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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jester David" data-source="post: 7221297" data-attributes="member: 37579">Okay. Fine. But that system in 3e never worked. It was a huge time sink that gave you a price that didn't really match how useful the item was at the table, how valuable it was to the players, and how likely it would be to be bought. And it assumed all feats were of the same value, all spells of a given level had the same benefit, and all skills were equally beneficial. 3e was filled with items that nobody ever bought because the cost vs the usefulness was skewed. And lots of great items - like staves - ended up ridiculously overpriced. The 3e rules were a huge trap. Like level adjustment. It was a pit unwary DMs and players could fall into and bork their game. The game always required some actual game design to look at the item, created and decide if it actually worked at that price. I mean, c'mon, is an item that gives you the Actor feat really equal in gp price to one that gives you Sharpshooter? Is an item that conveys the continual benefits of disguise self equal in power to at-will magic missiles? Heck, even in 3e the later designers gave up and threw out those rules. Most of the items in the Magic Item Compendium don't use that math. There's advice in the DMG on pricing magic items. And it's great, giving a solid ballpark for determining rarity. Because like designing a race or a class or a spell there's no magical formula of check boxes you can tick to design something that works. Which is why the race builder in Pathfinder is a munchkin's dream and the rules for building classes in 2nd Edition DMG just don't work. Except that it was a mandated outlet. There literally was something wrong with carousing or donating money or building a tower because that was akin to not taking a feat or learning the next level of spells. It deliberately hindered your character's power level and skewed your Wealth By Level. Right. But you can still have magic item shops in the game. That doesn't go away, it just becomes an optional encounter rather than a mandated one. Buying items just changes the power level of the characters and requires harder encounters. (Which you must be okay with, since you were advocating breaking wealth by level necessitating making encounters easier.)</blockquote>

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