Level Up (A5E) Magic Item Price List

[NotAYakk]

Alright, stupid question time, but: shouldn't the armor's pricing be dependent on the cost of materials and labor involved and not the AC it grants?

For manufacturing of new goods, flip it upside down. Nobody will make armor that requires super-expensive materials and skills if it gives less protection than something cheaper and easier to make.

For historical goods, the price of the armor as a tool is going to be based on how effective it is.

Armor may also have non-tool use value.

That means that, if you want non-variable magic item prices, armor should be priced based on how effective it is. You could note that some armor costs far more to manufacture, and the only armor you can find in that type is from ancient civilizations who couldn't do better.

Now we can check that the resulting prices don't result in something stupid happening. Ie, we don't want half plate to be 3x as expensive as full plate, or the like.

But once we have a price system that is based on an ordering of the utility of the item and about when a PC should be getting the item, we can then see if we can write justification (in terms of cost of materials and labor).

Or we can just throw together some random economic simulation and derive prices from it. The most likely result will be something like "nobody makes anything besides mithral plate, all other armor is worthless".

In the real world, that happens all of the time. For about 100 years, the internal combustion engine car dominated all other kinds of personal transportation in the industrial world. There wasn't a fun mix of Steam, Electrical, ICE, and Nuclear powered cars that had trade offs.

Writing out stats and prices for 1970s Steam, Electrical and Nuclear powered cars would be a waste of time in a game. If you presume some economic system that isn't taylored to the world you are trying to describe, where people wear those varieties of armor, then you'll almost always end up with "well, choice X is best, everything else is garbage", because that is what happens when you build that kind of system without the feedback loop of "but, I want there to be a reason to wear medium armor".

 

[NotAYakk]

Not sure how you're getting to 17 AC with medium armor. That would require a base AC of 15 (which I see you use again later in the post), which only half plate had, and half plate got moved to heavy armor. The base ACs for medium armor only cover 13-14, and adding +2 Dex only gives 15-16.

I was not building my list based on 5e equipment list nor the level up equipment list.

I was building it based on the idea that we want items that are better to cost more, items that are worse to cost less, and armor proficiency levels to be useful class features and/or feats.

I didn't name the armor types (other than plate and leather). That is, in a sense, fluff.

I had Cloth, Leather, Cheap and Expensive medium armor, Cheap, Medium and Expensive heavy armor, and some medium armor is bulky.

I then ensured a high-dex character would prefer light to medium armor (if not capped with dex, medium is usually better), and otherwise you'd prefer Medium to Light armor, and going (str+heavy) is better than (dex+medium) AC-wise (Dex is already a very powerful stat) by a point.

Then I calculated item prices based off of the WBL charts of A5E, and scaled them so that heavier armor costs modestly more than lighter armor. The "cheap" versions of armor that matched the expensive versions with a lower bonus, I priced based on how good they are.

That is where I got the ACs I produced. What the base AC is and name for each kind of armor, I don't really give much of a care. Half plate can be medium-expensive heavy armor, or the expensive bulky medium armor, whatever.

 

[Kinematics]

NB: These are my own thoughts, and the train of thought I've had that lead me to the conclusions that I reached, and isn't really an argument about the design, or even necessarily the train of logic the designers used or intended.


Trying to simulate the economical value of the items is, I think, an exercise in futility. The game is not designed to actually match a real economy, and it isn't useful to the primary purpose of the game design. As long as there aren't any egregious issues, you can get away with a "good enough" economic build that's focused on the needs of the player adventurers. Otherwise you add an extra burden to the GM and designers that probably doesn't rise to the level of usefully necessary.

What we have, instead, is what appears to be a valuation of goods based on affordability parameters, gauged against expected player wealth, so that you can have an expected AC by player level. Armor costing 100,000 GP isn't set to that price because that's proportional to its cost to manufacture, but because the player shouldn't be affording that til somewhere around level 17. That makes things more predictable to the designers, GMs, and module builders.

I will say, however, that I'm a bit uncomfortable with all the target ACs being given the same rarity. Should a chain shirt +3 (AC 18 when including Dex) cost (approximately) the same as baseline full plate? From the perspective of final AC, that's fine, but it feels "off" that a high tier enchantment isn't much rarer to find than an unenchanted piece of armor.

That, of course, is from the perspective of the enchanting system itself having its own scaling difficulty. IE: +1 takes effort, +2 takes more effort, and +3 takes extreme effort, regardless of what it's applied to.

However...

We know from other posts that the designers will be providing a more "exact" definition for HP, and it seems reasonable that a proper definition for AC will be associated with that. So what if the enchanting difficulty isn't bottom up, but instead top down? That is, the numeric scale that you're adding on top of the base equipment isn't, "How much am I improving this?", but instead is, "How much protection does this provide?" So the base cost of a chain shirt is much cheaper than full plate, but you can enchant it to reach a similar level of protection as full plate. It's just that doing so uses as much magic/energy/cost as it would cost to make the baseline full plate itself.

Or put another way, you can reach 18 AC either with pure physical materials (full plate), or with some mix of physical materials and "magic" (plus expectations of user dexterity). In that case, the "magic" used to boost the weaker physical material has the same "cost" as what you might use pure physical material to achieve. So you need 2 units of "magic" to give leather brigandine the same level of protection as an unboosted full plate, though you also require a certain amount of dexterity for the user to achieve that. Or you could use less physical material for a chain shirt, but add 3 units of "magic" to achieve the same thing.

So economically, the physical and the magical parts of armor are interchangeable and fungible. The choice of what to buy is then based on proficiency, affordability, and the opportunity cost of purchased Dexterity.

The intended goal of the system would then be primarily about making balanced encounters easier, rather than simulating a world economy.

 

[Stalker0]

All,

Here is an excel for the magic item prices list. Its not 100% perfect, I had some trouble parsing certain areas and so you'll see that for certain entries things are shifted a bit, but its correct for the vast majority of items and gives you the ability to sort and filter.

 

[Stalker0]

A few I noticed with my initial review. I'll use a quick rating system:

A = Anchor....its an item I'm well familiar with, so its good one to help decide on other items.
G = Good price
C = Too Cheap
E = Too Expensive

Now I am assuming the items work roughly the same as in vanilla.

Split +3....not sure what this does exactly, but at 24k it is significantly cheaper than every other legendary item, and so I wonder if that is appropriate.

Winged Boots / Wings of Flying (C) I still think these are WAY too cheap when you consider the power of flight. Even at only a few uses today, even 1 minute of flight a day can just solve so many adventuring problems. Its completely possible for a 7th level character to have these.

I think the 5k range is more reasonable. You have some really strong items at that point, and the cloak of the bat can give "unlimited" flying but in niche scenarios. So items that give more temporary flying, but can do it whenever the user wishes....seems about equivalent.

+3 weapon (G): So the legendary +3 weapon is 8k. By the treasure list Morrus gave, that could be an exceptional present to a 10th level character (aka that is their entire gold acquisition that level), or by 13th would represent about half of their gold acquisition. I'll admit that at first glance 8k for a +3 seemed crazy cheap, but in context of how much treasure you get this seems alright.

So with that 8k marker, I wanted to dig in a little bit more as to what I could get at that saw ballpark.

Arrow of Slaying: (E) So for the same cost, I'm getting an extra 33 damage. I am ignoring crits but also ignoring failing the con save (and considering that you are normally going to use this against a big bad....that con save isn't all that high). So I could match that damage with 11 hits of a +3 sword. Sure piling on the damage in one attack has its uses....but its not THAT useful. If a +3 weapon is 8k....this should be significantly cheaper.

Sword of Sharpness: (G) Decent effect at-will, not quite as good as a +3 weapon but a 1k cheaper...yeah that looks about right.

Spell Scroll (7th level - E): While you can get some good spells here, the 5k mark for magic items is really big...you get some GOOD stuff at even that range. For 8k and 1 use, I need something more than this. This is probably more what an 8th level scroll should be.

Sphere of Annihilation (E): So if we consider what this sphere actually does.... it does 4d10 force damage to creatures and objects every round as an action. Compared to a high level warlock that is not all that impressive, and when you consider the incredibly low dex save its not really something you can "attack" with.... so its main benefit is its ability to just destroy buildings and objects....and almost whatever.

So a greatsword of sharpness in the hands of a good fighter will do 17 damage a swing (so 34 with a couple of good swings), compared to the sphere that does 33..... again not all that impressive.

As "cool" as a sphere is, when we actually consider its true utility, 100k is much too high for it.

Staff of the Magi (A, G/E): Pretty much the top shelf item, next to the cubic gate. I do question whether 250k is too much (by the chart that is more than the entire net worth of a 20th level character). That said, I do feel like this item is worthy of the most expensive magic item, this has been proven to me any time I do high level games and give me players choice of high end items, the casters ALWAYS want the staff....which showcases if should be quite a bit more expensive than various other items. So I think the staff is your best metric to determine what is the most expensive stuff in the game... whatever you ultimately set this item to sets the cap for all other magic items currently in the game.

Wand of Fireballs (A): My players LOVE this item, its a go to for them.....so this gives me a ballpark to compare other 5k items.

Sun Sword (E): Its a good item, but its not as good as a wand of fireballs.

Staff of Swarming Insects (G): The Wand of Fireballs has much better spellcasting, but the 1 charge ability to make you heavily obscured for 10 minutes is ridiculously good.

Staff of Charming (E): Its too niche to be the same price as Wand of fireballs, maybe 4k or 4.5k.

Sword of Wounding (E): Compared to a +2 weapon, this thing is not all that great, especially if the prices are mainly for PC use. Against PCs its solid, but its too niche against monsters compared to a nice solidly good weapon.

Oil of Sharpness (E): compared to just getting a +3 weapon...no way.

Horseshoes of Speed (E): Just a bit too expensive, there is so much good stuff at the 5k mark. I would make it 4k.

Potion of Invisibility (E): Dear sweet lord, so expensive.... again 5k goes a LONG way in magic item land based on your current list.

Viscous Weapon (G): I think the price is fine, though I question why it needs to be rare, uncommon seems perfectly suitable for what it is. I think its serves well as a players first "magic sword"

Wand of Enemy Detection (E): Much too expensive for its duration. If it was 10 minutes maybe.

Stone of Good Luck (C): This is very good item, should probably be in the 1k range.

Ring of Regeneration (E): Vanilla way over estimates this item as well, putting it at very rare. In terms of game utility is just not that great, a wand of healing can provide similar utility at a full 1/7th the price. I would put it at the 12k mark, similar to ring of telekinesis, and should be rare.

Boots of Elvenkind (C): Stealth is really good in 5e, and this price is too low for such a nice at will benefit. I would go with 1k at the absolute least, and I think that may still be too cheap.

 

[Kinematics]

Split +3....not sure what this does exactly, but at 24k it is significantly cheaper than every other legendary item, and so I wonder if that is appropriate.

"Split" is a misspelling of "Splint", a type of heavy armor. Both Splint and Full Plate have a base cost 25% below 'standard' for a given AC (eg: 1500 for AC 18, instead of 2000), presumably because there are some extra penalties that other armors don't have (eg: Half Plate costing 2000 for AC 18).

The x4 scaling per +1 AC leads to them costing 24,000 at AC 20, which is where Splint +3 is at. AC 20 is the tier regarded as 'legendary'. AC 19 is very rare, AC 18 is rare, etc.


Also, I redid the parsing of the items to clean everything up (since most items had lost their rarity or type in yours), and put it into a new spreadsheet. Hopefully it will be helpful.

Going to review more stuff later.

 

[Kinematics]

First, a review of items that fall outside the 'expected' price range for their rarity.

All but 2 [common] magic items are under 100 gold, and those two only cost 150. Nothing immediately obvious as out of place.

• Contract of Indentured Service at 150. New item.
• Seven-sided coin at 150. New item.

All but 5 [uncommon] magic items are between 100 and 500 gold. The exceptions are:

• Pumpkin Bomb at 570. Only slightly higher than the general list. Appears to be a new item.
• Gem of Brightness at 900. Higher than expected for this band of magic items, but I don't think I'd consider it overpriced. May want to review.
• Elemental Quiver at 1000. I don't see this in existing 5E materials, so might be a new item. A homebrew item with this name is findable on google, so, assuming that (can change piercing damage to one of the four basic elemental damage types, 8 charges, recover 1d6 charges per day), it feels perhaps a little bit overpriced. Debatable.
• Broom of Flying at 2500. Not that hard to come across, but fairly expensive, presumably because of granting flight. Will keep this in mind for other flight-granting items.
• Lantern of Revealing at 3500. Substantially higher than the typical for an [uncommon] item. This reveals invisible creatures within a 30' radius. As a counter to a level 2 spell, Invisibility, it would be very useful for low-level players, however even a level 5 party would have to combine most of their funds to purchase it. I feel like it's overpriced, though I realize you only need one for the entire party. I'd probably drop it at least to 2500, the cost of the Broom of Flying, but might also review whether this was accidentally priced as if it were a [rare] item.

[Rare] items mostly range from 500 to 5,000. There's one 400 GP item, and six items over 5000.

• Vicious Weapon at 400. It adds 7 damage when you roll a nat 20. Reasonable that it's on the cheaper end, though as @Stalker0 notes, it could easily be [uncommon] instead.
• Steelsilk Mantle at 5250. Only barely higher than the normal cap of 5000, and I'm not sure why it deserves that minor tax.
• Dragon Slayer at 7500. It's a +1 weapon that does substantial extra damage against dragon types. A normal +1 weapon costs 500. Is the extra damage against a niche (but important) creature type worth taking it well above 5000?
• Ring of the Ram at 8000. The ring is nice — essentially repelling (5' instead of 10') Eldritch Blast post-level 5, with up to 3 casts per day — but it really doesn't feel like 8000 GP nice.
• Hopeful Slippers at 10,400 appear to be a new item. No way to determine if they're worth over 10k.
• Obsidian Butterfly Knife at 11,000 also appears to be a new item.
• Ioun Stone (Awareness) at 15,000. I think this is most likely just a mistake. The other [rare] Ioun stones are cheap — 600 to 1000 GP. However most of the [very rare] Ioun Stones are 15,000. The (Awareness) one is supposed to be rare, so most likely should be somewhere around 1000 GP, like the other [rare] stones.

[Very Rare] items range from 5,000 to 50,000. None of the listed items vary outside that range.

[Legendary] items are generally (but not always) 50,000+.

• Ioun Stone (Greater Absorption) at 15,000. This is probably another mistake, because 15,000 is the common price of [very rare] Ioun Stones, and this one is [legendary] (unless it's deliberately intended to be on par with the [very rare] stones).
• [Legendary] armors are priced according their own scaling method, so the ones priced at 24,000 to 32,000 are expected to be outside the 50,000+ cost range. It might be worth treating AC 20 as [very rare], though, instead of [legendary].
• Ioun Stone (Regeneration) at 25,000. Not sure whether this is a low-priced [legendary] due to the limits of how it operates, or another mistake. Could go either way.

 

[Kinematics]

Magic items granting flight:

• Permanents:
  • Winged Boots for 1500 [rare]. Requires attunement. Flying speed equal to walking speed for up to 4 hours per day.
  • Broom of Flying for 2500 [uncommon]. No attunement needed. Flying speed of 50', or 30' if carrying over 200 lbs. 400 lb limit. No time limit.
  • Wings of Flying for 3500 [rare]. Requires attunement. Flying speed of 60' for 1 hour, with 1d12 hours cooldown.
  • Cloak of the Bat for 5000 [rare]. Requires attunement. Flying speed of 40' while holding edges in dim light or darkness.
  • Carpet of Flying 3'x5' for 15,000 [very rare]. No attunement needed. 80' flying speed. 200 lb capacity.
  • Carpet of Flying 4'x6' for 20,000 [very rare]. No attunement needed. 60' flying speed. 400 lb capacity.
  • Carpet of Flying 5'x7' for 25,000 [very rare]. No attunement needed. 40' flying speed. 600 lb capacity.
  • Carpet of Flying 6'x9' for 30,000 [very rare]. No attunement needed. 30' flying speed. 800 lb capacity.
• Consumables:
  • Spell Scroll (3rd level) - Fly for 175 [uncommon]. Flying speed of 60' for 10 minutes, concentration.
  • Potion of Flying for 7000 [very rare]. Flying speed equal to walking speed for 1 hour.

The Winged Boots, Broom of Flying, and Wings of Flying appear to be following a simple progression for single-person flying items, priced at 1500, 2500, and 3500, respectively. The Cloak of the Bat is the next step up, at 5000, but also provides other features (advantage on stealth, once-per-day polymorph). The Broom of Flying is listed as [uncommon], even though the pricing is in line with the [rare] items. It also doesn't need attunement, while the others do.

Since attunement is mainly a way to limit how many magic items a character can have, it may be considered irrelevant to pricing. Considered from that perspective, and the combination of features and risks involved with a broom vs worn items, it's probably OK as listed. I'd guess the only reason the broom isn't [rare] is for backwards compatibility.

I have no particular objections on the carpet pricing. They're all basically designed for tier 3+ play.


Meanwhile, on the consumable side, the potion of flying feels way overpriced compared to the scroll. 6 scrolls (for 1 hour of flight) would cost 1050. Even if you consider removing the concentration requirement, I wouldn't increase the cost from 1000 to 7000. I would consider 2000-3000 more reasonable (though possibly overpriced even then). Plus, the potion only gives you flying speed equal to your walking speed (30' for most characters), rather than the 60' you'd get from the spell scroll or Wings of Flying (also limited to 1 hour at a time, but non-consumable). It's pretty much the weakest version of flight available, but has the highest cost (other than the carpets).

Personally, I'd probably put the Potion of Flying at [rare], and price it at 1500-2000 GP. Even at that price it won't be a casual purchase even up to level 10 (compared to level 5 where casters get access to the spell). At 7000 GP, you don't really even start thinking about such a potion before level 10, and it's an expensive purchase even up to tier 4, which is ludicrous for a level 3 spell. The main benefit is merely to have a form of flight without using an attunement slot or concentration — which, admittedly, can have significant benefits, but doesn't justify countering that via pricing.

 

[Stalker0]

"Split" is a misspelling of "Splint", a type of heavy armor. Both Splint and Full Plate have a base cost 25% below 'standard' for a given AC (eg: 1500 for AC 18, instead of 2000), presumably because there are some extra penalties that other armors don't have (eg: Half Plate costing 2000 for AC 18).

The x4 scaling per +1 AC leads to them costing 24,000 at AC 20, which is where Splint +3 is at. AC 20 is the tier regarded as 'legendary'. AC 19 is very rare, AC 18 is rare, etc.


Also, I redid the parsing of the items to clean everything up (since most items had lost their rarity or type in yours), and put it into a new spreadsheet. Hopefully it will be helpful.

Going to review more stuff later.

Great, I was curious how you did yours. I was using regular expression parsing but I didn't find an easy pattern so it took a bit of work and clearly had some errors, what method did you use?

 

[FitzTheRuke]

• Dragon Slayer at 7500. It's a +1 weapon that does substantial extra damage against dragon types. A normal +1 weapon costs 500. Is the extra damage against a niche (but important) creature type worth taking it well above 5000?

I would argue that the dragonslaying part of that item is not worth 7k gold. On the other hand, I think +1 to a weapon (all the time, attack and damage) is worth a lot more than 500 gp. Maybe in 4e where it was fully expected that you needed that 5% hike, but with bounded accuracy in 5e a permanent 5% hike (designed with the likelihood that you never get it) is really cheap.