D&D 5E Sane Magic Item Prices

[Maxperson]

Y'know, why are people that don't want magic item pricing guides even responding to this thread? Don't want it? Don't use it. Don't threadcrap.

I'm proposing an alternative pricing guide. One which teaches DMs how to price magic items. I have yet to see set prices in any edition not suffer from lots of problems.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Took me a minute to realize this was directed at me. Even if you aren't going to break the quote up, it does help to at least hit the button.

No, as a scavenger, you generally can't get 15 gp for a longsword.

Never claimed I could. I claimed that I could sell 4 longswords without anyone questioning the supply and demand that allows me to sell four high-quality martial weapons.

You could set up a longsword store snd wait a few months for buyers to come by.

You could go to a longsword shop and try to sell yours, but they won't buy them for 15 gp; they intend to sell them for 15 gp, and buying them for the ssme price is dumb.

If you find a place desperate for longswords, maybe you get 15 gp; heck, maybe you get 30 or 40.

The guy in the basement? He isn't selling his spells when he wants to. He is selling them when a customer arrives.

None of this addresses my point. I never once talked about getting 15 gold for selling the longswords. I simply said I could sell them with no questions coming up about supply and demand.

I could probably even sell longswords I made for 15 gold, without too many people raising an eyebrow.

Yet, I go to sell spells, and suddenly we have to question the socio-economic stability of the region. Why?

If that guy does have a system to sell spells on demand, he has a business that lines up clients. Those clients are going to be curated, there is going to be sales help, etc. It will be a business, and it will involve spending money to make money. At the limit, finding the buyer of the last spell slot/day can cost 1 gp less than they charge for it.

This describes a modern business. That is not how businesses have always been run.

The rules describe what a PC adventuring type can find for sale and what they oay for it. Using those rules as how much they can make by selling the same goods and services is stupid and simplistic and unrealistic.

Realistic rules result in boredom and more accounting than I prefer. Story first ideas work. Naive rules to quickly clear loot is ok (you sell the weapons for 1/4 face value). If it scales, more effort has to go into it.

Why is it stupid to assume I sell a thing to an end-user for the same price I would buy it for as an end-user?

The entire reason you sell gear at 1/2 value is because it is assumed the shopkeep is going to sell it to an adventurer for full value. But, the person being affected by a spell isn't going to sell that spell to someone else.

Now, maybe you are trying to say that there must, MUST be costs involved in offering my healing services. However, I point you to an obvious answer to that. As a Cleric, I probably have some sort of relationship with the Church. They are probably doing that work. Oh, and as an adventurer and all that, I probably have contacts in some sort of position of government, even if it is a secretary, who can easily point me to a way to heal people.

There is nothing "stupid" or "simplistic" or "unrealistic" about what I am talking about. And yet, I have greatly offended people it seems by even daring to think of doing such heinous acts as... use my resources.

And part of it is what kind of story the DM and otber players want to tell. Is it about an adventure, or a business wizard who adventures in the side?

The rules state what you can spend gold on, they don't state you can gain the same gold by doing the opposite. No more than you can pick up an angel's sword and do 2d12+4d8 damage. It isn't realistic, it generates warped incentives, and it isn't what those rules are for. I mean, commoner railgun, economic version.

And here again is the baseless accusation that completely ignores my true point. Again. Because I will now ask for a FOURTH time.

Why are you assuming that I am ruining the adventure by having a business? How is it that my actions of trying to make money and create a business are warping the game to such an extent that the game cannot possibly function under the weight of my choice?

Because again and again and again you and Max and others have accused me of wanting to ruin the game, of forcing the other players to simply sit and twiddle their thumbs as I selfishly make money all for myself... as though anything of any value that isn't gained from the steaming corpse of an enemy is evil and corrupt in the game of dungeons and dragons.

And no one wants to actually address the point. Why is money so important to your game that the very concept of making 1,000 gp in a month of downtime causes accusations to fly about that player trying to ruin the game and no longer play Dungeons and Dragons but some other game? No one has even bothered to answer it, they just seem to assume it is true and procceed to tell me how wrong and terrible I am for trying to do something other than march bravely out of the town to kill foes for gold.

 

[Chaosmancer]

All I can say is that I don't want to run a game nor play "businessmen and tradesmen".

People earn their keep in downtime but all profits are put back into the business. God's do not grant power so their clerics can get rich, they grant them power to further the god's goals.

Why is it that making money as a character ruins Dnd to the point that it is no longer DnD? Can't you run an adventure where the goal isn't money?

 

[Maxperson]

Why is it that making money as a character ruins Dnd to the point that it is no longer DnD? Can't you run an adventure where the goal isn't money?

Speaking personally, I've had parties buy stores and set up NPCs to sell stuff they bring back.

The above statement is confusing to me, though. You ask why it is that making money as a character ruins D&D, and then ask why you can't run an adventure where the goal isn't making money. Doesn't making money as a character, involve a goal of making money?

 

[CleverNickName]

That is a dangerous assumption in my opinion, and it often leaves newer DMs with no idea what to do. As I have seen first hand.

You lost me there. Assuming that the people playing the game know how to play the game is not a "dangerous assumption." It's the base assumption of all games, ever. The rules are intended for novice and expert players alike.

And neither here nor there, but in my experience the phrase "the DM (or player) doesn't know what they are doing" is often code for "the DM (or player) isn't doing what I want." If you hear it at the table, it should raise a flag.

 

[Chaosmancer]

My players have had that problem in smaller towns. Not everyone has a weapon/armor shop and the local general store isn't going to pay you for them. Also, from the rules... " Weapons and armor used by monsters are rarely in good enough condition to sell."

The vast majority of the time you aren't even going to be able to sell swords and leather armor looted from bodies. Personally, I ignore that rule for my game.

And yet, nothing you are saying disproves my point.

Maybe for your specific game, but I wasn't saying "In Maxperson's campaign world where he DM's I...". I said "if I posted to these forums". So, please try to respond to what I was saying, not what you interpret me to be saying.

As I've stated multiple times so far, this is because of common sense. It doesn't make sense for all of those things to align just right every freaking day. If you don't care about that, more power to you. Have fun.

So, if I had a version that makes sense, you'd be okay with the cleric selling magical services in exchange for gold? Even if that left them very wealthy?

Because, I was just throwing out a quick and dirty example to prove the point that you don't need a magical item to make money. But, you wanted to come in and start declaring how wrong I am and how terrible that is and how I'm ruining the game by forcing my fellow players... yadda yadda yadda. You never seemed to stop and think about any other aspect of this, just how wrong I was.

Nobility is not famous for hunting every day and unless there is a tournament going on, you aren't going to have a lot of serious injuries that will need magic.

Every day? No. Famous for Hunting? Yes. Very much so. Hunting was a huge deal. A big enough deal to appear in... the vast majority of medieval tales and myths. Whenever a group of nobles gathered together, their seemed to be a hunt or mention of hunting at some point.

Well, here it is again. NO. You are wrong with that statement and will always be wrong with that statement. I don't try to find reasons to say no. Period.

And yet, you have never once tried to find a reason to say yes to this idea. It has all been that it is stupid, unreasonable, illogical, ruins the game... never once tried to figure out a way to make it work. Just said no. And no. And NO.

Only an idiot is going to pay a bunch of gold to get over a cold or minor flu, which the vast majority are. There are better ways to spend several months savings than on a cold of flu.

An unskilled worker makes 2sp a day, IF working. Assuming a 5 day work week, that person is only making 4 gold a month, and has to pay living expenses out of that.

Even a skilled worker is only making 40g a month, so to pay 50g to have you cure a 24-48 hour flu is moronic.

Huh, look at you finding more ways to call the very concept stupid, moronic, and no, no, no, no, no.

Also, you might be thinking of the cold and flu as a modern disease, affecting generally healthy people with good nutrition and the ability to take a day off if ill. I assure you, that doesn't describe people from the ages of yore when DnD is nominally set.

Heck, even as recent as 85 years ago a cut that got infected could be a death sentence. How much would you pay to make sure that you didn't DIE?

Which question haven't I answered? I can pat myself on the back and answer you at the same time. Multitasking!

Changes nothing about how much you could make.

Um. I already said I missed that it was downtime. If it's downtime, okay. It's downtime.

The question you keep avoiding is why is making this much money a big deal? I now have three posters, yourself included who have made reference to the "I'm playing Dungeons and Dragons, not Cubicles and Taxes" or some variation there of.

Clearly I have committed some grave sin against the game by attempting to make money in a way other than killing monsters. Because that is a constant refrain. Every single person who has disagreed with me has made reference to the rest of the party helplessly sitting by and doing nothing, pining for the time when they could go on adventures, as though the very concept of my character having a business that turns a sizable profit ruins the game.

And yet, no one will tell me why that is. It happens with the crafting rules to. There are a lot of us who want crafting rules, we want that aspect of fantasy, and it gets shut down with the same argument. IF we could easily make things and make money off those things, then we wouldn't be playing DnD anymore, we would be playing a business simulator and the entire game would have to revolve around our business ventures.

But, again, unless the only type of adventure you can possibly run is "the players do this thing for money" then why is having a player who is independently wealthy and a successful business man a problem?

 

[Chaosmancer]

Speaking personally, I've had parties buy stores and set up NPCs to sell stuff they bring back.

The above statement is confusing to me, though. You ask why it is that making money as a character ruins D&D, and then ask why you can't run an adventure where the goal isn't making money. Doesn't making money as a character, involve a goal of making money?

Maybe, or maybe the goal is to run a business. Maybe the goal is political power through economics. Maybe I just think it is a fun side venture to mess with fantasy economics.

But, like I said in my other post. Every single person who has disagreed that a cleric could sell their healing services has responded with some variant of the rest of the party being bored by my forcing them to play a game that isn't dungeons and dragons.

Why? Why is that everyone's knee jerk reaction? What about making money without fighting and killing makes it impossible that the group or even my character could be playing DnD. Even you, right here, aren't allowing the players to create something or build something. The stores are for selling the loot they took from the steaming corpses of their enemies. It has to tie back into "your money comes from adventuring" every single time.

And yet, most people in the DnD world... aren't adventurers. And so... they can't be making their money adventuring.

 

[Oofta]

Why is it that making money as a character ruins Dnd to the point that it is no longer DnD? Can't you run an adventure where the goal isn't money?

Primarily because I have a limited magic mart. That and while we have fun with downtime activities, I don't want paperwork and bookkeeping to be a focus of the game. I minimize tracking as much as possible in my campaign. May not work for everyone.

That and in my campaign the power of the gods is not limitless, nor is there great need for it. If you don't need to heal immediately, there are other options. Magic isn't limited to PC classes.

But that's a whole other topic.

 

[Chaosmancer]

You lost me there. Assuming that the people playing the game know how to play the game is not a "dangerous assumption." It's the base assumption of all games, ever. The rules are intended for novice and expert players alike.

And neither here nor there, but in my experience the phrase "the DM (or player) doesn't know what they are doing" is often code for "the DM (or player) isn't doing what I want." If you hear it at the table, it should raise a flag.

Well, this isn't code.

Had a new DM, he wanted us to go to this magic shop he made up. It was an amusing place. We wanted to buy an item. He asked us, since we were far more experienced, what the price of the item should be. We told him that the book gave a price between 500 and 5,000 gold. He struggled for quite long time trying to figure out how he was supposed to price this. This was a problem for him for some time.

I'm pretty sure that is why he uses the "Sane Guide" now because it offered him a solid answer instead of a range. And all of us hate it and have asked him to stop using it, but he won't because he isn't comfortable with working with such a massive range of potential prices.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Primarily because I have a limited magic mart. That and while we have fun with downtime activities, I don't want paperwork and bookkeeping to be a focus of the game. I minimize tracking as much as possible in my campaign. May not work for everyone.

That and in my campaign the power of the gods is not limitless, nor is there great need for it. If you don't need to heal immediately, there are other options. Magic isn't limited to PC classes.

But that's a whole other topic.

1) What does a magic mart have to do with this? Are you saying I can't sell spells because you don't have people doing magic for money? Okay, great, that is your table and your campaign. Why should that apply to my tables to immediately cause your accusations about how what I am doing is wrong?

2) No paperwork or bookkeeping involved in my example. And, if the player is willing to do all the work, what does it matter to you?

3) Again, your campaign. Great, wonderful. You said that my character in a different DMs campaign doing a thing that doesn't involve your campaign or your gods was... well, I can just quote you back here "I don't want to run a game nor play "businessmen and tradesmen"." That doesn't sound like you are judging me based on the lore of your world, that sounds like you are judging the very concept I put forth in general. That now you are trying to justify by falling back to your own homebrew world. Which has nothing to do with a single thing I said.