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Admiral Squish
2008-02-08, 03:51 PM
Okay, my artificer came up with this. A magical amulet. Cheap, easy to produce. I haven't done the math yet, it can produce enough food (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/createFoodAndWater.htm) for one person, cast endure elements (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/endureElements.htm), and cast mage armor (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/mageArmor.htm), all once/day.

Now, this guy is making these to basically solve all the problems of the world. Food, shelter, and protection are free. He's making them by the dozen, and handing them out in villages and towns, making sure everyone gets one.

The question is, what kind of things is this guy stirring up? What are the long-range consequences of such a thing?

AKA_Bait
2008-02-08, 03:58 PM
Okay, my artificer came up with this. A magical amulet. Cheap, easy to produce. I haven't done the math yet, but three times per day, it can produce enough food (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/createFoodAndWater.htm) for a one person sizable meal, once a day it can also cast tiny hut (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/tinyHut.htm), and it grants the wearer mage armor (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/mageArmor.htm) as an always-active power.

How, exactly, is something like that cheap? Or are you just disregarding the item creation guidelines.



Now, this guy is making these to basically solve all the problems of the world. Food, shelter, and protection are free. He's making them by the dozen, and handing them out in villages and towns, making sure everyone gets one.

The question is, what kind of things is this guy stirring up? What are the long-range consequences of such a thing?
Some consequences

1. Aristocrats and political leaders in non-democratic societies will want him dead, dead, dead, dead. Because

2. Social order will start to collapse. Staple crops (corn, wheat, etc) will be worthless. Millions will be unemployed but still have the means to eat and have shelter. Why would any commoner go back to laboring in the fields if they had one of these?

Saph
2008-02-08, 03:59 PM
People with weapons can take these amulets away from the recipients as easily as they can take away anything else. So you'll still get famines, deaths from exposure, etc; it's just that the causes will be political (just like in the real world).

In better-ordered countries, the main consequence would be to take away the necessity to work. Economies would reorient to be more about entertainment than survival, which would have various long-term effects.

By the rules, though, this item shouldn't be cheap, so I'm not sure how the artificer's doing it.

- Saph

Admiral Squish
2008-02-08, 04:04 PM
How, exactly, is something like that cheap? Or are you just disregarding the item creation guidelines.
Well, it's not especially cheap, but it's relatively cheap, for what it gives. Also, change tiny hut for endure elements.

Admiral Squish
2008-02-08, 04:08 PM
People with weapons can take these amulets away from the recipients as easily as they can take away anything else. So you'll still get famines, deaths from exposure, etc; it's just that the causes will be political (just like in the real world).

In better-ordered countries, the main consequence would be to take away the necessity to work. Economies would reorient to be more about entertainment than survival, which would have various long-term effects.

By the rules, though, this item shouldn't be cheap, so I'm not sure how the artificer's doing it.

- Saph

Well, instead of slaughtering malnourished 10AC commoners, they're facing down well-fed 14AC commoners who really want to keep their amulets.

Telonius
2008-02-08, 04:12 PM
Always-Active "Mage Armor" is the exact functional equivalent of Bracers of Armor +4. Their list price is 16,000 gp. He's going to bankrupt himself if he puts that on the gizmo.

If you remove that, it looks like the item would be ...
{(Spell level 3 * CL 5 * 25) + [(Spell level 3 * CL 5 * 25)*1.5 for multiple abilities)]} / (5/1charge per day) = 187.5gp for the item.

Socially, this would have a lot of effects. Agriculture would grind to a halt. Staple foods would no longer be produced, though luxury foods would still have their place. Sieges would no longer be an effective battle technique, ever.

One thing would stay the same: the dirt poor would still be dirt poor. They just wouldn't be starving.

Reel On, Love
2008-02-08, 04:15 PM
Well, instead of slaughtering malnourished 10AC commoners, they're facing down well-fed 14AC commoners who really want to keep their amulets.

Unless the commoners are Brits with longbows (impossible in D&D due to longbow cost), they're just as buggered.

Plus, hell, conscription just means you've got the commoners hacking at each other.


Always-Active "Mage Armor" is the exact functional equivalent of Bracers of Armor +4. Their list price is 16,000 gp. He's going to bankrupt himself if he puts that on the gizmo.
No, the always-active mage armor uses the continuous-spell-in-item rules, which for Mage Armor is 1 for spell level * 1 for caster level * 2000 for continuous * 1 for the duration constant.
What you describe would be more sensible way of handling it, but then, the custom item rules are all kinds of wacky.

Admiral Squish
2008-02-08, 04:25 PM
Always-Active "Mage Armor" is the exact functional equivalent of Bracers of Armor +4. Their list price is 16,000 gp. He's going to bankrupt himself if he puts that on the gizmo.

If you remove that, it looks like the item would be ...
{(Spell level 3 * CL 5 * 25) + [(Spell level 3 * CL 5 * 25)*1.5 for multiple abilities)]} / (5/1charge per day) = 187.5gp for the item.

Good advice. How much would 1/day mage armor cost? I think CL 1 should do fine for duration. It's meant to stop the whole 'eaten by a housecat' thing.


One thing would stay the same: the dirt poor would still be dirt poor. They just wouldn't be starving.

Well, why do the poor need money? To have shelter, food, and protection. You could fall asleep in a field mid-blizzard with endure elements, you can feed yourself and your family for free, and with mage armor, you can, somewhat, protect yourself from the wandering beasts. Only greedy people would work, because they want things.

Reel On, Love
2008-02-08, 04:30 PM
Well, why do the poor need money?

Allow not nature more than nature needs,
Man's life is cheap as beast's.

Sstoopidtallkid
2008-02-08, 04:31 PM
Well, why do the poor need money? To have shelter, food, and protection. You could fall asleep in a field mid-blizzard with endure elements, you can feed yourself and your family for free, and with mage armor, you can, somewhat, protect yourself from the wandering beasts. Only greedy people would work, because they want things.Congratulations, you just created Communism. And that's as much as we can say on the topic.

Telonius
2008-02-08, 04:32 PM
Unless the commoners are Brits with longbows (impossible in D&D due to longbow cost), they're just as buggered.

Plus, hell, conscription just means you've got the commoners hacking at each other.


No, the always-active mage armor uses the continuous-spell-in-item rules, which for Mage Armor is 1 for spell level * 1 for caster level * 2000 for continuous * 1 for the duration constant.
What you describe would be more sensible way of handling it, but then, the custom item rules are all kinds of wacky.

This falls into the same category as the mythical Widget of Continuous True Strike. You should be using the "Armor Enhancement" section of the table, not the "Spell effect" and "Special" sections. The Armor Enhancement section lists the formula as (bonus squared) * 1000. For a +4 bonus, that's (4*4) * 1000, which equals ... 16,000, which happens to be the exact price of Bracers of Armor.

sikyon
2008-02-08, 04:34 PM
Congratulations, you just created Communism. And that's as much as we can say on the topic.

Communism indeed, and one that would actually work.

Congrats.

Admiral Squish
2008-02-08, 04:37 PM
Communism indeed, and one that would actually work.

Congrats.

Yay me! I win!

valadil
2008-02-08, 04:40 PM
Whomever sells food and shelter would be pretty pissed at the character. I wouldn't necessarily say that every farmer or governor (they effectively sell shelter in town for taxes) is going after the players, but there would have to be some corrupt ones out there who take exception.

People who don't get the amulets initially would get upset too. Unless you have a scheme for distributing these things evenly and simultaneously, that dwarf tribe that was last on the list due to logistic reasons is going to think you're snubbing them because you hate dwarves.

And even if these things get distributed properly, there's going to be some bully somewhere who takes or threatens to take amulets. If people get too dependent on magical food, they'll starve. As a sidenote, there could be old folks who don't want to rely on amulets for food and are against these devil toys.

These won't all necessarily happen. They're just ideas since the GM should throw down some opposition instead of letting a PC make the world perfect.

I could see a retired PC doing something like this. Keep 1k gold to live off of, which is plenty for most people, and put the rest into solving world hunger. Seems reasonable, if any PC were to retire.

Frosty
2008-02-08, 04:42 PM
Implications would include a sky-rocketing population. Much like how the industrial revolution and modern farming advances caused a huge population boom in the 20th century, having unlimited food supplies like this will also create a huge, if not endless, population increase.

However, Land and living space is still limited, so the poor will be well-fed, but completely land-less. Land-ownership and raw materials will be more precious than ever since everybody want them, and now there are a LOT more people wanting them. The service industry *could* grow to meet demand, *if* all the peasants have something of worth to give in return. What will all these peasants do now that they don't need to farm?

Either become soldiers and conquer more lands for the kingdom, or enter the manufacturing sector. The huge amount of workers will increase production, but the amount of raw materials remain the same, so prospecting and exploration of new lands for more resources would become important, and some of these peasants may become adventurers.

Either the kingdom will institute some sortof population control measure (a la China) or there will be inevitable conflict between it and other kingdoms and the kingdom tries to expand for more land and more natural resources.

Sstoopidtallkid
2008-02-08, 04:42 PM
Communism indeed, and one that would actually work.

Congrats.Not really, but by board rules we can't get into it, so lets just talk about how it will affect the GAME world.

Yes, ignoring the possibility of someone stealing the items, you are still looking at nobles who are used to having stuff, and will pay for the stuff. People will make the stuff because they want stuff, too. Think about it, are you happier with or without your computer. The focus of the economy would change, but economics remains the same. However, a noble who enslaves his people once they refuse to work for him wouldn't be uncommon, either.

BRC
2008-02-08, 04:43 PM
Congratulations, you just created Communism. And that's as much as we can say on the topic.
Expect the value of luxary items to skyrocket, since people no longer need the bare neccesities, they will spend money on luxuries. What your amulet essentally does is provide somebody the equivilant of, for no work, a sturdy hut and some bland food. The bare neccesities in short, However, people will want more than the bare neccesities, though they no longer NEED food, the stuff made by Create Food is rather bland, and so those who can afford it will still want somthing better for themselves.
However, all the peasants already living off bland food and in plain huts will be better off, and so will start moving up the social ladder in some way, trying to make money, which will be tough because you just eliminated the need for basic agriculture. There will still be some so the middle and upper classes can get better food than the amulet provides, but not anywhere nearly as much as before.

So you have abunch of people with nothing to do, at first everybody will be happy, then the peasents will get bored and jelous, and there will be a uprising, it will likely be bloody, and in the end not much will change. Though the peasents now have mage armor 1/day, so do all the soliders working for the nobility, and the peasents will be unlikely to attract a large enough following to actually do anything, as they can no longer claim that the nobility is, for example, taxing them too hard to feed themselves, as the amulets now feed them for free.

Reel On, Love
2008-02-08, 04:44 PM
This falls into the same category as the mythical Widget of Continuous True Strike. You should be using the "Armor Enhancement" section of the table, not the "Spell effect" and "Special" sections. The Armor Enhancement section lists the formula as (bonus squared) * 1000. For a +4 bonus, that's (4*4) * 1000, which equals ... 16,000, which happens to be the exact price of Bracers of Armor.

No, I shouldn't. If I were making an item that grants a +4 enhancement bonus to armor, I'd use the "armor enhancement" bonus. The "continuous mage armor" item is similar to a "+4 enhancement bonus to armor" item, but it is a little different. For example, the Mage Armor effect shows up to Greater Arcane Sight, and a vanilla +4 enh-to-armor item would stack with physical armor (making it +4) and wouldn't apply vs. incorporeal creatures. Bracers of Armor are actually different from either of those, since they don't stack with physical armor, but don't technically apply vs. incorporeal creatures, either.

It's a spell effect. The default is the "spell effect" guideline. If you're changing the price, you might as well pick a more reasonable one than the 16,000 gp you're getting, anyway (compare it with the +1 Glamered Twilight Mithral chain shirt, which can look like clothing, has no ACP or spell failure, and gives +5 armor rather than +4, all for 7,700 gp). Bracers of Armor are overpriced.


For the record, Continuous True Strike is a crappy item... because True Strike applies to one attack, regardless of the spell's duration.

Use-Activated True Strike, now we're talkin', but Use-Activated is yet another example of how the item creation rules are teh borked.

Spiryt
2008-02-08, 04:44 PM
Communism indeed, and one that would actually work.

Congrats.

Well, if my semester of sociology gave my anything, I can say that it would never work.

People would want more. It's the way people are.

EDIT: and I think that Blood(d)y Commie ninjed me.

Reel On, Love
2008-02-08, 04:45 PM
Expect the value of luxary items to skyrocket, since people no longer need the bare neccesities,

Look for the bare necessities
The simple bare necessities
Forget about your worries and your strife
I mean the bare necessities
Old Mother Nature's recipes
That bring the bare necessities of life!

mikeejimbo
2008-02-08, 04:46 PM
The Men In Black would steal his plans and erase his memory.

AKA_Bait
2008-02-08, 04:51 PM
Expect the value of luxary items to skyrocket, since people no longer need the bare neccesities, they will spend money on luxuries. What your amulet essentally does is provide somebody the equivilant of, for no work, a sturdy hut and some bland food. The bare neccesities in short, However, people will want more than the bare neccesities, though they no longer NEED food, the stuff made by Create Food is rather bland, and so those who can afford it will still want somthing better for themselves.

It occurs to me that this would totally be negated if Prestidigitaion were also in there to spice up the food...


So you have abunch of people with nothing to do, at first everybody will be happy, then the peasents will get bored and jelous, and there will be a uprising, it will likely be bloody, and in the end not much will change. Though the peasents now have mage armor 1/day, so do all the soliders working for the nobility,

Yes but the soldiers will be proportionally less well defended, since they probably had armor already. Of course... they will still have better weapons etc.

Frosty
2008-02-08, 04:51 PM
It's all about supply and demand. As long as there is something people want, and is in limited quantities, there will be the distinction between poor and rich. So now, the poor are still the same..except they're not hungry anymore.

Solo
2008-02-08, 04:53 PM
Look for the bare necessities
The simple bare necessities
Forget about your worries and your strife
I mean the bare necessities
Old Mother Nature's recipes
That bring the bare necessities of life!

http://img412.imageshack.us/img412/6035/caution049te2.gif

textextext

Reel On, Love
2008-02-08, 04:55 PM
[img=http://img412.imageshack.us/img412/6035/caution049te2.gif]

textextext

http://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i245/mgorinev/whatwhale.jpg

BRC
2008-02-08, 04:55 PM
It's all about supply and demand. As long as there is something people want, and is in limited quantities, there will be the distinction between poor and rich. So now, the poor are still the same..except they're not hungry anymore.
except they now have nothing to do, usually they could work hard in order to advance their social status (or try anyway, it usually didn't work), but as this is a pre-industrialized society, the vast majority of the peasents work in agriculture, about 90% of which no longer has any demand for it's supply. Other jobs will be very limited, leaving unemployed masses sitting around, leaving violence as the easiest way for them to improve thier social status.
And proportionally, the soliders will be just as better defended as the peasants, they will have these amulets too, on top of thier better amor and training.

Zincorium
2008-02-08, 04:57 PM
I've actually got a problem with similar effects but different causes with one of my homebrew projects.

All the members of a particular nation of humans go through a ritual to turn them into quasi-undead after going to magically accelerated childbearing (at slightly above replacement levels). Afterwards, they can only be killed through violence or severe mishaps. They also have a race of magically altered humans ('orcs') serving them and taking care of resource gathering and manual labor.

The way I've worked it out is that all of them are trained in the basics of magic so as to be able to contribute at least something, and then organized into guilds run by the oldest and most conservative members. They then spend most of their time scheming and backstabbing the other guilds, thus keeping the emperor and his plans free from mischief.

Solo
2008-02-08, 04:57 PM
What


What you say, what you say?


ps. It's working now.

Reel On, Love
2008-02-08, 04:59 PM
What you say, what you say?


ps. It's working now.

http://i74.photobucket.com/albums/i245/mgorinev/1180399783471.jpg

AKA_Bait
2008-02-08, 04:59 PM
And proportionally, the soliders will be just as better defended as the peasants, they will have these amulets too, on top of thier better amor and training.

Erm... Mage Armor doesn't stack with regular armor. So, no, they will not be as proportionally well defended.

Telonius
2008-02-08, 05:06 PM
No, I shouldn't. If I were making an item that grants a +4 enhancement bonus to armor, I'd use the "armor enhancement" bonus. The "continuous mage armor" item is similar to a "+4 enhancement bonus to armor" item, but it is a little different. For example, the Mage Armor effect shows up to Greater Arcane Sight, and a vanilla +4 enh-to-armor item would stack with physical armor (making it +4) and wouldn't apply vs. incorporeal creatures. Bracers of Armor are actually different from either of those, since they don't stack with physical armor, but don't technically apply vs. incorporeal creatures, either.

It's a spell effect. The default is the "spell effect" guideline. If you're changing the price, you might as well pick a more reasonable one than the 16,000 gp you're getting, anyway (compare it with the +1 Glamered Twilight Mithral chain shirt, which can look like clothing, has no ACP or spell failure, and gives +5 armor rather than +4, all for 7,700 gp). Bracers of Armor are overpriced.
.

Except Glamered and Twilight are enhancements to Magic Armor, which uses a different rule for creation than the Wondrous Item the OP was talking about. (Why the Wondrous Item/Ring/Rod table lists Magic Arms and Armor as an example, is beyond me. Stupid Wizards. :smallbiggrin: ) It's also made with mithral, a special material that has different rules. Yes, Bracers of Armor do cost more than Magic Armor, and they're intended to cost more than Magic Armor. One extremely random difference doesn't change the basic situation that the proposed item is essentially the same thing as Bracers of Armor (which follows the Wondrous Item pricing guidelines as though it were an Armor Enhancement item). I'm not saying some of the guidelines can't be a little screwy - item creation is notorious for this - but any other reading of that particular item is just trying to bend the rules.

BRC
2008-02-08, 05:10 PM
Erm... Mage Armor doesn't stack with regular armor. So, no, they will not be as proportionally well defended.
*Checks*
okay, point conceeded, however, the villagers get the bonus for one hour a day, the soliders get it for as long as they wear their armor. Also, if the nobility in question gets an AMF up, all those villagers lose even that.

Not even bringing into account the fact that it's commoners with clubs and sticks versus trained soliders.

AKA_Bait
2008-02-08, 05:14 PM
*Checks*
okay, point conceeded, however, the villagers get the bonus for one hour a day, the soliders get it for as long as they wear their armor. Also, if the nobility in question gets an AMF up, all those villagers lose even that.

Not even bringing into account the fact that it's commoners with clubs and sticks versus trained soliders.

Oh, don't get me wrong. I was just nitpicking about the relative AC's. I'm not saying that the peasants will win. Just that it will be marginally harder to kill them all.

Reel On, Love
2008-02-08, 05:19 PM
Except Glamered and Twilight are enhancements to Magic Armor, which uses a different rule for creation than the Wondrous Item the OP was talking about. (Why the Wondrous Item/Ring/Rod table lists Magic Arms and Armor as an example, is beyond me. Stupid Wizards. :smallbiggrin: ) It's also made with mithral, a special material that has different rules. Yes, Bracers of Armor do cost more than Magic Armor, and they're intended to cost more than Magic Armor. One extremely random difference doesn't change the basic situation that the proposed item is essentially the same thing as Bracers of Armor (which follows the Wondrous Item pricing guidelines as though it were an Armor Enhancement item). I'm not saying some of the guidelines can't be a little screwy - item creation is notorious for this - but any other reading of that particular item is just trying to bend the rules.

I know Glamered and Twilight are armor enhancements. The point is, having a +1 Mithral Twilight chain shirt is both cheaper and preferable (unless you're a monk, and then you could use a boost anyway, especially at low levels) to a continuous Mage Armor, and Glamered even covers the "invisible armor" bit.

No, an item of Continuous Mage Armor is NOT the same as Bracers of Armor. (Which is priced as a +4 armor enhancement, but is very different in nature from one, incidentally--that difference is why the bracers should be cheaper). Continuous Mage Armor is a spell effect. Thus, it is priced by the rules as a spell effect. If you try to argue that because Item A is similar to Item B, which uses the same pricing as Item C despite having a substantially different effect (stacking is *important*), then Item A uses Item C's pricing by the rules, I'm really not the one who's bending anything, here.

Nerd-o-rama
2008-02-08, 05:22 PM
No, I shouldn't. If I were making an item that grants a +4 enhancement bonus to armor, I'd use the "armor enhancement" bonus. The "continuous mage armor" item is similar to a "+4 enhancement bonus to armor" item, but it is a little different. For example, the Mage Armor effect shows up to Greater Arcane Sight, and a vanilla +4 enh-to-armor item would stack with physical armor (making it +4) and wouldn't apply vs. incorporeal creatures. Bracers of Armor are actually different from either of those, since they don't stack with physical armor, but don't technically apply vs. incorporeal creatures, either.

It's a spell effect. The default is the "spell effect" guideline. If you're changing the price, you might as well pick a more reasonable one than the 16,000 gp you're getting, anyway (compare it with the +1 Glamered Twilight Mithral chain shirt, which can look like clothing, has no ACP or spell failure, and gives +5 armor rather than +4, all for 7,700 gp). Bracers of Armor are overpriced.


For the record, Continuous True Strike is a crappy item... because True Strike applies to one attack, regardless of the spell's duration.

Use-Activated True Strike, now we're talkin', but Use-Activated is yet another example of how the item creation rules are teh borked.

Wrong.

The Magic Item Creation "rules" are guidelines, not hard-and-fast pricing rules. The very first guideline, the one that everyone overlooks, is "compare the prices of similar items to determine an appropriate cost." This is why the creation rules are "teh borked" as you so eloquently put it: because no one expects you to take them word-for-word literally.

Frosty
2008-02-08, 05:28 PM
except they now have nothing to do, usually they could work hard in order to advance their social status (or try anyway, it usually didn't work), but as this is a pre-industrialized society, the vast majority of the peasents work in agriculture, about 90% of which no longer has any demand for it's supply. Other jobs will be very limited, leaving unemployed masses sitting around, leaving violence as the easiest way for them to improve thier social status.

With increased population, there will be increased demand for all types of goods and services. Some entrepreneur will want to satsify that demand, so they'll want to set up manufacturing centers. Or in the pre-industrialized world, some sort of crafts guild or apprenticeship program. This will provide some jobs. And again, with the need for land/resource exploration, there will be jobs as adventurers.

souldoubt
2008-02-08, 05:31 PM
Implications would include a sky-rocketing population. Much like how the industrial revolution and modern farming advances caused a huge population boom in the 20th century, having unlimited food supplies like this will also create a huge, if not endless, population increase.
<snip>

To solve this, the amulet would have to include some kind of at-will contraceptive spell. :smallbiggrin:

And even then, maybe only roughly half (a little more, statistically) would need contraceptive spells, and those would be the ones provided to women -- which would completely turn gender relations on its head, since women would solely control reproduction and could decide on a whim whether a particular act of sexual congress would have the potential to result in a child or not, while men would have absolutely no say in the matter. :smalltongue:

Reel On, Love
2008-02-08, 05:32 PM
Wrong.

The Magic Item Creation "rules" are guidelines, not hard-and-fast pricing rules. The very first guideline, the one that everyone overlooks, is "compare the prices of similar items to determine an appropriate cost." This is why the creation rules are "teh borked" as you so eloquently put it: because no one expects you to take them word-for-word literally.

They include a "be careful with this" line because they're so broken, just like Epic Spellcasting explicitly requires you to run your spell past the DM. That doesn't mean the appropriate guideline.

Besides, even using the Bracers of Armor as a guide, a Wondrous Item of Mage Continuous Mage Armor still shouldn't cost exactly the same. If you're assuming the Bracers are properly priced (they're not), the defends-vs.-incporporeal aspect should make the Continuous Mage Armor item cost more.
The default item creation rule--guidelines, if you prefer--remains the Spell Effect one, despite the fact that "the *easiest* way" to get a price is to compare to similar items.

Frosty
2008-02-08, 06:01 PM
With enough magic items, I wonder if Utopia can be created.

Admiral Squish
2008-02-08, 06:09 PM
With enough magic items, I wonder if Utopia can be created.

Perapait of wisdom, helm of intellect and cloak of charisma all maxed for every leader in the world.

horseboy
2008-02-08, 06:11 PM
With enough magic items, I wonder if Utopia can be created.
Didn't we decide in the "post create food society" that one person's Utopia was another's Dystopia?

zerombr
2008-02-09, 01:13 AM
No, I shouldn't. If I were making an item that grants a +4 enhancement bonus to armor, I'd use the "armor enhancement" bonus. The "continuous mage armor" item is similar to a "+4 enhancement bonus to armor" item, but it is a little different. For example, the Mage Armor effect shows up to Greater Arcane Sight, and a vanilla +4 enh-to-armor item would stack with physical armor (making it +4) and wouldn't apply vs. incorporeal creatures. Bracers of Armor are actually different from either of those, since they don't stack with physical armor, but don't technically apply vs. incorporeal creatures, either.

It's a spell effect. The default is the "spell effect" guideline. If you're changing the price, you might as well pick a more reasonable one than the 16,000 gp you're getting, anyway (compare it with the +1 Glamered Twilight Mithral chain shirt, which can look like clothing, has no ACP or spell failure, and gives +5 armor rather than +4, all for 7,700 gp). Bracers of Armor are overpriced.


isn't this the 'duck rule' in action?

Tokiko Mima
2008-02-09, 02:22 AM
Isn't it just a little bit sad that solving world hunger, drought, granting security, and providing protection from the elements for all people only seems to cause more problems? And that there will still be jerks who want to hoard the bounty all to themselves, even though they almost certainly need no more than a single amulet? Why can't we ever actually *have* peace on earth and good will towards men? :smallfrown:

Jayngfet
2008-02-09, 02:43 AM
new plan, kill amulets maker, raise a bunch of nuke happy sorcerers from childhood to epic levels, blow up world, live in shelter till they blow them selves up(shouldn't take more than a few days to wipe out the capitols large cities and farms), sit back and sell the amulets for 10,000,000,000 gold apice

there, wizards of the coast, i did your job for you, leave THOSE SETTING WHERE YOU FOUND THEM

now if only I had orc pheromones and a buncha gnome sized intellect helms...

...an evil overlord to be's work is never done:smallannoyed:

Cruiser1
2008-02-09, 02:53 AM
Isn't it just a little bit sad that solving world hunger, drought, granting security, and providing protection from the elements for all people only seems to cause more problems? And that there will still be jerks who want to hoard the bounty all to themselves, even though they almost certainly need no more than a single amulet? Why can't we ever actually *have* peace on earth and good will towards men? :smallfrown:
That shows that the way to solve world problems isn't via what amounts to evolving technologically, but rather via evolving morally. If you want to change society, hand out Phylacteries of Faithfulness (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/wondrousItems.htm#phylacteryofFaithfulness) that can also Detect Evil and Detect Good at will. That way everyone, before doing anything, can privately know whether their deity approves of it. Everyone can also see who shouldn't be trusted, along with who should be looked up to and emulated. Like children when parents are watching, people are more likely to at least keep evil tendencies in check when everybody else is looking at them all the time.

Jayngfet
2008-02-09, 03:01 AM
That shows that the way to solve world problems isn't via what amounts to evolving technologically, but rather via evolving morally. If you want to change society, hand out Phylacteries of Faithfulness (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/magicItems/wondrousItems.htm#phylacteryofFaithfulness) that can also Detect Evil and Detect Good at will. That way everyone, before doing anything, can privately know whether their deity approves of it. Everyone can also see who shouldn't be trusted, along with who should be looked up to and emulated. Like children when parents are watching, people are more likely to at least keep evil tendencies in check when everybody else is looking at them all the time.

hmmm, removes free will, involves distributing magic items to pesants(ones that wind up giving them a flimsy excuse to go to war if one leader turns out to be neutral thus throwing the world into destitution as more leaders and generals arent LG, i like it

Tokiko Mima
2008-02-09, 03:17 AM
The only workable solution I can think of is to go around shapechanging people body and mind into Celestials. At least *they* seem to get along without killing, stealing, or forming mobs or armies to destroy each other.

Hey! That's an idea.. how about secretly putting that on the amulets, set to go off worldwide at some pre-determined time, so it happens simultaneously and hopefully relatively bloodlessly. Then you really could solve all of societies problems, which as it turns out are caused entirely by people. :smallamused:

TheSteelRat
2008-02-09, 03:50 AM
I think you've made a mistake in your pricing for your item.

You've got an item that casts "Create Food and Water" (lvl 3 Cleric Spell) and "Endure Elements" (lvl 1 Spell), without considering the Mage Armor Effect (+4 AC).

This is a Use-Activated Item (since your commoners don't have UMD) with 1 Charge per Day per spell, so the base cost is

2000 x Caster Level x Spell Level x Charges Per Day / 5
2000 x 5 x 3 x 1 / 5 = 6000 gp for Create Food & Water
2000 x 1 x 1 x 1 / 5 = 400 gp for Endure Elements x 1.5 (Added Feature) = 600 gp

So, for Unlimited Food, Water, and Endure Elements for a commoner a day, you've got 6400 gp. Not exactly what I'd call cheap. How are you figuring this exactly? "Create Food & Water" as stated above is actually a bit overpowered, since it provides enough for 15 people or 5 horses, but you can't have the Caster Level below the level required to actually cast the spell (or am I incorrect on this point?)

For Mage Armor once/day added on, that's another 600 gp too.

The only similar item I can think of is the Ring of Sustenance, which provides the food effect and reduces sleep to only 2 hours (a big benefit), but this has a price tag of 2500g. The Sustaining Spoon produces enough food for 5 people a day, though the flavor might make this undesirable, and costs 5400g

So, using these items as a guideline, reducing the Ring of Sustenance by half (for the sleep effect), that's 1250g, and for the spoon, it's 1080g/person. Lower than would be produced above with Food & Water, but higher than what you're looking at. This doesn't include Endure Elements OR Mage Armor. Could you post the methodology step-by-step as how you developed your price?

Edit: If you're using the following formula:
25 x Caster Level x Spell Level x Charges Per Day / 5
You should be aware that 25g is per charge in an expendable UMDed device, such that it only works once, and must be activated by the UMD skill with a check of 20+, which would be difficult for commoners as this skill is Cross-Class.

Nerd-o-rama
2008-02-09, 04:00 AM
They include a "be careful with this" line because they're so broken
They're so broken because they're not meant to be a final arbiter of appropriate pricing. Honestly, I wish that stupid section had never been printed, difficulties to homebrewing items be damned. All it does is encourage people to break the system in half.

Admiral Squish
2008-02-09, 11:03 AM
I'm so confused by this system...

SL 1st X CL 1 X 2000 +
SL 1st X CL 1 X 2000 +
Food for one person (spoon as base)
5000/(5/1)=1500

...Ish?

Grey Paladin
2008-02-09, 11:29 AM
Didn't we decide in the "post create food society" that one person's Utopia was another's Dystopia?

Mindrape :smallbiggrin:

Iku Rex
2008-02-09, 11:34 AM
Besides, even using the Bracers of Armor as a guide, a Wondrous Item of Mage Continuous Mage Armor still shouldn't cost exactly the same. If you're assuming the Bracers are properly priced (they're not), the defends-vs.-incporporeal aspect should make the Continuous Mage Armor item cost more.Mage armor has no special "defends-vs.-incorporeal" advantage over bracers of armor. They're both force effects.

Sebastian
2008-02-09, 12:49 PM
No, the always-active mage armor uses the continuous-spell-in-item rules, which for Mage Armor is 1 for spell level * 1 for caster level * 2000 for continuous * 1 for the duration constant.

See, this is the flaw in your reasoning. There are not "continuous-spell-in-item rules" there are "continuous-spell-in-item guidelines", an item that basically give a permanent AC bonus should be handled that way. but Mage Armor is not the real problem, essentially it is just a weightless scale mail, the other two spells would be more difficult to handle.

anyway it is not so cheap by any standard, by my calculations is
a user activated item with a 3rd level spells (create food) (3 (spell level) * 5 (Caster level) * 2000) usable once day (divided by 5) it is around 6000 gold pieces each one (just for the Create food effect). A peasant should work for something like an half dozen LIFES to put them all together.

mroozee
2008-02-09, 01:41 PM
Okay, my artificer came up with this. A magical amulet. Cheap, easy to produce. I haven't done the math yet, it can produce enough food (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/createFoodAndWater.htm) for one person, cast endure elements (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/endureElements.htm), and cast mage armor (http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/mageArmor.htm), all once/day.

Now, this guy is making these to basically solve all the problems of the world. Food, shelter, and protection are free. He's making them by the dozen, and handing them out in villages and towns, making sure everyone gets one.

The question is, what kind of things is this guy stirring up? What are the long-range consequences of such a thing?

I don't think this is a realistic problem for your world. How many can he possibly make? Even if he can somehow remove all financial costs, he can still only make one item per day (according to DMG 283).

So what is the population of your world? If he works for 100 years doing nothing but making one of these per day, he would only make 36,524 of them. This would be on the order of one ten-thousandth (0.01%) of the World Population at the Birth of Christ. After awhile, if they are popular, they would appear in the hands of only the wealthy and powerful. They would probably still be less numerous than "all other magic items combined" in your world... meaning the vast majority of people would never have seen one.

My guess is that your character is doing other stuff (like adventuring), that his items are not free, he is working on a much shorter time-frame than 100 years, and that the World Population is far larger.

One guy producing minor magic items will have almost no effect on large economies. A small village? Sure. A city? Very slight. Anything bigger won't feel it at all.

13_CBS
2008-02-09, 02:20 PM
Perapait of wisdom, helm of intellect and cloak of charisma all maxed for every leader in the world.

Congrats! You just made evil dictators that much more powerful.

Iku Rex
2008-02-09, 02:26 PM
Congrats! You just made evil dictators that much more powerful.

http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0058.html

The Glyphstone
2008-02-09, 02:49 PM
I don't think this is a realistic problem for your world. How many can he possibly make? Even if he can somehow remove all financial costs, he can still only make one item per day (according to DMG 283).

So what is the population of your world? If he works for 100 years doing nothing but making one of these per day, he would only make 36,524 of them. This would be on the order of one ten-thousandth (0.01%) of the World Population at the Birth of Christ. After awhile, if they are popular, they would appear in the hands of only the wealthy and powerful. They would probably still be less numerous than "all other magic items combined" in your world... meaning the vast majority of people would never have seen one.

My guess is that your character is doing other stuff (like adventuring), that his items are not free, he is working on a much shorter time-frame than 100 years, and that the World Population is far larger.

One guy producing minor magic items will have almost no effect on large economies. A small village? Sure. A city? Very slight. Anything bigger won't feel it at all.

He only needs to make a few of them, or find a friend with Planeshift, and go to a plane with an altered timeflow that moves much faster than the Prime timeflow - one of the places where one real-world second is a subjective year or somesuch. Granted, he'd get real old....but he's an artificier, he can just make a Phylactery and become a Lich, then churn out these amulets for a couple hundred years and return to the "normal" world after only a few/months years of real time.

Alternate timeflows are one of the classic theme elements of fantasy stories, but they sure do help to screw up intended limitations like time needed to make items...they can be altered/banned by DM's, but so can the magic item guidelines themselves.

13_CBS
2008-02-09, 03:32 PM
http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots0058.html

High wisdom =/= Good. Example: Fzoul Chembryl.

(And yes I know you're joking. :smalltongue: )

woc33
2008-02-09, 04:28 PM
I did some calculations and these are the results:
Create Food or Water is a 3rd level cleric spells which can sustain 3 medium humanoids per caster level for 24 hours. It's casting time is 10 minutes.

Creating a use activated item of Create Food or Water, according to the item creation guidelines would cost [spell level 3] x [caster level 5] x 2000 gp = 60,000 gp (Which is not 100% correct, since the guidelines state that spells with durations of 24 hours divide the cost in half, instead of multyplying by 2, but let's stay with 60k)

Now let's calculate how many people it could sustain in one day:
[people per casting (caster level 5) x (3 humanoids per casting)] x [the number of times 10 minutes fit into an hour 6] x [24 hour] = a bit over 2000 people.
That means that in order to sustain around 2,000 people for their entire life, you need 60,000 gp, devide that number by the number of people and you get less than 30 gp per person, for an item that could easily be created by a cleric in an average size community (a large town has a modifier of +3, add to that the 1d6 (average of 3.5) needed to decide the highest level npc cleric in the city and you get 6.5, which is 1.5 more than needed, which makes it 2/3 of the large towns in the world will have such a cleric. Keep in mind that a large town contains between 2000-5000 people, which means that the creation of two or three of this item would be enough).


Now That is Communism.

puppyavenger
2008-02-09, 06:18 PM
To solve this, the amulet would have to include some kind of at-will contraceptive spell. :smallbiggrin:

And even then, maybe only roughly half (a little more, statistically) would need contraceptive spells, and those would be the ones provided to women -- which would completely turn gender relations on its head, since women would solely control reproduction and could decide on a whim whether a particular act of sexual congress would have the potential to result in a child or not, while men would have absolutely no say in the matter. :smalltongue:

now just find an Artificer who is willing to mass produce at will condoms:smallsigh: