How do you tell if an item is minor, medium or major past whether it has it listed in a book.
When it comes to players buying items or rolling them up for town/city stocks how do you determining what level an item is?
The ones in Ultimate Equipment are neatly listed in tables but some items in later books don't have a listing and there doesn't seem to be a consistent way to tell.
Items change from medium to major even with the same caster level, other items are more expensive than majors but fall into mediums.
Metamagic Quicken lesser in some charts is a medium and a major as another example.
These issues don't really come into effect until a player wishes to purchase an item under the "all items are generally available" with help of Black Market Connections.
I am just really struggling to find a consistent way to judge what an items should be in regards to this.
To me I could be wrong but it seems like there kind of abstract as far as that goes. Maybe you could compare prices and go by that?
As far as I can see, the whole Minor/Medium/Major system is made to easily divide magic items into categories by price. It is not directly affected by CL or the action required to activate the item, but the price of such variables.
Items change from medium to major even with the same caster level, other items are more expensive than majors but fall into mediums.
Could you provide an example of Medium items which are more expensive that Major items?
If you're talking about Magic Weapons/Armor then you should know that Wondrous Items, Magic Weapon and Magic Armor/Shields have different divisions.*****
Here's a quick breakdown of the lowest and highest prices found in the different categories of Wondrous Items:
50-850: Least Minor
1,000-3,800: Lesser Minor
4,000-7,500: Greater Minor
8,000-17,500: Lesser Medium
17,500-27,500: Greater Medium
28,500-49,000: Lesser Major
50,000+ :Greater Major
*****
For weapons/armor/shields, then you'll need to adress their specific table to see what category that item fall into.
For example, you could get a +2 Weapon from rolling on the three following Magic Weapon tables:
Greater Minor
Lesser Medium
Greater Medium
If that is the case, then you should label the +2 Weapon as a "Greater Minor" magic item, since that is the lowest category it could be placed in.
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As the others have said, there appears to be no definitive proof. To my knowledge, based on the organization in the Ultimate Equipment tables of the PRD (sans the errata'd magic item pricings), it's based off of how expensive the item is (because let's face it, a lot of items, in my opinion, and grossly overpriced).
If it's less than 8,000 gold, it's a Minor item. If it's between the prices of 8,000 and 30,000, it's a Medium item, and if it's greater than 30,000 gold, it's a Major item.
After all, there is only this text, based from the purchasing of magic items, and it says:
The number and types of magic items available in a community depend upon its size. Each community has a base value associated with it (see Table: Available Magic Items or Table: Available Magic Items. There is a 75% chance that any item of that value or lower can be found for sale with little effort in that community. In addition, the community has a number of other items for sale. These items are randomly determined and are broken down by category (minor, medium, or major). After determining the number of items available in each category, refer to Table: Random Magic Item Generation to determine the type of each item (potion, scroll, ring, weapon, etc.) before moving on to the individual charts to determine the exact item. Reroll any items that fall below the community's base value.
Granted, you're asking how that is, the only clear indicator is price, and based on the paragraph's subject matter (value of magic items in merchant areas), that appears to be the defining factor.
Thanks for all the feedback everyone.
Frustrating there is no quick system for this but as others said I think I can just set up a rough by price in each category as a rule of thumb for my players to use.