D&D 5E [+] Design & Development: Magic Item Pricing

[Nevvur]

Not sure what you mean, but thanks!

My personal opinion is that the important relation between dropped or purchased magic weapons and Magic Weapon the spell, is that the items should not come so early that the spell never sees any use.

My focus is not on creating items and thus not the spell prerequisites needed in item creation either.

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Let me run you through the process to show you how I arrived at those numbers. The purpose isn't as a guide to creating magic items based on spells, but to regard spell resources as having certain thresholds where maintaining a given spell effect isn't prohibitively expensive. I actually ended up using the optional Spell Points system in the DMG rather than spell slots, since that provides a bit more flexibility with the maths.

Magic Weapon spell requires a 2nd level slot, or 3 SP. It has a duration of 1 hour. In a 6-8 encounter adventuring day, it would take 3 or 4 castings to have the effective equivalent to permanency (that is, you will always cast it when you need it). I'm going to err high since the final number will set the item level, and wealth is excessive under the assumptions of the OP. So that's 4 castings, or 12 SP. I'm arbitrarily setting "not prohibitively expensive" as half the caster's SPs. That means you need at least 24 SP to meet this requirement. Since you have 27 SP at level 5, the item is level 5.

Upcasting to a +2 weapon costs 6 points per cast, 24 per day for effective permanency, so 48 total SP to not be prohibitively expensive. You get 57 SP at level 9, so it's a 9th level item.

+3 takes 6th level slots, but you only get one 6th level spell per rest under SPs. The other 3 castings would require 7th, 8th, and 9th level SPs, for a total of 43. Double to 86 to not be expensive, and you're looking at level 15.

I used Flame Blade as the basis for creating a Flame Tongue. This spell only has a duration of 1 minute, so you'd need to cast it at the start of each combat to have an effective permanency. That's 8 castings for 3 points each = 24 SPs = 48 SPs to not be expensive = 9th level.

This isn't to say only level 15 casters can MAKE a permanent +3 weapon, only that they can, according to my 'expensive' threshold, make one effectively permanent (it's up when you need it, i.e. when combat breaks out) through repetitious casting without becoming useless throughout the adventuring day (ignoring concentration requirements, of course). This satisfies the "strictly a bonus" quality intended for magic items in 5e as far as I'm concerned. That doesn't really match up to actual play - a wizard missing all his spell slots from 6-9th is clearly going to be less effective than one using those slots to respond to different scenarios as they come up, but that's just one flaw among several in this approach.

It breaks down even more if you can't find a good spell equivalent to the magic item's effect. The lowest level spell that fits the "extradimensional space" quality of a Bag of Holding is Rope Trick. Since it's a 1 hour duration spell that requires an effective uptime of 24 hours/day, that's 72 SP. The caster must have 144 SP for this to be inexpensive, which makes it above a level 20 item. What's interesting here is if you instead use Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion, another extradimensional space. That's a level 7 spell but has a duration of 24 hours, so it only needs 1 casting per day, a 20 SP expensive threshold, so level 5 item.

Like I said, it gets weird and complicated. Again, I'm only offering this as a springboard for other ideas, not a well-tuned system for appraising all magic items.

 

[ccs]

* I've not read pages 2+. So you might have addressed this....

In the opening post we're told that you're assuming combat is dominant, and that items will be priced to reflect thier utility to the characters.

Won't this lead you to charging a premium for "combat stuff" & (probably) mis-pricing a great variety of other stuff?
Wich in turn will lead someone using your price lists decrying "_____ is broken!" When a player buys x, & uses it in some creative/obnoxious way.

Are you going to have some way for DMs to scale up a cost based upon the creativity of the players?

 

[jaelis]

You know what might be a reasonable place to start is just to rank magic items into a number of groups of similar effectiveness/value. Like, see if there is a consensus that boots of elvenkind are less valuable than a +1 sword. Once you have a ranking like that, you have a coherent basis for assigning prices or levels as you like.

If you can't perform such a ranking, then assinging prices would seem to be hopeless!

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

Magic weapons. In 3rd edition, the formula is simply bonus squared in thousands of gold. But in 5th edition, with bounded accuracy, the need for (and therefore value of) a +1 bonus is much lessened. Don't get me wrong, it's still great. But want < need. A +1 bonus is a luxury, not a requirement. Having a magical weapon at all, however, is very much a requirement - lots and lots of monster manual critters are resistent to non-magical weapons.

Once you cover the ability to break DR/magic (or in 5e terms, resistance or immunity to nonmagical weapon attacks), the value of each additional +1 bonus is much greater in 5e than 3rd. Bounded accuracy means that that +1 is a much greater proportion of total bonus to hit and damage than it was in 3e.

Now, pricing that +1 Longsword at 1000 gp is, in the context of 5th edition, nuts. Just like the official drop policy, it results in that monster damage resistance almost never comes into play (barring the odd wererat at level 4, like).

Since our price list is meant to meaningfully adhere to what is needed to make 5th great, I will argue that the "magicness" itself is a valued property of magic swords. Just as a talking point, say we price "magicness" at 5000 gp, and keep the "bonus squared" formula otherwise. This means a +1 Longsword costs 6000 gp, a +2 Longsword costs 9000 gp and a +3 Longsword costs 14000 gp.

The specific gp values aren't important right now, but the changed ratio between the three tiers is. Before, a +2 weapon cost four times as much as a +1 weapon. Now, with this example, a +2 weapon costs 50% as much as a +1 weapon. I would argue that comes much closer to the actual usefulness in a 5th edition context. (Remember, this is an example. I could be convinced the ratios should be different)

The best way to handle this would probably be to consider the existence of +0 magical weapons, either to introduce them, or purely theoretically.
Level 6 is when characters would appear to be granted magical attacks, so that sets a rough baseline, which can them be turned into a range, from maybe 5 to 10. Level 5 is when a character would start being able to afford magical +0 weapons of less-optimal types, such as clubs, tridents, light crossbows. Level 7 is when they should start to be able to equip themselves with +0 Longswords or shortbows. Level 10 is when the most optimal weapons: Handcrossbows, greatswords, glaives become affordable relative to their available cash.

Deciding when it is appropriate for characters to gain a magical weapon with an actual bonus is much harder, since the bonus is over and above any assumed maths build into 5e, and is unobtainable any other way.
Under normal circumstances in the setting, you also have the issue of higher-level adventurers with many times the available gold bidding on the same items. This however would be outside the guidelines of this thread, so we assume that utility to a PC optimised to use the weapon is the only factor.
We do need at least one other data point to start working from however, so for this purpose we shall assume that an adventurer should be able to afford the +3 weapon of their choice by level 20.
A magical +1 weapon bonus is a significant boost to a weapon-using character. A +2 is still very much worthwhile, but less of a boost over the previous step. Likewise +3 bonus. So access to +bonus weapons should probably be kept to the later part of a PC's possible career, but higher bonuses having less of a jump. I'd suggest baselines for standard weapons be +1 at around level 11, +2 at level 15 and +3 at level 17. There will be considerable spread according to the utility of the actual weapon however: a +3 sickle for example will cost less than a +1 handcrossbow or glaive due to is being of much less utility to someone specialised in its use.

 

[jaelis]

+0 weapon = moon touched sword from XGTE?

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

I used Flame Blade as the basis for creating a Flame Tongue. This spell only has a duration of 1 minute, so you'd need to cast it at the start of each combat to have an effective permanency. That's 8 castings for 3 points each = 24 SPs = 48 SPs to not be expensive = 9th level.

I think that having a Flame Tongue sword is considerably better than the Flame Blade spell, since we're assuming that the wielder of the Flame Tongue will be able to make multiple attacks with it and suchlike.

 

[Rossbert]

I skipped a couple pages to catch up, but I had a weird thought akin to the moment you realize money now is just numbers in a computer.

As the DM you determine how much gold the party gets in any given encounter. As the GM you also set the prices of items (especially ones with no normal list price). So really we are setting an exchange rate of encounters to magic items.

Instead of setting a price per item, perhaps think instead how much work (in encounters) you would want them to have had to put in to get it in a treasure pile and price it at whatever amount of gold you gave them for that amount of adventuring.

 

[Nevvur]

I think that having a Flame Tongue sword is considerably better than the Flame Blade spell, since we're assuming that the wielder of the Flame Tongue will be able to make multiple attacks with it and suchlike.

I believe I was quite clear the entire approach is flawed, so I'm confused as to why you would bother contending this particular choice.

If one were to pursue my methodology, it would likely require the wholesale invention of new spells using the guidelines in the DMG. That's not something I'm interested in doing, and I doubt it's a task anyone else is going to undertake either. Unfortunately, if the goal is to create an algorithm for pricing applicable to all magic items, I don't think there can be one since he existing items themselves do not appear to be generated by procedure; they have bases in tradition, play testing for balance, vague feelings, and maybe some loose guidelines - not unlike spells themselves. It would, however, be an approach built upon existing systems rather than the consensus of DM gut feelings.

In any case, let me restate: I posted my methodology as a springboard for other ideas, not as a serious suggestion as to how CapnZapp and other contributors ought to proceed.

 

[Oofta]

I skipped a couple pages to catch up, but I had a weird thought akin to the moment you realize money now is just numbers in a computer.

As the DM you determine how much gold the party gets in any given encounter. As the GM you also set the prices of items (especially ones with no normal list price). So really we are setting an exchange rate of encounters to magic items.

Instead of setting a price per item, perhaps think instead how much work (in encounters) you would want them to have had to put in to get it in a treasure pile and price it at whatever amount of gold you gave them for that amount of adventuring.

I agree. Cost of an item without having a rough idea of how much wealth PCs will have at certain levels is meaningless. Let's say a +3 weapon is worth 100,000 GP. If the PCs only ever accumulate 50,000 GP after other expenses they can never buy the weapon. If the PCs get a million gold pieces, then the weapon is relatively cheap.

You can't have one discussion without the other. Well, you can, but it's kind of pointless.

 

[Oofta]

If you want to question or discuss what this thread is about, do it in a new thread.

I will ask you nicely exactly once.

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Ask nicely, or not so nicely all you want. This is a public forum, I have not violated any rules of conduct that I know of. If a moderator wants to correct me I'm sure they will.

While I may have waxed a bit philosophical in some of my posts, I am trying to contribute because I do think if you have a magic mart then it is a valid question to ask how much items should cost. However, measurement without scale is meaningless. If I tell you an item weighs 10, you have no clue what that means. Grams? Pounds? Tons?

Without knowing how much money PCs have, pricing has little, if any, value. Once you know how much money PCs have at a specific level and decide what types of items and how many you want them to purchase then you can determine a price for those types of items.