D&D 5E Sane Magic Item Prices

[Blue]

I don't agree but that's besides the point.

The point is that don't use this to argue you can remove magic item prices without losing something.

I was using it to remove a ridiculous point that gold was worthless. Gold is useful.

If you want a point about removing magical item prices, that's a whole different point. And really simple. It was intentionally done to remove the exact reason you want it because the developers saw that as net detrimental to the game.

Net detrimental doesn't mean that your table can't handle it, but that how the game is played by all gamers. The whole need for items, the items as part of character advancement, the gear hamster wheel to get and then upgraded to more pluses, brought more negatives to the game then positives when aggregated across everyone answered surveys.

And if that's not why you're making the argument, fair enough, different playing styles and all that.

But don't presume to speak for other gamers, thankyouverymuch.

You mis-characterize what I said. If I say "more HPs will help you survive damage", I'm not "speaking for other gamers" - there's no opinion there.

Trying to lock in that there is only a single use for gold - buying magic items - in an edition where that has never been a use for gold - and therefore coming to the conclusion "there is no use for gold and it's worthless" isn't a defendable statement. Gold has uses - even before pointing at "styles of play" you can look at upgrading mundane equipment and expensive material components. Part of the support gold gives that is part of the base game and definitively not opinion or a particular style of RAW play.

 

[CleverNickName]

Every edition that I've played has had listed prices for living expenses and equipment. The rules assume that you are going to be spending most of your money at low levels on room and board, some fresh horses, passage across the river, etc. With all that being equal, different rules had other expectations as well.

In the BECM rules, once you reached a certain level ("name level,") you were expected to spend your gold on a permanent residence like as a ship, or a tower if you were a magic-user, or a castle if you were a fighter. At higher levels, you were expected to become the founder of a small kingdom or settlement, and you'd spend your gold on the armies and siege equipment needed to defend it. CM1, "Test of the Warlords" really focused on this part of the rules, and so did X10, "Red Arrow Black Shield" and the whole "Dawn of the Emperors" boxed set. Ultimately, you would eventually offer your amassed wealth to an Immortal Sponsor and ascend to immortality, but we never got that far (the "I" in BECMI rules.)

In 3rd Edition/Pathfinder, you were expected to spend your gold on magic items and spell components...whether you were buying them or making them yourself. That's it. Magic items became part of character creation in a way...you can Google dozens of build outs for character classes that require certain specific magic items. And sure, rules for purchasing ships and castles were provided in splatbooks later, and rules for armies and mass combat were added later still, but they were all largely ignored and no official adventure modules used them.

In 5th Edition, they tried a more hands-off approach. Magic items aren't specifically intended for sale, but there are scant rules that can be added in if you want them. Later books add more detail for buying and selling magic items, and ships would come later still...but that's it. Seven years in and there are still no rules that I know of for dominions or strongholds, no rules for armies or mass combat, and it doesn't look like they will be getting added anytime soon. (Maybe that's an opportunity? Someone should get a Kickstarter together...)

 

[CapnZapp]

Making a point should involve accurate terms. If the point is lost due to the use of grossly inaccurate terms, whose fault is that?

If the thread is derailed, whose fault is that?

 

[CapnZapp]

It was intentionally done to remove the exact reason you want it because the developers saw that as net detrimental to the game.

Well, creating and maintaining magic item prices is hard and labor-intensive. I believe they dropped it because they thought they could get away with not doing the work. And that turned out to be correct - the success of the edition meant WotC could and would ignore all the complaints. But like with the absence of low-light vision, there are plenty of gamers who would be better served by a more robust game.

The document discussed in this thread, Sane Magic Prices might be a early and imperfect effort to rectify this huge hole in 5th's support for standard adventuring. But at the time it meant a huge help for me.

Many years later I created a set of magic items (with pricing) myself. We had an entire session that revolved only around purchasing off of it.

For those interested, it's here:

D&D 5E - The many and fabulous bazaars of Port Nyanzaru - and beyond

Port Nyanzaru is depicted as a regional metropolis, and for my campaign, I wanted the offerings on hand to mirror a major bustling trade hub. Moreover, I've looked through the various "... of Faerûn" books for signature goods from Chult. Here are my results. Edit: Second iteration starts here...

www.enworld.org

 

[Maxperson]

If the thread is derailed, whose fault is that?

The fault of the person who sets forth a point that he didn't mean to. If you put the focus on the worth of gold, that's what will be discussed.

 

[jmartkdr2]

Seven years in and there are still no rules that I know of for dominions or strongholds, no rules for armies or mass combat, and it doesn't look like they will be getting added anytime soon. (Maybe that's an opportunity? Someone should get a Kickstarter together...)

Matt Covile's book covers these, and is well-regarded.

 

[Maxperson]

Well, creating and maintaining magic item prices is hard and labor-intensive. I believe they dropped it because they thought they could get away with not doing the work. And that turned out to be correct - the success of the edition meant WotC could and would ignore all the complaints. But like with the absence of low-light vision, there are plenty of gamers who would be better served by a more robust game.

The document discussed in this thread, Sane Magic Prices might be a early and imperfect effort to rectify this huge hole in 5th's support for standard adventuring. But at the time it meant a huge help for me.

Many years later I created a set of magic items (with pricing) myself. We had an entire session that revolved only around purchasing off of it.

For those interested, it's here:

D&D 5E - The many and fabulous bazaars of Port Nyanzaru - and beyond

Port Nyanzaru is depicted as a regional metropolis, and for my campaign, I wanted the offerings on hand to mirror a major bustling trade hub. Moreover, I've looked through the various "... of Faerûn" books for signature goods from Chult. Here are my results. Edit: Second iteration starts here...

www.enworld.org

I don't agree with that. I think they removed the prices, because magic items are purely a bonus now and not assumed by the game math. They aren't meant to be bought and sold, so they left it to individual DMs who want to do that. They tossed in a fairly bad price chart as an attempt to placate the minority of people who really want one, which was a mistake, since it just makes things worth to half-ass something.

I doubt they want to do all the work to price out everything appropriately, since it seems like they determined that it was bad for the game and just leads to magic item shops, which is something that will break this edition. Personally, I've just been making individual calls when needed, based on the item power/utility and amount of gold coming into the game. It's really easy to price things as you think they should be priced.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I get your point, but I feel stuck in the middle. Would I like a better guide? Sure.

But the value of things can differ greatly from campaign to campaign. Even if you tried to rank them relative to each other, it would be hard based on the campaign. My players would love and value anything radiant and anti-undead in this campaign, but it would have been useless last campaign.

And I agree their are a few glaring examples, but after looking at the difficulty in catering to all campaigns and tables, I am happy with the looser guidelines in XGtE, and letting the DM adjust from there.

I find myself agreeing, to an extent.

I think they went too far with the current guidelines (as they exist in the DMG, I don't remember how much Xanathar's changed them). Going from 5,000 to 50,000 is far too large of a gap. The value of something shouldn't be THAT imprecise. I'd have been much happier I think with going to 20,000 max. Something that gives us a smaller scale to fit items into.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Yeah. This is very table dependent. Some tables enjoy hard to get magic items. Others not so much. Have you talked to the DM about the magic item rate in that game?

Yes.

If this worked the desert folks would already have acquired one or several.

Yes

Sure, that works if you are playing Booboos and Bedsheets, but if you're playing Dungeons & Dragons, the party probably isn't going to want to leave the Cleric in town to use up all of his slots daily.

If we have a week of downtime to do whatever we want, why can't I make 1,120 gp by doing that?

See, this is my problem with this derisive "well, if you are playing DnD you won't-" If the point of the game is to make money, say by being hired to go and clear out a cave of monsters, then yes, my character would seek to continue making money. That is what you said my goal is.

If the point of the game isn't to make money but to deal with "PLOT A" then... if I have the downtime and my character wants to make a lot of money, who cares? The motivation for "PLOT A" isn't that we are getting paid a lot of money to go and do it, there are other hooks and those hooks are equally effective.

But, these sort of "clever players will try to use this, but we are playing DnD not Booboos and Bedsheets, or Taxes and Spreadsheets, or Lawyers and Accountants" excuses rely on assuming that the players will abandon everything else to pursue the sole goal of using this item to make money. I don't need that item to make money. I can do that as a character. I can do it rather trivially. If you don't want me to just sit around making money, then don't tell me the point of your game is for me to go out and make money.

 

[Maxperson]

I find myself agreeing, to an extent.

I think they went too far with the current guidelines (as they exist in the DMG, I don't remember how much Xanathar's changed them). Going from 5,000 to 50,000 is far too large of a gap. The value of something shouldn't be THAT imprecise. I'd have been much happier I think with going to 20,000 max. Something that gives us a smaller scale to fit items into.

I don't agree. A rare potion might cost 5k. A rare sword of doing cool stuff might be worth 50k or even more, really. The problem was with pricing by rarity and not by how powerful something is, but if they priced by power, they would have to price individually and they didn't want to do that. I mean, a rare(unique) rubber duck that can't be lost is not going be worth even 5k. Rarity shouldn't be the standard.