D&D 5E What's the point of gold?

[billd91]

AFAIC, I'd simply use the 3e numbers. They might be a bit off, but, at the end of the day, they're probably pretty close. Certainly workable.

Or, if you have one, use the 1e numbers from the DMG. In a number of cases, I've found them better than the 3e numbers. Frankly, eyeballing both may be of value.

 

[Wicht]

Make a robe with permanent mage armor (Caster level 1st) and compare it to +4 bracers of armor and tell me the formulas balanced anything.

Urm, that's not quite how the tables work. Under the 3e rules, a Robe with a +4 bonus to armor, regardless of spell used cost at least 16,000 gp (bonus squared x 1000gp). The bracers of armor +4 also cost 16,000 gp. So your robe is going to cost exactly the same as the bracers, but simply uses a different slot. The reason for this is because if there is a specific effect (armor, deflection, save, etc.) then you use the effect base equation not the use activated spell effect equation. The same still holds true for item creation using the Pathfinder rules.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

First, in that legality and availability vary by location and affect price. What you can buy in a mall in Seattle, and what you can buy in the literal underground of Seattle, are different; and what you can buy in Shinjuku, or in Guadalajara, are also different. SR has rules for adjusting the *actual price paid* from the nominal base price.

The interesting thing, to me, is that these are all presented as rules, in the book. A particular gun - Ruger Super Warhawk, for example - will have a list price and a Street Index that modifies the list price, and I want to say that the price you pay might also depend on the result of whatever skill check you made to acquire the gun. Since these are all rules, though, the players know what to expect and it's considered "fair". And of course, you always have the option of walking into the local equivalent of WalMart and just paying MSRP.

(It also sets up the expectation that Street Index is likely to vary in different cities, or based on recent often-plot-related events. If you're in Guadalajara, and the GM tells you that the Street Index for an item is 4 because of local availability, then I feel like that's probably more acceptable to a player than just saying that a +1 sword costs 8000gp where the list price is 2000gp.)

Second, in the equivalents of Big Six.

If you're just talking about generic item types, then it's definitely:
1) Initiative booster (wired reflexes, etc.)
2) Weapon of choice (either a super gun, or spell focus, or a cyberdeck, or something that you expect to be using every day as your primary form of attack)
3) Perception booster (cyber-eyes are ridiculously cheap, but mage-types might prefer goggles)
4) Armor (mostly just an armored jacket, or combination long coat and armored vest w/ plates)

And that's really all I can think of. Everything else is situational. Of course, given the cost and availability of most cyberware, you're unlikely to improve your reflexes or magical items much beyond what you start with; and normal weapons and armors are so cheap that there's little reason to ever upgrade, so you don't really get that same mindset where you worry about upgrading your stuff in a set order.

 

[Remathilis]

Urm, that's not quite how the tables work. Under the 3e rules, a Robe with a +4 bonus to armor, regardless of spell used cost at least 16,000 gp (bonus squared x 1000gp). The bracers of armor +4 also cost 16,000 gp. So your robe is going to cost exactly the same as the bracers, but simply uses a different slot. The reason for this is because if there is a specific effect (armor, deflection, save, etc.) then you use the effect base equation not the use activated spell effect equation. The same still holds true for item creation using the Pathfinder rules.

Actually, its quite doable. You just need to look at not as an item granting a bonus and instead as an item providing a Spell Effect.

Use-activated or continuous Spell Effect Spell level × caster level × 2,000 gp2

Item: Robe.
Spell effect: Mage Armor
Spell Level: 1st
Caster Level: 1st
Original Spell Duration: Hours/Level (so no modifier to price)

1 x 1 x 2,000 = 2,000 gp

The robe casts mage armor on the user when the user dons the robe (use-activated)

No system is perfect. The formula's are neat, but they can can make some real gems. And that is just the funny loophole. There are lots of magic items that have no guidance for a price. (Seriously, use the table and recreate the cost of the Apparatus of Kwalish). In honesty, they are no better than the wide ranges based on rarity; they just LOOK more accurate.

(and in reality; it goes to show that bracers of armor are stupidly overpriced).

 

[The Crimson Binome]

No system is perfect. The formula's are neat, but they can can make some real gems. And that is just the funny loophole.

Except it's not a funny loophole, because they saw the potential and implemented an Obvious Rule Patch to prevent it. In this case, you have to compare it to an existing item, and use that as the baseline cost. The rules explicitly prohibit using this formula where doing so would be inconsistent with existing items.

 

[Wicht]

Actually, its quite doable. You just need to look at not as an item granting a bonus and instead as an item providing a Spell Effect.

If you want to ignore the actual rules and guidelines for item creation pricing, then yes, its doable. But if you fail to use the rules as written, or blatantly disregard the examples provided of how it should work, then its not really a problem with the rules is it? It's just an effort to look clever and one, which, in my opinion, falls a bit short. What you are exploiting is not a loophole. You are simply choosing to willfully ignore the intent.

Use-activated or continuous Spell Effect Spell level × caster level × 2,000 gp2

As I said, you are using the wrong equation and if you use the wrong equation then you will get the wrong answer. Anytime there is an armor bonus granted, you use the equation "bonus squared x 1000."

Your example also disregards the principle that in order to confer an armor bonus to a wondrous item, your caster level needs to be at least two times the enhancement bonus (three if its actual armor being enchanted). Thus to enchant your robe with a +4 armor bonus using mage armor, you must use a CL of 8, which gives you, using your chosen formula (SL 1 x CL 8 x 2000; or 16,000 gp). Which, funny enough, is the exact same price.

Now, I'll be amongst those who admit that pricing magic items is as much art as science, and that sometimes the SRD equations give prices that are admittedly too high for what a particular wondrous item actually does. But they don't have the problem you are ascribing to them.

ADDENDUM: If you wanted to allow that robe to cast Mage Armor 1/day at that level (ie for 1 hour per day), or if you wanted it to be a charged item, or if you wanted it to have a number of uses per day, then I could see pricing it differently. But if you want it to simply be a permanent +4 armor bonus, then the 3x rules as written put the price consistently at 16,000 gp.

 

[CapnZapp]

Which proved to be absolutely useless.

To you, you mean?

Or perhaps you feel you have that special right where you speak unwanted, uninvited and uninformed on other people's behalf, about problems that you clearly don't care about?

But I might be mistaken: it could well be that you honestly meant to include "...to you", in which case I say great, but how is that relevant to what other players' feel?

 

[Riley37]

If you're just talking about generic item types, then it's definitely:
1) Initiative booster (wired reflexes, etc.)
2) Weapon of choice...

Your list and mine are fairly close, except for one element which I'll revise as essential only for the "Black Trenchcoat" style of SR, and not for the "Pink Mohawk" style of SR:

in *some* SR campaigns, a method of concealing or spoofing one's identity is essential. A party could legitimately refuse to include someone who was just showing their face, plain as day, and had a picture of that face on their ID, and who lived at the residential address shown on that ID.

Because shadowrunners sometimes make enemies, and being easily findable in a "Black Trenchcoat" SR game will lead to a hit team catching you with defenses down. And then interrogating you, and finding out everything you know about your teammates, before they flush what's left of you.

And that leads to another parallel to D&D and other TFRPGs: what happens between "Adventures".

If "You ride home in triumph from the Castle of the Necromancer, carrying piles of loot" is the end of a session, without spending so much as a *minute* on what the PCs do when they get home... well, that's a playstyle option, and it's certainly not how I roll. (Because shower first, or a Cold One first? That's what I've been thinking about, every mile of the journey from the Castle of the Necromancer to home sweet home. Except if there's a sweetie waiting at home, a kiss comes first, before Cold One AND before shower.)

If the next session starts with "Your next adventure is the Quest of the Dragon Gate, and along the way there's a pack of dire wolves, so place your figures on the battlemat"...

...well, darn, clearly your playstyle has zero interest in what the PCs did in the intervening month. That includes *not resolving whether they spent any of the treasure from the Castle of the Necromancer*, or at least not resolving that topic in categories B C or D. If Zapp demands a category-F-compatible method of spending gold on magic items, then that requires a category-F-compatible Thaum-Mart.

Come to think of it, there's plenty of episodic fiction along those lines, from some versions of Sherlock Holmes, to a variety of police dramas, starship dramas, etc. Then again, that's only *some* versions. The Cumberbatch version, for example, has an episode in which Holmes solves a murder mystery at a wedding... the villain is hauled away into police custody... and then the episode is NOT OVER YET; it spends just a bit of time on whether Holmes dances with anyone at the reception, and his deductions about Mrs. Watson. The reboot of Battlestar Galactica spent some episode time on things which happened while Vipers were on standby, rather than only spending episode time on things which happened from Viper launch to Viper re-docking.

So, here's how I intend to run the next phase of Tyranny of Dragons. The PCs have interfered with enough of the Cult's operations, that they are visibly a thorn in the Cult's side. The Cult isn't going to keep planning operations for the PCs to show up and foil. The Cult is gonna go after the PCs, find out who they are, where they live, and how they can be stopped *before* they foil another Cult operation. And then the Cult will sacrifice them all at an altar to Tiamat. Or possibly five altars, one for each head.

Well, that's the Cult's intent, anyways: get rid of those meddling kids. In practice, the PCs will have plenty of chances to notice and to take countermeasures. Those events will be played out while the PCs are meeting with faction contacts, with their Black Knights contacts, while training skills and practicing professions and generally *having a life between adventures*. Eventually one of those casual downtown RP incidentals will lead to an Initiative Roll and a showdown and blood. My goal is for the players to *not know until it happens*, whether "I sell my Wand of Magic Missile because I want enough gold to buy magic armor" is the trivial event which will lead to a fight scene, or whether it's "I go to the Temple of Kelemvor to multiclass as Cleric", or whether it's "I go to the Laughing Goblin inn and perform a song about my team's heroic defeat of the Necromancer".

Therefore, at my table, "I go downtown and find someone selling a +3 longsword and buy it", is not a category F event. It's a category D event, which might turn out to actually be category B or C.

 

[The Crimson Binome]

in *some* SR campaigns, a method of concealing or spoofing one's identity is essential. A party could legitimately refuse to include someone who was just showing their face, plain as day, and had a picture of that face on their ID, and who lived at the residential address shown on that ID.

I would say that's very much campaign-dependent, and thus situational. There's plenty of work for legitimate mercenaries and trouble-shooters in the Sixth World. I once played in a DocWagon campaign that was a lot of fun.

Therefore, at my table, "I go downtown and find someone selling a +3 longsword and buy it", is not a category F event. It's a category D event, which might turn out to actually be category B or C.

I must have missed something, by skipping to page 50 of this thread. What are these event categories of which you speak?

 

[Shasarak]

You say "steal". I say "pay the iron price". Thanks for answering my question, I guess. My question about the emotions of a Terminator.

The iron price is a possible complication when a PC sells a Wand of Magic Missiles to an NPC in a back alley, who can then immediately (no attunement required, no batteries required) use their newly-acquired Wand to shoot a 7th-level Magic Missile at the PC, and collect a 100% "rebate" from the PC's corpse.

I am not sure what is worse - the thought that a hapless NPC wanted to commit suicide by PC by attacking them, or the thought that someone assumes that the PCs were not already going to attack the NPC anyway.