CapnZapp
Legend
You really[\i] need to brush up on the incongruities of rarity before I continue our dialogue.
D&D 5E 5E's "Missed Opportunities?"
You really[\i] need to brush up on the incongruities of rarity before I continue our dialogue.
CapnZapp
Legend
No.
If there was an optional system, I could choose to use it and you could choose not to. We would both have fun.
In the current situation fun for you but no fun for me.
So a completely false equivalency.
Parmandur
Book-Friend
I checked the DMG again, and it specifically calls out Rarity as tracking with utility.
G
Guest 6801328
Guest
Ummm...yes.
Sort of. Not if my DM, or my AL game, decides to use it.
Sure.
False conclusion.
I was only stating that just because some people think something is fun, others may think the exact opposite. WotC's job is to figure out which of those things are fun enough, for enough people, that it's worth releasing official material. Both for the development and opportunity costs. They have to prioritize.
By the logic you just expressed, all rules, desired by anybody, should be included in a game, just in case somebody wants them. There is a finite amount of development time and page space. It does in fact matter which options are desired by the most players, and which rules would potentially undermine the design philosophy of the game.
L
lowkey13
Guest
*Deleted by user*
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billd91
Not your screen monkey (he/him)
You might find it, maybe, but how are the economics work? If the cost is based on the item's utility and not the local market, how is a village of a couple of hundred souls going to be affected by the massive influx of cash that would occur if the PCs bought it? How did the town get it and appropriately appraise it? They certainly couldn't have bought it since its value may exceed the value of everything else in the village...
What standard do you follow on the pricing and what are the downstream effects of it?
G
Guest 6801328
Guest
Although I really hope, for several reasons (none of which have to do with particular animosity toward @CapnZapp), that WotC never publishes an official price list, what would be kind of cool is an expansion of the system in Xanathar's for buying/selling magic items to incorporate both location and another, somewhat arbitrary factor, to represent high/low magic. That is, a small village that happens to be very magical (e.g. a moon elf enclave founded around a magical well) will have different factors than a large, low-magic city.
The DM still determines, however he/she likes, what the average price or price range would be, but then generates not just whether an item is available (or a buyer is interested) and the actual price, but also the reasons for that availability/price. Which is sort of what the Xanathar's rules do, but without accommodating locational variation.
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Parmandur
Book-Friend
More tables would be helpful.
Lanefan
Victoria Rules
There's many ways to explain in the fiction how some spectacular item ended up in a small farming village; and then later came on to the market.
The classic is, of course, Bilbo and his mithril shirt. That shirt - which was worth more then the rest of the Shire put together - would have either wound up in the mathom house or come on to the market, had Bilbo died heirless. Here the proceeds would likely have gone to the Shire as a whole, generating a lot of happy Hobbits.
Another option is that the village is where some major adventurer has retired to, and said adventurer is slowly selling off her no-longer-needed magic items. Here the proceeds go to the seller, and as the seller was likely already very wealthy this won't affect the village much at all.
A third option is that the village happens to be the home of a significant artificer. I can always dream up a reason for an item to be where it is.
For simplicity (and to avoid the silly-bugger games of buy low-sell high I'd have to DM otherwise) the pricing of a given item is - with very rare exceptions - arbitrarily going to be the same no matter where you find it. As for the downstream effects, it almost always boils down to "the rich get richer".
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