of a Level 17 Life Insurance Company, which takes deposits and a subscription fee from their clients and pays appropriately-aligned 17th level clerics and their temples for the service of resurrecting the client in the case of their death. Since true resurrection has a fixed cost (equivalent to 25,000 gp in the gold standard of the Player's Handbook), you can have the cost of a human life as a stable, constant, unchanging, universal base unit of reference for transactions in the thousands-of-GP range. (Below that you need to solve the granularity problem, but that's the same with the gold standard where you don't have a copper standard.) This would be possible in any world that has 17th level clerics available. The resulting economy would be based on the equivalent value of services and hence not all that different from a real-world economy, with the added benefit that the material component for a spell is constant, so that there would be no fear of your base indicator being subject to either inflation of deflation.

I_Got_This_Name

2009-07-18, 10:53 PM

Ptolemaic Egypt, ancient Greece in the times we're talking about, the silk road merchants, and Song China were fairly stable societies.

It's painfully easy for a mid to high level character to decide to kill all of the existing governments and set up a government as far as she or he can reach that lasts until someone bigger decides to do the same to her, which does not lead to stability. If your PC can defeat the orc horde that threatens the kingdom, they can threaten the kingdom, or conquer the orcs. The only governments protected at all from this are the ones already backed or run (same thing here) by high-level characters. D&D has more in common with the early iron age, bronze age, and the European dark age than any of the time periods you mentioned. Governments in a D&D world tend to be more of the "one person with a sword, armor, and gang of thugs" variety than elaborate bureaucracies, since the elaborate bureaucracies take time to establish themselves. Feudalism shows up when lower-level characters agree to pay protection money to the people bigger than them.

Then, even if you can get stability and safety to back banknotes or checks of any kind (even if that means putting your money on the outer planes, and having deities willingly transfer money that they're storing to other deities, even those they aren't on good terms with), you still have a system that encourages players to rip the marble off the Pyramids to sell for sword upgrades. Taking high-level characters off the need for gold fixes that problem.

PairO'Dice Lost

2009-07-18, 11:53 PM

Hmm... I don't actually see that anywhere. That would make sense, but why are we applying LOGIC on he INTERNET to DnD. If we did that we wouldn't have CharOp.:smalltongue:

From the SRD:

This powerful spell brings into being an immobile, invisible cubical prison composed of either bars of force or solid walls of force (your choice).

[...]

Like a wall of force spell

[...]

...made of bands of force (similar to a wall of force spell) for bars.

[...]

Solid walls of force form its six sides.

Well, you would have to give them all the same code to prevent them from doing this, meaning there are no rogue Efreet.

Hence the problem. :smallwink:

I think it would allow the current system for buying magic toys in DnD to make more sense, kind of. It basically has to be enforced by powerful entities, and these entities have to be able to produce things like scrolls of wishes en-mass. Efreets can, assuming we don't nerf the magic item creation part too much.

In a way I'm trying to justify the non-sensical system of economics in DnD. I'm saying a wizard Efreeti did it.

This is basically what the Dungeonomicon proposes (I don't remember whether it's been mentioned already); since wishes can create magic items and gold, once you get to a certain point anything you can get with a wish is chump change.

P.S. And why is a rogue Efreeti a bigger problem then a wizard binding Efreet? A lot would be a problem of course of either. So as long as rogue Efreet are very rare (as high level wizards)

A single wizard getting to the point where he can chain-bind efreet with impunity is much more rare than a single rogue efreeti; you have to be 11th level to bind an efreeti, but efreeti are CR 8, so a given creature would encounter the efreeti earlier...plus, there's a city of a few hundred thousand efreet sitting around, and no such city of 11th-level wizards.

TSED

2009-07-19, 01:30 AM

... and no such city of 11th-level wizards.

That's a terrifying mental image.

Oslecamo

2009-07-19, 08:05 AM

So why do people need adventurers to begin with? Because some dude's got a problem he can't handle himself! Even with a stable universal system, people would still be asking for adventurers because everyone would have problems.

Because your typical D&D adventurer isn't exactly trustworthy. They may decide to frag you later after all, or simply to run away with the reward as soon as you turn your head.

If there's a stable universal system, then there are stable suborganzations, and people will be turning to them to solve their troubles.

Do you expect a stable universal system to result in pure harmony on a scale that results in total world peace? Seriously, read another book (or study up on political science; the sheer volume of epic problems is never in short supply).

Yes, because it would demand for all sides to be in complete harmony in each other in order for the stable universal system to survive.

If there isn't perfect harmony, then the diferent sides will try to balance the scales to their own needs and the balance will be broken.

Of course it's an utopia and thus impossible to happen, but hey it's what I'm trying to prove here, that it's impossible to have a perfect system.

I'm sure in real life, we could use a few adventurers.
Why do you think people play D&D?:smalltongue:

PairO'Dice Lost:Thing is, dungeomicon solves NOTHING, because no matter what you choose as your currency, there are magical means to replicate/mass produce it, so everything is chump change.

Besides the BBEG has already slaughtered the party with his infinite stash of time stop scrolls.

Not bad for "chump change" huh?

It doesn't matter that they can be mass produced. Scrolls and swords and wands will still be darn valuable. Supply and demand rule. For each chained efreet granting wishes ONCE per day, there are INFINITE customers across the planes wanting to buy what you call "chump change". And the highest bidder takes it all.

rxmd

2009-07-19, 11:20 AM

Ptolemaic Egypt, ancient Greece in the times we're talking about, the silk road merchants, and Song China were fairly stable societies.

Song China and Ptolemaic Egypt I grant you. In ancient Greece, the whole reason why they developed sea loans was because sea voyages were risky and unstable - a sea loan is basically an agreement between partners you trust, that give someone a loan with a high profit margin that need not be paid back in the case of a catastrophe. People aren't stupid; living in a risky environment they get really good at managing risk. Similar for trade along the Silk Road - you had various conquests and the constant conflicts between nomads and the sedentary population, so cashless transfers were actually a means to reduce the risks of transactions between partners that trusted each other in a hostile environment. The idea is that everybody has some debts, you transfer money by shifting these debts around, and as people continually have to pay up their debts, the system works by making people pay up locally for transfers made globally. You could argue they worked so well precisely because the environment was so unstable, because you did have some people you could trust, and a cashless money transfer system allows you to translate trust into a competitive advantage.

D&D has more in common with the early iron age, bronze age, and the European dark age than any of the time periods you mentioned.
That's a tempting, but difficult analogy to make. We know next to nothing how bronze age societies worked except those that were fairly stable. As far as the European Dark Ages are concerned, people actually had a subset of the instruments. A Jew in Prague in the 11th century could do a cashless money transfer to a Jew in Mainz, in spite of both being subject to heavy repressions and society being highly unstable. Do you think all the money used for large transactions, construction projects etc. was lugged around in cash in the Dark Ages? This would have been completely foolish when instead you can send a letter asking someone to write this off from a debt somebody else has at the remote location. In effect, the whole point is to take people off the need for gold. Even now, underground political groups use hawala and similar systems to transfer money around because it's the only safe way to do so.

Especially in an unstable environment people develop tools to minimize their risk. Most D&D settings would be perfect environments for setting up banking enterprises based solely on mutual trust, even more so since you have sending, teleport object and magical means of authentication much superior to any of the means of communication available to and successfully employed by people in the Dark Ages. (Magical seals can be forged, but so could physical seals.)