Re: RE: (TFT) Magic Item Economics]

["Ty Beard" <tbeard@tyler.net>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "Matt Fraser" <mfraser@canada.com>
To: <tft@brainiac.com>


> >From: "Ty Beard" <tbeard@tyler.net>
> > Charm (+2) - 17,381 too expensive
>
> If you want to sell Charm  (+2) for a mear ~$83000, go ahead.  I play in
> Rick's campaign where the price of Charms has been multiplied by 10 and
they
> are *still* in demand.  Charms are just that good.  Perhaps some items are
> more expensive than they should be for game balance, or just because of
> supply and demand.  Of course, if you go by strict TFT

Well, please understand that I am making an economic assessment, not a play
balance assessment. What I'd recommend is that GM's simply adjust the
requirements to make such items so that their "selling price" bears a
reasonable relationship to their cost to produce.

Otherwise, it becomes a problem if you have campaigns in which time goes by
quickly and PC mages regularly craft magic items.

Given that when Steve Jackson created TFT most people hadn't heard of
spreadsheets (Visicalc was the only program around in 1980 IIRC), a few
errors can be forgiven...

> >7 hex Magic Carpet - 30,828 too expensive
>
> >From: "David Michael Grouchy II"
> >    Yes, I have found the same thing.  My analysis gave me the impression
> > that Flying carpets should be everywhere.  The are absurdly profitable
to
> > make.  There is almost no reason to make anything else.  The world of
> Cidri
> > should have traffic jams of flying carpets, cause there would be so
many.
>
> I think you read this backwards.  He said it was too expensive, not too
> cheap.  If 7 hex magic carpets were ~$19000, yes, everyone would have
them,
> but as I mentioned above, they are *very* useful and the demand would
drive
> up the price.  Not to mention that you probably probably don't distances
to
> become meaningless to your players.  Sometimes the journey is half the
fun.

Same problem as with the charm. The cost to make this item is far less (as a
percentage of its selling price) than for most magic items. Thus, wizards
would be better off only making magic carpets. Again, I submit that the
solution is to merely adjust the requirements so that the item is more
expensive to make.

As an aside, I have discovered what I believe to be another economic flaw in
TFT. A TFT soldier (recruit), etc., makes about $50 per week. This means
that a suit of plate armor can be had for about 10x a week's wages for a
recruit. Yet the medieval price list at
http://www.gamedev.net/reference/articles/article251.asp#wages indicates
that a soldier in medieval England made about 1 shilling per day or 5s per
week, while a suit of plate ("ready-made Milanese armor") costs 166s. So it
appears that plate in medieval England was about 3x more expensive than its
TFT counterpart. Here's a summary of the armor costs (as a multiple of a
recruit's weekly wages) in TFT:

Armor    TFT    Medieval
Cloth        x1        --
Leather     x2        x1
Chain        x4        x20
Half Plate    x6      x24 ("squire's armor"?)
Plate        x10        x33

When one considers that a TFT armorer makes $100 per week, it seems that TFT
armorers must work fast indeed. Assuming that the armorer wants to double
his money (to cover the cost of iron, equipment, fuel, etc.), this means
that he can turn out a full suit of plate armor in 2.5 weeks!

So it appears that armor pricing in TFT may be off as well.

--Ty
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