D&D 5E How is 5th edition in respects to magic item creation?

[Ancalagon]

And that goes double for monsters. For all you know, there's a beast out there that produces Sovereign Glue from a gland.

There is. A giant predatory worm, that hides in the haunted jungle of Lahag, near the Yellow City.

The beast is much feared for it's glue like saliva, which will stick someone irremediably in place. Should the victim survive the worm attack, the kind thing to do is to deliver a killing blow, instead of letting them die of thirst in the jungle....

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(edit: idea is not mine, but from Yoon-Suin)

 

[Coroc]

So a Wish or Meteor Swarm or Power Word Kill is worth 9 sets of non-magical plate armor?

Why would anyone make plate armor with those prices?

Good finding, yes it is that way BUT:

The plate armor is AC19 a real high renaissance plate armor, nice things do cost a bit.

I got this little special rule on my table: Casting stat needs to be 10+spell level.

And in 5 E wish is a risky thing you might want to read the description in the PHB, the mage out for destruction better buys a scroll of meteor storm right away.

I do control the party wealth to steer things, ATM the party is 4 pc level 5, if they put their silver together they can maybe buy 1 scroll of wish.

Theoretically you can buy war machines in my campaign they will do 4d10 to 16d20 in their path and in an impact radius depending on their size (and cost 5k to 80k silver), also orcs in my campaign are organized like landsknechte with pike formations and crossbow archers and reinforced by tanar'ri of any possible sort etc., so you might hit or down a few with your meteor storm but not all.

 

[Uchawi]

They have beaten crafting nearly to death with a nerf bat.

What you said about Wizards is one of the reasons why. That stuff is great for power gaming munchkins, but bad for the rest of the game. So now the game supports only the lowest-level crafting, i.e. healing potions and the like.

It's now much closer to Basic and AD&D; you are adventurers, who go out to find cool stuff via your crazy risk-taking. You have no idea what you will find, or where you'll find it. And you're not sitting away in your lab; you're out there, in the world outside.

Go out and find that loot!

It is great with the rest of the game as an option. More people are satisfied or they simply ignore it.

 

[Jester David]

We're referring to an utility-based magic item economy as seen in d20 games. Little gold buys little power, lots of gold buys lots of power.

I don't see why you can't do that in 5e.
Simple and cheap magic consumables are still pretty useful. And unlike in 3e and 4e, things like tanglefoot bags don't cease to be useful because the monsters outlevel the static DCs.

At high levels, you can buy lots of cheap consumable Common and Uncommon items.

Look, I understand, you're not interested in a magic item economy. That's fine.

But you don't _get to claim_ 5e supports one, especially since you aren't interested yourself. What 5e supports is *not* having a magic item economy in the sense the game *used to support*.

You seem to be operating under the misconception that not having a magic item economy that YOU like equates with not having one at all.
I'm well aware you don't like how magic items were handled in 5e compared to 3e. But many more people seem just fine with how 1e & 2e handled magic items and complained about the 3e system (and 4e for that matter) and are very, very happy now with 5e.

I sympathize to some degree. But I also remember having to adapt how I thought about magic items when I switched to 3e. Magic was no longer special and no longer things you attached a story to: there was no longer special items created by elite orders or with unique histories because any spellcaster could just take a feat and crank a copy out.
5th Edition is not 3rd Edition. It was never going to be 3rd Edition and is never going to work like 3rd Edition. And trying to make it work exactly like an older it is not is just a recipe for frustration. While the design team had the goal of making 5e feel like older editions, it was never going to do everything exactly like it had been done in previous editions. That was never really the plan.

Honestly, I could give a dead rat's ass about the economics of fully functioning magic item manufacturing industry.
I tolerated it in 3e, because removing the magic item treadmill was hard. And I actively tried to work around the magic item treadmill in Pathfinder with varying degrees success. (And it's retention is one of the reasons I'm not even touching Starfinder.)
I like my verisimilitude and logic between my game rules and game world. And I'm happy with the idea that magic isn't just something people make to sell. That there's not magical sweatshops where level 5 wizards churn out cloaks of resistance and +1 longswords.

While I like that magic items are made to use, and when they are bought and sold it is secondhand. The economy works just fine in that regard. People make magic at the base cost. Use it. Someone else sells it used for a tenth or half price. And then the vendor sells it to the next person for full base price, making their profit that way.
Don't think of magic item sales like buying new items but buying things from a pawn shop.

 

[Uchawi]

I am a proponent of adding detail across the board, so don't stop at magic item creation, include other areas like blacksmithing. Part of a more detail is to making it inclusive. It is typical to bias a fantasy system towards magic.

 

[Irda Ranger]

...But many more people seem just fine with how 1e & 2e handled magic items and complained about the 3e system (and 4e for that matter) and are very, very happy now with 5e...

...5th Edition is not 3rd Edition. It was never going to be 3rd Edition and is never going to work like 3rd Edition...

...Honestly, I could give a dead rat's ass about the economics of fully functioning magic item manufacturing industry...

...I tolerated it in 3e, because removing the magic item treadmill was hard...

...I like my verisimilitude and logic between my game rules and game world. And I'm happy with the idea that magic isn't just something people make to sell. That there's not magical sweatshops where level 5 wizards churn out cloaks of resistance and +1 longswords...

This. Except I didn't tolerate the 3E system. I just kept playing AD&D, then played Iron Heroes, then played 5E. I just skipped the whole 3/3.5/PF/4E era of the game, and I'm really, really happy with how 5E turned out, including its magic item system.

My personal favorite system for making magic items is that PCs just can't make non-consumables. You have to be an NPC artisan of immense skill (like Elrond), and even then you haven't much control over what you get. Or it's something 15+ level PCs do during downtime between adventures, if you take a year or two off, and you have the skill for some reason. And even then it's very expensive and you end up rolling on the random item table in the DMG to see what you get.

That's why magic items are something you acquire via adventuring, and you hold onto them.

I'm also a fan of the idea of magic items having immense potential power, but it takes a hero of great personal power to tap into it. In game mechanics terms this means the item grows with you. What you thought was a +1 longsword turns out to to be something more. It becomes +2 at 9th level and reveals special powers at some point.

 

[see]

If you want to have an adventurer who very occasionally crafts a magic item or two, a world where magic items are not routine items of manufacture or commerce, and characters with adventuring class levels are rare, the 5e DMG guidelines are adequate and the UA downtime rules more than. They also, under those assumptions, have good verisimilitude. No other edition of D&D does as well.

If you don't care at all about the actual economy of a world, and instead want to deal with gold and magic items exclusively as resources for characters who adventure, the 3.x/PF rules do a pretty good job of that, and you can ignore the fact that they make no sense as a matter of world-building. 4e does it even better, with a similar refusal to consider world-building logic. 5e-as-written doesn't do this very well, any more than any TSR-era D&D, but this PDF does a good job at giving you prices, which you can then use with a simple adaptation of the Pathfinder creation rules.

If you want a consistent simulation of an economy with common magic item crafting and high-volume commerce in magic items, with items priced according to their realistic costs and economic utility, no edition of D&D does that very well.

 

[Ancalagon]

I like the notion of gaining the knowledge - and components ! - on how to make a magical item to be a significant quest/adventure/achievement. And such knowledge should be rare. I like that magical items are rare and can become a "signature" item for the character.

You could have a party noted for "Grok the barbarian, with his magical flaming axe; Zubtar the holy-man, the noted master alchemist who knew the secrets to *three* magical potions; and Velemert, who had mastered the art of making wands of lighting"

 

[CapnZapp]

Honestly, I could give a dead rat's ass about the economics of fully functioning magic item manufacturing industry.

Then please don't speak for those that do.

If you absolutely must claim 5e has a functional magic item economy, please qualify that by adding "but not in any way, shape or form like the one I KNOW you are asking about"

Because that's my beef with you and anyone making the same claims you make.

You KNOW the person asking about "is there a functional magic item economy?" is talking about it from a 3rd edition perspective, because that's the edition that introduced one.

So the ONLY honest and not intentionally misleading answer is and must be:

Hell no!
5th edition may talk about items, their prices and their creation; but doesn't even come anywhere NEAR to providing actual support for a world that operates like a 3rd edition one did.

WOTC claimed 5th edition is great for supporting ANY old edition (with the possible exception of 4e, which they have finally started to admit it actually doesn't)

This is pure faff. Marketing speak.

There is nothing AT ALL in 5e to support the utility-based pricing mechanism (as opposed to rarity-based) of magic items, 3e style. Preferably complete with pricing formulas for individual power components, so you can derive the final item pricing.

Then you are perfectly within your right to believe this to be a good thing.

Just don't perpetuate the phony sales pitch that 5e does 3e, because until there's a utility-based magic item economy, there's a gaping big hole in that support.



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[CapnZapp]

If you want a consistent simulation of an economy with common magic item crafting and high-volume commerce in magic items, with items priced according to their realistic costs and economic utility, no edition of D&D does that very well.

On the other hand, nobody has asked for this. Like ever.

You can safely assume that anyone asking for a magic item economy is aboard the assumption that it won't make for a realistic economy. That's obvious as soon as you start seeing high level heroes with hundreds of thousands of gold pieces in their pocket.

(I started a thread, linking to a blog, that highlighted how incongruous 5e with the loot tables still yielding thousands if not millions of gold, even though there is no support for actually spending it during "uptime" - very few published campaigns feature any downtime, which is the ONLY kind of money sink the game support.

This problem is caused directly by removing the possibility to spend your riches on magic items, yet nothing is offered as replacement)





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