Minor Magic Items

[Mistwell]

Not really useful tips, but a couple of considerations:

- what is your purpose (as a player)? I sincerely hope it's not for making more money, because it will open a can of worms

- for pricing, it all depends on your fantasy settings... if magic, magic items and magic services are common, I would see no problem in saying that your items are cheap: it doesn't mean everyone can buy them, but usually high-magic campaigns also tend to feature modern-like economy and wealth at the same time, so that normal people in those settings are generally wealthy (much more than medieval historical earth at least); in a low-magic world I would excpet even minor magic items to be bought only by very important people and therefore be outrageously expensive

So overall I would start discussing with your DM about what kind of pricing would fit with your fantasy world, and only then I would decide how much it will cost your PC to make those items.

But honestly, I totally prefer a game where crafting yields a net ZERO in monetary gain for the PCs.

Psst. You're replying to a message posted 8 years ago.

I resurrected this thread because the title provided a convenient place-holder for me to gather the ideas from a half-dozen different threads on this kind of topic, so I can create a listing for the new OGRE tool.

That said, please do feel free to add more ideas!

 

[Morrus]

Once you've done this, Mark, I'm going to reference it in my treasure generator for certain!

 

[Celebrim]

I've got an Artificer who wishes to start a business selling minor magic items...Does anyone have any tips for this?

Change the rules.

If the rules ever offend the game you want to have, change them.

In my game I have a feat called 'Hedge Magician' (many of my feats are intended to establish tropes of my particular setting) that does three things:

1) You get double the number of 0 level spell slots per day.
2) You can craft any item that has as its spell prerequisites only 0th level spells without having the required crafting feat.
3) The cost in gold and XP of any item that has as its spell prerequisites only 0th level spells is halved.

It's not a particular potent feat in the long run (though it has been reasonably popular with players), but it does accomplish the point.

I should also note that I don't have the dual economic system that D&D traditionally has. Both PCs and NPCs utilize the same silver based economy. Therefore, magic items are priced in silver. (My PCs are about 6th level, and pooled between them have about 300g.p. in cash, and because of this they think they are wealthy and moreover they are right in this assumption.) I should also note that my pricing structure allows magical items to be created and sold at a profit. You'll note that in standard 3.X the market price and the cost to create an item are the same. You'll want to change that.

Anyway, the outcome of the Hedge Mage feat is that minor magical items are cheap enough that the very wealthy can purchase them as luxury items and status symbols, and the market price of 0th level items is surpressed (effectively, the professional hedge mages can undercut any would be competitor). I don't think you should underestimate the value that the very wealthy place on such things as luxury and status. I'd caution you against going much further than that though, since there is a serious risk that if you make magical item production too cheap, you'll end up recreating technology - radios, televisions, etc. If you want to do that, great, but if you don't want to do that make sure you pay attention to the possible side effects of making magic accessible.