One thing about magic that a lot of people don’t think about is how much it costs to cast a spell or buy a magical item. Most published roleplaying games have a table that shows how much these things cost, but let’s look at what these things means. For reference, I’m going to use the Pathfinder Roleplaying game, because the information is published online and therefore easy to use. All the information can be found here.

For a typical person, I’m going to use the wage for a trained hireling, which is 3 silver pieces (sp) per day. The convention is that 10 sp is 1 gold piece (gp). Here is the price, in days, for some common spells and magic items:

• Bless from an apprentice priest (1st level): 33.3 days
• Remove paralysis (3rd level priest, minimum): 200 days
• Remove disease (5th level priest, minimum): 500 days
• Wand of Cure Light Wounds: 2500 days (6.86 years)

So what does this mean? Apparently, learning even a basic, but useful spell is a sure path to fabulous wealth. Imagine that you are a 1st level bard and have Cure Light Wounds as a spell. This spell costs you nothing to cast and having even a modicum of talent will allow you to cast it three times per day. You could literally set up shop in an inn, call yourself a magical healer, and every time someone gets hurt, you could charge them three days wages (9 sp, less than 1/10 the listed price), and make a relative fortune. You only need one cure spell every THREE days to make the same wage as a skilled hireling! Imagine if you could actually get people to pay the list price. You’d only need to cast it once a MONTH to make the same amount as a any other skilled laborer. If you can get people to pay you the listed 10 gp per casting and cast all of them every day, you’d be able to buy a warship in a little over 2 years.

The cheapest magical armor costs 1000 gp, which translates to everything a skilled laborer makes in wages in nine years, one month, and seventeen days. The least powerful magical sword is twice as much, which means to get one requires a skilled worker would have to work over eighteen years without spending any money on anything to get one.

How is that possible? In my opinion, it isn’t.

There is no economic reason for items this expensive to exist. The reason things in the game cost this much is for game and balance purposes, not for any real reason. If magic is common in the world (and in Pathfinder it is), the cost of some of these things are just simply too high. If they do cost this much, then magical items in particular have to be fantastically rare. The idea that someone could create a magical item worth 1000 gp every day (seriously, here’s the rule) at a cost of 250 gp per day (a single masterwork armor) means that the market for +1 magical armor would be flooded within a year. The price would eventually drop to something not much more than the cost of masterwork armor, and if you could buy magical armor for 260 gp, why would you buy non-magical armor for 250 gp? One 5th level caster with the right feats and skill could destroy your entire economy in less than a decade while becoming so rich as to be able to buy the planet.

When designing your setting, think about who would demand these items and services, and how much are they able and willing to pay. Healing is the most obvious thing to think about. Who wouldn’t want to be healed or cured in seconds rather than weeks or months? If magical items are going to be fantastically expensive (as described above), then they are also going to be rare.

Remember, the prices for things are set by supply, demand, and competition in most economies. If someone can flood a market with goods, the price of those goods will drop. Easily created, highly profitable goods (like the magical armor in the example above) are the most obvious places where this can happen.

Let me know what you think in the comments below. Next week, I’m going to discuss how magic changes warfare. Thanks for reading and see you next Sunday!