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4 years ago ::
Jun 27, 2009 - 8:50AM
#11
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I did the numbers according to Birthright also, although not posted here, as to the ability and skills checks to the rating of the domain in question. I came up with a tax total of 2.12 million gp/year. The particular numbers of the budget can be explained etc, as I also don't think that the total % of the budget outlined came to 77%, with 23% in unassigned categories as of yet, there is plenty of room for tweaking. But in my estimation, I could instead of running the city be an enchanter, and would make alot more money if I charged market value for items For example, if I spent 8 hours a day doing item creation, 10 mins for enchant item ritual so say I make 4/hour, that's 32 items a day. If they were worth 10,000 gp (level 10 item) then I've made 32,000 gp that day, how can you say that 650K gp in a year is unreasonable? I could work 4 days a week, and it would take me 4 months (16 weeks) to make the same amount of money, and have 8 months of free tme to advemture. I personally thought it was conservative to go the taxation way, because I could make alot more money to item production way.
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4 years ago ::
Jun 27, 2009 - 8:57AM
#12
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Please don't get me wrong, if the idea wouldn't be ok to most that's ok, I can still rule the city just make my money the item production route, I just thought that it was an easier and less likely to be out of control method to say taxation through population would yield a reasonable yet steady income, but I can be the Trump of Balaernazaan easily enough through item creation
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4 years ago ::
Jun 27, 2009 - 9:16AM
#13
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Date Joined:
Oct 21, 2007
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you can't make money with item creation in 4e. The only way to make money in 4e is through encounters. This is because the point of the money system is to get your equipped with the right magical items.
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4 years ago ::
Jun 27, 2009 - 10:09AM
#14
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so in our realm, if you "make" an item you can't sell it? I can't for the discussion say to a fighter,"Bring me X residium (tha mount equals the gp cost of the item) and then charge him that amount to make it? For example, bring me 2600gp of residium and I will charge you 2600 gp to make this item for you. That isn't allowed by the rules?
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4 years ago ::
Jun 27, 2009 - 10:29AM
#15
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You could do that but why would a fighter pay you 2600 in raw materials (residuum) + 2600 in gold for a level 7 item that only costs 2600 gp + 10-30% to buy?
Creating items is not a reasonable source of income anymore because creating costs just as much as buying them if you manage to negotiate the best price. At the very best you could try to buy magic items at 20% of their cost from adventurers (that's what players expect to get for outdated equipment) and hope to find someone who needs exactly that item and is ready to buy it at full price which is exactly what NPC merchants supposedly do.
And even if we expand on the thought and assume that you create items and sell them for 120%, which is reasonable according to pricing guidelines. Assuming you are level 20, one item would net you a profit 25.000 gp. However in order to earn this sum you have to have a client capable of and willing to pay you 125.000 gp for your work. Depending on the adventurer density in your world and the ammount of competition you have to deal with, I doubt that you will see more than half a dozen customers a year. While that would be a fine income by itself, you'll have overhead and since you'll likely level more than once during that year, the amount you earn is trivialized by the galopping price increase for equipment you would want to use. (You can create more expensive items when you level but at the same time your customer base will shrink considerably.)
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4 years ago ::
Jun 27, 2009 - 12:19PM
#16
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I see your point
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4 years ago ::
Jun 27, 2009 - 1:23PM
#17
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- Stampeding Hybrid
- Dragon Slayer
Date Joined:
Dec 12, 2008
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you can't make money with item creation in 4e. The only way to make money in 4e is through encounters. This is because the point of the money system is to get your equipped with the right magical items.
I realize why this is true, but from an economic standpoint this is rather silly don't you think? If making magic items is really a financially stupid idea (as you only get 1/5 of what you put into an item out of it unless you're selling it to a PC at a 1:1 ratio you loose money at an alarming rate. This in my opinion begs the question, why does anyone make magic items? Who would voluntarily do something so financially suicidal? And then of course that leads to magic items being next to non existent, which mucks up the whole number system of 4e. From a mechanical standpoint I admit they did it for good reason, but once you get to metagame the idea becomes a rater bad conundrum.
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4 years ago ::
Jun 27, 2009 - 1:41PM
#18
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This in my opinion begs the question, why does anyone make magic items? Who would voluntarily do something so financially suicidal? And then of course that leads to magic items being next to non existent, which mucks up the whole number system of 4e.
Well who would make magic items if there were none for sale? Anybody with the means to make them and the need to have some. That would be adventurers or nobles equipping their armies for most of our common magic items. With all those fallen empires that's a comfortable cache of magic equipment floating around in the world to trade around.
And that is really the key. If magic items were actually that scarce, merchants probably couldn't get away with purchasing for a mere 20%.
And even so, creating magic items is not a losing game if you work on contract and are guaranteed your share. It's just that being an enchanter is not a free ticket to being a billionaire after a year even though you only need an hour to create a piece of work valuing more than a million gp.
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4 years ago ::
Jun 27, 2009 - 3:21PM
#19
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I personally am disappointed in the rules for 4E in this regard. Not everyone can or desires to make magic items. The old way IMHO was better. It depended on the spells you had etc. To me that was part of the fun, but another part gutted for balance and simplicity sake.
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4 years ago ::
Jun 27, 2009 - 7:31PM
#20
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Date Joined:
Apr 26, 2005
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I realize why this is true, but from an economic standpoint this is rather silly don't you think?
No? Assuming perfect competition (which admittedly isn't the case in the Magic Weapons market, but whatever), economic profits average out to zero.
From a practical standpoint, someone somewhere might be making a profit crafting magic items, (and someone else suffering hideous losses), but you, the one PC with the crafting rituals, will basically break even, period. From an economic standpoint, there's no problem whatsoever.
I personally am disappointed in the rules for 4E in this regard. Not everyone can or desires to make magic items. The old way IMHO was better. It depended on the spells you had etc. To me that was part of the fun, but another part gutted for balance and simplicity sake.
Right, the good old days, when spellcasters got to make free wealth, thus breaking the one remaining mechanism for by-level balance (and one which needed to be very heavily hacked to keep non-spellcasters viable, might I add- over-wealthing non-spellcasting types was one of only a handful of halfway-effective "house" fixes. But, of course, spellcasters could make wealth for free, so that was largely moot anyway.)
No thanks, I'll take 4e's route, where spellcasters can't get the equipment of a character twice or thrice their level just because, and where I can have badass, world-renowned Dwarf-made weapons and armor without needing to justify the existence of dozens of Dwarf Wizards.
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