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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Guest 6801328" data-source="post: 7334815">But if the gold has no value (because it's not your character, and you will never have an option to spend it on anything else) then it has no value.  It's meaningless to ask players whether they would be willing to spend 50,000 gold on a sword if they will not only never have another opportunity to spend the gold, but will also never have an opportunity to use it.Milton Friedman used to say that there are four ways to spend money:<ul> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">You can spend your own money on yourself, in which case you are most likely to get a good deal on a desired good.</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">You can spend your own money on somebody else, in which case you are likely to get a good deal but it may not be a desired product (e.g., socks as gifts)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">You can spend somebody else's money on yourself, in which case you will get a desired product but not necessarily at a good price (e.g. expense accounts)</li> <li data-xf-list-type="ul">You can spend somebody else's money on somebody else, in which case all bets are off (e.g. government spending).</li> </ul>Simulating the purchase of magic items falls squarely into the last category.  There are no actual incentives to balance cost vs. utility.  All you are measuring are players preconceived notions of value vs. utility, by players who already have an opinion of such things.To go back to the example of spells, it's kind of like asking players for their opinion on a spell, as opposed to having them actually playtest it.And maybe that's what you want: player opinions of the relative worth of magic items.  But that is heavily, heavily biased by subjective perception, because nobody has enough objective data to determine an item's actual worth.  Deck of Many Things might be over/under prices for reasons (nostalgia?) that have nothing to do with it's actual utility.  And if you are going to base it off something as variable as opinion, why bother?  Why not just tell DMs, "Charge whatever you think is appropriate."  It just doesn't matter.Again, not their gold, not their character.  Bad data.</blockquote>

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