D&D 5E magic items prices

[ExploderWizard]

But you still gain mountains of gold.

And the main way of spending that gold has been taken away.

What should you spend your gold on now?

What is all the gold FOR?

(For your answer please assume that you aren't interested in building a church, or donating to the orphans. You simply enjoy adventures and dungeons, and want options that increase your chances of survival.

I'm not saying it's wrong to donate to orphans. Just that not all players find that interesting. Especially players coming from, you know, the two previous editions and the last decade of the game...)

It is a comfort to know that you have enough money to live the lifestyle of the rich & shameless without ever needing to work again. That is something we can all relate to.

Also, money is an important resource in the campaign world (or it should be). Money can sometimes make the impossible possible. Lets say you have a dire situation in a distant place that requires heroes to go and resolve it. At the same time it is learned that there will soon be a vicious attack on the local area. Heroes who are filthy rich can use their wealth to hire The Flaming Fist mercenary company to defend the area while they go off and save the day in a faraway place.

A party with the wealth of many nations tied up in a few personal doodads they are carrying couldn't do that. They would have to choose who they would not be able to help. Wealth itself is a great resource.

 

[Chocolategravy]

Do you own your own fully automatic machine guns, attack helicopter, and armored personel carrier? If not then you should sell your house, car, and anything else of value and try to buy them. If you don't then you are a fool. Would you consider that reasonable?

Of course your strawman isn't reasonable, you made it as idiotic and unrelated to the argument as you possibly could.

 

[Chocolategravy]

Right...because Bilbo just walked into a shop, browsed around, and purchased Sting. Right? Oh, wait, no...Sting was a truly rare item. When Bilbo didn't need it anymore, he didn't pop down to the local pawn shop and sell it, he handed it down. That should be the default behavior of magic items. Buying or selling should be very, very rare indeed. As a player, it's far more rewarding to go on a quest/adventure and come home with a rare magic item after much hard work and danger than it is to walk into Magic 'R' Us and buy what you need.

Bilbo didn't get into enough fights to make it to 3rd level. At the rate he was literally being handed and tripping over magic items he'd have had several hundred by 20th level.

 

[Chocolategravy]

These players are not interested in buying anything with their gold that does not directly help them on their next adventure. Buying magical items is directly helping you on your next adventure. But the DMG removed this option without providing any alternatives.

There are a couple options... kill your character, then when you make the new one you get your pick of magic items, OR play in the official adventurer's league where you get to pick your items.

The lack of magic item economy in the DMG pretty much comes down to WotC not bothering to spend the time putting it in, because the encounter guidelines, official adventures and league all toss magic items at you non-stop. Not having a magic item economy in your game is swimming up stream and working against the system.

 

[Werebat]

If you bring back the magic shop then magic items stop being special.

"And when everyone's super -- no one will be!"

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

The DMG completely fails to provide an alternative for when you have 40000 gp and tomorrow enter the Dungeon of Slaughter.

Previously, you could whet your appetite for a +3 Axe of Slaying or another equally functioning item.

Now, not so much. In fact, not at all. All options either mean doing downtime stuff, or adding rules that merely act as a money sink. (Why hand out that much gold if all you can do with it is pay a trainer to level up?)

Well, you could hire some soldiers to accompany you, or cast Simulacrum for 1500 gold, or up-armor all your skeletal minions with plate armor, or buy a few thousand caltrops, or buy material components to cast Resurrection with...

 

[Warmaster Horus]

I don't see a reason the two philosophies being debated here can't coexist on a campaign by campaign basis. If some people want to play in a magic-rich environment, so be it. Use the DMG rules or something else and go with it. If other people want to play in a rare magic milieu, that's okay, too.

The argument that economies will force the creation and propagation of magic items is ludicrous, IMHO. The average worker makes 1sp a day, or 36gp a year. Magic items require mystical components, obscure instructions, highest quality materials and spellcasters who have better things to do with their time than sinking weeks and weeks into creating a Ring of Feather Fall to put on Ebay.

On the other hand, if you want to have magic be 'mundane' in your campaign, go for it.

 

[Werebat]

You CAN purchase magic items in 5E -- if the DM allows it. You can purchase any magic item that the DM allows you to, whenever they allow you to. Maybe there will be an auction of over a dozen rare and powerful magic items next month that a wealthy contact could get you a ticket into (it's a very exclusive venue) if you solve a little problem for him first. Maybe that merchant whose brother you rescued might let you know about "special stock" items he gets now and then, seeing as how you're known for having bags of gold and all. Maybe he'll sell to you for only FOUR times the amount he paid for them, rather than the usual ten. And so on.

If having a pile of gold and nothing to do with it is a problem, the DM can solve that problem.

The key here is that the power over what items are and are not available in the campaign is entirely in the hands of the DM. The DM, who just might have taken the time to read the same online paladin optimization guide that you did. Good luck getting your hands on that combo.

I like the "new" magic item scarcity and removal of magic item shops on every street corner. It might be my DM ears hearing, but the complaints I've seen so far have sounded like so much power gamer whining -- and my power gaming players almost universally like the loss of magic item shops!

 

[FormerlyHemlock]

I like the "new" magic item scarcity and removal of magic item shops on every street corner. It might be my DM ears hearing, but the complaints I've seen so far have sounded like so much power gamer whining -- and my power gaming players almost universally like the loss of magic item shops!

I suspect that I'm a power gamer when I'm playing (or running test games), and yeah, I like the loss of magic item shops. The low-magic option is one of my favorite things about 5E--it reminds me of AD&D, and in fact if 5E had been written with 3E/4E's apparent focus on magic items as integral to a PC's advancement, I wouldn't be playing 5E at all. What fun is it to play a roleplaying game where all your identity is wrapped up in your axe, of all things? What happens when you get attacked in the middle of the night, or poisoned and shanghaied off into slavery? Are you going to be totally bereft of awesome because your gear is gone, or are you going to pick up a couple of chipped flint daggers, kill both your guards, and lead a slave revolt because you still have Sharpshooter and Action Surge and 3 attacks per round!?! (ObTeaCup: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=16RdEtQL9EQ)

I ran a test combat last night with 3 6th level PCs with zero magic items against a Vampire (10,000 XP; CR 13). It was awesome and the PCs did surprisingly well, defeating the vampire at a cost of 30 HP and 5 ki points, although I made mistakes on both sides of the combat. (Forgot to use the Vampire's Legendary Resistances on the Vampire's part; forgot to exploit terrain/keep the range open on the PC's part.) In fact it went well enough that I now feel pretty okay about the fact that my real-life 3 6th level PCs are going up against a vampire tonight. It will be a Deadly-class fight but if they lose they will just get captured and used... The real-life PCs do in fact have some magic items but they sure didn't buy them from an optimization catalog, and the fact that 5E supports no-magic fights like the one I did last night also means that it supports random-magic fights like the ones my players are going to have. On the other hand, if 5E were built on the magic-mart expectation, Vampires would be built to require +2 magic items to damage them, and my 6th level PCs would have no hope at all of surviving until they found some more Magic Stuff. Boring.

 

[Gecko85]

Bilbo didn't get into enough fights to make it to 3rd level. At the rate he was literally being handed and tripping over magic items he'd have had several hundred by 20th level.

Not the point. The point was, Sting had been lost...buried in a cave for a very long time. An adventurer (bumbling or not) found it. It wasn't at Magic 'R' Us available for purchase.