Importantly, changes to the D&D rules (increased power and utility of low level mages, greater ease of making magic items, allowing the majority of clerics to cast spells etc) over the years have created what the DMG explicitly acknowledges, that there must exist in any D&D world a 'magical economy'. What exactly is the magical economy? Well a magical economy is all the production, trade, and services associated with spells cast by, or items made by Clerics/Druids/Adepts/Sorcerers/Wizards. The problem (in my opinion) is that there is little clarity about any of the things involved in such an economy: such as who as access to it, how much do things cost, where are they available. And I think the confusion about the ramifications of the magical economy extend to the designers of the game themselves, who have not thought through the full consequences (especially with regard to magical items). As a result some GMs still treat the default world as if it is Tolkien (as early D&D was) while others use magic like technology.
So I plan to go through some models of how exactly the magical economy would work, and therefore both what its ramifications are and how it can be modified to suit a GMs particular style. Because this sort of thing is fraught with difficulty I am going to present only the most basic aspect here (divine spellcasting), and hope people will take the opportunity to correct my errors.
Divine Spellcasting
Divine spellcasting (by Adepts, Clerics, and Druids) is the basis of the magical economy, because it helps to set basic prices for everything else. The reason is that an economic model already exists within the game for divine spells. The whole population of the world is engaged in a reciprocal economy with the divine spell casters via the tithe. Divine spellcasters provide magic as needed, and in return they receive 10% of the wealth of the people (DMG:140). Because we know how many people there are, how many divine casters of what levels (DMG:137-9) we can contrast the spells available to the total money to work out how much a spell is worth.
The first job is to calculate the value of the tithe, but based on the tables in the DMG I divided the population into tithing groups as follows
Peasants, 85% of population, 1cp daily tithe
Skilled, 10% of population, 4cp daily tithe
Lvl 1, 3.5%, 1sp
Lvl 2, 1%, 3sp
Lvl 3, 0.35%, 9sp
Lvl 4, 0.15%, 18sp
Which gives an average daily tithe per head of population of 3.52cp
[This may not sound like much, but in a small town the Churches will be raking in 51gp a day from this tithe. However the tithe could be further modified if you assumed some higher level characters pay very large amounts, or if you increased the pay of the mass of the population slightly. Needless to say changes to the tithe model alter everything that follows, and it does need some refining as it ought to increase for larger towns.]
Now given that the tithe is reciprocal for spells it becomes a simple matter (though rather tedious, so I had a computer do it) to calculate how many divine casters exist in a particular place and how many spells they can cast (DMG:137 to 139).
[So that what follows is not a complete shock, bear in mind that the DMG makes divine casters (Adepts, Clerics, Druids) incredibly common. Using the table on p.139 a Thorpe, the smallest level community with an average of 50 adults, has 5 divine spell casters].
To work out the cost of a spell I then divided the tithed money amonst the spell levels available, and then amongst all spells available at that level (so higher level spells cost more). And this gave the following table of costs (expressed in copper pieces)
Thorpe 1 1
Hamlet 1 2 42
Village 2 3 19
S Town 3 4 21 170
L Town 2 3 12 35 123
S City 1 2 7 14 38 71 249
L City 1 1 3 7 14 26 40 85 594
Metro 2 2 7 14 23 40 56 72 150 391
[Simply take the location size and count across starting at level 0. So for example, having a 3rd Lvl Spell cast at a Small Town would be worth 170sp]
Warning: this is not a table of how much spells cost! This is how much, in principle they are worth, when people give 10% of their income to the divine casters. As such it is a sort of long-term contract. However, it does provide a basis for how easy it will be to get a spell cast and how much it is likely to cost. The cost will be about 4 times the value in the table (based on a similar ratio of one-off to regular contracts given for hirelings in the DMG).
Implications - Player Purchase
How much does it cost to get a divine caster to cast a spell? How easy is it to do, and where can it be done?
Whether a spell is available can be read straight off the table above.
You also need to know the highest level caster possible: this is 6 + the community modifier (p.139 of the DMG). For spells cast by someone one quarter of the level of the highest caster these are widely available, just pay your money, get your spell. For spells cast by someone up to half the level of the community modifier there will be fewer casters available. So the players may have to answer awkward questions (certainly healing of any injuries will be alerted to the town-guard). For still higher levels of caster the players will also have to wait 24 hours while someone prepares the spell.
So for a small town players will be able to get the following divine spell services at these sorts of prices (excluding any materials costs):
Purify Food & Drink, 12sp, no questions asked
Cure Light Wounds, 16sp, no questions asked
Delay Poison, 8gp, questions asked
Remove Disease, 60gp, questions asked, 1 day delay
Also of particular interests to PCs and hinted at several times in the DMG is the spell raise dead. On page 41 of the DMG it states that Raise Dead will cost 450gp plus 5000gp materials. This is clearly nonsense compared to the calculations above. It is not available 'no questions' anywhere, but it is available in any small city. And (on the assumption the players waste no time and take the body to the nearest city) is going to set the players back about 35gp (plus materials, questions asked, and a days delay).
Implications - Earning Power
How much does a free-lance Cleric earn in a day. This can be calculated fairly easily, simply add up his spells and how much he charges and bingo. So a 1st Level Cleric working as a healer/refrigerator/drought-relief in a small village will earn 6gp a day. A fourth level cleric in a large town will earn 28gp a day. A top end cleric in a city (say 9th level) is going to be earning 140gp a day. Assuming, of course, they can find enough work.
Implications - Demographics
A small community of 50 people has access to 17 create water spells every day. A small city (population 8500, medieval life expectancy 40, typicaly a death every two days) has access to 7 raise dead spells a day, and 36 remove disease spells. Why would anybody in the DMG default world die? The DMG takes for granted that demographics are essentially medieval and in doing so it breaks its own guidelines presented on page 142.
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Problems in the DMG
Quoting from p.142
"Spellcasters may be fairly rare in the big picture, but they're common enough that people know that when Uncle Rufus falls off the back of a wagon, they could take him to the temple to have the priests heal the wound (although the average peasant probably couldn't afford the price). Only the most isolated farmer might not see magic or the results of magic regularly."
But this is nonsense by the DMG's own figures. The spell would be very cheap, and easily available. And why shouldn't it be? In his own village the divine casters are going to be able to cast 70 healing spells a day. With that sort of glut on the market, why should it cost anything? The designers have not fully thought through the implications of the prevalence of magic in their own world.
The most obvious modification to make is on the table of the Highest-Level-Locals on page 139. A straight universal modifier here impacts everything about the world. Now working on the principle that there should not be a divine caster in every village (so that Uncle Rufus has to travel at least a few miles), I applied a -4 Universal modifier to the level of the highest level local caster. This means that there will be a Level 1 Cleric/Druid/Adept in only 50% of villages, and they will never be found in Thorpes or Hamlets.
It produces the following table
Village 229 229
S Town 85 128
L Town 10 14 103
S City 3 5 23 83 374
L City 2 2 8 18 57 132 792
Metro 3 4 12 26 56 97 180 503
Now notice how this has profoundly changed things. To get a simple Cure Light Wounds at a village is now going to cost 90gp (more than Uncle Rufus can afford) and take a day to prepare. Create Water, Preserve Food and other such spells are now beyond the immediate costs of local communities.
For the players discussed earlier, buying spell casting in rural areas is expensive, limited to low level spells, and involves a delay of 24 hours. So looking at spells players might want casting:
Cure Light Wounds, In rural areas very expensive, 35gp to 90gp, and takes a day to prepare. Can still get it for 1gp, no questions asked in cities.
Remove Disease, requires at least a small city, and is going to cost 30 to 40gp, will take a day to prepare
Raise Dead, now restricted to only very large cities so there is a lot of travel involved. The cost is still not very high, 50gp plus materials, and it still outstrips the local death rate.
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More to come
I am hoping to refine that tithe model a little (suggestions would be good) and combine this with an interactive version of the program I used to generate these figures. The idea is that you will be able to feed in your own alterations to the p.137 table for calculating the highest level local casters and this will give you a basic economic model for how much particular spells cost at certain places and for different levels.
Robert
-EE
According to raw:
hireling unskilled-1sp/day
hireling skilled 3sp+/day- it depends on the ranks of the job skill
adventurers, warriors, nobles, spellcasters are making way more money than the commoners.
The price is set that high for game balance, not so it would make sense with your views of economics. Players should not and cannot have a resurrection spell that cheap. Death, while reversible, is meant to be a very serious thing, and only characters of about level 5 or higher can usually afford a res, which is the way it is supposed to be. If you want to explain the 5,000 gold in economic terms, consider the scarcity of this good (only high level clerics) and the demand and utility (economic definitions) of the spell (brings dead people back) would drive the cost up very high. Also, the price would absolutely have to cover the price of the material components, at least. Otherwise, nicely done.
I really enjoy your article-the economic model you created is a very good start. Here are two changes I can see to the model you present regarding larger cities. - Religions are going to have monumental temples in metropolitan areas-think Notre Dame and St. Paul's Cathedral. This is going to lead to higher overhead costs, raising the selling price for spells in big cities. A 5:1 or even 6:1 ratio might be called for.
- The 'market value' of higher level spells is not just being driven up by the residents in a given city, but also by the surrounding towns and villages that must travel to that city to get that spell-level. If, for example, there is only one metropolis in a kingdom, then the value of 9th level spells is a function of the tithe for the entire kingdom.
Besides, you can't take gross statistics and apply them to specific cases. Even if one in ten adults *is* a divine spellcaster, then that doesn't mean that your average Thorpe will have five of them, it means that somewhere out in the woods, there's a grove of thirty druids, and there's six nearby villages whose parish priest is just an Expert with a few levels of Knowledge: Religion.