There’s a 75% chance of any given item of the settlement’s base value or lower being up for sale.
The major, minor, etc. items you roll up can have any value.
So in a town with a 2,000 base value, the players have a 75% chance to find a cloak of resistance +1 for sale, but can’t ordinarily buy a cloak of resistance +2. But if you rolled a cloak of resistance +2 as one of the items for sale in that town, the players can buy it.
I'm confused the rules state
"This line lists the number of magic items above a settlement’s base value that are available for purchase...wouldn't that mean the rolled items should be above 2000 gp each? (virtually impossible with random minor items btw)
There’s a 75% chance of any given item of the settlement’s base value or lower being up for sale.
The major, minor, etc. items you roll up can have any value.
So in a town with a 2,000 base value, the players have a 75% chance to find a cloak of resistance +1 for sale, but can’t ordinarily buy a cloak of resistance +2. But if you rolled a cloak of resistance +2 as one of the items for sale in that town, the players can buy it.
I'm confused the rules state
"This line lists the number of magic items above a settlement’s base value that are available for purchase...wouldn't that mean the rolled items should be above 2000 gp each? (virtually impossible with random minor items btw)
There are basically two ways to determine what magic items are available in a settlement.
The first is the Base Value method. If a Player Character wants to buy a magic item the Dungeon Master compares the Price of the item to the Base Value of the settlement. If the Price is less than the Base Value then the Dungeon Master rolls d100, with 75% chance of success, to determine if the item is available. If the Price is more than the Base Value then the item is not available by this method.
The second is the Minor/Medium/Major method. These magic items are randomly generated. If one of the items generated by this method happens to be something a Player Character is looking for then good. These items have values completely independent of the Base Value method and the Base Value in general. The values of these randomly generated items can be more than the Base Value or less, it doesn't matter.
It is entirely possible to find a given magic item by both methods. For instance, a hat of disguise is a minor magic item worth 1,800 gp. In a Large Town with a Base value of 2,000 gp there is a 75% chance to find such an item. In the same settlement there are 3d4 randomly generated minor magic items and the hat could be one of those.
There’s a 75% chance of any given item of the settlement’s base value or lower being up for sale.
The major, minor, etc. items you roll up can have any value.
So in a town with a 2,000 base value, the players have a 75% chance to find a cloak of resistance +1 for sale, but can’t ordinarily buy a cloak of resistance +2. But if you rolled a cloak of resistance +2 as one of the items for sale in that town, the players can buy it.
I'm confused the rules state
"This line lists the number of magic items above a settlement’s base value that are available for purchase...wouldn't that mean the rolled items should be above 2000 gp each? (virtually impossible with random minor items btw)There are basically two ways to determine what magic items are available in a settlement.
The first is the Base Value method. If a Player Character wants to buy a magic item the Dungeon Master compares the Price of the item to the Base Value of the settlement. If the Price is less than the Base Value then the Dungeon Master rolls d100, with 75% chance of success, to determine if the item is available. If the Price is more than the Base Value then the item is not available by this method.
The second is the Minor/Medium/Major method. These magic items are randomly generated. If one of the items generated by this method happens to be something a Player Character is looking for then good. These items have values completely independent of the Base Value method and the Base Value in general. The values of these randomly generated items can be more than the Base Value or less, it doesn't matter.
It is entirely possible to find a given magic item by both methods. For instance, a hat of disguise is a minor magic item worth 1,800 gp. In a Large Town with a Base value of 2,000 gp there is a 75% chance to find such an item. In the same settlement there are 3d4 randomly generated minor magic items and the hat could be one of those.
Unfortunately, per the Ultimate Campaign rules, the bolded section is incorrect. Per Ultimate Campaign under 'Filling Item Slots:', if the random generation of an item to fill a slot results in an item greater than the settlement's base value, you have to reroll. I feel this is, like others have alluded to, an oversight, but I'm not sure what the best way to 'fix' it would be.
Ultimate Rulership (3rd party plug-in that I highly recommend to any kingdom building campaign) does clear this up. The 75% still applies for < Base value (rechecked after a month if desired). Then the additional magic item slots can exceed this value.
They also have a fix for the consumables issue (the fact that consumables cost so low compared to their caster levels, it is often able to find scrolls and such for spells that there is a very slim chance a wizard of the appropriate level exists in the settlement. What they do is essentially cap consumables by caster level of the NPC caster level availability of the settlement.
Ah, I see now. Yes that is confusing, and I suspect an oversight as well.
After looking over the rules I realize that the last paragraph of my post was also incorrect. The rules from the Core Rulebook for purchasing magic items states that when randomly generating Minor/Medium/Major items you must reroll any items that fall below the community's Base Value, thus it is not possible to find a given item by both methods.
I think therein lies the oversight, and I believe the Ultimate Rulership 3rd party publication made the correct move.
The rule on page 213 of Ultimate Campaign should probably reflect the rule from the Core Rulebook and call for a reroll if a randomly generated magic item for a magic item slot is less than the Base Value.
This change would solve all the problems mentioned in the posts above. Except for the near impossibility of randomly generating Minor magic items that are greater than Base Value.
Keep in mind, the 'base value' is for all items, not just magical. I believe the intention is that MOST magical items are above the 'base value' for nearly any settlement smaller than a city. I believe the intention was always to have the magic item availability based on the few minor/medium/major random slotting mechanic. This does greatly influence the impact of crafting.
Just to mention, I don't believe UCam is an oversight or an error when it says magic items in slots must fall below the settlement's base value. I think it's 100% intentional (though Jason Nelson or Sean K Reynolds are free to correct me), and was introduced as one of the "prevent runaway economy" features that were implemented (alongside the removal of the ability to sell magic items for BP) following feedback from players using the Kingmaker version of the rules.
I am one of a number of players who believe that putting both of those rules in place was overkill, but, to paraphrase Sean K Reynolds: there were issues with the original rules. People were unhappy. Those issues were fixed. And now people are unhappy. You just can't please people.
My personal recommendation is to allow (but not require) items in settlement slots to exceed base value. But you do have to be aware that you are effectively making those items available for PCs to purchase, 100% chance, when they can scrape the money together. Which probably doesn't matter too much when you roll up an amulet of natural armour +1, but your +5 stat books are another matter entirely.
So, changing it back doesn't in itself break the game, but the change was made for a reason.
It is possible for a settlement to have a higher base value than what the table shows. It just requires the GMs permission.
Base Value: The base value of a settlement is used to determine what magic items may easily be purchased there. There is a 75% chance that any item of that value or lower can be found for sale in the settlement with little effort. The base value of a new settlement is 0 gp. Certain buildings (such as a Market or Tavern) increase a settlement's base value. A settlement's base value can never increase above the values listed in Table 4—5: Settlement Size and Base Value (except under special circumstances decided by the GM).
I'm not sure there's much of a runaway issue with it. In a small settlement, the slots are still limited by power level. Ultimate Rulership goes on to limit it by caster level. This is good, because if you choose to have a small village, but are able to focus the town's focus on a particular thing (a magic school, for instance), you can very realistically churn out magic items. Still, the randomness of it will be very unpredictable (random on whether the get filled at all - 50% chance of filling one item per district, and random on the value that fills them).
There isn't a runaway issue with it. Any more. In the original Kingmaker rules, PCs could "sell" settlement slot items for BP (15 for a major item), which encouraged burning items that way and building item-creating buildings in preference to others, since a single major item was like a +75 bonus to Economy during taxation! (The maths for taxation was different: it was margin of success divided by 5.)
Couple that with the ability to re-roll items until you get one greater in value than the settlement's base value, and you have a recipe for extremely powerful items appearing in the PCs hands quite quickly.
The changes eliminate both of those problems quite handily, but I think they took it too far.
Example:
An Herbalist costs 10BP. It has a single minor potion/wondrous slot. If it was the only slot in the city, there'd be a 50% chance each month of it getting filled by a minor potion or minor wondrous item. Using the tables in Ultimate Combat, and assuming 50/50 potion vs. wondrous:
'Minor potion': (equals 145gp/minor potion created)
20% chance of lvl 0 potion/oil (25gp)
40% chance of lvl 1 potion/oil (50gp)
40% chance of lvl 2 potion/oil (300gp)
'Minor Wondrous': (3198.8gp/minor wondrous item created)
(((.5*145)+(.5*3198.8))*.5)*.5 = 417.975gp/month item value created - with no way to capitalize on that gp value. Sure, the item can be purchased by the players if they choose, at full price. Or they can encourage it's sale with an economy check, in which case it reduces Economy by 1, and the item disappears - no income. Or they can purchase it with BP (1BP=2000gp), and 'withdraw' it for personal use, causing 1 unrest per bp spent. This is the only way to 'earn' from it, and it's not any different than simply withdrawing the BP directly. In short, no matter whether the items are capped by base value or not, there is no economic runaway.
To go back to the OP though, based on the RAW in Ultimate Campaign, you are right, there is little use to magic item slots. However, 'fixing' that ruling via Ultimate Rulership's alterations (which I would never run a kingdom without) does not break the economy, but simply gives a off chance of finding a better item tucked away in your sleepy little village, that you'd still have to purchase at full price.
There were problems in Kingmaker, and those were fixed by other methods - the issue of magic item slots being limited by base value is not in any way related to fixing the Kingmaker issues.