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Message: <blockquote data-quote="cjosephs1s" data-source="post: 5713786" data-attributes="member: 6683450">So does this mean I can have the Use Rope book for 10gp for a +20 skill bonus since a longsword is more valueable to the campaign than this skill???  lol  This is what you have just suggested if you base price on "usefulness"   Prices are changed on Supply and Demand economics.  Yes even in mythical fantasy realms the law of supply and demand holds true.  This is why DMs are allowed to change Market prices for their specialized campaigns.  Usually magic items have a certain degree of this built into them.  This is partly why higher level items are very very expensive:  they are few in number as there aren't many 20th level wizards around creating them and it takes months to make them.   However using this supply and demand model I can, since you want to base things on a subjective approach, argue that since Use Rope isn't used by many adventurers is much harder to find  than Knowledge (local). As many people will be producing the local tome while almost no one is going to produce the rope tome and thus driving the price of the rope tome up considerably and the local tome down.  Even though the Rope tome is harder to find its also harder to sell, thus driving the price back down.  And even though the the Local tome is produced in vast quantities its also easier to sell, thus driving the price up.  So both tomes sell for their listed prices.   Hence..don't use subjective factors in price (also please note I do have a degree in Economics.) as it gets messy unless you are going to do it across the board and say all magic items are 20% higher/lower than listed due to certain economic factors.  If this is a brand new item that's just discovered then sure, jack the price up to double due to there's only one guy that can make them and he knows it (for now at least).  But that guy isn't going to go..hmmmm..i think this skill is worth more than that one.  He's a wizard, not a market researcher.  But after his technique gets out and more and more people start making them the price will come down to the listed price.  Now maybe after years of the books being on the open market some regions might have price despencies due to local factors (housing is more expensive in CA than MO for example) but it took decades for this trend to develop.    But this isn't based on usefulness.  Its based on regional supply and demand laws.</blockquote>

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