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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lanefan" data-source="post: 6389514" data-attributes="member: 29398">Sheer logic dictates there will end up being a market for, and trade in, arcane spells and magic items; here's why:For arcane spells: well, spells have to come from somewhere.  Either someone researches and invents a spell independently, or a wizards' guild does it.  And once that new spell exists, it can be - and will be - sold for cash or bartered for other spells; except in the unusual circumstance where the spell's inventor in effect makes it "public domain" from day one and just gives it away.For magic items: there seems to be fairly common agreement so far that the PCs can sell an item they don't need, even if only for a trivial amount of cash or barter.  And if the PCs can sell it that by default maens someone can buy it.  Now, let's reverse that.  The PCs are not the only adventurers the world has ever seen; there's other adventurers out there, either now or in the past, and they might well have magic items they don't need.  They can offer these items for sale.  And the PCs, by logical extension, can buy them if they hear about them and agree to the price.  Over the years, reasonably standard prices will develop for the more commonly-seen magic items e.g. basic-enchantment weapons, armour, spell scrolls and spellbooks, etc.  Never mind that there might be artificers out there whose living is made by making and selling magic items...in fact if there's an artificers' guild setting the rates then right there you're going to have a set of (basic) item prices.That said, to answer [MENTION=40158]Werebat[/MENTION] regarding the munchkin optimizers: neither magic item lists nor prices should be in the hands of players.  Period.  And, by the way, problem solved. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />A further reason for having standard item pricing: without it there is no way to properly and equitably divide the party treasury after each adventure; particularly if there is differing knowledge levels among the players as to what items are worth, and what their uses are.  If each PC's share of the non-magic treasure is worth 2000 g.p. (so we all get that) but there's 5 magic items to go around between 5 characters and I claim the gleaming magic longsword that slays dragons as my item and you only get a potion, you're quite rightly going to feel ripped off.  But without standard values (or values somehow set by a non-involved third party) there's no way to compensate, at least not without some fearsome arguing at the table.Lan-"believe me, having seen too many of both I can tell you treasury arguments are always way worse than alignment arguments"-efan</blockquote>

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