Quote from: Will;798631Continual flame. Continual flame costs 50 gp. It costs resources to make one.

 50gp doesn't have to reflect the resources needed to make the Continual Flame. It can also reflect the time required to make the Continual Flame. It could reflect the expected return on investment on the training of the caster to make the Continual Flame. Or it could be the highest price the market would bear for a Continual Flame.

More information that is not in the book is needed to figure why the Continual Flame is 50 gp. It is in that ambiguity that plausible reasons can be constructed to support any type role for Continual Flame for any type of setting.

The real question should be, if I have a setting that works like X what plausible reason exists for Continual Flame being worth 50 gp.

So if towns do not have street light system made with Continual Flames, yet Continual Flames are worth 50gp what plausible reason could there be for that situation? And that the right answer.

If your setting does have street light system then a different answer is need to explain why Continual Flames cost 50 gp.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;798636Making a helicopter ALWAYS requires a ton of resources.  So I repeat, horrible analogy.

Do you not get the difference between continual flame and continual light? Wtf, dude?

Continual flame costs 50 gp. Every single time.

There is a huge difference between 50 gp and a 3rd level caster's time, and 0 gp and a 3rd level caster's time.

Quote from: estar;798637More information that is not in the book is needed to figure why the Continual Flame is 50 gp. It is in that ambiguity that plausible reasons can be constructed to support any type role for Continual Flame for any type of setting.

Well, no.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/continualFlame.htm

'Material Component
You sprinkle ruby dust (worth 50 gp) on the item that is to carry the flame. '

Also, by 3e rules ( http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/goodsAndServices.htm#spellcastingAndServices ), the normal amount a wizard could expect to charge for casting this spell is 60 gp (plus the 50 gp for the ruby dust)

Quote from: Will;798638Do you not get the difference between continual flame and continual light? Wtf, dude?

Continual flame costs 50 gp. Every single time.

There is a huge difference between 50 gp and a 3rd level caster's time, and 0 gp and a 3rd level caster's time.

And do you get that we're not just talking about 3e?  Wtf dude?

Quote from: Sacrosanct;798642And do you get that we're not just talking about 3e?  Wtf dude?

OH goddamn it.

My bad. I could have sworn you said continual flame in a few places you didn't. Sorry about that.

(Stupid spells being similar but different)

First off a general statement. It is nice when a rule system takes the care, like ACKS, Harnmaster, GURPS, etc)  did in carefully designating premises and following through on the implications through the system. GURPS designates 1 point in a skill worth X hours of learning, ACKS built up a economic foundation and followed it through in setting up treasures and monsters. Harnmaster is tight model of how the Harn setting works which more or less based on 12th century England.

However not everybody interested in that. More important there is a consequence to having that design element in your game. That being your game is now tied to those premises.

Sometimes you want to sell a game that is more general purpose. Able to handle a wider variety of settings and premises. One technique to do this is to make things a more ambiguous as to why they are the way they are. That way referees can use the supplied aides, like price lists, 'as is' and still come up with a plausible reason for how it works in their campaign.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;798636According to the rules?  however long it takes a PC to get enough XP, which if you look at multi-classing, could be as short as a few days (sessions).

Yes, that is the default. And that was clearly chosen for out of game reason and not to model a setting. I would be surprised if alternatives to this are not addressed in the upcoming DMG.

In my opinion to take this as a model for how a setting is clearly a silly thing. I realize that is insulting but come on. It is clearly 100% a mechanic oriented to the game not how Mearls and his team thinks the D&D setting would really operate if you were standing there.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;798636Also, how many continual light stones do you expect to be stolen or lost?  if they're constantly being created, I don't imagine there's be a huge market for them theft wise.

Their utility value. Some things are just that useful to have around. A never dimming light source would be extremely attractive to a wide section of the populace. And if a particular realm is really good at policing for thefts then what will happen is a smuggling operation will arise to get the lights out and sold outside of the realms to say like the local barbarians.

Doesn't mean policing will not occur, it will become a continual cat and mouse game between the authorities and the smugglers with one or the other gaining the upper hand.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;798636This is just one thing that would occur in setting up a continual light system.
And more importantly, once you know how to cast continual light (or produce flame), you can keep doing it without any need for additional resources

Time is a resource, it requires an investment of time on the part of the magic-user to be part of the continual light system.

If you want a better analogy then software provides. Near zero cost to reproduce, expensive to produce. Requires a lot of training to be even be able to make it but once done millions of copies can be created in a blink of an eye.  But if you start a software business you will find that ability to freely make copies to be a very minor thing it all the other things you have to do.

Now it not a perfect analogy, that not the point. The idea is that you have to look at the whole picture to understand why things are they way they are. You are focusing solely on the fact that a Continual Light cantrip or Continual Flame items can be made easily and ignoring other factor that can contribute to a cost.

My point is that the other factors are NOT SPECIFIED in any level of detail in the 5e rulesut. In short it is up to referee to come up with the reasons way. Furthermore that it is my opinion that it was purposely designed this way to make the 5e system applicable to as many settings as possible.

Quote from: Will;798644OH goddamn it.

My bad. I could have sworn you said continual flame in a few places you didn't. Sorry about that.

(Stupid spells being similar but different)

Even if we were, it doesn't impact the overall point of the discussion, that being that at-wills break the world because spells become free and you can cast them forever.  And I'm saying that that has been largely true since the beginning.

It's just one of those things, like the economy in general (all these adventurers pumping thousands of gold into small towns would have a pretty significant effect akin to a gold rush, but no one ever actually plays their games that way), the ecology, or any number of other things that we if nitpick for realism, would break the world.  But we generally just ignore them because it's not fun.

Sure... though neither Continual light nor Continual flame are at-will, so I'm not sure how we got sidetracked into that.

Sorry estar, but I disagree.  In one situation, you can have the capability to do something after a week, and once so, it takes negligible effort or time sink.  You can cast a continual light on a stone while you're taking a shit.

Every time you make a helicopter, it's a HUGE sink of not only time, but of resources.  A tremendous amount.  Trying to compare something that is very rare and extremely difficult to produce each time with something that is pretty common and extremely easy to reproduce is a horrible analogy any which way you look at it.

I also think you way overstate the need to upkeep said stones in order for them to be very commonplace.  How many people go around stealing flashlights now?  if something is very common, and extremely easy to produce with little effort or time, then it's value is minimal.  Basic economics.

Quote from: Will;798639Well, no.

http://www.d20srd.org/srd/spells/continualFlame.htm

'Material Component
You sprinkle ruby dust (worth 50 gp) on the item that is to carry the flame. '

Also, by 3e rules ( http://www.d20srd.org/srd/equipment/goodsAndServices.htm#spellcastingAndServices ), the normal amount a wizard could expect to charge for casting this spell is 60 gp (plus the 50 gp for the ruby dust)

Sure, that works. If that part of the premise of your setting go with it. This particular debate got started over the fact that a person can cast a 5e cantrip every six seconds.

But that only effect my point in regards to 3e and only because 3e has an aide, not rules mind you, an aide that spells out how Continual Flame can produced for a campaign.

One thing about these debate people forget that RPGs rulebooks have several different kinds of material in them. The one I am going to highlight are rules and aides.

A rule describe how to adjudicate a action. I need to hit something? How many spells I can cast in a round? What does a fireball do?

And aide describe an element to be used in a campaign. The Continual Flame is a aide. It describe a item that a referee can include in his setting for use in a campaign. The problem stems when people confuses aides for rules. A setting could have Continual Flame be completely different or not exist at all.

Now you probably realize this anyway. But I am pointing it out because this thread is example of the widespread problem of treating tabletop RPGs rules like they are sacred text.

And Mearls and the designers of 5e realize this this a problem which is why 5e is not going to clarify this for people. It designed to useful and flexible. It is not designed to reflect a ready made out of the box consistent setting.  This is the critical point that will break 5e for hard core fans of D&D 4e and 3e/Pathfinder.

With 5e if you want a consistent setting you will have to define it yourself and pick the options to make it so. The rulebooks are not going to do that for you.  Or you can opt for one of the campaign books that are coming out like the one they are going to release in the spring for the Elemental Evil adventures.

Quote from: Sacrosanct;798652Sorry estar, but I disagree.  In one situation, you can have the capability to do something after a week, and once so, it takes negligible effort or time sink.  You can cast a continual light on a stone while you're taking a shit.

There you go, that the root of your issue. You feel that in 5e it only takes a week to learn to cast a cantrip thus having an outsize impact on the campaign setting.

Guess what? I am not arguing with you on that point. If something like a mend cantrip only takes a week to learn then the resulting setting will be vastly different than our own history from the point is become widespread knowledge.

Of course you could say that the setting is set in the time between when it was first invented and when it became widespread knowledge. I would argue that if a mending cantrip discovered in the CIty Greyhawk in CY 576 it would take at least a generation before is spreads to the western and eastern extremes of Flaness. I would feel that good case could be made that it would take at least a century and then another century before someobody figures out how to industrialize it.

Regardless it is my opinion that the 5e rules does not state that it takes a week for a peasant to learn a cantrip. Doesn't state anything at all except for  the specific instance of a magic using class seeking to fill a newly acquired cantrip slot.

You take to mean that if I hand a peasant the same amount of gold and give him the same amount of time that he too can learn the cantrip, I don't.

Quote from: Emperor Norton;798588I go by the logic of practically unlimited rather than literally unlimited.

Basically: An adventuring magic caster is not likely to cast cantrips in a day enough to really hit their limit. That doesn't mean there is no limit, it just means there is no reason to do bean counting on it.

If it starts getting excessive, I'll start making players make some sort of checks, either con or magic casting stat, to prevent exhaustion. The same I would for a Fighter if he said he was going to run 10 hours straight.

EDIT: As a note, I don't really count arrows either. I just generally assume if you bought arrows and/or can fletch you have enough arrows unless we start getting into situations where you couldn't recover arrows, were constantly on the run, and had very little contact with society to buy more. Magic arrows, of course, are always counted.

I think the comparison to the Fighter who says he is going to sprint full speed for 10 hours without pause or rest is a good one. (I changed the comparison from “run” to “sprint full speed” because normal, trained people actually can run 10 hours straight.)

But I also can see where someone who is used to actually tracking the expenditure of arrows, torches, oils, etc. would be uncomfortable with the lack of a specific limit. Aside from exercises in Scholastic Logic, I don't think either approach (specfic limit or unspecfic limit) will break 5E.

Quote from: Will;798638There is a huge difference between 50 gp and a 3rd level caster's time, and 0 gp and a 3rd level caster's time.

It’s a 50 gp difference. That is a difference, but it’s not what I’d call a “huge difference.”

Quote from: Sacrosanct;798604Yep.  You answered before I did.  It's not a false equivalency of 1x per day (it's actually a few times, depending on level of spell and PC, but whatevs) vs all day if your time frame spans decades.  I.e., both would result in a continual light stone in every house, and that's the relevant part of the argument.

It's just one of those things you don't worry about because it's nitpicking away the believability of the game.  Just like ecology.  There's no way all these monsters in the D&D world could live together in a world that otherwise mirrors the middle ages in our world from an ecological standpoint.  But we ignore it because hey, fantasy.


And I'm pretty sure we already had this conversation just a month or so ago.

We did.

Heres the counterpoint though. The argument above doesnt take into account the fact that these things can, and will end up snuffed every time a fight breaks out and someone drops a dispell magic. Or some Chaotic Neutral nut mage rampages snuffing every other one he spots. Not to mention the first thing a mind flayer or drow invasion is going to do is lights out.

Theres going to be some attrition over time. Requiring someone to replace the bulb. Especially in 5th ed where Continual Flames duration is "until dispelled" not to mention its 50gp in ruby every time.

Now what gave me a quirk was the description of a city, Elturel, in the Hoard of the Dragon Queen module which states it is lit by an eternally glowing mini-sun that lights up a huge area around the city like daylight.

Quote from: Will;798644OH goddamn it.

My bad. I could have sworn you said continual flame in a few places you didn't. Sorry about that.

(Stupid spells being similar but different)

5e Continual Flame also costs 50gp in ruby dust each time it is cast.

Quote from: Bren;798659It's a 50 gp difference. That is a difference, but it's not what I'd call a "huge difference."

try doing it 1000 times and then come back and we can discuss