D&D 5E Sane Magic Item Prices

[Chaosmancer]

Every edition that I've played has had listed prices for living expenses and equipment. The rules assume that you are going to be spending most of your money at low levels on room and board, some fresh horses, passage across the river, etc. With all that being equal, different rules had other expectations as well.

In the BECM rules, once you reached a certain level ("name level,") you were expected to spend your gold on a permanent residence like as a ship, or a tower if you were a magic-user, or a castle if you were a fighter. At higher levels, you were expected to become the founder of a small kingdom or settlement, and you'd spend your gold on the armies and siege equipment needed to defend it. CM1, "Test of the Warlords" really focused on this part of the rules, and so did X10, "Red Arrow Black Shield" and the whole "Dawn of the Emperors" boxed set. Ultimately, you would eventually offer your amassed wealth to an Immortal Sponsor and ascend to immortality, but we never got that far (the "I" in BECMI rules.)

In 3rd Edition/Pathfinder, you were expected to spend your gold on magic items and spell components...whether you were buying them or making them yourself. That's it. Magic items became part of character creation in a way...you can Google dozens of build outs for character classes that require certain specific magic items. And sure, rules for purchasing ships and castles were provided in splatbooks later, and rules for armies and mass combat were added later still, but they were all largely ignored and no official adventure modules used them.

In 5th Edition, they tried a more hands-off approach. Magic items aren't specifically intended for sale, but there are scant rules that can be added in if you want them. Later books add more detail for buying and selling magic items, and ships would come later still...but that's it. Seven years in and there are still no rules that I know of for dominions or strongholds, no rules for armies or mass combat, and it doesn't look like they will be getting added anytime soon. (Maybe that's an opportunity? Someone should get a Kickstarter together...)

I will agree that there is little direct support for effectively leveraging your gold.

A lot of the options in the DMG just amounted to ways to waste gold, not to use money to make money. I will second though that Strongholds and Followers does a decent job setting up what you are talking about, and the second book, Kingdoms and Warfare is getting towards the end of play tests and writing, and will be available soon, which gives you actual kingdom management stuff. Nothing nitty-gritty or detailed, but the gaps should be easy enough to fill in if you wanted to.

 

[Maxperson]

If we have a week of downtime to do whatever we want, why can't I make 1,120 gp by doing that?

You could certainly try. Just because you have the supply, doesn't mean the demand will be that high or that those who need the service can afford it. Maybe you make 1120g and maybe you make 150g. I'd give a roll to see how well you do, but 1120 would be unlikely, especially at 3rd level.

See, this is my problem with this derisive "well, if you are playing DnD you won't-" If the point of the game is to make money, say by being hired to go and clear out a cave of monsters, then yes, my character would seek to continue making money. That is what you said my goal is.

I didn't say what your goal was other than adventure. Booboos and Bedsheets isn't a great adventure in my opinion. That said, if sitting around waiting for the cleric to use up his spell slots for weeks on end is your idea of a fun adventure, have at it.

 

[Chaosmancer]

I don't agree. A rare potion might cost 5k. A rare sword of doing cool stuff might be worth 50k or even more, really. The problem was with pricing by rarity and not by how powerful something is, but if they priced by power, they would have to price individually and they didn't want to do that. I mean, a rare(unique) rubber duck that can't be lost is not going be worth even 5k. Rarity shouldn't be the standard.

I can agree that rarity shouldn't be the standard, but it is, and it is supposed to line up with power.

My bigger complaint is that pricing an entire category with that huge of a gap, is insane. Every other tier of item, combined, can fit inside that gap. It is FAR too big.

 

[Blue]

Well, creating and maintaining magic item prices is hard and labor-intensive. I believe they dropped it because they thought they could get away with not doing the work.

There were multiple designer discussions on wanting to remove magic item christmas trees and cutting down magic item dependence from D&D Next/5e. Google can't seem to find any supporting documentation for your stance that they cut it because it was hard to do. Can you provide a link or other support for your statement?

 

[M_Natas]

So, I studied the DMG and XGE for the Magic Item Prices to make my own List and I also looked when according to the DMG and XGE Magic Items are rewarded to the players.

What I found is:
According to the DMG, one player will find on average the following amounts of Gold and the following amounts of magic items in a game if you follow the DMG Guidlines for treasure.

Level-Range	Gold accumulated	Permanent Magic Items	Consumables
1-4	275	1 uncommon	4 common
5-10	23 100	1 uncommon, 1 rare	1 common, 5 uncommon
11-16	146 000	1 rare, 1 very rare	5 rare, 1 very rare
17-20	885 500	1 legendary	3 very rare, 1 legendary

If we take the maximum prices of the DMG for permanent Magic Items (100 Gold for common magic items, 500 for uncommon, 5000 for rare, 50 000 for very rare and lets say 500 000 for legendary (legendary items only had a minimum price of 50 001 Gold - half of these prices for consumables) one player could buy the following amount of magic items during a campaign from Level 1 to 20:

• 3 common permanent magic items
• 15 uncommon permanent magic items
• 12 rare permanent magic items
• 2 very rare permanent magic items
• 1 legendary permanant magic item

Consumables:

• 22 common
• 28 uncommon
• 13 rare
• 7 very rare

If one looks at the guidlines of xanathar, you see that common magic items are cheaper, uncommon more expensive, rare much more expensive and very rare are equally expensive as the DMG-Prices.

What that does is, that there are less rare magic items one could buy if you follow Xanathar instead of the DMG.

But what does that really mean?

If you take for every magic item the maximum price for its rarity according to the DMG or XGE and give out money according to the DMG, what happens is, that PCs are able to buy the same rarity of magic itmes they are also finding as treasure. Which means: When a PC finds a +1 Sword or Armor he is also able to afford one.
That is the mechanical background of the DMG and XGE prices: Player can buy the same class of magic items they also find in Adventures in the same level range. The advantage of that is, that for an adventuring party it is easy for everybody to have the same amount and quality of magic items. Thats good for inner party balance.
The disadvantage is, that magic items one find in treasure loose their importance. If I can find a +1 sword, but allready also just could buy one, the found magic item becomes less special.

So I changed the Item Prices by rarity for my campaign with the goal, that the players will find magic items that they can't afford yet to make the found ones more special:

So the new maximum prices are:
Common 100 (DMG 100, XGE 70)
Uncommon 900 (DMG 500, XGE 600)
Rare 25 000 (DMG 5000, XGE 20 000)
Very Rare 200 000 (50 000, XGE 50 000)
Legendary 1 250 000 (DMG 500 000, XGE 300 000)

Now, I'm not taking the maximum price for every magic item, but for all magic items that I think can change the power balance of the encounters (+X weapons and armor, items that give you the abillity to fly ect.pp.).

 

[Chaosmancer]

You could certainly try. Just because you have the supply, doesn't mean the demand will be that high or that those who need the service can afford it. Maybe you make 1120g and maybe you make 150g. I'd give a roll to see how well you do, but 1120 would be unlikely, especially at 3rd level.

Right, supply and Demand, let me work to stop you from doing this, for reasons.

You could say the same thing about an inn, but every town and city has at least one if not multiple inns that always seem to be open and have rooms for adventurers. Why are we going to start bringing in this realism to curtail me doing exactly what an NPC cleric is doing when we go to them for healing at low levels?

I didn't say what your goal was other than adventure. Booboos and Bedsheets isn't a great adventure in my opinion. That said, if sitting around waiting for the cleric to use up his spell slots for weeks on end is your idea of a fun adventure, have at it.

See, you are being a bit patronizing. And that is a frustrating problem with this discussion.

If I said that I wanted to build a kingdom as a fighter by slaying enemies and dragons, no one would bat an eye. The Barbarian wants to go and fight in a tournament of champions, no one cares. I say I want to have my cleric go and heal the people, and I'm going to charge for it just like those NPC clerics we have run into. Well, if I want to sit around and do nothing except make gold, but that doesn't sound like an interesting adventure. Can't have any hooks with wandering holy men healing the blind and curing the common folk. Can't use that as a seed fund to start a church or anything.

I never even claimed it was the only thing going on. I used the month just to show how much money could be made this way, but immediately we need to consider supply and demand and how we can cut that amount of money down, and how can you force me to go back to fighting monsters for gold instead of... being a healer with magical powers granted by the gods to heal people.

 

[Maxperson]

I can agree that rarity shouldn't be the standard, but it is, and it is supposed to line up with power.

That cannot and will not ever happen, though. It's not possible to make them all even roughly equal.

My bigger complaint is that pricing an entire category with that huge of a gap, is insane. Every other tier of item, combined, can fit inside that gap. It is FAR too big.

They had no choice. Given the above, the only way to allow DMs to price by power within in a given rarity was to provide a huge range.

 

[Maxperson]

Right, supply and Demand, let me work to stop you from doing this, for reasons.

Apparently you want to be able to just print money on demand with no regard for reason. Some DMs allow that. It can be hard to find one, though. I'm some DM out there thinks that every commoner with a cut has 50g laying around to pay your cleric.

You could say the same thing about an inn, but every town and city has at least one if not multiple inns that always seem to be open and have rooms for adventurers. Why are we going to start bringing in this realism to curtail me doing exactly what an NPC cleric is doing when we go to them for healing at low levels?

You can't see the difference between, there's an inn with rooms for rent in this town and every commoner has hundreds of gold laying around to pay you your 1140g a month for healing?

See, you are being a bit patronizing. And that is a frustrating problem with this discussion.

You're proposing that the entire party just sit around for a month while the cleric uses up all of his slots on healing filthy rich commoners(wealthy merchants/nobles aren't common and randomly hurt ones in an urban environment are fairly rare). All to make gold that the entire party could make together out adventuring.

If I said that I wanted to build a kingdom as a fighter by slaying enemies and dragons, no one would bat an eye. The Barbarian wants to go and fight in a tournament of champions, no one cares. I say I want to have my cleric go and heal the people, and I'm going to charge for it just like those NPC clerics we have run into. Well, if I want to sit around and do nothing except make gold, but that doesn't sound like an interesting adventure. Can't have any hooks with wandering holy men healing the blind and curing the common folk. Can't use that as a seed fund to start a church or anything.

Everyone can be included in the slaying of dragons and enemies and that tournament of champions. I have an issue with your cleric, because you are preventing the party from adventuring and participating for an entire month.

I never even claimed it was the only thing going on. I used the month just to show how much money could be made this way, but immediately we need to consider supply and demand and how we can cut that amount of money down, and how can you force me to go back to fighting monsters for gold instead of... being a healer with magical powers granted by the gods to heal people.

Yes. I immediately use common sense and reason and apply it to the game. Why even try to heal? If you aren't going to have a good reason that makes sense for the earning of the gold, just ask the DM for 1140 gold and be done with it.

It has nothing to do with forcing you to do anything, by the way. Healing is a good way to make money. It's just not going to be at the high end of that short of a war where the town you are in has been breached and a lot of wealthy people need the healing.

 

[SkidAce]

I don't agree. A rare potion might cost 5k. A rare sword of doing cool stuff might be worth 50k or even more, really. The problem was with pricing by rarity and not by how powerful something is, but if they priced by power, they would have to price individually and they didn't want to do that. I mean, a rare(unique) rubber duck that can't be lost is not going be worth even 5k. Rarity shouldn't be the standard.

Maybe the word "rarity" should be changed to something else like "difficulty to create", then it would almost work the same way...i.e. easy to make potions would naturally become more "common", although they may not be common in a particular campaign.

Thats kinda how I use that chart in XGtE anyway, not everything I list as common immediately becomes prevalent through the campaign.

Its a rabbit hole/catch 22. I honestly kinda don't blame them.

 

[Maxperson]

Maybe the word "rarity" should be changed to something else like "difficulty to create", then it would almost work the same way...i.e. easy to make potions would naturally become more "common", although they may not be common in a particular campaign.

I think that's the same difference. You still need to make the more powerful items(rare) more difficult to make than the less powerful ones(common).

Thats kinda how I use that chart in XGtE anyway, not everything I list as common immediately becomes prevalent through the campaign.

Yeah. No magic item is common in my game, not even potions of healing, though those are probably the most common.

Its a rabbit hole/catch 22. I honestly kinda don't blame them.

Ditto. I think that instead of broad categories and ranges of pricing, they should have just written in a paragraph explaining to DMs what things to consider when determining rarity and price.

 

[NotAYakk]

So, I studied the DMG and XGE for the Magic Item Prices to make my own List and I also looked when according to the DMG and XGE Magic Items are rewarded to the players.
[...]

So I changed the Item Prices by rarity for my campaign with the goal, that the players will find magic items that they can't afford yet to make the found ones more special:

So the new maximum prices are:
Common 100 (DMG 100, XGE 70)
Uncommon 900 (DMG 500, XGE 600)
Rare 25 000 (DMG 5000, XGE 20 000)
Very Rare 200 000 (50 000, XGE 50 000)
Legendary 1 250 000 (DMG 500 000, XGE 300 000)

Now, I'm not taking the maximum price for every magic item, but for all magic items that I think can change the power balance of the encounters (+X weapons and armor, items that give you the abillity to fly ect.pp.).

So, if you take the approach that magic items you can buy are no more "you pick" than the ones you find, then the gold buying magic items just produces more plot.

Finding someone to sell you, or make, a legendary X is an adventure in itself. The reward? You spend money and get the legendary X.

And maybe the spending of the money isn't "hand it over", but "I want Y", and you have to spend money to get Y, then deliver it to the person selling the legendary item.

I will agree that there is little direct support for effectively leveraging your gold.

A lot of the options in the DMG just amounted to ways to waste gold, not to use money to make money. I will second though that Strongholds and Followers does a decent job setting up what you are talking about, and the second book, Kingdoms and Warfare is getting towards the end of play tests and writing, and will be available soon, which gives you actual kingdom management stuff. Nothing nitty-gritty or detailed, but the gaps should be easy enough to fill in if you wanted to.

Spending money to make money should be spending money to make adventure.

As an example, sailing ships used to be huge gambles. You bought it, and there was a decent chance it wouldn't come back from the trading journey. Your trading post gets threatened by orcs. The keep you made is on claimed land (by more than 1 party), and one or more of them demands fealty.

The engine shouldn't be "spend gold, get income". It should be "invest gold, get adventure".

That adventure in turn can generate gold.

Is this a bit of an naughty word thing to do as a DM? A goal is to turn the player's actions into adventure. And a safe ROI isn't adventure, nor does it match historical investment.

Investments that safely return even 1% per year don't exist prior to an industrial revolution by a dominant superpower. Because 1% per year ROI starting 4000 years ago is x192,972,369,947,315,104 - 1/5th of a billion billion.

Instead, the economy looks more like:
1) Hording wealth is expensive because you have to defend it.
2) You invest wealth in order to make it harder to steal.
3) If you invest 100 tonnes of gold now, and in 20 years you can extract 50 tonnes of gold from it, and it kept itself safe, score.

The rich where the people who owned land and had some kind of security that they could keep it. They spent their resources maintaining that security through any way they could. Produced wealth was spent soon after it was produced, not horded; first spent on attempting to maintain the land you had, and then spent on more security.

If you got extra security (troops) you spent it on attacking your neighbors to take their land before your neighbors did it to you. Eventually larger states formed, and you cooperated with your neighbors to attack people even further away. This also kept your peasant population down as it would quickly outpace the requirements to farm your land; having some die in wars means less mouths to feed.

Cities where dumping grounds for excess population, and filthy and disease ridden. They would generate wealth in easier to trade forms, so where valuable, but where generally population-sinks not sources; more people moved into them than moved out, and more people moved in than they grew. It was better than starving in the fields -- think of it as an alternative to shipping people off to die in wars. You send them to a city, where their death rates are similar, but you get wealth without it being quite as zero-sum.

It is only on the margins that investment opportunities that generate net profit come out, beyond the "produce food" -- almost all of the wealth is literally "food". That food gets horded by peasants who don't like starving, so isn't cheap to get even if you own the land, and they use the food to produce more peasants, which you as a ruler don't have a need for ... so you spend them in a city or in wars for stuff you might find useful, like more land or trade goods.

But that is just blather.

The main point is, you can frame it as spending money to make money for the PCs.

But the mechanics should be investing money to generate adventuring opportunities. And change the world.

I can agree that rarity shouldn't be the standard, but it is, and it is supposed to line up with power.

For price? Naw, rarity isn't all that bad.

And yes, this means that item X which is worse than Y is cheaper. That only really matters if you have a magic mart.

My bigger complaint is that pricing an entire category with that huge of a gap, is insane. Every other tier of item, combined, can fit inside that gap. It is FAR too big.

I don't see why.

How much gold the PCs has varies, and the amount of gold you as a DM feel like you should be sucking out of them or giving to them when they sell stuff varies.

The idea of that range is to give the DM a ballpark of "lots" of money if you follow something vaguely like the DM treasure schedule. That really is all that is needed, for a DM, at least one not looking to have a magic mart.

For a player looking to magic mart, it is useless.

 

[Chaosmancer]

That cannot and will not ever happen, though. It's not possible to make them all even roughly equal.

Again, not saying it is what happened, I'm saying that is what they told us was happening.

They had no choice. Given the above, the only way to allow DMs to price by power within in a given rarity was to provide a huge range.

They didn't give nearly that huge of a range to Rare though. And uncommon is a paltry range compared to both of them.

Apparently you want to be able to just print money on demand with no regard for reason. Some DMs allow that. It can be hard to find one, though. I'm some DM out there thinks that every commoner with a cut has 50g laying around to pay your cleric.

Did I say anything about printing money? The game expects that if you are a jeweler you can find work no matter what, gives it as an option during downtime. All I'm saying is that I am taking the prices being charged in the PHB and applying them to me selling instead of buying.

Somehow that is a problem, but there always being a market for expensive jewelry is completely reasonable?

You can't see the difference between, there's an inn with rooms for rent in this town and every commoner has hundreds of gold laying around to pay you your 1140g a month for healing?

Who said I was only helping commoners? Who said I was in a village?

Supply and Demand is not assumed in the PHB at all, and the rules support any mundane job being able to work and make money regardless of any situation. But, once I start talking about using magic and making more serious money, then it is a problem that strains credibility.

How many noble collectors are there out there to buy those 2,500 gp pieces of jewelry you found on your adventure? Or the 5,000 gp paintings? There isn't really a question of "well, supply and demand means that", the DM just assumes that a market exists and the player gets their money.

You're proposing that the entire party just sit around for a month while the cleric uses up all of his slots on healing filthy rich commoners(wealthy merchants/nobles aren't common and randomly hurt ones in an urban environment are fairly rare). All to make gold that the entire party could make together out adventuring.

Quote me saying that the entire party is sitting around doing nothing. I was talking about DOWNTIME. The thing between the adventuring, when the characters do things that aren't adventuring.

But, now you want to accuse me of ruining things by insisting that we don't go adventuring (huh, didn't I explicitly mention how this discussion always turns to the party not adventuring, which is actually ridiculous if the DM has good hooks) so that I can make money. During my downtime, when I'm not supposed to be adventuring.

And, at the same time, the Sane Magical Prices guide ism theoritically, completely reasonable in assuming that any player who gets a Decanter of Endless Water is immediately going to travel to the desert to make insane amounts of money, and that must be stopped.

Everyone can be included in the slaying of dragons and enemies and that tournament of champions. I have an issue with your cleric, because you are preventing the party from adventuring and participating for an entire month.

Right, how dare I try to do something with my DOWNTIME other than tell the DM to stuff it and let us go back to adventuring.

Never Rest. Always Adventuring.

Yes. I immediately use common sense and reason and apply it to the game. Why even try to heal? If you aren't going to have a good reason that makes sense for the earning of the gold, just ask the DM for 1140 gold and be done with it.

It has nothing to do with forcing you to do anything, by the way. Healing is a good way to make money. It's just not going to be at the high end of that short of a war where the town you are in has been breached and a lot of wealthy people need the healing.

Right, players can't be allowed to do what NPCs do, because of Realism.

But, this just proves my point. Clever players don't need magic items to make enough money. All it takes is trying to leverage your downtime using the PHB rules for selling magic and the DM will immediately try and put a stop to it.

 

[Chaosmancer]

Spending money to make money should be spending money to make adventure.

As an example, sailing ships used to be huge gambles. You bought it, and there was a decent chance it wouldn't come back from the trading journey. Your trading post gets threatened by orcs. The keep you made is on claimed land (by more than 1 party), and one or more of them demands fealty.

The engine shouldn't be "spend gold, get income". It should be "invest gold, get adventure".

That adventure in turn can generate gold.

Is this a bit of an naughty word thing to do as a DM? A goal is to turn the player's actions into adventure. And a safe ROI isn't adventure, nor does it match historical investment.

Investments that safely return even 1% per year don't exist prior to an industrial revolution by a dominant superpower. Because 1% per year ROI starting 4000 years ago is x192,972,369,947,315,104 - 1/5th of a billion billion.

Instead, the economy looks more like:
1) Hording wealth is expensive because you have to defend it.
2) You invest wealth in order to make it harder to steal.
3) If you invest 100 tonnes of gold now, and in 20 years you can extract 50 tonnes of gold from it, and it kept itself safe, score.

The rich where the people who owned land and had some kind of security that they could keep it. They spent their resources maintaining that security through any way they could. Produced wealth was spent soon after it was produced, not horded; first spent on attempting to maintain the land you had, and then spent on more security.

If you got extra security (troops) you spent it on attacking your neighbors to take their land before your neighbors did it to you. Eventually larger states formed, and you cooperated with your neighbors to attack people even further away. This also kept your peasant population down as it would quickly outpace the requirements to farm your land; having some die in wars means less mouths to feed.

Cities where dumping grounds for excess population, and filthy and disease ridden. They would generate wealth in easier to trade forms, so where valuable, but where generally population-sinks not sources; more people moved into them than moved out, and more people moved in than they grew. It was better than starving in the fields -- think of it as an alternative to shipping people off to die in wars. You send them to a city, where their death rates are similar, but you get wealth without it being quite as zero-sum.

It is only on the margins that investment opportunities that generate net profit come out, beyond the "produce food" -- almost all of the wealth is literally "food". That food gets horded by peasants who don't like starving, so isn't cheap to get even if you own the land, and they use the food to produce more peasants, which you as a ruler don't have a need for ... so you spend them in a city or in wars for stuff you might find useful, like more land or trade goods.

But that is just blather.

The main point is, you can frame it as spending money to make money for the PCs.

But the mechanics should be investing money to generate adventuring opportunities. And change the world.

All of this is very historically accurate, but again, everyone seems to be missing the point here.

Let us say that the DM is running an adventure about stopping portals from Hell being created by the Cult of Asmodeus. During this adventure, as a side business, my character forms a trade empire that makes him a MILLION GOLD A MONTH!

How have I injured the adventure? Am I suddenly struck with a case of the stupids and don't realize that what I built is going to be destroyed if Hell comes to the Material Plane? Is my character suddenly incapable of fighting for the fate of the world?

Everyone keeps presenting this like "If you make too much money, you aren't going to go on adventures." and all that says to me is "I can't think of any way to motivate players other than money" Because DMs seem to fight so hard to prevent players from making money any other way than adventuring, and accusations are already flying about how I'm stopping the adventure by trying to make money... But none of that has to be true.

Not only, as you point out, could the trade empire be a source of adventure hooks, but money could end up not being the motivation of the party.

 

[Maxperson]

Again, not saying it is what happened, I'm saying that is what they told us was happening.



They didn't give nearly that huge of a range to Rare though. And uncommon is a paltry range compared to both of them.



Did I say anything about printing money? The game expects that if you are a jeweler you can find work no matter what, gives it as an option during downtime. All I'm saying is that I am taking the prices being charged in the PHB and applying them to me selling instead of buying.

So you're ignoring the rules. Look at the downtime amounts. A pit fighter can possibly get 200 if he wins 3 times, and a criminal can get up to 1000 with a DC 25 roll. You're exceeding those margins by an incredible degree by expecting 1140g with no roll.

Who said I was only helping commoners? Who said I was in a village?

Rich people don't get hurt by the numbers you want to heal. There are already a far lower number of people in a town or city. You want excessive numbers to be hurt, all of them to be able to afford you, and for you to somehow find each and every one and have them all agree to be healed. That's a tall order. Nothing in the rules say that the NPCs sell every slot every day, so why would you assume that you can?

Supply and Demand is not assumed in the PHB at all, and the rules support any mundane job being able to work and make money regardless of any situation. But, once I start talking about using magic and making more serious money, then it is a problem that strains credibility.

How many noble collectors are there out there to buy those 2,500 gp pieces of jewelry you found on your adventure? Or the 5,000 gp paintings? There isn't really a question of "well, supply and demand means that", the DM just assumes that a market exists and the player gets their money.

I don't assume that those things just get sold. The players have to find people to buy them, and it ain't happening at a village for those prices, and probably not even in a town.

Quote me saying that the entire party is sitting around doing nothing. I was talking about DOWNTIME. The thing between the adventuring, when the characters do things that aren't adventuring.

So you're assuming that there will be an entire month of downtime.

And, at the same time, the Sane Magical Prices guide ism theoritically, completely reasonable in assuming that any player who gets a Decanter of Endless Water is immediately going to travel to the desert to make insane amounts of money, and that must be stopped.

I don't know why you keep saying "must be stopped." I don't have that mindset and never have. I'm not an adversarial DM. At the same time, I do look at the game world and what would or would not be happening. If decanters are available, they would, given the tens of thousands of years of history in these desert locations, already be present down there. The PC can go compete in that market if he wants, but he shouldn't assume that he's going to be the only game in town.

Right, players can't be allowed to do what NPCs do, because of Realism.

Show me the rules that say that NPC clerics sell all of their slots every day?

 

[Chaosmancer]

So you're ignoring the rules. Look at the downtime amounts. A pit fighter can possibly get 200 if he wins 3 times, and a criminal can get up to 1000 with a DC 25 roll. You're exceeding those margins by an incredible degree by expecting 1140g with no roll.

I am not ignoring the rules. I took the rules for buying spellcasting services and said "I'm the seller now". That is literally following the rules.

Yes, pit fighting is hard and it doesn't pay well. It can also be done by anyone. Yes, stealing money from someone is very hard to do without getting caught, and you get away with a nice chunk of change. Neither of those is selling magic. And since they have different rules for making jewels, stealing jewels, and fighting for a pouch of coin, I don't see why they wouldn't have different rules for selling magic.

Rich people don't get hurt by the numbers you want to heal. There are already a far lower number of people in a town or city. You want excessive numbers to be hurt, all of them to be able to afford you, and for you to somehow find each and every one and have them all agree to be healed. That's a tall order. Nothing in the rules say that the NPCs sell every slot every day, so why would you assume that you can?

They don't? Cause there is no reason they shouldn't. Many nobles do dangerous things like hunting, sparring, and messing with alchemy. No reason why I can't find a few dozen who get hurt and are willing to pay a cleric.

I mean, by your logic, Doctors must be entirely out of business, because there aren't more than 120 injured people in a city of hundreds of thousands in a month.

I don't assume that those things just get sold. The players have to find people to buy them, and it ain't happening at a village for those prices, and probably not even in a town.

Sure, most people don't have it happen in a village or a town... but a city? Most people allow them to find a buyer in a city. And, most people don't have the players go on a mini-adventure to do it either. Usually it isn't even a roll.

So you're assuming that there will be an entire month of downtime.

That was literally my premise yes. During a Month of Downtime a player could go and make X amount of money by doing Y. Since this is clearly a lot of money, there is no reason to inflate the price of items to prevent "clever" players from using the item to make lots of money.

The item I used to highlight this philosophy is the Decanter of Endless Water, which the PDF listed at 135,000 gp on the premise :

By the way, Alchemy Jug: 6,000. Sphere of Annihilation: 15,000. Ring of Telekinesis: 80,000

So, clearly the idea of traveling to the desert to sell water, regardless of all other possible options, regardless of campaign, ect, was so compelling to the author that they made the Decanter the second most expensive item in the entire game.

Yet, I am unreasonable for assuming a month with nothing better to do. Something I know happens in plenty of campaigns? (I have one campaign that has taken two 3 months downtimes)

I don't know why you keep saying "must be stopped." I don't have that mindset and never have. I'm not an adversarial DM. At the same time, I do look at the game world and what would or would not be happening. If decanters are available, they would, given the tens of thousands of years of history in these desert locations, already be present down there. The PC can go compete in that market if he wants, but he shouldn't assume that he's going to be the only game in town.

Show me the rules that say that NPC clerics sell all of their slots every day?

See, but the thing is, you immediately started shutting down the idea. You didn't even pause long enough to see I was talking about a month of downtime to accuse me of ruining the game for the rest of the party by forcing them to sit on their laurels and not go adventuring. You even gave it a cutesy name "Booboos and Bedsheets".

But why? What did I do that was so utterly terrible except take the expected prices from the PHB, say "I'm going to be selling instead of buying" and do some math for how much that would be. If I said I was only making 100 copper would you have railed against the idea like this? No. So, it must be the amount of money, but again, why is that in anyway a problem?

Why is it that there is a pushback that if a character can make significant money, that is a problem, because they won't go adventuring? This honestly reads to me like people have no idea how to sell their players on an adventure without making it about making money. Ironman and Batman must never go anywhere and get into any adventures, because they make plenty of money with multi-national mega-corporations, right?

Except they do. Making money, even serious money, should not be a threat to the adventure, but people think it is, and suddenly we need to make sure that the rules for running a business make zero sense, crafting rules are nerfed into the ground, and we need to carefully regulated how many spell slots players can sell per day based on "logic", because if players can make money, then money can't be a motivator for adventure.

 

[NotAYakk]

I didn't break the rules, I just took the rukes for lowering HP with a sword and made it raise HP.

In the real world I cannot sell almost anything for what a store does. A d the cost of selling stuff in a store, quite often the cost of the goods sold is not the majority of the cost (efficiency is highe now in this age of low friction commerce).

The rules cover what PCs can expect to pay for spellcasting, roughly. Tge rukes do not say PCs can expect to find customers willing to pay that and at what rate.

Maybe that rate produces 1 customer per year for someone who sets up a wizard tower in a major city and is known throughout the lands. Then this matches the price PCs pay, but means selling such services is not very profitable.

Maybe the right to sell spells is predicated on providing spellcasting services to the state for free. And only with limited number of excess spells can you sell to3rd parties, for which you owe a 90% tithe. So the nobles aren't buying.

Again, PC prices look the same, but seli g sin't profitable.

"I just flipped the rules" does not mean you followed the rules.

 

[CapnZapp]

They tossed in a fairly bad price chart as an attempt to placate the minority of people who really want one, which was a mistake, since it just makes things worth to half-ass something.

Finally we agree on something.

I doubt they want to do all the work to price out everything appropriately

Oh I have no doubts. They definitely would like to not have to do all that work.

just leads to magic item shops, which is something that will break this edition.

No that's jumping to conclusions. The entire argument "we can't have logical prices because then the game breaks" just is bafflingly irrational.

It's really easy to price things as you think they should be priced.

No it most definitely is not.

 

[Maxperson]

I am not ignoring the rules. I took the rules for buying spellcasting services and said "I'm the seller now". That is literally following the rules.

Yes, pit fighting is hard and it doesn't pay well. It can also be done by anyone. Yes, stealing money from someone is very hard to do without getting caught, and you get away with a nice chunk of change. Neither of those is selling magic. And since they have different rules for making jewels, stealing jewels, and fighting for a pouch of coin, I don't see why they wouldn't have different rules for selling magic.

You're assuming with no rule to back you up, that sellers always completely sell out their product every day.

They don't? Cause there is no reason they shouldn't. Many nobles do dangerous things like hunting, sparring, and messing with alchemy. No reason why I can't find a few dozen who get hurt and are willing to pay a cleric.

First, most nobles just eat, drink and be merry. They don't do those things. Second, the ones that spar rarely get hurt by it. Third, the ones that explode from alchemy mishaps rarely do so and generally have potions of healing to fix themselves. They're ALCHEMISTS. Fourth, hunting accidents are also pretty darned rare. Fifth, even the few that do hurt themselves aren't just going to spontaneously show up in front of you needing YOUR help. There are other healers, including friends of theirs to do the job.

I mean, by your logic, Doctors must be entirely out of business, because there aren't more than 120 injured people in a city of hundreds of thousands in a month.

First, see above on multiple people to do the job. Second, doctors also treat commoners and charge less money. They also treat people with colds, flus, etc. Your False Equivalence is noted.

That was literally my premise yes. During a Month of Downtime a player could go and make X amount of money by doing Y. Since this is clearly a lot of money, there is no reason to inflate the price of items to prevent "clever" players from using the item to make lots of money.

The item I used to highlight this philosophy is the Decanter of Endless Water, which the PDF listed at 135,000 gp on the premise :

View attachment 135859

By the way, Alchemy Jug: 6,000. Sphere of Annihilation: 15,000. Ring of Telekinesis: 80,00
So, clearly the idea of traveling to the desert to sell water, regardless of all other possible options, regardless of campaign, ect, was so compelling to the author that they made the Decanter the second most expensive item in the entire game.

Cool. I don't have to agree with the PDF. The author seems not to have bothers to consider that people in the world would already have done this sort of thing if it's that worthwhile. He's probably not the kind of DM who runs a living, breathing world.

See, but the thing is, you immediately started shutting down the idea. You didn't even pause long enough to see I was talking about a month of downtime to accuse me of ruining the game for the rest of the party by forcing them to sit on their laurels and not go adventuring. You even gave it a cutesy name "Booboos and Bedsheets".

I missed one detail that changes nothing about the answer. Sorry about that.

But why? What did I do that was so utterly terrible except take the expected prices from the PHB, say "I'm going to be selling instead of buying" and do some math for how much that would be. If I said I was only making 100 copper would you have railed against the idea like this? No. So, it must be the amount of money, but again, why is that in anyway a problem?

Why is it that there is a pushback that if a character can make significant money, that is a problem, because they won't go adventuring? This honestly reads to me like people have no idea how to sell their players on an adventure without making it about making money. Ironman and Batman must never go anywhere and get into any adventures, because they make plenty of money with multi-national mega-corporations, right?

Except they do. Making money, even serious money, should not be a threat to the adventure, but people think it is, and suddenly we need to make sure that the rules for running a business make zero sense, crafting rules are nerfed into the ground, and we need to carefully regulated how many spell slots players can sell per day based on "logic", because if players can make money, then money can't be a motivator for adventure.

Look at the rules for crime in Xanathar's. That's a much more appropriate manner for your spells to gain money, for the reasons I listed above. If you hit the DC of 25, great, you get your 1140g. If you only hit a 15, you get something like 300.

 

[NotAYakk]

If there aren't magic item shops, and finding someone to buy or sell a single item takes weeks of downtime, and in-world there is no global standard pricing scheme for magic items...

Why isn't it easy for the DM to price items, especially given a vague price range based on rarity?

I mean, the DM could price something 10x higher or 10x lower than the recommended price, so long as they are happy with the players having that much gold or spending that much.

Outside of magic item shops, I do not see the value in "logical magic item prices" when in world fiction by default means there is no such list in world, there are isolated people who may or may not be willing to spend gold or take gold for individual magic items. And those people tend to be either powerful enough that they can just take the gold or items from people who want to buy or sell, or they are weak enough that they risk other people taking their gold or items.

And I see a detriment. A magic item price list implies the existence of a market for magic items that efficiently clears, which basically implies magic item shops (even if they aren't actual corner stores).

In editions of D&D prior to magic item lists, magic item prices where mercurial and shops rarely existed. In editions with price lists, magic item shops became more common. It is very natural for people, given a list of prices, to go off and actually let players spend gold at that price on those items.

---

Now, the "but rare items are worse than uncommon ones" is a bigger problem in my mind. Making the common items worse, or the rarer items better, is a better solution. Or just don't introduce the common items that are too good into the game as a DM, unless you feel like the players need that "power up".

Again, magic item and their distribution are intended to be one of the DM's levers to determine how the game goes.

---

Alternatively, you could explain why the rarer worse items are better in ways that don't matter to adventuring power. Maybe the boots of levitation are rarer because an ancient civilization made them, and nobody else knows how; meanwhile, the boots of flying where made much more recently. So collectors pay big bucks for the boots of levitation. Much like people might pay more for an anient Egyptian sword than a more recent one, even if the more recent one is better for fighting.

Or maybe boots of levitation can be hooked up to a harness and used to move more mass than boots of flying can be, as the boots of flying's lifting ability pushes through the body of the flier, while the levitation boots cancel out gravity. Such a harness requires precise setup, but makes the industrial application of boots of levitation very strong.

On the buying side, what items the players find to buy is up to the DM. Players looking for something to help them fly, you as a DM determine how hard it is, and what item they find. Maybe they only find boots of levitation.

 

[Maxperson]

No that's jumping to conclusions. The entire argument "we can't have logical prices because then the game breaks" just is bafflingly irrational.

We've seen hit happen multiple times. I saw it break 1e when used. I saw it break 2e when used. 3e built it in and broke itself. 4e I don't know about. 5e fixed the problem.

No it most definitely is not.

Yes it is. Magic items aren't bought and sold enough to have a standard price. You might find a Ring of Protection for 8,000 in one city being sold by a merchant, and for 13,500 in another being a family heirloom a noble is selling to pay debts. Circumstances will differ from sale to sale which impact the price. You're going to be more accurate choosing the price than a book will.