D&D 5E Thoughts on spending gold ...

[Derren]

Why would a medieval-like society be able to have stable pricing when our advanced society doesn't?

Because unlike pieces of art and collectors items, magical items have a fixed creation cost and are used to more than gaining prestige by possessing them.

 

[Gecko85]

Because unlike pieces of art and collectors items, magical items have a fixed creation cost and are used to more than gaining prestige by possessing them.

A baseball card or WWII pistol also has a fixed creation cost. I don't buy this argument at all.

 

[Derren]

A baseball card or WWII pistol also has a fixed creation cost. I don't buy this argument at all.

And you can get a base ball card for a single cent. WW2 pistols aren't that expensive either.
What is expensive is a base ball card misprint signed by some famous players. But that is not equivalent to magic items in general, but to a specific magic item wielded by a special person.

 

[77IM]

But why would a player ever think predictable pricing makes sense in-game, when it doesn't exist in the real world?

I never said it would make sense in-game; I think players want predictable pricing because of its role in the character-optimization mini-game. There are many abstractions in the D&D mechanics that make zero sense in-game but produce a much more fun game-play experience.

No it isn't. For making item acquisition a adventuring goal fixed prices work as well. Actually they work better as they still give the DM a workable guideline (he is of course free to deviate from).

If finding out the price is part of the fun, having all the prices just listed in the DMG takes away that fun. It's like having a book of puzzles and just looking at the answers. And even if one player doesn't look at those prices, I guarantee other players will, and it will be discussed ad nauseum, and any mystery around it will be vanquished.

I am not saying that the character-optimization mini-game is badwrongfun. I played a magic-item-crafting wizard in a 3.5 game and had a blast using those item-creation rules to create powerful and unique items. I'm just saying that it's very hard for this play style to coincide with the "magic items are mysterious and unknowable" play style.

One way they might both work together would be to give each item a knowable purchase price AND some "purchasing requirements" which come from random tables and therefore are not strictly knowable ahead of time. (That's what I was going for with my magic item purchasing rules: http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?404489-Buying-Magic-Items&p=6490189#post6490189 .)

 

[abirdcall]

Because unlike pieces of art and collectors items, magical items have a fixed creation cost and are used to more than gaining prestige by possessing them.

They do?

That's news to me.

 

[Gecko85]

And you can get a base ball card for a single cent. WW2 pistols aren't that expensive either.
What is expensive is a base ball card misprint signed by some famous players. But that is not equivalent to magic items in general, but to a specific magic item wielded by a special person.

And you can pick up a potion of healing in most towns for a reasonable price. But how many Dwarven Thrower's are there? Where can you find or buy one? Does it have a fixed cost? If two players can both afford it, should they both be able to walk into a store and pick one up?

 

[MoonSong]

I think some players would prefer to know exactly what all the prices will be and how much gold they will get per level so they can predict exactly what items they will get and incorporate that into the character-optimization mini-game.

Other players prefer to use item-acquisition as a motivation for adventuring and social-interaction. For them the vague pricing works better because finding out what price the DM will set is actually part of the game. That price may be in gold, bloodshed, rare arcane ingredients, or my favorite, promises.

5e leaves item prices vague, setting an important player expectation that DM's discretion will set the final price, and that the player's can't predict ahead of time what the prices will be (and there are no gold-per-level guidelines either). If players want predictable pricing, so they can browse magic items like a catalog, then that IS a lot of work for the DM.

So either I should not care about item pricing or I am a munchkin? Players motivations to do things are wildy varied and can't be reduced to oversimplified dichotomies. Your two-kinds-of-players model falls apart on non sandbox games. What about narrative heavy games where you can't just comfortably take a year off to go hunting for a rare-legendary-one-of-a-kind-snowflake-mighty sword of +1? Your only choices there are to get by with whatever the DM feels like throwing your way hoping to get what you need, or -gulp- ask for it. And it all applies to munchkiny swords of slaying +x to humble handy haversacks and floating lanterns equally.

Or in the other extreme, an arena setting, where each PC has to be created on equal footing so fights remain fair. Or in encounters, where you just don't have that kind of narrative control. And not everybody likes to treat magic items in the same way, granted in one extreme magic items become commodities that can be easily obtained, created or tossed away, thus becoming less magical, but in the other end they become pointless macguffins that are only there to drive the plot and won't have any actual effect because they are the ultimate reward to be obtained at the very end so nobody will actually get to use and enjoy them. As if turning an utility magic item into a reward and delaying it so much to it becomes useless would make it more special and wonderful.

And to be honest, the magic item section is already the less perused part of the DMG in all of the games I played in 3.x, I would only check it once at character creation -provided we started at higher levels- and then never again, the wealth guidelines being barely acknowledged because most DMs are human and the story takes so much prominence it isn't uncommon for us to find only so much coin. And so far I have never needed to look at it in any of the games I've played in 5e, magic items having turned into something so special and rare they may as well not even exist. As a DM I try to be less stingy with coin and magic items, but sometimes it is impossible and Magic item deprivation is so prevalent my players and I end up forgetting about it entirely, and this is in games where you can buy items.

 

[Derren]

If finding out the price is part of the fun, having all the prices just listed in the DMG takes away that fun.

Not really. Listing individual prices is first and foremost a DM help. How much the items cost in the game, if they are available at all, is still up to him.

 

[Beleriphon]

A baseball card or WWII pistol also has a fixed creation cost. I don't buy this argument at all.

Exactly. A low serial number Colt Single Action Army revolver engraved with pearl grips is probably a total of a $100 worth of material and parts these days if you look at its manufacturing costs, but what that thing is worth? Thousands to a collector because its what a collector is willing to pay.

 

[Derren]

Exactly. A low serial number Colt Single Action Army revolver engraved with pearl grips is probably a total of a $100 worth of material and parts these days if you look at its manufacturing costs, but what that thing is worth? Thousands to a collector because its what a collector is willing to pay.

Collector being the important word here. People who want a Colt for defense, like most adventurers, soldiers and nobles would want magic items for, they would pay far less for it.
Magic Items in D&D are not collector items but weapons designed for use.