Wish Economy

[DSMatticus]

The thing is that owning ships is a low level gig, and the price has to match.

No, because that makes low-level characters ridiculously fucking wealthy. And that, in turn, makes high-level characters off the charts by three miles. A +5 sword may have the sum value of entire metropolises. Plural. Which is batshit.

Your solution is to, "make mundane things cheaper compared to magic things," but that just makes magic things ridiculously more valuable than their bonuses warrant. And it still doesn't fix the issue: they can convert those things into some sort of magical trinket.

The wish economy fixes this.
1) You can't buy anything magic over 15k with gold, and
2) You get anything magic below 15k for free.

The net result is that players don't care about turning castles into potions anymore. They have as many potions as they could ever use, for free. So they can throw that money at whatever mundane crap they had in mind. And that mundane crap can be fun. It can be roleplaying related. It can be character building.

If you aren't willing to break the "gold -> upgrade your sword, more gold -> upgrade your sword some more, more more gold -> upgrade your sword some more more" cycle, then you will never fix the problem. Not by making it 'harder' to upgrade your sword, not by anything. You have to break that cycle. The wish economy does. Your proposed solutions don't. They just make it 'less painful' to drop some money out of the cycle. But why the fuck would you want it to be painful at all? Why is it a reasonable design goal to punish people, however minutely, for wanting to buy flavorful things?

[Fuchs]

Your proposed solutions don't. They just make it 'less painful' to drop some money out of the cycle. But why the fuck would you want it to be painful at all? Why is it a reasonable design goal to punish people, however minutely, for wanting to buy flavorful things?

I doubt it is reasonable, but some people like to spend character resources on "pure roleplay stuff" because sacrificing character power for roleplay reasons makes them feel as if they are better roleplayers - and sometimes gives them anexcuse for having a weaker character. In short, some people like it if it's a pain to spend money on flavorful stuff since they think it means only the chosen few "good roleplayers" will ever do that, not the "Powergaming munchkins".

[Lokathor]

I doubt it is reasonable, but some people like to spend character resources on "pure roleplay stuff" because sacrificing character power for roleplay reasons makes them feel as if they are better roleplayers - and sometimes gives them an excuse for having a weaker character. In short, some people like it if it's a pain to spend money on flavorful stuff since they think it means only the chosen few "good roleplayers" will ever do that, not the "Powergaming munchkins".

Those people are stupid and I hate them.

[DSMatticus]

Ditto @ Lokathor. That's not the way to go. Fuck those people.

[RadiantPhoenix]

I know this would be a lot more work than the wish economy, but...

The first option here seems like a good solution to this problem; if having a castle gives you a benefit similar in magnitude to that of an equivalent price suit of magic armor, or if staying at a good inn gives you a morale bonus or something, then the conflict between character power and not-being-a-hobo goes away.

[Lago PARANOIA]

Replaced with the new problem of characters who don't frickin' want to own a stronghold or farming commune having to do so anyway because they need or want the bonuses.

It's lame to have to choose between magical gear and a castle, but it's just as lame to force an isolationist druid to buy stock in an airship workshop or a wandering-the-earth style fighter to manage a martial arts dojo.

[Parthenon]

Not sure where to ask this but since this thread is about the Wish economy I might as well ask it here: is the same game test supposed to be balanced around a level 10 PC being on the Wish economy and having all the magic items they want, or is the test supposed to be based on the wealth by level guidelines?

[RadiantPhoenix]

It's lame to have to choose between magical gear and a castle, but it's just as lame to force an isolationist druid to buy stock in an airship workshop or a wandering-the-earth style fighter to manage a martial arts dojo.

As long as the "value" is approximately a function of the utility, nobody's forced to go one way or the other except by what sort of treasure they find.

[Prak]

Offering Thor 'Wish Economy Virgin Souls' for Mjolnir is exactly the same as offering Thor 'Big Piles of Gold' for Mjolnir. Even if 'Virgin Souls' are more valuable to him than gold, he's not going to give away that fucking hammer, so no economy really exists above a certain power level, no amount of wealth will allow you to buy yourself in, whether you measure your monies in shiny metals or exotic magic substances. How fucking hard is that to grasp?!

This is what I was saying before. The wish economy is a misnomer because it isn't an economy at all. There is no need for currency and trades only happen very rarely.

Planar currency wouldn't even exist at all. You may have deals where people trade magic items for combat services, but magic items are going to be the only thing people actually care about. And unfortunately there's really no need to trade up much for those, aside from saving XP in crafting because you can wish for infinite magical item crafting components.

Look at it this way, if the King of Xaricous decides he needs something the King of Daxen has, but not vice versa, there's no trade happening. But if all the people in that tier of "gold falls out of the folds of my skin and I don't give a shit" can agree that gold plated yachts are pretty awesome and are always willing to trade those around, then gold plated yachts become currency.

(stuff about confederate dollars and such)

Here's where your misunderstanding the wish economy. Wish economy currencies aren't random pieces of metal that some people are calling money. They are small, light, discrete things that most people who deal with them consider inherently valuable. Generally they're souls, whether ripped from a living creature, or the compressed soul of a vaguely virtuous person. There is a market where all four currencies are accepted, Sigil, and there is a race of plane traveling merchants and bankers who probably deal in all four, though I can't recall the name off the top of my head. It's the gold plated yacht thing. You're not going up the Sultan of the City of Brass and saying "Hey, I'll give you forty billion Daxelbucks for that sword." Your going up and saying "I'd like to buy that sword, would the soul of a great red wyrm/ten kilos of hope/some raw chaos be enough?"

Does something like that exist in the rules? And if so, does it fall within the wishing range?

Thought Bottles, Complete Arcane

[tzor]

Those people are stupid and I hate them.

Why? Because I think anyone who doesn't think this way needs to look in a damn fucking mirror. If you can honestly think that you are the best optimized person you can be, you're lying to yourself.

Granted, people who "roleplay" incompitent twits are indeed what they roleplay, but on the other hand, the only real thing your character needs to be is damn good enough. Absolute perfection is never required and anyone who wastes any resource between the levels of "damn good enough" and absolute perfect is playing an actual real fun to play character.

[fectin]

Those people are stupid and I hate them.

Why? Because I think anyone who doesn't think this way needs to look in a damn fucking mirror. If you can honestly think that you are the best optimized person you can be, you're lying to yourself.

Granted, people who "roleplay" incompitent twits are indeed what they roleplay, but on the other hand, the only real thing your character needs to be is damn good enough. Absolute perfection is never required and anyone who wastes any resource between the levels of "damn good enough" and absolute perfect is playing an actual real fun to play character.

because the point was:

some people like to [actively pessimize, because it] makes them feel as if they are better roleplayers - and sometimes gives them an excuse for having a weaker character.

...which is a stupid way of thinking, and irritating to everyone else.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

I feel I'm optimized the best I can be. I just didn't read the PHB before chargen and made some stupid decisions while leveling, thus I now perform at well below my ECL.

[Prak]

I feel I'm optimized the best I can be. I just didn't read the PHB before chargen and made some stupid decisions while leveling, thus I now perform at well below my ECL.

Same here, though I think we were both denied appropriate WBL...

[RadiantPhoenix]

According to a conversion chart that was once on the wizard's website, the 900gp WBL for a 2nd level character is equivalent to $18000, the 2700 gp for a 3rd level character is $54000, although you're almost certainly not that high level, and you're definitely less than level 4 so that doesn't matter.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

I have a 2000 dodge neon, a computer that's 10 years old, and an old-model Xbox. I'm pretty sure that doesn't even add up to the $18,000 I'm supposed to have at second level. I think I'm going to petition the DM into increasing the drop rate slightly.

[RadiantPhoenix]

Do you have the documentation proving yourself to be 2nd level?
Because a 1st level expert might have as little as (30gp) $600 at 1st level.

[K]

I feel I'm optimized the best I can be. I just didn't read the PHB before chargen and made some stupid decisions while leveling, thus I now perform at well below my ECL.

Same here, though I think we were both denied appropriate WBL...

I've spent my WBL on consumables..... just waiting for the DM to increase drops to compensate.

[Swordslinger]

No, because that makes low-level characters ridiculously fucking wealthy. And that, in turn, makes high-level characters off the charts by three miles. A +5 sword may have the sum value of entire metropolises. Plural. Which is batshit.

Wealthy compared to who? The first thing you've got to realize is that a lot of concepts like pirate captain don't even survive to mid levels. Sailing a ship isn't something you're going to be doing once you hit level 9 and beyond. So you better be able to afford that ship at relatively low levels if you want to do piracy. And no, it's not a solution to say people can afford ships once they're in the wish economy, because the wish economy doesn't have pirates. There's no point in robbing ships filled with gold if you can shit the stuff out for free.

Ships need to be much cheaper than they are now.

Your solution is to, "make mundane things cheaper compared to magic things," but that just makes magic things ridiculously more valuable than their bonuses warrant. And it still doesn't fix the issue: they can convert those things into some sort of magical trinket.

If the conversion rate isn't worth it, it doens't matter. The fact that you can convert mundane goods into pocket change just isn't a big deal. I'm really not sure why you're making a big deal about that.

Oh my god, you broke the WBL because you have 6246 gp instead of 6000. I can't even say I care.

The wish economy fixes this.
1) You can't buy anything magic over 15k with gold, and
2) You get anything magic below 15k for free.

The net result is that players don't care about turning castles into potions anymore. They have as many potions as they could ever use, for free. So they can throw that money at whatever mundane crap they had in mind. And that mundane crap can be fun. It can be roleplaying related. It can be character building.

The net result is that players don't care period.

The problem is that now there's no actual incentive to do any of that? Why own a ship if you can teleport? Why own a business if you don't care about gold? Why have a castle if it just means you enemies know where to go to kill you?

The big failure of the Wish Economy is that it gives you no good reason to interact with it. The problem with limitless gold is that it becomes valueless gold. Anything I can buy I could just wish for in less time than it'd take me to go to market and shop for it and the sim city I've made has no value because everything is free.

Got a throne of gold? Nobody gives a shit, it's not expensive, it's free. Might as well be made of cheap wood.

If you aren't willing to break the "gold -> upgrade your sword, more gold -> upgrade your sword some more, more more gold -> upgrade your sword some more more" cycle, then you will never fix the problem. Not by making it 'harder' to upgrade your sword, not by anything. You have to break that cycle. The wish economy does.

It breaks the cycle by fucking the swordsman in the ass, because now he can't buy a magic item anymore. Fighters need to buy magic items because they can't make them. This is D&D, magic items aren't optional. You need them to compete.

And if you go to planar currency, I really don't even see why you can't break the planar currency economy just as easily. If you need souls, you can very well harvest those. If astral diamonds come from mines, you can have astral diamond mines. Planar currency has to come from somewhere too.

[RadiantPhoenix]

It breaks the cycle by fucking the swordsman in the ass, because now he can't buy a magic item anymore. Fighters need to buy magic items because they can't make them. This is D&D, magic items aren't optional. You need them to compete.

This is why the tome fighter can, in fact, make his own magic swords and shit.

[Count Arioch the 28th]

Do you have the documentation proving yourself to be 2nd level?
Because a 1st level expert might have as little as (30gp) $600 at 1st level.

http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.p ... tid=305748

[RadiantPhoenix]

Huh, I've never had someone present the paperwork before; I have no clue what to do with this, you should contact your local Mister or Missus Cavern.

[RobbyPants]

Do you have the documentation proving yourself to be 2nd level?
Because a 1st level expert might have as little as (30gp) $600 at 1st level.

http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.p ... tid=305748

That's awesome!

[Midnight_v]

Do you have the documentation proving yourself to be 2nd level?
Because a 1st level expert might have as little as (30gp) $600 at 1st level.

http://www.myth-weavers.com/sheetview.p ... tid=305748

I had one of these Irl once. Damned if yours isn't fucking more realistic somehow. Bravo.

[wotmaniac]

Okay, so I've been giving this whole Wish Economy idea some more thought lately .....

When I first read about the concept, as well as its design goals and objectives, I was fairly impressed -- I thought I had finally stumbled upon something that worked (because simply messing with prices or units of currency doesn't really get rid of problems; it only shifts and magnifies problems).
Initially, the only question that came to mind was "where does your high-level treasure come from? what does a campaign using this look like?". The 2 obvious answers that immediately came to mind was "seeded treasure" and "adventure for it"; and I just left it at that and moved on -- it seemed simple enough for me.

But then I started to try and plan a campaign that uses this concept; at which point I discovered that I did indeed have some fundamental issues with this.
It has occurred to me that games using Wish Economy would necessarily end-up having one (or more) of three things happening:
1) high level treasure simply doesn't exist
-- this has multiple problems, and shouldn't even be a consideration unless invasive measures are taken to heavily manipulate the basic assumptions of the game system
2) seed everything via treasure.
-- again, this comes with its own set of problems; not the least of which involves verisimilitude and immersion (on multiple levels)
3) your campaign ends up devolving in to a series of scavenger hunts that serve no purpose other than power accumulation for its own sake. I actually take more issue with this one than I do the first 2 combined -- to the point that I'm actually offended.
-- sure, there's the response of "tie the adventures for this accumulation to the plot". To which I say: you can only have so much plot-driven wealth/power accumulation; after a certain point, it becomes monotonous and contrived. Sure, if your scavenger hunt is for the Great MacGuffin, then by all means, go for it. However, if you've got to go scouring the planes every time Thog wants to upgrade his sword or Swizzleblitz needs to recharge his staff, then that becomes monotonous and boring real quick -- sorry, there are only so many plot hooks you can tie to that before it just becomes a pile of contrived hoop-jumping bullshit.


Well, so that I'm just not all criticism, I have come to the table with some basic ideas:
Okay, as I see it, there are 2 fundamental problems to be dealt with:
1) free-flow of on-tap uber-powerful magic items wrecking a game
2) Greyhawking (which is just a means to get to the former)

solutions:
1) adjust how magic items are made. first and foremost, you've got to do away with cost reducers (this is more than just the explicit ones -- this also includes fiddle-fucking with spell and caster levels). beyond that, you could maybe raise the xp for self-creation (which would probably necessitate the lowering the price of xp by a proportionate amount ... but that's probably its own discussion).
I also don't have a real problem with flea market or pawn shop type set-up for buying/selling magic items ... but whatever. you just gotta regulate that shit.
speaking of regulating that shit ... you have to decide at the start of the game the wealth/power level that you're prepared to deal with and stick to it.

2) this is the big one -- and nobody is going to like my answer to it.
If your players start completely dismantling the obsidian palace and scraping the gold leaf off of otherwise-mundane objects, then you have to step in and tell them to knock that shit off. It's as simple as telling them "hey, how about you stop gaming the system like a douche-bag, and actually just play the game". As a matter of fact, this is probably the type of shit you should cover before you even start the game, as a simple matter of setting expectations (i.e., the whole gaming-the-system -vs- playing-the-game). by setting that core standard/expectation, it won't be any surprise when you have to call them down (and since the expectation has already been set, there's less chance for hurt feelings).
And it's bullshit to say "since the system doesn't explicitly exclude it, then it is encouraging it". That's the equivalent of saying that since a state hasn't explicitly outlawed bestiality, then it is encouraging it (btw, a full half of the states don't have said laws). There is way too much narrative in the literature about the basic assumptions to deny that the concept of Greyhawking is looked down upon. The philosophy of the designers and play-testers has been well documented; and it is blatantly obvious that these were people that simply wanted to just play the game (vs. gaming the system) -- as such, it is this mentality/philosophy that is built in to the fundamental assumptions of the game. And, as always, anytime you disregard base assumptions, your game is going to have problems.
And at that point, it's a philosophical discussion about whether the flaw lies in the system or whether is lies in the douche-bag system-gamers.

Thoughts?

[Kaelik]

We want people to do the thing you are banning in 2, because it's a viable aspect of characters that isn't disruptive unless you have a shitty economy.

As for actual solutions:

1) Comprehensive crafting rules that don't suck, to go with the economy rules that don't suck.