Inconsistent pricing between DMG & MIC

[Greenfield]

billd91 makes a good point. These determine seling price, not just purchase price.

Greenfield, if I give your Martial PC a choice between a Greater Ring of Universal Energy Resistance and a +5 weapon, +5 armor and a +5 shield (all three, not a choice between them), which will you choose? At present, those +5 everthings cost 100,000 gp, so at the ring's original cost, you have considerable cash left over if you sell it. At the revised price, you have to top up 10,000 gp. Is that ring really a bargain at 180,000 gp? It seems very overpriced at 308,000 when compared to these options, at least to me.
Why? I suspect because the formula pricing does not consider that we can switch between Resist Energy types whenever we change spells, but a ring of only one type will never help against another. Item prices fail to consider whether how situational their benefits are.

So, is the ring overpriced, or are magic weapons and armor underpriced? Perhaps that is the real question - maybe the "big 6" should have their prices raised until they are no longer the clear and obvious choices.

Okay, I see two problems with your question/argument. The first one is strictly numbers: The arms and armor you offer retail at 100k. The ring retails at either 180k or somewhere north of 300 k. In neither case do I have to come up with 20 k.

But while numbers irk me, they're kind of a distraction.

The other problem is the real one: A martial character *needs* arms and armor. The option you offer says, "Would you rather go into melee unarmed and unarmored, but relatively fireproof, or are swords and claws the bigger threat?"

In short you're asking me to compare apples to oranges.

Comparing apples to apples would be, "You can add Dancing and Flaming Burst to your sword, and Ghost Touch to your armor and shield, or you can have this shiny ring of Greater Universal Fire resistance?"

Presuming that the bonus add-ons to my arms and armor came out to something like 180 k, I'd take the ring. I'll run into energy damage far more often than I'll face non-corporeal undead.

Of course, if the price of the ring is over 300k, I'd be looking at a lot more nifties on my arms and armor to match the price. That becomes a different question. Say if we were talking Ethereal on the armor, and Holy on the weapons, so I could go after the non-corporeals on their own turf and smear them, and add in some Dimension Stride boots, I might decide to buff the other equipment instead. Or I might not. I'll still run into fire, cold, acid and electrical damage more often than I'll go chasing undead from plane to plane.

But both forms of this question presume that the character is of a level to be tossing hundreds of thousands of gold around at once. It's the rare case.

Looking at the whole scope of the items in MIC, and comparing them to the scope of items in the DMG, they amount to a bargain hunter's dream. The MIC offers more power, over all, for less gold, and it offers it to pretty much every level of PC. The stated goal of the repricing was to make more and more varied magic available at lower levels.

You want to re-price the DMG items to the new scale? Cool. Drop the treasure handed out and the "wealth per level" to match, and you're good. The average 5th level PC, walking into a common town or village is carrying enough wealth on their body, in the form of magical gear, to buy that town.

But more power for less gold under the current economic scale spells power creep.

I've asked that question several times now: How is it anything but power creep? Nobody's even tried to answer it. They've tried to shuffle and side step, "Well, it's just more efficient, more options, more opportunity." Ignoring the fact that all of these "more" things are just other ways to say more power.

I think the linkage that's been missing, that would make it clear, is the linkage between character level, money available, and resultant power. All the arguments I've seen have turned a blind eye to the link between level and wealth.

The question is, do I get that Necklace of Adaptation at 7th level, or do I have to wait until 9th? Do I get my Universal Resistance Ring at 16th level, or do I have to wait until 19th to afford it?

Under the MIC items like those come into play sooner. The Wealth per Level chart in the DMG lays out a good scale, and while we might not all use it as a hard and fast guideline, we can at least use it as a reference.

If the wealth difference between level X and level X+3 is 40% (the approximate difference between 308,000 and 180,000), then dropping prices by 40% effectively gives a character at Level X the magical gear horsepower of someone three levels higher.

And that, my friends, is power creep, by the numbers.

 

[N'raac]

Okay, I see two problems with your question/argument. The first one is strictly numbers: The arms and armor you offer retail at 100k. The ring retails at either 180k or somewhere north of 300 k. In neither case do I have to come up with 20 k.

If I find the ring, I sell it for 90K and need 10k to top up to the 100k for the arms and armor. Even at half price on the lower price, it seem like a pretty good deal. If I have to choose between purchasing either, I cannot imagine choosing the ring for north of 300k. I cant even justify not selling it for north of 150 and using it for other items. To me, that indicates "overpriced".

The other problem is the real one: A martial character *needs* arms and armor. The option you offer says, "Would you rather go into melee unarmed and unarmored, but relatively fireproof, or are swords and claws the bigger threat?"

In short you're asking me to compare apples to oranges.

Comparing apples to apples would be, "You can add Dancing and Flaming Burst to your sword, and Ghost Touch to your armor and shield, or you can have this shiny ring of Greater Universal Fire resistance?"

Presuming that the bonus add-ons to my arms and armor came out to something like 180 k, I'd take the ring. I'll run into energy damage far more often than I'll face non-corporeal undead.

For 180,000, you can buy a +5 Dancing weapon (162,000) and use your current +5 weapon while it dances. And you have 18,000 left over to add one Resistance to your armor.

So let's compare apples to apples. For 18,000, you can add 10 points of resistance to one element to your armor. 42,000 gets you 20 points. So let's add the latter to your armor (all five energy types for 210,000) and the former to your shield (another 90,000) For 300,000, less than the cost of the ring, you get the same results and keep a ring slot open. Fairly priced? A ring with one resistance costs 12,000, 28,000 or 44,000.

I've asked that question several times now: How is it anything but power creep? Nobody's even tried to answer it. They've tried to shuffle and side step, "Well, it's just more efficient, more options, more opportunity." Ignoring the fact that all of these "more" things are just other ways to say more power.

I think the linkage that's been missing, that would make it clear, is the linkage between character level, money available, and resultant power. All the arguments I've seen have turned a blind eye to the link between level and wealth.

If the character is persuaded to buy something different instead of further enhancing one of the Big Six, and this results in an equivalent level of power, not a more powerful character, then it is not power creep as power is not increased. It is also not power creep if the players keep buying exactly what they bought before - nothing has changed at all in that case, and the repricing failed to have the desired impact.

If it means everybody focuses on the Big Six, just as they always have, and then get more goodies afterward with leftover cash, then I would agree it is power creep. But it also means that the exercise failed, as the point was to make these items competitive with the Big Six, so they might be a viable tradeoff against further enhancing your Big Six items.

 

[Tequila Sunrise]

So, is the ring overpriced, or are magic weapons and armor underpriced? Perhaps that is the real question - maybe the "big 6" should have their prices raised until they are no longer the clear and obvious choices.

Ugh, no. There is no appropriate price for something the game expects the PCs to have.

The Big 6, or rather the necessary bonuses they grant PCs and NPCs, should have been simply baked into level progressions. Particularly the AC boosters.

After PCs no longer need to be magical Xmas trees to play the way the game expects them to, devs and DMs can fiddle with item pricing and/or lower WBL to their heart's content. Heck, throw WBL out the window!

Sorry for getting ranty, but this is one of the biggest flaws of D&D magical items.

And, more on topic: I don't see a particular need to lower the cost of rings of universal energy resistance, but that has to do with my opinion that high-level blaster casters don't need even more of a roundabout nerf. Using such an item is like telling your players or your DM "U use blasterz lol noob suxx!"

 

[N'raac]

If I were going for power creep, I'd be looking to enhance the power of things the players already buy, not create new options for them to take, instead of those items presently accepted as the "best buy". Now, an error in that regard that causes something to leapfrog over the Big Six (ie everyone wants this now; it's the most powerful option) would cause power creep anyway. It's a balancing act overall.

 

[Greenfield]

Rewriting existing items has two problems, from the author's point of view:

1) You now have two different, official write ups of an item.
2) You can't sell your book of nifty new items.

In the 3.0 to 3.5 change over, they re-pricied more than a few items. Upward.

We used to call Boots of Striding and Springing "Boots of standard equipment". They were so cheap for what they did there was no reason for any character past 5th level not to own a pair.

Cloak of Displacement changed at some point as well, requiring an action to activate and having a 15 round limit per day.

Wings of Flying jumped from 10k to about 50k.
Now under 3.5 there is essentially no reason for anyone to ever make magical arrows. You can enchant them on the fly with Greater Magic Weapon, if you need to, and in any case they don't stack with magic weapons. A +5 magical bow costs pretty much the same as fifty +5 magical arrows, and gives the same bonus to far more than fifty shots.

In short, they rewrote a lot of items, but they could do that because it was an edition change. That sort of retro-fit within an edition wasn't going to work and they knew it.

More to the point, the rewrite was the opposite of power creep.

Then they came out with the new book and pretty much tossed out any guidelines for pricing magic. And the "base it on usefulness/power" standard is far too unstable. Things like an Ever full Mug, or a Decanter of Endless Water are of minor value/usefulness in most setting, but are priceless in desert campaigns. Even the "big six" come into question: What is a +5 Longsword worth in an underwater campaign? What price magical full plate there, when it's armor check penalties are doubled?

So, should either of these be any easier or harder to enchant just because there's more or less sand or water?

What they intended was to make miscellaneous magic so cheap and powerful that it competed with the life-or-death stuff like armor, saves and hit points. They said as much in those articles. And, like it or not, more power at lower cost/level is power creep.

 

[N'raac]

We used to call Boots of Striding and Springing "Boots of standard equipment". They were so cheap for what they did there was no reason for any character past 5th level not to own a pair.

Then was it a power reduction to raise the price?

Now under 3.5 there is essentially no reason for anyone to ever make magical arrows. You can enchant them on the fly with Greater Magic Weapon, if you need to, and in any case they don't stack with magic weapons. A +5 magical bow costs pretty much the same as fifty +5 magical arrows, and gives the same bonus to far more than fifty shots.

Again, would reducing the price of enchanted arrows be power creep? I suggest it would not, in that they move from "never worth purchasing" to "having some value", but that still means some characters will have magical ranged weapon capacity before they otherwise would have.

Then they came out with the new book and pretty much tossed out any guidelines for pricing magic. And the "base it on usefulness/power" standard is far too unstable. Things like an Ever full Mug, or a Decanter of Endless Water are of minor value/usefulness in most setting, but are priceless in desert campaigns. Even the "big six" come into question: What is a +5 Longsword worth in an underwater campaign? What price magical full plate there, when it's armor check penalties are doubled?

So they should never have suggested using some other method to price an item which provided True Strike at all times? ? And should I not also be able to buy an item which provides Expeditious Retreat at all times for the same price? Bet that's cheaper that Boots of Striding and Springing. The Cloak of Displacement change also deviates from the standard pricing guidelines, doesn't it? If it is possible for an item (or many items) to be inappropriately cheap at the standard pricing model, does it not stand to reason there may be other cases where the standard pricing model results in an excessive price? Should we fix only one of the two discrepancies, or correct both?

What they intended was to make miscellaneous magic so cheap and powerful that it competed with the life-or-death stuff like armor, saves and hit points. They said as much in those articles. And, like it or not, more power at lower cost/level is power creep.

If the "big 6" are so critical that they must be the priority, perhaps they are underpriced - that is, they provide an excessive benefit for their cost. On that basis, perhaps what MIC got wrong was lowing prices on many other items, rather than raising the price for the "Big 6" effects. Of course, that would have other repercussions, when players got these bonuses delayed, but if the +3 Sword, or the bump from +2 to +3, is more valuable than Miscellaneous Item X, should it not also cost more?

Was the structure perfect before? If so, then a change was ill-advised. I agree with the designers that a huge book of items that will never be used - for whatever reason - is a waste. So that comes to either addressing that problem (their choice), focusing the book on items that would provide the same, or similar, benefits to the Big Six, or writing the Book of Useless Magic Items and expecting gamers to pay for things that will never be used. Which of the three should they have selected? If you consider the change made by the designers to be inappropriate, what change would you recommend instead? One choice, of course, is simply to stop publishing new content. I think the gaming community wants new content, though. Of course, the choice to publish no new content isn't really a choice from a business perspective, but selling "Power up Coupons" to players and "Slap 'em Back Down Coupons" to GM's could make some money too.

 

[Deset Gled]

If I were going for power creep, I'd be looking to enhance the power of things the players already buy, not create new options for them to take, instead of those items presently accepted as the "best buy". Now, an error in that regard that causes something to leapfrog over the Big Six (ie everyone wants this now; it's the most powerful option) would cause power creep anyway

In addition to many new, cheap items and lowering prices on existing ones, the MIC includes a new set of rules to improve existing items by adding ability enhancement bonuses, AC bonuses, saving throws, and energy resistance. More importantly, it removes the extra cost previously required to do so by the DMG's pricing guides.

In other words, the MIC enhances the power of things players already buy, and leapfrogs over the original Big Six by allowing players to merge the Big Six into their other items.

 

[delericho]

Although 3e (3.0e) received a huge amount of playtesting, it really looks like that was highly concentrated on some parts of the game. Specifically, it looks like multiclassing, pretty much everything beyond 10th level, and the entire field of magic item creation (and purchase) was largely untested. (Plus, of course, that testing was done without the expertise in 'optimisation' that has since proliferated, and was done according to the built in assumptions of using several low-CR challenges per adventuring day rather than one big encounter.)

So, as soon as the game was hit with lots of optimisers, as soon as it became standard practice for people to create (or buy) magic items, and as soon as people were creating PCs above 1st level using the WbL table, it became apparent that the whole thing was broken.

So, the designers of the MIC were almost certainly right when they identified the problems with magic items. Too many items were (and are) useless. Too many items are way off in price. And magic item creation is pretty much broken. And the prices of the items in the MIC are mostly (probably) close to being 'right'.

But it is a real shame that they didn't bother to fix the rest of the system - revised pricing for the DMG items really was a 'must' if they're going that route, and we needed a revised magic item creation system. Alas, I suspect at that point they had half a mind on the forthcoming 4e, so didn't really care about fixing a system that they were shortly going to replace anyway.

 

[delericho]

In other words, the MIC enhances the power of things players already buy, and leapfrogs over the original Big Six by allowing players to merge the Big Six into their other items.

Probably the single biggest mistake in 3e's magic item design was in allowing 'plain' enhancement items at all. If they'd required every item that gives a + to something to also have some sort of power, they'd have had a much more interesting magic item selection - does your Rogue take Gloves of Arrow Snaring (+2 Dex) or Gloves of Storing (+2 Dex)? Either way, he gets the same +2 Dex, but it's tied to something else - and it's that "something else" that makes for the interesting choice.

IMO, of course.

 

[MichaelSomething]

I wonder how people would feel if they decided to triple the prices of the Big Six items instead?