I still find the argument strange that putting prices on things means people are going to argue that means there should be a store selling it.
Have your players argued that with you?
Because when I tell my table there aren't magic item stores, they just shrug and carry on. Do I just have really amenable players?
No, not among my gaming friends. I'm basing my prediction off two things:
1) Behavior/demands I see in Adventurer's League games, where players come in with all sorts of arguments based on what they've found in the books. "But the books says
THIS..."
2) The arguments I see put forward on these (and other RPG) forums. In this
very thread people are using 'evidence' from every edition, and even FR novels for crying out loud, to make their case.
But, thinking about this, there is an idea in here. A UA article which has a big table. In column 1, you list all the magic items in D&D in alphabetical order - just the names. Column 2 lists the DMG prices. Column 3 lists prices based on a la carte player buying. Column 4 lists prices based on impact to world building and goes high - sort of an Eberron selling guide. Column 5 lists prices for a low magic world.
Then give advice as to how to adjust the numbers based on your individual campaigns. I could see something like this being a useful baseline to start from.
Yes, if there is going to be a price list I think it should be something like this. I was thinking it could really just be a range, with notes. ("If you are in a low-magic campaign it should be on the high end...") But some people in this thread are asking for a specific price so they don't have to make a decision or remember what it was, so I suppose that wouldn't meet their needs.
(And then I always come back to the problem of: "Unless gold is more rare/abundant in your campaign than is assumed, in which case these prices are nearly useless...".)
1. There was a discussion somewhere in the rules about how an economy is affected by the sale of magic items and the kinds of things that nobility and centers of power would be doing to shore themselves up in that sort of situation.
This is along the lines of what I was suggesting earlier: just provide guidelines/considerations for DMs in setting their own prices. Not that it meets the needs of those asking for prices, but it's what
I would do if I were Mike Mearls.
First, there's two types of consistency; and both are important to me.
The first is consistency within the same item. If a +1 longsword is 1500 g.p. here I want it to be 1500 g.p. everywhere - very artificial, yes, but done specifically to prevent the game turning into an endless exercise of buy-low-sell-high as the PCs travel from town to town.
I could see this possibly arising if specific items were common/frequent enough that this could occur. But both because it requires an abundance of magic items for sale...so abundant that it starts to feel like a Magic Mart...and because it's so easy to prevent it ("Sorry, that one sold while you were off in the other town", or "Sorry, the
sell price and the
buy price are different," or even "Word gets out that you are frequently transporting magic items...roll initiative.") that I have trouble imagining this actually being a
problem.
The second is consistency between different items. If a +1 longsword is 1500 g.p. then it only makes sense that a +1 battleaxe is also going to be around 1500 g.p. and a +2 longsword will be somewhat more than 1500. The headache here comes when trying to compare basic items that aren't really the same e.g. a +1 longsword vs a +1 chain mail vs a +1 ring of protection vs. an Onyx Dog, in order to maintain some consistency. If nothing else, a price list shows what the designers have done with these comparisons; and even if you don't agree with the results and change them for your game you at least have that starting point.
I was at a Sotheby's auction of Impressionists paintings, and ended up sitting next to a couple who were selling a small Degas (I can't remember if it was actually found in their attic, but it was the classic story of discovering this thing they owned was valuable). A larger Degas sold for a lot, and so I did a price-per-square-inch calculation and whispered, "So you should expect about $X." They laughed, because
of course I was joking. (I think they ended up getting more per square inch.)
The argument that similar magic items should have a similar price, or that +1/+2/+3 should somehow be proportional, strikes me the same way. I mean, I
suppose it makes some sense, in the way that price per square inch of paintings makes sense. But if magic items are rare and wonderful and have unique histories and owners with unpredictable personalities and buyers who covet such items for reasons known only to them...all bets are off.
YMMV, of course.
Maybe the way to handle pricing is the way everything is solved these days: a social media app. If you (the DM) want an item to be for sale, you enter it into an app. Every DM offering the same item ends up in the same auction. You then ask your players how much they are willing to pay. You enter the price, tap 'bid', and wait. If your players win the auction, they get the item.
(Yes, I'm joking.)
