Topic: Availability of magic items?

[rdanhenry]

As long as some of those magic-wielders go into investigative magic, I see acceleration, not retardation, of technological progress (which went on even in the so-called "Dark Ages"). If magical healing is used to improve health care and magical enhancements improve agricultural efficiency to move more individuals out of farming and into other lines of production, then you'll even end up with a greater quantity of inventors and engineers.

[Marc R]

Assuming 1d100 stat generation, and that 90 prime is a requirement 10% of any population will be able to be a caster of a given realm. 1% will be potential hybrids. . .0.1% will be potential tri realms.

Of course, that assumes if you have a 90 EM you're Essence. . .not a 40 In, 90 Em of the realm of channeling. (if realm is not fixed to high stat, it cuts the odds to 1/3 the above). But assuming realm and stat run in synch. . .

So in Ancient Rome. . .100,000 potential magicians, 10,000 potential Sorcerers or Mystics, and 1,000 potential archmages. . . .just in the city itself.

If you assume you just need a 90 potential, that might double or triple. (profession is fixed in adolescence, so likely not)

Of course, how many of those are uneducated, of the wrong social strata, or in a religion that frowns on magic and burns witches? They might never learn a spell.

If the empire actively tested and trained casters regardless of caste or background, that number might be close to actual, depends how diligent and efficient they are.

What if the imperial authority and/or church hunt down and kill casters?

Also, as the seat of a major empire, it might draw caster potentials out of the whole empire, draw them in to the capitol, so that number could be much much higher. . .or the capitol might send out their hordes of mages to hold the imperial frontier, so most of the casters in residence would be non combative types, trainees, or central management, and lower in overall number.

What if casters are required to join a celibate order, or otherwise prevented from reproducing? What if only casters are allowed to have children? Could skew the odds in a remarkably short turnover of generations if the capacity is at all genetically based.

A lot of social and economic variables in play that can radically skew results.

Then again, I'm not a big fan of prime requisite stats, but that's the best way of measuring proportions of caster possibles in a given population.

But, too many variable factors under GM control to really state there's one obvious generic answer that fits all worlds, even just using the base core rules basic stuff like "How many people in the kingdom?" determine answers. . . .in a nation of 50,000 people, the odds above say that at most there are 5000 magicians, 500 essence hybrids, and 50 archmages. . .who might actually be farmers or some other more common profession, even though they have the capacity to be a caster, they never encounter or learn magic. . .in a low population world, casters might be exceedingly rare. Unlike Channelers, magicians appear to need to be taught, rather than made. . .so you need for one of 5000 random people in a kingdom to encounter someone who can teach them, early enough to where they can learn (i.e. in adolescence). . .what are the odds?

[GrumpyOldFart]

Of course, how many of those are uneducated, of the wrong social strata, or in a religion that frowns on magic and burns witches? They might never learn a spell.

Yes, but discounting "seat of empire" effects both pro and con, and assuming that 9 of every 10 people don't have the education/social standing/desire/etc. to be a spellcaster, that still leaves 10,000 Magicians, 1,000 Sorcerors and a hundred Archmages within the city of Rome. Not common, but hardly rare either, a sector of both culture and economy large enough to have a noticeable impact.

Or to put it another way, if it depends on stat (1 in 10) and is winnowed further by education/desire/etc. to 1 in 100, then if you live in an apartment complex in a metro area somewhere, imagine having magic use be common enough that half a dozen or so spellcasters live in your complex.

It's reasonably likely that one of your coworkers is one. Go to a large, crowded bar on a Saturday night, it's almost certain one of the drunks is one.

[Marc R]

Of those 10,000 Roman Essence casters, how many are Pure casters? Lets say 5,000.

How many are Alchemists? Illusionist entertainers get all the chicks, Magicians are in demand for the Legions. . . .

The availability of magic items would likely follow the logic of the real world economy also. . .

The $10,000 rifle, are you likely to find them in the hands of every soldier in the army, or in the hands of a high end mercenary or wealthy big game hunter?

The time it takes to create magic items (and the implied level of required stability) would likely direct most magical efforts to satisfy the wealthy or the state, who control the money and the stability. . . which might result in lots of roman magic being directed to creating items that adventurers would consider frivolous. . .or into public works like stadium effects, water purification or vermin reduction, which would likely be less than handy to adventurers or non portable form to prevent their theft.

Some adventurers might find a comb that keeps your hairstyle protected from the weather painful to wear under a helmet, and likely a podium of voice projection too bulky to carry around.

The flip side, in many games, is that the sword +5 tends to last nearly forever. . .

In the end, the GM can justify magic items being as common, or scarce as they want them to be.

[providence13]

  In addition I have an "attunement point cap" so the characters are limited to exactly how many items they can be attuned to (or possess).

I do something similar. We use PP adders instead of multipliers, but each one after the first is +1 DR harder to Attune.
We cast at Rank in the List (instead of lvl) and use a scalable PP system. Each "per level" effect in the spell is now a "per PP". So you have to spend PP to cast but also spend PP to maintain Duration, etc.
Magic is much easier to learn and cast but not many people can actually power effects. "You say the write words and do the motions perfectly... nothing happens."
This forces Alchemists to work together and limits players from making magic items.

The players like it, because they can actually cast spells. 10 Ranks in a List and you cast that List as 10th lvl. But if, for example, the spell is "1 min/lvl" it is now "1 min/+PP". That 10th lvl spell just cost you 10 PP and lasts 1 min; unless you spend more PP at the time of casting. But you can spend as many as you want! This drains PP fast and they have to make hard choices about what to cast and when to use a skill, saving PP.

[RandalThor]

How about that Layman tailor that wants to learn a few spells to improve his business? There is nothing in there saying he has to have 90's in the appropriate stats. You only need those to be a particular profession - not to learn and cast spells. At least, that is how I have always seen it. (One of my favorite RM characters was a Fighter that had about 6 mentalism spells that helped him hide/sneak and granted him DB bonuses.)

So, you have your pure, hybrid, and semi-spell users, and then you have the rest of the population who are non-spell users, but can learn some spells, albeit very expensively. But, if it means that craftsman will be able to make 5 cloaks in the time it would normally take to make 1, I think it is a good investment. Not to mention, if he is able to make a cloak with a permanent enchantment that keeps it dry and warm, and/or keeps the color from fading, or a special color/pattern effect (Nobles! What is the next trend going to be? Living capes you need to feed?!?), or keeps it from wearing way/fraying, etc....

In a world were magic can be learned by anyone, it would become just like any other science, and permeate society in a myriad of ways. I surprised that RM doesn't have a magic book called: Mundane Magic Law, covering all the magic used by commoners and nobles to enhance their lives.

As long as some of those magic-wielders go into investigative magic, I see acceleration, not retardation, of technological progress (which went on even in the so-called "Dark Ages"). If magical healing is used to improve health care and magical enhancements improve agricultural efficiency to move more individuals out of farming and into other lines of production, then you'll even end up with a greater quantity of inventors and engineers.

Which is why I said:

(purely) technological growth?

Sciences that combined the two (magic & technology) would go up by - whatever the percentage is when you are saying it is higher than 0%. 

I am a firm believer that daily life, in a world where magic is as common as RM would make it out to be, would be quite different than it is portrayed to be. Farming would be different; they might be able to get yields comparable to our modern farming, maybe even better. All manner of things would be different, and there would be crap loads of new ways, as well. The members of the Harbor Masters Guild use water magic to ensure safe passage through the waterways they operate in, scouts use nature magic to help track down escapees, or hunt the dangerous beasts terrorizing the townsfolk, etc... In a world of magic, it would be near suicidal to not learn some magic to be better at what you do. Most settings don't include this level of magic is because of 2 main reasons: 1) Tradition/Don't think of it: by going on rote, it never even gets addressed my the majority of the GMs and players. 2) Those that do think of it, usually decide not to do anything about it because it would be too much work and be a "power-level" problem.

[Balhirath]

In regard to NPC spell casters, they don't need a prime stat at 90. To be precise nobody needs a prime stat at 90. CCL stated that "A character is guaranteed of having at least 90 in each of his prime requisites." and that NPC are assumed to have 90 in his primes.
All they need is 55 in the power stat, since that would give them 1 powerpoint per level.

So getting back to the Romans thats about half a million potential spell casters in the city alone and an untold number in the Empire.

As for mundane Magic, I use Prodaic magic from Spell Users Companion, which is kinda brilliant for that

[RandalThor]

You are obviously going by RM2/C, which is fine. In RMFRP it states that to become a pure spell-user (magician, cleric, mentalist, etc..) you must have 90's in your prime stats - in fact, to be any of the professions you must have 90's in your prime stats. But, it doesn't say that to be a fighter that is going to cast spells they must have 90's in the appropriate realm stats, so you are good to go. Also, in RMFRP, you don't need a 55 in your realm stats to get power points, only bonus PP. You get PP by developing the skill Power Point Development, just like getting more Hits by Body Development.

So in RMFRP, the numbers of people being able to cast even a few spells increases dramatically.

[Balhirath]

How about that Layman tailor that wants to learn a few spells to improve his business? There is nothing in there saying he has to have 90's in the appropriate stats. You only need those to be a particular profession - not to learn and cast spells. At least, that is how I have always seen it. (One of my favorite RM characters was a Fighter that had about 6 mentalism spells that helped him hide/sneak and granted him DB bonuses.)

So, you have your pure, hybrid, and semi-spell users, and then you have the rest of the population who are non-spell users, but can learn some spells, albeit very expensively. But, if it means that craftsman will be able to make 5 cloaks in the time it would normally take to make 1, I think it is a good investment. Not to mention, if he is able to make a cloak with a permanent enchantment that keeps it dry and warm, and/or keeps the color from fading, or a special color/pattern effect (Nobles! What is the next trend going to be? Living capes you need to feed?!?), or keeps it from wearing way/fraying, etc....

In a world were magic can be learned by anyone, it would become just like any other science, and permeate society in a myriad of ways. I surprised that RM doesn't have a magic book called: Mundane Magic Law, covering all the magic used by commoners and nobles to enhance their lives.

Prosaic Magic from Spell Users Companion and some of the Professional lists in both Companion 5 and Alchemist Companion can be used to reflect those "Mundane" spells.

I am a firm believer that daily life, in a world where magic is as common as RM would make it out to be, would be quite different than it is portrayed to be. Farming would be different; they might be able to get yields comparable to our modern farming, maybe even better. All manner of things would be different, and there would be crap loads of new ways, as well. The members of the Harbor Masters Guild use water magic to ensure safe passage through the waterways they operate in, scouts use nature magic to help track down escapees, or hunt the dangerous beasts terrorizing the townsfolk, etc... In a world of magic, it would be near suicidal to not learn some magic to be better at what you do. Most settings don't include this level of magic is because of 2 main reasons: 1) Tradition/Don't think of it: by going on rote, it never even gets addressed my the majority of the GMs and players. 2) Those that do think of it, usually decide not to do anything about it because it would be too much work and be a "power-level" problem.

I have incorporated a lot of magic into one of my worlds and Yes, it takes a lot of work AND it takes some time for the players to get used to, but I think that it is worth it.
Some of the most obvious things are also the most visible.. like that most protective walls are warded against desctructive magic (Crack Calls/Stone to dust ect.) and more then 30' tall (Leaping allows you to leap 20').

However it's also importent to note that many speciallity spell-lists will be guarded by those who have them and most likely by a guild of some kind, so while cleaning spells might be fairly common, smithing, tailoring and other professionel lists are not that easy to come by.

 

[Cormac Doyle]

With respect to the "requirements" for prime stats ... that is a D&D'ism that was imported into Character Law when Character Law was designed as a replaceable module for D&D. There is ABSOLUTELY no reason why it needs to be adhered to in RM. (Rule 0 = ignore any rule that is inconvenient) ...

[GrumpyOldFart]

I think you'll have a fair number of extremely simple, low level items, available for a pittance. Why? Because the apprentice has to practice somehow, the master may as well make back a bit of his investment and get the local populace "spoiled" to having magic available while he's at it. The "loss leader" marketing concept.

Beyond that... relative to the prices for mundane equipment, magic items tend to be fearfully expensive. Sure it'd be nice to have a magic item than can plow an acre perfectly in 1 minute, but if its capacity per season is only about 10% of your farm and it costs half your budget for a year, are you going to buy one? Of course not.

Therefore in general, items above the "practicing apprentice" level will probably only be bought by those to whom monetary and time costs are not the overriding priority, either because the buyer is just that wealthy or because something else ("if I don't get one of these today everyone I know is probably going to die tomorrow") takes priority over any amount of money.

That said, magic items tend to be "eternal". While they may be buried, or in the deeps of a cave, or lost at sea, the chances of _____ magic items being reusable if/when recovered is far higher than for equivalent mundane items. Therefore you could expect availability to go up in fairly direct proportion with how long the area has been inhabited.

But really, magic item pricing and availability can't be put in a book, because the controlling factors are inherent in the setting rather than the game mechanics. 1. The creators aren't going to bother if they can't make a living at it. 2. The buyers aren't going to bother unless the economic cost/benefit of doing _____ with magic beats the cost/benefit of doing it some other way. Unless the book can manage the balancing act of every possible economic pressure in every possible economic system, the pricing and availability of the book can't possibly be any more than a best guess.

[RandalThor]

but I think that it is worth it.

Me too.

However it's also importent to note that many speciallity spell-lists will be guarded by those who have them and most likely by a guild of some kind, so while cleaning spells might be fairly common, smithing, tailoring and other professionel lists are not that easy to come by.

Definitely. This is something I imagine even being specific to each particular culture/nation. Though there could very well be guilds that span several nations.

GOF: I have to say that is the 3rd method games (and GMs) use to limit magic items: by making the ingredients and process so prohibited, they aren't worth making at all. I mean, is a +20 weapon really worth 20,000 GPs?* I think not. (Of course, you can make the argument that the weapon is absolutely needed to beat the Big Bad, but that gets old quick and only works for a few items.)


*This was just a number I pulled out of the air, I don't know the real numbers for making RM magic items. But, I do remember that several of the special materials to use are upwards of thousands of gold pieces an ounce. How many ounces of metal do you need to make even a dagger? That doesn't include all the special ingredients that get used up in the process.

[GrumpyOldFart]

The problem as far as relative "worth" of magic items is that it ties into the labor and materials cost to the creator. In short, you can't really drop the price much without making it economic suicide for those who make such items, unless you also adjust what is required to make it. Someone who has spent a fair portion of his life learning these skills, and then spends all of his time for weeks, months or even years just to make one item for you.... well yeah, you're going to have to make up that year or so that he couldn't make a living doing anything else.

More to the point, it's a vicious cycle, in that the more hideously expensive his products become, the smaller the market he can sell to, so when he does get a commission he pads the price to make up for all that dead time while he was unemployed. The result is that very minor adjustments to the time and expense need to create _____ item can have consequences in both price and availability that seem far out of proportion. And of course, if you apply that adjustment equally to all magic items it's possible to create, that multiplies the effect.

[runequester]

It depends on the setting. Generally, magic items are family heirlooms and the sorts. Maybe they got their status /because/ they were passed down from generation to generation, slowly accumulating bonuses

[rafmeister]

I have not run a campaign for several years. However, I decided that magic weapons should not be that difficult to come by. Unfortunately, they also break with significant regularity. I also came up with a lot of one shot items that could (and would) be produced.

As a result, I generally make it fairly easy to purchase a +5 wooden staff, or maybe a +10 magic sword. Runes are easy to get, if you can find the runepaper. Potions could be worked into candles, throwing crystals, etc. to allow one shot effects. Higher quality stuff (say a +15 magic spear of boarslaying) is fairly hard to find and rare to purchase. More powerful items are definitely difficult to acquire. However, the wrong character may get some powerful item they cannot control...

[GrumpyOldFart]

Magic weapons break, but weapons of any sort take a lot of abuse, too. I'd expect weapons and armor to suffer more attrition than, say, rope or jewelry. Magical body parts would probably outlast the owner, and maybe outlast more than one.