Many magic items in official books are not priced. Help me price them?

I have compiled an index of every single magic item from every single 3e WotC published book (including Dragonlance). It took 2 years to finish, but it is just about done. One thing I noticed is that many items that are not listed as artifacts still do not have a Market Price listed with them. I'm not sure why that is.

Some of them are magical locations, and I assume would not normally have a price since you wouldn't actually buy it, but many magical locations do have a price listed. I would only like a price listed as more of a guideline for DMs to know if the magic location benefit would be an appropriate level "treasure" to provide.

In any case, I was hoping that people would be kind enough to give me their best calculation for what the market price would be for these items. I have provided the name and book/page that the item comes from. I'd really appreciate the help, thanks!

Statue of Mystra - Cormyr: The Tearing of the Weave 31
Magic Wall Mirror - Cormyr: The Tearing of the Weave 129
Lost Star - Dragonlance, Dragons of Autumn 77
Glaive of Grimwulf - Dragonlance, Dragons of Autumn 78
Mina's Kiss - Dragonlance, Dragons of Autumn 80
Skull Totem - Dragonlance, Dragons of Autumn 208
Brightblade - Dragonlance, War of the Lance 51
Dragonslair - Dragons of Faerun 125
Earthcrown - Fields of Ruin 14
Blueglow Moss - Pool of Radiance 77
Testament of Jade - Pool of Radiance 79
Box of Endless Biscuits - Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil 84
Everful Keg - Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil 84
Black Thurible - Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil 154
Incense of Dreaming - Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil 154
Purple Robe of Tharizdun - Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil 154
Torch of Revealing - Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil 155
Shroud Resonator, Lesser - Secrets of Sarlona 142

Oryan77 said:

Holy Symbol, Nature's Children - Complete Champion 135
Holy Symbol, Nature's Sickle - Complete Champion 135

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These are not magic items, per se. They are additional examples of holy symbols from the previous pages, and as such cost 350 gp.

Agony - Deities & Demigods 67

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Agony is a +5 chaotic, frightful, unholy morningstar, so it should be priced as a +12 weapon. That's 2,880,000 gp according to the SRD (plus the cost of a masterwork weapon if you want to be exact).

Amulet, Adamantine Spider - Drow of the Underdark 106

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The amulet is part of making the actual adamantine spider, so it's part of the spider's 10,900 gp cost

Dimensional Seal - Eberron Campaign Setting 272

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The description says that it's "actually a minor artifact", hence no price.

Amulet, Arcane Ballista - Forge of War 149

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Part of the cost of the Arcane Ballista itself, which is 37,000 gp.

Umbral Spy - Forge of War 155

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It says they are never sold, but you can extrapolate the price by doubling the cost to create, which would put you at 22,000 gp.

Box of Endless Biscuits - Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil 84
Everful Keg - Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil 84
Black Thurible - Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil 154
Incense of Dreaming - Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil 154
Purple Robe of Tharizdun - Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil 154
Torch of Revealing - Return to the Temple of Elemental Evil 155

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The Thurible, the Incense, the Robe, and the Torch don't have prices because they only work in the Temple to reveal particular secrets. They are more "plot tokens" than actual items. Similarly, the Box and the Keg only work in a particular room in the temple, and are valueless elsewhere.

Shroud Resonator - Secrets of Sarlona 141
Shroud Resonator, Lesser - Secrets of Sarlona 142
Aukarak (Reality Storm) - Secrets of Sarlona 144

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Greater shroud resonators are minor artifacts even if not called out as such (e.g. CL 20th, no price given). Not sure how to price lesser ones though. Reality storms are "natural" hazards, not something you can make or buy.

Gulthias Tree - Sunless Citadel 28

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I'd probably classify the tree as a minor artifact/wondrous location, on account of being able to brainwash and permanently transform people as well as its unique origins.

Thanks for the feedback so far. I removed most of those off the list.

Staffan said:

The Thurible, the Incense, the Robe, and the Torch don't have prices because they only work in the Temple to reveal particular secrets. They are more "plot tokens" than actual items. Similarly, the Box and the Keg only work in a particular room in the temple, and are valueless elsewhere.

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I'm still trying to price things like this even if it is only good for a particular adventure/hook. Not that it is a big deal, but some people have the mentality that "everything has a price". I don't know this adventure, but maybe a situation arises where a previous adventurer wants to sell one of these item to someone else trying to explore the temple. Maybe someone found the item and didn't use it yet, but offers to sell it to some other adventurer that would use it. Maybe the item isn't found in the temple and someone finds the item from a traveling merchant, which causes the item to be a sort of adventure hook?

That may not be a great example, but I'm just interested in pricing it for what it is worth to someone interested in buying it (to use it as intended).

not going for every wotc official source, but rather going for the smaller list of published by wotc? that's too bad.

nijineko said:

not going for every wotc official source, but rather going for the smaller list of published by wotc? that's too bad.

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Smaller list of published wotc? I really have no idea what you are referring to.

It took me 2 years to make this index which includes 201 3rd edition books, 72 issues of Dungeon Magazine, 89 issues of Dragon Magazine, the Dragon Annuals, Dragon Compendium, and every web enhancement WotC put out. That's a small list?

Oryan77 said:

Smaller list of published wotc? I really have no idea what you are referring to.

It took me 2 years to make this index which includes 201 3rd edition books, 72 issues of Dungeon Magazine, 89 issues of Dragon Magazine, the Dragon Annuals, Dragon Compendium, and every web enhancement WotC put out. That's a small list?

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the list of "published by wotc" and "all official wotc material" are not the same. the former is a smaller list.

"all official material" would have to include the official 3.x birthright, 3.x dragonlance, 3.x planescape, 3.x mystara, 3.x ravenloft, and 3.x dark sun materials as well, since wotc farmed out the making of official 3.x material for those settings to various groups. due to the licensing involved, the groups in question and wotc are equal co-owners, and their material is considered equal to anything wotc published themselves, i.e.: official. there used to be links on the wotc site to all of these official sites, which page i have saved somewhere, and i have all the site links as well, assuming they are still up.


of those, the original ravenloft group lost their license when white wolf licensed it briefly and released some (again, official) 3.x ravenloft material. after that license expired, no one else picked it up, so it is in limbo back with wotc.

the birthright and planescape groups are still active, iirc.

the dragonlance group also lost their license when it was picked back up briefly by weiss and hickman and they released some 3.x material, though just like the ravenloft group, the material they produced before that event remain official unless superseded. i think H&W kept the license in this case.

once the dark sun setting was officially announced for the later editions, the dark sun group lost a lot of steam, and haven't produced any new 3.x material for a while to my knowledge.

mystara was never interested in using their license to produce official 3.x material for certain historical reasons, so they have some suggestions for conversion, but that's about it.



oh, and by 'all magic items' did you include all the psionic (and other sourced) ones as well?

nijineko said:

the list of "published by wotc" and "all official wotc material" are not the same. the former is a smaller list.

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You sure about the former being smaller? Planewalker.com and Dark Sun did a small handfull of sourcebooks. I'm not even sure if the other 3rd party "official" sources did anything close to 200+ books combined.

I included Dragon/Dungeon magazines. I also included Dragonlance because I own the books, but most people do not consider any of the 3rd party stuff like that to be official anyway since so much of it is broken and all over the place. The magazines are a little more tolerated, but even then people do not allow them in games willy-nilly for the most part (at least compared to published WotC books).

Your original post sounded like you were disappointed, which I find amusing. The amount of sources that I covered for this project has not been compiled into a single source like I have done. I've referenced the Bibles, the Chet Erez (crystal keep) stuff, and a dozen other sources and they are always lacking something.

By all means though, if you want to help make this as complete as possible, I'd be thrilled if you compiled all of the magic items from the 3rd party sources that you mentioned and sent that info to me.

When I asked for help on this project a year ago, my thread had around 600 views and only 1 guy contacted me with an offer to help. He indexed 2 books and then I never heard from him again.

nijineko said:

oh, and by 'all magic items' did you include all the psionic (and other sourced) ones as well?

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Yes, I included them.

Oryan77 said:

You sure about the former being smaller? Planewalker.com and Dark Sun did a small handfull of sourcebooks. I'm not even sure if the other 3rd party "official" sources did anything close to 200+ books combined.

I included Dragon/Dungeon magazines. I also included Dragonlance because I own the books, but most people do not consider any of the 3rd party stuff like that to be official anyway since so much of it is broken and all over the place. The magazines are a little more tolerated, but even then people do not allow them in games willy-nilly for the most part (at least compared to published WotC books).

Your original post sounded like you were disappointed, which I find amusing. The amount of sources that I covered for this project has not been compiled into a single source like I have done. I've referenced the Bibles, the Chet Erez (crystal keep) stuff, and a dozen other sources and they are always lacking something.

By all means though, if you want to help make this as complete as possible, I'd be thrilled if you compiled all of the magic items from the 3rd party sources that you mentioned and sent that info to me.

When I asked for help on this project a year ago, my thread had around 600 views and only 1 guy contacted me with an offer to help. He indexed 2 books and then I never heard from him again.


Yes, I included them.

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yes, the former list is smaller, even if it is only by a few hundred items.

never saw your help request you mentioned. but then i'm not online very much and only visit here sporadically.

i have also created an extremely extensive archive, which took me something like 7 years, and another one which took me a year or two) but every time i mention them here Morris shuts down my thread/post. *shrugs* not sure why he lets yours slide but doesn't like mine, oh well - perhaps he'll chime in. (maybe it's just when i link it...)

for the record, i personally appreciate people who compile useful information into handy to have formats. thank you for your hard work. i'd check it out if i knew where to find it.

and i wasn't intending to emote 'disappointed' (blasted non-emotive quality of text format), i was intending more like, 'huh, that's weird - wonder if he knows about those other official groups'. i'm a big fan of supporting all official sources of stuff i like, and i think the history of those official groups are interesting - took me a few months-ish of research to get all the info on them. in any case, i obviously phrased myself poorly.

nijineko said:

i have also created an extremely extensive archive....not sure why he lets yours slide but doesn't like mine, oh well - perhaps he'll chime in. (maybe it's just when i link it...)

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What kind of archives did you compile? I'd be interested in checking it out if you wanted to PM me a link. Your threads could be getting shut down if you are linking to a site that includes d20 content that is not part of the OGL. Or maybe you forgot to bribe him like I did?

Oryan77 said:

What kind of archives did you compile? I'd be interested in checking it out if you wanted to PM me a link. Your threads could be getting shut down if you are linking to a site that includes d20 content that is not part of the OGL. Or maybe you forgot to bribe him like I did?

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hmmm, logically inconsistent, if so. i'll just send you a pm. bribing, huh. no one's yet ever taken advantage of the bribing rule i have in place. ^^