D&D 5E Sane Magic Item Prices

[Doctor Futurity]

Anyone not using the selling rules in the "downtime" section of the DMG is missing out on the fact that it's pretty hard to get full value on magic items.

Although I agree that the economy of the game is borked, I feel this is nothing unusual for every edition. After four and a half years of a default magic-item economy and massive escalating gold earnings in PF I have thoroughly embraced 5E's distinct non-economy. When PCs go out to find magic items they find that every item generally has an unwilling owner or a quest involved with it. "Want an Alchemist's Jug? Sure, i know a guy in the Capitol who owes me....I just need some gold to get the jug imported, and as a favor I'd appreciate it if you took out a local gang of assassins for me..." "Oh, a broom of flying? I heard that the Witch in the North Mountains knows the secret of how to make one. You'll need to seek out the old cursed duke who knows the secret path to her hut, but he'll probably want you to deal with the banshee that haunts his lands..."

I live in glorious ignorance of concern about everything that the OP has problems with by fully embracing the creation/selling rules and emphasizing the true worth of magic items in my game, such that no one ever sells them. Just pretend it's a gun economy....in a world where almost no one knows how to make guns or bullets, and those who do need to go mine for ore and find the right chemicals on their own in a monster-haunted land.*



*Yes, a gun economy where a saturday night special might be very rare while a bazooka might be uncommon. I'm not sure there's a rule that says you can't have it that way....and even less so now that it seems these are carry-overs from 3.5

 

[CapnZapp]

My players aren't paying me to DM.

I AM paying someone to write the rules.

There's a bit of a difference in expected standard there.

Further to that, it's far more useful to me if the D&D community admits that there's something screwy with the magic item prices and actually assess the impact of house rules in those areas than crusade onwards with the attitude that since a good DM can fix all the rules themselves the rules are perfect and noone should publish improvements to them.

From a 3e standpoint, the 5e magic item creation and economy rules are a cruel joke and completely unusable.

That doesn't mean the 5E approach is objectively wrong or can't be used.

It does mean 5e is completely unsupportive of your preferred playing style; which to me, is a significant omission.

There's no need quarreling whose playstyle is better, and the long threads on "magic shoppes are evil" are merely exhausting.

The constructive path forward would be to recognize that the players who wish to play without a functional magic item economy have everything they need, while the players who like such an economy don't.

So when the conversion guides finally come out, I want an updated d20-style pricing and creation subsystem to top the list for the 3e-to-5e document.

Finally there's a group of posters who actively want to deny us these rules merely because they can't resist it once it's there, but those negative fun-killers can go xxxx themselves.

 

[Jester David]

I accept the rebuke. The meat of the post was written as an introduction for the forum where I'm maintaining the tables, but looking back at it I can see how it would be less effective where people have to go to the extra effort of deciding to click on a link rather than automatically being presented with the more calmly worded readme and tables. In my defense, actually describing a representative example of the DMG system's failure is rather more convincing than just saying "Hey, I think the DMG's magic item prices are bad, take my word for it". The latter would likely have lead us along a different, but not particularly more productive path.

The fly problem is a good example of some of the pricing quirks. Leading with the link piques the curiosity and the fly item extended example could be the follow up justification for why the change is needed.

A different tone would have also made a world of difference. It's a harsh critique and comes across as aggressive. Confrontational. Being lighter and more flippant makes it easier to accept ("What is the deal with potion of fly? It's 25,000gp for one use. You can buy an airship for that price. Is it a brand thing? Does Nike have exclusive rights? Is the primary ingredient saffron? You know, I bet it's a TSA thing. All that security screening is expensive and you can't just let anyone fly.")

 

[jgsugden]

....The thing is, that model produces much, much higher prices for a lot of basic magic items than those in the DMG. And it still doesn't explain all the items that are in blatantly the wrong place relative to one another. I can absolutely accept that the dagger of venom sells for 5,000 gold(enough to buy a guildhall). I can't really accept that the dagger of venom is selling for a guildhall while the broom of flying is only worth a good horse. Even with each being priced individually without full context or full information that just doesn't make much sense.

When someone tells you to ignore the prices in the DMG and treat it like a free economy - with the DM setting the prices to fit the situation - saying the approach doesn't work because the prices are not well placed relative to each other doesn't really line up.

Think of it this way: Magic items are big purchases like jewelry, cars and houses. Although you might find some channels where these have a fixed price, it is more common for these things to be sold via negotiated pricing. Role play the sale.

 

[Saidoro]

[MENTION=37579]Jester Canuck[/MENTION]. Yeah, replacing crass humor with odious corniness is not my take-away here. I do appreciate the thought, though.

When someone tells you to ignore the prices in the DMG and treat it like a free economy - with the DM setting the prices to fit the situation - saying the approach doesn't work because the prices are not well placed relative to each other doesn't really line up.

Think of it this way: Magic items are big purchases like jewelry, cars and houses. Although you might find some channels where these have a fixed price, it is more common for these things to be sold via negotiated pricing. Role play the sale.

When you tell your dealer which car you would like there is an amount of money that they will expect to be making off of you and an amount of money below which they will not be selling you a car at all. You may not know what these amounts are, they obviously aren't going to tell them to you since they hope to increase the first number as much as they can, but they still exist. My lists are perfectly compatible with negotiated prices, the numbers I'm giving just becomes a starting point rather than an absolute.

 

[Warmaster Horus]

How is this a thing? The DM can price magic items however they want for their world.

 

[jgsugden]

...When you tell your dealer which car you would like there is an amount of money that they will expect to be making off of you and an amount of money below which they will not be selling you a car at all...

Not entirely true for cards and not true for other items that share the key traits with magic items: High value and uniqueness.

Let's say they get a 2015 Pinto and it doesn't sell at cost. Does a dealer hold it on the lot forever? Does it fill up valuable real estate on the lot until someone eventually buys the hunk of junk? No, they sell it at a loss to make room for something they can move at a profit.

The same is true of a House or Expensive Jewelry. Sometimes you sell it at a profit, sometimes at a loss - it all depends on how much you think you can get and how badly you need to move it.

In the end, these unique high value items are sold for what the sellers believe they can get for them. The car is a bit more stable in the pricing, but that is because it is a bit more cookie cutter of a product than you see with jewelry or houses.... or magic items. High value and unique items, like magic items, houses, expensive jewelry and antique furniture have prices determined by what the market will allow.

If a standard guideline for prices gives DMs an easy out to just say, "Pay the list price". DMs don't have to do it, but it is easy to do and I've seen it in the 5 decades I've played this game. It makes magic items feel more cookie cutter and less special - more Blue Light Special and less Secrets of the Mystic Arcana. More, "Would you like Fries with that Giantbane Longsword +2?" and less, "You hold in your hands the Blade of Algalorn, last of the Giantslayers and King of the Dead Marshes... a treasure beyond compare."

A list of prices is easy. Easy is not always better.

 

[Saidoro]

Let's say they get a 2015 Pinto and it doesn't sell at cost. Does a dealer hold it on the lot forever? Does it fill up valuable real estate on the lot until someone eventually buys the hunk of junk? No, they sell it at a loss to make room for something they can move at a profit.

The same is true of a House or Expensive Jewelry. Sometimes you sell it at a profit, sometimes at a loss - it all depends on how much you think you can get and how badly you need to move it.

In the end, these unique high value items are sold for what the sellers believe they can get for them. The car is a bit more stable in the pricing, but that is because it is a bit more cookie cutter of a product than you see with jewelry or houses.... or magic items. High value and unique items, like magic items, houses, expensive jewelry and antique furniture have prices determined by what the market will allow.

Yes, occasionally a car or house or other expensive item will be sold at a loss, but that is quite obviously not the typical expected case. Most cars are sold for a profit. And if you evaluate a house you will find that it has a price. And if you evaluate a piece of jewelry you will find that it has a price. And if you evaluate a piece of furniture you will find that it has a price. Several people may disagree about what that price is, but they are likely to be clustered somewhat rather than randomly distributed across the entire number line.

A list of prices is easy. Easy is not always better.

There already exists a list of prices in the DMG. I am not making more of a list of prices than already exists. I am making a list of prices which is better.

EDIT: Or rather, the items are already priced, since the phrasing above was a bit unclear.

 

[Saeviomagy]

If a standard guideline for prices gives DMs an easy out to just say, "Pay the list price". DMs don't have to do it, but it is easy to do and I've seen it in the 5 decades I've played this game. It makes magic items feel more cookie cutter and less special - more Blue Light Special and less Secrets of the Mystic Arcana. More, "Would you like Fries with that Giantbane Longsword +2?" and less, "You hold in your hands the Blade of Algalorn, last of the Giantslayers and King of the Dead Marshes... a treasure beyond compare."

... well, except for the fact that it's only worth about twice what a potion of flying is worth. Along with any other number of comparisons you can make, some of which may not be glowing. "Beyond compare" is a literary construct that really means nothing.

Also - your example defeats your argument: the existence of a price list doesn't cause the cookie cutterness. The importance of the item, and the rarity of it does. It doesn't matter if I can sell Algalorn for 25,000 gold. It matters that I can't buy it, and that I don't have a sword that is better than it. If my party already has weapon options that are better than Algalorn (which can include non-magical options - a polearm specialist likely won't use it even if the alternative is his non-magical halberd), it's history won't stop me from putting it in a golf bag of weapons for a rainy giant hunting day and forgetting about it. Neither will a lack of a price to buy/sell it.

No matter what, very few people are going to be excited if they get a potion of flying without an awful lot of setup from the DM. So there is really no harm at all in sticking a price on it.

 

[Hussar]

Having seen this come up before, I really have to ask, why not simply use 3e prices? The Hypertext SRD has pricing for every single 5e magic item. Poof, done.