What's a good currency for a city of mages? Mana crystals?

Again, why would you need a currency if you can just make whatever you want? Why bother storing it? It's not a limited resource.

The GM I primarily play with wrote some novels for his fantasy setting (which isn't cringed because he's actually a decent author), one of them deals with a group of "mages" who've elevated themselves in flying cities, and built magic items to do everything they would ever need done, make any food, clothing, anything. It happened generations ago, and the citizenry have become a ton of lazy fat fucks who don't really know magic, and don't actually do anything, because why would you ever need to.

Point being: Why would you need currency if everything you want can be conjured with little more than the wave of a hand?

Magic is a limited resource user. In like every game or system. MP, limited castings, mana, etc. A wizard can't go casting spells willy nilly, there is a limit.

Food
The city runs on epicurean novelty
Magically synthesizing food uses the exact amount of magical energy as you would get from metabolizing it

They're doing wizards wrong then, and should be discarded.

Physical commodities are only one corner of the triangle. The other two are unskilled labor (for OP's setting this is probably baseline mana/casts regeneration rather than physical work; you may be able to create 10,000 GP a cast 9 casts a day but some days you're gong to want 100,000 GP) and luxury goods/services (any mage can magic up a stack of blank tomes, but only a few write the rules for Elevators & Expensereports. Any mage can conjure rations, but only a few are master chefs, as that's as much creativity in what to serve as preparation. Any mage can wave a 50-pound gold brick into existence, but only a few can turn it into a beautiful, unique ring.)

>Aww gee, I'm out of spells/mana/whateverthefuck!
>Guess I'll go take a nap and get it allllll back tomorrow!

Wow, so limited.

> all wizard games and rpgs were doing it wrong
I find that unlikely.

Again, it's like energy in Alpha Centauri. They take it from the sun which technically makes it renewable, but there is a limit of how much they can take (number of solar panels for example).

If magic is limited, that means gold must be limited too, so use gold as currency.

1d4chan.org/wiki/Why_Magic_Items_Cost_Gold

I cannot possibly imagine a more pointless and boring setting than one in which wizards are literally omnipotent

>Aww gee, I'm out of money
>Guess I will wait my next welfare check
>I didn't need energy or water or food anyway

That's not how it works user. A society that depends on magic REALLY depends on magic. Lamps, magic elevators, magic servants... all those things need magic to work.

The problem through is that magic makes gold unfit to be a currency. It's like the reason we changed gold for money. Magic however has the advantage of not being a 'magic promise' that is backed by a country.

>The problem through is that magic makes gold unfit to be a currency.

Not if you don't want it too. Alchemists IRL considered gold to be a special metal, spiritually and physically pure. The idea of transmuting base metals to gold was considered the peak of alchemical practice, not something routine. You don't have to make it a common thing. It might even be a plot point that the greatest alchemist in the city is able to make gold from lead and has a grip on the economy (but knows well enough not to crash it).

If they can just make anything they want, why do they need currency?

You would employ the most cunning demonic artificers to create the most impossibly intricate coinage that they can create using their full breadth of ability in an arbitrary amount of time.

The value of these coins are backed by the time itself used to create them.

Wizcoin

I don't understand what you're trying to get at here. Are you comparing money to magic? Because that's stupid and you know it. You don't have to wait for somebody to give you your magic back. You don't have to do anything once you've spent it. It literally renews itself whenever you go to bed or stop using it or however the refresh mechanic in your system of choice works. It isn't anything remotely like a paycheck, you fucking imbecile.

Can magic make exact duplicates easily?

Because if individual manufacturing is the big problem, we already have counterfeiters who needs to have significant skill to make something passable

> You don't have to wait
You literally have. It takes time to refresh magic.

> You don't have to do anything once you've spent it.
Except you are ignoring all those things with magic upkeep. Or your magic limitations.

> It isn't anything remotely like a paycheck, you fucking imbecile.
It is in the sense that you receive it periodically. And that you use it to take the things that you do.

You could live only on it, but if you want to have a more lavish life you need to have other power sources. How did you miss the point so bad?

You don't wait for someone to give you your labor back, you just sleep for 8 hours and you can work again, yet you get your $7.25 an hour at McDonald's for it.

Top kek.

You seemed to have missed the point yourself. I said that you don't have to wait for someone to give you your magic back. Go back and fucking read it idiot. Then read it again, and keep reading it until it sinks in. Other people don't control how much magic you get. Ever.
You don't have to work to get your magic. It's nothing like a paycheck.

Arguably the comparison would be more apt if you got $58 for the day for sleeping for eight hours.

>I will act mad, that will improve my position
Not really.

The fact you are paid money is irrelevant. The point (which you missed) is that magic feeds upon your own energy, just like your labor. There is a reason why wizards get fatigued when they get carried away with spells. You also refresh your labor each day, which you can use to trade for money.

But that actually isn't even the original point really, because I said welfare check. My original point is that even through you could try to survive with your own inner reserve, it would be a pretty mediocre standard of life when compared with those wizards who actually earn more magic.

>it would be a pretty mediocre standard of life
Blatantly false. You can conjure yourself a lavish four course meal with the same spell you can use to make a bowl of gruel.

>when compared with those wizards who actually earn more magic.
Can you actually read the paragraph before replying?

A wizard who has more reserve magic can feed more things of constant upkeep, cast more spells and summon things of greater value.

Oh, so now you're just making shit up? Fine, yeah, we can play that game. Now every time a wizard casts a spell his dick shrinks a little bit. Now nobody uses magic, fuck you I win forever.

Knowledge. Deflates in value the more you use it.

How about you describe some rules on how magic works in your setting before posting a vague retarded question no one but you could hope to answer?

Just y'know something to consider?

Gold

They have a lot of tools to sniff out magic gold.

> user is unable to understand the utility of spell battery
Alrighty then.

Sexual favors

Have to agree. If in your world magic can do anything and provide sustenance and shelter with minimal investment then you basically have a welfare state. Except that the welfare and free housing comes from nowhere rather than having an impact on people.

Economy would probably crash because there is no limit to resources and supply would exceed the demand. You have to rethink your world building at that point.

People have been answering just fine. Except of course those who think that wizards are almight beings (which is weird because there is literally no mainstream system where this happens).

Basically pick your favorite fantasy world.

>having a setting where mages can just make shit out of thin air
First mistake.

Souls

Could be worse. Could be druids.

>golds becomes trivial
Do you even magic?
Gold's specific resonating frequency.
Gold's ability to be morphed and moved.
Gold's ability to withstand rust, and not wear away.

In most games a "Midas Touch" spell is not allowed, while a Fool's Gold spell is (illusion spell). You can take alchemist levels in some games, that's fine. You're the one sacrificing your experience for it.
However gold is just as limited as anything else and it has specific traits that all person's from any species would like.

Gold is only trivial if you make it so.

Slaves.

>depends on le setting

Just a heads up: the only metal that rusts is iron. That's not an unique quality.

Depend on how your magic works.
If it's something like "create things out of nowhere with the power of your mind", then the whole idea of currency is unnecessary as you're pretty much a demigod.
Books of spells is pretty much the only that could be valuable in a world with that type of magic

There is actually a spell named Transmute Gold which creates real gold. It does require experience through.

Actually that gave me an idea: experience points as currency. That's also worth looking at.

Why bother with currency? Why not pay in time?

>I'd like a dozen eggs and a cabbage
>That'd be 5 hours and 35 minutes

> wizards buy lifetime from mortals to have more time to live and burn
That's pretty interesting too.

>please be impressed by my amazing setting with alternative physics

The fuck you smoking?
Not everyone in a Magocracy is going to be reality warping geniuses.
Therefore it stands to reason that a society totally reliant on magic to run will have various standards of life depending on the ability of the individual.
So the shitter mage, if they want a better lifestyle, will rely on more masterful wizards to provide it.

Magic could be used as a currency but it would make more sense for it to run like said.

Currency is worth what it can be traded for. There's not much cause for mages to make their own currnecy unless the entire community using it is also a country or city-state of its own. Altneratively, wizards exist in mundane communities and use the local currency and trade in that or other foriegn currencies because of their value to other mages; "I have twenty GP in Faerun currency and you're travellng there next week to make another "chosen one" so that'll cover your bus fare if you give me fifty "dollars" to make some quick bets and arrangements on third-earth."

Gold is trivial on the local basis, as can most physical currencies, but fucking over ecconomy by shitting out billions into the thorp next door is shitting in your back yard fiscally speaking.

The currency of mages is knowledge.

An entire city of wizards seems unlikely as magic isn't exactly an easy thing to learn (in most settings).
It requires you to dedicate yourself to the art, which would make getting the city started impossible as you would not have enough wizards to run the city yet.

It would more likely be the wizards would become the rulers forming a Magocracy and they will not make it easy or cheap to learn magic (I imagine) as they would then lose their hold over the Magocracy.

Therefore gold would still be the currency but mana crystals would be more valuable than gold but also more limited (depending on how you imagine mana crystals to work).

If mana crystals allow the wizard to cast more than he normally would or allow him to cast spells beyond what he could every hope to without the crystal than the crystals would become very dangerous to keep and the wizards may just take them or impose laws claiming the city-states ownership over them.

Gold would therefore be used by the lower class and the crystals would be used between the ruling class as they (being wizards and rulers) would have an abundance of gold making it worthless between wizard-lords.

Yes, some form of crystalline mana or magical energy would work quite well.

So they're not all reality warping geniuses but they can all warp reality by creating gold from nothing? So instead they should use crystals which can be created without reality warping magic just enough pressure?

Also what kind of magic is this where they can literally make precious metals out of nothing but they can't improve their own lifestyle?

Trouble is Money tends to have two functions: both as representative of something and as Medium of Exchange, and magic scrolls hit the problem that they can't be verified without being destroyed through use by a mage.

You likely, even if you made it the de jure official currency of the realm, end up with a situation where the majority of all economic transaction would be barter based, and circulation would be paradoxically low but inflation ridiculously high (because, as the only taxable income medium, you'd have a weird upper class of money changers who do nothing but convert scrolls back and forth into barterable good every payday/tax season for the working classes, thus the majority of all transactions in scrolls would be by these money changers who can pay more and thus will be charged more, driving inflation up)

You also usually want taxable income to be in a medium that is useful to the state (hence why even in medieval countries with fiat or metal backed currencies like China or japan, taxes were paid in rice because the state needs that to maintain the state's armies, military and nobility.

And then you have the problem of the mageocracy trading with other nearby states.

This is why I propose the perfect unit of currency for a mageocracy is peices of plate armor - the mages at the top of the society have no use for it, they are easily checked and verified by even the lowest levels of society, both their own society as a whole and neighbouring countries have use of it for practical matters, making it a powerful thing for the mageocracy to hoard and control.

>warp reality by creating gold from nothing
No, Jimmy, gold comes from the earth.
You dig for it.
Then smelt it.
Then mint it into coin.

Memories/knowledge/data. You can't create that out of thin air.

How would you manage to use that as currency then? Do you have to tell a funny story about your childhood when you buy a burger?

Not him, but you could pay 1 INT.

You would have to have 1 INT to think Knowledge would make a good currency for a City-State.

If a wizard dies after -24 hours of not having spells, and didn't plan his day out better so he had some when he needed them, then he deserved to die.

Then make gold not reproducible by magic?

Not him, really, just thinking a way it could work.

In DnD you pay experience to make artifacts that permanently raise stats. Therefore it's not impossible to think about a society where currency is stats.

A INT however is very powerful. But I could see a player trading like a few permanent HP for a magic item.

The setting sounds almost dystopian.

Yes, it would fall like human resources. Just like if using souls.

I always thought it was weird you suddenly lose a bunch of experience to make artifacts.
I suppose at that point you would earn it back no problem but it still irks me.

Would be better to make the materials required super rare and maybe require a powerful soul than suck your experience away.
Would make more sense in my mind.

A society that is entirely run by magic would grow it crops magically so it makes sense that the farmer wizard would need spells reserved for food and water.
But I think this whole idea of an entire city of wizards is stupid and nonsensical due to reasons explained here .

Long story short

1.) Material that can't be made by magic

2.) Energy for magic

3.) Handmade stuff could be pretty vaulable too, since your society seems like they got alot of magic, actually investing time into something is a luxury.

Also looking at our society

4.) The promoise of value.
Read it up almost no currency this day is backed by any sort of material value.

Funny aside: There was an MMO that ended up working like that.
There used to be no currency and no trade aside from dropping items for people, but it was a roguelike and there was class exclusive gear that people wanted to offload and stat-up potions that everyone needed to cap and be able to attempt endgame content.
So you got an emergent economy where the various varieties of stat-up potion became denominations of currency based on how much of each was needed and how rare each was. The basic 'coinage' became the potion for the DR stat, because it couldn't be gained through leveling and everyone needed it.

the game went down the toilet with MTX but I'll always remember the economy.

Sounds pretty neat, what was it called?
Got any stories to tell about it?

Almost every currency these days is backed by x minutes of ditch-digging or burger-flipping. Which makes even more sense in a magic-driven post-material-scarcity economy, each level 1 scroll comes out worth exactly 1/9th of a day of the lowest-engagement labor.

>Almost every currency these days is backed by x minutes of ditch-digging or burger-flipping.

No, they're backed by the US dollar, which is backed by ALL THE AIRCRAFT CARRIERS

So the money is only worth it's own value.
Which is in real terms only the promoise that somebody gives me something when i hand them pieces of paper/metal.

why? Do we use blood vials as currency?

Doublegold
It's like gold but better

Depends. Are we vampires?

Why would vampire use blood vials as currency? do we use bread as currency?

Realm of the Mad God. Don't bother with it these days, it got bought by a cashout company years ago and lost a lot of what made it unique. Even before that it was pretty grindy.

And most stories around it don't have anything to do with the thread topic. It had some neat balance (or lack of) and mechanics for classes but how useful those would be for possible porting I have no idea. I could try reading up on it again and writing out thoughts later.

> blood is used to recover HP
> blood is also used to keep yourself 'alive'
> blood is also used to keep the beast in check
> blood is also used to activate vampire powers
It may as well be.

Plus:
> blood has an effect as a drug better than heroin

>> blood is used to recover HP
That's one big reason to NOT use it as a currency.

Currency is suppose to fluctuate, if you eat it then your currency is worthless.

Again, why don't we use bread as currency if something that keeps up alive and active our neurons could be used as currency?

If your Magic runs on some sort of energy, use that. Even better if you have something that can hold it like crystals or some such.

Salt used to be currency.

I mean, that's basically how the greater planes work. Angels and Devils and shit don't trade with coins, especially when someone, somewhere has a gate to the Elemental Plane of Gold, they trade with bits of life force and soul. Someone else's, usually.

.... Does anyone have a good history of how player created magic items was handled?

4e had it basically be a way to get common magic items without being in town

You just reminded me of a book i once read.
The magical premise was, that wizards or some other mojo dude found a metal which was able to channle a very specific kind of enchantment/curse.

The enchantment/curse would allow you to basically steal [mostly] physical attributes, like strength, endurance and even beauty from one person and "brand" the worked and enchanted metal was pretty much a brand iron onto another person.

The person whos attribute was taken would loose most of it, get weaker, slower, heinous ugly. One kingdom took good care of those branded, while others just used slaves. Those who recived the brands could literally become superhuman, jumping up walls in full plate armor and shit like that.

Also every person could be "giver" of all their attributes only once, so when the branded died, their attribute would return to them and they can't give anybody else a power up.

Well said metal was very expensive and sought after and therefore a strategic resource and a display of wealth, so only nobles could afford it.

Just use magic fucking coins. Coins with an enchantment that is difficult and illegal to reproduce. It's fiat money.

Well that's also how the soulsborne games work - in game currency is also XP you need to level up (though I suppose another way of looking at it is you gotta buy levels)

It's funny how much you can just port modern stuff into fantasy settings to explain how stuff works.

The soulsborne meta doesn't need to make sense in universe, because it mostly looks good and is hard.

The price for things doesn't depend on the number of blood echos in circulation, despite that being how things actually work.

Something something sufficiently advanced technology is magic, mumble grumble.
Don't even get me started on how a wizard makes the most sense if the wizard is accessing a magic server.

Gold.

If you get caught magicking up gold, you get a pair of mage-hunters sent to your door.

> Secrets
> True Names
> Spell components (physical)
> Spell components (words, incantations, drawings, compositions, etc.)
> Spell slots
> Age / Life force
> Slaves
> Books
> History