Upgrade your account to a Community Supporter account and remove most of the site ads.

Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="mlund" data-source="post: 6548094" data-attributes="member: 50304">The other thing to keep in mind about the "price" of magic items is that price has to do with what someone is willing to pay. An adamantine +1 longsword (as opposed to a non-magic longsword) is phenomenally valuable to a fighter-type in some editions of D&D, but if you think of its worth to your typical men-at-arms or even to a petty baron with a half-dozen knights and a few hundred levies to do his fighting for him is much less. Items like that have more value to nobility as objects de art than weapons. The value of the magic sword, outside of an art piece or status symbol, is determined by the worth of the hero wielding it.On the other hand, a Necklace of Fireballs is basically multi-use, concealed WMD that could let a single slack-jawed oaf peasant wipe out a whole village, let a spy start an uncontrollable inferno that wipes out half a major city, or let a hedge-knight obliterate on-rushing enemy heavy cavalry in a battle between nobles - not only winning the battle outright but potentially pruning out entire families in a rival feudal chain in a single toss. It's completely bananas. The idea of such an item being trafficked among the lower classes and sold to a random bidder is enough to keep the local lord's executioner busy for a long time. It's market in a D&D setting would be roughly analogous to that or enriched uranium in the modern world.So, provided there are no WMDs or super-swords lying around to buy, I recommend investing your hard-earned capital into land and/or people. Maybe you do both and get some tenants / serfs on a nice manor somewhere. Maybe you buy "favors" to be named later from merchants, clergy, nobility, or organized criminals. Maybe you found the charter for a mercenary company or some other form of self-sustaining business that could come in handy later. Capital allows you to farm influence in the game world. Sure, it isn't much if everything's a cardboard set-piece but that's less a fault of the game system than the setting.And let me gripe one more time about lifestyle expenses. Seriously, how many adult dragons does a man have to slay in his lifetime before he can reasonably expect to hang up his sword-belt, take a wife, and live the good life without ever worrying about running out of money in retirement? The answer really should be "one," but in this wacky D&D economy I think its more like a dozen. That's just messed up. <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f61b.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":P" title="Stick out tongue    :P"  data-smilie="7"data-shortname=":P" />Marty Lund</blockquote>

Verification