While I don't take issue with anything you've said, I find myself wondering: does the "Sane Item Pricing" lists not fulfil your needs? (Or, at least, get you a long way towards that target.)
Or are you of the view that nothing other than a printed book from WotC will do the job? (That latter is a position I can understand - I'm of much the same view when it comes to some of the things I want from the game. So I'm just asking.)
Apologies if you've already answered this - it's a long thread, so I've missed some stuff.
A so proud statement allow me some questions.
Do you have made, as dm, any changes to your game concerning this matter?
Or more precisely do you use any sane magic item price list?
Thank you for asking.
I use Sane for reference, mainly as a shorthand for having a think about a certain item myself. In short, if an item is priced by Sane at 25,000 gp that tells me "probably not appropriate for my players until tier III".
Very much unlike WotC's rarity system, Sane represents somebody actually thinking about how an item influences and changes gameplay. They even have a small list of completely gamewrecking items that they refuse to price! This is very useful to a hard-working DM.
Problem is; it's all far too direct a d20 conversion to be truly useful.
In no particular order:
# all weapons are assumed to be equally desirable; meaning that - just like in d20 - a +1 dagger and a +1 greataxe is costed the same: 1000 gp. This simply isn't true. Any martial character with Greatweapon Master and Greatweapon Fighting Style is dreaming about a magical greatsword, and will be prepared to pay a fortune to have one, and not to have to use, say, a Longsword or Maul.
# all armors are assumed to be equally desirable; which is patently absurd. A +3 ring mail costs 24000 gp despite being strictly worse than a regular full plate for 1500 gp!
# the magical plus of weapons follow the exact same pricing formula as in 3E, except that +3 weapons are priced as if they were +4 items. That is, the price is the bonus squared times a thousand. This is simply not valid anylonger in 5E, since there is only one level of damage resistance. ALL magic weapons bypass resistance, and so ALL magic weapons need a hefty surcharge. The difference between a +2 sword and a +3 sword might have been significant once (remember 3E featured different schemes for damage resistance in 3.0 and 3.5) but is no longer so. Just "plus one" to your hit is of course nice, but hardly vital, especially in the face of 5E's much lower monster AC over the board. And "plus one" damage is almost inconsequential.
# So a real 5E take of magic weapons might want to set a base price of 10000 gp for ANY weapon that registers as magical (that is, bypasses magic resistance). THEN you can have +1000, +4000 and +9000 for +1, +2 and +3 enchantments, respectively.
In the end, such a scheme would indicate that a +3 weapon is
roughly twice as desirable as a +1 weapon, and not
sixteen times as Sane would have you believe! But more importantly, that no magic weapon is less desirable than ordinary full plate, or even close to it.
# In a similar vein, magic armor pricing needs to focus on the actual end-result Armor Class you achieve.
Magical +1 leather armor needs to cost... 45 gp, since that's all the utility you'll get out of it. (Unless we add rules for combining enhancements onto items and say you need a magical item as base). Magical +3 ring mail needs to cost... 200 gp or slightly more (since you do get no Strength requirement).
# The Sane prices of scrolls is WAY too low. (5E official prices, on the other hand, is stupidly high. No a consumable can't cost half the amount of a permanent item, that's just stupid, WotC). Even so, Sane is too low.
In 3e, you would routinely sport wands with 50 charges, that made out of combat utility casting a non-issue. Not so in 5e. Maybe "level squared" times a hundred is adequate. Contrast Sane's d20:ish pricing of a fifth-level scroll (640 gp) with my off-the-cuff proposal (5x5x100=2500 gp) and you see what I mean.
# Next, spell levels 6-9 are special in 5E. Just look at the DMG rules for spell points if you don't believe me. Any 5E-appropriate pricing mechanism needs to at least double the price of items replicating effects of this level, if not more. A level 6 scroll should not cost 3600 gp - it should cost 7200 gp. (If not more)
I could go on, but you get the point. Achieving a true utility based pricing mechanism and fine-tuning it to the particular sensibilities of 5th edition is hard, and nobody but WotC has the time and know-how to pull it off.
In the meanwhile I'm trying to get by using a demand-driven economy, i.e. the idea is to set prices high and have them gradually lower until a player snaps up the item. In theory this makes for "right" prices.
In practice, however, this ain't a video game where a player might return to town and visit the shoppes every hour and end up with a handful of visits per session. In a pen and paper game we're seeing perhaps one visit every other level if that.
So it's hard, but it's all I have, barring official support.
PS. I trust you did see my thread on Port Nyanzaru shoppes, yes?
http://www.enworld.org/forum/showth...he-many-and-fabulous-bazaars-of-Port-Nyanzaru
