D&D 5E Sane Magic Item Prices

[Chaosmancer]

Fair enough, but when they're planning a battle they really don't need my-as-DM involvement very much (unless I've a party NPC and they ask its opinion), which means I can go get a beer and sit back for a bit. I don't even really need to pay that much attention, and perhaps probably shouldn't.

When they're updating their businesses etc. they need my involvement on an ongoing basis, which means I have to pay attention whether I want to or not. Big difference.

Perhaps it's because such things might act as a threat to the adventure-to-get-rich paradigm most games implicitly (or explicitly) function under.

In pre-4e editions this wasn't a big deal - it'd take years of exceptional trading to make the same haul as one good adventure could provide - but in 4e and 5e adventuring isn't quite the gateway to immense and immediate wealth it used to be (at least until quite high level) if the DM runs the modules as written, meaning other forms of making money become both more appealing and (potentially) more lucrative.

I mean, if you're a Cleric and you can either spend three weeks in the field putting your life on the line for 517 g.p. (your share of the treasury) or you can spend those three weeks safe in town casting healing spells on those who can afford it and make 550 g.p., which would you choose?

And I think that is exactly right. And if you aren't operating under that assumption, that the entire point of adventuring is to get rich, then all of these other things aren't an issue.

This is the point I've been trying to make, that if you are designing and operating under the assumption that Adventuring is the way to get rich, then these other systems that people may want to explore, these roleplaying opportunities, get treated like a threat to the game. Because if you can make more money by being safe, then why would you adventure? And while I can get the realism aspect of it, these is a second part to the realism... wealthy people who are not adventurers do exist. Not all money is made that way.

 

[Chaosmancer]

There's nothing disingenuous about my not caring why you choose to do it. I don't care about that particular thing.

Then stop trying to debate it. If you don't care how people run the game except when it directly affects your table, stop debating with people about the state of the game and the rule sets and assumptions we make. None of it affects your table, so stop butting in just to tell us that you don't care.

It both works and makes money the way I am suggesting. Why do you think you should just get your way in a nonsensical manner?

And maybe an entire temple gets all of the work. Lot's of possibilities.

Nothing was shut down.

You are missing the larger point Max. You are trying to make tables, statistics, make it a DC with results at these intervals so that you only get full value this percentage of the time.

This is the kind of extra work that Lanefan gets annoyed with, but why even bother having it? What have you added to the game by making this a roll to see how effectively things work? This seems entirely just to make it so that the maximum value is harder and more tedious to get. But why? What is the point? You don't offer up a dragon hoard then have the players roll to see how much of the hoard is counterfeit coins, or coins that have been ground away by the dragon's scales and lost value, or how much is in the wrong currency and won't be accepted.

If there is a fundamental difference between the two ways of making money, what is it and why should we care so much.

Don't do it and you won't be accused of it.

Yep. One fallacy for me and multiples for you.

It doesn't matter either way. Nothing I do is ever good enough to not be accused of malfeasance except agreeing with you. I can quote you literally word for word and that isn't good enough because I do something wrong. It is exhausting.

So is English, yet we don't say that the game of D&D mirrors reality due to English being used. The supply and demand I am talking about isn't figured out to the nth degree so that it mirrors reality. It's just something that also just happens to be in the real world, yet isn't overly realistic, such as swords, spears, daggers, trees, flowers rocks, water, air and on and on and on and on and on and on and on...

Look up Max, see that dot in the sky? That was the point. Try not to miss it next time by throwing mud at the walls to make it seem like you are responding.

So your core argument is that we got it wrong about downtime? It seems silly to me to make that your core argument, but it's yours to make.


Yes I do. You've been obsessing over our missing that you were talking about downtime and keep ranting about us doing something based on a mistake that I at least have owned up to and moved past. Let it go man.

I think you attributed that to me incorrectly. It doesn't sound like anything that I've said.

No Max. And now I am done. I have literally stated my direct point multiple times. It wasn't that you got something wrong about downtime, Because I made a point before you ever responded. But you don't care. While you demand that we absolutely never interpret anything you say, because you always say exactly what you mean exactly how you mean it, if I repeat myself saying "no, I didn't mean A, I am arguing B" you will seemingly inevitably and without fail respond with "Why are you so obsessed with arguing A?"

I'm not doing this. Once you are willing to read my point, that I have explicitly stated multiple times, then maybe we can have an argument, but I'm sick of this.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Because other parts of the game are not expanded enough for them being attractive to spend gold on. So you build a (cliché) orphanage and then what? Its pure background and if you want to interact with it further you need to have a campaign centred on a single location which is not always, I even dare to say often, the case. Spending money on personal estates and businesses would technically mean that the character becomes a NPC as what's the point to adventure further (in case you did it for personal gain?). Or you hand the money over to a relative or family member and tell them to do stuff with it.
In all cases you are not really using the money as the effect of the game is very low but just erasing it from your character sheet. (And by effect I do not necessarily mean stats, but can also be that people react differently to you which you can leverage).

Most D&D settings are also very egalitarian and meritocratic as in nobles have hardly any power or influence and there is no real divide between nobles in the party and former beggars with swords. What matters is the combat power. And in the default settings and the D&D adventures I have seen people care little about the social background adventurers have. So why waste money on buying status?

As for using it for bribes and similar things, for that you earn too much money and would not present a significant amount unless the bribes in the setting are measured in wheelbarrows. Most problems in D&D adventures can be solved or bypassed by violence anyway (either directly or doing a quest for whoever you need support from).

Not every game does work this way. And some people like affecting the setting.

I had a player once who dropped a hefty sack of gold on a pregnant woman whose husband had died. It doesn't matter that that action didn't net them anything tangible (though it did affect the story) they wanted to be the type of person who can make the world a better place.

That is important to some players. They want to make things, build things, invest in the world and see that investment matter, even if it doesn't help them in a fight. And, frankly, I'd love to see those aspects of the game get a bit more meat. Something to help people feel like the game recognizes that this is a worthwhile pursuit.

 

[Maxperson]

Then stop trying to debate it. If you don't care how people run the game except when it directly affects your table, stop debating with people about the state of the game and the rule sets and assumptions we make. None of it affects your table, so stop butting in just to tell us that you don't care.

I was debating other aspects of it. You argued that supply and demand don't play into selling 4 longswords. First, it does. There's little demand for damaged goods, so they're rarely bought. Second, because they are rarely bought, you can't just got out and easily sell them all like you stated. You're playing with a house rule and trying to use that to prove your point. WHY you allow the selling of those weapons is entirely irrelevant and I couldn't care less what the reason is. I even stated that I ignore that rule as well, but they can't always sell all of their gathered weapons in my game. They still need to find someone willing to buy them.

You are missing the larger point Max. You are trying to make tables, statistics, make it a DC with results at these intervals so that you only get full value this percentage of the time.

Just like other downtime activities, yes. All or almost all of the ones that give you income do so with a variable roll, some of which also involve losing money. I'm not missing your point, I'm making a better one. If you're doing the selling of your spells in downtime, the income would be variable, not maximum like you want it to be.

This is the kind of extra work that Lanefan gets annoyed with, but why even bother having it? What have you added to the game by making this a roll to see how effectively things work?

Because aside from making sense, that's how downtime attempts to make money work. If you don't want to make the effort to have your new downtime activity conform to how downtime works, your probably trying to game the system.

This seems entirely just to make it so that the maximum value is harder and more tedious to get. But why? What is the point? You don't offer up a dragon hoard then have the players roll to see how much of the hoard is counterfeit coins, or coins that have been ground away by the dragon's scales and lost value, or how much is in the wrong currency and won't be accepted.

More fallacies. False Equivalences are false. A dragon horde gained through the defeat of a mighty dragon is not the same as free money during downtime. They involve different rules and challenges.

It doesn't matter either way. Nothing I do is ever good enough to not be accused of malfeasance except agreeing with you. I can quote you literally word for word and that isn't good enough because I do something wrong. It is exhausting.

I just don't agree with your position here. Nothing more. And you weren't accused of anything for the first 2-3 back and forth posts, because you didn't engage in fallacies that I saw. It wasn't until you started them back up that I started calling you out for them again. If you don't want to called out for them, stop using them. You've proven that you can do it, so just keep doing it.

No Max. And now I am done. I have literally stated my direct point multiple times. It wasn't that you got something wrong about downtime, Because I made a point before you ever responded. But you don't care. While you demand that we absolutely never interpret anything you say, because you always say exactly what you mean exactly how you mean it, if I repeat myself saying "no, I didn't mean A, I am arguing B" you will seemingly inevitably and without fail respond with "Why are you so obsessed with arguing A?"

Dude. You kept on with, "But why is it that I am accused of wanting to keep everyone else playing when I just wanted to make some money in downtime." You kept on with it AFTER I acknowledged that I missed downtime, which was the only reason I said those things. You refused to let it go. I do say what I mean, and when I said it, I meant it. However, it was clearly based on a mistake on my part which I acknowledged and therefore corrected. It was withdrawn.

 

[Maxperson]

Because other parts of the game are not expanded enough for them being attractive to spend gold on. So you build a (cliché) orphanage and then what? Its pure background and if you want to interact with it further you need to have a campaign centred on a single location which is not always, I even dare to say often, the case. Spending money on personal estates and businesses would technically mean that the character becomes a NPC as what's the point to adventure further (in case you did it for personal gain?). Or you hand the money over to a relative or family member and tell them to do stuff with it.
In all cases you are not really using the money as the effect of the game is very low but just erasing it from your character sheet. (And by effect I do not necessarily mean stats, but can also be that people react differently to you which you can leverage).

Most D&D settings are also very egalitarian and meritocratic as in nobles have hardly any power or influence and there is no real divide between nobles in the party and former beggars with swords. What matters is the combat power. And in the default settings and the D&D adventures I have seen people care little about the social background adventurers have. So why waste money on buying status?

As for using it for bribes and similar things, for that you earn too much money and would not present a significant amount unless the bribes in the setting are measured in wheelbarrows. Most problems in D&D adventures can be solved or bypassed by violence anyway (either directly or doing a quest for whoever you need support from).

That's not true.

First, many players like to invest in the world, because that's what their PC would do. Roleplaying is very valid reason to spend money and it makes the players like that happy.

Second, it has pretty significant impact on the game world as NPCs react to what the PCs do. Even if they don't stick around, when they come back through they get treated very differently. Word travels of what the group does and it can even impact how they are treated in distant cities.

Third, if the DM is ignoring backgrounds and making nobles and beggars the same in how the game treats them, he's doing a pretty hefty disservice to the game and the players. Unless they're just playing some hack n' slash kind of game where nothing but combat matters. If the game is more than combat, though, social differences should matter and they do in my game. In fact, because they matter so much, you can't just choose to be a noble. Background is rolled. Bought status matters if the DM runs it that way.

D&D is a roleplaying game and what you do with it makes a huge difference. If you(general you) choose to ignore all the other ways to spend money and how those things would impact the game world, then yeah, they will be crappy. They'd be crappy because of you(general you), though, not because of the game.

 

[CapnZapp]

Because other parts of the game are not expanded enough for them being attractive to spend gold on. So you build a (cliché) orphanage and then what? Its pure background and if you want to interact with it further you need to have a campaign centred on a single location which is not always, I even dare to say often, the case. Spending money on personal estates and businesses would technically mean that the character becomes a NPC as what's the point to adventure further (in case you did it for personal gain?). Or you hand the money over to a relative or family member and tell them to do stuff with it.
In all cases you are not really using the money as the effect of the game is very low but just erasing it from your character sheet. (And by effect I do not necessarily mean stats, but can also be that people react differently to you which you can leverage).

Most D&D settings are also very egalitarian and meritocratic as in nobles have hardly any power or influence and there is no real divide between nobles in the party and former beggars with swords. What matters is the combat power. And in the default settings and the D&D adventures I have seen people care little about the social background adventurers have. So why waste money on buying status?

As for using it for bribes and similar things, for that you earn too much money and would not present a significant amount unless the bribes in the setting are measured in wheelbarrows. Most problems in D&D adventures can be solved or bypassed by violence anyway (either directly or doing a quest for whoever you need support from).

There are a lot of players that happily roleplay their characters spending gold on these activities despite them not being directly related to the quest of defeating the Water Cultists of the evil temple (or whatever the adventure is about).

Some even play open-ended campaigns where "what the players like to do" is the quest.

And all that's fair.

 

[CapnZapp]

But when you publish adventure after adventure asking the heroes to go down one dungeon after the other, it is inexcusable to not support the playing style where downtime is just glossed over and where the main purpose of gold is to enable players to customize their heroes' abilities with magical gear.

There simply is no valid reason to just cut out this entire playing style, and everybody claiming "it's easy to add your own prices" is just flat out wrong. The game needs to provide this support.

 

[Maxperson]

But when you publish adventure after adventure asking the heroes to go down one dungeon after the other, it is inexcusable to not support the playing style where downtime is just glossed over and where the main purpose of gold is to enable players to customize their heroes' abilities with magical gear.

First, even though it was half-assed, the tables on buying and selling magic items in 5e constitute support for that playing style. Second, they can't go in depth with support on all the different playstyles that get used with D&D. Some are going to be sparse.

There simply is no valid reason to just cut out this entire playing style, and everybody claiming "it's easy to add your own prices" is just flat out wrong. The game needs to provide this support.

I guess I'm just very, very good then. I found it easy to come up with my own prices during 1e and 2e. I found it very easy to do it in 3e where item prices were even more borked. And I've found it even easier in 5e there isn't a set price list to mislead the players. I'm honestly flabbergasted that you think it's hard.

 

[S'mon]

But when you publish adventure after adventure asking the heroes to go down one dungeon after the other, it is inexcusable to not support the playing style where downtime is just glossed over and where the main purpose of gold is to enable players to customize their heroes' abilities with magical gear.

I think that's a pretty good point, though as noted the standard WoTC solution to "What to spend gold on in a linear campaign adventure?" is typically "What gold?"

 

[NotAYakk]

So, D&D was played where people just went into dungeons, got treasure, came out, and repeated.

Without a central book of magic item prices.

The DM made naughty word up on the spot.

You only need such a list if the ability to pick which magic items a given character has is in the hands of the player, where they spend gp to customize their PC's abilities from a menu determined by said prices.

---

You can even have a magic item shop under such a system.

Start with XGTE prices.
Common: 100 gp
Uncommon: 400 gp
Rare: 4000 gp
Very Rare: 40000 gp
Legendary: 200000 gp

Now lets make them random.

Rarity	Sell to NPC	Buy from NPC
Common	1d8 * 10 gp	1d4 * 50 gp
Uncommon	1d6 * 50 gp	1d8 * 100 gp
Rare	1d6 * 500 gp	1d8 * 1000 gp
Very Rare	1d6 * 5000 gp	1d8 * 10000 gp
Legendary	1d10 * 10000 gp	1d4 * 100000 gp

Roll twice on the buy/sell values. The lowest (for buying) and highest (for selling) is the asking price. The other value is the absolute limit of what can be bargained for short of killing the buyer/seller and stealing it.

If it has been X weeks since the last time you got a price for an item, roll 1d20; if the value is at or under X, reroll the price. Otherwise, you get the same price.

Now we just have to distribute items avaliable for sale. Have a system whereby the items for sale "level up" with the players somehow, either by accessing new places where things sell, or as the PCs spend money, or make naughty word up.

Every 1d20 days, remove half of the items for sale at random, then roll on a DMG treasure table horde for new items for sale. For each item, roll twice for the price (highest is asking, lowest is absolute floor).

There we have it. You now can spend gold on magic items. You can't customize your character. Sometimes you'll run into an item that is awesome and cheap, other times they will be selling a potion of healing for way too much and you won't buy it.

No fixed prices needed. Unless, as I said, you are going to hand the price list to players who spend their gold points on customizing their characters from a menu.

---

Flaws in a price list only matter if everything is for sale at one point in time. Because without that, there really isn't a chance to trade your boots of levitation for boots of flying. Either you have the gold, need to fly, and one or the other is for sale, or not. The odds both are for sale at the same time is low, so PCs won't even compare the prices in-game.

Maybe they'll find they have boots of levitation, and they find boots of flying for sale, and it is a bit strange that the merchant buys the levitation boots and sells you the flying boots and gives change. But, as I have mentioned, it isn't hard to explain that; maybe the boots of levitation are the actual boots in some actual story and the merchant knows a collector, while the boots of flying have no such story.

Requiring a globally consistent system only matters if the entire system is in play at once.