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[Ancalagon]

Blacky: if you're new to ENWorld would advise you to just ignore this.

The obvious reply is "if you don't like rational utility-based pricing, you're in the wrong thread."

Oh fair enough... buuut don't say it's inexplicable. It's okay to want a utility based magical item pricing. Just don't go and claim that it's the only logical system...

 

[Ancalagon]

If you're assuming that magical capability develops in parallel with technological development, that does make a sort of sense. - The renaissance-level culture of most PC races are the only people who can enchant armour, so they only enchant the very best stuff.

While cultures of more medieval tech level or lower may regard chain armour, (or even hide) as the pinnacle of protection, if they just plain don't know how to enchant armour, you won't get any of it floating around or locked away in ancient tombs.

It's a built-in assumption that magical item creation knowledge hasn't been successfully transferred down. As magical items seem to be more durable than mundane items, it does make sense that a lot of items are a bit old tech - the breastplate, the rapier are more modern inventions.

 

[Blacky the Blackball]

The problem is that you are creating prices that makes sense to *you and me* - modern human beings who value expediency and efficiency. People in a fantasy world don't necessarily have those values.

Utility-based pricing and rarity-based pricing can go hand-in-hand, if the more powerful things are rarer (presumably because more a more powerful item needs a more powerful creator and more time to make than a less powerful one).

To an extent, that's what I've done anyway, since my measure of utility/power is mostly based on how powerful the spell effects that the item replicates are (most items replicate spell effects to a greater or lesser extent).

So is an item that replicates a fifth level spell more expensive than one that replicates a first level spell because people who can make items with fifth level spells in are rarer than people who can make items with first level spells in? Or is it more expensive because fifth level spells are more useful than first level spells?

The answer, I suppose, is "some of each". After all, the spells themselves were mostly designed so that more powerful/useful effects were higher level!

But I've made no judgement between the utility of spells other than their level. Two items that give access to a spell of the same level will be the same price, regardless of how subjectively useful we find one or the other spell.

If you're assuming that magical capability develops in parallel with technological development, that does make a sort of sense. - The renaissance-level culture of most PC races are the only people who can enchant armour, so they only enchant the very best stuff.

While cultures of more medieval tech level or lower may regard chain armour, (or even hide) as the pinnacle of protection, if they just plain don't know how to enchant armour, you won't get any of it floating around or locked away in ancient tombs.

It's a built-in assumption that magical item creation knowledge hasn't been successfully transferred down. As magical items seem to be more durable than mundane items, it does make sense that a lot of items are a bit old tech - the breastplate, the rapier are more modern inventions.

I'm not sure I'd agree with either of those points of view. A trope that is very common to fantasy settings is that of the lost golden age, where ancient empires were more advanced both magically, and technologically than the present day, and ancient artifacts are more powerful than recently created items. So I wouldn't expect older items to necessarily be older tech.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

It's a built-in assumption that magical item creation knowledge hasn't been successfully transferred down. As magical items seem to be more durable than mundane items, it does make sense that a lot of items are a bit old tech - the breastplate, the rapier are more modern inventions.

That wouldn't fit with the assumption that only the best-for-PCs armour gets enchanted.
If the crafters and spellcasters of a Viking-level culture for example are capable of creating magic items, then you're going to get examples of chain +1 etc.

Ancient empires of a high technological level are going to be able to produce plate +1. But if hide +1 doesn't exist, you need a reason why a magical, but less technological culture can't make magical armour. Tying ability to enchant to technology rather than magic would explain this if you choose to implement the restriction.