How much should a Random-5 Mage cost?

[Scott Hebert]

I'm not sure your method is "fair". I mean, having the average of the cost of an Abysian Blood mage, an Atlantian Water mage, and a Vanheim Smith is not a good estimate of a random mage, because variety/flexibility itself is a thing that should be paid and that noone in my 3 examples gets.

Flexibility is not necessarily a good thing, however. The flip side of being flexible is not being reliable. This, to me, is at best a wash.

I don't know how else I could evaluate them. I honestly don't see how it _can't_ be fair to look at them strictly on the numbers. I'm not going to be making any qualitative judgements as to the various numbers I generate.

With the specific example of a 5-random mage, the most common occurrence is a 2/1/1/1 mage (with a 0.513 probability), and that has a price tag set by Illwinter at 160g. Again, if you think the 4th path's 1st level should cost more than the third path's first level, that's your opinion, but I have no rubric to deal with, so I'm trying to extrapolate from the current rubric.

Really, I'm not sure how I could calculate the price of mages with random picks aside from the method I'm using. Strict probability and a weighting of price based on those probabilities seems the 'fairest' way, to me. No, it doesn't take into account the other variables involved, but then the very lack of those other variables in the analysis may point to the way to quantify those variables.

What is the nearest thing to a random-5 mages I think of is Arco Mystic, but he has only 3 random elements + 2 fixed Astral . He costs 180, and is usually considered rather underpriced.
I'm not sure a random-5 mage would fit thematically anywhere or be "balanced", but I suggest a cost of at least 240 gp.

I don't know, personally. You can look at the Master of the Five Elements and the Celestial Master from Tien Chi to see the most likely costs. I haven't gotten to them in my analysis yet, but they're costed pretty well.

I think the main point I'm unfortunately failing to get across is how not-good the 'average' random-5 mage is. You have to buy on average 6 5-random mages before you get one that has a 3 in a single path. That is something that most if not all of your examples above have that the random-5 mage most likely does not, and that's a difference of 60g. There's a greater than 70% chance that the 5-random mage doesn't even have 2 paths at 2. All of these lower the price, believe it or not.

Unfortunately, by the way that Illwinter currently has their pricing scheme up, randomness is not valued as highly as specific picks, if those specific picks are at all concentrated.

I'll do the Master of the Five Elements right now to show you how I'm doing this.

Commander: 30g
Holy-2 Priest: 20g
The probability that the Master of the Five Elements is a 2/1/1/1/1 is 0.625. A 2/1/1/1/1 Magic Path is worth 140g. Multiply 140 by 0.625, and you get 87.5.
The probability that the Master of the Five Elements is a 1/1/1/1/1/1 is 0.375. That is worth 90g. Multiply 90 by 0.375, and you get 33.75.
Add these together, and the Master of the Five Elements should cost 171.25g. Its actual cost is 190g. This can lead to several conclusions, which I've said before I really won't go into at this point. I agree with Gandalf that interpretation of data is not as useful to IW as the data itself.

I will say that any mage that has only 1 random pick that I've done so far (mostly independent due to the structure of the .xls file) I've matched with Illwinter's costs about 90% of the time. I also calculated the cost of the Jade Sorceress as 182.25, which is quite close to IW's cost of 180.

In any event, I think I will continue on as I have until I receive a different method of evaluating the grey areas in the current rubric.