Essentials: Magic Item Rarity Explained, it's actually good!

[Dice4Hire]

I like it.

It helps explain why some magic items are really good for their level and some are really terrible. Also, having costs change is nice. 20% to 100%

 

[RangerWickett]

I'd like to see a few examples, but theoretically it sounds pretty good. My magic item house rule was edging toward a "7 item limit," with the ability to make single magic items that combined multiple powers but counted as multiple items. But making that work would've required a lot of work that no one's paying me to do, so I think I'll go for WotC's work.

 

[Grydan]

Mmmm how is this going to be backdated into the thousands that already exist? Every single MI needs another line in it's stat block! Not a problem with DDi but...

Easiest way to handle it would be to insert a blanket statement into one of the rulebooks somewhere, along the lines of "Unless otherwise specified, magic items are Uncommon".

 

[eamon]

The idea is good - the sale price thing isn't. It's completely counter to common sense that common items have the highest disparity between selling and buying price. The more common the item, the less the disparity between buying and selling an item should be.

 

[vagabundo]

The idea is good - the sale price thing isn't. It's completely counter to common sense that common items have the highest disparity between selling and buying price. The more common the item, the less the disparity between buying and selling an item should be.

Some things keep their resale value and some don't.

Why buy used when you can buy new.

 

[Aegeri]

The idea is good - the sale price thing isn't. It's completely counter to common sense that common items have the highest disparity between selling and buying price. The more common the item, the less the disparity between buying and selling an item should be.

How... how does this make sense?

If something is common, why would someone want something more and therefore offer a higher price than a rare, hardly seen before near artifact of considerably higher power?

I just can't fathom how this works. Common items are everywhere, they aren't in high demand and so selling them is much harder (so you get less for them). Rare items are in extremely high demand and there are hardly any of them, so merchants are going to pay a higher price (in this case 100% of the items value).

 

[FabioMilitoPagliara]

I like the changes... and now I want back my at will flame shooting staff!

and we should be able to make justice to old favourite like the Staff of Wizardy and similar items...

 

[vagabundo]

Easiest way to handle it would be to insert a blanket statement into one of the rulebooks somewhere, along the lines of "Unless otherwise specified, magic items are Uncommon".

Or to give some guidelines about what items are considered rare and uncommon - similar to the points listed in the articles above - and leave it to DM discretion.

 

[Kingreaper]

The idea is good - the sale price thing isn't. It's completely counter to common sense that common items have the highest disparity between selling and buying price. The more common the item, the less the disparity between buying and selling an item should be.

Given as you can't buy uncommon and rare items, the disparity is a meaningless comparison.

Also: No. If items are rare because no-one wants them, the disparity between purchase and sell will be big.
That's common magic items, everyone can make them, no-one wants them that much.

If items are rare because no-one can get them, a 5% finders fee will work fine for the merchant, they already have five people who've asked after a flametongue sword, so getting one into their hands is valuable. Meanwhile, getting a +2 sword into their hands is slightly pointless when they have 4 gathering dust.

 

[WhatGravitas]

After the whole thing was roughly outlined at GenCon, this article isn't a huge surprise - but it's nice to see it explained in detailed with their reasoning behind it. And the bit about the sale price is pretty nice too - didn't expect that.

Very happy about the change overall - seems to give us the best of both worlds, the ease of 4E (commons crafted by PCs, uncommons are probably still wishlist material) and the shiny of older editions (i.e. rare items).

Cheers, LT.