How do you explain magic items costing so much / where does the money go?


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion

Scarab Sages

So I've been playing around with magic items and something just occured to me. The ring of invisibility is a "plain silver band" that requires 10,000 gold pieces worth of goods to construct. Im just wondering where does all that gold go and how do people explain it?


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Materials for the ritual. You don't just melt down the coins, but rather acquire ingredients needed for the enchantment. I imagine gems are often involved as well.


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Spices to attract the right spirits and repel hostile ones, incense to set your own mind in the right state, odd glassware which gets used just once, acids to etch a design on to the silver band and then to remove the etching afterwards, strange chemicals infused with magic to bathe it in. Research materials. Relics and monster bits.

Extra-strength coffee or other substances to keep going when an all-nighter is required followed by more work the next day - yes I know it's a routine business in the rules but I like to imagine that you might need to keep a ritual going for seven times seven hours or some such.


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All the previous answers seem unlikely: it can't be expensive material costs, because the free market would drive prices down quickly by innovation and substitution, especially with thousands of high INT/WIS magic users involved.

So there can be only one reasonable explanation of unchanging high costs: taxes & license fees.

Scarab Sages

Hmmmm that last one appeals to me.

Silver Crusade

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Nigel Aldain’s next kickstarter.


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Theaitetos wrote:

All the previous answers seem unlikely: it can't be expensive material costs, because the free market would drive prices down quickly by innovation and substitution, especially with thousands of high INT/WIS magic users involved.

So there can be only one reasonable explanation of unchanging high costs: taxes & license fees.

Well it is possible to create cheaper magic items by restricting them to certain alignments, classes, or requiring skill ranks. So the innovation has already happened. There are also traits and other abilities to further reduce the cost of crafting. But these cheaper variants never make it to the market. As if someone is pressuring every single shop, no matter the country or plane, to not sell such items. And to always buy magic items at half the market price so that you normally make no profit while crafting magic items.

As the price of magic items doesn't change when stepping over borders, it can't be the result of any government unless they all somehow colluded with no backstabbing going on. Which simply isn't possible. So the obvious conclusion is that there is an extremely powerful multi-planar company which holds a monopoly on magic item crafting, preventing the market from ever changing.

Or maybe it's all held together by divine mandate, which would explain why the cost of magic items aren't affected by normal market forces such as inflation. And why diamonds of a specific value rather than size are used for Raise Dead. Probably Abadar?


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Gold is the solidified essence of magic, this is why it is the universal basis for economic systems. When making magic items you are actually convering the crystalized magic in the gold back into a free state, which is then used to empower the final item.


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I see monetary resources of such a magnitude as more than ingots of gold. The finances of a character represent the will of others to work for said character, constantly being maintained and renewed.

A bit like a character levelling up can be narrated as having trained for a long time to acquire the techniques but it is only at level up that it is reflected upon mechanically, I see removing said amount from the inventory of a character as having been spent on a longer period of time, for research, goods, discussion, experimentation, by the character or by others. The moment when the gold is removed from the character sheet is only when the sum of all this is gathered, compiled and used in a way to produce the object.

There is a lot of meta-game in it.

The characters are doing much more than what the players have them do. Only most of it doesn't reflect in the mechanics. It is when a lead materialises that the cost is paid. A character doesn't get to react quicker from one day to the next in the story, she gets better at it time after time and when she has reached sufficient results, the players gets to write «Improved Initiative» on the sheet.


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don't over think things... it's about game balance...

Scarab Sages

TxSam88 wrote:

don't over think things... it's about game balance...

I'm not overthinking things and its not about game balance its about world building and coming up with a workable explanation of why a simple silver ring costs 10,000 gold to make. I HATE the "don't question it" dismissal of a game mechanic because it ruins the world immersion for me when a pile of gold just poofs out of existence without explanation. I want an explanation to make the world work.


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Some of the items may be multi stage items where you need to build something that allows you to build something else. Often these items can only be used once. For example the ring of invisibility may need to be stored in 3 solid gold box made from virgin gold taken directly from the earth. But each box must be crafted by a different person. After the ritual is complete the boxes dissolves leaving the ring behind.

Creating magic items may also require bargaining with appropriate outsiders. Part of the cost of the materials is sacrifices and bribes to the appropriate being. Maybe a ring of invisibility requires the blessing a fey queen. Her price for her blessing is some rare work of art.

Maybe he materials are tied to the creator of the item. The items needed may have to have spiritual value to the creator of the item. So while one caster will require a perfect diamond another may need the heart of a dragon. As a person ages they change so what worked once may not work again.

There also may be environmental effects that affect what ingredients are needed. Things like the season or the position of the stars or planes may change the requirements. So in winter you need one ingredient but summer requires a different one, and then the fact that Mars is in line with the moon requires an alteration in the ingredient dictated by the season.

Then there is supply and demand. If some of the ingredients are rare the competition for them will artificially raise their price.

All of these factors can be operating at once. This means that often a good portion of the cost to create the magic item may go into research into what is needed at this particular time and place. Tracking celestial conjunctions may need charts of the stars. Contacting the proper outsider may require researching their names and what they want as sacrifices.


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I treat it as altering information about an object in a coterminous plane (The Plane of Names). You're opening up a portal to the information about that specific object and putting things in that portal to change the object's identity. I use the same device to explain mending spells knowing what something is meant to look like.

The materials shift as time passes, quickly becoming unrecoverable as the object changes states and passes through time.


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Senko wrote:
...ruins the world immersion for me when a pile of gold just poofs out of existence without explanation.

It does not "poof" out of existence unless your GM makes it do that.

Different tables and GM's explain it different ways depending on the FOCUS of their interest in the different aspects of the game, or the world, or the economy in general.

In my own minds eye, if the GM does not want to spell it out, I assume I am spending gold on divergent rare and exotic components that are consumed in the process to make the ring. So in the case of the ring, that 10,000gp is going to various suppliers, vendors, contractors who charge that much for the rarity of the components required to consumed in the many-days-long ritual to produce said ring.

Paizo is not going to spell out the exact ritual and component items with attendant costs to manufacture every single wondrous item. That is something for the players and GM to decide if it is worth their interest and sense of world immersion to figure out.

I am not berating you at all - When I play a crafting PC, I do make up my own rare and exotic components and costs for each and spell out the ritual step by step, because it interests me and sparks creativity. But other players and the GM may not give a rat's @$$, have the time, energy or inclination to care about that part of the game.

For gloves = Specially coated silver thread, magical beast skins that must be treated and cured in a unique tanning solution, cut to shape with a mithral blade, and sewn up to shape over the smoke of rare incense while repeating the incantation. Then branding the runes on the cuff using fire from wood that has to have been struck by lighting and a cold iron branding iron... every bit of which is consumed/wrecked in the process as its special properties are leeched into the gloves so it counts as a "one-time-cost" to finally make the magic gloves.

Scarab Sages

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mardaddy wrote:
Senko wrote:
...ruins the world immersion for me when a pile of gold just poofs out of existence without explanation.

It does not "poof" out of existence unless your GM makes it do that.

Different tables and GM's explain it different ways depending on the FOCUS of their interest in the different aspects of the game, or the world, or the economy in general.

In my own minds eye, if the GM does not want to spell it out, I assume I am spending gold on divergent rare and exotic components that are consumed in the process to make the ring. So in the case of the ring, that 10,000gp is going to various suppliers, vendors, contractors who charge that much for the rarity of the components required to consumed in the many-days-long ritual to produce said ring.

Paizo is not going to spell out the exact ritual and component items with attendant costs to manufacture every single wondrous item. That is something for the players and GM to decide if it is worth their interest and sense of world immersion to figure out.

I am not berating you at all - When I play a crafting PC, I do make up my own rare and exotic components and costs for each and spell out the ritual step by step, because it interests me and sparks creativity. But other players and the GM may not give a rat's @$$, have the time, energy or inclination to care about that part of the game.

For gloves = Specially coated silver thread, magical beast skins that must be treated and cured in a unique tanning solution, cut to shape with a mithral blade, and sewn up to shape over the smoke of rare incense while repeating the incantation. Then branding the runes on the cuff using fire from wood that has to have been struck by lighting and a cold iron branding iron... every bit of which is consumed/wrecked in the process as its special properties are leeched into the gloves so it counts as a "one-time-cost" to finally make the magic gloves.

Oh I know not everyone enjoys world building this much I've just developed a pet hate for having that posted in a thread specifically asking about world building. Just like there's a lot of threads that don't interest me. I just try not to post in them because I'm not contributing to their discussion same as responding to "I'm just wondering where does all that gold go and how do people explain it?" with "don't over think things... it's about game balance...". I know WHY the game mechanics work that way what I'm looking for is ways to explain HOW that mechanic works in a world where the finished item is just a plain silver band. I have had this kind of response so many times (in multiple forums. It's just a game mechanic, don't overthink things, you're making this too complicated) its starting to provoke a snarly reaction from me because its not helpful to answering the question that thread was created to deal with. Much the same as the "Git Gud" meme in gaming is of zero help when someone asks for advice on how to get past a certain level as opposed to "try this move" or "when they do X this area will prevent it hitting you".

In this case I've gotten lots of helpful advice I can use e.g. incense that's burnt up, acid to mark or erase things on the ring, taxes (not so much admitedly on a plain silver band but some other magic items would easily lend themselves to this), research (especially with traits like hedge mage that reduces costs by 5%), single use components to infuse the magic. If that kind of discussion doesn't interest you though then just don't post because obviously other people DO enjoy discussing this kind of thing and its part of their fun in the game.


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IMC I have decided that there are no magic shops and have a homebrew feat chain that makes crafting permanent and/or powerful items extremely expensive in terms of feats required. I also have a very limited number of NPCs with character classes and even fewer with high levels. Consequently, commissioning a magic item requires influence and gold. Imagine trying to commission Leonardo Da Vinci to make you something. That's not to say there aren't magic items around but they are treated a little like fine art snd the backstory is that most were created before the twin cataclysms (Greyhawk campaign world) and the techniques used then are lost.

EDIT: I also require rare and exotic components, many of which cannot be found on the prime material plane. Some of the most powerful components are metaphorical, such as a lie uttered by an angel. It's up to the players to think about how to gather the components.


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I feel you. I hate when I ask a question like 'How does X work?' and people start going on about how Z interacts with Y because it's supposedly better than X. I'm like 'That's not what I asked. Answer what I asked.'

As for your question, I assume that some of the gold is paying for the time of the crafters. More is for buying materials and equipment, paying for power (like coal for a furnace and things like that). And the rest is sales tax.

Scarab Sages

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Hugo Rune wrote:

IMC I have decided that there are no magic shops and have a homebrew feat chain that makes crafting permanent and/or powerful items extremely expensive in terms of feats required. I also have a very limited number of NPCs with character classes and even fewer with high levels. Consequently, commissioning a magic item requires influence and gold. Imagine trying to commission Leonardo Da Vinci to make you something. That's not to say there aren't magic items around but they are treated a little like fine art snd the backstory is that most were created before the twin cataclysms (Greyhawk campaign world) and the techniques used then are lost.

EDIT: I also require rare and exotic components, many of which cannot be found on the prime material plane. Some of the most powerful components are metaphorical, such as a lie uttered by an angel. It's up to the players to think about how to gather the components.

Ohhhh metaphorical components I hadn't thought of that and its such a common idea in fiction too. Very nice suggestion thanks.

To be fair crafting feats are already horrifically costly if you want to try and cover multiple things rather than just one. Brew potion, Craft magic arms and armour, craft rod, craft staff, craft wand, craft wondrous items. That's 6 feats on just the normal stuff and doesn't even touch on things like craft construct (one feat per type), cultivate magical plants (Vine of wish grapes :)), inscribe tattoo and the others . Then of your course you need the crafting skills to make them or I thought you did.

Heather 540 wrote:

I feel you. I hate when I ask a question like 'How does X work?' and people start going on about how Z interacts with Y because it's supposedly better than X. I'm like 'That's not what I asked. Answer what I asked.'

As for your question, I assume that some of the gold is paying for the time of the crafters. More is for buying materials and equipment, paying for power (like coal for a furnace and things like that). And the rest is sales tax.

Oh I've had that alot too, nice to know I'm not the only one bugged by it. I know they're being helpful but I usually want to know about X thing I like I'm not trying to min max the best or most powerful combination in existence.

Hmmm I thought you had to make them yourself didn't realize you could hire others to make the item while you infuse power. This changes things a bit for my future play.

I never even thought of material costs like coal. Lots of helpful advice to this question.


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Well, as far as the game mechanics go, you are making the items yourself. But you can flavor it as though you hire some craftsmen to help you with crafting.

The Exchange

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My problem has always been with the difference between the crafting price and purchase price.

a Wizard spends 12.5 gp (and a few hours) crafting a scroll of a 1st level spell.

if he wants to BUY one, it costs 25 gp.

easy enough.

NOW - he wants to sell the one he crafted... and he can sell it for 12.5 gp. But the person buying it pays 25 gp.

what happens to the extra 12.5 gp? Taxes?

There always seems to be an OotS for an Example.


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Paying lower level adventurers to fetch some of the materials for you.


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Before everyone answers this question, remember that some magic items can be worked on while a PC adventures. So if the high cost of crafting a magic item involves having access to the spleen of a displacer beast or the DaVinci of rings, how do you justify that

Magic Item Creation wrote:
if the caster is out adventuring, he can devote 4 hours each day to item creation, although he nets only 2 hours’ worth of work. This time is not spent in one continuous period, but rather during lunch, morning preparation, and during watches at night. If time is dedicated to creation, it must be spent in uninterrupted 4-hour blocks?
While re-reading these rules on the SRD, these statements jumped out at me:
Magic Item Creation wrote:
At the end of this process, the spellcaster must make a single skill check (usually Spellcraft, but sometimes another skill) to finish the item.
,
Magic Item Creation wrote:
Magic supplies for items are always half of the base price in gp. For many items, the market price equals the base price. Armor, shields, weapons, and items with value independent of their magically enhanced properties add their item cost to the market price. The item cost does not influence the base price (which determines the cost of magic supplies), but it does increase the final market price.

These to me suggest that 1. the creator buys some, if not all of the materials, including the finished materials, and ASSEMBLES them with the right combo of spells and the proper feat in order to finish the item. Also, the cost of the item, like in the case of armor, might be separate from the half-market-price cost to create. So, if making Studded Leather Armor +1, a creator needs to pay 500 GP, plus the cost of Masterwork studded leather armor.

Putting all of this together paints a picture that some, if not most of the final components of magic item creation are not directly under the control of the creator. A Ring of Invisibility then may cost so much b/c while the final result is a silver ring the creator had to get said ring from a specialist that had to brave a journey through orc-infested lands to the top of Mount Doom, take an ingot of silver that had been kissed by an elf queen known as The Light of the East and cast said ring while having cast Plane Shift at the exact right moment so that the ring exists simultaneously in the Prime and in the Plane of Shadow... meaning that the ring itself is significantly more costly than a simple, silver ring.

So, one answer to the OP's question may simply be that the cost of creating a magic item may simply be all of the extra materials, services, and rituals that go into the COMPONENTS, that in turn make up the magic item. The GM could also, using the Armor and Weapons bit above might add even MORE cost based on the value of the item(S) the magic item(s) are made from.

Now, this of course adds the wrinkle of "what if the creator has the skill appropriate to making the item from scratch?" For example, if the creator has Craft: Jewelry to make a silver ring for a Ring of Invisibility, couldn't they just make the thing themselves and avoid paying an outside party the cost of making that component?

But then I reference back to all the extra things that need to be done to obtain that component, besides just folding some silver. If the player wants their character to take on the dangerous quest of finding the elf-kissed silver themselves, procuring it from an unhinged monarch, making the journey to the volcano (which requires specific events to happen to the silver-bearer along the way), then stand next to an active pyroclastic flow while casting Plane Shift, all while using Craft: Jewelry to forge the ring... that character is likely out of the main adventure for over a year to get all that done.

Or, y'know... they could just pay a nine-fingered halfling for the one they already have crafted.

Magic item creation isn't just about making the item, throwing a spell on it and calling it a day. Even a scroll of a first level spell might have unique items. They can't just use any old parchment; the material has to come from the untanned hides of the finest sheep, raised on a special diet, aged at least 13 years, and slain in a moment of total peace. There might only be ONE shepherd locally that can pull all that off, and even with subsidies by the local Mage's Guild that Shepherd still charges parchment dealers in the area a decent amount to buy those hides. Then the parchment-makers need to prepare the parchment only under indirect sunlight or candlelight, scraped at 109% tension and only in contact with a skein that includes cordage from a 90 year old yew tree, and finally dehaired using the soured remains of a high-quality dwarven beer mixed with lime.

Again, all of these unique requirements, even if subsidized, keep costs of the materials high. When a level 1 Universalist Wizard that kept their Scribe Scroll feat runs out to the local merchant to buy the scroll parchment, they're just dropping 12 GP and 5 silver on a roll and some ink rather than go through this whole process themselves.


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I see the magic item market the same way as the housing market.

Where I live, houses are overly expensive. Yes you need to pay for a place to live, but now you need to be rich or have a house to sell to buy one. Many people bought a house decades ago, and literally could not buy the next-door neighbor's identical house since it's "value" has increased so much. There's a lot of Fear Of Missing Out, so people will overspend in bidding wars (they fear the house will just get more expensive if they try to save more). Picture a noble who wants to buy a Wand of Cure Light Wounds, 750 gp. They try to do so, but a team of adventurers, fresh from selling off the loot from a dragon's hoard, show up and make an 800 gp donation and get the wand instead.

Many people treat houses as an investment. However they won't downsize (sell the house for a cheaper house) when they retire. So the house was treated as an investment while working, and as an (overpriced) good while retired. I figure many adventurers will not let go of their magic items post-retirement, since many of those items help keep them alive. Why would the retired fighter give up his Cloak of Resistance?

I figure you have to buy "rare" components when you make a magic item. It's magic, not technology, so making things more efficient probably isn't possible. When making a Wand of Fireballs, you need all that bat guano and sulfur and several thousands of dollars worth of other components (red dragon blood, perhaps?) which could only be obtained, at high risk, by a higher level adventurer. Dragons are greedy enough to sell their blood, but are too prideful to actually do it. (Plus it's dangerous to give a spellcaster your blood.) I'm not seeing an "efficient" way of getting true dragon blood (as an example).


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Its not just "silver ring... plus Invisible Stalker blood... plus Invisibility spell" and bam - you've got a Ring of Invisibility. You have to have the RIGHT silver, the RIGHT Invisible Stalker blood, and other components. At least, that's what I've done in my games.

These specific conditions are what make the components so costly. The conditions are not easily met either. The 'Stalker blood for example - it might be that the monster must have been exsanguinated during a period of heightened terror, then the blood itself must have been proofed with "Dust of Ether" for 3 nights under direct moonlight.

When the creator makes their Spellcraft check to "finish" the item, one of the things they might be doing is testing the blood. Perhaps the vendor who sold it to them was lying and it was never proofed at all, or proofed with exposure to sunshine that spoiled it. In this case, the creator may have to scramble to use other reagents to get the blood "active" or something; there IS technically a chance of failure or a cursed item being crafted after all.

The key to the RAW on Magic Item Creation though is to make the costs fixed, for ease of play. Once you introduce fluctuating markets, bidding for items, and the breakdown or cost analysis on specific components and their individual requirements in the process of making items, you run the risk of adding extra layers to the game you hadn't intended.

I began running a low-GP game and advised my players to monetize other revenue streams, showing them the section on "trophies" on the SRD. The one guy who runs a wizard and makes Wondrous Items noticed that some specific "trophies" can sub in for the cost of item crafting or even give an item a special effect depending on what is used in the item's creation.

Now this game has partially devolved into "monster dissection time." The wizard's player is constantly asking if there are any special parts, such as eyes or organs, that can be useful for item creation and then uses a Wand of Gentle Repose (the Cleric version, with UMD) and "harvests" what is needed from the monster corpse after threats are cleared from the area. Needless to say, I now have to prep my encounter designs with this in mind.

This is anecdotal, YRMV, but it illustrates one of the pitfalls of mucking about with alternatives to the standard RAW on magic item creation.


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Smoke & Mirrors wrote:

My problem has always been with the difference between the crafting price and purchase price.

a Wizard spends 12.5 gp (and a few hours) crafting a scroll of a 1st level spell.

if he wants to BUY one, it costs 25 gp.

easy enough.

NOW - he wants to sell the one he crafted... and he can sell it for 12.5 gp. But the person buying it pays 25 gp.

what happens to the extra 12.5 gp? Taxes?

There always seems to be an OotS for an Example.

That's a very concise and clear highlighting of the inconsistency. Perhaps the extra 12.5GP can be accounted for by:

The market for scrolls is limited and most people who want them can make them themselves. So the item is held for a while and the sale price covers mundane living expenses such as food and rent.

The PC mage is not a very good merchant and gets bargained down.

Agent or broker fees between the buyer and seller.


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I've been reading some DND 2.0 stuff as of late, and it seems they were really into collecting ingredients for making magic items. The impression I got was there were no markets for buying or selling magic items, nor were there markets for magical ingredients. Collecting each ingredient was possibly a whole adventure itself.

There were no price tags in the DMG. Just treasure the GM would some times randomly roll.

I think simplifying the crafting process was supposed to be a feature in DND 3.0. Mind you, back then you still had to invest xp to make magic items, so it wasn't all money. Pathfinder dropped the xp part.


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Smoke & Mirrors wrote:

My problem has always been with the difference between the crafting price and purchase price.

a Wizard spends 12.5 gp (and a few hours) crafting a scroll of a 1st level spell.

if he wants to BUY one, it costs 25 gp.

easy enough.

NOW - he wants to sell the one he crafted... and he can sell it for 12.5 gp. But the person buying it pays 25 gp.

No, the person buying it pays 12.5gp.

You might be able to find someone willing to pay more, if you're willing to stop adventuring and devote your life to searching for a buyer who needs what you've got to sell.

But if your caster is selling a scroll, he will normally sell it to the shop that buys anything. It buys the scroll for 12.5gp, and hopes to make a profit by selling it for 25gp at some point in the future. The shop that buys anything can't afford to pay full price for items because it would be running at a loss.

They need to have a large gold supply so they can buy whatever random junk other adventurers bring it. They have an extremely high security budget, because they know that if they can get robbed, the game balance of the entire world gets screwed up. They pay taxes and rent too. So their seemingly large profit margin is mostly spent on overheads.


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Why are PCs allowed to even make or buy magic items? Why not have players just wait for their GM/DM's to hand them out? Think about it: without allowing the sale of magic items or their creation in your game, PCs wouldn't have much reason to hoard loot at all. I mean oh sure, there's the occasional expensive spell component but otherwise what good really IS gold?

3 GP/mo is all that's needed in a settlement to scrape by with food, water and shelter. Using the Downtime rules, a PC using an untrained Craft check to earn a daily wage could manage that.

In the wilderness, barring GM-imposed penalties, you've got food and water on a DC 10 Survival check, which can be used untrained as well.

Camping gear, rations and waterskins are extremely affordable, as are some simple modes of transport. Getting from place to place and surviving the journey is fairly easy after level 1.

Surviving encounters is difficult, but again the GM is handing out magic items for that, right? So, as long as you're keeping your PCs in items needed by level to get their numbers where they should be for combat survival, why hand out gold at all?

Scarab Sages

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So we can buy things we like that probably wont be in the treasure we loot like nice outfits, a houes, artwork to our taste etc.

I remember one first ed character I had who made a habbit of looting useful body parts from the things we killed. The other party members were fine with it till they started carving up human opponents on the basis "You never know a human spleen might just be useful for something."


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Honestly, I assumed magic items are made mad-libs style. So your "plain silver band" requires some crazy set of ingredients based on what kind of silver it is (or the time of year, or the caster, or some other incredibly variable thing). So "any possession from the home of a king", "anything stolen from a troll", "dry and brown earth", and "cheek of a carpenter". Considering the list that came from that was both tame and appropriate.

So the cost is more about obscurity or rarity than actual costs. Instead of a "gold coin" you need "a gold coin that won a longshot bet" or "a gold coin that was used to pay to kill a king". And the rest of the cost is finding or making that.

Sort of like the lich ritual. There's requirements, there's a cost, but everything else is "make up something personal to them".

Scarab Sages

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I remember one of the tremors movies (4 I think) where there was blood silver so named because when first exposed to the air it looked red in colour for a little while.


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Much like real-world services, you can't always see where the money went.

Have a leak behind your wall?

Tear the drywall down, fix the pipe, fix the rot, re-do the drywall, match the paint, and paint.

You literally can't see any difference between before and after, but your home is now far safer/better.

You've also spent $5k.

Magic items are a ~service~ you're paying for labor, not so much material goods.


Same way I explain the time it takes... research... way more than any material cost... or actual crafting/construction... what is needed... what is available... what works as a substitute in this specific case... who knows the answers to these questions... where are they... how much do they charge for this information... how much is the replacement that was just learned about from the person you just found out about...


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I've always been a fan of the idea that part of the reason that gems, gold, silver, etc. have intrinsic value in-universe is things like spell components and other magic that literally removes them from existence as physical matter in order to power a magical effect.

So the gold is spent on valuable stuff, and the bulk of it is removed from existence as physical matter and now only exists as the magic of the item.

Maybe not quite to the level of Harry Potter and the Natural 20 where they were throwing salt into a furnace to consume it and make it into magic items, though.

Dave the Commoner has some nice examples of specific super expensive stuff that was used for the raw materials of various magic items if you prefer that route.

I sorta mix and match and mish and mash according to my capricious whims and moods.

Liberty's Edge

I generally downgrade the costs of Mundane items down a step when I run more gritty games. example: Long Swords cost 15 Silver instead of Gold.
Alchemical items generally cost twice as much in Silver and magical items still cost gold.

Starting wealth is in Silver Pieces
and the traits that offer more wealth offer just more Silver instead of gold.

Now, normally the reason I have Magic Items cost so much is because there are few spellcasters in my world making them. Their might be a specialist here and there that makes Magic Swords and permanent items. Mostly Scrolls, Wands and Potions are the most common items floating around from casters.


I think it costs so much so that it incentivizes players into taking feats like Craft Wondrous Item.

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