Spell scrolls are used by spellcasters to activate a spell if it is on their character’s spell list. If the scroll’s magic is more powerful than the character can cast, they must make an ability check to use it successfully. The cost of hiring someone to cast a relatively common spell of 1st or 2nd level, such as cure wounds or identify, is easy enough in a city or town and might cost 10 to 50 gold.
For example, a spell scroll containing a level 4 spell requires 2 hours and 50 gold per spell level. A Wizard copying a level 3 Fireball scroll needs 6 hours and 150 gold pieces. Assuming your setting lies somewhere in the middle, a spell will sell on the market for roughly 1/5 of a spell scroll’s cost or 1/2 (remember, consumable).
The mana cost of a spell is equal to the spell’s level, so to cast a 2nd level spell would require deducting 2 mana from a character’s mana points. Casting the spell does not remove the spell from the spell. A common scroll with cantrips could be around 50g-100g, while a scroll with a ninth level spell like wish or gate would go into the tenthousands.
Spell service cost is calculated by multiplying the square of the spell level by 10, adding double of the consumed material cost, and adding 10 of nonconsumed material cost. For example, a first-level spell scroll costs 100 GP and four days to be made by a spellcaster of 3rd level or higher. The cost is 50 GP per spell level.
A good rule of thumb for a DM is to charge for the appropriate scroll (from common to legendary) and prepare your wizarding wallet from common spells at 25gp to legendary ones over 50,001 gp. Material components add extra cost.
📹 Magic Item Prices in D&D DON’T WORK! (And how Pathfinder fixes it)
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What are spell charges in D&D?
Spell Charges is a unique item power that allows a Hero to cast a spell directly through an item, using its charges instead of their own mana. It is available for Wands and Staves through Create Artifact and requires knowledge of the spell. An exploit allows the less-scrupulous to imbue Spell Charges for free on any weapon, expanding its role in the game. However, a spell adds a 20x Combat Casting Cost for each charge when crafting. Wizards in Master of Magic can craft Wands and Staves that specialize in channeling magic, but creating a Charged artifact can be one of the most expensive operations a Wizard can undertake.
How much does Spellbreak cost?
Spellbreak was a free-to-play third-person shooter video game developed by Proletariat for Microsoft Windows, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch. It was released on September 3, 2020, and was announced to be shut down in early 2023. The game was a projectile-based PvP shooter with gauntlets that fired magical spells instead of guns. Players could levitate and carry a ‘Rune’, giving access to abilities like flight, teleportation, or invisibility.
They could choose from six elemental classes: wind, fire, ice, lightning, stone, and toxic, each with their own class gauntlet. Gauntlets could deal a primary attack called a spell and a secondary attack called a sorcery. Spells were limited by Mana, an energy pool shared with levitation. Elements from different gauntlets could be combined to make spells more powerful, provide crowd control effects, or reduce others, depending on strategic desires.
How much does it cost to copy spells in D&D?
The process of copying a spell takes 2 hours and costs 50 gp per level. This cost includes material components and fine inks needed to master the spell. Once the cost is paid, the spell can be prepared like any other spell. If copying from a spell scroll, the copier must succeed on an Intelligence (Arcana) check with a DC equal to 10 + the spell’s level. If the check succeeds, the spell is successfully copied, and if it fails, the spell scroll is destroyed.
How much gold to copy spells in 5e?
A fee of 10 gold may be paid in order to transfer spells from one book to another. Alternatively, each book may be sold for one hour per spell level, with the proceeds being used to finance the acquisition of the spells in question.
How much does a Level 3 spell scroll cost?
A scroll is a written spell or collection of spells that can only be used once. The price of a scroll is determined by the level of the spell, the creator’s caster level, and 25 gp. If the scroll has a material component cost, it is added to the base price and cost to create.
A scroll is a heavy sheet of fine vellum or high-quality paper, with an area of 8-1/2 inches wide and 11 inches long. It is reinforced at the top and bottom with leather strips slightly longer than the sheet’s width. Scrolls holding more than one spell have the same width but are an extra foot or so long for each additional spell. Scrolls that hold three or more spells are usually fitted with reinforcing rods at each end.
To protect the scroll from wrinkling or tearing, it is rolled up from both ends to form a double cylinder. The scroll is placed in a tube of ivory, jade, leather, metal, or wood, and most scroll cases are inscribed with magic symbols that often identify the owner or the spells stored on the scrolls inside.
How much does a DnD book cost?
Wizards of the Coast has announced a price increase for physical Dungeon and Dragons books, starting with the upcoming sourcebook Bigby Presents: Glory to the Giants. Starting from $59. 95, the books will be priced 20 more than $49. 95, marking the first price increase in nine years. The change is due to rising costs associated with creating new books and ensuring future projects are of the highest quality. The price change will not affect physical books released prior to the expansion or digital versions of sourcebooks, which will retain their current MSRPs.
How long does it take to make a level 1 spell scroll?
Scribing a spell scroll is a reliable and time-consuming task, as it requires preparation of the spell and proficiency in the Arcana skill. The process can take anywhere from 1 day to 48 workweeks and costs between 15 and 250, 000 gp. Each day spent scribing a spell is considered a workweek, with a total of 8 hours spent on it. The number of days allowed for breaks is not to be consecutive, but should not exceed twice the required time.
Scribing down spell scrolls can be a light activity, allowing for more time for other activities. For example, a Pact of the Tome Warlock with the Aspect of the Moon Invocation can be done in two hours during a long rest, or eight hours for a Pact of the Tome Warlock with the Aspect of the Moon Invocation, which can free up more time for adventuring. Overall, scribing a spell scroll is a valuable skill that can be done independently or with the help of a skilled Arcana skill.
Why are D and D books so expensive?
A DnD book is the product of numerous contributors, as evidenced by the credits list for the Players’ Handbook. The extensive list of contributors to this publication demonstrates the significant input from numerous individuals, exceeding the scope of the production process.
How much can you sell a spell scroll for?
The text posits that scrolls are sold at a value of 100 +50 per level above the first, with varying levels of 100, 150, 200, 250, and 300 on the selling and repairing table.
How much do spell books sell for D&D?
Spell books are expensive, with wizards paying 50 gp per page for materials and preparation, and 100 gp per page for traveling spell books. Each spell requires a number of pages equal to its level plus 0-5 additional pages, which can vary for each wizard due to differences in handwriting and notations. No spell book can have more than 100 pages, no ordinary non-magical scroll more than 25, and no traveling spell book more than 50.
At best, a spell book filled with 9th-level spells could only hold 11 spells (99 pages), with only one blank page for a magical protection. This book is likely to be filled before 11 spells have been entered.
How much does a spell cost in D&D?
The cost of a spell can be compared to modern currency, with 1 c. p. equaling $1, 1 s. p. equaling $10, and 1 g. p. equaling $100. Levels of spells can range from 1 to 7th level, with a 1st level spell costing around $1, 000, 90 g. p. for a 3rd level spell almost $10, 000, 250 g. p. for a 5th level spell around $25, 000, and 490 g. p. for a 7th level spell almost $50, 000. Instant global and planar travel costs vary, with teleportation circles costing around $35, 500, teleporting without a circle almost $50, 000, and opening portals via the Gate spell costing around $131, 000. Rich people can cheat death with spells like Raise Dead, Clone, and True Resurrection, costing over $5 million.
📹 Fixing D&D’s Magic Item Pricing
D&D 5e’s magic item pricing has always annoyed me, so I thought it was finally time to do something to fix it! Check out today’s …
Fun fact about items not being balanced between tiers: according to the DMG, dragon scale mail should cost around 5001-50000 GP, while a staff of the python likely costs around 101-500 GP: but dragon scale mail is about as good as nonmagical half plate and would only help if the resistance ever came up, while the staff of the python gives you an immortal ally that does a ton of damage: the only way it can die is if the enemies can do 60 damage in a single round before you can use your action and bonus action to de-summon and re-summon it, which they will not be able to do until around level 4 or 5 at minimum, otherwise players would be getting instakilled Who even designed these items???? 50000 GP for resistance to one damage type instead of the AC boost you’d get from other armor of the tier? 100 GP for IMMORTAL MURDER SNAKE?
This has been among my least favorite aspects of 5e as well. It’s symptomatic of a bigger problem with 5e being a bit too obsessed with itself. It’s afraid of doing incremental bonuses in favor of advantage/disadvantage, afraid of being anything beyond completely simple, the DMG focuses on completely asinine content, feats and magic items were supposed to be significant deals that the DM had careful control over yet then monster statblocks at higher levels just assume you have magic items or specialized means to deal with them. 5e’s bounded accuracy also makes upgrades to AC really potent. Magic armor is one rarity tier higher than weapons. Yet, shields are equal to weapons, despite providing the same bonus. And someone who’s played as and had players who’ve used high-AC builds, it’s very easy to become nearly invulnerable against anything other than super higher tier monsters. The dichotomy can get so bad that, even with bounded accuracy, you run into the situation where for a monster to hit you, it’d have to be a guaranteed hit on the rest of your party.
I would even add to that: PF2e has very clear and concise rules on pretty much everything which leaves little room for vagueness. Also this way it gets rid of inconsistent homebrew rulings (because last sessions those rules the GM made up on the fly are now different or nobody remembers their ruling and so on). People might consider this as a negative but to be fair: Beyond the veil of maybe a bit more rules chunk you can find an awesome system in PF2E. At first glance it might seem like that overly complicated system but I assure you it isn’t.
I’ve literally gotten into debates with people who say 5e’s lack of item economy is good because then you can make shit up for the players to buy yourself without strong-arming them into tying item economy into character advancement. When I asked for hard examples for what you could do, the responses I got were, no joke, airship flights, arming the kings military, and building an orphanage. Yes, the answers for what DMs should homebrew themselves to give players an excuse to spend their gold without magic item prices, is transport and what’s essentially a kingdom building system. At what point are players going to realise this is the reason why DMs are starting to burn out on 5e and go to crunchier systems with more back-end support?
Oh man, I completely agree with you on this. I really hate how some pricing can be in D&D especially for magic items. I thankfully don’t run into this problem as much anymore since I’ve come to realize players don’t “need” magic items, but when I was fresh off the bat dming I’ve made that mistake of making them super accessible. I can understand what they were probly thinking with the pricing table but the disparity is fucking massive. Something nice and static like what pathfinder has could be a huge help. Especially if you use that as a basis when when trying to figure out how much it would cost in your own setting. Be easier to judge how much you would bump up or lower the price.
This is something Xanathar’s Guide to Everything fixes… a bit. There is a downtime activity called “Buying and Selling Magical Items”. In there, you can spend time and gold to both find and buy a magical item, and at the end, roll a Persuasion check to find the item, with a +1 bonuses for both weeks and 100GP spent on the search. If the player is seeking for a specific item, the level of the item fixes the DC of the challenge (10 for common, 15 for uncommon and so). Depending of the result, you either find the item you are looking for or a different item that it is rolled in the DMG item table. After finding it, you just need to roll the dice and make the calculations based around the rarity of the item, so for example, a uncomnmon item would cost 1d6 X 100, so between 100 and 600 GP. There are also complications that give hooks for small adventures, like a rival gang stealing the item or the item being cursed by a god. What makes me angry about it is that it is a sound system. There is variation on it, the prices aren’t fixed so you can justify a high roll with availability or a low roll with a scam, but then I ask myself… Why is this on a suplementary book instead of the Dungeon Master’s Guide or fuck, even the Core Rulebook? This system (as well as many others that were added in Xanathar’s, like Tool Usage) could be put on 5e’s basic ruling, answering some really important questions, but it is locked behind a specific book that you need to buy. And it’s not like PF2e that “locks” variations of the rules behind the GMG, but rather options that could aid any campaign.
Honestly the thing about the discount is like, saying it’s 700 and giving them a 10% discount is the same as saying it was 630 and not giving them a discount, because there’s nothing saying it has to be 700, in Pathfinder’s case, saying it’s 30 when it should be 35 has a tangible objective benefit cause the rules say that item costs 35, so both you and the players know for sure that this is discounted, it’s not arbitrary
This has been my biggest gripe with 5e as well (other than some really awkward lore shifts from the old) coming from 3.5e and pathfinder 1e, seeing how much better it was handled in older editions compared to the present just baffles me. I like 5e, I still think it’s overall my preferred system, but this is one stinker of an issue it has.
I don’t like magic shops in my games ( starfinder is a bit different as the whole setting is a corporate dystopia with God’s and dragons running corporations) the most I’ve done is had players seek out casters to have consignment work or during a planescape campaign I had a roving band of bariuar that would hold swap meets/auctions every few months, that idea I really enjoyed, it gave me better control over what the players spent their money on and I was able to throw in a few items that were cool or useful that the pcs wouldn’t normally consider but since they had gold burning holes in their pockets it worked out really well)
I think it’s important to not give excuses for 5E in this regard, as I used to often give the excuse that you can always homebrew to fix these problems For being such a large TTRPG, with years of experience in design, they still manage to have issues such as these fall upon the DM’s hands. As Nonat brings up they have these tables for gems and artwork, it’s honestly incredible how these tables got prioritized over the rest. it’s a great example that 5E has an illusion of simplicity, especially for the DM The more work the system does for your specific game, the better the system is – I’m really glad I’ve switched to Pathfinder 2e last months
It’s obvious that they wanted 5e to get away from “the magic shop mentality”. I understand that many DM’s don’t want magic items to be bought and sold. However, not providing support for DM’s that do want magic item shops is stupid. Especially when they have Eberron as a campaign setting. Eberron specifically has magic item shops. One of the dragonmarked house specifically creates and sells magic items. What’s more, items in the same category have huge differences in effect. That’s what comes from only having five categories. 20 levels gives a lot more flexibility.
Dude I’m currently having this exact problem, I’m running a west marches style campaign for Undermountain and I have like 8 active players and a few less active ones and I have had such an issue with pricing these things. I’ve been retconning prices constantly and blaming the economy lmao. When I don’t know the price off the cuff I just say it’s not in stock and spend like an hour post session debating price points and it’s exhausting
Subtract the lower level from the upper level to get your difference. Roll a percentile. Multiply the difference by the percentile to get your variant price. Add the lower level to the variant price to get the total price. Kaboom, you have a crazy random price. Why does a +1 shortsword cost 4500 today when it costed 595 last week? Cause your magic item shop owner is craaaaaaayyyyyyzy
Yeah, this is one thing that REALLY irks me about 5e. A lack of actual item prices (which they had in previous editions) has knock-on effects for the encounter system because the DMG/XGTE doesn’t give you any guidance as to which items are appropriate for which character levels, so you could very easily make your party too strong for monsters and you wouldn’t know it. 5e seems to go out of its way to give DMs more work than they should be doing. 5e as a rules system feels like the house from Money Pit. It’s an attractive house from the outside, but then you discover there’s no plumbing or electricity in the house and now you, as a new home owner, are meant to add it to the house yourself instead of having the builders put it in in the first place.
I 1000% agree with this, D&D 5e’s Guidelines on Magic Items is whack. Even after releasing the Revised Guidelines in Xanathar’s Guide to Everything this is still a constant problem. Its still just a little table that tells you a rarity value and a random price range of…say for an Uncommon Item 1d6 x 100 GP, but because magic items are so random in terms of power even among their own rarity its not always accurate. You get an item that gives you permanent flight or puts your Strength Score to 19 (In a game where ASIs are very slow to get) for as low as 100 GP. Its wild. This also extends to Crafting Magic Items, even the updated guidelines for that in Xanthar’s Guide aren’t concreate enough. It doesn’t give specific details on how to obtain formulas, it doesn’t clarify if crafting the item requires the base cost of the original item plus added magical aspects, it doesn’t have level restrictions or any amount of Tool or Arcana dice rolls related to increasing or decreasing the time to craft them. This has actually led to moments where the crafting economy doesn’t make a ton of sense, because if you’re following the crafting table’s numbers…lets say its a Common Magic item like Smoldering Plate Armor, because the table nor guidelines doesn’t state you add the cost of Plate armor to the crafting process nor does it say you need the base armor itself, you can just craft Smoldering Plate Armor (After you get the Formula & Exotic Material) for 50 GP whereas regular Plate cost 1500 GP.
I can tell you why DnD ended up that way (I think at least). In previous edditions, PCs carried a ton of magic items, and it got very complicated very quickly, lots of stuff to remember. So Wizards wanted to do away with the magic shop, make magic items something more unique that you found as part of your quests, or bought at a high end auctions. So the price list got so little attention, because you weren’t meant to buy the items. Each item does not have a price, because that would imply you could buy it. The problem is, a large segment of the player base still want to play with a magic shop, it is the most meaningful way for them to spend all that gold they find and earn, because it is the most impactful on gameplay. And yes, the balancing is completely out the window, even though I would take an animated shield over boots of speed on quite a few characters, so not the best example. But broom of flying being uncommon is ridiculous.
oh man when you said “there can’t be tables for all items” my mind instantly went to the 3.5 and pathfinder 1e games I currently play in because item prices there are incredibly detailed and narrow. Like there’s formulas for what a weapon, a scroll or armor has to cost. Just to give an example, you want a mithral full plate +2 that also is glamered? Well, full plate is 1,5k gp, making it out of mithral adds the heavy armor pricing for that material so that’s another 9k, add 150gp for it being a masterwork (which is required for it being enchanted) and a further 4k gp for the +2 enchantment and lastly a base 2.7k for the glamered enchantment, bringing you to a total of 17,35k gp in cost for that item. Like pathfinder 2e seems to be the halfway point between 5e and 3.5/pathfinder 1e which is pretty neat since as a GM that had multiple newbies join my 1e campaign at level 5+ these ultra detailed lists are as intimidating as they are helpful. You can go overboard with the details and the earlier editions of the game are very much in that category of bloatedness, especially if we’re getting into the “making it up on the spot” list – unless you are very well organized and have all these tables infront of you then looking up prices for items becomes a major part of every shopping trip. In 2e you just go “ah, you want these runes? Here’s the pricing for that, enjoy”. In 1e it’s more like “You want X enchantments? Okay, so these are equivalent to a weapon enhancement bonus of Y, except for these two because they for some reason have a fixed cost instead so lemme bust out my calculator real quick”.
Yes PF2’s magic item system is simple, but it kinda destroys the purpose of magic by its simplicity. From my experience, magic in PF2 works like stickers you can pull and put on any items. Where is the magic in that? where is the mystery, the charm? I feel like they sacrificed the literary aspect of magic for simplicity’s sake. The system makes magic mundane, not special.
The lack of pricing of magic items in 5e (when price and power were explicit in 4e) is obviously to stop exactly what your table was doing: straight up buying magic items from a catalog. That’s just horrible, childish role-playing. It’s hilarious that your problem with the situation was that WotC doesn’t make that easy. Worse, it’s not necessary. All you have to do is say “You ask about items of magical power… The sage Halbern has heard of wondrous of magical speed in the possession of the evil knight Sir Waverick of Carno. He is said to head the raiders who trouble the coast of Plass.” If they don’t like that, given them another one until they bite. Adventure hooks should be about both the treasure and the conflict the heroes will encounter. Now just deduct the value of the boots from the treasure you’d otherwise award, and you’ve “pseudo-sold” the party a magic item without handing them a Sears Christmas Wish Book. Yes, you need pricing for this, so use the prices in 4e.
Xanathar’a Guide to Everything just had a better table for magic item prices and it works way better and fixes the ranges But then some DMs think the prices in Xanathar’s are too high, but I personally don’t think they are These prices are as follows: Common – (1d6 + 1 ) x 10 gp or 20-70 gp Uncommon – 1d6 x 100 gp or 100-600 gp Rare – 2d10 x 1000 gp or 2,000-20,000 gp, but it’s weighted on 11,000 if you wanted to default to that Very Rare – (1d4 + 1) x 10,000 gp or 20,000 – 50,000 gp Legendary – 2d6 x 25,000 gp or 50,000 – 300,000 gp weighted on 175,000 gp Great table, it’s in Xanathars Guide to Everything under “downtime activities,” subsection “buying magic items” But what I’ve done is made a shop where the inventory reflects the commonality of items. They are hard pressed to find a major very rare at this store, and more likely to see commons and maybe 1 uncommon, with the rare… rare item, and the once in a life time very rare item. This store does not sell legendary items ever. That’s something they strictly have to find. Every day the shop has 3 items to choose from and the party can choose 1 to purchase. I haven’t play tested this yet but I’ll be introducing them to the store in session 1 and hopefully this system works, it uses the prices from Xanathars that I mentioned
The article is not about pricing or about magic items. It is about vague vs. exactly ruling. I play both: DnD (DM) and Pathfinder 2E (player) and both has its benefits. No reason to rant here. That ist the same like a DnD fandboys would rant about all the narrow rulings in PF2E. Fanboy-blabla! I really like your PF2E content, but this here…? A DnD rant about its pricing of magic items? Really?
I think Wizards screwed themselves. They have magical creatures and players who can cast spells. Get enough magic casting people in a single location and some would start making magical items to make their lives easier. Others would open up universities/colleges/cults (need to include warlocks and druids!) to teach magic. Some of the teachers and students would make magical items to make things easier on themselves…. Some of those places will be well known… adventurers, merchants, nobles, royalty, dragons, extra-planar entities would go to these places looking for magic items to make their lives easier. These lazy gits would realize it’s easier to sell temporary magic items to them, even if its forbidden, for exorbitant prices in order to live lives of idle luxury. Guess what, they now they have created a magic item market!!!! So, what was the logic WotC used?
It is not simplification, it is a value scale reference. The intention is to remove Gold from a PC power level by making magic items not purchasable with Gold, at all. It is explicitly stated somewhere, I know because I showed it to my DM in person during a Curse of Strad game. This is a game design choice not a simulation choice(Pathfinder made a different choice to have Gold be part of a Character’s power level). If anything the value should not of been listed because rarity does not equal power. Rarity is the chance to be found, power is when it should be possible to find, whish there was a power rating, not that WotC has a good record in rating the power level of things…
Why are DMs even allowing players to buy magic items? Magic items should be found in my opinion. Only reason you need a “cost” is to sell the item. But in 5e what’s the point of having treasure? In old D&D gold went to experience points, magic items were found and had immense impact on your character and gold would be used to make you own magic items. DO yourself a favor and play OSE and tweak as needed.
It’s very clear to me that in DND 5e, you are not supposed to buy or sell magic items from a catalog. I don’t think that table is in there to help you sell magic items. It’s there to give you a suggestion as to how valuable the magic items are to society and ultimately is a way to contextualize the value of a gold piece for roleplay purposes. The tables of gems and art are not for buying and selling. They are there for delivering gold to the players through a medium other than gold… And by dedicating so many tables to it, they are telling the reader that “this is a key part of our vision of the game” and by including a little table for magic items value and keeping it vague, they are telling you “this is NOT a key part of our vision of the game”. DND 5e’s biggest problem is that people treat it like a “generic” RPG system that can be tweaked and hacked into any setting, any genre, any theme, and any style of RPG experience. But it’s not designed that way. And to be fair, I’m not saying DND 5e is even well designed. But I do think that many complaints of DND 5e accuse it of being poorly designed when it’s really that they want to do something that DND 5e isn’t designed to do.
In your example is the dm at fault and not the system. At level 10 in high fantasy a character should only have 6 magic items, 5 uncommon and 1 rare. Still the price range is far to big to be easy to handle but magic items should be rare. Even a Magic shop should not have more then maybe 5-7 items at the time and thats something you can prepare quite well and come up with a fitting price. The biggest problem is that the rarity is in 6 stages and not in 21(?) like pathfinder2e. Thats something they really should change.
5e monsters CR are set against same level players, with no magic items. Adding magic items makes my work as a GM harder to balance every battle. So I have a LOW magic item setting. When they find something magical, it is a BIG deal, and they prize them more for it. This also let’s me pick and choose the items they will find, so I know how it will affect battles. tosses box of magic items my players will never find on the fires of sacrifice
Why would pirate towns have expensive goods? It would be the opposite. Pirates are in a hurry to offload their goods, they aren’t merchants they don’t have time or the skill for negotiation and the goods are by the nature of being stolen, less desirable than the same goods that are not stolen. Pirates sell cheap.
I do think D&D should have prices for the items, but one think I like better than in PF is tables in general. Do I need 10 tables for artwork and gems? No. Do I want them? Well, now that you mention it, yes. I mostly miss the random encounter tables by biomes from PF1e, but I do see a critical lack of tables in general in 2e.
A lot of 5e hate in this comment section lol. Yeah magic item pricing and management is a nightmare in 5e but it’s just about the only thing that is imo. I think the a lot of 5e instinct is to intentionally leave things vague to spur creativity and it works wonders in other places! Just not here lol.
Actually this prices are more reference for the crafting system and selling. I cant remember exact passage but it is said that the magic shop don’t exist just like that, and if you really want to sell or buy some role playing and creating must be done – finding a secret shop, doin some favor quests, paying someone for find sellers/byuers and than wait – days and months, and some complications may pop out – like fake item, thieves, fraud organizer and stuff, and even not every item will be fo sale – there are even a table of chance with rolled dice. This whole thing is a quest of it’s own and not just a random shop in the middle of nowhere out any logic stocked with resourses. So for me this case is bad DM job not failure of the system.
dnd 5e is built off of the idea that magic items are found inside the game instead of there being a magic item economy, this is why they were lazy to implement proper pricing for items, the fact the gm controls the hand out of magic items allows the designers to get away with powerful magic items, generally, i agree with you on the hand that lack of magic item economy is a problem but not for the reasons you have, I find the lack of economy kinda makes gold useless, basically like shiny rocks, anyway, that’s my points lolz
it is dumb that there are any tables for artwork and gems. “You find 200gold worth of art and gems.” The 99 out of 100 players are not going to ask for any details about them. I think this stuff is there because in the old days treasure was the purpose to do anything, the value of treasure use to be how your got exp. That concept died in 2nd edition I think.
My interpretation and how I run Magic Items in my 5e games is that for the most part there is no market for them (outside of Healing Potions, which I make cheaper). Magic items aren’t needed in 5e in the first place; they’re special rewards and power boosts for adventuring, not something you pick up down at the local market. The guidelines are useful for those rare moments they find an item for sale, or when they try to sell something, then the non-standard pricing system works because they’re rare enough that fixed prices aren’t established. I’ve only seen problems come out from giving players full access to an open market to buy whatever item they want.
Just to add onto this, with the exception of platinum coins, any other type of coin other than gold has no real value technically speaking. Just think of how many times the reward for a quest is a sum of 50 silver or even electrum for that matter. The fact that the only reward that’s both expected and really has any value is gold, this leads to an inflation of the party having more than enough money to buy anything they want. Let me back up a little and clarify that when I mean that gold is essentially the only real coin of value, it’s that nearly everything you can get in the equipment section outside of some small knick knacks and ammo, is going to cost some amount of gold. Even a freaking Dagger costs 2gp in order to buy it. That’s just a regular Dagger, something you’d expect any commoner with a few silvers or coppers to rub together could get for self defense. A way you could fix that is to drop the normal regular items’ prices down a coin value, from gp to sp and sp to cp, but leave magic items in general with a gp price. This would prevent having an influx of magic items and it would allow the other types of currency to shine other than gold and platinum.
I’d say the 5e is more realistic in their pricing than Pathfinder is. D&D assumes most magic items are discovered artifacts that you would not be able to buy or sell in a simple shop. A shop only really works if it can sell items, often, to random passerbys. Magic items are expensive to the point that the only buyers or sellers would be other adventurers, factions, wealthy collectors, or governments. Buying or selling magic items would be more akin to dealing with real estate in our world. You’d have to work with brokers and appraisers, so expect fees on top of the price. The market value would be widely variable by location and haggling would be expected. A wide range of possible prices makes sense depending on supply/demand and location. Fixed prices on magic items only make sense if your dealing with some sort of international Guild or Brokerage system. Magic Shops only makes sense if magical crafting is a common profession that almost anyone could learn. At that point the pricing would need an overhaul because such items would be a lot cheaper in that setting.
As someone who started in 3.5 I was bothered to the depths of my soul because of this, and I spent weeks, if not months, searching on forums and on the internet for guidelines on pricing. I still dislike it because it sounds like lazy design, let DMs decide is the mantra of 5e, and if it sounded liberating in the beginning it got to a point that got so tired of having to make things up that I quit 5e and got back to developing my own system.
I hate this. The fact that all magic items don’t have their own price and level in 5e is not simplification. It is lazy hand waiving. There are quite a few things that are just left to dm discretion. I’m not saying they should have rulings and details for all possible instances butt it a bit less vague would be nice.
When 5e first came out I really enjoyed it. I will say its one of the easiest to learn system. But after a little time I realised this is my least favourite version of dnd. To me even 4e ended up being better than 5e. Pf1 started good but its issue now is its too big with splat books galore. This is when all systems fall but 5e is already at a disadvantage to everything else atm
One of the worst things about the system. Table makes no sense because the rarities also don’t line up well. You could pay 1k for a mango that magically tastes like avocado and half that for something that might as well eat enemy souls and give you their special moves. Wait, most monsters in 5e don’t have any special moves so that would be useless. Fair enough then.
I 100% agree. I remember trying to run a DND5e oneshot for Level 7 Adventurers as a somewhat experienced GM to Pathfinder1e, incredibly frustrating thing at first when I was used to relatively fixed magic item prices that I could fiddle with. Out of frustration I just said to have 1 rare and 2 uncommon magic items, simply because the price ranges were super wide. I can understand Why they have large price ranges but most of the time, it’s better if there is a Set price for items, or at least have prices for Magic armor/weapons and potions that have a set price, since those are the most common magic items simply because they have the most variety (like maybe Armour/Weapon cost +X amount for +Y enhancement).
One thing I’ve learned after playing in and GMing both D&D 5e and Pathfinder 2e, is 5e is very much designed as a low to middle fantasy setting, whereas Pathfinder is primarily a high to epic high fantasy setting, and if you want to do the opposite thing in either edition, it’s gonna take some work. 2e however, gives you some pretty neat(though not perfect) tools to do that, like automatic bonus progression and proficiency without level to name the big ones, but 5e has….more magic items?
Yep, magic items pricing is the second biggest pain in the 5E. Third biggest gripe is lack of penality for getting KO’ed every turn, which some groups use as part of their strategy. Finally my biggest gripe is lack of OGL, so getting digital materials and sharing those with players is quickly getting very expensive, especially if you want concise place like Nethys. Otherwise the system is pretty nice, just start at level 3 😉
Yeah the pricing is all over the place XD When i’m gming i use magic item shops, but instead of rolling i for generally lower price if they’re in a place with plentiful magical resources ( like cold resistance gear being cheaper on frost areas ) and mostly items you can buy are uncommon and some rares, nothing over it
I know of a few GMs who would just roll to see what it cost. Example: item cost 501 to 5000 gp, roll a d10 and multiply by 500, done. These guys would also do the same with monster and npc hit point. If monster had 8d12, they would roll a d12 and multiply by 8. That’s how we got a 40hp red dragon. 40HD, rolled a 1.
My answer to your question boils down to designers looking at more abstract, lower-magic game systems, and deciding that that would be the default assumption for their game. Unfortunately, they also decided it was in their best interest to force that core assumption on players and DMs by deliberately under-designing how magic and economics interact within the baseline game system. And because the game is meant to be played without access to an abundance of magic items as a real balance factor to high-level play, the game becomes quite unstable after 14th level.
It is so awful! We are playing with a first-time DM using a pre-written adventure. We have gotten little gold or treasure and then came to a Magic Shop where he added in some potions for us to shop for. Because of the prices he made up using the official guidelines even the cheapest item was more than any single character could afford and even if everybody pooled our money together we could barely buy a single-use consumable. Really sucks out the motivation to adventure when there is no rewards for doing so. One of my biggest gripes is that the Cloak Of Protection is uncommon and the Ring Of Resistance is rare when they do the EXACT SAME THING! Why would anyone ever buy the ring which will be vaguely more expensive???
I think my biggest issue with 5e as a whole is summed up with that. Inconsistency. I’ve always felt that with the items and their extremely loose guidelines with lots of people saying “you can just make it up yourself.” Thanks, that’s GM’ing already though, I can make up new numbers anyways it’s just effort foisted onto the GM for no apparent reason other than they didn’t want to do it. The VERY same could be said with spells, seriously go look up how many spells on a given spell list are concentration and then start comparing some and it’s insane the difference in power there. Seeing as concentration was done for “balance” there are just clear winners and losers in those categories… also god forbid you have twinned of certain ones because it feels illogical and with certain spells can be broken.
I like both systems! Although I agree that Pathfinder 2e has a number of tools to help the DM orient themselves better while playing, when it comes to D&D there is a major difference in how magic items interact with the game. For instance, magic items are not accounted for in their bounded accuracy system, characters are meant to be able to deal with everything without any of that (not even feats are ‘meant’ to be there, they’re an optional rule). So keeping everything vague is supposed to translate the idea that these items are not meant to be sold anywhere, they’re an optional type of treasure, and if your campaign does feature them heavilly you have to know that they are intrinsically unbalanced, it’s an objective power up that was not accounted for in the encounter building system, and having their ranges makes it so you can design your own guidelines for pricing. Xanathar’s Guide to Everything has some more guidelines to help you in that regard. Pathfinder 2e, on the other hand, requires characters to own magic items in order not to fall behind the system design. The bonus increments are part of the game and encounter building falls apart if you don’t take that into account, to a point that the Gamemastery Guide gives you rules on how to deal with a campaign with no magic items. So having the magic items in the Corerulebook is pivotal, having prices and a very clear outline of how to distribute magical gear is key to convey to the player that their intentions are for that to be an active part of the game.
There are so many things in 5th edition that don’t feel… complete… treasury is one thing, but monster encounters can be very basic… for example dragons… in D&D 5th edition, they basically JUST have raw generic stats and abilities across the dragon line… at least with Pathfinder, it provides them with spells and ways to shapechange themselves for interesting ways to deal with adventurers within or outside of their lair that isn’t immediately encounter-focused…
I was in a 5e game that shared a similar philosophy as your game. The GM, said that any item (homebrew included) was possible to get in this particular elven city because “their technology is better” (it was a Wakanda type deal because “void metal” is the most powerful metal and that only elf Kings can use it with their space rippy time shit). It was awkward to ask the GM every 2 episodes how much is an uncommon magical item and I would get ranges of 2000-49k gp for items like spell Storing rings, rings of mind shielding, etc. Not a fun ordeal. I had a lot of problems with the game, but going broke over item priced is definitely one of them.
Man, trust me, you haven’t even scratched the surface of the problem with buying magic weapons in 5e is. I’ve never run into the problem of not knowing how much an item costs, because so far my experience with shopping for magic items in 5e has been: it’s either priced at maximum value or it is not available in the campaign. My personal experience revolves around playing in WotC published adventures. So far, the only campaign in which I was able to shop for magic items was Dragon Heist. And the reason is because it was Waterdeep, one of the greatest cities in the Sword Coast. And even then, apparently the book prices magic items based on their max value. We bought a Portable Hole, a rare item, for 5k gold. A Bag of Holding, an uncommon item, was 500 gold. It is literally the maximum price in the chart. So yeah, I’ve never run into the problem of deciding how much an item costs, because apparently every magic item in an officially published campaign, if there are any being sold at all, costs max value. Basically, the way it looks you are not meant to be able to buy magic items. You find them in adventures and sell them for gold if you don’t want them (IF you can find a buyer that is gonna pay you what the item is worth).
5e wasn’t designed with generous magic item gifting in place, or any magic items at all. That’s why they have weird pricing, that’s why they are in the DMG rather than the players handbook, that’s why most monsters don’t have items listed. Magic Items, even +1 weapons and potions beyond 2d4+2 healing potions, break the game down. You’re expected to have the casters be able to slap Magic Weapon spells on Martials, and casters just handling everything for the party after a certain point. Certain Monsters CR are defiantly effected the “Resistance vs Non-Magical”. They aren’t designed to be taken down by Magic Weapons, they are designed to be taking more damage, and the Casters are the ones taking them out.
This is again an example of 5E trying to have its cake and eat it too. The game, very specifically, was designed not to have ‘magic item shops’, nor require characters to own magic items to keep progression going. And that’s an approach I rather like over 3.5/PF- more like Bilbo finding Sting, The Ring, & Mithril vs. MMO gear dumping. But they go and jam the prices in on the DMG because they figured, like flanking, some people would want it… and that’s no surprise when gold has little value and people are desperate for a gold sink.
the magic item system in 5e is defiantly one of the worst aspects of the game. Even scrolls are awful in the way they price skewed, going from very cheap to INSANELY expensive very quickly. Too many ‘good” magic items are way underpriced and many somewhat soso magic items (that used to be fairly cheap in previous editions and in Pathfinder) are stupidly expensive. And don’t get me started on alchemy, the way D&D 5e does alchemy and potions is mind boggling.
I think in 3.5 it was the price of the armor bonus squared plus constructions and material times 1000. So a +5 would be 5 squared so like 25k plus a few thousand. The problem was what do ya do late game when the enemies are dropping gear like crazy(cause their stats were based off having this magic). What value do the sell a 25k suit of armor in town thats economy is dwarfed by the value of a single magic item? In 4e that took it a step farther and said you could essentially smelt down items into the magic gear you wanted. This +2 sword of blank becomes a +2 ax of blank. It also had concrete prices for everything. It broke the fantasy for most people. 5e is vague because magic items should be hella hard to come by in 5e with bounded accuracy. The problem comes in two issues if you have a player base that wants to be dripping magical bling and you create a magical Walmart like you described then what do you do? If you don’t have a good price structure how do you convey fairness to players without creating your own? It was an over correction from 4e for sure, but I have played in games from most editions where players were dripping in swagged out gear. I think WotC should accept that the player base is not going to play in a low magic setting when most classes can cast spells and release a revised pricing guide for sure.
For me this really hits the nail on the head that bothers me greatly about 5e. It’s not about the system being simple, I love FATE and FATE accelerated. Imo 5e is actually in the middle between rules lite and rules crunchy. The problem I have is sometimes it feels like the game isn’t built around how people actually play the game, it’s built for some aliens who’ve never played older edition dnd. To assume players wouldn’t care about magic items, that players don’t want feats, that dms would love to run 8 to 10 encounters per long rest, just Flys completely in the face of how everyone I’ve ever known or seen plays dnd.
This is another circumstance with 5e where it tries to find a middle ground and I just don’t think it works. Either magic items have defined prices so you can go shopping in the magic mart (ala Pathfinder), or true magic items are only available via adventure and if you find a place that sells them it’s a plot point (ala 13th Age). 5e’s middle ground solution of giving price ranges but then no solid guidance or rules for setting those prices introduces a worst of both worlds situation. It’s a problem endemic to the system, imo, where it tries to find a crunchy/light middle ground and ends up not really satisfying either end of things.
I’ve played a little of 5e ages ago and for me two things stuck out. 1) There was not a lot of choice character wise. 2) Money is essentially useless. On the money side I came from 3.5 edition and Pathfinder 1e so money is used to buy magic items and tweek them and make them your own. In 5e I was told by some other DMs that the magic items are rewards and aren’t for buying any more. It has essentially meant that we played a game and instead of spending money on magic items we worked out how many rounds of ale we could by the population of the city instead. You are very right that Pathfinder 2e is great for having item levels and costs against items.
AD&D 2nd, D&D 3e and Pathfinder 1st edition did it well. All three included how to breakdown the cost for any item and the formulas to make new items. In my games, there are no shops that sell magic items specifically. It encourages the players to take those crafting feats. A wizard creating a magic sword can live for the better part of a year from the gain in gold from making that single magic item, so why would they make enough to fill a shop with them? Heroes and villains alike sometimes carry magic items created specifically for them as well. That makes the paladin in the party carrying that Holy Avenger +5 particularly powerful, but it is nothing more than a master crafted weapon in the hands of anyone else. That’s why so many are buried in tombs with their owner. That also makes weapons that have been passed from one champion to the next detect as really strong magic, but be nothing more than nearly-indestructible in the hands of the PC.
D&D 5e: You’re not supposed to buy magic items. Challenges are designed in function of PC’s not having any. If they have any, they can face greater challenges. Pathfinder 2e: You’re supposed to have a minimum of magic items per level. Challenges are designed in function of PCs having them. If they don’t have any, they’ll be weaker than they should be at their level. It’s a design choice.
Unlike you I really have lot of negative thoughts on 5e and don’t really like it despite running campaign on level 18 that started on level 1 :’D One of those things I think some people like and others dislike is that 5e math and abilities are designed in mind for parties without any magic items. So you can easily play low fantasy campaign or campaign where each of party members only has one item. But anytime you give party items their powers will increase even higher from expectation :’D
Personally, I think the pricing system actually works well for how 5e as a whole was designed. The idea behind 5e’s design was very much to give groups the foundation of a system that they could then easily customize to meet their preferences. Variable pricing for magic items fits well in this regard. Some groups like the magic items grow on trees style while others might say “sure, they may grow on trees but this is a desert world”. Did the system do this perfectly in all aspects? No, of course not. And naturally, you can still do variable pricing in any system if you want since ultimately the GM always has final say.
5e DOES NOT HAVE FIXED MAGIC ITEM PRICES AS A FEATURE, NOT A BUG. Magic items are completely optional. AD&D 1e and 2e didn’t have magic item prices either. And no one cared. Non-issue. This is more about having tables for every frickin thing. Uh, no. Strangely, having gone from 3.x to 5e I don’t care about the need for forensic accounting in my game.
I don’t think PF2 goes “the extra mile” for listing item prices. Yeah, it doesn’t make much sense that an item costs exactly the same all over the world, but such an insane price range as 500-5.000 is incredibly unhelpful to guess an “average” price. Especially if you want to make it consistent. Is the average price literally in the middle? Why not list it as 2750, with a note that says to add or subtract up to 2000 gold depending on circumstances?
Assigning prices to magic items isn’t homebrewing, it’s DM’s prerogative. It’s written that way so that you don’t get someone insisting that they have 4,169 gold and therefore they are entitled to buy a ring of protection. It’s not an oversight, it’s a deliberate design choice that is fully in line with the edition’s base philosophy: simple structure and limited rules allow for high adaptability and deep personalization. If you don’t personally click with that philosophy, I think that’s OK. But I do think that your DM is the source of your issue here; if this is coming up enough that it’s prompted a article, she has had enough warning to have systematized this for your table already, even if it’s as simple as saying everything is 1/2 the upper limit of its range.
I think that what dnd 5e has for the magic item gold/rarity is more for GMs that want to homebrew magic items and to give a certain amount of value for the effects. Normally what I do at my table, if a player asks me what about a +1 (insert weapon name here) and if they want just that with no additional benefits I have created a small table to go along with it. +1= 6 times the weapon original price (to make it more accessible to newer players and giving them an input); (a +1 weapon falls in the uncommon boundary) +2= is a direct skip to 20 times the weapon price (+2 is already a great increase, consider how much a +1 is in any check in Pathfinder even though it seems miniscule); +3= impossible i will let you find it eventually, or find a cooler weapon than what you’re using, but there’s no way I’m giving off a +3 that easily. Overall I agree though that some items in dnd are badly calculated, there’s a medium armor that’s 14+Dexterity modifier AC, and it’s a lower rarity than a +1 scale mail
Usually i just avoid having random shops that sell a lot of magic items. A few potions and scrolls maybe and if they’re really lucky my players can upgrade that +1 to a +2, but that’s it, really. I don’t like the idea of being able to just go and shop yourself more powerful. This powergain should be a reward of some sort in my opinion.
Great Work. I do allow my players to buy stuff at a MAJOR city. Usually 5 times book value and 50% book trade in. I have a robust Critical Hits and misses table and I have WEAPON item BREAKS on that table. Last adventure. My guys main fighter. Broke his +4 vorpal sword. he paid 230000 GP for on a Critical Miss and he rolled a 1 on a saving throw for it. ( I use the ANCIENT item saving throw chart 1st edition D&D.) It is great way to siphon gold!!!!!
I think this is a fairly complicated (read that as fun and interesting) topic to work through for any setting. I always like thinking through the economy of a setting because of how quickly disbelief will set in for me if things just don’t make any sense. I can’t have an adventuring party roll into a major city and drop more gold than the entire GDP of the region on items that are apparently available to the average merchant, but other items might only be owned by a king almost as a symbol of office and if somehow purchased at some fancy auction, should nearly bankrupt most nobles. In that light, I don’t think huge scaling of sums, from under 100gp right into 10s of thousands or even 100s of thousands are out of the question for the most powerful items in the game and I just think of them like towers, strongholds or large ships. How long do they take to build and how much power does owning one convey? Some magic items are absolutely on that tier but then sometimes have the additional value of they cannot be made any more. I guess that is a long-winded way to say I think exponential growth feels better when paired with exponential rarity.
Surprised to see that you were leaving PF2, but after reading your blog post, I definitely empathize everything you just said. I had my own journey with PF2, initially coming from 5e as I was so frustrated with it, and being amazed at all the modern innovations it had in terms of math and balance and player options. But yeah, it has a ton of bugbears – just as much as 5e did. The beauty with 5e is that it’s so loose that you can definitely still run a game with those bugbears, and homebrew or house rule stuff to fix the seams. But in PF2, you have to live with those bugbears. That martial caster disparity still exists in PF2, except casters suck because the spell slots system inherited from 3e sucked. And there’s just no way you can fix that, whether be it in PF2 or 5e because both use the same flawed spell slot system. And if you’re going to choose to play a broken system any way, why not pick the one that’s easier to run, and more fun? In any case I departed from PF2 too. I switched to D&D 4e, and I’m having a whale of a time. That system has its flaws and bugbears too, but I found it a nice middle ground where its flaws can be fixed because its math is loose just like 5e, and it was both fun and easy to run.
I use logic to price everything. That’s It. Of course that means knowing exactly what materials and distribution factors and processes go into the construction of everything. It means factoring in rarity of components in a given locale, the degree of elite status of its architect, mass-producibility, number of middle-men mark-ups… I know that sounds complicated but it isn’t done one item at a time. It’s all leveraged in a relational database. A lot of research went into it but that’s how I roll. I’ve been DM-ing for 43 years. It’s been a labor of love. Everything in my campaign worlds are deeply entrenched like this and the results are extremely immersive for myself and the players. P.S.: Just discovered this website! Love it! Subscribed!
0:01 “today we’re going to fix the economy.” I don’t hear any principals of economics in this article. Your criteria for setting prices are based on arbitrary game design and game mechanics rather than concepts like the value of labor, scarcity of resources, and supply and demand. Your prices don’t feel any more diegetic than the prices that the game designers set. Please rectify this false promise.