Proposed Costs and Times for Fabricating Magic Items

[oakesspalding]

For SEVEN VOYAGES of XYLARTHEN I've put together some costs and times for fabricating standard magic items. These are to some degree extrapolated from the examples given on p. 7 of Men & Magic. Clarifications: "Archimagi" are Lawful player character Wizards (so the "Staff of A.M." is equivalent to the Staff of Wizardry). We are on the silver standard so Silver Pieces = standard gold pieces. In my rules set swords are not considered to be "standard" magic items so they are not included. Mail and Shield combinations must be used together to get the bonus. Finally, the magic items referenced are in general similar to 0e items so many are more powerful (though a few are less powerful) than their 1e equivalents--staves for example are much more powerful, as they will often have 7-10 times the charges of their 1e cousins.

Do any of you guys have any input or suggestions? Do the costs and times seem too lenient/too severe? Are the costs and times for the various items consistent amongst themselves? Any comments or criticism would be appreciated.

Oakes

[Deleted]

Base Assumption without more information: The crafter can't work on more than one item at a time.

From a 'let's make crafting impractical and expensive so players don't make lots of magic items for themselves' standpoint the list seems fine.

From a magical business standpoint, where a mage goes into business making magic items for profit, it doesn't really seem to work to me. No one in their right mind would spend that much money and that much time crafting items which they'd sell for a pittance profit by comparison. To stay in business, sale price should be no less than triple the cost to manufacture, and 5-10x the cost to manufacture is more realistic and desirable.

A flying carpet for instance, if it costs 100,000 in expenses and takes a year of a mage's life to make, it's ridiculous to think he'd sell it for a mere 115,600 at the end of it (profit of 300 x 52 weeks). A more realistic sales price would be on the order of 400,000-700,000 depending on demand.

If a potion costs 200 to make, and a week of time (which if you have a mage working for you to make it and you're paying him 300 a week for a total manufacturing cost of 500), the sales price should be close to 5000.

Anyway, that's my perspective on the list.

[oakesspalding]

Very interesting. Thank you.

Actually, if you take into account the fact that costs and time required go down by 10% per level (I should have made it clear that selling price does NOT go down), profit possibilities look a bit rosier. If P is a Healing Potion and X is the X-Ray Vision Ring, then an 18th level Wizard would make 900/week or 1,676/week:

Level P X
11 300 300
12 361 400
13 429 596
14 504 769
15 588 961
16 681 1175
17 785 1412
18 900 1676

If you increase the selling price to, say, a 50% mark up on the cost plus 500/week, you get these numbers:

Level P X
11 625 981
12 722 1197
13 830 1436
14 950 1703
15 1084 1999
16 1232 2328
17 1396 2693
18 1579 3099

So one question is if a Wizard just decides to sit there and make stuff, what should his income be per week? I have no idea. You are probably right that 300 is too low, especially considering that he has other costs like just keeping up his tower or castle, etc. By comparison in U&W the cost of an Alchemist is 232/week and a Sage is 464/week (though their own actual incomes are no doubt lower than their costs). If you go with the second scheme or something like it, you start out making 625-981/week at 11th level, going up to 1,579-3,099 at 18th. So, we're talking a yearly income of anywhere from 30,000-50,000 to 80,000-160,000. In M&M it costs 100,000 to go up a level (whether or not income could be used for that is another question-I would say, no). Does that sound better?

The COSTS for making the Healing Potion, the X-Ray Vision Ring and 5 other sample items are simply taken from M&M, and I extrapolated for the other items. The selling price schemes are based on my own guesses as to what Wizards should make and what people would pay for such items. One guide for the second question is the prices in the DMG. The first scheme assumes a selling price 50% or so higher than those prices. The second scheme assumes a selling price of 100% to 150% higher. I don't think we should go any higher than that. It makes sense that a patient and commercially savvy Wizard should be able to sell his items for 2 to 3 times what adventurers can get from unloading them, but any more than that seems too much (though I might be wrong). Does that make sense?

Once again, thanks for your comments. I hadn't thought as much about the selling price issue. Fortunately, it's much more easily twiddled.

[oakesspalding]

By comparison, here's what you get from having a "barony" (M&T) or "controlling a territory" (U&W):

2-8 villages x 100-400 inhabitants x 10 GP/year = 2,000-32,000/year (p. 24 of U&W).

Against that, just sitting in your tower and getting 15,000/year from making stuff (the gross income of an 11th level Wizard under my original scheme) doesn't seem that out of line.

At that point, of course, you have to ask, what is all this money for? By assumption, income per head, investing, manufacturing magic items, etc. doesn't give you experience points. So, presumably you want the money to build a tower, castle, underground lair or whatever and have enough cash flow to staff it with a few hundred troops and various specialists. Estimating wildly, perhaps that's a 100,000 initial investment + 50,000/year to keep it up. Should you be able to just do that without adventuring? Again, I'm not sure what I think, but I certainly don't believe it makes sense to make much more than that without adventuring. Among other things, it's not clear WHY you would need much more than that beyond just making money for its own sake. After all, by stipulation you already have your lair and its staff.

Maybe you want to start a collection of large galleys (30,000)?

[Deleted]

Why does a +1 spear cost as much as a +2 axe when a +3 spear costs the same as a +3 axe? What is the thinking behind making different weapons cost different amount?

[oakesspalding]

Axe +2 is a tiny bit more costly than Spear +1 (it takes 1 more month to make) but point taken. In my rules set melee weapons differ somewhat in effectiveness, and a spear is generally better than an axe. As to why the +3 axe and spear cost the same, the answer is that I should have been paying more attention. Rounding things for simplicity and aesthetic clarity caused some weird anomalies, some of which I didn't catch. That's why I wanted to have other sets of eyes look at it. I'll review the variances again. Thanks!

[Deleted]

It's going to be difficult to come up with a crafting system that involves building a business without building up an economy that it fits into. You also have to set some ground rules as to how these items get created.

The first questions I would ask are:
1) Is the mage required for every single aspect of the creation of the items? In essence is he a painter or a woodworker. While a painter can have some preparatory things done by someone else, he pretty much has to paint the picture by himself (if we're talking fine art). A woodworker on the other hand can develop a plan, have a shop full of assistants cutting the wood to his specifications leaving him to concentrate on carving the fine details.

Since many magic items aren't necessarily individual works of art where each one is different (how different is one healing potion crafted from another after all) I would think he's more like a woodworker.

2) Can the mage work on more than one item at a time, or alternatively can he optimize his time better by batching his creations? If I want to make a business of selling healing potions, and the creation of those potions involve grinding herbs, measuring liquids, and heating the concoction of a certain quantity for some duration, then I would be inclined to grind enough herbs for fifty or a hundred batches all at once, then setting up a tray of that many bottles where I measure liquids into each one before adding the herbs I ground. Lastly I'd put the whole tray in an oven and heat them all at the same time. That's a far more practical business process than grinding herbs, measuring liquids, heating a bottle then repeating fifty times.

If I really wanted to make a business of mass production, I'd make a contracts with an herbal supply dealer to deliver to me pre-measured packets of pre-ground herbs, a glazier to deliver bottles to my liquids supplier who would fill them with precise quantities of the liquid I need and then train a few people to combine the ingredients and do batches in the oven. This is effectively what McDonalds does.

3) How much does it cost to maintain an alchemy lab? The mage will have to buy fuel for his burners, have glaziers make him bottles and flasks, he needs to have water, firewood, perhaps tubing and leatherworking done and so on. What does this all add up to each year.

4) What does it cost in rent and taxes to have a store in a city? Certainly country folk won't be affording anything but the occasional healing potion or +1 shovel if they're doing particularly well.

5) How does the mage advertise and sell his wares? Does he hire callers to bring business into his store, does he have painters paint signs to advertise, does he have hirelings to man the store and keep track of inventory. How much does all this cost since all this would take time away from the mage making the stuff.

6) After all those expenses, and the cost of supplies to make the items, how much should the salary of a hard working mage be? How much should the salary of a very smart businessman be? In medieval times, smart peasant businessmen were able to earn so much money they became lords. A very smart mage, who is also a smart businessman I have to wonder what the limits might even be.

[Deleted]

At that point, of course, you have to ask, what is all this money for?...
Among other things, it's not clear WHY you would need much more than that beyond just making money for its own sake. After all, by stipulation you already have your lair and its staff.

This is a peasant's view regarding money. "What do I need to survive - why would I need more than that?"

For the wealthy, money opens doors that would otherwise be closed. You probably don't hang out in the company of kings if you're only making 30-50k a year, you also probably don't have a whole lot of political influence. If you have to spend a year's salary on a necklace for your wife when you go to the King's ball, you're out of your league.

If you're assuming a Baron, the lowest rank of peerage/nobility, let's say makes 25k a year, then based on the Pareto Principle the breakdown of the ranks make approximately:

Baron: 25,000 / yr
Viscount: 50,000 / yr
Earl: 75,000 / yr
Marquis: 350,000 / yr
Duke: 2,460,000 / yr