D&D (2024) Uncommon items - actually common?

[Maxperson]

do you not see the difference between the price of something & the amount of that thing? Sooo.... If it IS already "a fixed amount of material for the spell, rather than anything to do with price." What is the unit or volume for so I can list them on a tradegoods/commodity style list tuned for the setting I happen to be running (ie reberron FR darksun Ravenloft etc)?.....

Spoiler: These examples

• specially marked sticks, bones, or similar tokens worth at least 25 gp)
• (gold dust worth 25+ GP, which the spell consumes)
• jacinth worth 1,000+ GP and one silver bar worth 100+ GP
• (an agate worth at least 1,000 gp,
• A diamond worth 50gp
• The powder of a crushed black pearl worth 500+gp
• a focus worth 100+ GP, either a jeweled horn for hearing or a glass eye for seeing)
• a diamond worth 1,000+ GP, which the spell consumes, and a sealable vessel worth 2,000+ GP
• a gem-encrusted statuette of yourself worth 1,500+ GP
• incense worth 25+ GP,
• (ruby dust worth 1,000+ GP
• a diamond worth 5,000+ GP
• powdered diamond worth 200+ GP
• Diamond dust worth 100+gp
• etc.

Before you say "aha! there are several that call for A [thing] worth...", are you claiming that all instances of that thing (ie agate/jacinth/black pearl/etc) ever formed or found in every setting happens to be valued at that price?

So none of that changes anything. Magic doesn't care about subjectivity in what mortals desire. Worth at least 1000 is the same as 1000 as far as the magic is concerned. It's not as if the magic will fail if you have 501gp of diamond dust present for those spells that require 500gp of diamond dust. The "at least" is assumed to be present.

As for will those gems be worth the same in all settings. Yup! Again, the magic doesn't care about subjective pricing in various settings. It doesn't matter to the magic that the Dark Sun wizard is using a 50000 ceramic piece ruby that would be 5000gp in the Forgotten Realms and 25000 if it was Kim Kardashian's cuddling ruby. The magic just wants a gem grade ruby of a certain size. The subjective prices are not relevant.

The DMG gives those standard ruby sizes and values. Ruby is 5000gp and all gem grade rubies of that size are 5000gp for the purposes of things like magic. If the DM wants one half that size, it's 2500gp as far as the magic is concerned.

 

[tetrasodium]

You literally posted such a list, or at least a part of such. You have items with their prices.

No. I posted the current items for several spells and talked at length about the problems present in that list.

I literally do not understand how any sort of a list affects any of this. If the component has value, it can be sold, completely irrespective whether that value is listed directly in the spell, of whether it is listed in a separate trade goods list.

That has been talked about. The current items are both uselessly varied to the point of being unrecognizable when found while simultaneously being careless on doubling up spells that use a particular component to limit access/frequency for balance with spells that use the same component for fluff or minor reasons & it's done against such a wide range of spells (level function etc) that it makes such a list shared across spells into a serious problem for balance

So sure if you don't care about any of the problems I'm the way of changing it and you don't feel any desire to change it to begin with its trivial to just keep doing standard rules as written. As usual it's stripped down so it's easy to homebrew and literally everything about it ensures that any such homebrew is functionally identical in every way

 

[Maxperson]

You literally quoted one "Having the spells drawing from a GM side list would allow the GM to make use of that list as a subjectively desirable form of treasure that players should logically be excited about"

They will be just as excited at 10000gp of silk as they will at 100 pounds of silk.

 

[tetrasodium]

They will be just as excited at 10000gp of silk as they will at 100 pounds of silk.

There is a line where a pile of trade goods is more trouble than it's worth and taking it means ignoring it or setting everything else aside in order to sell it immediately rather than taking it & continuing to adventure even while carrying something bulky enough to potentially complicate that adventuring. A thousand pounds of anything passed that line & kept going till it ran right off the planet.

 

[Maxperson]

There is a line where a pile of trade goods is more trouble than it's worth and taking it means ignoring it or setting everything else aside in order to sell it immediately rather than taking it & continuing to adventure even while carrying something bulky enough to potentially complicate that adventuring. A thousand pounds of anything passed that line & kept going till it ran right off the planet.

Okay. Who said anything about 1000 pounds?

 

[OptionalRule]

I think that this perspective can be helpful. In a somewhat magic heavy world, which is the setting that the rules seem to imply, a +1 sword or a bag of holding shouldn't be a big deal.

I generally keep this perspective.

Common - Most people will have one. Modern Equivalent: A basic smartphone or laptop.

Uncommon - Most professionals or power users will have one. Modern Equivalent: High-end workstation or professional camera gear.

Rare - Most high end professionals will have access to one. Modern Equivalent: Private research lab or professional recording studio.

Very Rare - The best high end professionals will have access to one. Modern Equivalent: Advanced robotics lab or electron microscope.

Legendary - Top people in their field will have access to one. Modern Equivalent: NASA Mission Control or Large Hadron Collider.

Leaving artifacts off since they are individual by nature.

(edited to use better examples)

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Common - Most people will have one. Modern Equivalent: A basic smartphone or laptop.

Most people have magic items in your world? We run very different games!

 

[OptionalRule]

Most people have magic items in your world? We run very different games!

The entire premise of the thread is how are rarities viewed in a magic heavy world.

 

[Xetheral]

Cut isn't going to mean squat to the spell. When you see 500gp of diamond dust, it's set default amount/quality that doesn't care about cut. Perhaps it's just X amount of gem grade diamond dust. By taking a larger(500gp in amount) gem grade uncut diamond and cutting it into smaller more valuable to humans diamonds, you are losing a portion of that 500gp amount and wont have enough to crush for the spell any longer, even if you can sell those diamonds to humans for 1500gp.

Wait what? Now I'm confused. I thought you were arguing that a solid ruby worth X was still worth X when crushed into dust? But the above post seems to contradict that completely. To make sure I'm understanding you correctly, could you please clarify your answers to the following questions?

If a player in your game finds in a treausre a cut ruby worth 500 gp, and crushes it, how much is the resulting dust worth?

If a player in your game finds in a treasure a rough, uncut ruby worth 500 gp, and crushes it, how much is the resulting dust worth?

If a player in your game finds in a treasure a rough, uncut ruby worth 500 gp, uses gemcutter's tools to cut it into a 1000 gp cut ruby, and crushes it, how much is the resulting dust worth?

I had thought your answers would be 500/500/1000, but maybe I misunderstood? (For reference, my answers are "a whole lot less than 500"/"more, but still a whole lot less than 500"/"identical to the previous, assuming the player kept the trimmings.")

 

[pemerton]

If a player in your game finds in a treausre a cut ruby worth 500 gp, and crushes it, how much is the resulting dust worth?

If a player in your game finds in a treasure a rough, uncut ruby worth 500 gp, and crushes it, how much is the resulting dust worth?

If a player in your game finds in a treasure a rough, uncut ruby worth 500 gp, uses gemcutter's tools to cut it into a 1000 gp cut ruby, and crushes it, how much is the resulting dust worth?

I had thought your answers would be 500/500/1000, but maybe I misunderstood? (For reference, my answers are "a whole lot less than 500"/"more, but still a whole lot less than 500"/"identical to the previous, assuming the player kept the trimmings.")

I'm not Maxperson, but my intuitive answers are the ones you suggest - basically a correlation of gem value to dust value.

That does mean that, when ruby dust is discovered, it's not straightforward to put a money value on it. I think, in the context of D&D or a similar sort of RPG, I can wear that complexity - because the trade off, which I think is going to come up more often, is that there is a straightforward correlation between finding a gem as treasure and collecting a useful material component.