Selling Spellcasting Services

[Talakeal]

So I have a player who noticed that spell-casting is worth 10 x spell level x caster level GP, and realized that every day he can cast thousands of GP worth of spells, so he just wants to break WBL sitting around town and casting spells for NPCs all day.

I tried to explain that there isn't that much demand, at which point he started arguing that the market value is all about supply and demand, and that if there wasn't such a demand the NPCs wouldn't be able to charge so much, so I other need to let him sell his spells at market value or I need to greatly decrease the cost at which NPCs will sell spells to him.

Anyone else ever have a similar problem or have advice on how to resolve it?

[StevenC21]

"Expensive" is subjective.

Heck a 9th level spell at CL 20 is only 1800 GP. That's peanuts to a 20th level caster.

[Talakeal]

"Expensive" is subjective.

Heck a 9th level spell at CL 20 is only 1800 GP. That's peanuts to a 20th level caster.

Yeah, but how many of them can you cast in a day?

Doing some napkin math, a level 20 wizard with no int bonus (and how likely is that?) can cast almost 900k worth of spells in a month of downtime, which is significantly more than the entire WBL for a level 20 character.

[StevenC21]

My point is that the spells are actually really cheap, thus showing that the demand is rather low.

[nighteyes95]

When one of my players did this a couple years back I explained to them that Dungeons & Dragons is not an accurate model of supply and demand in the first place.

Cost of spellcasting services is not necessarily based on what people need every day it's when they need a spell and what they are willing to pay.

And most that offer spellcasting services have a affiliation with a church/guild/business so people know they're getting quality service.

Then I basically told the player yes there character could retire and spend the time and effort to be associated with a church/guild/business get a income based on the likelihood and frequency of specific spells being needed while the rest of the party continue actually being adventurers and he's free to roll a new character that joins the rest of the party.

Then he asked about going back to the previous character after they had made money I said if a player wanted to go back to a retired character who was not actively adventuring he could rejoin the party one level below them with appropriate wealth by level because adventuring is far more lucrative, grants more knowledge, experience of the world and they generally would catch up in a session or two anyway.

Worth noting that was the general rule before he ever asked about spellcasting services because I wanted to discourage players from switching out characters repeatedly as one had previously tried to do it basically every time a specific skill would shine like making a sun cleric when they knew they are going to go fight undead.

[BWR]

By all means, let him sell his spells at market value. Let him experience market forces in action, not in idealized theory.

How many people have the money for that in any given circumstance?
Spells get expensive real fast, at least for your average non-adventurer. Unless he wants to undersell himself, he will not find a lot of people willing or able to pay what he demands.

Competing market forces
There are more casters than the PC in the world. Richer prospective customers could easily already have an agreement with another caster, making the PC's offers moot. Towns and cities might very well have established casters who the locals know and trust instead of this newcomer. Not to mention local guilds. Not to mention lower level casters are cheaper.

Local laws
How is selling your spellcasting services looked upon in the various places in your setting? How are they taxed? Do they need guild membership? Do they need licenses? Do they need to reside a certain number of days per year in that settlement?

How often will this PC be available to cast them (i.e. not out on adventures)?
This really depends on if you run the kind of game where PCs are always out doing stuff or if they may spend months or years at home between adventures. PCs may not always be available when their services are required.

How often do people need spells?
There may simply not be much by the way of demand. How often do people need much beyond a CLW or Remove Disease now and then? Cheaper to spend a month building a barn than to get a caster to use a few Walls of Stone/Wood and do it in an afternoon, and you don't need to talk to your deceased daddy all that often or summon angels for protection.

Competing do-gooders
I don't know about your games but mine have plenty of high-level casters (often PCs) giving away their services because they wish to help people, especially clerics and paladins. Try selling your Remove Disease spells when a wandering paladin does it for free and gets the goodwill of the locals. Try selling Walls of Stone when the local wizard is happy to help out neighbors with a few spells.


Don't just prevent all the player's attempts, just enough point out that there is more to the game world than rules in the book and make the extra income minimal in relation to what you want them to have at their level.


Edit. Hiruma'd

[Khedrac]

To extend what people have said above, settlements are supposed to have a gp pool, limiting how much the entire setllement can buy. In the case of large cities an character's spellcasting services will be a drop int he ocean, but in a small town they may be out of cash before the party has finished selling loot.

Next, if a character is selling spellcasting, he or she should expect the buyer to speify the spell needed - and so they may get a stack of nobles asking for comprehend languages as they seize the chance to sort out their library, or stone shape for some building repair.
If the player has their normal combat load memorised there's a good chance none of them will be needed by people.

[King of Nowhere]

the price of spellcasting services is made entirely on the premise of not wanting the players to buy them regularly.

Since I put some more thought on economy, I assumed a more sane price as 1*spell level*caster level, possibly varying with request and offer. And I further postulated that wizards in cities would have offices like lawyers or other professionals do in our world, with signs advertizing prices and availability of spells. and inside you would likely found a secretary getting you an appointment for the next time the wizard can actually prepare the spell you requested.

it's easy work and it earns enough to live in luxury even with my reduced price, so I assume most wizards would pick that career.
but it won't break wbl in a month, especially since you're likely to end the day with many unsold spell slots anyway.

and if a player wants to retire from adventuring and become a professional, I'd tell him he should play a different game. but I fear your players would react poorly to it

[SLOTHRPG95]

Competing market forces
There are more casters than the PC in the world. Richer prospective customers could easily already have an agreement with another caster, making the PC's offers moot. Towns and cities might very well have established casters who the locals know and trust instead of this newcomer. Not to mention local guilds. Not to mention lower level casters are cheaper.

Local laws
How is selling your spellcasting services looked upon in the various places in your setting? How are they taxed? Do they need guild membership? Do they need licenses? Do they need to reside a certain number of days per year in that settlement?


Speaking of guilds, if the player is going for greater fidelity, it might be worth mentioning that guilds are usually interested in limiting competition. This is, after all, how they can maintain their monopoly and hence their status: by limiting all competition. Want to freelance and sell your services casting Detect Thoughts or Scrying for some noble? The Diviner's Guild won't look kindly on that, and they know where you live.

[pabelfly]

So I have a player who noticed that spell-casting is worth 10 x spell level x caster level GP, and realized that every day he can cast thousands of GP worth of spells, so he just wants to break WBL sitting around town and casting spells for NPCs all day.

I tried to explain that there isn't that much demand, at which point he started arguing that the market value is all about supply and demand, and that if there wasn't such a demand the NPCs wouldn't be able to charge so much, so I other need to let him sell his spells at market value or I need to greatly decrease the cost at which NPCs will sell spells to him.

Anyone else ever have a similar problem or have advice on how to resolve it?

Let him sell his spells at market value, but turn it into retail hell. Oh, sure, some people will buy the occasional spell. But then he has the bad customers too. Have people ask for spells he doesn't have prepped. Have people waste his time. Have him roll multiple diplomacy checks because he's running a business and trying to sell to customers. If he does really bad on those diplonacy checks have the customers stop coming. Have haughty merchants try to lowball him. Have him have to pay taxes and deal with local laws and buy advertising and a store and all that fun stuff.

At the same time that this is happening, run an adventure with the rest of the party where the people are making good money and experience and he's not.

See how quickly his tune changes.

[Asmotherion]

there would be demand for specific spells. You're more probable to have some adventurers willing to pay the price for a teleport or phantom steed than for a fireball; you could corner a group of people to buy that fireball though as a means to save their lives from some monsters (not a good act though).

Specialisation and publicity should find you a cliantel; it's easier to find people willing to pay you for teleportation (for example) if you're famous as "the mage who sells teleportation spells" because people who need your services will come find you and not the other way around.

it's also useful to have a good reputation. People already fear what they don't understand and magic is double scary for non casters. if a caster has a bad reputation for failed spells or for terorising peasants with his magic people would not trust him to cast a spell for them: what if he's on a bad mood and they instead end up turned into frogs... or worse.

Finally if he gets a ponopoly in a specific spell competitors will rise and thus lower the prices for the specific spell (or spell level). This can get his income in chec without outright banning the idea or giving easier access to spells he can't yet cast.

[Trandir]

A trained hireling gets 3 sp per day and that hireling also has to eat this mean that if he works every day on the year and buys a single new set of clothes ( 1 gp) and let's presume that this one spends on nothing else in a year he can save 72 gp.


If we take the PHB word an average artisan earn 52 gp a year and if he eats only poor meals and spends 5 sp a year on clothes he as left only 15 gp every year of work so even a detect magic performed by a lv 1 Wizard would take 4 months.

Experts should use the profession rule so assuming 4 ranks in a craft skill, with masterwork tools for another +2, and a +2 from int and that the d20 rolls a over the 52 weeks is always considered a 10 we get a wopping 9 gp per week or 468 a year with all 52 weeks of a year working.

Adepts probably do not need to work per say.

And aristocrats have to govern over all the others.


Now in the DMG the demografics are divided as follows:

91% commoners
5% warriors
3% experts
0.5% adepts
0.5% aristocrats

The commoners might have 20 gp for an emergency.

The warriors are by all means trained hirelings so let's jus presume that hve at least 120 gp to spare.

Experts could very well have saved a couple of thousands gp just to get their hands on raw material and other one of a kind offerings that a traveling merchant or a party might have for him.

Adepts could have anything from 1 gp to 10k gp depending on their level and if they are part of a guild/univerity/conclave and so have access to some sort of collective funds

Nobles probably have an infinite ammount of gold to throw to the adventurers but only them know how to take it from his current location.

Now considering all of this a commoner will not be able to pay a PC for any kind of spellcasting service, a warrior or an expert might but there is almost certanly a local spellcaster that already perform healing, dealing with the ghost of someone's grandpa and the likes.
Adepts can cast themselves so that's a no.
And the nobles will probably offer an adventurer a quest rather than pay him to cast a spell.



If your player wants to do that to ears some extra money allow him to do so. But he will have to do it as a proper buisness.
This means a building or at least a room to meet and see if he can deal with the NPCs requests.
Pay taxes to the local autorities, get the permits from the noble/guild to work legally.
Make him either go around and gather informations or think of some sort of advertisement or else litterally no body will look for him.
Page 186 of the DMG2 offers the buisness related encounters. Make him roll once every now and then (most of them are quite terrible but if you are against his idea it's even better).
Ask him a competitive pricing for his spells since no one has 55 gp to get a lv 11 adventurer to cast mending on a plate and the local npc probably charges less than the PHB anyways.

[KillianHawkeye]

Have some noble or other kind of celebrity come asking him for some spells to be cast, but then demand his services for free or at a heavy discount on the grounds that they will tell all their friends and followers about how great a spellcaster he is. Think of all that exposure!

If the wizard actually falls for this, make sure that nothing ever comes from it.

[Elysiume]

An extravagant lifestyle is 1000gp/month. If a caster can sell one fourth-level spell per week, they can live like a king.

Maybe established spellcasters charge high rates because they garner trust and a new face in town gets no customers.
Maybe there's collusion and anyone who charges a lower rate than the established spellcasters in town gets their teeth kicked in.
Maybe they're knowingly charging an unreasonably high rate because they don't want to be bothered unless it's worth their time and if someone else comes in they'll viciously undercut them until it's not profitable.

Maybe the player should recognize that this is a stupid thing to consider other than as a joke or thought experiment.