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

[Jester David]

Using that calculation no one would every invest in solar panels for their house. The cost and the return on investment is no where near 3 years.

And as everyone knows, solar panels are ubiquitous and found on every household.
Oh wait no, they're still rare as heck, and most people can't even be bothered to switch to LED bulbs...

--edit--
And, as I said elsewhere, that's the price in 3e. It's easy to go both higher and lower in 5e as the number of casters available is less established.

 

[Shasarak]

And as everyone knows, solar panels are ubiquitous and found on every household.
Oh wait no, they're still rare as heck, and most people can't even be bothered to switch to LED bulbs...

The only reason why they have not switched to LED bulbs is because candles are so cheap.

Which is the reason why you never see anyone using solar panels.

 

[Mirtek]

and most people can't even be bothered to switch to LED bulbs...

You just need a government that forces them down your throat like in the EU

 

[Kikuras]

As a player I've always wanted to spend my gold on weird, non-mechanical, or partially mechanical things. The problem I've always faced was DMs who don't want to be bothered with that sort of thing, or who feel the need to destroy my investments because why shouldn't your house be robbed while you're away, or why shouldn't your groom and all your mounts be butchered by a dragon while the party is exploring the dungeon? The DM giveth, and the DM taketh away.

 

[Derren]

Using that calculation no one would every invest in solar panels for their house. The cost and the return on investment is no where near 3 years.

Forget solar panels. With that calculation no one would buy a house.

 

[Jester David]

More power to you. As a supplemental rule, I have no problem with it. Actually, a UA with some rules for how to price things wouldn't be bad. My concern is the on the world assumptions and player assumptions with making such a system critical to D&D.

I want such a system as an option for Eberron, but not a core assumption for Greyhawk.

It'd make a solid UA article.

But I'd like to see a wealth of other articles first. It's low-ish on the desirability scale.
It's also an idea that would make an excellent 3rd Party Product, if they ever released the new OGL. Or even a detailed blog post. There's no reason a fan pricing guide would be worse than an official one. There's a chance for it to be better as they can make it their "thing" and devote far more time to the project than anyone at WotC could, and be faster to respond to feedback.

 

[Fanaelialae]

I've been pondering how a designer would approach pricing magic items, and there are a few issues I've come up with.

1) You need wealth by level guidelines. Otherwise a great (or poor) roll on a hoard could unexpectedly unbalance a campaign. If you have no idea how much gold will be floating around in your campaign, how can you set fixed prices? Additionally, you want to leave only a minimum of spare gold (intended to be used for anything but magic items) or the players may use the extra to buy more magic items than the guidelines intend. (I have this picture in my head of an epic level party decked out in a king's ransom of magical bling but dressed in rags, living in the woods to avoid having to pay for an inn just so they can afford their next big upgrade a little sooner.)

2) There's a fine balance to be had. On the one hand, if the prices scale too slowly, players can forgo buying lower level items in order to get a really powerful item much sooner than they ought to. They could even pool their resources to buy an extremely powerful item.

Conversely, if you make prices scale too quickly, players can forgo their next + 1 in order to buy a near infinite supply of lower level items. (The best example I can think of is the purchasing of multiple wands of Cure Light Wounds for minimal sums in 3.x, which made healing between combats functionally unlimited.) This is the method that 3.x and 4e used, and is in fairness probably the lesser of two evils.

3) There's no way to price items in a way that is fair to all characters. A cloak of displacement will be far more powerful in the hands of a fighter with optimized AC, than on an unarmored wizard with a poor dexterity score. The two best options as I see them are to either price for an optimized character (which means that characters who aren't optimized in that respect probably won't bother), or find an average price somewhere in the middle (in which case there's little chance that the optimized character will pass it up).

None of the above is to say that it can't be done. However, I don't think it's possible to come up with a system that finds an ideal balance. Even if it's done by WotC and they really take their time to get it right, I think it will be exploitable.

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

Well, as far as having the formula goes, if you know the spell then you should be able to prepare scrolls given the right materials and time. Opportunity cost will vary from campaign to campaign. What if permanent item creation is a lost art or costs 10X as much in a given campaign? Assuming that you can make anything listed in the DMG simply because there are suggested rules for it isn't a great idea.

I said, "under the current rules there is almost no reason to ever create scrolls." You took exception to this but you needn't have. I agree that you could change the rules by making permanent magic items more 10x expensive than consumables of the same rarity, making spell scrolls not need formulas, or simply decreasing the rarity of spell scrolls. I was pointing out a weakness in the rules relative to the treasure tables--not suggesting that the problem was insurmountable.

 

[Coredump]

The problem is that D&D is not a generic system, and instead it is built on a number of basic assumptions that are spelled out on in the DMG. You're more than welcome to change any of those assumptions, but because they are so fundamental and inter-connected, it's not as simple as just adding two pages with charts and formulas and expecting everything else to still mesh together.

Thats annoying.... I spent about 4 paragraphs trying to say that...

Well done.

 

[Coredump]

People who are arguing for magic item prices are not arguing for 'easily purchasable' magic items or walmarts of magic items. Some posters quite the opposite actually. They're arguing that the designers *should* have put this stuff in the game to save them the hassle of having to do it for themselves, and it's not a niche demand, it's something which the past two editions and pathfinder supported/s.

But those are pretty much hand in hand.

The only way to have easily crafted items, is if they are also readily available, and thus easily purchasable.
the only way to have reliable consistent pricing, is to have enough of each of item available to create such a consistent economy.

You simply can't have +1 swords be easy to make *and* always be 2K gp *and* hard to purchase.... it just doesn't work.

If the designers say scrapped lazer rifles in the DMG (and some other variant rules that belong more in an Unearthed Arcana), and instead designed more robust magic item economy support (as a variant rule), that would have made a lot of people who want player driven gear acquisition/advancement happy.

While I have no use for lazer rifles... they are a much easier fit into the default world than easily produced magic items and consistent pricing. Lazer rifles are basically magic wands reflavored. Plus, they are similar to non-magical items like a crossbow.