D&D 5E More precise magic item pricing

[Fralex]

For a while, the "Why does 5e SUCK!?!?!" thread was actually just people talking about different aspects of the game in a friendly manner. I'm not sure if it stayed that way, but one thing I got out of it was finally getting a chance to share my ideas on pricing magic items. I'll move it here for safekeeping.

As you can tell, the pricing for permanent magical items (consumable items cost half what they'd be if they were permanent) increases by 5 x 10^(a number related to rarity). Well, except for Common items, which cost 100 gp instead of 50 gp. There are twice as many spell levels as rarity levels, which annoys me, so when pricing spell-based items like scrolls I refer to a chart that includes prices for every spell level. Uncommon items cost 500 gp, and the DMG says they can reproduce spell effects of up to 3rd level. Rare items cost 5000 gp and can produce spells of 5th level or lower. So, since 3rd level = 5 x 10^2 and 5th level = 5 x 10^3, 4th level must equal 5 x 10^2.5, or about 1581.13883. We can just round that up to 1600 gp for convenience's sake. Following that pattern, you get a chart like this:

0 - 16
1 - 50
2 - 160
3 - 500
4 - 1,600
5 - 5,000
6 - 16,000
7 - 50,000
8 - 160,000
9 - 500,000

And you can play around with these numbers by changing how fast the rarity number increases. Like, here's what it looks like if you follow a 2/3, 1, 1+1/3... pattern:

0 - 23
1 - 50
2 - 110
3 - 230
4 - 500
5 - 1,100
6 - 2,300
7 - 5,000
8 - 11,000
9 - 23,000

Right now, I'm keeping as close to the book as possible, to give it a chance, so I'm keeping 1st level at 100 gp and having 0 level be 50 gp. I actually made a little chart on a notecard, including this information along with a bunch of other useful things related to spells and magic items:

[TABLE="class: outer_border, width: 800"][TR][TD]Spell Level[/TD][TD]Rarity[/TD][TD]Permanent Price[/TD][TD]Consumable Price[/TD][TD]Max AC/Attack Bonus[/TD][TD]Single-Target Damage[/TD][TD]Multi-Target Damage[/TD][TD]Spell Attack[/TD][TD]Save DC[/TD][/TR][TR][TD]0[/TD][TD]Common[/TD][TD]50[/TD][TD]25[/TD][TD]
[/TD][TD]1d10[/TD][TD]1d6[/TD][TD]+5[/TD][TD]13[/TD][/TR][TR][TD]1[/TD][TD]Common[/TD][TD]100[/TD][TD]50[/TD][TD]
[/TD][TD]2d10[/TD][TD]2d6[/TD][TD]+5[/TD][TD]13[/TD][/TR][TR][TD]2[/TD][TD]Uncommon[/TD][TD]160[/TD][TD]80[/TD][TD]+1[/TD][TD]3d10[/TD][TD]4d6[/TD][TD]+5[/TD][TD]13[/TD][/TR][TR][TD]3[/TD][TD]Uncommon[/TD][TD]500[/TD][TD]250[/TD][TD]+1[/TD][TD]5d10[/TD][TD]6d6[/TD][TD]+7[/TD][TD]15[/TD][/TR][TR][TD]4[/TD][TD]Rare[/TD][TD]1,600[/TD][TD]800[/TD][TD]+2[/TD][TD]6d10[/TD][TD]7d6[/TD][TD]+7[/TD][TD]15[/TD][/TR][TR][TD]5[/TD][TD]Rare[/TD][TD]5,000[/TD][TD]2,500[/TD][TD]+2[/TD][TD]8d10[/TD][TD]8d6[/TD][TD]+9[/TD][TD]17[/TD][/TR][TR][TD]6[/TD][TD]Very Rare[/TD][TD]16,000[/TD][TD]8,000[/TD][TD]+3[/TD][TD]10d10[/TD][TD]11d6[/TD][TD]+9[/TD][TD]17[/TD][/TR][TR][TD]7[/TD][TD]Very Rare[/TD][TD]50,000[/TD][TD]25,000[/TD][TD]+3[/TD][TD]11d10[/TD][TD]12d6[/TD][TD]+10[/TD][TD]18[/TD][/TR][TR][TD]8[/TD][TD]Very Rare[/TD][TD]160,000[/TD][TD]80,000[/TD][TD]+3[/TD][TD]12d10[/TD][TD]13d6[/TD][TD]+10[/TD][TD]18[/TD][/TR][TR][TD]9[/TD][TD]Legendary[/TD][TD]500,000[/TD][TD]250,000[/TD][TD]+4[/TD][TD]15d10[/TD][TD]14d6[/TD][TD]+11[/TD][TD]19[/TD][/TR][/TABLE]It's really handy.

 

[Dragonsbane]

Very cool. Love the way the prices go up!

Question though, consumables like a 7th, 8th, or 9th level scroll. Price seems very high there, especially if you allow PCs to craft a scroll, a high-level scroll would take ages.

 

[bganon]

Well, let's see: a 9th level scroll (consumable) takes 10,000 days to make. That's over 27 years. With another capable wizard around to help, you could bring that down, and as a DM I'd be willing to rule that help from a whole circle of lower-level mages might be roughly equivalent. But I think 27 years for a scroll of meteor swarm/gate/imprisonment/power word kill is probably OK as a starting point. Anybody can use scrolls, and with 9th-level spells they're goddamn nukes! From a worldbuilding standpoint I'm quite happy if it takes a good chunk of someone's lifetime to make even one.

 

[Kryx]

Your level 2 base price doesn't make sense.

From 0-1 you increase from 50 to 100, or 200% the price
From 1-2 you increase from 100 to 160, or 160% the price
From 2-3 you increase from 160 to 500, or 312.5% the price
From 3-4 you increase from 500 to 1600, or 320% the price
From 4-5 you increase from 1600 to 5000, or 312.5% the price
From 5-6 you increase from 5000 to 16000, or 320% the price
From 6-7 you increase from 16000 to 50000, or 312.5% the price
From 7-8 you increase from 50000 to 160000, or 320% the price
From 8-9 you increase from 160000 to 500000, or 312.5% the price


level 2 should at least be 200, though I think 300 is better.

My scale: 50,100,300,750,1500,3000,6000,12000,24000,80000.
Consumables: 25,50,150,375,750,1500,3000,6000,12000,40000

Though legendary spells are hard to manage as legendary items need to be priced accordingly while no1 should pay 40,000 for a scroll.

 

[Dragonsbane]

27 years for a scroll seems reasonable? If you don't want them in the game, remove them. Setting a bar that is so high seems a little off, sir, since at that time span, no player would ever do it.

A few years seems reasonable for some high-powered item. A disposable item? Not so much, at least in my game.

 

[CapnZapp]

I honestly believe the first step to a working set of magic item creation and pricing ruleset must be to completely ignore the 5e rules in this area.

 

[MoutonRustique]

My suggestion for building this thing would be:
- create and classify all items into a few large "useful for" categories
- with said categories grade the items with regards to relative power (perhaps on a scale of 10)
- create/recognize one or two reference points between the created "ladders" (the graded categories)

This being built, you can fairly easily set prices by using a single descriptive value (i.e. I want +1 swords to cost 1,000 gp). This will give you a very stable and powerful reference to set your ingame prices - especially if you go with something as cool as [MENTION=40177]Wik[/MENTION]'s idea in this post

 

[Fralex]

I'm pretty familiar with D&D spells, so estimating an item's rarety based on what spells it resembles works well for me.

 

[Fralex]

Your level 2 base price doesn't make sense.

From 0-1 you increase from 50 to 100, or 200% the price
From 1-2 you increase from 100 to 160, or 160% the price
From 2-3 you increase from 160 to 500, or 312.5% the price
From 3-4 you increase from 500 to 1600, or 320% the price
From 4-5 you increase from 1600 to 5000, or 312.5% the price
From 5-6 you increase from 5000 to 16000, or 320% the price
From 6-7 you increase from 16000 to 50000, or 312.5% the price
From 7-8 you increase from 50000 to 160000, or 320% the price
From 8-9 you increase from 160000 to 500000, or 312.5% the price


level 2 should at least be 200, though I think 300 is better.

My scale: 50,100,300,750,1500,3000,6000,12000,24000,80000.
Consumables: 25,50,150,375,750,1500,3000,6000,12000,40000

Though legendary spells are hard to manage as legendary items need to be priced accordingly while no1 should pay 40,000 for a scroll.

It's like I said, I'm keeping the prices as close to the DMG suggestions as possible for now, including the weird change in price from Common to Uncommon. Once I've given these prices a chance, I'll play around with other values and see what happens. Yours look pretty good, how did you come up with that pattern?

Of course, the base price for Legendary items really only applies to crafting, since it's hard to imagine Legendary items ever being bought and sold in a conventional way. Crafting has a whole slew of other limitations, like minimum level and time spent. Legendary items would require a 17th-level mage to spend several years crafting. For reference, the most money you can get yourself directly with the wish spell is 25,000 gp, so Legendary scrolls definitely should cost more than that. This gives us something of an upper limit. Er, a lower limit. A minimum upper limit?