Level Up (A5E) Magic Item Price List

[Kinematics]

Great, I was curious how you did yours. I was using regular expression parsing but I didn't find an easy pattern so it took a bit of work and clearly had some errors, what method did you use?

I used a regex as well. The final pattern I used was:

(.*?) ((Wondrous item|Weapon|Armor|Ring|Bracelet|Wand|Staff|Scroll|Rod|Potion|Impossible Cube|Varies|Armor \(light\)|Armor \(medium\)|Armor \(heavy\)|Armor \(plate\)|Armor \(padded leather\)|Armor \(shield\)|Weapon \(lance\)|Weapon \(shortsword\)|Weapon \(dagger\)|Weapon \(axe\)|Weapon \(varies\)), )?(common|uncommon|rare|very rare|legendary)( \((SENTIENT)\))? (\d[,\d]*)( (.*))?

with a replacement code of $1\t$3\t$4\t$6\t$7\t$8, and then imported into Excel. The regex isn't the most efficient, but it works, which is all that's needed.

There were also a few typos from the original source, such as missing commas, or page numbers inlined into item names, that I manually fixed.

I would argue that the dragonslaying part of that item is not worth 7k gold. On the other hand, I think +1 to a weapon (all the time, attack and damage) is worth a lot more than 500 gp. Maybe in 4e where it was fully expected that you needed that 5% hike, but with bounded accuracy in 5e a permanent 5% hike (designed with the likelihood that you never get it) is really cheap.

Well, let's look at what they seem to want for +x weapons.

Basics:

• +1 = 500 GP
• +2 = 3,500 GP
• +3 = 8,000 GP

8000 GP matches the very rare (AC 19) tier of armor. +2 is well above the [rare] (AC 18) tier of armor. +1 equals the [uncommon] (AC 17) tier of armor.

500 GP is something someone could buy at level 3-4. 3500 would be level 6. 8000 would be level 8. However each of those would be using up pretty much the entirety of the character's expected wealth. Keeping it to 1/2 of starting wealth, it would be level 5, level 10, and level 12, respectively.

From what I understand of game progression, you're largely expected to pick up a +1 weapon by the start of tier 2 (level 5), a +2 at the start of tier 3 (level 11), and a +3 at the start of tier 4 (level 17), though I'm feeling like I'm misremembering those.

Level 5/Tier 2 is expected to have a starting wealth of 1300 GP. Considering you'd want both a weapon and armor upgrade at that point, and that each would cost 500 GP [uncommon], that does not feel particularly out of line. That would use up most, but not all, of your starting wealth, leaving some for potions and whatnot.

If it was the only thing being bought at that level, yes, I'd up the price to probably 1000 GP. And if (like the next tier) you expected armor and weapon to basically take two levels to upgrade, then the 1000 GP price would also work.

Upgrading armor and weapon to the next tier (costs: 2000 and 3500) would happen around levels 8-9, probably taking one of the upgrades on each level. Level 9 is also where you get your next proficiency upgrade, so overall this level feels appropriate for where the next upgrade happens.

However, if we assume that sort of ladder, we'd expect the +3 weapon to be acquired around level 13. So, I'd price it around 15,000–20,000. 15,000 would be a x4 scaling, similar to the armor scaling jumps, even though the +1 to +2 was x7. If the +1 was 1000 GP, then the scaling would be similar to the x4 that armor uses.

Overall, I'd probably price the +1/+2/+3 weapons at 1000 / 3500 / 15,000. Raise the entry barrier for the +1 a bit, but mostly keep it so that the armor+weapon upgrade can be done over levels 4-5. Then double the cost of the +3 to push it up to around level 13 affordability.


Also, yeah, I'd cut the Dragon Slayer price back to around 3000 — a little under the cost of a +2 weapon. Dragon slaying is nice, but you can go whole campaigns without it ever coming into play. You want to consider the value of it for the duration that it's reasonable to carry it: levels 5-10. After that it's likely to be replaced by something costing around 3500.

 

[CapnZapp]

Before spamming a giant list of individual items, let's discuss the underlying principles. Formulas, that is. How can we otherwise provide meaningful feedback? Just being asked to compare item 231 to item 312 is a hopeless task.

First question: how much gold is an adventurer of a given level expected to get?

If you have 1000 gold, then an item that costs 500 is expensive.
But if you have 10000 gold, then that same item is cheap.

The first order of business needs to be to establish a backbone of "core" items. Items providing the fundamental bonuses. The "big six" items for those of you that remember 3rd Edition.

Only when prices for those are set (and enough people can agree they're acceptable) is it worth the effort to evaluate prices for the remaining 90% of items.

These are not questions meant for fans to reverse engineer. These are questions the dev team should openly and clearly delineate if they want meaningful assistance.

 

[Stalker0]

500 GP is something someone could buy at level 3-4. …Keeping it to 1/2 of starting wealth, it would be level 5
.

I think this is important point when looking at items.

its easy look at items that are a few hundred gold and go “oh that’s super cheap”, however the simple truth is, for a large portion of the game that is a tremendous sum of money.

it’s really not until 6ish level that players are expected to get the “bling money”

 

[Stalker0]

The first order of business needs to be to establish a backbone of "core" items. Items providing the fundamental bonuses. The "big six" items for those of you that remember 3rd Edition.

While I don't know if we will find a true "big 6" list here (as most items don't scale like 3.5 items did), I do agree with the notion of archetypal items. Aka, for this class, these are the items that would always be solid and welcome in a standard dnd game.

And then price works on the principal "if I were trade my archetype for this other item, would I still feel I'm getting value?"

If I were to look at the typical fighter, I would consider these as archetypes:

Weapon +X (.5/3.5/8k)
Heavy Armor +X (6/24/96k)
Shield +X (1/7/49k)
Ring of Protection (1k)
Stone of Good luck (.35k)
Amulet of Health (5k) (this does depend on current stats of course, but for a character focusing on their primary stat, this bonus remains relevant for a long time. I think its also an item that every character would want, you would never get this item and go "meh")

so look at that list a few things pop out as being suspiciously cheap for their utility:

• Ring of Protection: Currently the system seems to put a very high premium on anything that can push AC beyond its normal limit. However, the RoP can do that for a very low price.... and that's before we include the saving throw bonus. I feel like any player that has options on what to get magic item wise would prioritize this item very highly.
  
  
• Stone of Good Luck: Now we do need to remember that in level up ability checks are a liiiitle weaker due to maneuvers using DCs instead of opposed rolls, so for example the stone would not help you oppose a grapple check like it would in vanilla (from my understanding). But even still, it does help grapplers grapple, provides a +1 to initiative, makes sneaks sneakier, etc. With bounded accuracy, anything that is a direct boosts to rolls is a big deal, and this stone seems very cheap for what it does..... note I haven't even included the saving throw bonus yet.
  
  
• Shields: Again, considering the incredible premium put on armor bonuses....the shield bonuses are extremely cheap. This one is less of a cost problem and more of a how the items are designed. If the game is designed so that Sword/Board is roughly equal to other styles near the beginning of the game, than as time goes on Sword/Board clearly dominates....as its easy to put your money towards AC in a way that other styles can't.... and they have no equivalent avenue to raise their offense to counter. With that in mind, the simple problem is.... as long as a +3 shield can stack on armor you are always going to have scaling problems, no matter your pricing. So the answer here is.... either limit a shield to only the +1 version (and price it accordingly compared to the ring of protection), or add a rule that says the magical bonus from shields and armor don't stack. I like the first one but if you are going for backwards compatibility you would likely need the later one.

 

[Stalker0]

Or put another way, you can reach 18 AC either with pure physical materials (full plate), or with some mix of physical materials and "magic" (plus expectations of user dexterity). In that case, the "magic" used to boost the weaker physical material has the same "cost" as what you might use pure physical material to achieve. So you need 2 units of "magic" to give leather brigandine the same level of protection as an unboosted full plate, though you also require a certain amount of dexterity for the user to achieve that. Or you could use less physical material for a chain shirt, but add 3 units of "magic" to achieve the same thing.

I think that makes a lot of sense, and it also helps to explain why magic armor doesn't require attunement. Its not magic in that it provides some magical ability its just the construction of the material that gives it its properties.

 

[tetrasodium]

They could be listed elsewhere, but I don' think I've seen them. A pretty big omission I see missing from the magic items price list is the cost to copy spells or spellbooks with spells in them. Warlock & sorcerer get a lot of class features on op of largely getting the same spell list to draw from as wizard on the assumption that wizards will pad out their spellbook with more spells, but actually accomplishing that is all but impossible without a gp cost for copying spells from spellbooks.

Technically a wizard can hope to buy scrolls and then spend 2hr+50gp per level of the spell, but it's a it's a bit overkill to require an expensive scroll capable of casting the spell itself so a wizard can spend even more in order to scribe a spell into their spellbook when they are still limited to level + intelligence mod prepared spells.

 

[Faolyn]

They could be listed elsewhere, but I don' think I've seen them. A pretty big omission I see missing from the magic items price list is the cost to copy spells or spellbooks with spells in them.

That's not an omission because that's in the section ion wizards. You're not buying a magic item when you copy the scroll into your book.

Technically a wizard can hope to buy scrolls and then spend 2hr+50gp per level of the spell, but it's a it's a bit overkill to require an expensive scroll capable of casting the spell itself so a wizard can spend even more in order to scribe a spell into their spellbook when they are still limited to level + intelligence mod prepared spells.

They're not limited in the number of spells they can have in their books, just the number they can have in their brain at any one time. They can have a couple of hundred spells in their spellbooks, if they wanted to.

 

[Kinematics]

Continuing on the thoughts on weapon pricing: I forgot to account for two-weapon fighting. Boosting the cost of the +1 version of weapons from 500 to 1000 means the dual wielder needs to pay 2000 for a full upgrade instead of 1000.

Now, this might be what they want, given that dual wielding "overperforms" at low levels, but it's still something to consider.

Perhaps the prices might scale for light, normal, and heavy weapons (eg: -50%, +0%, +50%), but that would also make it look like the question of how pricing of armor works for light/medium/heavy armor. Since the decision on armor was to price based on the target AC, what do things look like with to-hit rolls?

To-hit rolls increase by both attribute and proficiency bonus, whereas armor is only affected by Dex. If we assume a 16 in the main stat at level 1, increasing to 18 at level 4, and then increasing to 20 at level 12-16 (because the game was balanced against an 18 in the primary stat for tier 2, and doesn't assume a 20 til late game), we're looking at:

Level 1: 16 Str, +0 weapon = +5 to attack
Level 5: 18 Str, +1 weapon = +8 to attack
Level 9: 18 Str, +2 weapon = +10 to attack
Level 13: 20 Str, +3 weapon = +13 to attack
Level 17: 20 Str, +3 weapon = +14 to attack

Honestly, it feels like a decent progression rate, gaining about +1 to hit every 2 levels, and +1 to damage every 4 levels. Compare with armor gaining about +1 AC every 2 levels (up to a point).

So, my original estimate of when to gain the next +X to a weapon seems appropriate, and price can be derived from that. Mainly 8000 seems too low for a +3, as you're able to afford that only a couple levels after you get a +2, which really ruins the value of +2s.


Putting that aside, and going back to the Dragon Slayer, there's the issue of replacement cost. That is, in my original analysis I assumed a +1 weapon would be replaced by a +2 weapon. However, since weapons generally don't require attunement (including the Dragon Slayer), it's reasonable to hold on to the Dragon Slayer in order to use it in its niche specialty, rather than replace it.

So you get your Dragon Slayer, which functions as a +1 sword, at level 5, but you don't replace it at level 9 because if you fight a dragon, you're still going to want to use the Dragon Slayer, even if you use some other +2 weapon the rest of the time. You're more likely to replace it entirely when you get a +3 weapon.

So, in the original pricing, costing 7000 means it costs just a little less than a +3 weapon (8000), which is the point it would be getting replaced (maybe). If you consider 7000 relative to a price of 15,000 for a +3, it seems more reasonable. It's a +2.5 for its niche use, but doesn't compete with a full +3, while still being affordable at a point that allows it to be used for a few levels before +3s start being viable.

Of course you might evaluate it as being worth holding onto regardless of any alternate weapons, because the +3d6 vs dragons outweighs 2 less to-hit points by a fair margin. In that case, the Dragon Slayer will never get fully replaced, and pricing it as only a little less than a +3 is reasonable because it can last the entire game. You don't buy it as a primary weapon, but as a specialist weapon.


And I'm kinda out of thoughts on how to evaluate that any further, at the moment. I'll look at @CapnZapp's point later.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Pricing magic items according to economic theory is difficult because I feel most people except magic item prices to conform to a price mechanism, where price settles at an equilibrium, allowing supply to match demand, and demand be based on the objective usefulness of an item, based on its rulebook description -- so more people would be interested to buy a +2 fork over a +1 fork, until the price of the +2 fork reaches the point of equilibrium by lessening demand. However, there are reasons to think that magic item market could work differently.

1. Availability of goods and local monopolies

The equilibrium is functional only if there is a large number of buyers and a large number of suppliers. Depending on the game world, there can be a strong chance that there is few (only high level characters can make items, and they have better things to do) to none (legendary magic items and artefacts can't be created today, they are relics of a past magic-using empire...). The owner of one of such items could ask whatever he wants without fear of losing a prospective buyer to a competitor... because he'd have an effective (albeit maybe local) monopoly on one type of items. Of course, Enchanter Tim could sell twice as many +1 longsword each year if he reduced the price by 37.84%. But... Enchanter Tim's behaviour isn't replicated by simulating an infinite number of suppliers. Enchanter Tim doesn't care about selling more sword. If you want a +1 sword, you'll pay him 5,000 gold, so he can hire a group of adventurers to travel across the land and fetch him the Great Book of Herbs from Candlekeep. Locally, the price of the +1 sword isn't tied to utility, it's tied to the price of hiring a band of heroes -- even if Tim's effort is minimal to mumble a few magic words AND he could make boatload of money (but he isn't interested into gold... he'd like a 5,000 gp diamond, though, and he would pay more than 5,000 gp for that). Technically, he could mumble twice as much and create a +2 sword. There is no difference in effort on his part ; so the price could be 5,000, whether you seek a magic sword +1 or +2 from him. You wouldn't certainly be able to ask for a Plussetwo sword, what would you get? The promise to enchant it at the best of his ability... How loud will he mumble? Could you really sue him for a refund if he mumbles not a lot but your sword is still glowing when orcs comes near?

2. Asymetry of information

Depending on how one views his universe, several choices can be made on the inforamtion level about the magic item. For a gamer's point of view, a +1 sword is less useful than a +2 sword. This is objectively true. But in game... (a) getting information about whether an item is magical or not is impossible. You could pay someone to cast Detect Magic on the item, of course, but it has its own cost of hiring a specialist so you wouldn't do that for a low cost item, and there is a possibility that it is only detecting a Nystul's Magic Aura and not a true magic. Even if we assume that you're sure it's magical, there is no chance of distinguishing whether the blade once belonging to the Runed Knight, reforged into a glowing, red longword, and the holy longsword wielded by a paladin who gave its life protecting a bridge from goblins while an innocent family fled is bearing the more powerful enchantment. You could line up naked commoners and strike at them all day long in order to establish which weapon is probably better, but such a method could be... immersion-breaking. You could pay someone to cast Identify, but again it might be easily fooled and... the lack of information goes both way. It is strongly possible that the seller of the magic weapon ignores the difference between +1 and +2, especially if he looted the armor on the aforementioned dead paladin's body. So your +2 could command the same price as the +1 one, 'cause both glow shiny. Asymetry of information can drive the price of any item arbitrarily low, especially if the properties of the item aren't immediately obvious, like an absurdist web (if you don't know you can put item into it...)

3. Quality of luxury items explaining more of the price than enchantment

An elven chain costs 5,000 gp and his effectively a +1 chain shirt that you can wear without proficiency in medium armor. Buyers with 18 DEX will find elven chain as useful as Padded Leather (worth 45 gp). Characters proficient with Medium Armor, which constitutes the vast majority of the prospectives buyers for armor, will find the elven chain as useful as a breastplate (worth 400 gp). How can such a price be rational? Who would buy it if breastplate is equal?

For most people, a +1 longsword will have 0 utility (unlike a +1 gardening implement). For most warrior, it will have a very low utility. They won't measure that it allows them to hit 5% more often and do 22% more damage, especially if damage isn't a wound. Let's say they can somehow get that they down their opponent in one hit 37,5% of the time instead of 25%, so there is some measure of increased utility, but is it worth paying 500 gp over 15? And once you have a +1 sword, would you buy a +2 sword, 233 times the price of a regular sword, that does most of the needed job? Especially since the difference between a club (cost: 1sp) and a longsword (cost: 15 gp) is more damagewise than the +1 enchantment? What would you pay a +1 club if you're trained in martial weapon (like any regular fighter would be, the normal customer for weapons) and not expecting to fight creatures immune/resistant to nonmagical weapons (like the regular, non heroic customer would)?

Most of the value of the magic items might come from something other than usefulness. It is dubious that the difference in effectiveness is the reasoning behind the pricing. People might not priorize only that when making their buying decisions. It could be that the enchanting is part of what make the item attractive, but, say, if nearly all weapons coming from the Elfland are +1 but their main quality is that REAL noblemen will have only the finest Elfland-made weapons, and the noblemen group of buyers far outsizes the "heroes who will be interested into getting +1 on their attack and damage rolls" group of buyers, you could have 15 gp longsword, 450 gp longsword-from-Elfland and 500 gp +1 weapons from Elfland. Too bad nobody makes weapons as they do traditionally in Elfland. Of course, one could wear a breastplate instead of an Elven chain, but you wouldn't want to be seen in a regular breastplate.

4. Regulations, especially sumptuary ones.

Price could simply be regulated. Most settings will lack the authority to actually enforce a "magic wepons permit", but it's not something ot be discarded totally. If you have a sumptuary laws forbidden a gondola to be sold more than 500 gp, your folding gondola enchanted with a self-directing gondolier won't be priced more than 500 gp. Of course, there are many buyer who would pay, but the seller isn't interested in selling for more and risking having all his family killed and his hands cut off for overpricing.

Combining some or all of these, you could have realistic prices as arbitrary as you want. I find it more useful, nowadays, to consider gold accrued by PCs as a reflection of their buying power, not actual stack of gold pieces. High buying power is a result of having the connections needed to locate and acquire, probably commission, the item, and have price list not reflecting a hypothetical magic item market and embrace the gamist aspect of it and use @Kinematics excellent's analysis.

 

[tetrasodium]

That's not an omission because that's in the section ion wizards. You're not buying a magic item when you copy the scroll into your book.


They're not limited in the number of spells they can have in their books, just the number they can have in their brain at any one time. They can have a couple of hundred spells in their spellbooks, if they wanted to.

On that bold bit, can you quote what you are talking about in the "section o wizards"?

Wizards certainly could have every spell in existence in their spellbook yes, but they won't have anything but the allotment given by their class if they can't find anything or go broke buying spell scrolls while carrying around a black hole for gold that nearly any wizard has reason to cross copy or rent time for copying. o5e places too much emphasis on what could be in this area while omitting any methods of getting there.