Topic: What is wrong with Rolemaster?

[Arioch]

I would like to see some Official Rules for Touch attacks.
MDC

Rules for Touch Attacks are given in RMC Creatures & Treasures (page 26, just checked  )

On the economy thing: imo having a coherent, functional economic system is more important than having a "realistic" one (and with realistic here I mean, a system that follows a real-world economic system).
RM system isn't bad, it works quite fine until you come to the magic items/herbs part, which are clearly based on a completely different scale. Really, they make absolutely no sense compared to all the other things.
And no, imo the "prices are there only as a reference" and "magical items aren't to be sold" arguments are not very strong.
If prices are there only as a comparison, that should be another reason for them to make sense! A price based on a totally different scale than everything else is not really helpful if you're trying to compare the value of two items.
And if magic items aren't to be sold, then just say so in the book! That would be much better than giving weird prices (that make people think that the items are actually purchasable).

[Dax]

Of course you are right Arioch.

Items should be purchased and sold.

My argument was for artifacts because "they" started talking about magical items (items ?)
that cost more than there are gold pieces (or Spanish Reals) around.

And you remind me that I even reduce costs for magical service:
If a craftsman gets a copper piece a day (depending on live spending cost),
a magician gets up to a silver for one day (or more depending on live spending cost or less depending on "supply and demand" and bargaining).

If I remember correct the characters get a 3. lvl spell cast for 5 cp.

[yammahoper]

RM base economy has always been excellent.  A poor person has an income of 2.5gp in year (calculated buy two cheap meals and lodging cost per day and assuming no savings).  This creates a good baseline (I think of it as the poverty line). GM Law and Castles and Ruins develop a middle ages type gaming economy further.  ...and a Ten Foot Pole is also very useful for those seeking an expanded economy with more available goods.

Where it all falls apart is the cost of magic, be it items or spell casting fees.  Herbs in particular are rediculous.  If I don''t outright change the cost, I start by reducing magic items to a silver base in cost and herbs to a Bp base )don't get me started on the broken time for production rules in Treasure Companion...perfect for an elven society, crap for us lesser mortals).  This brings herbs in particular into line with the economy and makes them expensive but affordable to the middle class, who generate 3-10x the base line income.

The trade tables in GM Law are very well designed and offer a great balance factor for all GM's who want to shave the coins PC's recieve.  They are also useful for generating the occassional adventure!  The section covers finding a buyer (IF they can) and the reality of selling; watch that pawn shop show to see how a merchant should behave.  Bargaining is a set of skills in our modern western society that have mostly been regulated to garage sales since we scan or swipe a card to buy almost everything today.

[Arioch]

Of course you are right Arioch.

Items should be purchased and sold.

My argument was for artifacts because "they" started talking about magical items (items ?)
that cost more than there are gold pieces (or Spanish Reals) around.

Well, even in our world artifacts and holy relics were (and are) bought and sold 
But that's another story: I would totally understand if the book said the magical items and herbs are never sold. In fact, that would perfectly make sense and would give a very special feeling to that kind of items.
Putting a ridicously high price tag on them (especially for herbs, that are right there on ChaLaw, together with all the rest of the equipment) will just cause trouble and means that the GM will have to revise all the prices by himself.

Where it all falls apart is the cost of magic, be it items or spell casting fees.  Herbs in particular are rediculous.  If I don''t outright change the cost, I start by reducing magic items to a silver base in cost and herbs to a Bp base )

Do you mean that you divide their price by one hundred (as 1gp = 100bp), or that you just use the price on the list, reading it as bronze pieces instead of the listed coin?
Ok, that's a quite convoluted sentence. I mean, say we have and herb that cost 35sp. Your price for it would be 3.5bp (35sp = 350bp /100= 3,5bp) or just 35bp?

[Old Man]

RM base economy has always been excellent.  A poor person has an income of 2.5gp in year (calculated buy two cheap meals and lodging cost per day and assuming no savings).  This creates a good baseline (I think of it as the poverty line). GM Law and Castles and Ruins develop a middle ages type gaming economy further.  ...and a Ten Foot Pole is also very useful for those seeking an expanded economy with more available goods.

Where it all falls apart is the cost of magic, be it items or spell casting fees.  Herbs in particular are rediculous.  If I don''t outright change the cost, I start by reducing magic items to a silver base in cost and herbs to a Bp base )don't get me started on the broken time for production rules in Treasure Companion...perfect for an elven society, crap for us lesser mortals).  This brings herbs in particular into line with the economy and makes them expensive but affordable to the middle class, who generate 3-10x the base line income.

The trade tables in GM Law are very well designed and offer a great balance factor for all GM's who want to shave the coins PC's recieve.  They are also useful for generating the occassional adventure!  The section covers finding a buyer (IF they can) and the reality of selling; watch that pawn shop show to see how a merchant should behave.  Bargaining is a set of skills in our modern western society that have mostly been regulated to garage sales since we scan or swipe a card to buy almost everything today.

+1. I have similar thoughts. The base normal item costs look good (I compared them to the numerous costs in Columbia Games' Harn in the past). I really like the resale table. But the item/herb costs with respect to income/build time/time to find, always have felt a bit "off." I'd like to see some thought in the new Character/Campaign Law to syncing the economics of magics (Alchemist time/salary/markups ... ) to the world.

Regards,
Old Man

[intothatdarkness]

+1. I have similar thoughts. The base normal item costs look good (I compared them to the numerous costs in Columbia Games' Harn in the past). I really like the resale table. But the item/herb costs with respect to income/build time/time to find, always have felt a bit "off." I'd like to see some thought in the new Character/Campaign Law to syncing the economics of magics (Alchemist time/salary/markups ... ) to the world.

Regards,
Old Man

I'd rather see guidelines, given the way some folks can latch onto rules. So much of how cheap/expensive magic items are relates directly to the magical prevalence/power level of the setting, along with tech levels and resource availability. I adjusted most costs to suit my world, which was mid-level in terms of magic stuff (nowhere near as common as, say AErth) and fairly advanced when it came to metals and mining. Herbs had a sliding cost based on where they came from and rarity. Some of the RM2 stuff was pretty useful for this, but it always felt like something that was tacked on to the basic rules.

[jdale]

The cost of magic items and other economics of magic really depend on how magical the setting is. In a rare magic setting, forget hiring mages, you are questing to even find them, and magic items are super rare as well. In a common magic setting with lots of high level casters, it makes sense to have rates to hire a caster and magic items should be common enough that they are feasible to buy. Not sure a single set of guidelines can cover both possibilities, it might be better to discuss them in the context of setting and give two or three options.

Modern games have started to look more and more like online games in terms of the economy of magic. The design goal is that low-level characters get low-level items, medium-level characters get medium-level items, and high-level characters get high-level items. To enforce this you set logarithmic prices. A first level item is 1 gold, second level is 10 gold, third level is 100, etc. A low-level character can't even imagine enough treasure to buy a 1,000,000 gold eighth level item. An eighth level character has a fortune, but they still can't afford the 100,000,000 gold tenth level item.

This works for its purpose -- tons of magic items available, you're still locked to the capabilities you are supposed to have at your level. But it's totally unrealistic and stupidly broken if you try to use it as an actual economic system. For a tabletop game, it's better to handle item availability and not break the economic system by handling it with prices, in my opinion.

Edit: I see that first paragraph was singing to the choir.

[GrumpyOldFart]

RM base economy has always been excellent.  A poor person has an income of 2.5gp in year (calculated buy two cheap meals and lodging cost per day and assuming no savings).  This creates a good baseline (I think of it as the poverty line).

So if a brand new, just finished his apprenticeship spellcaster thinks he should be able to make at least 3 GP per year...

3 GP = 30 SP
30/12 = 2.5 SP/month

Call it a bronze piece a day. And no matter how low he puts his prices, people aren't going to want him to cast something every day, there's going to be dead time. Nonetheless, if he charged 1 lousy copper piece per spell point used, he'd probably acquire net wealth faster than the merchants do, because the peasantry can afford his services and he has no inventory/overhead. There aren't many wealthy, but there are a LOT of peasants. If he lives in a city where he can get a big enough customer base, he can do medium well like that.

And that's a brand new caster, too. Get to a mid level guy who's charging, say, sixpence per spell point used for his services, he's getting fairly well up the wealth scale. One lightning bolt goes for what was a week's wages back when he was a rookie.

[pastaav]

It is obvious that magic level of the setting matter to the price of magic. On the other hand I think it is fairly safe to ignore low magic worlds that has so few magic items so that there are non existent trade. Actual price of the magic item imply that trade of magic items happen at the listed price.

One possible metric is coins in circulation. The magic item can be purchased with the equivalent of a percentage of the coins in circulation. In practice a purchase will not involve actual coins, but lots of exchange of other forms of wealth.

Another useful metric is to say the magic item can be purchased with the equivalent of x years of income for typical middleclass. 

Yet another useful metric is to look at how much labour the magic item saves. If the same result can be achieved by manual labour then you get a benchmark to compare prices against.

My point is pretty much that everything works out well if you use some kind of logic connected to the setting when you set the price. What the actual logic is will not be terrible important provided that you explain it since the GMs will adjust the prices for their setting. There is massive value if price structure is coherent so you can work with it, but you don't need it to work for every world. Make it work in economics described in Gamemaster Law and you are good to go. 

[Kristen Mork]

These are good recommendations for determining the sale price of the item, but they don't help establish the production cost for the item.  For example, what materials do you need to make a magic sword?  Per Treasure Companion, you need 64 gp worth of generic "supplies."  Personally, I reduce this by a factor of 10, but perhaps magic items just need the base item and lots of power points.

[Nortti]

I have never had a setting with magic-shops. I have never had a setting where spellcasters cast spells for copper, bronze, silver or gold. If someone of them would try the other magic-users would probably kill him before he can humiliate himself any more.

In my campaigns ability to do magic has always been a gift, sometimes rare, sometimes ultra-rare. Magic-users may serve lords, kings, organizations but they always do it as long as they get to have a chance to acquire more knowledge, magic-items, protection from the witch-hunters etc.   

I like to plan strong magic-items and use them in my adventures. Players will not easily give them away, let alone sell them for something so trivial as money.

But, in a rulebook there must of course be some kind of prices for magic-items and spellcasting. GMs will always have different ways to treat magic in their games.

 

[markc]

These are good recommendations for determining the sale price of the item, but they don't help establish the production cost for the item.  For example, what materials do you need to make a magic sword?  Per Treasure Companion, you need 64 gp worth of generic "supplies."  Personally, I reduce this by a factor of 10, but perhaps magic items just need the base item and lots of power points.

  I did something close to this but the max bonus you could get was based on the material used and its workmanship quality. The numbers were not based on simple +5, +10, +15,... but were smaller in nature so the total might be a +5 or +10 when you were all done*. I also introduced Magic 0, in which the weapon or armor got some bonus for being magic but not an OB or DB bonus. So for weapons, Magic +0 let them do crits on the magic table, better saves vs weapon breakers, better weapon strength, material specific abilities and ability to damage creatures that cold only be damaged by magic weapons. Note: I know there are not a whole bunch of creatures in RM Creatures books that require magic to him them but in my game world there are significantly more.  Now that I think about it in the future I will remove the ability to do crits on the Magic Table and give that ability to Magic 1 (think like +5) and Magic 2 (think like +10).   
    *Note: the material bonuses were also not based on +5, +10 ... but followed the same idea as above. IMHO it worked well but it did have some charts involved.


MDC

[pastaav]

These are good recommendations for determining the sale price of the item, but they don't help establish the production cost for the item.  For example, what materials do you need to make a magic sword?  Per Treasure Companion, you need 64 gp worth of generic "supplies."  Personally, I reduce this by a factor of 10, but perhaps magic items just need the base item and lots of power points.

Personally I think a good baseline would be that materials should cost 60% of the final price to the customer. If it just takes lots of power points then the adventuring Alchemist might be loaded with magical items. Perhaps not the end of the world, but it gets more manageable if there is a production cost that is not salary.

[yammahoper]

by 10 and 100.

an 800 gp staff of lightning cost 80gp

a 55gp herb cost 55bp.  thus a 55sp herb would cost 55cp.

55bp is two months work for a peasent, that's a number i can get drama out of.  55gp is 16 YEARS of labor.  pointless.  no one would buy it.  i have seen single meals for $5000 american in our world, but even that is 3 months work for a poverty line income ($20k a year).

some may recall alphonso the druid i bring up from time to time.  one cause that led him to found a kingdom/circle the gold mnts was being declared outlaw in danarchis for foraging noble lands.  alphons was fun.

[Arioch]

by 10 and 100.

thanks!

[Kristen Mork]

These are good recommendations for determining the sale price of the item, but they don't help establish the production cost for the item.  For example, what materials do you need to make a magic sword?  Per Treasure Companion, you need 64 gp worth of generic "supplies."  Personally, I reduce this by a factor of 10, but perhaps magic items just need the base item and lots of power points.

Personally I think a good baseline would be that materials should cost 60% of the final price to the customer. If it just takes lots of power points then the adventuring Alchemist might be loaded with magical items. Perhaps not the end of the world, but it gets more manageable if there is a production cost that is not salary.

60% of the final cost to the consumer doesn't work if the final cost to the consumer is based on demand (e.g., based on labor-savings).  For example, not all Level 2 wands are equally "useful," but the 60% rule would base the production cost on "utility" not on the fact that it's a Level 2 spell.

I do agree that there should (probably) be a production cost, for the reason you stated.  But, I wonder if other people have tried removing the production cost?  Adventuring alchemists still suffer from a) the perception that they're boring and b) a considerable temporal cost.

[GrumpyOldFart]

60% of the final cost to the consumer doesn't work if the final cost to the consumer is based on demand (e.g., based on labor-savings).  For example, not all Level 2 wands are equally "useful," but the 60% rule would base the production cost on "utility" not on the fact that it's a Level 2 spell.

Exactly. The reason I posited a caster charging 1 cp per spell point is that it puts it in manageable terms to the average potential customer. For a poor peasant, that means a 1st level spell has to be worth more than 3 hours or so of his labor in order for him to consider it worth buying. If a farmer is going to make a deal with a druid to manage his fields, the druid has to be able to show him that it's cheaper and more effective than owning a horse/plow/etc. and doing it himself.

That's not to say hiring someone to cast a spell should necessarily be that cheap. The point is not what it costs in abstract terms like so many of a particular type of coin, the point is what it costs in terms of the value of the labor that would otherwise have to be done to get an equivalent result. If the cost/benefit doesn't work, it's not going to sell, regardless of what you're charging.

[yammahoper]

I keep my spell casting for coin in the middle class cost range.  10cp a pp, or 5cp a pp for members of a temple/faith.  This puts magic healing out of the range of the poor.  There will always be those who will undermine the rich and serve the poor, for charity or devious devices...the world is a big place.  1 Bp a pp is my guild price fixing standard.

[GrumpyOldFart]

Whichever. The point is that what gets charged for magic, or whether magic is for sale or hire at all, at any price, isn't going to make sense unless it's part of the GM's world building process. An economy is an effect of a culture, not a cause, so every bit of tailoring the GM does to the setting either a) will affect the pricing of various goods and services, or b) will make the pricing of goods and services seem increasingly nonsensical because they aren't reflective of supply and demand in the setting.

So when all is said and done, what RM needs is less a price list than lessons for GMs in how to properly build one.

[GrumpyOldFart]

Example: My setting is the Rocky Mountains from northern New Mexico up through Yellowstone.

Copper ore is common. Zinc ore is common. Tin ore is nearly nonexistent. Therefore,

1. Tin will be a major trade consideration internationally.
2. Local "bronze" will not be traditional copper/tin alloy but "arsenic bronze".
3. Most of what people use bronze for elsewhere, the locals will use brass for instead.
4. The local money will not use bronze pieces, and bronze pieces of other currencies will tend to be hoarded.
5. Price listings that assume 100 CP = 10 BP = 1 SP won't make any sense in the local economy.

Either that or I have to "discover" (in other words, invent) a new source of tin ore in the central Rockies.

See? In order to work correctly, price listings have to be a result of the setting.