Gold for P.P.E.!!!

[Eryk Stormbright]

Interesting.... very Interesting.

[DarkwingDuk]

Soylent PPE is PEOPLE

[azazel1024]

Could simply be a 'matching service' that sets up willing donors with mages who need the PPE for rituals.

I am sure there are plenty of people who'd take an evening out of their week for 100 gold to stand around and chant some stuff and give up some mystical essence that they can't see or care about to some muckety muck wizard who wants to cast some spell.

Plenty who'd be scared spitless, but magic isn't THAT uncommon in PFRPG. Course it probably wouldn't work for some horrible evil ritual.
-Matt

[Cap'n Nick]

You know this is tantamount to selling a portion of your own soul for some cash, right? In the highly religious setting of a world where magic and witches and gods and demons are well-documented, that's not going to go over very well except in some very cosmopolitan and well-educated areas. It would probably be limited to certain cities in the Western Empire. I imagine most places would likely see outbreaks of mobs willing to burn and kill to put an end to that thar ebbil soul-stealing bastard's nefarious trade.

Just replace "they's takin' our jahbs!" with "they's buyin' our sohls!" and add fire, religious fervor and a fear for what will come in an afterlife they have far more belief and expectation in than there has ever been in real life.

[Anthar]

I don't see any problem with storing PPE, that's what the talisman spell is for. You can creaat an objest to store the PPE and refill it once depleted, not hard really.

[azazel1024]

Yeah, I don't see the Talisman working so well for this. It costs 500 P.P.E. to make, and only holds 50 P.P.E. So to have enough of these for the company to work, it would be VERY expensive to start this up. Going with the spell prices in MoM1, it would cost from 70,000 to 140,000 gold per talisman. Even at the low end, that means if your average day is 500 donors, each giving 5 P.P.E. each, you would need 50 of these, which comes to a cool 3.5 million gold. This goes to 7 million gold on the high end.

I am curious if there are some more efficient forms of P.P.E. storage out there. I can't think of any off hand.

That isn't that bad. We are talking probably an alchemist running the business or something similar to facilitate the transfer and storage of the PPE. You just 'rent out' the talisman with a method for getting it back, say getting the users true name or some kind of magically linked retribution if it isn't returned in X time or something, get creative as the GM.

Next so long as you are getting the talismans back to recharge after each rent out no worries. 3.5-7 million gold start up cost for 2,500PPE a day. Charge just 10 gold per PPE to magic users (25,000g a day) and you have a pay back period of 3-6 months.

Heck even if the occasional one went missing I am sure you could pretty easily replace it. Heck maybe its an old fashioned security deposit on the talisman keeping people honest. 500 gold for the 50 PPE and a 25,000g security deposit in goods, gold or hostages and 1 week to return it.

Even if you said 1 week and increase the number of talismans you'd need to keep on hand I bet you could make the scheme pay for itself in a couple of years and I can't see to many wizards, etc no willing to pay 10 gold per PPE.
-Matt

[azazel1024]

Check out Rifts Atlantis Dimensional Market. The water merchant sells such a good. Of course it is all hush-hush, but sounds like this is the ticket. Heck maybe he imports it from the Palladium world.
-Matt

[Anthar]

Yeah, I don't see the Talisman working so well for this. It costs 500 P.P.E. to make, and only holds 50 P.P.E. So to have enough of these for the company to work, it would be VERY expensive to start this up. Going with the spell prices in MoM1, it would cost from 70,000 to 140,000 gold per talisman. Even at the low end, that means if your average day is 500 donors, each giving 5 P.P.E. each, you would need 50 of these, which comes to a cool 3.5 million gold. This goes to 7 million gold on the high end.

I am curious if there are some more efficient forms of P.P.E. storage out there. I can't think of any off hand.

Talisman costs 500 PPE to create then it can store an initial 50 PPE. When the first 50 PPE is used, it can be recharged with 30 PPE at the cost of 60 PPE. Every company needs an initial investment, but your calculations are off. You just need the initial single investment in the talisman spell, then all you need is any cheaply made vessel/object to hold the PPE.

[Anthar]

Talisman costs 500 PPE to create then it can store an initial 50 PPE. When the first 50 PPE is used, it can be recharged with 30 PPE at the cost of 60 PPE. Every company needs an initial investment, but your calculations are off. You just need the initial single investment in the talisman spell, then all you need is any cheaply made vessel/object to hold the PPE.

This isn't counting any remaking of the talismans. These calculations are based of the initial making of the talismans, as they are reusable.

Concerning your remarks, where does it state that the 'reused' talisman can only hold 30 P.P.E. at the cost of 60? I am reading the spell in the PFRPG main book, and there is nothing about this that I see.

And what do you mean, "all you need is any cheaply made vessel?" The talisman has very little cost in materials. It can be made out of a stick, for all that matters. A simply carved wooden emblem in the shape of the company logo was what I was thinking for that. Wouldn't cost much at all.

After reading it again, it doesn't actually say its reusable as a P.P.E. storage device, if its made for that instead of spell holding... Just says that you can make it to hold P.P.E. instead of spells, and they can never be used for the other application of the Talisman spell. However, in the MOM1, on page 23, it states that talismans can be recharged for 50 P.P.E.

But the costs I came up with are for the initial P.P.E. cost to cast the Talisman spell that many times. Only the once. I looked at the calculations again, and they are sound.

But, at 10g per P.P.E., times 500 is 5000 gold times 14 for the spell level per talisman to have them made. Thats 170,000 gold. Each. Each can hold 50 P.P.E., so if 1000 P.P.E. a day is the average, you would need 20 talismans just to keep up with that average, and thats hoping you use all that every day, so the talismans are available for the next day. But that isn't feasible, to say the least. Better to have enough for a potential weeks worth, at least. So, you have 3.4 million gold for 20 talismans, times 7 days is 23.8 million gold, just to have enough talismans for the 'average' amount of P.P.E. needing to be stored. Even then, you would have to hope that the buyers of the energy return the talismans really quickly.

As per Rifts Book of Magic pg 150 second column second paragraph. The MoM: 1 misquotes the Talisman spell and it should have fact checked better.
You don't have to recast the Talisman spell to recharge it. For PPE purposes you only need to burn 60 PPE to recharge the talisman with 30 PPE and who says that you have to create the talismans using bought PPE. Besides offering 1gp per PPE point is not very feasible, more like you would offer 1gp per donation and you might get 6-14 PPE per donation which would make a business offering the resale of magic energy more feasible.

[azazel1024]

Don't see how offering 5g per ppe point or heck even something like say 50g for all your PPE (75g for a child's PPE) makes it unfeasible.

If you turn around and sell it for 1,200g for the loan of the Talisman charged with 30 PPE I think you'll find plenty of magic users willing to pay that. So if you need 60PPE input, and you are paying out probably on average 300g to charge it up (10ppe average a person, 50g per donation, 6 donations needed) you'd be clearing 900g per rental.

Like I mentioned, just collect a deposit on the talismans when renting them out with a strict 'must be back within 7 days' and charge the 1,200g per day its late after 7 days with loss of the security deposit after being 7 days late.

It would be best if it was an alchemist running the business or had one or more as partners. The cost of the Talisman is if BUYING it, not making it. If you have the skills you can make one, in which case your cost is relatively little (so long as you have the PPE to make one). Of course at the regular rate of PPE recovering you might only be making 3-4 talismans a week, which could take awhile to get the business off the ground, but you could start small with only maybe 2 dozen initially and work your way up as your business starts to succeed.
-Matt

[Anthar]

Rather than worrying about keeping track of rented talismans try providing the facilities for a mage to rent in order to perform their magic. This would eliminate any unneccesary paperwork and reduce the number of unsavory clients the business has to deal with since they wouldn't like their activities watched by a third party.

[azazel1024]

I like it. However I'd say there should be a standard save vs. magic (12 or higher) to prevent your PPE from being drained, a save means only a single point is drained. And/or make it only 3d6 PPE drained per touch, otherwise it gets a bit excessive (say a dragon touches it and gets drained of 300PPE in a go!)
-Matt

[azazel1024]

Sounds good. I'd still have them lose a tiny bit on a succesful save. Like 1d6 PPE or a single point or something.
-Matt