What would the top magic item picks be for a Commoner / Expert NPC? ^^

[Firechanter]

Suppose you live the life of a regular Joe Schmo in a typical D&D-like world. FR, Golarion, even Eberron (but not Dark Sun or anything like that). You're not interested in adventuring (or are aware that you don't have what it takes to survive). Instead, you do regular but trained work, and your Craft or Profession skill earns you about, let's say, 7GP per week / 350GP per year. Living frugally, you may be able to save what, maybe 150-200GP/year.

So, further assuming that you can buy / have made to order any magic item(s) officially listed in D&D 3.5 and/or PF, at list price. Which one(s) would strike your fancy, and why? (Take into account how long you need to save up for them.)

Just in case: No Tippyverse nonsense with self-resetting "traps" that create stuff for you or anything.

Example: it might be desirable to get a pouch of Everlasting Rations. Save up 2 years for them, never worry about food for yourself anymore, save up money at a faster rate in the future.

Basically the point of this thread is to flesh out how Commoners might be living in a high-magic civilization, and figure out what items might be the bread and butter for an artificer when he isn't backlogged with orders from adventurers. ^^

[Vizzerdrix]

Hmm... any of the tools that add +10 (or was it 5? 15?) to a crafting check. Those are very pricy, but the sort of thing I could see families saving up for. That is the sort of bonus you can put in the hands of an unskilled worker and still get a decent product out of.

A healer's belt. Farming is dangerous work. You are surrounded by heavy equipment and animals all day. Ever see a sow bite? Not pretty. Very likely to fester too if you can't clean it right away. Any farmer with a healer's belt could make a healthy side profit by using it to help his community. Even the +2 to healing checks would be useful for treating strained backs and whatnot. A large family would end up saving lots of gold by having one of these, both in trips to a cleric, and work hours not lost.

Was it mm4 or 5? One of those has a clockwork pony. A stronger than normal draft animal that needs no food or rest and can work 24/7 means your farm needs less feed and can be going almost constantly. Hook it to a grain or lumber mill and you can run it nonstop. Again, pricy, but you'd soon corner the lumber business by sheer volume of product.

Amber amulets of vermin. These would be great in the hands of shepards, or when moving product to market. Losing an animal to a wild predator is a huge loss of invested time. Having a pokemon at the ready to help defend the flock would make even large threats like bears or raiders manageable.

EDIT: also, masterwork tools of all sorts, as well as eggshell grenades, tanglefoot bags, shapesand, thunderstones, acid... the list for alchemicals and their uses are almost limitless.

[JustIgnoreMe]

This thread may be useful. https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=12723274&postcount=4

[KoDT69]

I've thought about this kind of thing many times over the years. Some really simple magic items can be world changing to commoners, especially in small farming villages. A drought can destroy a year's crops, but a single Decanter of Endless water could be passed around the village to keep everything growing just fine. Items with unlimited use Cantrips or 1st level spells could be infinitely valuable to a town if used correctly.

In a high magic setting, I think that an adventurer might find something or even craft something useful to gift to the village they grew up in. I have had a few retired characters that did that kind of stuff and some that actively did even at lower levels.

[the_tick_rules]

masterwork tools would be nice. a ring of sustenance would be amazing. no spending money or time on eating and 6 hours of less sleeping is so much more time to work.

[Pinkie Pyro]

usefulness: agreed, magical masterwork tools for more money from profession

comfort: socks of endure elements, that also has continuous prestidigitation so the wearer is constantly clean, dry, and magically air conditioned.

[Maat Mons]

According to the upkeep rules in DMG, a typical serf earns an average of about 3 gp per month, and incurs expenses that total up to about 2 gp per month. So savings may accrue slower than you think.

Stronghold Builder's Guide has Everfull Larder. That thing creates enough food for 5 people each time it's used, but has unlimited uses per day. It costs 15,000 gp, which is a lot for common folk, yes. But according to the DMG, every small town has at least 36,000-gp worth of currency in circulation. So if they all pooled together, they could afford it.

If 365 serfs pooled 14 months of savings each, they could buy a Hand of the Oak Father. One Hand of the Oak Father is enough to keep 365 locations continuously under the effects of Pant Growth. That gives a +33% boost to crop production, which presumably translates to making 4 gp per month. With the 2-gp-per-month cost of living, that doubles their disposable income from 1 gp per month to 2. And the picture is even rosier if they can fit more than one farm into each casting of Plant Growth.

[Firechanter]

The rules on making money are pretty clear. Half your Craft or Profession check result in GP per week. At level 1 you'll easily have a +4 skill check even with 0 ability modifier, and soon you'll be able to afford MW tools for another +2, and that doesn't even yet include Skill Focus. You'd Take 10 and Bob's your uncle - easily 28-40GP per month.

And besides, it's just way more sane to ignore any such rubbish that laborers would only make 1SP/day. That figure is simply not sustainable in a D&D price list context. They'd live in hovels, wear only rags (since even a shirt is unaffordable) and die early from malnourishment and consumption. It may be a certain image of medieval life but a woefully inaccurate one.
One simply has to accept that the DMG contains a lot of bull**** esp when it comes to demographics and everyday life.

[The Random NPC]

Rather than buying everlasting rations, it would be better for a few families to pool their money to buy a field provisions box. Costs a little under 6 times as much, but feeds 15 times the people and can be used to feed horses (they count as 3 people). Also, first-level eternal wands are 820 each. They're only arcane so you won't have access to a lot of useful spells, but there's still a few out there like cure light wounds and unseen servant.

[Biggus]

The rules on making money are pretty clear. Half your Craft or Profession check result in GP per week. At level 1 you'll easily have a +4 skill check even with 0 ability modifier, and soon you'll be able to afford MW tools for another +2, and that doesn't even yet include Skill Focus. You'd Take 10 and Bob's your uncle - easily 28-40GP per month.

And besides, it's just way more sane to ignore any such rubbish that laborers would only make 1SP/day. That figure is simply not sustainable in a D&D price list context. They'd live in hovels, wear only rags (since even a shirt is unaffordable) and die early from malnourishment and consumption. It may be a certain image of medieval life but a woefully inaccurate one.
One simply has to accept that the DMG contains a lot of bull**** esp when it comes to demographics and everyday life.

Poor families grow most of their own food, make most of their own clothes, and their children start helping out at around the same age they'd start primary school nowadays: this is exactly how medieval peasants actually lived. The 1SP is mostly just for those items they can't grow or make for themselves. This is mentioned in the DMG (p.139).

It's only the Profession skill which gives you half your check result in GP per week, the Craft skill works differently.

It's certainly true that D&D economics and demographics are wonky as hell though.

[sreservoir]

It's only the Profession skill which gives you half your check result in GP per week, the Craft skill works differently.


You can practice your trade and make a decent living, earning about half your check result in gold pieces per week of dedicated work. You know how to use the tools of your trade, how to perform the craft’s daily tasks, how to supervise untrained helpers, and how to handle common problems. (Untrained laborers and assistants earn an average of 1 silver piece per day.)

Craft has this function in addition to the other stuff you can do with it. Of course, even untrained commoners will prefer to use Craft to make stuff directly, since any DC over 8 generates progress faster than the gp earned by an equal Craft check to "practice your trade", though it certainly means that the wealth accrued should be well above the DMG figures. One figures that pretty much all of it goes to expenses and/or illiquid assets, but ... yeah, basically, D&D econ is silly.

[Firechanter]

If you look actual historical lists of wages and prices, you will find that the salary gaps - for city dwellers that is - were way, way smaller than what we have today. Roughly speaking, an untrained laborer made about 70-80% of a journeyman, and a master maybe 120-150% of a journeyman.
Rents were super low by today's standards, but about 1/3 of the salary went into alcoholic beverages bc they were the only stuff safe to drink.

Country people would live and work on farms so ofc they'd produce their own food, but that's worth money too.

D&Dconomy prices and "trained" salaries are hugely inflated by historical standards, roughly by a factor of a honking 15 by gold weight compared to central European figures.

--

BTT:
The provision box would surely be handy, but 2000gp is pretty steep. Might be worthwhile asking if there are banks and loans and if a family could borrow and pay off over decades like people do with houses today. Also like houses, your children would inherit the box after you and it could be passed on for generations.

[Gnaeus]

I think it’s going to depend a lot on the exact circumstances. I agree that all the above items are legit choices, but.....

Is the village regularly in danger from outside threats? Hiding or running away items would be valuable.

How about disease? A periapt of health or other disease counter could be more important than food. Remember that there was commonly a literal death tax, in which the lord would take the most valuable livestock from a family whose head of household died, to compensate him for the lost work from dead peasant. Keeping the paterfamilias healthy was key. And you could probably pass it to women in childbirth, maybe even sick animals.

Social items would be important. A 5% improvement on every transaction, including life altering ones like negotiating marriages or petitioning the lord for stuff could matter a lot. When the lords son comes through town everyone gives their +Cha necklace to the most eligible daughter.

Multi use items. A belt of constitution would help you survive a plague or a goblin raid and also work longer before fatigue. An int or wis item could help profession or craft, but also just help you make better decisions.

[Maat Mons]

Well, you have to ask yourself, do you want to discus real medieval society? Do you want to discus D&D society as the books describe it? Or do you want to discuss the post-scarcity world that could logically be created by magic?

Because right now, you're not doing any one of the three. You're using light tippy-verse "magic makes all the food" stuff when it suits you. You're using D&D's numbers for earnings and costs when it suits you. And you're appealing to the actual economics of historical Europe when it suits you.

[Cicciograna]

One Hand of the Oak Father is enough to keep 365 locations continuously under the effects of Pant Growth.

I assume it would save a lot of money in tailoring clothes for your children. One size fits them all!

[Firechanter]

Well, you have to ask yourself, do you want to discus real medieval society? Do you want to discus D&D society as the books describe it? Or do you want to discuss the post-scarcity world that could logically be created by magic?

Because right now, you're not doing any one of the three. You're using light tippy-verse "magic makes all the food" stuff when it suits you. You're using D&D's numbers for earnings and costs when it suits you. And you're appealing to the actual economics of historical Europe when it suits you.

I'm trying to - probably like KoDT69 further up - describe a D&D world that's plausible and makes sense. As I see it, the best way to achieve that is to take the real world as a baseline because we already know that worked (so for instance we can take the real world wages and convert them with the factor that D&D dictates). Then we put magic on top and make adjustments. It makes zero sense to introduce another factor that has no basis in reality and doesn't check out with the rest of the world just because one poorly-thought-out paragraph in the DMG says so.

--

@Gnaeus: a bunch of great ideas, though mostly a bit on the pricy side -- like, ofc it would be nice to be immune to disease, but where do you get 9000GP when you can save up maybe(!) 200GP per year?

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The Commoner's Handbook also has some great ideas, thanks for the link.

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One little pitfall I've come across is that for instance the Food items seem to all use the level 3 Cleric spell, which would kinda necessitate that Churches / Temples employ crafters to create and sell these things. When I think magic crafter I typically associate that with arcane casters operating their private enterprise (mostly to finance their arcane studies). Now in PF I guess it's easily possible to create an item without knowing the associated spell (the Spellcraft DC just goes up a bit); is that also possible in 3.5?

[Gnaeus]

@Gnaeus: a bunch of great ideas, though mostly a bit on the pricy side -- like, ofc it would be nice to be immune to disease, but where do you get 9000GP when you can save up maybe(!) 200GP per year?


I don’t know. The same place he gets 2000 GP to buy a box of endless food?

But seriously, if the commoner lives in a place with a big church, he won’t buy a magic item. He will just donate to the church so if he gets consumption the priest will cast cure disease on him. Otherwise, It comes in potion form. I think we could reasonably expect that a lot of peasant treasure will come in a bottle.

Although some commoners won’t be human. An elf woodworker might save 20 GP/year for 450 years for his healthcare plan. The longer something lives the more sense expensive purchases would make. I spend more on healthcare as % of disposable income than that, and it’s not like at some point I’m going to go “whew! That’s paid for. I’ll never be sick again and I can pass it down to my kids and grandkids.”. If elf commoners make 200g/yr*1500 year working lifespan id expect them to glow with gear. Could they buy on credit? “I crafted wooden components for 534 wands and staves for the wizards guild before they gave me my amulet. Only 86 more until it’s paid off...”

And again, in many cases groups might buy items. Maybe the periapt of health belongs to the clan, and is worn by every mother around childbirth. Something like a dwarf with a low reproductive rate is going to care a lot about keeping mortality rates down. Or the mayor gets the +2 charisma item and he negotiates taxes or prices for village goods.

In other cases I would expect work exchanges. A Druid might contribute the periapt in exchange for 4 months of labor/year during non growing months for 100 years. Somebody has to erect those standing stones/churches/pyramids.

[mabriss lethe]

I figure that a Survival Pouch might be on the list somewhere. There are cheaper options for the individual effects, but for a one stop shop that can give you food, water, shelter, fire, weapons, and trasportation, it ain't half bad. I'd think a commoner would prefer a magic object that was as flexible as possible. On any given day there's probably some use a small town could find for it.

[Firechanter]

One idea that has been suggested and would seem very appealing to me would be something that climatizes buildings. So kinda like a fix-installed version of Leomund's Tiny Hut. Is there already an item that does that?
Not having to buy or make and haul firewood saves time and money in the long run, and prevents potential axe-idents or carbon monoxide poisoning.

Creating such an item based on LTH might be a "tad" on the expensive side, unless we get a serious discount for not using the entirety of LTH's functionality (we don't need the rainproof opaque shell after all, just the heating / cooling effect).

[Gnaeus]

I’d think items of endure elements would be way cheaper. Like the 500 GP magic bedroll which provides endure elements and 1hp/night healing. It also apparently gives you a good nights sleep and smells of lavender, although that may be flavor text. Or a least crystal of adaptation and some MW padded armor. Then you are warm in the house but you can also work outside in any conditions. Save real climate control for the rich.

[Particle_Man]

Is there a way they could leverage an item that grants xp, to become a higher level commoner or expert? I mean there are stats for 20th level commoners, so it must be possible in theory to level them up.

[Vizzerdrix]

Isn't their a horn or something that summons a pile of barbarians? I be they would be a huge help when it came time to get the harvest in.

[KoDT69]

I had always just assumed that the Farmer (Commoner level 1) after many times hunting for food, running predators off protecting livestock, and such things would gain tiny amounts of XP over time and level up. I'd even assume XP from overcoming social situations. With practice, people get better at things over time. The level chart seems to be the intended mechanical expression of that thought IMO.

Another consideration of how the commoners live would be strongly affected by the type of social structure in a given city/town/village. A small remote Forrest village might have a stronger sense of community (like the Amish) and take great pride in helping each other out. A large city may be much more likely to be full of people that try to keep to themselves and their homes would reflect that lack of support.

I've got to agree on the wages though. Like how can anybody have only 1gp per month of hard labor, but you can manage to pluck 50gp from a small group of goblins that are 4hp creatures. If that were me as a teenager commoner, you'd be hard pressed to keep me from gathering the other young strong commoners and roaming the woods with long spears looking for an easier way to get that loot. So I do think the people would have it at least a little better than suggested, unless there is an oppressive greedy lord/baron/king that is actively trying to keep them worse off. Hey this is all giving me an idea for a campaign I'm getting ready to start :smallcool:
On the other hand, it's also plausible that each family is capable of farming for food, growing cotton etc for clothes, and doing their own carpentry and homebuilding. Still they gotta be able to get or make new ropes, axes, plows, and other tools of the trade.

[Firechanter]

Thing is, farming your food, growing raw materials (flax, linen) etc is _also_ work and would basically be covered under "Profession: Farmer" or something, and even with minimal training and a super bad stat (Wis 3) it's basically impossible to make less than about 14GP's worth per month.


I had always just assumed that the Farmer (Commoner level 1) after many times hunting for food, running predators off protecting livestock, and such things would gain tiny amounts of XP over time and level up.

Yeah that's one possibility. Like, MAYBE you just get 1XP per day for living your life. For adventurers that would quickly become irrelevant (who'd want to take years of downtime just to grind a level?) but for a Human Commoner it would be enough to lift him to level 5-ish during the course of their career.
As for level 20 Commoners though -- well maybe these are Elven Commoners who've lived through their rut for 600 years, but personally I think that's just another of those instances where the DMG tables are rubbish. :6
Another approach is that NPCs neither get XP nor need XP to level up, and reach their personal plateau through some other means.

For my setting, I've decided to assume that Commoners / Experts will advance to (only) about level 3-5 in their field, BUT that NPCs with sufficient ability scores take up PC classes, and that youths with such abilities are actively sought after for recruitment by the various factions, especially for training as spellcasters. But still only a small fraction of these have what it takes to be Adventurers.

[The Random NPC]

Remember, the 1 silver a day is only for those people with absolutely no idea what they're doing. As soon as you get some idea (1 rank in profession(whatever)) you start making gold. Even if all you're doing is carrying things being a professional porter will earn you higher wages.


Thing is, farming your food, growing raw materials (flax, linen) etc is _also_ work and would basically be covered under "Profession: Farmer" or something, and even with minimal training and a super bad stat (Wis 3) it's basically impossible to make less than about 14GP's worth per month.



Yeah that's one possibility. Like, MAYBE you just get 1XP per day for living your life. For adventurers that would quickly become irrelevant (who'd want to take years of downtime just to grind a level?) but for a Human Commoner it would be enough to lift him to level 5-ish during the course of their career.
As for level 20 Commoners though -- well maybe these are Elven Commoners who've lived through their rut for 600 years, but personally I think that's just another of those instances where the DMG tables are rubbish. :6
Another approach is that NPCs neither get XP nor need XP to level up, and reach their personal plateau through some other means.

For my setting, I've decided to assume that Commoners / Experts will advance to (only) about level 3-5 in their field, BUT that NPCs with sufficient ability scores take up PC classes, and that youths with such abilities are actively sought after for recruitment by the various factions, especially for training as spellcasters. But still only a small fraction of these have what it takes to be Adventurers.

Technically XP is granted not for killing monsters, but for overcoming obstacles. So if there's a drought and you still grow enough food to feed your family and pay your taxes, you should be getting XP.

[aglondier]

An item I have often given to npc commoners in campaigns I run is an amulet that ĺets the wearer animate and control up to a half dozen undead. Two words: unpaid labour. I think it tallies out to less than 2000gp, and gives them untiring, uncomplaining workers that don't need food or wages. Stick them in a mine and they will earn their cost back in no time. A lesser version that animates and controls a single skeleton...gets you a plow horse that costs nothing to maintain, or a donkey to turn the millstone 24/7 again without upkeep costs...and for a mere few hundred gold...

Unlimited use cantrips come in at about 900gp market value. Light, mending, prestidigitation, drench, create water, purify food and drink, guidance, message...
Lamp oil, 1sp for 6 hours of light. 1gp covers you for 10 or so days, 3gp for a month...so it would take about 25 years to make your money back. Continual flame might be a better investment...
Mending is a much better investment, particularly if you set yourself up as a tinker and do a circuit of villages and thorpes...
Likewise for Drench. Even during an average rainfall year, having someone water all your cropland once every couple of weeks would make a difference, and during a drought...
Setting a tiny shrine in your guildhall that grants Guidance to your workers as they pass it in the course of their duties is rediculously more valuable than the 900gp it would cost to set up...

An item that grants a +3 to a skill also comes in at about 900gp. Not quite enought to turn an apprentice into a journeyman, but certainly enough to make your efforts stand out in a crowd...or get an item giving you +2 to two related skills for 700gp...or three skills for 900gp...

[Firechanter]

Everburning Torches are 110gp apiece. ^^
There might be some kind of stationary version of certain items that's cheaper than the mobile "adventurer's" version.

Unlimited Use Cantrips are very attractive I guess. Prestidigitation can clean clothes and flavour food so that would be a top pick for the household I guess. Particularly if you eat the bland mush that comes out of a Create Food item every day.

A skill bonus item will pay for itself over time -- every +2 skill pay back 1gp per week.

[Asmotherion]

Probably save up a bunsh of money for a resurection and healing spells in case of emergency.

Alternativelly, save to get at least one of their children an education so they can become Wizards or Clerics of the local deity; With spells at that rate, you would not only ensure your kid's future by giving them the chance to be Utility-focused Casters in the city, but also your own. Even a 1st level caster casting a 1st level spell makes more in a few secconds than a farmer makes in a week's efforts.

The tools mentioned above also make sence, as it would be a very good investment.

An interesting choice could also be a Relevant Spell for their buisness. For example, a Farmer could be saving for a Plant Growth spell on his local, or a Town Guard may save up to get a Permanent Detect Magic casted on himself (or a magic item that does that).

Now, if they had an adventuring ancestor they could very well have some magic weapon as a family hairloom.

[Firechanter]

As it happens, last night I finally figured out a demography model (that makes sense to me) to determine how many NPC primary spellcasters of which levels exist in such a high-magic society. The details are beyond the scope of this thread, but the long and short of it is that spellcasting factions (temples, academies, colleges) _want_ to recruit acolytes with a relevant mental score of 16 or better. They may not find all eligible candidates, and may be bribed to fill their ranks with less talented folk, and everything can be fine-tuned but you could assume 5% per casting method (Int, Wis, Cha). So that's a total of 15% of the populace.

I fiddled around with estimations how long it might take non-adventurers to level up and determine what fractions manage to level up at all, and ofc you could change each parameter, but I'm quite happy with the basic model I came up with.

According to this, there will be about 75.000 spellcasters per million people (counting children). 60.000 of these will be levels 1-4, the remaining 15.000 level 5 and up. They will be roughly 50:50 arcane and divine.
If 1/4 of the total are Clerics, this means that about 650 per million people will be able to cast Raise Dead. And a similar amount of Wizards may be able to cast Teleport, for instance.

I suppose it makes sense if many of them have picked up at least one item creation feat, but probably not all. So finding a suitable crafter outside your party may be a challenge in its own right. Similar for other spellcasting services.

[KoDT69]

The first thing to consider is how high magic is your campaign setting. What I've done in the past was to start with the type of town, location, and what churches make sense to be there. How many divine caster types might be there? Then I figure if there is a tactical location for arcane casters to be interested in. Is your town near a cave system that has a path to the Underdark? Is there a mine containing minerals used in spell components? Might a powerful caster be staying there and attracting a following. Little dumb thoughts here but I've had a lot of good feedback on immersion plotting out this way.

[ExLibrisMortis]

This post (https://forums.giantitp.com/showsinglepost.php?p=19417465&postcount=22) and subsequent discussion is about food supply in a high-magic society. Bottom line: It's going to happen through magic, because magic is ridiculously efficient.

The main item under discussion is a "kettle", an item that casts create food and water over and over again, storing the food until needed (later that day). It feeds 2160 people and costs 30 000 gp. Let's say each person earns 7 gp per week on average, including children and the elderly, and 1 gp out of every 7 gp is saved, resulting in a total savings of 112 320 gp per year for the entire 2160-person community. That means all the people working together can buy a kettle with only about fourteen weeks' savings.

Fourteen weeks is a pretty short time, but you do have to get 2000+ people to get in on the same item together (not to mention eat in shifts), which is not easy (the modern equivalent would be getting a neighbourhood to buy a wind turbine together). It might be that the first kettle is not bought by the people from their savings, but rather by the local elite, using wealth extracted from the local (farming) population in rents and taxes. The local population will now pay for access to the kettle, reinforcing the position of the elite (since they now control "food" in addition to "land" and "military" and "courts" and so on). That leads me to my next point: The "means of production" will become much more firmly held by the elite.

In a society where 90% of the people are subsistence farmers, each farmer produces a small part of the surplus food that supports the elite--the farmers may even own the land, which gives them some power. The local elite will still have a great deal more power--military and economic--but ultimately relies on the farmers' manpower to feed itself, which the farmers may be able to leverage every now and then.

In a society where 90% of the people are fed by magic items they can't afford, the local elite has all of its usual military and economic power, but it no longer depends on farmers to feed itself--one magic item crafter is enough, and magic item crafting is very much an elite activity, so you can be sure that magic items crafted are mostly going to be set up to the elite's advantage. It is now crucial for the former farmers to have access to a food supplier, because going back to subsistence farming is really, really hard, especially since the whole social structure that supported subsistence farming just isn't there anymore--all your neighbours that you could count on in years of poor harvest are eating from the kettle. In the absence of checks on the elite's ability to exploit the magic items they can afford, I would expect to see a lot of the lower classes being more or less "in bondage", getting food vouchers only redeemable at a given site (a mine, a plantation, a workshop), effectively tying them to their place of work (note that standards of living may in fact go up while all this happens--it's not all horror). Needless to say, a lot of the mine/plantation/workshop output is going towards magic item crafting. D&D rules don't generally specify what raw materials you need to craft something, but when I do worldbuilding, I don't use "gold pieces" as raw materials for all magic items.

Now, you can go one step further and have a more empowered lower class with (say) democratic control over the major magic items that shape life, for example by having each village/community as an autonomous collective (anarcho-syndicalist or otherwise) that has collective ownership of the means of production. In such a case, it becomes important for a village to be able to protect its food supply--now highly centralized and vulnerable--from bandits, people with armies, and spellcasters. I'd expect villages to effectively become mini-cities, with walls and everything--the effective minimum size limit for an independent human community becomes one kettle's worth of people. That pretty much sets you up for a lower-power version of the Tippyverse, with magical cities heavily fortified, the land in between not really relevant except where it is mined or quarried, and generally pretty bleak for the lower class. As a neat side effect, this sort of thing explains why dwarves can live inside mountains and only mine for a living.

Besides descending into a sort of fantasy-industrial dystopia--which is an interesting game setting! it might just not be what you want--you could also restore some balance and have a more conventional "farmer" class, whose role is tied in with magic item production. Ask yourself: Where are all the magic item components coming from? Some of them come from mines, sure--the use of precious metals and gems for magic is really common in the fantasy genre--but that doesn't have to be the only or even the main source of magic components. What if you just grow magic item components on farms? Instead of a farmer growing wheat to eat (and some for tax), you get a farmer growing... I don't know, celestial sunflowers, or something. Elemental fireberries (do not eat). Orchards of pomegarnet shrubs (just as good as real gems when making wands). That last one works better in Dutch, I'm afraid. There could be a host of items that have solid gp equivalents that any spellcaster can get at the local artificer's market (every Friday on the Blue Square, get your wares cheaper at Blikje, warforged wonder of the world).

I mean, at the end of the day, in a high-magic world, magic item crafting is the equivalent of crafting industrial machinery. Due to the way spells are written up--most being drastically more efficient than real life equivalents, some being worse--you may not see the same kinds of social structures grow around magic items that you see around industrial plants, but even low-power items made without any optimization or cost reduction will, if implemented consistently, result in extremely drastic changes to the conventional pseudo-medieval D&D world.