I know there's a pdf called Sane Magical Prices by Saidoro but I wanted to make my own pricing for magical items in order to make some more accessible to players while others are less so but are still rewarding when and if they do get it.
So my question is, which one would you recommend more, the pricing from Xanathar's Guide to Everything or the Dungeon Master's Guide?
My question to you is: If you plan to make your own pricing, what's the difference?
Pricing is pretty arbitrary, and depends also how much gold you give to the players to fuel these purchases. If there are things you don't want players to have, like +1 weapons and armor, then just have shops not sell them.
You don't need to have magic item shops. I usually don't have any aside from scrolls and potions, because my magic items for my players are more homebrewed and specific to their narratives.
definitely XGE...DMG crafting prices vs buying is just broken (imo). the idea that the buy price is never more than making it yourself (and sometimes hugely cheaper to buy than make - its not like there's overseas labor camps making this stuff) was just a really large miss imo and didn't take into account the entire human history of how markets work. In XGE, if you purely stick with the tables, there's still a small chance that'll happen for some rarities but small enough that its believable. XGE (again IMO) is a little better thought out (which I think is why they put it in there when it was already in the DMG - to fix something that was totally broken).
edit: also, i think a good approach when the publish multiple versions of the same rules is to use the latest rules as they often take the opportunity to fix stuff in the concept.
The various designers of the game were clearly not economists, nor had any interest in designing a functional economy. Magic is concentrated wealth, of the highest order. If players actually bought and sold items using either the DMG or XGTE prices, they would break local economies.
I would recommend the banning of buying or selling of magic items. But if you are determined to go down that path, use the XGTE pricing, and be very very strict that players operate in a vacuum, and do not interact with any local NPC economy.
It's a fantasy role-playing game; therefore, no expectation should be made as to simulation of realism.
The books are guidelines, they do not demand you use any given set of buy/sell magic items prices -- in fact, at best you only get a range of value for items of Uncommon, Rare, etc. It is up to each DM to decide how to customise prices based on their own needs and the interest of the group. I suggest using the guidelines as a guide and adjusting buy prices up to make magic items more rare and inaccessible and vice versa for plentiful items.
Magic items are not necessary. The game is balanced in combat without PCs having items. If you give them and especially if you let PCs buy magic items, it will make PCs more powerful. But a big fun part of the game are the magic items. :)
Lots of people here suggesting you don’t let them have magic items or price them in the book. I have magic items in my games; always have, and they are great. My players love pooling gold together figuring out what one thing to buy as a party for one or 2 players. The attunement rules mean that after a while the powerful stuff gets collected but can’t all be used, I have one barbarian who currently has collected 18 magic weapons at level 14, all require attunement all are in his bag of holding and his character sees it as his collection. If it’s shiny and hurty he wants it :). I also have magic shops, I treat them like hordes so use the various tables to generate a base stock and then tweak that based on where the party are and what they are doing.
As for cost I used to use the prices in the DMG (and now Xanathars) as a rough estimate based on how powerful I felt the item would be in the party. But since then I have got a pretty good vibe and pretty much wing it in the moment, there are of course plenty of roleplay activities that allow players to talk prices down (or up) and the opportunity for a party to gain sponsorship or at least get loyalty bonuses. For my players “shopping episodes” can run at 4-5 hours long sometimes depending on what the players want to do, who they want to talk to and where they want to go. Partly they see it as a way to just make me make up shops and shop keepers on the fly :). Not every town has a magic shop, but it isn’t only restricted to a certain size town.
The players may stumble across an old wizard who set up shop in a small villiage that hero’s pass through, he only needs to really sell 1-2 major items a year to top up his earnings from the more mundane stuff he does for villigers. If you really pick you might find out that years ago he was a youngster in this very villiage, but everyone that knew him died years ago.
Or they may come across 3 competing shop keepers in the same city, each trying to outdo the other the players going from shop to shop. On session lasted 3 hours and the players had no money to spend, they just spent the time bouncing from shop to shop pretending to be high rollers looking to spend there money making each shop keepers wait on them.
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I know there's a pdf called Sane Magical Prices by Saidoro but I wanted to make my own pricing for magical items in order to make some more accessible to players while others are less so but are still rewarding when and if they do get it.
So my question is, which one would you recommend more, the pricing from Xanathar's Guide to Everything or the Dungeon Master's Guide?
My question to you is: If you plan to make your own pricing, what's the difference?
Pricing is pretty arbitrary, and depends also how much gold you give to the players to fuel these purchases. If there are things you don't want players to have, like +1 weapons and armor, then just have shops not sell them.
You don't need to have magic item shops. I usually don't have any aside from scrolls and potions, because my magic items for my players are more homebrewed and specific to their narratives.
definitely XGE...DMG crafting prices vs buying is just broken (imo). the idea that the buy price is never more than making it yourself (and sometimes hugely cheaper to buy than make - its not like there's overseas labor camps making this stuff) was just a really large miss imo and didn't take into account the entire human history of how markets work. In XGE, if you purely stick with the tables, there's still a small chance that'll happen for some rarities but small enough that its believable. XGE (again IMO) is a little better thought out (which I think is why they put it in there when it was already in the DMG - to fix something that was totally broken).
edit: also, i think a good approach when the publish multiple versions of the same rules is to use the latest rules as they often take the opportunity to fix stuff in the concept.
Guide to the Five Factions (PWYW)
Deck of Decks
The various designers of the game were clearly not economists, nor had any interest in designing a functional economy. Magic is concentrated wealth, of the highest order. If players actually bought and sold items using either the DMG or XGTE prices, they would break local economies.
I would recommend the banning of buying or selling of magic items. But if you are determined to go down that path, use the XGTE pricing, and be very very strict that players operate in a vacuum, and do not interact with any local NPC economy.
It's a fantasy role-playing game; therefore, no expectation should be made as to simulation of realism.
The books are guidelines, they do not demand you use any given set of buy/sell magic items prices -- in fact, at best you only get a range of value for items of Uncommon, Rare, etc. It is up to each DM to decide how to customise prices based on their own needs and the interest of the group. I suggest using the guidelines as a guide and adjusting buy prices up to make magic items more rare and inaccessible and vice versa for plentiful items.
Magic items are not necessary. The game is balanced in combat without PCs having items. If you give them and especially if you let PCs buy magic items, it will make PCs more powerful. But a big fun part of the game are the magic items. :)
Lots of people here suggesting you don’t let them have magic items or price them in the book. I have magic items in my games; always have, and they are great. My players love pooling gold together figuring out what one thing to buy as a party for one or 2 players. The attunement rules mean that after a while the powerful stuff gets collected but can’t all be used, I have one barbarian who currently has collected 18 magic weapons at level 14, all require attunement all are in his bag of holding and his character sees it as his collection. If it’s shiny and hurty he wants it :). I also have magic shops, I treat them like hordes so use the various tables to generate a base stock and then tweak that based on where the party are and what they are doing.
As for cost I used to use the prices in the DMG (and now Xanathars) as a rough estimate based on how powerful I felt the item would be in the party. But since then I have got a pretty good vibe and pretty much wing it in the moment, there are of course plenty of roleplay activities that allow players to talk prices down (or up) and the opportunity for a party to gain sponsorship or at least get loyalty bonuses. For my players “shopping episodes” can run at 4-5 hours long sometimes depending on what the players want to do, who they want to talk to and where they want to go. Partly they see it as a way to just make me make up shops and shop keepers on the fly :). Not every town has a magic shop, but it isn’t only restricted to a certain size town.
The players may stumble across an old wizard who set up shop in a small villiage that hero’s pass through, he only needs to really sell 1-2 major items a year to top up his earnings from the more mundane stuff he does for villigers. If you really pick you might find out that years ago he was a youngster in this very villiage, but everyone that knew him died years ago.
Or they may come across 3 competing shop keepers in the same city, each trying to outdo the other the players going from shop to shop. On session lasted 3 hours and the players had no money to spend, they just spent the time bouncing from shop to shop pretending to be high rollers looking to spend there money making each shop keepers wait on them.