Wish Economy

[Kaelik]

Gate was going to be rewritten along with the planar binding line of spells. Sadly, the things that aren't broken about them are incomprehensible.

Yeah, that. Do that.

[wotmaniac]

Which is the exact same thing as the earlier example of a mud-farmer finding an artifact on the ground.

One of us must be missing something. I'm talking about characters taking their hard-earned gold for which they adventured the old-fashioned way, and instead of buying a wand of whatever, they buy the gem, etc., and commission some shit.

Does the Oberoni Fallacy apply to incomplete house-rules?

again, we seem to be talking past each other. There's actually 2 things here:
1) this one is just a matter of general principle: once you've hacked the system and implemented your own shit, that's fine. But what's the point of going through all that trouble of "fixing" a core mechanic, if you still have to continually fix the "fix"? If you say "we're using *this* set of home-brew rules", then that's fine -- I'm perfectly fine with accepting that as the established rules for a given game. But don't sit there and tell me "OMG, these rules are sooooo much better than the core rules" when there are clearly gaping wholes that create a whole new set of issues that need to be dealt with as you go. If you have to houserule the home-brew, then that is still tantamount to Rule 0, because the patch has become the new baseline rule set for that given group.
Furthermore, just because a rule is admittedly incomplete doesn't mean that gaping holes are okay -- it just demonstrates that the admission was correct, and nothing more. Also, if it has been explicitly declared that there will be no significant effort to complete the said incomplete rules, then what you in effect have is a finished product. And saying that "elements x, y, and z were going to be included, but ...." doesn't really count because those aren't comprehensive patches -- they're just nebulous, amorphous concepts. (btw, that is in no way a rebuking of Frank and K; just simply rebutting an argument)
So yes, saying "Wish Economy is just fine, because all you need to do for that problem is *x*" is, at least in essence, falling victim to Oberoni.


2) I keep repeatedly seeing people insist that the answer to dealing with low-level characters that somehow get on the Wish Economy ride before they are tall enough is something along the lines of "powerful entity suddenly appears and gives them the smack-down". Really? Whenever this kind of deus ex machina is claimed for a fix for the actual core rules, people get their panties all kinds of bunched up. Why is Tome material any different? Just because you happen to generally like Tome material more than the core rules doesn't make it not hypocrisy.
What's good for the goose is good for the gander -- a particular standard of adjudication (whether it be on-the-fly Rule 0, deus ex machina, or some other form of DM fiat) is either proper or it is not. If it is a poor way to deal with the Core rules, then it's a poor way to deal with a home-brew patch. Conversely, if it is appropriate for dealing with patch issues (thus validating the patch), then it's appropriate for Core issues (again, thus validating the core). Handwaving is handwaving; and it doesn't matter what set of rules you do it with. But yet I see hypocrisy and a complete disconnect on this issue all the time.
Yes, I understand and appreciate the fact that home-brew material is generally a work in progress, and is usually under continuous revision as new situations are encountered. But I'll be goddamned if I'm gonna sit here and let anybody get away with pissing on my leg while they tell me that it's raining.

Personally, I am a fan of homebrewing -- but only so long as it has purpose and meets its objectives without being counterproductive. However, few things drive me up a wall more than arbitrary rule changes that don't actually fix anything, or that create more problems than they fix (or are otherwise exercises in futility). And it only compounds my delirium when "patches" go out of their way to shoehorn in a whole new subsystem despite there already being perfectly good ways to achieve the same objective by simply utilizing existing systems.

BTW, that whole Oberoni quip was more directed at K than anybody else. But I'm fairly sure I know what you were getting at with that; so there it is.

It only takes 6 seconds to cast Wish too. If your argument is that people who aren't in the wish economy can get into the wish economy by convincing someone in the Wish economy who is twice their level at least to give them Wish economy level materials, then your argument is stupid.

The scroll hole does still exist in the sense that technically, you can buy a scroll of gate, which you then use to Wish... everything. It's not a hole with the unwish side of the wish economy, but it is a slight problem that level 4 characters already have infinite wishable gold and materials.

Wishing for a Scroll of Gate is actually wishing for more wishes, in a way that is allowed, and I hate it.

Except that I'm not even talking about using wishes or gate shenanigans.
But then, that opens up a whole other series of rabbit holes .....
What all spells (for the purpose of making scrolls) go on the "wish-only economy", and what ones go on the "free access" economy? Is it just high level stuff? Is it just cross-planar stuff? Is it just stuff that binds an entity? Why not all soul-manipulating spells?
All of those are completely arbitrary, in that any of those categories would either contain a plethora of spells that make no sense to be restricted or would miss a bunch of spells that probably should be restricted.
Let's look at some of these:
- high level spells: we can get a whole wand of Cure Serious wounds, but not so much as a single scroll of the Mass version?
- cross-planar: I guess that means that blink is right out.
- soul-manipulating spells? so much for trying to get your buddy raised.
- binding an entity? well, depending on how far you want to take it, this one might actually be in order. However, this can easily be taken to logical ends that would produce some pretty farcical results.

Now, I do realize that I'm probably begging the question with this, and I'm probably taking things to a ridiculous extreme; but there is a point to it:
The whole thing is completely arbitrary; and in order to properly implement it requires the development of a whole bunch of other stuff, to the point of forcing a complete paradigm shift in the fundamental base assumptions of the entire game. At that point, you might as well just scrap the whole game and play something else.

The balancing point is that you have to kill a powerful monster to get a soul gem big enough for a Wish economy item. That's one thing that people are handwaving that really can't be handwaved.

except that it's not that hard -- the said "powerful monster"really only needs to have 16 HD (right?). Where's this handwaving that you're talking about? If there's any handwaving going on, it's in the it's in the deus ex machina argument of "powerful entity comes down and straightens shit out".
Has "powerful creature whose soul would be worthy of planar currency status" ever been properly defined? As far as I know, it really hasn't; which leaves me with interpreting it for myself, within the confines of the skeleton I've been given -- which tells me that 16+ HD would be the start point (since the necessary gem, while mundane to start with, is too valuable to wish for), and one would naturally have to assume that said creature would need to at least be sentient. But beyond that?

Again, this misunderstanding comes from people not understanding the soul gem concept. Again.

what am I missing? illuminate me, please.
(I'm being serious here -- I really am trying to understand)
*note: the arguments that I'm posting are actually a condensed culmination of the discussions that I've had with my group (i.e., I pitched the idea for use in our games, and this is what resulted).


Speaking of deus ex machina .....
Okay, as I understand things, part of the design goal of the Wish Economy was to be able to encourage the buying of castles and shit without fucking them out of personal power.
What would be wrong with just throwing enough gold at the characters to let them do both? Hear me out:
1) since everybody seems okay with contriving some deus ex machina for keeping planar currency out of the hands of low level characters anyway; then one could simply use these same entities to do the same thing to everybody who starts to exceed expected/desirable limits on major magic items. You don't even have to change your reasoning behind why they're only allowed to have "x" amount of powerful magic. The same powerful crafters are gonna be just as finicky; and if all else fails, you just throw some inevitables at them to properly explain the delicate balance of the multiverse and to give them a proper smackdown if they need it.
2) once they realize that the multiverse does indeed take special interest in the arrangement and distribution of major magic items (and are thus discouraged from accumulating too much), they'll have no choice but to spend their gold on good ol' fashioned castles and shit.
I mean, if you're gonna do that anyway in order to enforce the integrity of the wish economy, then why not save some work and added complexity, and just implement things on a game play level instead of rewriting the whole book? (you would obviously have to have some sort of discussion with your players beforehand; but this is no different that the conversation required in order to implement wish economy).

[darkmaster]

One of us must be missing something. I'm talking about characters taking their hard-earned gold for which they adventured the old-fashioned way, and instead of buying a wand of whatever, they buy the gem, etc., and commission some shit.

Well, you actually can't buy that sort of gem with money. Regular diamonds, and the like, aren't planer currency, so you can't commission stuff with them. You have to have magic gems and those can't be purchased or wished for.

[Kaelik]

Short Summary of the problems with your only example loophole:

1) You must first obtain an item worth more than 15,000gp, that is therefore unwishable, and no one who had it would give it to you for gold.

2) Then you have to get an 8th level scroll, or get a 15th level caster to cast a spell for you, no 15th level caster is going to give a shit about a level 9 or lower character, which is the lower than wish economy level, and they don't sell scrolls of that either, because it requires a post wish economy caster to make unless you:

3) I guess you use wish rules + Planar Binding to get a trap soul spell, but so what, you already have access to wish at this point, so you are just a 11th level character, who is now spending their time and resources to get Post Wish goods, just like every other 11th level character is also doing.

4) Now you have an unbuyable unwishable gem that you adventured for, and you have trap the soul cast on it. Now you have to go kill a CR 11+ enemy in order to get more post wish economy goods.

....

5) Profit?

Okay, great, so you first killed some monsters that provide you with post wish goods, then you spent some spell slots to enchant the gem, then you...killed a monster that provides you with post wish goods, and also got it's soul.

So you...killed a bunch of post wish economy monsters, in order to get post wish economy goods. Just like every other Post Wish economy character.

So I guess m question is... Are you an idiot? How is that a loophole? That's the fucking point. You have to kill post wish enemies to get post wish goods.

[jadagul]

Kaelik: I think you're overcomplicating it. I see no evidence that the gem needs to be that expensive before you bind the soul into it. So your (1) is silly. And given the scroll rules it seems like a scroll of trap the soul or whatever should be purchasable with gold, so you can do that in the purely gold economy. Technically.

But you're right about the core thing: the value of a soul is 100 times the square of the CR, and that means that until you're killing a CR 13 creature your soul gem doesn't get you into the post-wish economy. Because I can just wish up a soul gem of CR 12 or lower, since it's worth less than 15,000. And once you're killing CR 13 creatures, you probably are supposed to be getting post-wish items anyway.

[K]

But you're right about the core thing: the value of a soul is 100 times the square of the CR, and that means that until you're killing a CR 13 creature your soul gem doesn't get you into the post-wish economy. Because I can just wish up a soul gem of CR 12 or lower, since it's worth less than 15,000. And once you're killing CR 13 creatures, you probably are supposed to be getting post-wish items anyway.

Exactly. Reading is fundamental.

HD is not a measure of monster power at all which is why soul gem potency is based on CR.

[wotmaniac]

Sorry to resuscitate this thing; but I have one simple question that I need to pose to anyone intimately familiar with the Wish Economy ....

Can anyone see any potential problems with raising the cap from 15k to 25k?

that is all -- thank you.

[Red_Rob]

The reason for the Wish Economy is that there are several ways using various spells and powers in the PHB to get effectively infinite mundane money. If you allow players to convert this money into character power then you have players running around with +8 Vorpal Swords and Robes of the Archmagi at level 9. This is not good.

But more than this, the fact that each gold piece and masterwork short sword you find can be saved up until you have the 200,000gp needed for a +10 sword means that players are rewarded for Greyhawking every last valuable item from everywhere they go with increased character power. This turns the high level game from an epic journey by world shattering badasses to something like Katamari Damacy, where your only goal is to hoover up as much random stuff as possible until you get the next power boost.

So, by increasing the Wish Economy break point you are effectively saying that characters will get more of a benefit by figuring ways to break the economy, and that they will have to collect swords from bad guy henchmen and rifle through random enemies pockets for change for longer.

[wotmaniac]

Thanks for the reply, Red, Rob.

I get the concept overall.

Your assessment is interesting though -- my question was based on whether or not there might be some game-breaker that I was missing. Your response is not only "no" but that it just increases the time they spend rifle through pockets and pocketing silverware (which, at that level, is an issue I can handle just fine).

You've definitely put my mind at ease. Thanks.

[Red_Rob]

Well I don't use the standard magic item rules, instead using the rules (such as they are) from Book of Gears along with the item classifications found here. So I'm not the best one to ask about gamebreaking items.

Raising the value of an item that can't be wished for to 25,000gp does mean that if your players figure out how to get lottery money they instead of all getting +2 stat items and capes of the mountebank, they instead get +4 stat items, rings of invisibility and luckstones. I guess whether that's a problem depends on the level they get the goodies.

[wotmaniac]

I guess whether that's a problem depends on the level they get the goodies.

I do a pretty good job of keeping a lid on things up to about level 10 -- that's when things generally start to get dicey. That's the time where they really start coming off of the WBL and getting all stupid with shit. That's also the level where parties should start to be getting the wagon trains full of treasure.

[Starmaker]

So, by increasing the Wish Economy break point you are effectively saying that characters will get more of a benefit by figuring ways to break the economy, and that they will have to collect swords from bad guy henchmen and rifle through random enemies pockets for change for longer.

I'm not following. If you increase the breakpoint from 15k to 25k, the tween items that were only purchasable by souls (and thus highly desirable) are now mass-produced by Wish. So that's less of an incentive to loot enemies.

For example, you have just broken into the Wish economy and loot a belt of giant strength +4 (16,000 gp). If the cap is 15k, you put it on or sell it for souls. If the cap is 25k, you leave it where it is, because everyone and their mom already has one.

[wotmaniac]

the point he was making is this:
the higher you set the cap, the more useful the gold economy is, which will cause you stay in it for longer. This increases the validity of looting bodies and scraping gold-leaf off of wall sconces. Increasing the cap makes diamond chandeliers that much more valuable as a character-power commodity.

[travis50]

the wish economy, aspirations become currency, traded in the marketplace of dreams. Each wish carries the weight of possibility, shaping desires into tangible outcomes. It thrives on the currency of hope, where imagination knows no bounds. In this economy, every wish is a transaction, and every dreamer a stakeholder.