Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 7516906" data-attributes="member: 29398">Now this is an example of the all-or-nothing problem of extremes that arises every time this topic comes up.Pricing items and thus by extension allowing for a magic item economy is not - or at least IMO shouldn't be - the equivalent of "blessing magic marts".  All it does is reflect this series of extremely likely developments in the game world:Step 1 - for whatever reason, someone ends up in possession of a magic item he or she has no use for (e.g. a fighter with a spell scroll)Step 2 - ditto, but someone else (e.g. a wizard with a suit of enchanted plate mail)Step 3 - these two people meet; each can make use of the other's item so they swap...and one pays the other some sort of consideration to offset a perceived value difference (the plate is seen as more valuable than the scroll)Now we've got a barter or quasi-barter system.  Next:Step 1 - someone makes a magic item on commission for someone elseThis alone sets a price for the item; combining materials, the builder and-or enchanter's time, and possibly some profitStep 2 - the commissioner never returns to pick up the item, or flat-out changes his-her mind on seeing itStep 3 - the maker, after doing what diligence she can to ensure the commissioner will not and cannot return (e.g. is dead), puts the item up for sale or auction.And now the item's on the market as a straight sale.Once these and other perfectly reasonable things happen enough times within a game world a certain set of values will slowly coalesce around the more commonly-seen items, which will eventually extend to pretty much everything.Another very nice side effect of magic item price lists is they make possible a more equitable treasury division within a party; for this reason alone (and having seen some rather awful results otherwise) I probably wouldn't even play in a game that didn't have them.Lan-"yes, not having even the most rudimentary of magic item pricing is very much a 5e missed opportunity"-efan</blockquote>

Verification