Wealth of Nations

[TheStranger]

This is inspired by the “Taxes” thread and mostly about D&D 3.P or similar systems with high-magic settings where mid to high level PCs typically have personal wealth (mostly in the form of magical gear) that’s orders of magnitude more than what the average person would see in their lifetime. Anyway, I’ve been thinking about what assets rulers, powerful nobles, or other elites in the setting have on hand.

Certainly any setting will have some number of nobles who are land-rich and cash-poor. They’ll have a modest castle and everything that goes with it, but not enormous piles of gold or magic items. I’m not talking about those guys. I’m talking about the kings, dukes, or merchant families who are implied by the setting fluff to have been accumulating wealth and power for generations. So, what does that wealth look like? And how does it compare to the level of wealth high-level PCs have available?

Option 1: It’s mostly an informed attribute. Elites have all the trappings of wealth, maybe a few magic items, and as much cash on hand as the plot requires. But if the PCs were to loot the ducal palace they’d find that it doesn’t add up to all that much compared to the gear they’re hauling around. High-level PCs, by any measure, are among the wealthiest people in the setting.

Option 2: They’re ridiculously wealthy, but most of that wealth is consists mostly of land, artwork, business investments, and other stuff that the average PC isn’t concerned with. The net worth of a truly wealthy individual is many times that of even a high-level PC, but it’s mostly “mundane” wealth.

Option 3: They’re ridiculously wealthy, and a lot of that wealth takes forms that PCs are familiar with (in addition to the mundane stuff). The ruling family has accumulated a Scrooge McDuck-style money bin full of cash and a large number of magical items (which may be on semi-permanent loan to loyal vassals). The royal palace has magical architecture from the Stronghold Builder’s Guidebook. The king can easily kit himself out like a high-level PC when he goes to war. The elites of the setting are many times wealthier than the PCs, and they spend it like a PC would.

Personally, I’ve always conceived of the average D&D setting as something like my second option. The PCs are “new money” wealthy, spending it all on flashy stuff. The setting’s elites are the “old money,” quietly sitting on enormous wealth in serious assets rather than personal gear. That mostly reflects the standard faux-medieval setting, I think.

That said, if war is something that happens semi-regularly in the setting, the duke would be foolish to ignore the obvious benefits of being fully decked out in magical gear. And if it’s readily available, why wouldn’t they keep some in the armory for the next campaign? So maybe the more I think about it the more I’m leaning towards something like the third option.

Anyway, what do other people think? I’m not really looking for a RAW answer, I’m just curious what makes sense to people.

[hamishspence]

That said, if war is something that happens semi-regularly in the setting, the duke would be foolish to ignore the obvious benefits of being fully decked out in magical gear. And if it’s readily available, why wouldn’t they keep some in the armory for the next campaign? So maybe the more I think about it the more I’m leaning towards something like the third option.

In a world where magic items can be upgraded bit by bit (Magic Item Compendium) I can believe that, rather than replacing the sword +1 that a noble family might have begun with, they upgraded it over the centuries.

So a noble family might have better magic loot than might be expected.

[MoiMagnus]

Option 4: The main wealth noble have, which dwarf land and magical objects, is relations and influence. In a world filled with exceptional individuals, there is no greater possession than the favour of the great Archmage, and the possibility to summon them to repay this favour. Magical contracts and debts, passed from generation to generation through blood, when not linked to an immortal being or sentient magical object (the king might only remain king as long as the magical sword recognises him as legitimate), are what shape power and allegiance.

The difference with Option 3 is that while the elite of Option 4 are immensely powerful, they are very restricted in the way they can use this power, which justify the use need for heroes, which are powerful peoples that are not yet entangled in the huge web of politics.

Also, in Option 3, nobles have huge piles of magical objects, which mean there is a LOT of magical object in the universe. While in Option 4, noble have access to many magical objects, but might not own them, just borrow them when needed, which mean those magical objects can still be rare.

I quite like Option 3 for magical kingdoms (the elf king is probably at this level of wealth), but for a mundane kingdom I prefer Option 2 or 4. Option 1 is fine when I don't want to think too much about worldbuilding.

[jjordan]

Wealth is mostly going to be reflected in goods/items rather than in coin. Images from the Middle Ages which depict looting show people stealing goblets/chalices, plate, and even ornate belts. Money is much, much more common in the modern world because it's not tied to physical reserves (i.e. the gold standard) or made of actual valuable materials. There simply wasn't all that much coinage out there and the coinage that was available was largely created to allow commerce to take place (where a lot of that commerce was trading in the coins themselves) and to enrich the realm. But they always had issues with the precious metals being more in demand for making objects.

I like MoiMagnus's fantasy world additions to this metric.

[Anonymouswizard]

The wealth the nobility have is generally invested in land and organisations, in order to generate more wealth. While they do have golden dinner plates and fabulous art, any noble who doesn't have the majority of their wealth invested in practical things is not going to stay wealthy.

Nobles also do have magic items, but the number and power varies based on connections. Nobles don't but items from adventurers, they recieve then as gifts from wizards and temples, as well as the occasional adventurer, in exchange for favours. They're also very well guarded, by the time you can reasonably get the Duke's +3 sword you probably have a +4 keen sword. They'll also loan these items if necessary, especially ones that can be used in the castle, but not the absolute best ones they have.

In general a noble house probably has a magic sword or three, a crystal ball, some other utility items, and a few more bits and pieces if they're high ranking. If they made a deal with a wizard they may get a new item every year or two, but at least some of those are traded for valuable services and commodities. Although your average Baron may just have a +1 sword and nothing else.

High level adventurers have more magical gear, but I'm practice when they retire they have to shift some of that to pay bills, so they probably end up roughly as wealthy as a count/earl.

[VoxRationis]

The answers to these questions depend on the answers to yet more questions about the nature of the setting. One way or the other, however, it would seem unlikely that the rich have a large amount of their money just sitting around in vaults; they'll have put it to some use somewhere (or at least spent it on luxuries).

How anomalous are the experiences of the PCs? If the setting is populated with loot-filled ruins which, for one reason or another, have been heretofore inaccessible to the broader population, then the PCs' acquisition of wealth might be akin to the first few European trans-continental voyages, providing them with unheard-of amounts of highly concentrated valuables. On the other hand, if the PCs are far from the first adventurers around, it might be expected that origins of many centers of power lie in previous generations of successful adventurers; the PCs' wealth will therefore be typical of the wealthy, and quite possibly a mere fraction of it.

How available are the PCs' tools to authorities in the world? Player characters very quickly amass the sorts of tools which can allow them to challenge or supplant existing power structures. If these tools are available more broadly, it stands to reason that authorities in the setting will have them; either existing authorities will have acquired some using their power, or the possessors of these tools will have become the new authorities. Therefore, these authorities will have invested more of their wealth into magical items, griffon mounts, et cetera and less into sawmills and signal towers.* On the other hand, there are settings where those tools aren't reliably available to authorities: magic items aren't common enough for acquisition by sale, barter, or robbery; fantastic creatures are rare and/or impractical to train; training in the absence of active adventuring doesn't provide level increase, and so forth. If this is the case, the wealthy will then not have those tools and will have invested their wealth into other things.

Spoiler: *Aside

Show

This leads into a concept I've been thinking of for a while, which is that most D&D settings need to be more medieval than they are because they exist in a universe where the prowess of a smaller number of individuals tends to have outsized effects. In D&D (and many other games), sufficient investment in equipment and training can make a single combatant 20 times as effective as a lesser individual in an open field, to say nothing of more specific situations where the difference is even more significant because the circumstances reward concentration of force more than total cost-efficacy. Powerful individuals also are less taxing logistically than large armies or other institutions, freeing up resources and allowing more individuals to be doing productive labor. In addition, the threats facing civilization tend to be sporadic, mobile, and highly concentrated, difficult to engage with mass levies. All this rewards investment in individuals and the relationships those individuals have with each other more than it does investment in institutions, which makes all those modern state structures in a lot of D&D settings all the stranger.

And that's just for fighter-types and +X magic weapons. When you take into account magic users, who attain qualitative increases in capability with greater personal power, and various non-stat-increase magical items, that just skews it even more effectively in the direction of personal power structures. A mid- to high-level wizard who either is the ruler or assists the ruler can monitor and communicate over absurdly long distances, reinforce a structure faster than it can be torn down by enemies, keep a spare heir in a jar on standby so as to avoid both vacant successions and sibling rivalries, and quickly evacuate the royal family hundreds of miles away in case of attack.

It may therefore be surmised that in a D&D-type setting where personal power scales upward as it does and where the means to achieve that power can be found by authorities that power structures will tend to favor hierarchies of powerful individuals overseeing fiefs rather than bureaucratic institutions.

[Tvtyrant]

Wealth is going to be in permanent magic items, because you accrue their benefits forever. A decanter of endless water instantly solves the dirty water problem for a wealthy household forever, an eternal torch is a permanent source of lighting, etc. I would expect those kinds of items to be the foundation of wealth; a Duke is going to have hundreds of years of slowly acquired low level magic items.

In a 3.5 setting this becomes a massive labor saving device on par with the industrial revolution: Every eternal wand of Remove Disease cures 730 people a year. Buying one is extremely expensive, but once you have them they become a net source of wealth for the community even if you don't charge for it.

In less magic item centered games it would be less drastic, but even in 5E a cleansing stone would be tremendous for a community.

[BRC]

I feel like a lot of it will come down to the inherent biases of the game mechanics (This is a game built for Adventurers, not Land Management), and what sort of magic items are available for purchase, as well as how reliable magic items can be created.

Consider a +1 Flaming Sword. That's a very powerful, expensive magic item (8000 GP by 3.5 rules), but it only really helps out if you are actively out fighting things.

Your average noble, even in a monster-filled D&D Style setting, is going to spend a lot more time on administration and land management than killing monsters.

So if you happen to possess a +1 Flaming Longsword. You could keep it around in your castle, pulling it out whenever you go to war, or you could sell it for 8000 GP, which is a lot of money in exchange for a sword that isn't that useful in your day-to-day activities. Sure, it's great if you need to fight, but how often do you need to do that, and how often is the scale such that one extra +1 flaming longsword on the battlefield is worth it, compared to the small army you could hire with 8000 GP.



The second thing to ask is how reliable/customizable are magic items? 3.5 kind of operated under the assumption of the "Magic Item Mart", where PC's could convert Gold to specific (Or even custom) Magic items pretty easily, but that's not a guarantee. it isn't necessarily the case that a noble could convert 8000 GP to a specific, helpful magic item, and a lot of the magic items in the DMG are more useful for adventurers than nobles.

If By-order Magic Item creation isn't a thing in your setting, what might be more common, and a reason for nobles to keep piles of cash on hand, is hiring spellcasters. While there are some magic items (Such as a decanter of endless water, lyre of construction, or folding boat) that could see regular use, I feel like hiring a spellcaster to cast the specific spells you need might be a common practice, assuming you can't just turn money into magic items.



Another thing that I could see happening is a certain "Mercantile" class of people who, by skill or fortune, happen to posses one of the more generally useful magic items, and can charge elaborate fees for their use.

Somebody who inherited some Boots of Teleportation from an adventuring ancestor could probably make a killing teleporting people around, cutting weeks if not months off travel time.

Perhaps noble families who acquire such magic items use them as a revenue source, renting them out to other nobles (Probably under heavy guard). Rather than each noble family having a wand of remove disease, the King, or a single noble house might control such an item, loaning it out to other families, potentially under the guise of charity, but with the expectation of a hefty "Gift" in return.

[Mechalich]

This is inspired by the “Taxes” thread and mostly about D&D 3.P or similar systems with high-magic settings where mid to high level PCs typically have personal wealth (mostly in the form of magical gear) that’s orders of magnitude more than what the average person would see in their lifetime. Anyway, I’ve been thinking about what assets rulers, powerful nobles, or other elites in the setting have on hand.

Okay, so the essential problem here is that answering this question depends on finding a high-magic setting of this type that actually possesses sufficiently robust world-building where this question is even meaningful.

As far as I know, no such setting actually exists.

[Quertus]

So, the problem is, this conversation starts off in the middle. Let's back up a few paces.

For example, the Forgotten Realms wasn't 3e for long. Before that, it was 2e, which was very different in many ways - ways that affect the answer to this question.

But ignoring that… D&D is generally and historically about post-apocalyptic worlds. There haven't been generations upon generations to build up - most magic items are those randomly found from the *last* civilization that built up.

So, if you're playing D&D? *Most* countries should be… "poorly optimized", and send the Determinator into convolutions.

But, if you've got a (homebrew) world that had historically had 3e kingdoms for millennia? Then the nobles probably have numerous powerful artifacts, keyed to their bloodlines. That's… likely no small part of house they stay in power.

[Nifft]

This is inspired by the “Taxes” thread and mostly about D&D 3.P or similar systems with high-magic settings where mid to high level PCs typically have personal wealth (mostly in the form of magical gear) that’s orders of magnitude more than what the average person would see in their lifetime. Anyway, I’ve been thinking about what assets rulers, powerful nobles, or other elites in the setting have on hand.

Certainly any setting will have some number of nobles who are land-rich and cash-poor. They’ll have a modest castle and everything that goes with it, but not enormous piles of gold or magic items. I’m not talking about those guys. I’m talking about the kings, dukes, or merchant families who are implied by the setting fluff to have been accumulating wealth and power for generations. So, what does that wealth look like? And how does it compare to the level of wealth high-level PCs have available?

Why does your setting have nobles at all? Answer that, and you'll know what sort of wealth or gear they'd need to accomplish and maintain their roles.

As an example, in one game I had the setting basically feudal -- except it wasn't human feudal, it was supernatural feudal.

The royalty of the starter "good" kingdom was half-Celestial. They ruled by literal divine blood, and this was important because that blood gave them sufficient standing among the supernatural entities (a Fey robber-baron, a Dragons, a Hag-queen, and so on) which claimed neighboring lands.

Nobles below the royalty needed enough gear to compete with the vassals of the neighboring powers. A particular Duke might need be able to fight -- indirectly through a retainer or directly in person -- on par with an Ogre-Mage, for example. That means hiring and equipping an appropriately leveled retainer, or adventuring in person to level up, which is what many of the noble non-heirs did.

Since the ruling class needed to be able to defend against concerted attacks by the exact same things which the PCs would go out and stab, they ended up looking a lot like PCs with Leadership. This dovetailed into a nice story about what happens to PCs who choose retirement at any point in a campaign -- yeah, there's a place for them, and probably some people quite like them in that place already.

Consider a +1 Flaming Sword. That's a very powerful, expensive magic item (8000 GP by 3.5 rules), but it only really helps out if you are actively out fighting things.

- It slices.
- It dices.
- It sears the steak.
- One-stop kebab pole, no firepit needed.

Clearly all the old starter-weapon flaming rapiers have been re-purposed as food cart tools.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by jjordan
There simply wasn't all that much coinage out there and the coinage that was available was largely created to allow commerce to take place (where a lot of that commerce was trading in the coins themselves) and to enrich the realm. But they always had issues with the precious metals being more in demand for making objects.

Not sure where you’re getting this from. Coins were widespread in the Roman Republic and Empire, since that’s how most soldiers were paid, and coins continued to be produced throughout former Roman territories, by kings of every stripe as well as local mints.

And coins flowed into Europe from well beyond, such as the silver dirhams minted in Baghdad, which found their way to Vikings at Staraya Ladoga and thence to Scandinavia, which is how silver coins from Baghdad ended up in Iceland.

Originally Posted by jjordan
Images from the Middle Ages which depict looting show people stealing goblets/chalices, plate, and even ornate belts.

I have an image on my wall of four women in flight suits in front of a B-17, but that doesn’t mean women were flying B-17s into combat.

If these images you mention show looting of golden chalices, then the images may have been commissioned by the owners of those chalices to make a specific point, rather than being reflective of general circumstances. An image of a single activity doesn’t necessarily mean that was the whole story.

[Destro2119]

Frankly, under the highly adventure focused economy of 3.X, I think the book Orconomics* where there is a whole economy based around adventuring is the best summary of the situation.

The problem is, this whole wealth issue inevitably spirals off into how the "average" DnD world that has been around for "thousands of years" simply can't support itself logically under the game mechanics. Logically, the world should have attained at least Eberron/1880s level of advancements becasue the whole "post apocalyptic" thing is really only a few hundred years at most.

Again, it is a misnomer that the entirety of medieval times in Europe is just one huge brainfart. It is an even bigger misnomer to think that Europe's "Dark Ages" were the norm for the whole world.

*As it demonstrates, you don't even need crazy tech innovation if you don't want it. You just need to take the "adventuring economy/magic mart" base assumptions of 3.X into account; ie cities based on investment in adventuring groups, etc.

[GloatingSwine]

Not sure where you’re getting this from. Coins were widespread in the Roman Republic and Empire, since that’s how most soldiers were paid, and coins continued to be produced throughout former Roman territories, by kings of every stripe as well as local mints.

Depends when you're talking about. The Republic went about 400-500 years without any widely recognised coinage and they mostly started using it because the cool kids (Greeks) were doing it and they didn't really get standardised or catch on until later.

[Segev]

There is narrative and world-validating value to "the King can kit himself like a high-level adventurer when he goes to war:" Maybe this is because he is high-level, and possibly a retired adventurer.

Remember that the old-school notion was that high-level (read: 6+) PCs would be building strongholds, thieves' guilds, monasteries, churches, or personal wizard's towers with surrounding lands/cities that they influenced or directly controlled. This comes not just from the wargaming history of the game, but from the classic story trope of the wandering knight (the adventurer) marrying the princess and becoming the king. The "standard hero reward."

In this light, having the king be the previous-generation Hero Who Married the Princess and gained "half the kingdom" (maybe all of it, now, if his father-in-law passed on or retired) would mean being a high-level adventurer makes sense.

Why doesn't he go beat up the latest dragon? Well, he's busy running the kingdom. Also, there are, like, a half-dozen dragons running around the periphery of his kingdom, and while he could take any one of them down, what about the other five? Best to let up-and-coming heroic adventurers do it. Maybe he has six kids he needs to marry off, too, and making sure a powerful adventurer is each one's suitor (by testing them on the dragons) is just good parenting, looking out for his kids' futures. (Of course, if one or more of his kids IS an adventurer, so much the better!)

[BRC]

The issue there is one of Succession, if every Monarch is a high level adventurer, where do heirs come from?

I could see it being a Thing that Monarchs reaching the end of their reign either training and equipping their children, before sending them out to go Adventuring in hopes of becoming storied/high level enough to take over the reins of the Kingdom.

Either that, or similar to how a lot of Roman Emperors worked. It was very common however for the Emperor to either marry one of his daughters off to a well respected General, or simply Adopt the general directly to be the heir.

High-level adventurers unassociated with a kingdom might spend a lot of time dodging marriage proposals and/or Adoptions from monarchs looking to secure a good Heir.

[King of Nowhere]

Option 5: all of the above

it mostly depends on the specific setting, but i expect all those options to coexhist on some level. Some nobles are administrators, their only magic is for mundane purposes. Some nobles are adventurers; i expect they will either mostly stay adventuring/traning, and have someone trusty to deal with administration, or they will administrate, and have someone trusty whom they loaned their magic gear.
The most powerful nobles will have at least some protection against adventurers; not even much against assassination, but more against being dominated or replaced by a clone or other similar stuff that's potentially much more damaging than a status condition that can be removed by a 5th level spell. Most mansions will have at least a "panic room" that can withstand high level assault for a while, and perhaps a scroll of teleport inside in case they need to run from an adventurer's raid.
type 4, wealth in connection, is my favourite for the most powerful individuals or organization, for the power dynamics it creates: sure, those organizations are much more powerful than any adventuring group. but their "power" grows slowly and is expensive to use. so they are reluctant to use it, to ask favors, because it will weaken them. They can defeat any adventuring group that goes into direct conflict with them, but they try to avoid conflict, because it would leave them greatly weakened. It creates an environment where the players are encouraged to engage with the world and its politics, while they are discouraged from going murderhobo.

Okay, so the essential problem here is that answering this question depends on finding a high-magic setting of this type that actually possesses sufficiently robust world-building where this question is even meaningful.

As far as I know, no such setting actually exists.

hey, i take offence with that. i spent a lot of effort in my homebrew world to answer exactly those kind of questions, and i can't be the only crazy dude to have done so

[Telok]

There's also the old AD&D assumption that ass kicking equals authority, thus all great leaders are therefor higher level and blinged out with gear. The magic item cycle in that setup is that when something nasty shows up the leaders literally lead from the front and if they fail it's in epic style where all/most of their stuff is lost. The stuff ends up unidentified (AD&D item identification wasn't the simple, easy, auto-success like later editions) and in a ruin, monster lair, or just falls down a rabbit hole somewhere until more adventurers recover it again.

The higher success rates of noble offspring in adventuring is down to easier potion/healing access, a truely secure home base, and better info networks that let them grind "safer" threats closer to home. That also explains why the PCs, low class hobos that they are, are out on the wild frontiers looking at high risk & high reward threats. The PCs will end up higher level faster, but the nobility back in civilized lands is still recycling magic loot and gaining xp to be the authorities.

Of course this doesn't work with post-AD&D xp rates, power scales, and easy magic item creation.

[Segev]

The issue there is one of Succession, if every Monarch is a high level adventurer, where do heirs come from?

I could see it being a Thing that Monarchs reaching the end of their reign either training and equipping their children, before sending them out to go Adventuring in hopes of becoming storied/high level enough to take over the reins of the Kingdom.

Either that, or similar to how a lot of Roman Emperors worked. It was very common however for the Emperor to either marry one of his daughters off to a well respected General, or simply Adopt the general directly to be the heir.

High-level adventurers unassociated with a kingdom might spend a lot of time dodging marriage proposals and/or Adoptions from monarchs looking to secure a good Heir.

Yeah, I imagine would-be blood heirs seriously consider being adventurers, or look to date adventurers and woo them, with the intent to be the "man behind the man" when it comes to being the bureaucratic and political maven of the power couple.

[Zombimode]

The second thing to ask is how reliable/customizable are magic items? 3.5 kind of operated under the assumption of the "Magic Item Mart", where PC's could convert Gold to specific (Or even custom) Magic items pretty easily, but that's not a guarantee. it isn't necessarily the case that a noble could convert 8000 GP to a specific, helpful magic item, and a lot of the magic items in the DMG are more useful for adventurers than nobles.

If By-order Magic Item creation isn't a thing in your setting, what might be more common, and a reason for nobles to keep piles of cash on hand, is hiring spellcasters. While there are some magic items (Such as a decanter of endless water, lyre of construction, or folding boat) that could see regular use, I feel like hiring a spellcaster to cast the specific spells you need might be a common practice, assuming you can't just turn money into magic items.

I never had the impression that the "Magic Marts" were intended to be an actual thing. Instead I see it as a metagame construct to empower players to have an influence over the gear of their characters.

That is to say: on the meta level the player makes the choice to convert some of their characters treasure to an item of their choice, and then the narrative bends arround that and makes it possible that the character can aquire the item by whatever means and that this will cost them for whatever reason the listed price in treasure. Only if you generalize the players choice to be the characters choice actual in-world "marts" and subsequently and magic item economy will appear.

Now you might say "but what about the Forgotten Realms? It canocically has actual magic marts in form of Thayan Enclaves!"
Well, not really.

First, compared to the number of large cities in the FR, there are actually very, very few Enclaves. There are less then 2 dozen enclaves, which is less then the number of large cities in the North&Savage Frontier alone.
Having a Thayan Enclave is a Special Feature of a city, not the norm. The "Magic Mart" on the other hand is only and directly tied to the cities GP limit.
Thus, Thayan Enclaves can't be the realization of the general Magic Mart.

Second, if you read what the Enclaves actualy provide in services and goods it is a very long shot from the "Crack up the Magic Item Compendium, everything you find in there is available" that is usualy the norm for the generalized Magic Mart.


Eberron on the other tried to integrate both magic items and the availability and economy arround them more into the setting.
Two design decision worked very well towards that goal: first enabling magic item creation for a dedicated NPC class and second generally lowering the settings power level* so that a Magic Mart doesn't have to put ridicoulsly expensive items on the shelf.

But in my view it ultimately fails in grounding magic items into the setting. It fails by not tieing the settings MacGuffin ressource strongly enough to magic items and magic item creation.
My euphemism for Dragon Shard really demonstrates the problem: Dragon Shards are just a MacGuffin because their usefulness is not really backed up by mechanics.
It is simply not enough to list a couple of shard items and then making the nebulous and very weak statement that you can if you want use Dragon Shards for creating other magic items.
But you don't have to and there is no benefit of doing so, which really raises the question: why even bother?

For all my love of the setting, I would have much prefered if Eberron took the firm stance and simply stated that for Eberron "magic item" actually means "Dragon Shard enhanced item", with rules on the implications for magic item creation.

* well, actually Eberron cuts on both ends: it limits the number of high level (read: double digit) NPCs with levels north of 14 being almost unheard of. On the other hand it also makes 2-4 HD npcs the norm instead of the execption. Published adventures have long followed this (by my completely non-scientific gut-feeling the average for non-champion NPCs is about level 3 in published adventures), but rule and setting books tried to sell the idea that almost everyone is level 1. Not so in Eberron.

[jjordan]

Not sure where you’re getting this from. Coins were widespread in the Roman Republic and Empire, since that’s how most soldiers were paid, and coins continued to be produced throughout former Roman territories, by kings of every stripe as well as local mints.

And coins flowed into Europe from well beyond, such as the silver dirhams minted in Baghdad, which found their way to Vikings at Staraya Ladoga and thence to Scandinavia, which is how silver coins from Baghdad ended up in Iceland.

But not in the post-Roman Dark Ages and Medieval timeframes D&D tends to be set in. A lot of silver flowed out of Europe and into the coffers of the Mamluk Sultanate and various Mongol states. And the foreign currencies that were used as currency tended to be used in the areas bordering those foreign states, so the South of Europe.

I have an image on my wall of four women in flight suits in front of a B-17, but that doesn’t mean women were flying B-17s into combat.

If these images you mention show looting of golden chalices, then the images may have been commissioned by the owners of those chalices to make a specific point, rather than being reflective of general circumstances. An image of a single activity doesn’t necessarily mean that was the whole story.

No, it doesn't. But taken in conjunction with accounts of extortion (where coins were produced) and looting (where coin was not) from a roughly 300 year timespan it's fairly trustworthy. And I should have said "Portable wealth".

[icefractal]

I never had the impression that the "Magic Marts" were intended to be an actual thing. Instead I see it as a metagame construct to empower players to have an influence over the gear of their characters.

I think buying magic items is an actual thing, but it doesn't imply a convenience store type of deal where they're all just sitting there on shelves.

You're an adventurer, you want to get Boots of Flying. You talk to a broker, who has a catalog of what-all magic items they have access to. Meaning that they know the seller and it's still available, not that they personally possess it, usually. They answer questions, make sure you're actually able to afford it and not trying to pay with illusory gold, and then go off to arrange it. The broker buys the item at somewhat less than "market price", sells it to you for market price, and the difference is their pay.

Once you're talking to people who can hook you up with something like a Cubic Gate, they have access to teleportation and world-spanning networks of connections. So it's not that every major city has a Cubic Gate for sale, it's that at least one person in the world does, and big-time item brokers know about that person.

As a minor house-rule, I consider the 50% selling price to be for a "rush sale" where the broker is buying it on spec. If you have a way for the broker to contact you and are willing to wait a few days/weeks/months for a buyer to be found, you can get 75%. And if you do the legwork of finding an end-user buyer (and vetting them) yourself, you can get 100%. Usually people still go for the first option since they have more valuable things to do with their time, but the latter two can be a useful downtime activity.

[Destro2119]

I think buying magic items is an actual thing, but it doesn't imply a convenience store type of deal where they're all just sitting there on shelves.

You're an adventurer, you want to get Boots of Flying. You talk to a broker, who has a catalog of what-all magic items they have access to. Meaning that they know the seller and it's still available, not that they personally possess it, usually. They answer questions, make sure you're actually able to afford it and not trying to pay with illusory gold, and then go off to arrange it. The broker buys the item at somewhat less than "market price", sells it to you for market price, and the difference is their pay.

Once you're talking to people who can hook you up with something like a Cubic Gate, they have access to teleportation and world-spanning networks of connections. So it's not that every major city has a Cubic Gate for sale, it's that at least one person in the world does, and big-time item brokers know about that person.

As a minor house-rule, I consider the 50% selling price to be for a "rush sale" where the broker is buying it on spec. If you have a way for the broker to contact you and are willing to wait a few days/weeks/months for a buyer to be found, you can get 75%. And if you do the legwork of finding an end-user buyer (and vetting them) yourself, you can get 100%. Usually people still go for the first option since they have more valuable things to do with their time, but the latter two can be a useful downtime activity.

That may be true*, but the gp limit represents things on hand in a single area, not things like teleports et al which would be additional price.

In any case, the fact that the city's base limit allows as many as it does just begs the question of why there isn't a push towards civic improvements on even the basic scale. Or why all those items seem to be for adventurers only and not available for public/state use.

*the "magic item" issue is even more egregious of a problem in 3.5, where you have to pay xp (your personal spirit essence, basically) as well. In PF/3.X, you no longer have to pay xp and it's HEAVILY implied that magic items are no more difficult to make than technological items (ie the lack of xp means that the manufacturing process is more "natural" than "supernatural" anymore), but the availability is still the same due to contrived reasons/legacy bogging it down.

[TheStranger]

That may be true*, but the gp limit represents things on hand in a single area, not things like teleports et al which would be additional price.

In any case, the fact that the city's base limit allows as many as it does just begs the question of why there isn't a push towards civic improvements on even the basic scale. Or why all those items seem to be for adventurers only and not available for public/state use.

*the "magic item" issue is even more egregious of a problem in 3.5, where you have to pay xp (your personal spirit essence, basically) as well. In PF/3.X, you no longer have to pay xp and it's HEAVILY implied that magic items are no more difficult to make than technological items (ie the lack of xp means that the manufacturing process is more "natural" than "supernatural" anymore), but the availability is still the same due to contrived reasons/legacy bogging it down.

The thing that gets me, and part of what inspired this thread, is that unless the PCs AND their opponents AND the places they explore are all unique in the setting (i.e., the setting exists solely for the benefit of the PCs, like a CRPG), there must be a lot of magic items floating around. They're bought and sold, as evidenced by the fact that the PCs are able to buy and sell them. Whether that's a "magic mart," a commissioned broker, or something else, there almost has to be some kind of trade taking place.

Which, yeah, does beg the question of why magic isn't used regularly for civic improvements and other purposes that are useful to the population at large instead of the minority that kills things for a living. Even if you say that combat magic is more advanced than practical magic (military technology is generally pretty cutting-edge), you'd still think some of it would be used for the obvious civilian applications (as military technology generally is).

Here's a thought experiment - what would happen if every spell and item that has a semi-obvious use that goes beyond the tech level of a pseudo-medieval setting just didn't exist? So something like Teleport is out, but most combat magic is probably fine. Is there enough left that the game still works? Does that actually solve anything, or would we just be here complaining that it makes no sense for mages not to have developed relatively simple but world-changing magic when combat magic is both powerful and widely available?

[Mechalich]

Here's a thought experiment - what would happen if every spell and item that has a semi-obvious use that goes beyond the tech level of a pseudo-medieval setting just didn't exist? So something like Teleport is out, but most combat magic is probably fine. Is there enough left that the game still works? Does that actually solve anything, or would we just be here complaining that it makes no sense for mages not to have developed relatively simple but world-changing magic when combat magic is both powerful and widely available?

Large swathes of explicitly combat oriented magic items have obvious civilian applications, including basic essentials like stat-increasing items - which make life better for everyone pretty much no matter what you do. Ex. in the video game version of Pathfinder Kingmaker, the crown you get for becoming a king gives +6 to all mental stats. If such an item is available it is an obligate need for rulers just to keep pace with their rivals. Even fairly basic combat-oriented items like flaming swords have non-combat applications.

Generally items - or any permanent effect - are far more destabilizing to settings than temporary ones like spellcasting. At its most basic this happens becomes temporary effects are inherently limited in at least one component of scale, time, by nature. Consequently banning all magic items is one way to make high-magic settings significantly more viable.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by jjordan
But not in the post-Roman Dark Ages and Medieval timeframes D&D tends to be set in.

In seventh-century Francia there were hundreds of towns that each had their own mint, part of a “great proliferation of mints, especially in the Merovingian and Visigothic kingdoms,” as described here. That sounds like a lot of coins being produced in the post-Roman Dark Ages.

Also, the silver dirhams were flowing into Northern Europe through Staraya Ladoga by 800 or a little earlier, which is right in that same timeframe.

[Stattick]

Now I want to run a game where circumstances throw the early level PCs together with a king and his advisors. The PCs are refugees or low ranking conscripts. The king has just been routed from the battlefield by The Dark Lord's forces, and they're hiding, trying to figure out their next move. That's when the wraiths or shadows find the king and his men, and slaughter them, but leave the bodies. The PCs, probably looking to evacuate the area, realize that the gold crown, the king's chain of office, and so forth, would be worth a lot of money. You know how PCs are, they loot everything. And a lot of that gear is magical. Moreover, I'd use Mercer's Vestiges rules, so those magic items would grow with the PCs. Planned culmination of the campaign would be the PCs turning the tide against The Dark Lord and defeating him, taking back their nation. End it like a Shakespearian comedy - marriages for everyone, as the PCs get married into the surviving noble and royal families to preserve power and mollify the surviving nobles to make them less likely to attempt to usurp the PCs.

[TheStranger]

Large swathes of explicitly combat oriented magic items have obvious civilian applications, including basic essentials like stat-increasing items - which make life better for everyone pretty much no matter what you do. Ex. in the video game version of Pathfinder Kingmaker, the crown you get for becoming a king gives +6 to all mental stats. If such an item is available it is an obligate need for rulers just to keep pace with their rivals. Even fairly basic combat-oriented items like flaming swords have non-combat applications.

Generally items - or any permanent effect - are far more destabilizing to settings than temporary ones like spellcasting. At its most basic this happens becomes temporary effects are inherently limited in at least one component of scale, time, by nature. Consequently banning all magic items is one way to make high-magic settings significantly more viable.

Items and permanent effects being more problematic was my thought as well. I don’t agree that just because an item has civilian applications it’s a problem, though. To use your example, even if every king has boosted stats, it doesn’t make the “medieval Europe with magic” setting fall apart. Kings are just moderately smarter than they would be otherwise. But IMO, a few individuals having greater capability doesn’t move the needle all that much on society at large.

To me, the problematic magic from a worldbuilding perspective is the stuff that should logically be in widespread use to raise the standard of living, replace large amounts of labor, or otherwise raise the effective tech level well beyond medieval. Especially if it’s low-level magic that doesn’t require a 17-level wizard to set up.

I’ll bite: what, other than looking cool and killing things, can a flaming sword do that you couldn’t do cheaper with a mundane fire source?

[King of Nowhere]

this has to be handled with worldbuilding, if you don't want the world to run on too much handwavium.

you can find ways to nerf those things that have civilian use. wall of iron/salt/whatever are no more permanent but last one day/level. create food lacks all kinds of nutrients so that it will sustain you for a while, but cannot replace real food. magic items listed as permanent will still eventually break with repeated use, so they can't be accumulated by society.
Personally, i have a general policy of "if a spell would render a worldbuilding point moot, then assume either the spell does not exhist, or it does not work that way"

the other way is to incorporate magic in society. figure out ways that the magic could be used, and implement them, and actually show their effect. nobody would just try to assassinate the king, because the priest can just fix him for 5000 gp in diamonds. well-to-do people would never take a long trip when they could teleport. faraway nations that would have been mostly oblivious of each other in a medieval fantasy keep strong ties because there is instant communication.
i try to think on that kind of stuff on a setting. i either incorporate the various magic into society, or i make it nonfunctional.

there is a long tradition of introducing flashy magic for fighting/adventures, without considering how that would affect the world otherwise. perhaps in the past it was assumed that nobody would care enough about a story to start asking questions. or perhaps it was assumed that readers would be morons. either way, there's no reason to keep the tradition running. one always has to give some thought on the effect of magic on a plot

[gijoemike]

Adventurers have the largest amount of liquid assets. Kings/Queens/other noble families have invested that cold hard cash into permanent boons like magic items and investments. They aren't rich because they have 1 billion gold pieces hidden in the castle tower. They are rich because they gave the seed money to what is now the merchant guild. They take a profit as a business partner. Nobles have many steady sources of income with a good amount on hand.

They own hundreds of acres of land. They allow people to farm this land and they take only a portion of the crop/livestock. They own magical wards, safe houses, sources of clean water and a wand that can end famine. They form alliances with other powerful family and intermarry. The kind doesn't need a +5 Flaming Keen longsword. He only needs a magical status symbol that his grandfather also used. It can be a +1 Flaming longsword and accomplish the same effect.

Adventurers on the other hand have tens of thousands of gold pieces at the ready and will use that all on a single sword. There would be many times an adventurer would have more liquid assets on there physical person than the entire noble family in the region. They rarely have personal land, alliances, power, or servants.