Has anyone seen any suggestions for price on the items offered in the Basic Rules DMG? Running parties through Hoard of the Dragon Queen and the official DMG is months away. 
The only thing we've really seen are comments like "magic items are rare and wonderous things that will never be able to be bought with coin alone." I think the designers didn't expect people to be able to purchse them without a quest attached. We don't how how high-magic worlds will function. I did some bluesky number crunching a while back and estimated a minor magic item like the "Goggles of Night vision" to cost around 2,000 gold if you were to buy them.
As stated above, the current rules assume that magic items are far too valuable to be bought and sold with any kind of standard pricing.
If they can be crafted, if materials can be aquired in one way or the other, then there is a price tag.
Always!
Trance-Zg wrote:
Trance-Zg wrote:
I can't believe this is the setting most of us are actually going to end up playing. Magic items are SO rare that the PCs are expecting to only acquire them through adventuring. No standard for creating, trading, buying, selling. Do you responders picture that as the setting for your campaigns?
Must be only the Potion of Healing is the only item worthy of having a price tag.
Gold_Katana wrote:
Gold_Katana wrote:
Gold_Katana wrote:
I will cast my support for a no-magic-item-economy system. It's what I've wanted for a long time, and how my setting has always functioned in canon.
As the devs have said before, it's easier to start with something being optional and then add it in later. So I'm hoping there will be optional buy/sell/trade rules for magic items in the DMG. That way it's easy for DMs to say that it doesn't work that way in their world .
I personally prefer a hybrid system ... magic items up to a certain level of power can be bought/sold/traded on the open market but really special items are custom rewards.
In addition a guideline for how much wealth PCs should have by level would be helpful.
I'm a firm beliver that powerful magic items are not going to be the sort of thing that can be purchased with gold. Anything that's Rare or Requires Atunement will be the sort of stuf that gives a character a signifigant bump in power, will be off the table for purchase with gold. Now, you MIGHT be able to buy a treature map to an ancient king's burial mound out in the hinterlands, but there's a whole quest attached to that.
However, "uncommon" magic items that don't require atunment seem to not offer a massive boost in power. So far, the only ones we've seen like that are the Boots of Striding and Sprining, and the Goggles of the Night (one lets you move better in heavy armor, the other gives you night vision). Going off of the general guidelines we've had in past editions ,and what we know of THIS edition, these are my bluesky numbers.
I'd say that those goggles were the product of about two's worth of work for a wizard or alcemist (again, we don't have the DMG, so I'm just guessing). An alchemist (or any other skilled professional) makes 5g a day, so that would make the base price of three months worth of work about $450. Now, you have to spend half as much as the end price in materials, you cut further into the alchemist's profit margin. I'm thinking that there likely isn't a large ammount of alchemists that know the arcane secrets that allow you to make glass that can see the night like day, so they can easily charge double what they spent (the need is great, and the supply is JUST them) I'm estimating that the cost would be around 2000 to 3000 gold. That's $450 in just work, and a bare minimum of $1000 gold in materials. If it takes longer than two months of work to make the device, the price goes up signifigantly.
Still though, that being said, useful magical trinkets that dont' break bonded accuracy should be able to be bought (the players need money sinks afterall).
OoftaMeg wrote:
Saelorn wrote:
Illithidbix wrote:
Gold_Katana wrote:
Gold_Katana wrote:
Gold_Katana wrote:
As others stated, it's about how common or rare magic is in your setting. In mine, magic parallels technological advancement in the real world. That is, it tends to get better and proliferate over time without social intervention. Though it also happens that the world is on course for a magical apocalypse, on top of its recent troubles with a rapidly expanding undead threat.
In my present timeline, the difference between owning a longsword and a longsword +1 is the difference between owning a beater car and a used BMW. Desirable and envy provoking, but not irreplacable and not wondrous. The suggested rarity in official writngs is the difference between a beater car and a brand new custom Lamborghini.
One of the things I dislike about magic items being extremely rare is that their (attempted) theft ought also be a much more common occurence, and I'd rather not sidetrack the narrative with frequent robberies. Even if the adventurers are renowned to be dangerous, they're outnumbered 500,000:1 by the desperate and dastardly.
That said, my 'magic shops' exist only in major cities, operate exclusively under the purview of a powerful mageocratic branch of governmnent, and don't carry anything over +1 and minor wondrous items in stock. +2 can be made to order at Lamborghini prices, and +3 or higher is simply not for sale. +1 goes for 3-5k, +2 60k or more.
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Nevvur wrote:
Amount of magic available should be up to what makes sense for the DM. In my view since magic items typically don't rust or decay they last virtually forever, over time,magic items are going to become more readily available . This is especially true in worlds like mine where the population is recovering from devastating losses increasing (relatively speaking) the magic item to person ratio.
It also makes sense to me that if someone owns magical items they will be too valuable to keep when they are no longer useful. Does that retired adventurer really need that +1 shield? Probably not. If he could sell it or trade it for a modest sized house, he probably would. Similarly when someone dies, burying their cool toys with them would just be an invitation to grave robbers.
If you don't like the idea of magic shops, perhaps there are magic item brokers, people who arrange buyers and sellers of these rare and powerful items. For a commision of course.
I don't mind the base assumption being a low magic world. After all if you give kids unsweetened oatmeal every morning for breakfast, throwing raisins into it occasionaly would be a real treat. Give them sugar frosted cocoa bombs every morning and try to give them oatmeal with raisins one day and there will be hell to pay.
austinmonster wrote:
Coredump00 wrote:
I see +1 item as 3rd level spell, +2 item as 6th level spell and +3 item as 9th level spell.
how many people out of one milion are 5th level spell casters? That many +1 weapons are out of milion ordinary weapons.
how many people out of one milion are 11th level spell casters? That many +2 weapons are out of milion ordinary weapons.
how many people out of one milion are 17th level spell casters? That many +3 weapons are out of milion ordinary weapons.
danyc wrote:
OoftaMeg wrote:
When it comes to magic items there is no right or wrong answer. I view availablilty as a scale
- In a very low-magic world, magic items are pretty non-existant, or limited to the occasional potion or elixir.
- Magic items exist but are rare. Evil monsters collect the few that exist and hoard them. If they do go up for sale, the PCs never find out about it.
- Magic Items are occasionally sold at auction or through specialized brokers but are extremely expensive. You have to know about the auction or broker in order to have a chance to purchase the item, if you can afford it. The exact item you are looking for may not ever be available (the +1 longsword is not available, but how about this +1 warhammer?)
- Magic items are bought and sold at heavily guarded specialty shops in major cities. Once in a great while, one may be for sale in an estate sale or by someone who no longer has use for the item.
- Just go down to the local magic item bazaar to get what you want, or commission someone to make it for you.
All are perfectly valid.
I personally have never cared for Option #2 even though it's kind of the default because it never made sense to me that only adventurers are the ones who stumble into the items. And why do all the cool toys end up in the hands of the bad guys in the first place? In a low magic setting like Tolkien's it makes more sense, but in my experience most people have a magic item or two after a few levels.
Option 3 makes sense to me, even if items are fairly rare simply based on how societies/civilizations work. Things of value that can be traded or sold will be traded or sold. Besides, unless you're incredibly wealthy, why would you hold on to the majority of magic items? A +1 sword is awesome if you're an active adventurer, not much use to your average Joe.
Like I've said, I prefer Option 4. Magic items last forever and are reasonably common. Magic item dealers are kind of like high end sports car dealers ... you normally only find them in big cities.
Option 5 was the 4E default which I kind of found annoying but may make sense in a very high magic world.
Gold_Katana wrote: