D&D 5E Sane Magic Item Prices

[LuisCarlos17f]

Other option would be to change the value of the magic item, then you would need "residium" and not gold coins.

 

[CapnZapp]

No, no prices are better.

Magic item sale and purchase should be run like finding treasure, not like a shop.

Then don't use prices. Your position only denies fun to those who like magic item shopping.

The lack of utility-based magic item pricing, that gold is worthless, remains one of the biggest weaknesses of the entire edition.

 

[nevin]

The magic item price rules have been compiled into an excellent pdf by Inconnunom.

Let's talk about flying items. There are a few items which give the ability to fly in the 5e DMG. Among the first I came across were the Winged Boots and the Broom of Flying. The Boots give a fly speed equal to your walking speed for 4 hours per day divisible into 1 minute chunks while the broom gives you a flat 50 foot fly speed all day long, decreasing to 30 feet if you are particularly heavy. Both are clearly very powerful, if you've got two sides in a combat one of which can fly and one of which can't the flying side has a huge advantage. If the other side also has no good ranged attacks the flying team more or less wins automatically. Yet both the Boots and the Broom are uncommon, they only cost 500 gold, pretty much any adventurer who decides they want one should be able to get their hands on one if they really want to.

Right under the Winged Boots are the Wings of Flying. The Wings give you a fly speed of 60 feet for one hour but then require a 1d12 hour cooldown period after each use before they can be activated again. Again, a pretty powerful item, but probably less useful than either the Broom or the Boots for most practical purposes. The higher move speed will occasionally pay off, but usually the ability to fly whenever you want will win out in terms of practical utility. At most, it's definitely not better than either the Broom or the Boots. The Wings of Flying are a rare item. They are worth 5,000 gold, 10 times what the boots or broom are worth.

The next item I found was the boots of levitation. These boots let you use levitate as the spell at will. Levitate moves you straight up or down only. It can never move you more than 20 feet off the ground or more than 20 feet up or down at a time. It has a similar weight limit to the Broom. It consumes your Concentration slot. You can't use it for longer than 10 minutes on end without returning to the ground. The boots of levitation are rare items. They are worth 5,000 gold, just like the Wings of Flying. 10 times more than the Winged Boots or the Broom.

The next item I found was the potion of flying. The potion of flying gives a fly speed equal to your walk speed the same as the Winged Boots do. It lasts one hour like the Wings of Flying, and can only be used once ever. The potion of flying is Very Rare. It is worth 50,000. 100 times what an item that gives precisely the same effect 4 times every single day forever does.

When the red mists had receded and I was once again able to speak in words other than the incoherent babblings of a shattered mind, I set about fixing this clear and present lunacy masquerading as legitimate rules text.

The fixed prices are located here. Please comment either here or there telling me what you think, if I've blatantly miscalculated the value of an item I'd like to know about it.

You did the right thing. Always consider prices in rulebooks as a starting place. Your campaign will determine what they should go for.

 

[NotAYakk]

Then don't use prices. Your position only denies fun to those who like magic item shopping.

The lack of utility-based magic item pricing, that gold is worthless, remains one of the biggest weaknesses of the entire edition.

Gold is as useful as
a) The friendship of a king
b) The enmity of a dragon
c) Saving the town from the orc horde
d) The ownership of a warded tower with a secure teleportation circle

Gold, as a second set of points you spend on improving your characters gear, was a D&D 3e era thing (via WBL) that 4e embraced.

First, I pointed out why the pricing in the book has problems, and how those problems are systematic.

Fundamentally, 5e magic items are not designed for christmas-tree PC builds, where you min max and optimize what items go where.

Now, 4e was; with gold growing exponentially (5x every 5 levels) and item prices likewise, and static bonuses ensuring that lower tier items had to be sold off, it was a solid "gold as character building points" system and another point of character customization, better done than either 3e (which was bolted on more than it was designed) or any set of costs for 5e items can pull off, because the items themselves where designed with that in mind.

5e attempts to return to AD&D and OD&D style magic items, but the habits of 3e and 4e players remain, and this price list is an example of it attempting to rework 5e to be more like 3e/4e.

I mean, I enjoyed both 3e and 4e, but we don't have to inflict it on 5e. And if you do inflict it on 5e, the right approach isn't "reprice 5e magic items", but make magic items that reflect a christmas tree approach and price those.

If not, guess what the correct price is for a cape of the monteback? Quite high, because every high level PC should own as many attunement-slot-free 1/day escape and conceal items they can get their hands on. Teleport, change cloak, repeat! Stuff a bag of holding full of them.

Or a potion of speed, a concentration free self cast of haste. That is +2 AC, +1 attack/round (or extra dash), double speed, dex save advantage for 1 minute (then you lose 1 round). The downsides of the spell are mostly gone (as you can't lose concentration on a potion), and for a 2-attack PC by round 2 you have caught up, and you start passing it. In the "sane magic item" prices, that is 300 gp, similar to the price of a potion of healing.

Expensive at lower levels, but in comparison to upgrading a +2 to a +3 weapon? Crazy cheap, you can own dozens and use them in every tough fight.

A price list like this instills false confidence, and at the quality provided is worse than useless. Without a price list like this, the DM might pick a value that isn't sensible, but the next time the price would be different, possibly based off of how useful the DM saw the potion was. The damage would be one over cheap haste potion in the "no price list" case, or a price that is too high to buy and no haste potion.

(Note that a haste potion can only be replaced by dragging around a 5th level indestructible spellcaster hireling, which typically can't be stored in a handy haversack; so the substitution price is very high).

...

A better, more sane, approach would when you want a magic item shop, grab the DMG tables and roll up a small treasure horde. Offer those items for sale. No sticker prices, have the NPC negotiate - use the DMG price guidelines. Items that cost too much, PCs won't buy, and that is ok. Maybe they'll steal them!

Or, your magic item shop can be "the outsider of infernal bent offers you each a +1 weapon or shield of your choice for this task".

Or, in one podcast, they had a wonderful moment when they where looting the armory and treasure vault of the one and only dracolich. There where rooms full of platinum bars and armories full of magical +1 weapons. They filled bags of holding with platinum and grabbed a bunch of +1 gear. Turns out the (spoilers) dracolich wasn't gone yet, and was watching. They could keep what they took for a "minor" task (that almost killed them).

When later they forgot about that they had a damaged soul gem (among others) of a herald of a god inside the bag, the gem exploded and magically irradiated the platinum. Good times. Good times.

No WBL, no magic item prices, just world. It made sense that this dracolich had a magical armory and horde, but wasn't that worried about it right now and needed the PCs more.

 

[Oofta]

So I did a quick take on this for my own sanity and because I don't mind having a way to syphon gold from my player's PCs. But I ignored the "utility" aspect of pricing because things that have great utility often cost far less than items with little or no utility. That, and it was easier.

I broke things down by consumables, major and minor (based on Xanathar's) and then came up with a simple price sheet.

Rarity	Consumable	Minor	Major
Common	50	100
Uncommon	150	300	500
Rare	2,000	4,000	15,000
Very Rare	15,000	25,000	40,000

Legendary items are never for sale, I still control what is available and also apply some of the rules for Xanathar's for modifying the cost.

 

[Maxperson]

Then don't use prices. Your position only denies fun to those who like magic item shopping.

The lack of utility-based magic item pricing, that gold is worthless, remains one of the biggest weaknesses of the entire edition.

Except that has never been true. As a player I can find all kinds of worthwhile things to spend gold on. The DM will probably need to come up with the costs for me, but spending gold on worthwhile things is only as bad as you choose to make it. If you don't think outside of the small boxes 5e gives you, then yes gold is going to SEEM worthless. With just a bit of imagination and proactiveness, gold is as good as it ever was.

 

[CleverNickName]

I think this thread (and the project it discusses) dates back to a time when 5th Edition was new, and players/DMs alike were trying to find ways to make it more closely resemble earlier editions of the game, most likely 3.5E/Pathfinder. I don't know about the community at large, but we've since moved on.

When 5E was released, I think everyone balked at the suggested prices in the DMG for magic items, compared to other editions, and decried how "useless" gold was. We had been conditioned for more than a decade to assume that GOLD=MAGIC ITEMS, after all, and that was a hard association to break. So we downloaded this PDF and updated it every few months as the document was also updated, and tried our best to have Ye Olde Magick Shoppes in every major town. And it works okay, if that's the sort of thing you need at your table.

But after playing the 5E rules for a while, and getting a feel for the new game economy, we find that the DMG suggestions work just fine for us. We spend our cash on things like living expenses, spell components, and story-related things (my character is trying to buy a house in Sharn at the moment.)

 

[Oofta]

I think this thread (and the project it discusses) dates back to a time when 5th Edition was new, and players/DMs alike were trying to find ways to make it more closely resemble earlier editions of the game, most likely 3.5E/Pathfinder. I don't know about the community at large, but we've since moved on.

When 5E was released, I think everyone balked at the suggested prices in the DMG for magic items, compared to other editions, and decried how "useless" gold was. We had been conditioned for more than a decade to assume that GOLD=MAGIC ITEMS, after all, and that was a hard association to break. So we downloaded this PDF and updated it every few months as the document was also updated, and tried our best to have Ye Olde Magick Shoppes in every major town. And it works okay, if that's the sort of thing you need at your table.

But after playing the 5E rules for a while, and getting a feel for the new game economy, we find that the DMG suggestions work just fine for us. We spend our cash on things like living expenses, spell components, and story-related things (my character is trying to buy a house in Sharn at the moment.)

I have limited magic for sale because to me it makes sense. Magic swords for example don't rust, so they're going to last a long, long time even if not cared for.

Other magic items are simply too valuable to discard or bury. If someone dies and they owned a car in mint condition, you don't bury the car with them.

That and in many cases I'd rather give gold or valuable trade goods rather than have items in treasure that just happens to be what people want.

I appreciate not having a magic mart or expected item levels, but I do think there could have been a compromise. In any case I posted my simple workaround above.

 

[Maxperson]

I have limited magic for sale because to me it makes sense. Magic swords for example don't rust, so they're going to last a long, long time even if not cared for.

Other magic items are simply too valuable to discard or bury. If someone does and they owned a car in mint condition, you don't bury the car with them.

That and in many cases I'd rather give gold or valuable trade goods rather than have items in treasure that just happens to be what people want.

I appreciate not having a magic mart or expected item levels, but I do think there could have been a compromise. In any case I posted my simple workaround above.

I have very highly limited magic for sale. You might occasionally find some very wealthy merchant or noble that has an item for sale, but magic items are not something you can shop for. The reason for this is that magic items are rare in my game. I want them to be highly valued when found. Wizards don't run around making them. Even a +1 sword was something done as as something very special and unique by some wizard in the past. That wizard had to sacrifice to make it and it probably involved a lot of danger and questing for him to find out how and get what was needed.

Potions are more common, but even so they are also more limited than 5e implies and more expensive than 5e sets forth. You aren't getting a potion of healing for 50g.

 

[NotAYakk]

I have limited magic for sale because to me it makes sense. Magic swords for example don't rust, so they're going to last a long, long time even if not cared for.

Other magic items are simply too valuable to discard or bury. If someone dies and they owned a car in mint condition, you don't bury the car with them.

That and in many cases I'd rather give gold or valuable trade goods rather than have items in treasure that just happens to be what people want.

I appreciate not having a magic mart or expected item levels, but I do think there could have been a compromise. In any case I posted my simple workaround above.

Sure.

However, I would treat the items for sale like loot from a monster. It is "random" from the perspective of the players.

Finding a specific item for sale is similar to questing for a specific item in a dungeon.

By T2, maybe you have enough social capital that you can track down a magic weapon or whatever for sale.

OTOH, finding a magic shop, I'd be really tempted as a DM to bust out the random treasure tables and that is what is in inventory.

And if the players are trying to swap their wand of chicken summoning, I might use random tables to generate items that people might want to swap. Some of which might be red herrings.