I think you misunderstand what I am trying to say. Note that I didnt predict that the prices of charged items in general would skyrocket, and in fact I did not use the word "price".
What I meant is that for a magus who needs only a single charge from a charged item to save a seasons work, the value of that charge is equal to the value of their season. So if a magus values a season of work at 3 pawns and their covenant has tasked them with something that they need to spend a season solving, then a charged item that solves the problem is suddenly worth approximately 3 pawns to that specific magus. Thus in this specific instance the value of this hypothetical item has skyrocketed for the magus, since before finding themselves in this situation the magus would presumably have valued the charge at less than 1 pawn.
The situation created here is one where suddenly one magus is economically incentivized to pay above market value for an otherwise worthless item. Thus the owner can exchange their worthless item for a few pawns and the buyer can buy the item and save themselves somewhere in the range of a season of work.
My point is that I believe this kind of situation happens often enough that there is reason for lots of individual magi to seek out such random items that are just laying around from the time when X covenant needed to solve a problem only once but found that the easiest solution was to craft a magic item.
In fact the items dont even need to be charged they can be just random lesser enchanted items too. As long as the spell is sufficiently specific to make it not worth anything on the broader market.
It sounds like I understood perfectly. You're talking about price-gouging. I was talking more generally, much because price-gouging requires that very specific thing to be available but only in a limited way. And even then, it's more likely someone will have a useful Formulaic spell on hand than remaining charges on a useful charged item, especially when we consider the added flexibility of Formulaic spells with regard to casting requisites. For a quick comparison of likelihood, look at any game you've played in and count how many effects all the mages in a covenant have in Formulaic spells v. how many effects they have sitting around in charged devices. Even with price gouging you cannot do a supply-demand analysis while ignoring supply. Price gouging doesn't work unless supply is effectively curtailed, right? So I was trying to include the supply side as well, but also more generally. Yes, this certainly could happen rarely, but even more commonly this would happen with Formulaic or Ritual spells than with Charged Items, or even with Lesser Enchanted Items as you pointed out, or even more powerful items. If it's so much more likely with these, why would it be that Charged Items are the ones to get skewed?
I made a list all of the published (Flame & Faith) candidates I found interesting (I lead the Tribunal stories) and threw in a few extra to add a little apparent depth.
There are also lecturers offering to expound on their special subject (Teach) for an honorarium, but based on player reaction, they don't get much interest.
While I agree that a high-volume market for magic items and Hermetic services is plausible, I cannot see that they are bound to develop. There are two many assumptions and unanswered questions?
Your formulaic service caster, how do the clients get in touch when they need the services? Yes, he could get there instantly when called upon, but how do you instantly make the call? I assume he does not dish out ACs just to be reachable ...
Is ambulant cook really what the magus want to do with his life? Yes, I can imagine that he could make one lavish feast a year for the highest bid, be it a queen of vis, a branch of the arts, or two years of free study at Durenmar. If he really is game breakingly good, I would not be surprised if he could command such a price. But why would he bother with a second client?
I agree that a Rusticanus so inclined could probably make a steady income from high-penetration combat spells, but how many Rusticani are there? How many have specialist sufficiently in such spells? And how many of them are comfortable spreading such weapons around the Order? The answer could be quite enough, but it could also be zero. Either is plausible.
The problem here is that all the arguments for a smooth-operating market with competitive prices are based on the economic theory of free competition, but that theory depends free entry and exit from the market and infinitesimally small units of change. There are only about 1300 magi in Mythic Europe, with 15 arts and 50 TeFo comboes to speicalise in. That's only 26 magi per TeFo comboes, and when you require foci or special lineages like rusticani, the set of potential suppliers become even smaller. Not all of them have sufficient experience, not all of them want to engage in this trade, not all of them have the teleportation to serve any location, and not all of them have are know to potential clients far away.
We may easily see a situation where there is only one potential supplier in a specific area of specialisation, and even if there are a few, they may be so comfortably set up that they do not bother to supply unless the price is sky high.
For this reason, it is not implausible if prices skyrocket. It is also not implausible if a thriving market have developed with sufficient volume to push prices down, but I think this depends on a lively luxury market as well, to give the wealthy artisans something to spend their vis on.
That's the same question for all of them, not just for the casters. If you can contact someone for an item, you can contact someone for a spell. I was just pointing out the relative likelihood between them.
Is hundreds if not thousands of experience per year game-breaking, and would you give a few minutes a day to get it? +20ish Living Conditions for an entire covenant with no Warping and no sterility game-breaking? And how much would your covenant pay for that per year, with my mage only needing to spend half an hour a day (which is relaxed and leaves time for some walking around and chatting) to handle the home covenant and two or three others with ease?
Yes, and no. We mustn't forget that nearly every covenant can be a potential supplier. Prices are held down because even spring covenants could team up if need is great enough. Even so, wouldn't this supplier be better off making one spell and casting it when paid rather than making a bunch of Charged Items and potentially having to go back to the lab? (Again, high-penetration combat is an exception.)
No, it is different questions. The formulaic caster must be contacted when you know when they are needed. The item can be procured ahead of time.
I don't what rules you use to get hundreds of xp or +20 living condition. But that was not really the question here. If this is what the covenant can get, I am sure the caster can find one that pays so much that after a few years they have enough wealth to last a lifetime, and would go out of business. Unless they start hoarding wealth, and start asking for payment in dragon skins and other unique artifacts that few can provide.
If prices are held down, the need is little and to the Spring covenant of Spring magi, the effort of teaming up to provide something that not anyone can make would be substantial. It could work if the market is large enough to provide good returns even at low per item prices.
That is just blatantly false. Think about the real world. Have you never been able to schedule an appointment a single time in your life? And if we're dealing with sudden need, you're much more likely to find someone who can cast the spell quickly than an already existing item. Only in the case where you know you're going to need something well in advance, but have no idea when you're going to need it, and are willing to invest in it in this way will the item work out better, which is exactly the case with certain high-penetration combat effects.
I think the rules question is what's also throwing off the later part.
Rules: a) 1s rolled give you +1 experience, and botches give -1 (which Cautious with Finesse handles), and this experience is not capped. b) You must roll a stress die. So every time you cast one of these spells using Finesse + Faerie Sympathy you gain 0.111... experience toward your Sympathy Trait. Let's say you're just baking loaves of bread for a covenant. How many loaves of bread do you need for the day? Let's say it's 10 and you do this for your home covenant and two other. That's about 3.33 experience per day, or a bit over 1000 a year.
Rules: Excellent quality craft goods give bonuses. There is an explicit example of bread giving a bonus to Living Conditions. Consider how high a bonus you get to when you're picking up 1000 experience a year.
And now consider how this must be done. While you might bake some bread a day earlier or maybe slightly more, you probably won't keep it for long. You could set up preservation circles of course, so that you might only visit once every week or two. Meanwhile, it's the act of casting so much that makes you so good and lets you replace Longevity Rituals across the Order. Sure, you have lots of wealth, but you can't change the Order unless you keep it up (Ambitious).
Of course, but only when I know what is needed. And I often find myself buying stuff because of the significant likelihood it be needed without knowing when that will be. Hence your formulaic caster is not a complete replacement for items.
Dealing with sudden need, the inexperienced magi of a Spring covenant are a lot more likely to find a spare item in the cupboard than a formulaic caster for hire. The chance of an item may well be 10^-9 but the chance of a formulaic caster is smaller still when the closest covenant is a week away and the next redcap visit is a month or two ahead, and nobody has a teleport spell or a relevant AC or a carrier pigeon or a messaging tablet or any other means to outcompete a grog on horseback.
I should add that I have never been able to make appointments by correspondence at medieval messaging pace either.
Maybe. It is certainly the case that your hundreds of xp is a plausible player reason for staying in business, even regardless of pay. It does not sound like a valid in character reason though. XP is not an in character concept and real people tend to be bored. One could argue the ruleset be broken, but that does not matter. I did not really want to discuss what is plausible behaviour in the ruleset. Only what is plausible in the setting.
Scale!!! We're talking about pawns of vis to pay a magus to make a charged item. You can fully construct a fabulous covenant with only several times that. So each of these items would be like... I might need some metal parts in my house so I've bought a lathe, a mill, a band saw, etc. and metal. Or I might need some more storage at some point in the future so I just bought a spare garage.
And just the right spare item in your cupboard as a spring covenant? How many pawns of vis are they spending on just-in-case items to have sitting around that they might never use? If we were talking about some bits of gemstone, wood, metal, stone, etc., sure. Nails, boards, etc.? Sure. But we're not talking anywhere close to that scale. Do you really just find yourself buying stuff that costs many thousands of dollars or euros "on the off-chance it might be needed without knowing when that will be"? If so, I would hazard a guess that you may be wealthier than everyone else on this board put together.
Sure, which is why no one practices things ever, right? Also, I think you missed the major in-character reason: changing the Order.
I've made similar arguments about teaching. I had a really good teacher who only charged 2-3 pawns for a season of teaching Magic Theory. The thing was that she made sure to schedule a bunch together. It's not too hard to get you and two buddies at your covenant to pitch in 12 pawns for all three of you and all three of your Familiars to pick up 20 experience apiece in one season. And I'm getting 12 pawns, which is double what I could extract and won't damage the Aura. That saves you a lot of time over picking up a book, for instance. And then suddenly the price of Hermetic teachers (except for Arts) shifts.
Scale is indeed the question. Sure, magi would only stock items which they can be fairly sure to need, and only a few effects could ever get skyhigh prices. OTOH there are also plenty of reasons why the threshold to call on a caster could be high. It may difficult to find one and time consuming to make the bargain.
But this is a bootstrap problem. Once there is a lively market, young and inexperience magi can always find a way to earn vis by selling simple utility items and services, and use this vis to buy items and services which they cannot make, which creates the demand that makes it worthwhile for others to make and sell other services. Once vis starts to circulate, instead of being horded and expended on personal acts of magic, all your reasoning makes sense, and the market drives itself to grow.
However, getting to that point is not trivial. Setting up a business and making it worthwhile is impossible when everybody else is shortvised and saving for their longevity ritual. And with few actual customers, very few potential customers are going to get word about the business. This is why a world with a low-volume market is plausible, and with low volume, prices are likely to be erratic and sometimes high.
If you can achieve scale, and I totally agree that that too is plausible,
everything changes, and with critical mass, the market may be self-accellerating.
Well, order-changing magi are few and far between, and not the ones to make the scale of the economy.
I have seen few actual purchases of magic items. Most of the time someone in the covenant can make low level items, and invested items get really expensive.
The few exceptions I've seen (usually trades and favors rather than outright purchases) were all mid-level Lesser Enchanted Devices that the people involved were not good enough for yet - Josephine sold my Bjornaer player a necklace that transforms clothing into a beast-fang pendant.
More often people will see something they want on another magi and barter for the lab text, or more often, decide they need something and lock themselves in the library until they're able to do it themselves.
If you have a story guide that lets a min-maxer exploit a rule to get 1000 XP a year so be it, however it is not a useful example in a discussion about what would be a reasonable expectation of market forces in most games.
Make the appointment be in another country. That's the only way to reasonably extrapolate that comment to Mythic Europe for anyone but a magi with 7 league stride.
One can make the appointment if they have enough notice, however, now paying for flights, accommodation, etc. If instead of showing up personally, what if I could just post an item that achieves the same outcome? I'd do that.
It is logical to think there will be left over charged items.
Here's one example. A magi needs water breathing to deal with an underwater problem. The magi wouldn't want water breathing to run out at the wrong time, so over-engineers the solution and has some left over charges once the problem is dealt with. The magi now has a item with no purpose. Selling it off for some vis seems logical.
The order has been around for hundreds of years. Magi die and there will be inheritances. There's just cause to think there are a lot of items about, charged and minor.
Yes, definitely. That's where a bunch of us were working off the OP idea of "I think that there is a large market for second hand items." But if it doesn't exist, then yes, you'd have to set it up. That's why my mage who plans to sell Talisman devices first has plans to get the word out through the Redcap network and personal communications.
I think you missed part of the discussion:
(Like game-breaking good which exposed a problem with Faerie Sympathy.)
And then there was a rules question about this. We didn't know about the problem until this mage was created. I created the mage, and between some later sessions as things got going I discovered the canonical problem. I proposed a simple house-rule which I propose any time Faerie Sympathy/Antipathy show up in a game.
It isn't there to show a likely outcome. It is there to show the vulnerability of the market to supply-end effects. If supply-end is irrelevant, then you can't have this happen. This is a proof by contradiction that supply-end not mattering is incorrect. For that it is useful in discussion.
I get that. But please look at what I was responding to. There was a comment that spell casters must be contacted at the moment of need while items can be procured ahead of time. Look at real-life, wealthy end of Medieval Europe. People were hired across a distance for certain purposes and traveled far, were they not? Yes, of course there is the matter of convenience. But consider what I've been showing: if someone wants to sell spell casting for a good profit, are they likely to have a good transportation spell, too?
You need to realize here I'm not saying selling magic items won't happen; I think it will happen plenty. I'm saying outside of price gouging and certain other spots where competition will be limited (e.g. high-penetration combat effects), not taking spell casting into account is leaving out a large part of the supply end, and leaving out a large part of the supply end will give you wonky results.
My apologies. I see what you were trying to achieve with that example now.
Agreed. Demand and supply always move to meet each other.
If mages make lots of items in their lifetimes, with the longevity of the order there will be a bunch of items and arguably a thriving market. The legacy items from deceased magi, or old items living magi have made better versions of, will be in the more established parts of the order. Those on the fringes will tend to have more vis income, so vis for items seems clear. It's a big IF at the start of this paragraph, and what does "lots" even mean?
If magi don't make that many items, traveling magi casting spells is more likely.
Talking supply/demand, there may be a rego corpus focus in those traveling magi though, as learning 7 league stride from nothing is 7 seasons if one has really good sources, and more likely 9 seasons. That's a sizable cost.
Rego corpus items, apart from the ones that let you travel, might be less valuable as there's more rego corpus traveling magic sellers.
I think that's unlikely, keeping in mind two of the three Verditius fraternities allow initiation into a Minor Magical Focus that can be extremely broad when you're enchanting items (swords and wooden wand). And then you add Craft, Philosophae, a lab that - while not specialized in an art, is actually specialized in items - and you don't even need to get to Elder Runes to get an impressive lab total.
I feel like most spellcasting will be for riituals, not least healing and resolving aging crises. And it's likely that those proficient in them will have a reputation, if they are willing to sell their services.
You misunderstand several rules, as you've broken several of them here. You cannot apply Verditius Runes nor Elder Runes to Lesser Enchanted Devices. You can still add Craft, though. Despite this, anyone deciding to specialize in making items will have an item-focused lab, and even if Verditius Runes did work, they add flexibility, not lab total, as anyone can double MT with Shape & Material bonuses. That means the magus with better MT wins out on all but Craft here, both in the lab and in the Shape & Material bonuses; it's actually hard for a Verditius to keep up with a Bonisagus here without also having a MT boost.
Yes, while swords may be an area most people would carry many with them, the handful of those magi with wooden wands could do a fair amount. But there are also those with better Foci, like wood, which covers wooden wands and a ton more stuff.
That's the conventional view, fuelled, I take it, by the fact that ritualists have no competition from items. @callen 's craft magic example is a good one, though. The required finesse means that an item, on its own, will still not do the job to satisfaction. I can also imagine the artisan magus mastering a range of spells for a complex task - say cultivating a garden - where an item would be ridiculously expensive because of the number of the effect, but where half a day of magical work is good value.
There is also a case for some spells at L40-50. Lesser items lose out at this level because they must be created in a single season. Greater devices are significantly more expensive, but spells can be invented by a wider range of magi. Formulaic casting simply takes a lot less work overall than any of the alternatives, even if this is often ignored in play. At lower levels tablets is an alternative; casting L35 from a tablet is rarely a problem for a covenant.
Good point. I focused on the question, namely what a market should look like, to which I really think the answer is that it should look very different in different sagas. And furthermore, it may look very different for different areas of magic. The Hermetic population of 1300 is very small, and the potential product range is immense. It is very plausible that the market may operate as smoothly as you suggest in some areas, and still see small volumes with high and erratic prices in others.
You have a fair point about Lesser Enchanted Devices, which you were talking about, on the mass produced items. That being said, I did want to point out that from my perspective you're wrong in saying a Verditius is no more likely to have an applicable focus than other magi - precisely because it's relatively easy for a Verditius to initiate a relevant magical focus to crafting items, which isn't the case for most other Houses. You don't need to buy it at character creation at all.