Seriously. If there is one point of 5E that has failed horribly, it would be the implementation of magic item pricing. The rarity is not bad, but the DMG guide to pricing by rarity is quite frankly moronic. They could have easily gone back to 3rd ed or 2nd ed and pulled prices from there as a baseline and then adjusted. This seems just so utterly lazy that it is just really annoying. The rarity also fails as it does not take into account the usefulness of an item. Again...lazy.
Pricing is not just used for over the counter sales...it is also used in crafting. And that is also a lazy excuse for not adding in reasonable pricing as it really is up to the DM to figure out if the campaign he is running has magic for sale or not. They might as well have just removed magic items from the game as a whole if they were going to put it all on the backs of DMs anyways. You shouldn't add something of value and then not actually give the value of it.
That seems a little hyperbolic, saying that just because they don't have robust pricing for magic items, they shouldn't have magic items at all.
Magic items have value based on rarity, and they provide rough monetary ranges based on rarity. But that also depends on the amount of gold you give out to your players. In modules where they've set the amount of gold players can obtain, they also set the explicit prices any purchasable items can be bought for. Outside of that, WotC has no idea if a DM is going to be stingy or liberal with gold, so they can't reliably map rarity of an item onto a meaningful price.
Because that's not how value works. Somethings monetary value exists in relation to how available it is and how much people are willing to pay for it. In default D&D, magical items are not very readily available and due to their obscene rarity, people are generally not willing to pay as much as the item practically might be worth.
A longsword has a value of 15gp because they are readily available, people reliably want them and that's a price people can reliably afford. A +1 longsword would be maybe salable for 500gp, would take several days to find a buyer, and said buyer might actually offer you anything from 1/10 to one and half times its price, depending on the market.
Magic items, per core D&D, are not intended to be bought and sold like regular equipment, and the power level across level progress reflects that. If you want to change that, that's your power as DM to do so.
Both XGTE and the DMG provide rules frameworks for buying, selling and crafting magic items, but those are optional and not the expected norm of default D&D. If you want to do something outside the default, that's your responsibility. The game cannot be possibly designed to cater to every possible style of play, but it does its best to provide the tools so you can adapt it yourself. That's the opposite of lazy.
Again, wrong. The game has exactly done that for the previous 4 editions. None of that pricing needed to take into account whether or not a DM decided to make their items rare or not. It merely needs to take into account the effectiveness of what it provides. That is an actual guide that is useful.
4e was balanced assuming a regular, steady supply of magic items per level. This is why weapons had explicit pricing and the system had residuum rules for crafting.
5e is balanced so that you magic items are non-mandatory for progression.
Pricing is not just used for over the counter sales...it is also used in crafting. And that is also a lazy excuse for not adding in reasonable pricing as it really is up to the DM to figure out if the campaign he is running has magic for sale or not. They might as well have just removed magic items from the game as a whole if they were going to put it all on the backs of DMs anyways. You shouldn't add something of value and then not actually give the value of it.
Crafting magic items is also optional.
Also you realize the irony that you are saying DMs should get to decide if items can be sold, so WotC should tell DMs how much they sell for.
Older editions (well 3, 3.5, and 4) were highly tuned and specific so a character's power could be carefully managed. 5e is more casual.
While not too the same degree as the OP the pricing of magic items does leave something to be desired. Granted this only comes up in regards to Half-Plate and Plate armour but you can buy a +1 variant of the previous tier armour that is in both cases lighter weight and in the case of the medium armour better than the next tier for 500g, cheaper than said higher tier mundane armour.
I mention this as it came up it came up at the start of an Eberron game I'm part of, we started at level 5 in a high magic setting and using the guide out of the DMG for starting at higher level you can argue that it isn't clear.
In 4e the prices of items were a lot clearer in relation to their relative usefulness compared and with a lot more demarcations compared to 5e.
Pricing items would be less work for the DM to do if this was the case in 5e and you could have a simple -/+X% increments for setting specific points such as if your setting is high/low magic etc.
5th Edition is considerably more successful than its predecessors and one of the reasons is that it is specifically geared towards customising the game for one's own ends. Previously editions were more heavily routed in "this is what this is like" while 5e has more "you could have it like this, or maybe this, here's some info to see what works for you". Previously editions were built around the availability of magic items and you had to accept a certain level of magic fantasy in your games - if you wanted more or less magic you had a lot of customising to do that the rulings did not help with. In 5e, however, the magic is "as a guide" and so it is more flexible for what level of magic fantasy you want - you are given the range of prices by suggested rarity and that makes it easier to just put something lower or higher in the range as you see fit rather than previous editions giving you only set prices which is harder to work with since you then have to compare to other items of similar rarity and try to find the range of prices on your own and adjust them.
Working with a range right off the bat means you don't need to do quick math to adjust the price on the spot - you can see the range and decide where in the range you want to go for that particular item in that particular store or for that particular merchant, and makes it easier to determine approximate loot value without needing to do quick math.
Prices may vary by campaign, by region, by each individual merchant or shop so really have a set price for a magic item seems counter-intuitive so an edition that is considerably more focused on easier game customisation and quick ad-hoc adjucation by DMs.
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Unfortunately what the current system leads to are players abusing the relative cost of items within the same rarity level to pick the most effective ones for a fraction of the price for what they really should be worth. So then the DM has to step in and do more work to now figure out what an actual fair price is. No reason for that. Lots of history on these things to price close enough and then DMs can adjust to their specific campaign. Instead, we have to examine every freaking item to see what it really should cost. Huge waste of time.
Unfortunately what the current system leads to are players abusing the relative cost of items within the same rarity level to pick the most effective ones for a fraction of the price for what they really should be worth.
So then the DM has to step in and do more work to now figure out what an actual fair price is. No reason for that. Lots of history on these things to price close enough and then DMs can adjust to their specific campaign. Instead, we have to examine every freaking item to see what it really should cost.
According to your theory, you'd only have to do it once.
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Unfortunately what the current system leads to are players abusing the relative cost of items within the same rarity level to pick the most effective ones for a fraction of the price for what they really should be worth. So then the DM has to step in and do more work to now figure out what an actual fair price is. No reason for that. Lots of history on these things to price close enough and then DMs can adjust to their specific campaign. Instead, we have to examine every freaking item to see what it really should cost. Huge waste of time.
I don't undetand the why behind this argument. What is wrong with a fighter starting out with a greatsword and heavy crossbow? Why does a DM have to do anything other than confirm "fighter, yep. 2 martial weapons, that checks out," and be done?
yeah, I found that. I can't say I've had the time to compare it to the previous edition pricing to see if they used it as a baseline or not. Some of those prices are really out there compared to whats in the current DMG. Some items are easily 5 times the value stated in the DMG if not more. So that becomes a little hard to swallow. But again, if Wizards decided not to put much though in pricing (which seems obvious) then it doesn't surprise me the values are so different.
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Seriously. If there is one point of 5E that has failed horribly, it would be the implementation of magic item pricing. The rarity is not bad, but the DMG guide to pricing by rarity is quite frankly moronic. They could have easily gone back to 3rd ed or 2nd ed and pulled prices from there as a baseline and then adjusted. This seems just so utterly lazy that it is just really annoying. The rarity also fails as it does not take into account the usefulness of an item. Again...lazy.
Because the default assumption is that you can't just buy magic items over the counter in 5th edition.
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Pricing is not just used for over the counter sales...it is also used in crafting. And that is also a lazy excuse for not adding in reasonable pricing as it really is up to the DM to figure out if the campaign he is running has magic for sale or not. They might as well have just removed magic items from the game as a whole if they were going to put it all on the backs of DMs anyways. You shouldn't add something of value and then not actually give the value of it.
That seems a little hyperbolic, saying that just because they don't have robust pricing for magic items, they shouldn't have magic items at all.
Magic items have value based on rarity, and they provide rough monetary ranges based on rarity. But that also depends on the amount of gold you give out to your players. In modules where they've set the amount of gold players can obtain, they also set the explicit prices any purchasable items can be bought for. Outside of that, WotC has no idea if a DM is going to be stingy or liberal with gold, so they can't reliably map rarity of an item onto a meaningful price.
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WotC should be able to correctly value a magic item based on its usefulness. They have done it since the game began. So not doing it now is just lazy.
Because that's not how value works. Somethings monetary value exists in relation to how available it is and how much people are willing to pay for it. In default D&D, magical items are not very readily available and due to their obscene rarity, people are generally not willing to pay as much as the item practically might be worth.
A longsword has a value of 15gp because they are readily available, people reliably want them and that's a price people can reliably afford. A +1 longsword would be maybe salable for 500gp, would take several days to find a buyer, and said buyer might actually offer you anything from 1/10 to one and half times its price, depending on the market.
Magic items, per core D&D, are not intended to be bought and sold like regular equipment, and the power level across level progress reflects that. If you want to change that, that's your power as DM to do so.
Both XGTE and the DMG provide rules frameworks for buying, selling and crafting magic items, but those are optional and not the expected norm of default D&D. If you want to do something outside the default, that's your responsibility. The game cannot be possibly designed to cater to every possible style of play, but it does its best to provide the tools so you can adapt it yourself. That's the opposite of lazy.
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Again, wrong. The game has exactly done that for the previous 4 editions. None of that pricing needed to take into account whether or not a DM decided to make their items rare or not. It merely needs to take into account the effectiveness of what it provides. That is an actual guide that is useful.
4e was balanced assuming a regular, steady supply of magic items per level. This is why weapons had explicit pricing and the system had residuum rules for crafting.
5e is balanced so that you magic items are non-mandatory for progression.
Find my D&D Beyond articles here
Crafting magic items is also optional.
Also you realize the irony that you are saying DMs should get to decide if items can be sold, so WotC should tell DMs how much they sell for.
Older editions (well 3, 3.5, and 4) were highly tuned and specific so a character's power could be carefully managed. 5e is more casual.
While not too the same degree as the OP the pricing of magic items does leave something to be desired. Granted this only comes up in regards to Half-Plate and Plate armour but you can buy a +1 variant of the previous tier armour that is in both cases lighter weight and in the case of the medium armour better than the next tier for 500g, cheaper than said higher tier mundane armour.
I mention this as it came up it came up at the start of an Eberron game I'm part of, we started at level 5 in a high magic setting and using the guide out of the DMG for starting at higher level you can argue that it isn't clear.
In 4e the prices of items were a lot clearer in relation to their relative usefulness compared and with a lot more demarcations compared to 5e.
Pricing items would be less work for the DM to do if this was the case in 5e and you could have a simple -/+X% increments for setting specific points such as if your setting is high/low magic etc.
5th Edition is considerably more successful than its predecessors and one of the reasons is that it is specifically geared towards customising the game for one's own ends. Previously editions were more heavily routed in "this is what this is like" while 5e has more "you could have it like this, or maybe this, here's some info to see what works for you". Previously editions were built around the availability of magic items and you had to accept a certain level of magic fantasy in your games - if you wanted more or less magic you had a lot of customising to do that the rulings did not help with. In 5e, however, the magic is "as a guide" and so it is more flexible for what level of magic fantasy you want - you are given the range of prices by suggested rarity and that makes it easier to just put something lower or higher in the range as you see fit rather than previous editions giving you only set prices which is harder to work with since you then have to compare to other items of similar rarity and try to find the range of prices on your own and adjust them.
Working with a range right off the bat means you don't need to do quick math to adjust the price on the spot - you can see the range and decide where in the range you want to go for that particular item in that particular store or for that particular merchant, and makes it easier to determine approximate loot value without needing to do quick math.
Prices may vary by campaign, by region, by each individual merchant or shop so really have a set price for a magic item seems counter-intuitive so an edition that is considerably more focused on easier game customisation and quick ad-hoc adjucation by DMs.
Click ✨ HERE ✨ For My Youtube Videos featuring Guides, Tips & Tricks for using D&D Beyond.
Need help with Homebrew? Check out ✨ this FAQ/Guide thread ✨ by IamSposta.
Unfortunately what the current system leads to are players abusing the relative cost of items within the same rarity level to pick the most effective ones for a fraction of the price for what they really should be worth. So then the DM has to step in and do more work to now figure out what an actual fair price is. No reason for that. Lots of history on these things to price close enough and then DMs can adjust to their specific campaign. Instead, we have to examine every freaking item to see what it really should cost. Huge waste of time.
How are they doing that, exactly?
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According to your theory, you'd only have to do it once.
"Sooner or later, your Players are going to smash your railroad into a sandbox."
-Vedexent
"real life is a super high CR."
-OboeLauren
"............anybody got any potatoes? We could drop a potato in each hole an' see which ones get viciously mauled by horrible monsters?"
-Ilyara Thundertale
Per item.
I don't undetand the why behind this argument. What is wrong with a fighter starting out with a greatsword and heavy crossbow? Why does a DM have to do anything other than confirm "fighter, yep. 2 martial weapons, that checks out," and be done?
that is nice idea
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So what? It doesn't matter if it's been done that way in the past, that has no bearing on how it's done now.
I use this - http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?424243-Sane-Magic-Item-Prices
yeah, I found that. I can't say I've had the time to compare it to the previous edition pricing to see if they used it as a baseline or not. Some of those prices are really out there compared to whats in the current DMG. Some items are easily 5 times the value stated in the DMG if not more. So that becomes a little hard to swallow. But again, if Wizards decided not to put much though in pricing (which seems obvious) then it doesn't surprise me the values are so different.