Magic Item Cost Analysis (might be useful for non-RAW campaigns)

nnms

First Post
With changes coming to magic item distribution, I thought it would be a good time to look at the underpinnings of magic item prices and the 4E economy.

How the costs progress

Every 5 additional levels (the levels the enhancement bonus increases) an item costs 5 times the amount.

This is not spread linearly from level to level. Instead, the difference between the cost of a high level item of the same enhancement bonus is 11.11% (one ninth, actually) more of the difference between the lowest enchancement bonus item and the next higher enchancement bonus item. This probably needs an example.

A level 1 item is 360. A level 6 item (the enhancement bonus is now +2) is 5 times that amount at 1800. A level 2 item costs the same as a level 1 item + one ninth of the difference between 1800 and 360. So it costs 520.

At level 6, the math starts again, with 1800 being the new 360.

So it sort of looks like this:

level 1 360
level 2 360+.1111 of difference between level 1 and 6
level 3 360+.2222
level 4 360+.3333
level 5 360+.4444
level 6 1800

What money is spent on

Mundane equipment
Ritual components
Consumables
Rituals & Alchemical formulas
Magic Items

I don't think I'm missing anything.

Mundane equipment becomes proportionately irrelevant pretty quickly. With the treasure parcel system giving increasing treasure at the same rate of magic item costs, tracking the purchasing of mundane equipment quickly becomes as irrelevant as tracking copper pieces.

Ritual components can be broken down into two categories. The first being the cost of casting rituals during the course of an adventuring career. The second being component costs to create magic items. I'm going to talk about money spent on magic items through the use of rituals as part of the magic item category rather than ritual category.

If you look at the cost of rituals, they do no progress at the same rate as magic item costs and treasure coming in. They remain relatively flat and then start spiking dramatically at level 15. They are also proportionately very small expenditures compared to magic items of the same level. The utility of a ritual is not necessarily diminished at higher levels. A +1 magic sword is drastically worse than a +4 sword, but what a ritual accomplishes still has it's full effect. An animal messenger still gets the message sent out. And with skill checks getting higher, often better than it did at lower levels. At higher levels, some ritual component costs are as irrelevant as copper pieces when you're breaking astral diamonds into platinum for change. If during the course of a level, the party is bringing in a few hundred thousand gold worth or treasure, the cost of low level rituals becomes negligible, even though some will be just as useful. Unlike a +1 sword, a ritual generally does not get replaced by an identical version that is +2 but costs 5 times as much.

Consumables are like ritual components in that once they are used, they are gone. They include things like potions, magic whetstones, balms and other things that can be used up. Alchemical creations are examples of consumables. They have a cost progression very similar to magic items. Generally speaking, they hover around 3-4% (with 4% being the most common) of the cost of the same level magic item.

Rituals and alchemical formulas are another thing that some PCs will want to spend some money on. Like consumables, these are inconsistentantly priced, but average around 15-20% of the cost of a magic item. Some vary wildly from this.

Magic items are the largest cost items. And once a character has enough gold that any mundane equipment and even many ritual components become irrelevant, there is nothing to do with the money but to spend it on magic items. Either through purchasing them or through the funding of item creation ritual component costs. Furthermore, the combat system assumes that characters of certain levels will have appropriately leveled gear. At this point, gold effectively becomes a second form of experience points as its only use becomes that of gaining bonuses and abilities similar to those gained by increasing in level.

My next posts will cover the implications of all these things and ideas about how tweaking a variable here or there can help create a certain kind of campaign. For example, my next campaign will have the players starting off as the rulers of a noble house. How will the exponentially growing treasure values need to be changed for such a campaign where players may wish to fund construction, hire soldiers, commission research, buy land and a variety of other tasks they might want to do in the periphery of their heroic adventures.
 
Last edited:

log in or register to remove this ad

So what variables are available to be changed in order to fine tune the D&D 4e economy for your game?

Cost of a level 1 item.
Rate of increase every 5 levels/enhancement bonus increase
Distribution of cost increase for item levels of the same enhancement bonus (the 11% thing)
Consumable cost as a percentage of full item

The new magic item system coming in essentials breaks down items into common, uncommon and rare. Only common items can be made by rituals and it looks like any current item that contains a daily ability will become uncommon (see Mearls' comments on rpg.net about the 2nd half of the magic item rarity system making sure daily powers can't be exploited).

So what if you decide there is no purchasing of magic items in your game. If so, then once mundane items and ritual components become negligible in cost, you'll need something to spend money on. Or you'll need to scale back the amount of treasure you give.

This is most easily accomplished by reducing the multiplier for cost on an item of a higher enhancement bonus. A 3x or even a 2x multiplier would make the amount of gold coming in more manageable. It would still be a lot of gold, but it wouldn't be hundreds of thousands just sitting there, waiting to be poured into a medieval economy to utterly destabilize it.

A 3x multiplier progression:
Code:
1 - 360
2 - 440
3 - 520
4 - 600
5 - 680
6 - 1080
7 - 1320
8 - 1560
9 - 1800
10- 2040
11- 3240
12- 3960
13- 4680
14- 5400
15- 6120
16- 9720
17- 11880
18- 14040
19- 16200
20- 18360
21- 29160
22- 35640
23- 42120
24- 48600
25- 55080
26- 87480
27- 106920
28- 126360
29- 145800
30- 165240

And a x2 progression:
Code:
1	360
2	400
3	440
4	480
5	520
6	720
7	800
8	880
9	960
10	1040
11	1440
12	1600
13	1760
14	1920
15	2080
16	2880
17	3200
18	3520
19	3840
20	4160
21	5760
22	6400
23	7040
24	7680
25	8320
26	11520
27	12800
28	14080
29	15360
30	16640

As you can see, the small change ends up having an exponential effect by level 30. Even at 20, a x3 means a level's worth of treasure will be around 100,000 gold. But at x2 it would be around 20,000.
 

So what about changing the cost of a level 1 item?

Since the higher level item values, and treasure parcels by extension, all increase exponentially off of the value of a level 1 item, changing the cost of a level 1 item doesn't change the relative cost of higher level items.

Instead it changes the overall cost of magic items relative to the other things a PC may purchase.

Or perhaps because a PC brings in treasure based on the value of a magic item of his level, it's better to say that changing the value of a level 1 item actually changes the cost of non-magic items.

If a level 1 item is cut in half in price and a party still receives the normal treasure parcels based off of the price of items, then they're just getting half the gold if they spend it on non-magic items.

If you keep the percentage based consumables and rituals as the same percent as an equivalent leveled item, then they too are effectively the same price.

A treasure parcel is connected to the cost of a magic item, not to the cost of mundane equipment. So it's probably not the only variable you're going to want to change unless your goal is to change the relative cost of different things. Or if you're abandoning treasure parcels based on magic item values as the basis for figuring out treasure.
 

Changing the relative cost of non-enhancement increasing level items (the 11% thing) can influence a few different things.

As it stands, a level 5 item only covers 44% of the difference in price between a level 1 item and a level 6 item.

The implications for this are that getting your hands on a thematic item (fire sword vs a frost sword) is less expensive the more squished down the pre-level 6 (or 11, 16, etc.,) prices are.

Reducing them further would make such items even cheaper. As it stands, you pay quite handsomely for the extra +1 to hit and damage. A level 6 item with the 44% spread for levels 2 to 5 is quite a bit more expensive than a level 5 item.

If they were to be normalized, the bonuses gained from a thematic weapon would likely not be worth the minimal amount of money it would take to get a +2 item over the level 5 +1 items.

If it was squished so that the jump from level 5 to level 6 was even higher, it might throw off the treasure parcel system in terms of gold. There already is a noticeble increase in the amount of gold given under the treasure parcel system for level 6 compared to level 5.

If you want to have less price differentiation between items of the same plus to hit and damage, you could compress the prices of levels 2-5 (and 7-10, 12-15, etc.,) to be closer to level 1 (or 6, 11, 16, etc.,) and then find another way to calculate treasure parcels.
 

Changing the costs of consumables, rituals, etc., is very similar to changing the cost of an individual level 1 magic item. It's all relative to how treasure comes in.

If you want to encourage rituals and consumable use and cut their costs in half, but still use the normal treasure parcel system, you've done it. You've doubled their purchasing power in terms of rituals and consumables.

If you changed the level 1 item to be worth 720 instead of 360 and then double the cost of mundane equipment, you've done it again. You've doubled their purchasing power in terms of rituals and consumables.
 

Finally, an application of all this!

In my upcoming campaign, the characters are going to begin as the inner circle of a noble house. I'm borrowing the noble house creation rules from the Song of Ice & Fire RPG. It only gets a little bit of modification to make it work with D&D.

It has an input from the party treasure. The house has a "wealth" attribute that it can use to buy things. Castles, towers, other construction, influence, enlarging the army, more town guards/garrisons, etc., etc.,.

And each 1000 gp inserted into the noble house increases the wealth of the house by 1.

So there's my connection between their noble house and adventuring treasure.

At low levels, they'll be struggling to fund things. But at higher levels, they'll be scraping off chunks of their astral diamonds to fund the construction of whole cities.

I want to normalize this a bit. I want their ability to contribute come sooner and not become meaninglessly easy at higher levels.

So I'm going to decrease the multiplier to x2. And increase the cost of a level 1 magic item to 500 gp. They'll still get about a level item's worth of treasure each over the course of a level. I'm going to keep the ritual and consumable costs where they are. So the PCs have increased purchasing power for mundane equipment, rituals and consumables.

As this campaign is going to be be points of light based, learning and magical craftsmanship are not where they once were. Magic items will not be easily purchased. And creating items will not be easy either. The lower relative cost of higher level magic items won't be an issue as they'll largely be unpurchaseable. Well, except for any that are truly common. I'll wait to see the new Rules Compendium before I think to much more about that.

The campaign will also use inherent bonuses, so players won't necessarily be too negatively impacted by not having easy access to magic-Walmart or magc-Amazon.com.
 
Last edited:

A level 1 item is 360. A level 6 item (the enhancement bonus is now +2) is 5 times that amount at 1800. A level 2 item costs the same as a level 1 item + one ninth of the difference between 1800 and 360. So it costs 520.

At level 6, the math starts again, with 1800 being the new 360.

So it sort of looks like this:

level 1 360
level 2 360+.1111 of difference between level 1 and 6
level 3 360+.2222
level 4 360+.3333
level 5 360+.4444
level 6 1800


I like to look at it more like there is a virtual zero level item costing 200 GP. Then the costs of an item are 80% (non compounding) more for each step above until you reach that 5th tier. This avoids using fractional math (1/9th or .1111) and the resulting rounding errors.

The resulting table would look more like this:

Code:
Level 0 = 200
Level 1 = 200  * 1.8 = 360
Level 2 = 200  * 2.6 = 520
Level 3 = 200  * 3.4 = 680
Level 4 = 200  * 4.2 = 840
Level 5 = 200  * 5.0 = 1000
Level 6 = 1000 * 1.8 = 1800

The math all works out the same, but this way is a little bit neater if you are using a spreadsheet.
 

This avoids using fractional math (1/9th or .1111) and the resulting rounding errors.

On my spreadsheet, I just had a cell that was literally 1/9 that I used whenever I needed it to avoid the rounding errors of having a limited number of digits in a decimal expression of it.

Code:
Level 0 = 200
Level 1 = 200  * 1.8 = 360
Level 2 = 200  * 2.6 = 520
Level 3 = 200  * 3.4 = 680
Level 4 = 200  * 4.2 = 840
Level 5 = 200  * 5.0 = 1000
Level 6 = 1000 * 1.8 = 1800

Very cool. So every enhancement bonus starts off with a "0th" level that is 5 times the 0th of the one before it.

I think I'm going to add another page to my spreadsheet with everything being based off of the 200 rather than the 360 as a starting point. I don't think there's any mathematical difference between adjusting the 200 and adjusting the 360.
 


More on treasure as a form of experience:

When you take a look at the math underpinning the advancement of character levels and the difficulty of challenges they face throughout their adventuring career, it becomes clear that the leveling system is less about being a power boosting system and more about being a pacing mechanic.

Your character goes up in level and you get a bonus to hit, a bonus to damage, bonus to defenses and a bonus to skills. As well as some more options.

But what happens to the monsters? They go up in HP, defenses, attack bonus, damage, etc.,.

And what happens to the DCs of most skill checks? They also go up.

And part of this system assumes that you are getting level appropriate magic items to add more to your side of the equation. So much so that the DMG2 spells out the bonuses you'll need to substitute in if you don't use magic items for the math of the game to still work.

Magic items are part of the whole advancement/pacing mechanic.

And like the tiers of experience levels, magic items are broken up into tiers based on enchancement bonuses. With two of these tiers for each of heroic, paragon and epic tier.

While mundane equipment, alchemical formulas, rituals and other consumables are nice, the real destination for treasure is magic items.

What do magic items accomplish? Each item does one or more of the following:

- Their enhancement bonus adds to attack and damage
- They provide additional daily, encounter or at-will* powers
- They provide properties that modify or grant other abilities
- They increase skills

So what happens when you level up?

- Your 1/2 level bonus adds to attack
- You gain additional daily, encounter or at-will* powers
- You gain feats that modify or grant other abilities
- You increase skills

* at-will powers from both items and gaining levels are relatively rare.

As you can see, treasure is "sheet potency." It provides many of the same things as leveling up. And the monster defenses, HP, and even skill check DCs often rise assuming you're getting these item and enhancement bonuses along with your leveling bonuses.

More on the implications of this to follow.
 
Last edited:

Remove ads

Top