Breaking the Economy (3.5)

[SirNibbles]

For a long time, I've wanted to play an economics-focused campaign. I admit that 3.5 is not the best system for a Merchants and Wagon campaign, but the amount of variety it offers in character building makes me want to try anyhow.

That being said, what are some issues that could come up if playing with RAW in terms of the economy?

Some examples pop up at me immediately, like Wall of Iron making iron mining operations pointless and thus leading to devaluation of other minerals. (A single mid-level Wizard can produce 15 cu/ft per casting without optimisation, and this increases exponentially with level increases).

[Red Fel]

Fabricate (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/fabricate.htm), like so many spells, completely bypasses skill checks when it comes to making money.

Consider the humble Craft (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/craft.htm) check. It allows you to convert materials into goods. Crafting time is measured in days or weeks.

... Unless you can cast Fabricate, which takes rounds. No Craft check is required unless you're making goods requiring "a high degree of craftsmanship." So, elaborate and elegant swords, make a Craft check; iron pot, don't even bother.

Now, admittedly, Fabricate is a 5th-level spell, and a 9th-level adventurer probably has better things to do. But what if he doesn't? By 15th level, a Wizard can cast Fabricate at least four times a day. That's the ability to do in one day the amount of work that takes a craftsman a month. If our Wizard works for one month, casting four times a day, that's almost three years' work for a craftsman. Our Wizard can put any local craftsman out of business while on his vacation.

Yes, using spells like Wall of Iron can break the economy by creating a surplus of materials, right up until the economy self-corrects by dropping the price of materials. But using Fabricate allows you to break the economy by ruining the livelihoods of laborers. Their salaries don't self-correct; they just starve.

But wait, there's more. Don't want to go to the trouble of harvesting the raw materials yourself? Make them come to you! Spells like Plant Growth and Flesh to Stone give you ample supplies of wood and stone, respectively. Spells like Shatter let you turn somebody else's finished product into more raw materials - and, bonus, great way to drive an enemy out of business. And spells like Unseen Servant can perform simple gathering tasks (such as harvesting your Plant Growth or Shatter bounty). And yes, you could always just use a Wall of X spell to have a massive pile of raw materials if you so choose.

[the_david]

Buy a 10 foot ladder, take it apart, sell as 2 ten foot poles + firewood. Repeat.

[JustIgnoreMe]

Flesh to Salt on cows is one I've seen mentioned a few times. The price of the scroll is less than the amount you get for the salt.

IIRC there's a line in one of the books about "trade goods" bypassing the usual "sell for half value" rule for selling objects. Salt is a trade good.

[EisenKreutzer]

Buy a 10 foot ladder, take it apart, sell as 2 ten foot poles + firewood. Repeat.

Use the rungs of the ladder to make and sell nunchucks instead. Much greater profit margin.

[flappeercraft]

1. Buy a candle of invocation (evil)
2. Call an Efreet
3. Make the Efreet use his 3 daily wishes to each replicate Simulacrum spell and of himself
4. Order the Efreet to tell the simulacrums to obey only you now, not even himself
5. You now have a daily source of 9 Wishes which can get you up to 25,000 GP worth nonmagical items each for a total of 225,000 GP worth of items daily at the expense of a one time investment of 8,400 GP.
6. ???
7. Profit

Edit: You can use the wishes from the Simulacrum Efreets to make another Simulacrum Efreet.

Variant: For those that argue that this cannot be done as the Efreets would have half the Hit Dice and could not cast the wish even though there are no arguments I am aware of, you can order the original Efreet to give you 2 Scrolls of Ice Assassin and to make a potion of Loresong for UMD with Wish (Dragon Magazine #335) and you do that every day to make Ice Assassins which would qualify for the Wishes even if the SImulacrums don't which they should

[SirNibbles]

Buy a 10 foot ladder, take it apart, sell as 2 ten foot poles + firewood. Repeat.

Price is determined by supply and demand. As you eat up the ladder supply, prices go up. Additionally, you're increasing the supply of 10-foot poles without increasing the demand. Was there any demand for 10-foot poles to begin with?


Flesh to Salt on cows is one I've seen mentioned a few times. The price of the scroll is less than the amount you get for the salt.

IIRC there's a line in one of the books about "trade goods" bypassing the usual "sell for half value" rule for selling objects. Salt is a trade good.

This seems like it could really hurt the salt economy. Good one.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by Red Fel
But using Fabricate allows you to break the economy by ruining the livelihoods of laborers.

In a campaign world edging towards the economic equivalent of Tippyverse, I could see this tactic being used by guilds and unions to try to sabotage each others’ efforts, or between principalities in a trade war.

Using magic as an economic weapon could be a specialized form of warfare, and I could see elaborate treaties and conventions restricting its use to prevent economic collapse on a regional or continental scale. That could be a whole campaign in itself.


Originally Posted by Red Fel
Their salaries don't self-correct; they just starve.

Well, they may have a couple other options. Assuming this is a smallish community, and the wizard is dependent on them for food and/or other amenities, they can always refuse to trade until he returns to more, you know, appropriately wizardly pursuits.

Even if the wizard isn’t directly reliant on the local community, he still needs to sell his goods to someone, and unless he sets up his own portal network or Phantom Steed Express, he’ll need to move his goods on local roads and across local bridges. Sabotaging a high-level wizard’s boutique mail-order operation might not sound like a winning proposition, but people whose livelihoods are at risk sometimes take desperate actions.

As a safer alternative, the craftsmen may try to form some sort of cooperative of their own, pooling their resources to hire a competing spellcaster. This would take a whole community of craftsmen, and given the economic disparity it might not be feasible; but it’s a reasonable response to an economic threat.

And if that doesn’t work—and if the locals can’t or won’t appeal to a higher authority to deal with the issue—then the laborers will do what people have done for thousands of years, which is to leave and look for work elsewhere. A less community-minded wizard will probably encourage them to do so from the outset.

A variation on the final option is for the laborers to retrain (in the economic, not game-mechanic, sense) to produce something other than they’d been working on before. This can be a frustrating and painful process, but it may be marginally better for those who can’t easily relocate. If the wizard is producing iron pots, the potmaker may turn to making fine gloves, or maybe invest his last coins in a truffle pig.

There may be no good options in the face of magical competition, and the local craftsmen will likely see a steep drop in their standard of living or be forced to leave; but they do have other options than simply starving in place.

[JustIgnoreMe]

Price is determined by supply and demand.
Not by RAW...

[No brains]

Not by RAW...

IIRC, there are some RAW provisions in the DMG that do give the DM leeway in deciding prices based on supply and Demand. It isn't the default rule, but it's something that can begin to apply if the adventurers mess with it enough.

I can't get to my books right now, but I do know that part of the economic RAW is that communities can only produce so much GP worth of value at any given time and that number resets at the end of some amount of time. This can make market saturation a thing. I found all this out while trying to buy a chain shirt in a pre-printed adventure...

[Goaty14]

Buy a 10 foot ladder, take it apart, sell as 2 ten foot poles + firewood. Repeat.

I pointed this out to my DM, and he pointed out that 10 foot poles are metal, not wood. RAW doesn't say whether it's wood or metal, BUT if it is iron, then the pole (2sp, 8lbs) can be melted into 8 1 lbs of iron, each worth 1 sp, making 4sp sell price, and therefore making 2sp.

Math:Start: 10 ft iron pole, melt into 8 pounds of iron, iron worth 8sp, sell for 4sp, costs = 2sp

[elonin]

Not by RAW...

Not true. AFB but there is a mention in the DMG about dumping large amounts of items on a local economy and brief mention of supply and demand

[Shalist]

Fabricate (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/fabricate.htm), like so many spells, completely bypasses skill checks when it comes to making money.

Consider the humble Craft (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/skills/craft.htm) check. It allows you to convert materials into goods. Crafting time is measured in days or weeks.

... Unless you can cast Fabricate, which takes rounds. No Craft check is required unless you're making goods requiring "a high degree of craftsmanship." So, elaborate and elegant swords, make a Craft check; iron pot, don't even bother.


Material Component

The original material, which costs the same amount as the raw materials required to craft the item to be created.
Pay one-third of the item’s price for the cost of raw materials.Note that crafting doesn't care about the Conservation of Mass, so you could just use piles of coins or gems as 'raw materials' to make even bigger piles of loot (i.e. Craft: minting).

Alternately, (RoS 158, 75g) has a 100-pound steel tower shield. So for 1225g, you can buy a 50-pound mithril shield, despite mithril being worth 500g/pound as a trade good.

---

Eternal Wands of unseen servant crafter (lvl2 spell, servant that uses your skill/stats, last for days/lvl) make for great sweat shops. Notable mention here for poisons costing 1/6 their value for the raw materials (and with weekly progress measured in gold instead of silver). Also, the 'mercantile background' feat, which lets you sell stuff at 75% instead of 50%.

Alternately, you can hire NPCs (DMG pg 106) for 3s/lvl/day, but potentially make more than that if you use them appropriately (i.e. crafting). Technically you could hire, for instance, a 10,000th level 'warrior' for 3000g/day and enjoy those ludicrous skill checks, or simply having an adventuring buddy that doesn't eat your exp.

edit: Formatting changes, and unseen crafter, (RoE pg 191), not unseen servant

[Sagetim]

I pointed this out to my DM, and he pointed out that 10 foot poles are metal, not wood. RAW doesn't say whether it's wood or metal, BUT if it is iron, then the pole (2sp, 8lbs) can be melted into 8 1 lbs of iron, each worth 1 sp, making 4sp sell price, and therefore making 2sp.

Math:Start: 10 ft iron pole, melt into 8 pounds of iron, iron worth 8sp, sell for 4sp, costs = 2sp

Iron is a trade good, and the GM is within their rights to deem that iron from those 10ft poles is inferior when resmelted into iron bars, thus giving you a problem of trying to offload inferior product when quality iron can potentially be had for the same price.

One reaction that doesn't seem to have come up yet is that craftsmen may well up their game. The Magewright is an npc class that mixes a little arcane crafting into their 'like a commoner but a bit better' game and could provide some amount of competition in numbers against a fabricating wizard.

Something else to consider is that psionics is first party material in 3.5, so it would be remiss not to point out that psion (shaper) characters are better at deploying fabricate multiple times in a day, due to how power points work. Now, the trade off for psionics is that most of their powers require more point investment to get more of an effect, but that tends to be on things that do damage, like Energy Ray, Psionic Disintigrate, and so on. The point being that there are base classes who can do this better than the wizard, baseline, with pretty much no optimization. Now, that said, I'm pretty sure wall of iron doesn't exist in psionics natively, so unless someone is running an Erudite, you don't have to worry about wall of iron shenanigans from your garden variety manifesters (just the cerebremancers and spell to power erudites).

In any case, abusing fabricate for money is something that I have done in a 3.5 game using a psion. Mostly by buying up trade good piles of iron bars, firewood, and fabricating that into made to order masterwork plate mail and mountain plate. It got me a few thousand gold as I met the demand for such armor, and then business dried up because only so many rich people were idling around looking to get some plate/etc quickly. Mind you, this worked because the DM was willing to rule that fabricating raw materials into finished product, including going all the way from very raw (iron and carbon a la wood) into steel finished product, was a valid use of Fabricate. Even so, it's will within your rights as a DM to have that stop working after a few times per location. This is when a clever player will probably try to negotiate with the town's leadership so that they can sell them platemail at a cut rate for the city guard to use. In my example, it cost about 50 gold for me to make a suit of masterwork platemail, because I was paying for poundage of iron mostly. This is ignoring the normal crafting rule of 1/3rd cost of finished material, and is ignoring the tacked on price of masterwork items because of how we, the DM and I, interpreted what those costs are supposed to represent. Since I was fabricating up high quality material out of the materials I was using, the DM was willing to go with it being unnecessary for me to pay separately for a masterwork component, or even the regular crafting cost for crafting items. So, in this extreme case of economic chincanery, I went from having a few hundred gold left from my starting cash, to being flush with a few thousand after just a few days. That game spiraled out shortly after from other players instigating world ending events with their own silly shenanigans, but if it had continued, I'd have likely started selling a bulk order of masterwork platemail to the city guard for the cut rate price of about 100 gold per suit. Then I'd have moved on to a new city. It benefits the city guard, since they get sweet armor for about the cost of regular chain shirts, and it benefits my adventurer, and it doesn't really impact the regular smiths, because they never would have gotten that kind of order anyway. In fact, they now have new work in the form of maintenance on that armor that they can take over, giving them a little more work than they might have otherwise gotten.

That is to say, not all of these manipulations have to be detrimental to everyone else. DND is not Skyrim, and unlimited ranks in diplomacy does not grant you the merchant perk to let you sell anyone anything.

Oh, and that reminds me: diplomacy is used for haggling in dnd. If your players are trying to maximize their profits by haggling up a sale, the npc involved does get a counter roll to that. It may not be much, but every little bit can help cut into a naked money grab. Also remember that some places are bound to have laws regulating the sale of goods, up to and including requiring a license to sell goods within a city's limits, special taxes on high quality goods, bans on various things (ranging from sensible ones like heavily regulating poisons to silly ones like banning whales despite being a land locked country).

As an honorable mention, I'm running a pathfinder game where the kingdom the game is in actively utilizes wall of iron and variants to meet it's metal needs. It makes more sense than mining the ore, and the people who would be miners do other things with their lives. Like fighting monsters, farming, etc. It's an odd setting, but if you have a supply of casters who can manage it, there's little reason to mine ores that you can magic up. It's also why people who pass the master craftsman test at the capital are awarded some poundage of various metals (including special materials like mithral, and adamantine). They have a steady, reliable supply and control the supply of metal within the country. It provides an incentive beyond 'it's the law' to passing that test to become recognized as a master crafts person.

[prototype00]

Did you know you can craft magic items for less than half the normal crafting price?

The trick here is to Personalize your items, make it so that only one person (your patron presumably) can use it.

By applying the discounts for crafting based on skill, class and alignment, you can craft an item that costs 44% of the normal base price, I.e. 22% in gp upfront.

And best of all, for most wielders of Magic items, this is a benefit! It's exclusivity! Tell that noble that in order to make this flaming sword that will only respond to him or those like him in spirit, you will need some of his vital essence, and he'll probably even pay the xp cost for said item.

Edit: You also craft items in less than half the time based on this. Not only do you make the most exclusive items, you also make them the fastest. Undercut every Mage in the realm who doesn't craft like this!

[legomaster00156]

I mean, frankly, the economy is already broken. The D&D economy makes no logical sense.

[Crake]

Not by RAW...

Actually, unlike the "mentions in the DMG" that others have brought up, there actually is a straight up RAW for supply and damage in the arms and equipment guide, reducing the cost of oversupplied items by as much as 20%, while increasing the cost of highly sought after items by up to, and even over 100%

[Sagetim]

Actually, unlike the "mentions in the DMG" that others have brought up, there actually is a straight up RAW for supply and damage in the arms and equipment guide, reducing the cost of oversupplied items by as much as 20%, while increasing the cost of highly sought after items by up to, and even over 100%

Oh Arms and Equipment Guide, first you bring us Soar Whales, and now we find rules for simulating supply and demand too, Do your wonders never cease?


I don't care if soar whales were in a different book, I find their very existence amusing and the fact that they aren't in use in more settings seems odd to me.

[Kayblis]

I pointed this out to my DM, and he pointed out that 10 foot poles are metal, not wood. RAW doesn't say whether it's wood or metal, BUT if it is iron, then the pole (2sp, 8lbs) can be melted into 8 1 lbs of iron, each worth 1 sp, making 4sp sell price, and therefore making 2sp.

Math:Start: 10 ft iron pole, melt into 8 pounds of iron, iron worth 8sp, sell for 4sp, costs = 2sp

Not only you assume the iron is preserved(it's not, melting it can contaminate the metal and make it worth less), you also assume there's no cost in making a fire hot enough to melt the iron. Installations to work metal aren't free.

If you want to put it in RAW terms, the melting of an item is working it by Crafting rules. You're producing ingots.

[Darrin]

From an earlier post (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=14925473&postcount=26):

"Like Water For Acid"

A 5th level wizard can cast water to acid, which can convert 5 cubic feet of water into acid. That's about 37.5 gallons, or 300 pints. Buy 300 flasks (3 CP each) for 3 GP, fill them with water. Cast water to acid, then sell the 300 flasks of acid for 50% market price, or 1500 GP.

If you don't want to wait until 5th level, a 1st level character with at least 153 GP can do this by paying a spellcaster to cast a 3rd level spell, assuming he can find one that knows water to acid. (Using the mount trick at least twice should get you about 150 GP.)

"Wall of $alt"

A 7th level cleric/druid/wizard can cast wall of salt to create 175 square feet of wall that's 7 inches thick. Assuming each square foot is 7/12ths of a cubic foot, that's about 102 cubic feet of salt. Per ASTM salt weighs 80 lbs per cubic foot, but that can vary anywhere between 72 to 80 lbs depending on moisture content and the size of the crystals. Call it 72 to be safe, 102 x 72 = 7344 lbs. Per the PHB p. 112, one pound of salt is worth 5 GP as a trade good, so 7344 x 5 = 36720 GP. This is actually more efficient than casting wall of iron, which produces about 113437 lbs of iron (assuming 450 lbs per cubic foot), or 11343 GP per casting.

"Black Lotus Bonanza"

This post (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showsinglepost.php?p=10040483&postcount=5) uses a Chaos Flask + summoned djinn's major creation to create 19140 vials of Black Lotus Extract, which has a market price of about 86 million GP.

I had a somewhat less ambitious trick that used saffron, but cloves (http://www.aqua-calc.com/calculate/food-volume-to-weight/substance/spices-coma-and-blank-cloves-coma-and-blank-ground) actually have better density per cubic foot. 20 cubic feet is about 540 pounds. As per PHB p. 112, cloves are a trade good that's worth 15 GP per pound, so you can trade that in for 8100 GP. Use that to summon more djinns, rinse and repeat until you've got enough GP to make your DM blubber incoherently.

[Doug Lampert]

Buy a 10 foot ladder, take it apart, sell as 2 ten foot poles + firewood. Repeat.

That's silly, you but the COMPONENTS needed to make a 10' ladder. That way you pay 1/3rd as much and the poles are already separated.


Price is determined by supply and demand. As you eat up the ladder supply, prices go up. Additionally, you're increasing the supply of 10-foot poles without increasing the demand. Was there any demand for 10-foot poles to begin with?

The DMG tells you what local supply and demand are based on community size (take 10% of the community price limit and multiply by population, this is the total value amount of ANYTHING you can buy that's typically available in such a city, it's also the amount of coin available and thus limits demand).

Thus this is not in fact a problem in a large city until the number of ladders and poles is in the millions.

[SirNibbles]

That's silly, you but the COMPONENTS needed to make a 10' ladder. That way you pay 1/3rd as much and the poles are already separated.



The DMG tells you what local supply and demand are based on community size (take 10% of the community price limit and multiply by population, this is the total value amount of ANYTHING you can buy that's typically available in such a city, it's also the amount of coin available and thus limits demand).

Thus this is not in fact a problem in a large city until the number of ladders and poles is in the millions.

I think that, in an economic campaign, the one thing a DM might change slightly from RAW is the way markets are simulated. By RAW, I meant things like spells, feats, classes, etc. that would allow you to greatly impact the economy, either by: eliminating the need for labour; dramatically increasing the supply of a product; being able to completely control the supply of a good in order to artificially limit it; reducing transportation costs; and so on.

Examples:
Wall of Iron drastically increases supply of iron, eliminates the need for labourers (miners & refiners), and removes the need for transport (from mines to industrial centres).
Fabricate saves time and removes the need for labourers.
Wishes allow you to get an infinite supply of any good.
Water to Acid greatly increases the supply of acid.
Wall of Salt greatly increases the supply of salt.

[Sagetim]

I think that, in an economic campaign, the one thing a DM might change slightly from RAW is the way markets are simulated. By RAW, I meant things like spells, feats, classes, etc. that would allow you to greatly impact the economy, either by: eliminating the need for labour; dramatically increasing the supply of a product; being able to completely control the supply of a good in order to artificially limit it; reducing transportation costs; and so on.

Examples:
Wall of Iron drastically increases supply of iron, eliminates the need for labourers (miners & refiners), and removes the need for transport (from mines to industrial centres).
Fabricate saves time and removes the need for labourers.
Wishes allow you to get an infinite supply of any good.
Water to Acid greatly increases the supply of acid.
Wall of Salt greatly increases the supply of salt.


Well, to be fair, check the duration on some of those things. I didn't see one mentioned for water to acid or wall of salt. They'd need either permanent or instant duration to be useful for what you're talking about.

Also worth mentioning is that wall of iron doesn't get rid of the need for refiners at all, it just changes their job a bit. After all, unless you combo with fabricate, and even if you do, you need refiners to turn that wall of iron into usable iron, not just a giant slab that you might have crushed something with. And Iron isn't Steel, which is what weapons and armor are made of in dnd. And Fabricate (without DM ruling intervening) doesn't change iron to steel.

Wishes are more dangerous than most TOers seem to be willing to admit, because there are high cr monsters called inevitables who will start coming down hard on anyone who is abusing wishes too damn much. Using infinite wish loops seems like it would count and would probably call down an arbitrarily large number of them to the point that you die, the end. Even without infinite wish looping shenanigans, for normal casters wishes cost xp in 3.5, and a very hefty amount of it per wish. Getting that +5 to a single stat runs you more than enough xp to have gone from level 20 to 21, for example. It's a terrible way to get copious amounts of resources. Furthermore, when you are using a creature's ability to grant wishes or what have you, you're supposed to wind up having the wish twisted and manipulated in some inconvenient way, it's not just supposed to go 'oh, this evil magic creature was totally chill with my wishes and didn't screw with my low level chincanery at all'. Now, if, as a DM you want to allow that and run with it, that's fine, have fun. But that shouldn't be the baseline assumption when it comes to using creatures for wishes.

[SirNibbles]

Well, to be fair, check the duration on some of those things. I didn't see one mentioned for water to acid or wall of salt. They'd need either permanent or instant duration to be useful for what you're talking about.

Also worth mentioning is that wall of iron doesn't get rid of the need for refiners at all, it just changes their job a bit. After all, unless you combo with fabricate, and even if you do, you need refiners to turn that wall of iron into usable iron, not just a giant slab that you might have crushed something with. And Iron isn't Steel, which is what weapons and armor are made of in dnd. And Fabricate (without DM ruling intervening) doesn't change iron to steel.

Wishes are more dangerous than most TOers seem to be willing to admit, because there are high cr monsters called inevitables who will start coming down hard on anyone who is abusing wishes too damn much. Using infinite wish loops seems like it would count and would probably call down an arbitrarily large number of them to the point that you die, the end. Even without infinite wish looping shenanigans, for normal casters wishes cost xp in 3.5, and a very hefty amount of it per wish. Getting that +5 to a single stat runs you more than enough xp to have gone from level 20 to 21, for example. It's a terrible way to get copious amounts of resources. Furthermore, when you are using a creature's ability to grant wishes or what have you, you're supposed to wind up having the wish twisted and manipulated in some inconvenient way, it's not just supposed to go 'oh, this evil magic creature was totally chill with my wishes and didn't screw with my low level chincanery at all'. Now, if, as a DM you want to allow that and run with it, that's fine, have fun. But that shouldn't be the baseline assumption when it comes to using creatures for wishes.

Water to Acid is instantaneous (Stormwrack, page 124), as is Wall of Salt (Sandstorm, page 127).

__

Your point about Wall of Iron making iron rather than steel is important and should not be overlooked.

__

Even if the creatures granting the wishes are trying to screw the player, a well-worded Wish can be completely airtight, leaving only the player's intended interpretation. It's easier to simply not allow Wish than to allow it with the assumption that players will mess up and allow the DM to punish them.

[Goaty14]

Your point about Wall of Iron making iron rather than steel is important and should not be overlooked.


But still, I'm pretty sure unrefined iron is still better than wood, so unless you're selling to a druidic community, you shouldn't have much problem.

[Crake]

But still, I'm pretty sure unrefined iron is still better than wood, so unless you're selling to a druidic community, you shouldn't have much problem.

Plus fabricate is specifically capable of refining materials into other materials, even capable of going from ore to finished product.

[Coidzor]

Planar Binding a Djinn can turn a rich profit on Darkwood or Black Lotus Extract or Ebony or any other valuable good produced from plants, even if you pay them well by the standards of Planar Binding.

Teleportation Circle has had much written about its ability to eliminate trade routes and thus destroy or alter many economies.

[Vaz]

Oh Arms and Equipment Guide, first you bring us Soar Whales, and now we find rules for simulating supply and demand too, Do your wonders never cease?


It also provides rules for magic items to grant feats.

[Florian]

Some examples pop up at me immediately, like Wall of Iron making iron mining operations pointless and thus leading to devaluation of other minerals. (A single mid-level Wizard can produce 15 cu/ft per casting without optimisation, and this increases exponentially with level increases).

You´ve fallen prey to a simple error that gets repeated on and on in this kind of thought models.

How much does it cost to train up that caster, how much does the lifestyle of that caster cost and how would that influence the price of the raw material in question. Last but not least, how does the magical output compare to the general global needs of said raw material?

That´s funny, because no specialist would have any interest in ruining the base going prices.

[Vaz]

You mean until they choose something else to make money on?

[Florian]

You mean until they choose something else to make money on?

Good point. I´m in the food production business and we tend to stockpile up to three years of raw materials just to keep future production levels stable. Getting a cheap and out-of-seasons offer for raw materials might seem inviting, but will lead to increased storage cost in return.
Now we´re a rather small company and "only" use up to three tons in raw material per working day, so "a druid did it" wouldn't´t have too much impact unless it´ll get to be a stable supplier.

[Sagetim]

Also worth noting is that there Are people who just want to be jerks to others and lord their power/skill/money over other people for their own amusement/validation/other. Not everyone who gets high enough level to cast wall of iron is going to be good, there's bound to be a neutral or chaotic evil jerk at some point that will just wreck the salt market by casting wall of salt repeatedly. Now, that's not to say that they're going to be able to sell that much salt, or even get people to actually pay them For the salt, especially if they just dropped their biggest spells for the day on it. Get enough of a mob together and you can rush the salt wall and the caster and kill the guy as he runs out of spells and then have a bounty of salt like you wouldn't believe that you can now store in town and start selling to the rest of the country or what have you.

But the point that Florian brings up is another valid one: How do these spells stack up against the supply and demand of the local economy? Even ancient civilizations had some amount of globalized economy going on (with civilizations like the greeks, egyptians and others in that area trading across the ocean in an interdependent manner). So your fantasy medieval civilization could be supplying a much larger market of demand than it first seems, especially if the country you are in has any kind of links to spelljammer trade lanes or other extra planar routes. With a large enough market demand, your wall of iron shenanigans (especially if you lose some of your poundage of iron in the refining process, as there's nothing to the wall of iron spell that says it's high quality or pure iron) may be such a drop in the ocean of trade that you can dump your supply, make your cash, but not put anyone else out of business. You might drive local prices of iron down, as people nearby catch on to what you are doing and how much iron you have regularly, but they'll cart that iron off and re-sell it or make it into steel or what have you and as it spreads out across a global or transplanar network, it will ultimately amount to little to no change in the average price of the metal. At least not any time soon.

[Lukan_Greymark]

At lvk 12 Warlock with 2 levels of chameleon can break the economy. Just sell what you make at the full normal price.

[Florian]

@Sagetim:

Agreed. people, especially life-long city dwellers, generally don´t seem to have a firm grip on what the numbers in raw material production, now and back in the middle ages, actually mean and how it would look like. Magic might seem powerful, but unless you´ve got an army of high-level wizards, it can never be more than a drop in the ocean.

D&D by RAW is weird as it only has level 1 fixed market dynamics to compare to, so a Wall of Iron looks like a good business proposal.