D&D 5E No Magic Shops!

[Ancalagon]

Since it is all based on rarity, it is utterly useless for any campaign that hands out gold instead of magic items, so that the players can choose themselves what they want to buy.

The reason for the fan-effort "Sane Magic Prices" is exactly that the WotC support is entirely random... or as they would say: insane. Winged Boots more rare/expensive than the Broom of Flying? Weapon of Warning uncommon while Vicious Weapon rare?

Are they mad? A Weapon of Warning is a hundred times more valuable than a Vicious Weapon. (171 times more, in Sane's opinion)

While I don't have your... vehemence... I must say that your central premise - that the rarity rating isn't equal to the power - is entirely correct. If memory serve (I'm eating breakfast and I don't feel like getting my books ) a +1 weapon is uncommon, and a Vicious Weapon (+7 dmg on a critical) is rare. Now I think it's pretty clear that a +1 to hit and dmg all the time is much better than a + 7 to damage only only on critical hits. At most, on a power level, they should be in the same "category". BUT, on a rarity scale, the vicious weapon is rarer!

Now, there may be very valid reason why this is - maybe the vicious weapon is harder to make - or maybe the few magical item creators felt that it sucked and made + 1 weapons instead (haha) and thus it's relatively rare. This difficulty/rarity could drive up the price. In Yoon-Suin's Yellow City, where there are magical item auctions, most of the buyers (and sellers) aren't users of the items, they are collectors! (The slugmen of the Yellow City are very rich, and bored). So for them, the vicious weapon is more valuable that the "I've already have 3 of those" +1 weapon.

BUT, if you want a system where the price of the item is entirely dependent on its *utility* then yes, the rarity = price guidelines of 5e is not going to cut it.

BUT, I would contend that the prices of 3e weren't quite right either

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

Just as a thought experiment, what items in our world would be roughly equivalent to magical items, in terms of rarity, desirability, etc.? Are there any?

None that I can think of.
Our world doesn't really have professional mercenaries/adventurers with the same bent as D&D does. And most of the military or similar equipment actually used is mass-produced. Even in Eberron, which has probably the most magic item production, every item still needs to be enchanted individually my a skilled creator. There is no industrial or mass production of magic items.

Artwork spring to mind, but magic items are typically useful things, or at least things that have a use. I mean, maybe there are wealthy magic item "collectors"...

Another category would be "tools made by famous dead people". Like Stradivarius violins, or various japanese blacksmiths (most notably plane blades*). That still doesn't feel quite right to me.

Any other ideas?

*In '99 I thought I had acquired one of the last plane blades to ever be made by one famous Japanese smith, but after I received it my dealer asked me to send it back for inspection. It turns out the smith's son did most of the work because the father was just unable to do the work anymore. I missed getting the last blade he ever made by one.

As you say, famous works of art might be more similar, but magic items have a specific use and are probably sought after not only by collectors, but by professional adventurers and the military as well.

There isn't really an equivalent parallel.
The closest that I can think of would have been those fully-enclosing, intricately designed suits of armour: gothic plate and such from the early renaissance?

 

[Ancalagon]

Just stop it.

You're showing your ignorance. Updating the 3e system to 5e is a major undertaking.

Your opinions are thus devalued.

Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app

Back home we would say "On respire par le nez!" - the snark isn't helping your cause here...

 

[Lanefan]

Maybe I am mixing editions or just remembering play test data but was the default campaign idea at the core a "points of light" setting.

That was 4e.

On the whole populations are isolated, the night is dark and full of terrors, the great wonders of the past are lost and heroes are few and far between.

This seems like a world where a +1 weapon could be an amazing treasure, but a typical town couldn't afford its value.

Fine in theory but it falls down at "heroes are few and far between", as in a true points-of-light setting there's likely to be in the population a greater proportion of "heroes" than in a more peaceful (i.e. bog-standard) setting; as these heroes are all that prevent the points of light from being snuffed out completely.

Why is this relevant? Because more heroes likely means more adventurers, and more adventurers likely means more magic items entering the economy, and more magic items likely means there'll be some trading and bartering and buying/selling of such.

Lan-"a points-of-light setting is step one towards a grittier and darker campaign"-efan

 

[Lanefan]

BUT, if you want a system where the price of the item is entirely dependent on its *utility* then yes, the rarity = price guidelines of 5e is not going to cut it.

BUT, I would contend that the prices of 3e weren't quite right either

Having just finished going through and re-doing magic item pricing for my own game I can say this much in defense of those authors/designers: it's hard!

The reason it's hard is that in a whole lot of instances there's really no way to estimate just how useful any given item is going to be until it's been in play for a while; meaning that while pricing items previously seen in play is fairly easy, trying to price some weird item you've never DMed or seen in play is something of a crapshoot. And with most magic items utility or perceived utility is a very large part of the value.

All three of 1e, 3e and 4e (I'm not familiar with 2e pricing) had some RAW item prices that either right away or in hindsight were completely out to lunch; 1e and 3e due to poor guessing-of-usefulness (and, in the case of 1e, a few glaring typos in the DMG) and 4e due to being hard-wired to a pricing formula that didn't allow for some much-needed flexibility...which from all accounts seems to be the route 5e is taking as well.

So, in the end it's right back to square one: make up your own price list for your own game, if you think you need one.

Have fun!

Lanefan

 

[gyor]

The problem with no magic shops is that it doesn't fit FR at all, which absolutely does have magic shops, from Thayan enclaves, to the Calishite city of Almraiven whose primary insutry is making common magic items, and so on.

It makes sense for settings like At has, Nentar Vale, Dragon lance, Ravenloft, and others to have no magic shops, but Forgotten Realms, Eberron, Spelljammer, and Planescape its an annoying setting damaging retcon.

 

[Guest 6801328]

The problem with no magic shops is that it doesn't fit FR at all, which absolutely does have magic shops, from Thayan enclaves, to the Calishite city of Almraiven whose primary insutry is making common magic items, and so on.

It makes sense for settings like At has, Nentar Vale, Dragon lance, Ravenloft, and others to have no magic shops, but Forgotten Realms, Eberron, Spelljammer, and Planescape its an annoying setting damaging retcon.

Not sure what you mean FR "absolutely does" have magic shops. Do you mean from the novels that are set there?

 

[pming]

Hiya!

5e has been out for a while, and it's been a bit since I last wrote about the cash/power economy. Are you guys happy with the lack of magic shops in 5th? Do you ever miss them? Do you find yourself itching to
homebrew systems for turning gold pieces into magic items, or do you prefer to play it as written, thank-you-very-much?

Well this is gonna be a quick post!

Yes. No. No. Yes. ...in a nutshell.

Yes I am VERY pleased that there is the default "no magick shoppe". No I don't miss them because we never used them. Ever. Even when playing 3.x/PF...and I wasn't the DM 99% of the time with 3.x. No, I've never ever ever had the desire to work up some sort of 'gp to magic items'. And lastly Yes, I DM the game 'as written' (no purchasable magic of any real sort).

Reasoning: If PC's can buy magic items, then Players get to, or should, know what is out there from a meta-game perspective. That instantly turns "magic items" into "mundane items that are expensive". That fact that 'magic' has to be imbued into them becomes common place, and therefore, "not special". It's like computer hardware designers, cutting-edge medical devices, etc...not very common, but everybody knows they are out there and that they 'do their thing' and we end up with self-driving cars and 4.6ghz CPU's pushing around billions and billions of 1's and 0's. (e.g., "magic" to the layman).

No magic shops! Just say NO to magic item purchasing! Not even potions! Potions are the gateway drug into hard-core magic item use!

^_^

Paul L. Ming

 

[Hussar]

Just stop it.

You're showing your ignorance. Updating the 3e system to 5e is a major undertaking.

Your opinions are thus devalued.

Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app

Hang on then. If updating the 3e system to 5e is a "major undertaking", then you are expecting WotC to ... well... undertake a major undertaking for an optional system that not that many people are actually clamoring for. It doesn't seem to have a lot of support anyway.

I'd rather they spent their design time on stuff that more people want to be honest.

 

[Zardnaar]

The problem with no magic shops is that it doesn't fit FR at all, which absolutely does have magic shops, from Thayan enclaves, to the Calishite city of Almraiven whose primary insutry is making common magic items, and so on.

It makes sense for settings like At has, Nentar Vale, Dragon lance, Ravenloft, and others to have no magic shops, but Forgotten Realms, Eberron, Spelljammer, and Planescape its an annoying setting damaging retcon.

Thayan enclaves were a retcon and it was a 3E thing to enable magic item buying in 3E FR. Early FR did not have magic shops. Early 2E was more or elss the same as 1E you could not buy magic items. 1E had a sell price but once again you could not buy.

At least in the modern mentality you could not buy whatever you wanted ie something specific which 3E kind of enabled. 4E you did not even need a shop just a pile of gold and a ritual and 1 hour.

So its basically disingenuous to claim that magic items for sale are baked in to FR. I would imagine Thayan enclaves are long gone.