flatline wrote:Killer Cyborg wrote:flatline wrote:Spreading rare spells far and wide doesn't require a movement. It just requires a small number of dedicated individuals who can stay one step ahead long enough for those spells to lose their exclusivity.
In order to teach rare spells far and wide, they'd need to be teaching them TO somebody. To lots of somebodies, presumably.
These somebodies would need to be interested in at least accepting the teachings.
So you'd need a large number of people interested in the same thing, and acting on their interest.
That's a movement.
The movement this thread is proposing is about sharing spells on a large scale. If one person happens to teach Talisman to 1000 people, that's not a movement. It becomes a movement if the people he teaches are also recruited to teach others like he has.
If one person happens to teach Talisman to 1,000 people, then that's 1,001 people who are willing to buck traditions (and in some cases laws), to go against the guilds, and to do something different from the standards of their society.
It's getting into semantics, but I count that as a movement.
Also, it takes 2 days per spell level to learn a spell as a rule (BoM 22).
So it takes 26 days to teach one person the Talisman spell. If you teach those 1,000 people one at a time, that's going to be 26,000 days, or 71.23 years of non-stop teaching, without taking a day off.
Of course, it might be possible to teach people in groups... but once the group is large enough, you effectively have a school, one that's dedicated to buck tradition, possibly break the laws, undercut the guilds, etc. Which, again, I'd consider to be a "movement."
Again, though, this is semantics.
But for spells that are in high demand, regular economic pressures are sufficient to drive prices down without the need of any ideological movement behind it.
Generally, yes... but one thing that guilds have always done historically is to artificially interfere with the free market for their own profit.
Since Talisman can be sold for $1M+, there's a strong incentive for those who know Talisman to sell it and make themselves rich. However, the number of potential buyers is extremely small with the price set so high, so the seller is pressured to reduce his selling price in order to expand the pool of potential buyers. As long as the number of sellers remains constant, the price will be set where the sellers think they can maximize revenue. But since every sale increases the the number of potential sellers by one, the more successful you are at finding buyers, the larger the seller pool becomes which means that for a particular seller to maximize their potential revenue from selling the spell, they have to either be better at finding buyers (which probably means advertising...which is potentially dangerous for all the reasons you guys have pointed out) or reducing his price to make more sales to the potential buyers he already has access to ("hey buddy, I don't normally do this, but since I like you so much, I'll give you a great deal! Just don't tell anyone...").
This is why I feel the high prices for highly useful spells is unsustainable. No ideological movement required.
--flatline
I'm guessing that Subjugator and Ed will be able to get into a lot of the economics of it.
For me, other than the guilds, one factor is that I'd say that it'd be killing the golden goose.
Unless you need CR 1,000,000 right NOW, it'd be short-sighted to sell the spell itself instead of simply selling your talisman-making services.
Precisely for the reasons that you're talking about: the more you sell the spell, the less that spell is worth to you. You're decreasing your own profitability by increasing your competition.
You might make a million creds NOW, but you'll be potentially losing out on millions.
Also, I think a lot of your perspective depends on how common all the factors involved are.
Talisman, for example, is a 13th level spell. While any mage with the PPE can cast the spell if they know it... I don't think that a lot of mages would actually know it.
Any mage wishing to pay somebody to teach them that spell would first have to find a seller that actually knows the spell to begin with. According to RUE 190, there's only a 10% chance of a magic seller even having that spell available, and that's only out of the shops/colleges that deal in high end spells at all.
Because (and I quote)
Most magic shops and even colleges do NOT offer the full range of spells (levels 1-4 are most common) and many shops will not be able to teach spells at all.And
...it is the rare community outside of the Magic Zone that even has a magic shop of any kind; most wilderness towns do NOT. On the other hand, there is likely to be 1d4 magic shops of some kind (perhaps mobile; and probably only a couple dozen spells from levels 1-4) in one or two of the CS Burbs.So you're not going to learn Talisman in the Coalition States territories. You're not going to learn it in a wilderness community or town.
You might have a change in the Magic Zone, in a large community... but only a chance.
And there aren't all THAT many major magical communities in the Magic Zone. With only a 10% chance of each place even having Talisman, it's actually possible for a mage to travel the entire magic zone looking for that spell only to discover that NOBODY there has it for sale.
Perhaps the character will look for somebody he can trade with for the magic, but I suspect that the same scarcity issues would be involved. Especially since the actual text under the "Trade For Magic" section of RUE 190 reads:
Much more common than purchasing invocation for credits is trading one's services (or the service of the group) in exchange for a couple of mid or high-level spells (levels 5-9). The more powerful the spell, the more dangerous the work.Notice that level 10+ spells aren't even mentioned as an option here. There's not even a 10% chance that anybody would trade this spell. There MIGHT be exceptions, of course, but just wanting to know the spell doesn't mean that you could find anybody who had the spell for trade. And even if you do, you have to remember
the more powerful the spell, the more dangerous the work."
And the spell you're looking for is 4 levels more powerful than the "high level" spells listed as being available.
You can also try to trade with demons for the spell, if you can find demons who know the spell... but there are plenty of reasons why this isn't all that popular of a method of learning magic.
You can learn spells as boons and grants from kingdoms, guilds, priests, and gods... but, again, it doesn't sound like it'd be that common to find high level spells this way. Also, the opportunity to have a god teach you a spell is probably not too common.
Then there's the Guilds, which is perhaps the most reliable way to learn magic. In which case, you have to pledge your loyalty, and do work for the guild, generally over a long period of time, as they determine how loyal and trustworthy you are.
And, again, that's mostly stuff under level 10:
[i]Spell knowledge is power, thus it is guarded jealously by most mages. Even in the friendly and open magic societies like Lazlo, New Lazlo, and (the former) Tolkeen, there are some spells that are guarded secrets, rarely taught. These generally include most spells above level 10. The easiest spells to find are levels 1-4, followed by levels 5-7. Beyond this, the secrets of magic are just that, secret.The only official chance you have of a Guild teaching you Talisman is (assuming that the Guild knows the spell at all),
an incredible act of heroics or self sacrifice, which can earn you 1d4+2 spells from levels 1-6, OR
any one spell from any level beyond six.So IF you're a guild member, AND you make an
incredible act of heroism or self sacrifice in order to help the guild, THEN you
might be able to learn Talisman.
But, being a Guild member, you have made oaths of loyalty to the Guild, and have to abide by Guild laws and price regulations.... so undercutting their prices wouldn't be a realistic option, unless you're willing to break your word, get kicked out of the guild, and probably killed.
If you're NOT a guild member, then the best you can get out of a guild by performing heroics on their behalf is a couple spells from levels 1-5.