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.