Is that really what people want to turn magic items into? Something you just buy at a shop in any town, and everyone can have?
Speaking just for my games: sure, everyone can have magical items; not everyone can have the cool, unique, special stuff I tailor for the campaign and the players though. A +1 longsword from Ye Olde Magick Shoppe is nice, but it's not the same as a +1 longsword with a great history and certainly not as interesting as Quicksilver, the consecrated blade that will be the doom of Deathfang, the undead werewolf that is terrorizing the county the PCs find themselves in - even if Quicksilver is just a +1 longsword against everyone other than Deathfang - and Quicksilver is not for sale (or at least not for coin). Maybe it's just me, but merely being hard to find doesn't really make an item interesting. Sure, it's more satisfying to delve through three libraries and seven tombs in order to find a magic ring than to simply slide a fat purse over a counter, but the real wonder will happen when coming across a ring the PCs never even heard of.
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Really? How does that work? I've been in plenty of high-level games with few or no magical items, and it never seems to be an issue.
I'll go out on a limb and say those games were properly prepared to work without the PCs being tricked out too much. However, that knife cuts both ways. Hoards of magical loot that would derail other campaigns can be just fine in one where the DM kept its effects in mind. I don't think this is a bigger concern than say, having an unbalanced party that isn't equipped to deal with certain types of challenges and will waltz through others with both hands tied behind their backs. In practice, "standard" or "normal" adventuring parties are as unusual as a white raven. It's almost always better to make adjustments for the players in front of you rather than following the book that assumes some kind of average group of characters.
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I have seen campaigns derailed by too few magical items, or specifically magical weapons. When you keep going up against things with resistance to non-magic weapons and the DM has been very stingy with them.
Gotta silver up. That is the very first thing I spend my first 100 gp on as a martial class is silvering up.
That is a gigantic issue. no magical items even by high level???? What???
Players like finding magic items, that is an important part of D&D, and DMs not handing them out at least to SOME extent are failing.
It's really a matter of taste. I was playing for a while with a bunch of my father's friends, all old-school low fantasy fans. They didn't like a lot of magic items around and I found I didn't much miss them. Tended to focus more on the characters that way. Some of the new crowd that cut their teeth on Witcher are the same way. Mechanically it's not that needed when you have most classes eventually having access to magical effects, or players just getting creative with their work-arounds. Probably best to announce that stylistic difference early on though, session 0 really.
Really? How does that work? I've been in plenty of high-level games with few or no magical items, and it never seems to be an issue.
That is a gigantic issue. no magical items even by high level???? What???
Players like finding magic items, that is an important part of D&D, and DMs not handing them out at least to SOME extent are failing.
Not at all. Magical items impact on a campaign in 2 negative ways:
1. The economy of the region can pushed be severely out of whack if players are buying and/or selling items they find, or get in the "Magic Items R Us Superstore". Consider the income of even a high end tradesman in a major city with a "relatively" high cost of living. What does he spend/earn in a day? The various source books put living expenses for a "comfortable" lifestyle at 2 GP per day. So let's do some math, based on that. Say the city is fairly affluent, and the average worker has a "Comfortable" existence. Say the city is big, by D&D standards, with a population of 10,000. If half the people in the city earn some kind of income, the daily GDP of the city is 5,000 X 2 = 10,000 GP / day. So exactly how many people are going to be buying/selling half the city's daily GDP to deal with a single Rare item?
2. As stated previously, there is many a magic item, even Uncommon ones, that can change a char from good to god-like. At that point, it is not the player's ability to maximize their char's innate abilities, but the power of the magical items they possess. In one campaign, I am playing a Halfling Scout Rogue. Goggles of Night would be a HUGE boon to this char, but the char does not even know such things exist, and I have to work really hard with light sources to operate at night or in dungeons. It is great, and makes me a better player.
Really? How does that work? I've been in plenty of high-level games with few or no magical items, and it never seems to be an issue.
That is a gigantic issue. no magical items even by high level???? What???
Players like finding magic items, that is an important part of D&D, and DMs not handing them out at least to SOME extent are failing.
Not at all. Magical items impact on a campaign in 2 negative ways:
1. The economy of the region can pushed be severely out of whack if players are buying and/or selling items they find, or get in the "Magic Items R Us Superstore". Consider the income of even a high end tradesman in a major city with a "relatively" high cost of living. What does he spend/earn in a day? The various source books put living expenses for a "comfortable" lifestyle at 2 GP per day. So let's do some math, based on that. Say the city is fairly affluent, and the average worker has a "Comfortable" existence. Say the city is big, by D&D standards, with a population of 10,000. If half the people in the city earn some kind of income, the daily GDP of the city is 5,000 X 2 = 10,000 GP / day. So exactly how many people are going to be buying/selling half the city's daily GDP to deal with a single Rare item?
2. As stated previously, there is many a magic item, even Uncommon ones, that can change a char from good to god-like. At that point, it is not the player's ability to maximize their char's innate abilities, but the power of the magical items they possess. In one campaign, I am playing a Halfling Scout Rogue. Goggles of Night would be a HUGE boon to this char, but the char does not even know such things exist, and I have to work really hard with light sources to operate at night or in dungeons. It is great, and makes me a better player.
1) Rares go between 500 and 5000 gp, with traders typically paying about half price to adventurers. In other words, the most expensive rares would require a trader to invest 2500, maybe 3000 gp and offer a potential profit of 2000 to 2500 gp. A city's GDP is quite a bit more than the sum of its workers' wages - a handful of the rich upper crust could easily be making as much as all those workers together, particularly since what's "comfortable" for a single adventurer is modest at best for a provider for a small family. For a potential profit of that order, a trader unable to raise the investment by himself would likely take out a loan and/or work together with others; even if they'd get just 20-25% of the profit in the end that's still a very good deal.
2) With all due respect, "maximizing a character's innate abilities" is not really the mark of a good player to me. Dealing effectively with challenges is (aside from the roleplaying part, obviously), and challenges don't have to be easy because of a few magical items. DMs challenge characters based on what they can do, not on what they can do innately alone. Besides, if Darkvision would matter so much it's not hard to believe a character would go looking for ways to handle working in darkness more conveniently (especially since light is a dead giveaway of someone being present) or if available have a companion cast it on them (Darkvision is a 2nd level spell, lasts 8 hours without concentration, and is available to 5 different classes). I'm very interested in hearing what "working really hard" entails in this scenario though.
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Really? How does that work? I've been in plenty of high-level games with few or no magical items, and it never seems to be an issue.
That is a gigantic issue. no magical items even by high level???? What???
Players like finding magic items, that is an important part of D&D, and DMs not handing them out at least to SOME extent are failing.
Not at all. Magical items impact on a campaign in 2 negative ways:
1. The economy of the region can pushed be severely out of whack if players are buying and/or selling items they find, or get in the "Magic Items R Us Superstore". Consider the income of even a high end tradesman in a major city with a "relatively" high cost of living. What does he spend/earn in a day? The various source books put living expenses for a "comfortable" lifestyle at 2 GP per day. So let's do some math, based on that. Say the city is fairly affluent, and the average worker has a "Comfortable" existence. Say the city is big, by D&D standards, with a population of 10,000. If half the people in the city earn some kind of income, the daily GDP of the city is 5,000 X 2 = 10,000 GP / day. So exactly how many people are going to be buying/selling half the city's daily GDP to deal with a single Rare item?
2. As stated previously, there is many a magic item, even Uncommon ones, that can change a char from good to god-like. At that point, it is not the player's ability to maximize their char's innate abilities, but the power of the magical items they possess. In one campaign, I am playing a Halfling Scout Rogue. Goggles of Night would be a HUGE boon to this char, but the char does not even know such things exist, and I have to work really hard with light sources to operate at night or in dungeons. It is great, and makes me a better player.
1) Rares go between 500 and 5000 gp, with traders typically paying about half price to adventurers. In other words, the most expensive rares would require a trader to invest 2500, maybe 3000 gp and offer a potential profit of 2000 to 2500 gp. A city's GDP is quite a bit more than the sum of its workers' wages - a handful of the rich upper crust could easily be making as much as all those workers together, particularly since what's "comfortable" for a single adventurer is modest at best for a provider for a small family. For a potential profit of that order, a trader unable to raise the investment by himself would likely take out a loan and/or work together with others; even if they'd get just 20-25% of the profit in the end that's still a very good deal.
2) With all due respect, "maximizing a character's innate abilities" is not really the mark of a good player to me. Dealing effectively with challenges is (aside from the roleplaying part, obviously), and challenges don't have to be easy because of a few magical items. DMs challenge characters based on what they can do, not on what they can do innately alone. Besides, if Darkvision would matter so much it's not hard to believe a character would go looking for ways to handle working in darkness more conveniently (especially since light is a dead giveaway of someone being present) or if available have a companion cast it on them (Darkvision is a 2nd level spell, lasts 8 hours without concentration, and is available to 5 different classes). I'm very interested in hearing what "working really hard" entails in this scenario though.
First off, Xanathar's has complete sections on the crafting/ purchasing/ selling of magic items. Page 133 states the base cost of a Rare is 4000 GP, before modifiers, and there are many caveats (see pages 126 and 129) about handling magic items in a low magic campaign. There are zero Rare items that go for 500 GP.
Further wrt a city's GDP, I took the average of all workers earning a "comfortable" living. That is considered a merchant or skilled tradespeople (page 158 PHB). Many citizens in a large city live in slums with an income measured in a few SP per day. And to assume half of a population is earning an income is generous, to say the least. The 10,000 GDP per day is high, for a city of 10,000. An item worth 5,000 GP being sold/purchased would be earth-shattering news. That is 20% of a warship, and it takes many many months to build one, with a huge manpower load. BTW, if you look at the population density of medieval cities, you will find they have quite low population density, and most towns/cities you see in various modules are way way too small in surface area to support a decent size population. (10,000 people is likely 5 square miles. There are estimates that vary from source to source, but the ballpark is about 2000 per square mile). In my regional capital, with an income based on ship building and trade, the size is about 7 miles wide, 10 miles deep, extending in a triangle on both sides of a river). So far, the players have found ZERO magic shops in that city, with a population of 100,000.
As for my "working hard", my Halfling is indeed ****** for scouting work. Yes indeed, the group always "announces its presence with authority", since we are 3rd and 4th level, all humans and halflings. We all need light sources. We have learned to sleep when outside without a fire, since it has drawn unwanted company. It makes for a tougher game, which we all love. Well., except the Cleric who will die next session, since he broke the cardinal rule "Never split the party."
To put what Vince is saying into perspective... 2 gp/day is the mean earnings of a middle-class D&D NPC, then they make 730 gp a year. Asking for 5,000 gp for an item would be 7 years of earnings. It's like asking someone who earns $70K a year to buy something for half a mil. People making 70K don't buy Bugatti Veyrons... they buy Honda Civics and Toyota Camrys.
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1) First off, Xanathar's has complete sections on the crafting/ purchasing/ selling of magic items. Page 133 states the base cost of a Rare is 4000 GP, before modifiers, and there are many caveats (see pages 126 and 129) about handling magic items in a low magic campaign. There are zero Rare items that go for 500 GP.
2) Further wrt a city's GDP, I took the average of all workers earning a "comfortable" living. That is considered a merchant or skilled tradespeople (page 158 PHB). Many citizens in a large city live in slums with an income measured in a few SP per day. And to assume half of a population is earning an income is generous, to say the least. The 10,000 GDP per day is high, for a city of 10,000. An item worth 5,000 GP being sold/purchased would be earth-shattering news. That is 20% of a warship, and it takes many many months to build one, with a huge manpower load. BTW, if you look at the population density of medieval cities, you will find they have quite low population density, and most towns/cities you see in various modules are way way too small in surface area to support a decent size population. (10,000 people is likely 5 square miles. There are estimates that vary from source to source, but the ballpark is about 2000 per square mile). In my regional capital, with an income based on ship building and trade, the size is about 7 miles wide, 10 miles deep, extending in a triangle on both sides of a river). So far, the players have found ZERO magic shops in that city, with a population of 100,000.
3) As for my "working hard", my Halfling is indeed ****** for scouting work. Yes indeed, the group always "announces its presence with authority", since we are 3rd and 4th level, all humans and halflings. We all need light sources. We have learned to sleep when outside without a fire, since it has drawn unwanted company. It makes for a tougher game, which we all love. Well., except the Cleric who will die next session, since he broke the cardinal rule "Never split the party."
1) Well, I like Xanathar's - but it flat-out contradicts the DMG without there being an errata issued to back that up.
2) That's all well and good, but you brought up some numbers and I said they don't add up. As for medieval cities and whatever happens to be the situation in your regional capita, how pertinent is that? Actual medieval cities didn't have magic to help with bountiful harvests, transportation or disease control (btw, 1300's London packed about 80,000 people and 1100's Constantinople 200,000 to a quarter million - neither had anywhere near the surface area to cover that with 2,000/square mile, even if those numbers would be off by half). And what happens to the players at your table isn't relevant anywhere but at your table. That's not an argument, just like my very different experiences at my tables aren't.
3) How is your character sleeping in the dark hard work for you as a player? You're pretty much just accepting your circumstances are what they are. You're not overcoming them, you're not working around them, you're suffering the consequences. I don't hold that against you, but I don't see how it makes you a better player either.
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To put what Vince is saying into perspective... 2 gp/day is the mean earnings of a middle-class D&D NPC, then they make 730 gp a year. Asking for 5,000 gp for an item would be 7 years of earnings. It's like asking someone who earns $70K a year to buy something for half a mil. People making 70K don't buy Bugatti Veyrons... they buy Honda Civics and Toyota Camrys.
Sure, but nobody's suggesting selling a rare magical item to a middle-class trader. Or that it would be an item that trader wants to use, instead of sell on at a profit. Bugatti dealers make great money, assuming they're successful, but they don't make money like their customers. Not even close.
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1. The economy of the region can pushed be severely out of whack if players are buying and/or selling items they find, or get in the "Magic Items R Us Superstore". Consider the income of even a high end tradesman in a major city with a "relatively" high cost of living. What does he spend/earn in a day? The various source books put living expenses for a "comfortable" lifestyle at 2 GP per day. So let's do some math, based on that. Say the city is fairly affluent, and the average worker has a "Comfortable" existence. Say the city is big, by D&D standards, with a population of 10,000. If half the people in the city earn some kind of income, the daily GDP of the city is 5,000 X 2 = 10,000 GP / day. So exactly how many people are going to be buying/selling half the city's daily GDP to deal with a single Rare item?
To put what Vince is saying into perspective... 2 gp/day is the mean earnings of a middle-class D&D NPC, then they make 730 gp a year. Asking for 5,000 gp for an item would be 7 years of earnings. It's like asking someone who earns $70K a year to buy something for half a mil. People making 70K don't buy Bugatti Veyrons... they buy Honda Civics and Toyota Camrys.
The earnings of the average citizen is irrelevant since regular people probably are not going to be buying magic items. It would be the wealthy like nobles and merchants. It can also be safe to assume that income inequality is extremely high and the economy is split along class lines, and the amount of wealth that moves between the elites have little daily impact on the lives of the poor. For example in real life, if Elon Musk sells Tesla to Mark Zuckerberg, that transaction is not going to impact me and my fellow Californians much economically, despite Tesla having a market cap of $800 billion ($0.8 trillion) and California having an annual GDP of only $3.2 trillion in 2019.
GDP also is not solely about household consumption. GDP also includes investment, government spending, and trade. Household consumption generally averages to about 60% percent of GDP in our real life world, so we can expect the GDP of a 5,000 population city to be about 16,666 gp, assuming Toril's GDP components' percentage is the same as Earth's. Since income inequality is much higher and the median wealth is much lower, household consumption as a percentage of GDP is probably much lower, and the GDP of a 5,000 population city could be much higher due to the upper class having much greater wealth.
People making $70,000 per year might not buy a $500,000 car, but it is not unreasonable for them to buy a $500,000 house with a 30 year mortgage. For D&D nobles and top merchants with access to much greater wealth, buying a sword +2 from adventurers from time to time to outfit their personal guards is not going to make a huge dent in their pockets. A clay golem already costs 50,000 gp to make, so a shield guardian has to cost at least that much, and if nobles can afford shield guardians and the supply cannot keep up with demand, then an adventurer being able to easily sell a 5,000 gp sword +2 is not all that outlandish.
The Basic Rules mentions coinage to be the domain of merchants, professionals, adventurers, and the middle class. Nobles trade in legal rights (rights to a mine, port, etc.) and metal bars, measuring gold by the pound rather than by the coin. The peasantry generally do not deal with coin at all and rely on barter. The DMG also mentions merchants frequently using trade bars worth 10, 25, and 250 gp in addition to regular coinage, so if merchants frequently make transactions in bars of metal, I am pretty sure they can afford at least a sword +2 if not shield guardians.
I tend to think it just comes down to 'What do you and your group want at your table?' then you adjust the world to accommodate. Realism and in-world logic are secondary concerns which should suite the players.
I have seen campaigns derailed by too few magical items, or specifically magical weapons. When you keep going up against things with resistance to non-magic weapons and the DM has been very stingy with them.
Gotta silver up. That is the very first thing I spend my first 100 gp on as a martial class is silvering up.
That is a useful strategy if you're fighting a lot of lycanthropes. And basically does nothing whatsoever if you're fighting anything else. I've had the misfortune of being in games where the GM threw a flesh golem at the party before we had any sort of magical equipment. Now that was an unpleasant fight: the fighter and rogue were completely useless as it ignored them while my wizard and the cleric attempted to peck it to death with our spells.
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Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
I have seen campaigns derailed by too few magical items, or specifically magical weapons. When you keep going up against things with resistance to non-magic weapons and the DM has been very stingy with them.
Gotta silver up. That is the very first thing I spend my first 100 gp on as a martial class is silvering up.
That is a useful strategy if you're fighting a lot of lycanthropes. And basically does nothing whatsoever if you're fighting anything else. I've had the misfortune of being in games where the GM threw a flesh golem at the party before we had any sort of magical equipment. Now that was an unpleasant fight: the fighter and rogue were completely useless as it ignored them while my wizard and the cleric attempted to peck it to death with our spells.
Moon-touched blades. They don’t give any appreciable bonuses, but they count as magical and are affordable at low levels because they’re common. Strictly speaking they only come in greatsword size, but there’s no good reason I can see not to offer some other types of swords with similar properties.
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I have seen campaigns derailed by too few magical items, or specifically magical weapons. When you keep going up against things with resistance to non-magic weapons and the DM has been very stingy with them.
Gotta silver up. That is the very first thing I spend my first 100 gp on as a martial class is silvering up.
That is a useful strategy if you're fighting a lot of lycanthropes. And basically does nothing whatsoever if you're fighting anything else. I've had the misfortune of being in games where the GM threw a flesh golem at the party before we had any sort of magical equipment. Now that was an unpleasant fight: the fighter and rogue were completely useless as it ignored them while my wizard and the cleric attempted to peck it to death with our spells.
Moon-touched blades. They don’t give any appreciable bonuses, but they count as magical and are affordable at low levels because they’re common. Strictly speaking they only come in greatsword size, but there’s no good reason I can see not to offer some other types of swords with similar properties.
I know they are listed as common, but in what campaign are they actually common?
In whatever campaign a DM wants the martial characters to have access to ‘magical’ weapons early, I assume.
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This leads to a tangent. The Eberron world and most of the D&D multiverse are totally incompatible. Magic, and magical items, are ubiquitous in Eberron. The artificer can break a small local economy with their creation of Magical Items. That is why Artificer's will never be in my non-Eberron game.
I tend to think it just comes down to 'What do you and your group want at your table?' then you adjust the world to accommodate. Realism and in-world logic are secondary concerns which should suite the players.
I completely agree there, the main difficulty remaining that there is often some discrepancy between the DM's views and the players' view, or at least some of the players. And, in that kind of case, the DM is usually the conservative one in terms of rarity (although I've seen DM push items, often powerful ones, to players who really did not want them, these have been the exception rather than the rule). Also, in addition to the wishes of the players, it's still the DM's world, and some are not comfortable with the abundance of magic and its effect on the way the world works.
I'll give you another example of consequences: assuming that there are magic shops selling powerful items, how are they protected against theft ? And, if you want to talk economics, how much does that protection cost ? And how can it be trusted ?
On the one hand, you can get really nice scenarios from these kind of premises, but if you look at it in detail, it creates all sorts of ripples down the line that most people who want magic shops prefer not to think about.
This is why the closest thing to magic shops I have in my worlds are formal guilds, places that already have other reasons for stronger security measures. Other than maybe potion shops or trinket shops in a large enough high magic enough city that such things are really common and security measures are less expensive (by way of greater supply).
Indeed. The concept of some kindly old man running a shop having magic items mounted on walls or under a glass counter is just plain silly. Such items are only for the very rich, very powerful, and kept under the heaviest security available. No way an adventurer walks into a town, wanders over to Ye Olde Magic Shop, and says "Yes, I want that Ring of Protection, with the pretty sapphire in the setting, here is 5000 GP".
Exalted does a kind of middle-ground: They have a rating system for artifacts. Ratings one to three are kind of like common items. Their are a lot of them, but the average person can only afford one in the way that a family affords a car; Not uncommon, but you don't purchase it lightly. These are your +1 items, kind of generic. Higher ratings are unique, and always have a semi-sentient personality. You get real power from them, but you'll need to spend time figuring the item out, and there may bean issue of personality clash which is not always surmountable. One of the signature items in the main book acts like a jealous lover, and one magic boomerang will try to kill it's user if it doesn't approve of how it's used. Problematic, but never boring.
Really? How does that work? I've been in plenty of high-level games with few or no magical items, and it never seems to be an issue.
Speaking just for my games: sure, everyone can have magical items; not everyone can have the cool, unique, special stuff I tailor for the campaign and the players though. A +1 longsword from Ye Olde Magick Shoppe is nice, but it's not the same as a +1 longsword with a great history and certainly not as interesting as Quicksilver, the consecrated blade that will be the doom of Deathfang, the undead werewolf that is terrorizing the county the PCs find themselves in - even if Quicksilver is just a +1 longsword against everyone other than Deathfang - and Quicksilver is not for sale (or at least not for coin). Maybe it's just me, but merely being hard to find doesn't really make an item interesting. Sure, it's more satisfying to delve through three libraries and seven tombs in order to find a magic ring than to simply slide a fat purse over a counter, but the real wonder will happen when coming across a ring the PCs never even heard of.
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I'll go out on a limb and say those games were properly prepared to work without the PCs being tricked out too much. However, that knife cuts both ways. Hoards of magical loot that would derail other campaigns can be just fine in one where the DM kept its effects in mind. I don't think this is a bigger concern than say, having an unbalanced party that isn't equipped to deal with certain types of challenges and will waltz through others with both hands tied behind their backs. In practice, "standard" or "normal" adventuring parties are as unusual as a white raven. It's almost always better to make adjustments for the players in front of you rather than following the book that assumes some kind of average group of characters.
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That is a gigantic issue. no magical items even by high level???? What???
Players like finding magic items, that is an important part of D&D, and DMs not handing them out at least to SOME extent are failing.
Gotta silver up. That is the very first thing I spend my first 100 gp on as a martial class is silvering up.
It's really a matter of taste. I was playing for a while with a bunch of my father's friends, all old-school low fantasy fans. They didn't like a lot of magic items around and I found I didn't much miss them. Tended to focus more on the characters that way. Some of the new crowd that cut their teeth on Witcher are the same way. Mechanically it's not that needed when you have most classes eventually having access to magical effects, or players just getting creative with their work-arounds. Probably best to announce that stylistic difference early on though, session 0 really.
Not at all. Magical items impact on a campaign in 2 negative ways:
1. The economy of the region can pushed be severely out of whack if players are buying and/or selling items they find, or get in the "Magic Items R Us Superstore". Consider the income of even a high end tradesman in a major city with a "relatively" high cost of living. What does he spend/earn in a day? The various source books put living expenses for a "comfortable" lifestyle at 2 GP per day. So let's do some math, based on that. Say the city is fairly affluent, and the average worker has a "Comfortable" existence. Say the city is big, by D&D standards, with a population of 10,000. If half the people in the city earn some kind of income, the daily GDP of the city is 5,000 X 2 = 10,000 GP / day. So exactly how many people are going to be buying/selling half the city's daily GDP to deal with a single Rare item?
2. As stated previously, there is many a magic item, even Uncommon ones, that can change a char from good to god-like. At that point, it is not the player's ability to maximize their char's innate abilities, but the power of the magical items they possess. In one campaign, I am playing a Halfling Scout Rogue. Goggles of Night would be a HUGE boon to this char, but the char does not even know such things exist, and I have to work really hard with light sources to operate at night or in dungeons. It is great, and makes me a better player.
1) Rares go between 500 and 5000 gp, with traders typically paying about half price to adventurers. In other words, the most expensive rares would require a trader to invest 2500, maybe 3000 gp and offer a potential profit of 2000 to 2500 gp. A city's GDP is quite a bit more than the sum of its workers' wages - a handful of the rich upper crust could easily be making as much as all those workers together, particularly since what's "comfortable" for a single adventurer is modest at best for a provider for a small family. For a potential profit of that order, a trader unable to raise the investment by himself would likely take out a loan and/or work together with others; even if they'd get just 20-25% of the profit in the end that's still a very good deal.
2) With all due respect, "maximizing a character's innate abilities" is not really the mark of a good player to me. Dealing effectively with challenges is (aside from the roleplaying part, obviously), and challenges don't have to be easy because of a few magical items. DMs challenge characters based on what they can do, not on what they can do innately alone. Besides, if Darkvision would matter so much it's not hard to believe a character would go looking for ways to handle working in darkness more conveniently (especially since light is a dead giveaway of someone being present) or if available have a companion cast it on them (Darkvision is a 2nd level spell, lasts 8 hours without concentration, and is available to 5 different classes). I'm very interested in hearing what "working really hard" entails in this scenario though.
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First off, Xanathar's has complete sections on the crafting/ purchasing/ selling of magic items. Page 133 states the base cost of a Rare is 4000 GP, before modifiers, and there are many caveats (see pages 126 and 129) about handling magic items in a low magic campaign. There are zero Rare items that go for 500 GP.
Further wrt a city's GDP, I took the average of all workers earning a "comfortable" living. That is considered a merchant or skilled tradespeople (page 158 PHB). Many citizens in a large city live in slums with an income measured in a few SP per day. And to assume half of a population is earning an income is generous, to say the least. The 10,000 GDP per day is high, for a city of 10,000. An item worth 5,000 GP being sold/purchased would be earth-shattering news. That is 20% of a warship, and it takes many many months to build one, with a huge manpower load. BTW, if you look at the population density of medieval cities, you will find they have quite low population density, and most towns/cities you see in various modules are way way too small in surface area to support a decent size population. (10,000 people is likely 5 square miles. There are estimates that vary from source to source, but the ballpark is about 2000 per square mile). In my regional capital, with an income based on ship building and trade, the size is about 7 miles wide, 10 miles deep, extending in a triangle on both sides of a river). So far, the players have found ZERO magic shops in that city, with a population of 100,000.
As for my "working hard", my Halfling is indeed ****** for scouting work. Yes indeed, the group always "announces its presence with authority", since we are 3rd and 4th level, all humans and halflings. We all need light sources. We have learned to sleep when outside without a fire, since it has drawn unwanted company. It makes for a tougher game, which we all love. Well., except the Cleric who will die next session, since he broke the cardinal rule "Never split the party."
To put what Vince is saying into perspective... 2 gp/day is the mean earnings of a middle-class D&D NPC, then they make 730 gp a year. Asking for 5,000 gp for an item would be 7 years of earnings. It's like asking someone who earns $70K a year to buy something for half a mil. People making 70K don't buy Bugatti Veyrons... they buy Honda Civics and Toyota Camrys.
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1) Well, I like Xanathar's - but it flat-out contradicts the DMG without there being an errata issued to back that up.
2) That's all well and good, but you brought up some numbers and I said they don't add up. As for medieval cities and whatever happens to be the situation in your regional capita, how pertinent is that? Actual medieval cities didn't have magic to help with bountiful harvests, transportation or disease control (btw, 1300's London packed about 80,000 people and 1100's Constantinople 200,000 to a quarter million - neither had anywhere near the surface area to cover that with 2,000/square mile, even if those numbers would be off by half). And what happens to the players at your table isn't relevant anywhere but at your table. That's not an argument, just like my very different experiences at my tables aren't.
3) How is your character sleeping in the dark hard work for you as a player? You're pretty much just accepting your circumstances are what they are. You're not overcoming them, you're not working around them, you're suffering the consequences. I don't hold that against you, but I don't see how it makes you a better player either.
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Sure, but nobody's suggesting selling a rare magical item to a middle-class trader. Or that it would be an item that trader wants to use, instead of sell on at a profit. Bugatti dealers make great money, assuming they're successful, but they don't make money like their customers. Not even close.
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The earnings of the average citizen is irrelevant since regular people probably are not going to be buying magic items. It would be the wealthy like nobles and merchants. It can also be safe to assume that income inequality is extremely high and the economy is split along class lines, and the amount of wealth that moves between the elites have little daily impact on the lives of the poor. For example in real life, if Elon Musk sells Tesla to Mark Zuckerberg, that transaction is not going to impact me and my fellow Californians much economically, despite Tesla having a market cap of $800 billion ($0.8 trillion) and California having an annual GDP of only $3.2 trillion in 2019.
GDP also is not solely about household consumption. GDP also includes investment, government spending, and trade. Household consumption generally averages to about 60% percent of GDP in our real life world, so we can expect the GDP of a 5,000 population city to be about 16,666 gp, assuming Toril's GDP components' percentage is the same as Earth's. Since income inequality is much higher and the median wealth is much lower, household consumption as a percentage of GDP is probably much lower, and the GDP of a 5,000 population city could be much higher due to the upper class having much greater wealth.
People making $70,000 per year might not buy a $500,000 car, but it is not unreasonable for them to buy a $500,000 house with a 30 year mortgage. For D&D nobles and top merchants with access to much greater wealth, buying a sword +2 from adventurers from time to time to outfit their personal guards is not going to make a huge dent in their pockets. A clay golem already costs 50,000 gp to make, so a shield guardian has to cost at least that much, and if nobles can afford shield guardians and the supply cannot keep up with demand, then an adventurer being able to easily sell a 5,000 gp sword +2 is not all that outlandish.
The Basic Rules mentions coinage to be the domain of merchants, professionals, adventurers, and the middle class. Nobles trade in legal rights (rights to a mine, port, etc.) and metal bars, measuring gold by the pound rather than by the coin. The peasantry generally do not deal with coin at all and rely on barter. The DMG also mentions merchants frequently using trade bars worth 10, 25, and 250 gp in addition to regular coinage, so if merchants frequently make transactions in bars of metal, I am pretty sure they can afford at least a sword +2 if not shield guardians.
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I tend to think it just comes down to 'What do you and your group want at your table?' then you adjust the world to accommodate. Realism and in-world logic are secondary concerns which should suite the players.
That is a useful strategy if you're fighting a lot of lycanthropes. And basically does nothing whatsoever if you're fighting anything else. I've had the misfortune of being in games where the GM threw a flesh golem at the party before we had any sort of magical equipment. Now that was an unpleasant fight: the fighter and rogue were completely useless as it ignored them while my wizard and the cleric attempted to peck it to death with our spells.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
Moon-touched blades. They don’t give any appreciable bonuses, but they count as magical and are affordable at low levels because they’re common. Strictly speaking they only come in greatsword size, but there’s no good reason I can see not to offer some other types of swords with similar properties.
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In whatever campaign a DM wants the martial characters to have access to ‘magical’ weapons early, I assume.
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This leads to a tangent. The Eberron world and most of the D&D multiverse are totally incompatible. Magic, and magical items, are ubiquitous in Eberron. The artificer can break a small local economy with their creation of Magical Items. That is why Artificer's will never be in my non-Eberron game.
Indeed. The concept of some kindly old man running a shop having magic items mounted on walls or under a glass counter is just plain silly. Such items are only for the very rich, very powerful, and kept under the heaviest security available. No way an adventurer walks into a town, wanders over to Ye Olde Magic Shop, and says "Yes, I want that Ring of Protection, with the pretty sapphire in the setting, here is 5000 GP".
Exalted does a kind of middle-ground: They have a rating system for artifacts. Ratings one to three are kind of like common items. Their are a lot of them, but the average person can only afford one in the way that a family affords a car; Not uncommon, but you don't purchase it lightly. These are your +1 items, kind of generic. Higher ratings are unique, and always have a semi-sentient personality. You get real power from them, but you'll need to spend time figuring the item out, and there may bean issue of personality clash which is not always surmountable. One of the signature items in the main book acts like a jealous lover, and one magic boomerang will try to kill it's user if it doesn't approve of how it's used. Problematic, but never boring.
It brings to mind this.