D&D (2024) Uncommon items - actually common?

[Oofta]

To my knowledge, there are two main drivers for using money: trust level and fungibility. Not a value threshold.

When you're dealing with other people from your one little village that you've known all your life, you have a personal and long term relationship with them. The trust level is high, and you don't have to worry as much about defective goods or skipping out on a debt. But when you're dealing with a traveling merchant, or living in a larger urban center where you don't have that personal relationship with everyone, you need a way to secure the transaction. And the best security is cash up front.

Fungibility, though, is what drives the use of money even in familiar circumstances. The farmer only needs the farrier to shoe his horse once a year, but the farrier needs bread from the baker every day, and the baker doesn't need any horses shod but does need a steady supply of firewood for the ovens, and so on. Money is a method for keeping an abstract score of labor done and owed that can be traded about to the persons and proportions needed. Trying to barter everything is hugely inefficient and often entirely impractical, and the past definitely wasn't some idyllic commune where everyone pitched it for everything.

So yes, compensation was often in non-monetary forms. That doesn't mean it wasn't carefully enumerated, or that barter was anything but a fallback when everything else had failed.

Money has been important since it's invention.that doesn't mean a servant's pay is solely in the money they receive. Just saying in many cases people were not as reliant on money which skews any correlation of GP to modern currency.

 

[Minigiant]

Uncommon items are quite ... mundane for adventurers, heroes, but also nobles, military officers - any kind of people with significant wealth and a life where conflict is quite likely. I could see a wealthy merchant acquiring utility, protective or divination items too

Personally I equip nobles and knights according to their rank.

Lesser Nobles and Normal Knights- 1 Uncommon, 1 Common
Normal Nobles and Royal Order Knights- 2 Uncommon, 1 Common
High Nobility, Lesser Royalty, and - 1 Rare, 1 Uncommon, 1 Common

Somebody is commissioning all those +1 swords, lances, axes, and warhammers

 

[Ancalagon]

Money has been important since it's invention.that doesn't mean a servant's pay is solely in the money they receive. Just saying in many cases people were not as reliant on money which skews any correlation of GP to modern currency.

Which is exactly why it's important to be clear what we are talking about.

When we say that the cost of living of a poor person in D&D is 2sp/day, I don't think this means that they earn 2 cool silver pieces every day. Rather, they earn the value of 2 sp. Perhaps it's lodging, food and a few coppers working as a servant. Or some other kind of arrangement.

And knowing that 2 sp is enough to live on on a "poor" lifestyle... that's a bit fuzzy of a value, but it's a very concrete and meaningful one. So if a hero offers a 1 gp bribe to someone, knowing that the gold is a week of wage for some, and a day's for another, or less... it really helps us understand that in D&D world, gold is less valuable than it was in the medieval era.

I think it's also worth pointing out that this is based on an assumption of an under-monetized economy. It doesn't have to be that way. With dwarves and alchemists and whatnots, gold may be more plentiful than in real earth medieval times.

 

[kigmatzomat]

With dwarves and alchemists and whatnots, gold may be more plentiful than in real earth medieval times.

Gold was fairly plentiful in pre-medieval times, it just wasn't the basis for commercial transactions, silver was. Gold was traded between kings and emperors, not by common merchants.

Crassus was said to have removed 320,000lbs of gold from the temple in Jerusalem (8,000 talents, assuming the smaller 40lb talent). Even if you assume that's a totally BS number to make the Temple's wealth seem super fabulous, there were plenty of other accounts of city treasuries having hundreds of talents of gold, so tons of gold.

Tons of gold was exchanged as forms of tribute: ~2,000lbs/year to the Huns & Persians at various times well before 1,000AD.

Not that it really counts for anything besides trivia. Gold isn't a great material for coins in the real world but for RPGs it doesn't matter.

 

[tetrasodium]

This is an off-shoot of the "bespoke items" thread.

I've been thinking a lot about the "meaning" of uncommon. The crafting rules in 5.5 are pretty generous, and uncommon items are pretty accessible. Given the very high utility of some of these items, it seems to me that they would be... common? I've been thinking a lot about this, because the rules actually fit the campaign I'm about to start (Yoon Suin); which has a great abundance of castes living in an area for thousands of years. There has been plenty of time to make lots of items.

But I thought more about it, common for whom?

Uncommon items are quite ... mundane for adventurers, heroes, but also nobles, military officers - any kind of people with significant wealth and a life where conflict is quite likely. I could see a wealthy merchant acquiring utility, protective or divination items too.

Common magical items are "common" from well, the more common people. Shop keeps, wealthy farmers, common sell swords. If you make a gp a day, but manage to save 1 silver a day... you could afford a common item in a reasonable amount of time.

I think that this perspective can be helpful. In a somewhat magic heavy world, which is the setting that the rules seem to imply, a +1 sword or a bag of holding shouldn't be a big deal.

Yup to pretty much all of this but I think there's an outlook that causes it to make sense logically.

Wotc is still clinging to the "MaGiC iTeMs ArE 'oPtIoNaL' " rather than admitting the math needs to properly support them with churn & allow things like a higher pointbuy for games not using them after reworking the math.

I haven't seen the DMG "common" items & from one of the videos talking up the cloak of billowing feel safe in assuming that they continue the trend of being completely underwhelming.

"Common" magic items should be a step down from uncommon items but still basically the same function, single use scrolls potions & trinkets. "Uncommon" items should be (generally) similar returns but multiple charges in the item without the everlasting recharge currently the default in 5e. "Rare" items should be small always on bonuses & possibly minor charged items with some form of self replenishing pool of charges. Moving to "Very Rare" & "Legendary" could have larger always on bonuses, charged items with more significant charge recovery, or some combo of any of the other rarities.

 

[Minigiant]

Yup to pretty much all of this but I think there's an outlook that causes it to make sense logically.

Wotc is still clinging to the "MaGiC iTeMs ArE 'oPtIoNaL' " rather than admitting the math needs to properly support them with churn & allow things like a higher pointbuy for games not using them after reworking the math.

It's less WOTC still clinging to "Magic Items are optional" because the new DMG and old DMG both assume high level PCget magic item.

It's more WOTC wants to offer "low magic worlds" without the mechanics and nonmagical items to support those worlds nor the adventuring lifestyle. So NPCs and monsters lack the equipment they should have.

It's the "Nothing to spend gold on". Nobility and merchants will have the money to spend on the highest tech of the setting. And if you only offer magic items, every very rich person would have magic items.

"Common" magic items should be a step down from uncommon items but still basically the same function, single use scrolls potions & trinkets. "Uncommon" items should be (generally) similar returns but multiple charges in the item without the everlasting recharge currently the default in 5e. "Rare" items should be small always on bonuses & possibly minor charged items with some form of self replenishing pool of charges. Moving to "Very Rare" & "Legendary" could have larger always on bonuses, charged items with more significant charge recovery, or some combo of any of the other rarities.

There really be some sort of logic to magic items and not just nostalgia vibes.

Nobles and major merchants having closets of common consumables and an uncommon magic item really livens up D&D setting with some logic.

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

Curiously, I am not miffed by WotC assumption of magic item price as I think it's pretty obvious that they are writing for people don't know (nor care) about how faux-medieval economics would work. I've come to accept that they don't make sense and the price are just a reason to use gold that adventurer tend to gather.

What strikes me more about the rarity of magical item is the lack of correlation between the magic item making rules and the prevalence of items. Eberron addressed that: in order to get a magic-wide world, there were specialized class of NPC whose only power would be to create continual light. So, it makes sense that the world is covered by continual lights and fire hazard are much less prevalent in an Eberron city than in a medieval city.

Outside of that, with a lack of mean for destroying items in current rules (outside of the odd "use the last charge and it stops working", but have we ever seen anyone do that?), civilization that are millions-year old, magical item creation rule that can be easy, the world should be drowned in common and uncommon magical item that have use for everyday folk. If I have a ruler and with a court wizard, AND the rule say that creating a continual light require an eye of a dragon or a crystal that is still reflecting the light of the Trees before the Sun was made, I probably expect to see a world where people use torches for lights in the city. If it's 200 gp and 10 days, my wizard will be tasked to create items each time he isn't working on something more urgent. At worst, it costs me 4,000 gp a year to progressively make my city impervious to fire hazard. Enspelled stone of cure light wound would turn my 30-years life expectancy peasants into 70+ live expectancy peasants overnight (well, over a tenday), resulting in a spectacular increase in population. And in a world were people are weath, I wouldn't hesitate to invest if I were the ruler. I'd also consider having my druid make jars of goodberries and progressively remove agriculture from my list of task my peasant should devote their time... (assuming 3 castings of goodberries a day, that's 30 persons fed for 200 gp... forever. To break even in a single year, one would need to value a goodberry meal at less than 2 cp (a squalid meal, and nothing in the spell description mention people living off goodberries being particularly unhappy -- if they replace an average meal, they break even in 22 days).

While I can close my eyes and think the price list doesn't exist, it's difficult to have people living in the world not using the rules. Yeah, I know, I should think that the item creation rule are just for heroes and everyone else are just very bad wizards who can't replicate their uberness... because the alternative is that it's difficult when your PC wizards start saying "I'll spend my first 200 gp earned on a jar of goodberries, producing 9 gp worth of food each day, hire an underling at 1 gp a day to manage the stall and live a quasi-aristocratic life forever from the proceeds" and having nobody try to emulate him...

 

[Minigiant]

Curiously, I am not miffed by WotC assumption of price lists as I think it's pretty obvious that they are writing for people don't know (nor care) about how faux-medieval economics would work. I've come to accept that they don't make sense and the price are just a reason to use gold that adventurer tend to gather.

What strikes me more about the rarity of magical item is the lack of correlation between the magic item making rules and the prevalence of items. Eberron addressed that: in order to get a magic-wide world, there were specialized class of NPC whose only power would be to create continual light. So, it makes sense that the world is covered by continual lights and fire hazard are much less prevalent in an Eberron city than in a medieval city.

That's because 5e was designed for grognards who ran worlds were the mages who could craft magic items were all dead, evil, aloof, or far way. PCs had to find every magic item except with weakest potions.

That's why there were no real crafting rules in 2014 and finding magic items for sale was a random crapshoot controlled by the DM.

So when item crafting and item buying was added later, WOTC was stuck with rules and prices that didn't make sense due to backwards compatibility.

 

[ezo]

Oddly, my D&D games have become even less "magical item"-oriented than they were in AD&D days; and I would be thrilled to run a game with NO MAGIC ITEMS at ALL!

Common magic items ruin the game for me. All the "common" items that appeared in Xanathar's will never see the light of day at my table--frankly, I think they are just stupid.

For magic to remain special for me, it CANNOT be everywhere. It is the main reason why I can't get behind hardly any of the more modern D&D artwork. It is much to magical, glowing this and glowing that, strange races everywhere, glimmering lights and magical effects splattered across the page. Yuck! No, thank you.

Give me an game with ultra-rare items of magic, but make them truly powerful items!

 

[Minigiant]

Oddly, my D&D games have become even less "magical item"-oriented than they were in AD&D days; and I would be thrilled to run a game with NO MAGIC ITEMS at ALL!

Common magic items ruin the game for me. All the "common" items that appeared in Xanathar's will never see the light of day at my table--frankly, I think they are just stupid.

For magic to remain special for me, it CANNOT be everywhere. It is the main reason why I can't get behind hardly any of the more modern D&D artwork. It is much to magical, glowing this and glowing that, strange races everywhere, glimmering lights and magical effects splattered across the page. Yuck! No, thank you.

Give me an game with ultra-rare items of magic, but make them truly powerful items!

The issue is the name.

It shouldn't be "common, uncommon, rare, very rare, legendary, artifact"

It should be "minor, major, powerful, very powerful, legendary, artifact"

So you can have settings where powerful major items are common (Eberron or Strixhaven), settings where powerful magic items are rare (Forgotten Realms or Greyhawk), and settings where powerful magic items are unique and one of a kind (Dark Sun or Westeros).

Then provide nonmagical resources and treasure for less magical worlds.

Don't use TTG scaling.
Use power scaling. Like normal people.