Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jay Verkuilen" data-source="post: 7725299" data-attributes="member: 6873517">I have no perfect idea. Prices IRL float for a reason, but we shouldn't let the best be the enemy of the good. IMO coming up with a solid, workable (though ultimately arbitrary) price list isn't fundamentally different than coming up with tradeoff costs for powers vs powers, feats, spells, or what have you, which the game has clearly already done. In some cases this is even indexed to gold: They figured out a way to charge for scribing spells in a wizard's spellbook (though they didn't bother giving some notion of how available spells are). They also priced many mundane items, some of which are pretty far up the quality chain compared to others. There are some basic principles that can be adopted to make the job easier and give a verisimilitude of reality, which is all that we can realistically ask out of a game. An example would be diminishing returns. A +1 magic sword should be more than a regular sword (obviously). A +2 sword should be more than double the cost of a +1 sword. Choosing what the cost curve is in many respects sets the expectations for treasure accumulation. So, let's say, just as a wild guess, the cost of a +1 sword is set at 2000 gold. Then the +2 sword should be larger than 4000 gold. Let's say it's 5000 gold but maybe it's higher, like 8000 gold. (In 1E/2E because of the need for +X to hit there were qualitative differences between blade plusses. This isn't in 5E.) None of these prices are perfect, or not arbitrary, but the book could have some nifty options in it reflecting commonality of magic items, say "common", "rare" and "essentially nonexistent". -Common would have Ye Olde Magic Shoppe and essentially work like most CRPGs. -Rare would have some level of items be manufacturable or purchasable, with magic shops requiring a fair degree of effort, such as travel to places like Waterdeep. This is more or less like many D&D campaigns have worked for a long time. -Essentially Nonexistent would have the manufacture of most things be lost arts except in the most exotic of locales like the City of Brass or Sigil or found in legendary hordes. This is very much like, say, LotR, where items from the First Age or from the Numenoreans are still around to be found but very few people can make them anymore. Even still, it wasn't but a few hundred years before the timeline of the novels where elf princes were getting mithril coats commissioned from the dwarves!  Prices could be tailored for these three levels and at some levels, no price would exist at all, saying "this item only exists as a DM drop". (And no, I'm not going to do all this work and post it to DM's Guild for nobody to read. It should be in the book....)</blockquote>

Verification