Dec 13

Dec 13 Pricing Magic Items - Part 1

Header Art: Magic Props Shop by Asya Reshetnikova

For the final spreadsheet, check out Part 8.

Whether in Dungeons & Dragons 5th edition you think magic items should cost something or not, there is no denying that your players are always going to ask how much a +1 weapon costs. Adventurers collect gold and treasure; they want something to do with it, and they want to spend it on powerful items to make themselves that much more powerful. There will always be someone looking to sell or buy magic items, even in a world where magic is wholly outlawed and almost all items have been destroyed. Where there is a demand, there is a supplier, the only question is… what’s the cost?

My goal for this topic is to have a formula for the mechanical effects of magic items that can tell the GM how much a magic item is worth, or at least provide a rough estimate. The GM could then take that formula and adjust key numbers within it so that they get prices that best match their world and desires.

You can check out other parts by following the links here:

Part 1 / Item Rarity, Restoring HP with a Consumable, Damage with Consumable (no save), Damage with Consumable (with save), Magic Weapons
Part 2 / Spell Levels & Spell Scrolls, Conditions with a Save
Part 3 / Permanent Items, Magical Enhancements, Armor Class
Part 4 / Items with Semi-Permanent Damage, Permanent Damage, Increase Ability Scores
Part 5 / Pricing out the “A” items in the Dungeon Master’s Guide
Part 6 / Pricing of the first 100 items
Part 7 / Pricing all of Dungeon Master’s Guide and Xanathar’s Guide to Everything
Part 8 / Pricing all of Tasha’s Cauldron of Everything, the most up-to-date sheet

Setting Prices

Everyone awards gold in different amounts and there is little guidance on how much gold a player should get at each level. This was a purposeful decision by the designers of 5e but it means that we don’t have a common benchmark except for what appears here and there across sourcebooks. While everyone can agree that a potion of healing is 50 gp, how much should a potion of greater healing be? Then again, maybe we all can’t agree on that price for a potion of healing as Xanathar’s Guide to Everything states that a common magic item, like a potion of healing, should be (1d6+1)*10 gp - and then half that price for a consumable like a potion of healing, so about 20 gp on average.

Yeah, I guess no one can agree on prices. This is why I like the idea of creating a formula that anyone can adjust a few key costs so that it matches their campaign and how prevalent they want such items to be.

An Item’s Rarity

The first thing I want to talk about is an item’s rarity. If you flip through the Dungeon Master’s Guide, there are items that are uncommon that should probably be very rare and very rare items that are mechanically weaker than rare items. It’s kind of a mess and is a bad way to figure out the strength of an item… and is a necessary sin for us to work with as it provides a rather simple function - it lets us know how available something is and that will always reflect in its price.

To that end, every item is going to have their price increased if it is uncommon or higher. This means that we will first determine the cost of all effects and abilities as if they were going on a Common item, and then increase those costs based on the rarity of the item. Common items are widespread enough that there are no increases to their cost just due to the law of supply and demand. My rarity increases will be as follows:

Common = x1
Uncommon = x1.5
Rare = x2
Very Rare = x3
Legendary = x5

While I would love to ignore taking an item’s rarity into account, it is going to be needed for items like potion of healing which have different versions that are more effective the rarer they become. A basic potion is only 50 gp, but the next one doubles the amount of healing, and so logically it would be only double the cost but… that’s not considering the convenience of using an item that heals twice as much during combat and not requiring you to use two actions to get that healing. Thus, the rarity of an item will also act as a Convenience Tax. It’s not perfect, and maybe I’ll change my mind on this and think of some other way of doing things - but it’s the easiest way to do it.

Restoring Hit Points with a One Target Consumable

My first question is, what does it cost to heal with a one-time consumable? This is the simplest one to answer because I’m going to stick with the Player’s Handbook and go with 50 gp for a potion of healing. Though the next question is, do we do the math based on the most healing from a potion or the average? I think the average is going to be the way to go, but we can go ahead and see what both costs are:

As a reminder, a potion of healing heals 2d4+2 damage. Also, a reminder that the average of a 1d4 is 2.5, so 2d4’s average is 5, not 4, like you might think at a glance.

Average: 50 gp / 7 damage = 7gp 1sp 4cp per point of healing
Max: 50 gp / 10 damage = 5gp per point of healing

Alright, I’ll be honest 7.14 gp (or 7gp 1sp 4cp) isn’t very pretty to look at but let’s go ahead and see what the cost for every other potion of healing would be and then we can decide which price point we want to go with.

Greater Healing / Uncommon / 4d4 + 4
Average: 14 damage * 7.14gp = 99.96 gp * 1.5 rarity = 149.94 gp
Max: 20 damage * 5gp = 100 gp * 1.5 rarity = 150 gp
Superior Healing / Rare / 8d4 + 8
Average: 28 damage * 7.14gp = 199.92 gp * 2 rarity = 399.84 gp
Max: 40 damage * 5gp = 200 gp * 2 rarity = 400 gp
Supreme Healing / Very Rare / 10d4 + 20
Average: 45 damage * 7.14gp = 321.3 gp * 3 rarity = 963.9 gp
Max: 60 damage * 5gp = 300 gp * 3 rarity = 900 gp

Shocking, probably no one, the prices remain pretty much the same until your average healing is less reliant on dice and more on the flat bonus you get. I haven’t yet decided which number is better. The allure of having a simple 5 gp per hit point healed is rather good, but part of me likes the 7.14gp just because it has a decimal point and that’s nice.

I think, it’s best to stick with average as a lot of things through 5e’s design space is based on the average of dice notation plus modifiers, so 7.14 gp per hit point of healing on a consumable! That’s our first value and I couldn’t be prouder. Of course, no one is going to like a cost in copper and silver pieces, so let’s go ahead and round up all those prices to the next 5 gp, so 150 gp for greater healing, 400 gp for superior healing, and 965 gp for supreme healing. Much prettier.

Damage with a One Target Consumable with no Save (Attack)

The next thing we can look at is dealing damage with a consumable, like poison or acid. We have a few things we can look at, and for this one, I’m only going to look at objects that deal damage with no save involved. The examples we have are a vial of acid and holy water that deals 2d6 damage and costs 25 gp, and really that is what we have. Everything else that has a cost has a save associated with it or it works on multiple people at a time. I’m just interested in the raw numbers for a single target damage consumable that happens once, this will be important to figure out when we want to look at permanent effects and can help us determine how much a flame tongue or a giantslayer might be worth.

So, 2d6 acid damage, 25 gp, and it’s a common item because its just a generic piece of equipment. Easy peasy. Let’s go ahead and find the average, which is 7 (3.5 * 2). Then do the math…

Average: 25 gp / 7 damage = 3gp 5sp 7cp per point of damage
Max: 25 gp / 12 damage = 2gp 0sp 8cp per point of damage

I think we’ll go ahead and do what we did before and just stick to the average. So this is telling us that a consumable, single target, no save, effect is 3.57 gp per point of damage (on the average). What this tells us is that it is cheaper to deal damage than to recover from damage.

But What About A Save?

Unfortunately for our purposes here, we just have the lowly acid or holy flask to go off for our damage calculations with no save. But we have quite a few things we can look at for damage with a saving throw… unfortunately this is a bit of a problem as they are poisons and they seem INCREDIBLY expensive… but maybe it’ll all make sense. Below is a list of the poisons in the Dungeon Master’s Guide with their cost, average & max damage, and their DC.

Midnight Tears / 1,500 gp / Avg: 31 / Max: 54 / DC 17
Purple Worm Poison / 2,000 gp / Avg: 42 / Max: 72 / DC 19
Serpent Venom / 200 gp / Avg: 10 / Max: 18 / DC 11
Wyvern Poison / 1,200 gp / Avg: 24 / Max: 42 / DC 15

So removing all poisons that have other effects than just save for half damage gives us just 4 poisons to look at. None of them share a DC or the same amount of damage, but that’s OK. We can start by looking at a breakdown of their costs and go from there.

Midnight Tears Avg Cost: 48.38 gp, Max Cost: 27.7 gp
Purple Worm Poison Avg Cost: 47.61 gp, Max Cost: 27.7 gp
Serpent Venom Avg Cost: 20 gp, Max Cost: 11.11 gp
Wyvern Poison Avg Cost: 50 gp, Max Cost: 28.57 gp

So these costs are all over the place. They aren’t even close to what the cost is for an acid flask or holy water, which just goes to show you how expensive it is to be a poisoner in this game. There is something useful we can see at least, the strongest poisons are quite close to each other regarding cost based on the max damage that they can deal.

From here, I think we can sort the poisons out like this:

Serpent Venom - Common / DC 10 to DC 12
NONE - Uncommon / DC 13 to DC 14
Wyvern Poison - Rare / DC 15 to DC 16
Midnight Tears - Very Rare / DC 17 to DC 18
Purple Worm - Legendary / DC 19+

So now that we know how our rarity tax (convenience tax) will work, we can now begin pricing them out. But what should be our base starting cost? If we take our single target no save damage cost of 3.57 gp per point of damage, we can then get better costs:

Serpent Venom: 3.57 gp * 10 = 35.7gp
Wyvern Poison: 3.57gp * 24 = 85.68gp * 2 rarity = 171.36 gp
Midnight Tears: 3.57gp * 31 = 110.67gp * 3 rarity = 332.01 gp
Purple Worm: 3.57gp * 42 = 149.94gp * 5 rarity = 749.70 gp

I feel like we are close, but there is a big difference between an acid flask and a save for half poison. The acid flask doesn’t give a save for half damage while poisons do, which means that the acid flask is stronger because there is no chance to reduce its damage beyond just missing. So if we take that into account, we should further reduce the cost of such damage with a save since their damage can then be stripped away. While I think saying half of 3.57gp would be a bit extreme, I think saying that 3/4 of its cost (2.68gp) may be reasonable, so let’s look at that.

Serpent Venom: 2.68 gp * 10 = 26.80gp - Round to 30gp
Wyvern Poison: 2.68gp * 24 = 64.32gp * 2 rarity = 128.64 gp - Round to 130 gp
Midnight Tears: 2.68gp * 31 = 83.08gp * 3 rarity = 249.24 gp - Round to 250 gp
Purple Worm: 2.68gp * 42 = 112.56gp * 5 rarity = 562.80 gp - Round to 565 gp

Alright, these prices are looking… reasonable compared to what limited information we have from the Player’s Handbook and I’m still liking what the rarity tax is doing. Of course, I can already hear people not liking these prices for poisons because poisons are an illicit substance, but that’s alright. Just ignore that they are poisons and call it stabby damage or fire damage and look at it through that lens. Is asking for 565 gp so a player can do a one-time extra 42 damage (save for half) that much to ask for on a consumable? If you think so, you can always increase the cost!

Let’s jump on to the next thing…

Magic Weapons

This next one is going to be VERY contentious I think, and I am going to be the first one to yell at me. YOU CAN’T PRICE A MAGIC WEAPON THAT CHEAPLY! WHAT ARE YOU THINKING STEPHEN!?

There, now I feel better. I’ll let you do the same.

…

Alright, let’s start looking at magic weapon prices. Thanks to the newest release from Wizards of the Coast, Strixhaven: Cirriculum of Chaos has the cost of a +1 weapon. It is 300 gp, which actually lines up with the 1d6*100 gp cost that Xanathar’s recommends for uncommon items! So if you were already doing that system in your games, than you may have sold a +1 weapon for as little as 100 gp or as much as 600 gp or even 300 gp.

But wait - 300 gp is for an uncommon magic weapon. What about the other rarities? Well, sadly Strixhaven doesn’t go that far, but we can by using the rarity tax we set up above. First, we have to figure out what the common magic weapon would cost as well as figure out what the +1 to hit and damage should cost.

Thanks to our work above, we know a consumable should cost 3.57gp per point of damage. A permanent effect should cost more but how much more. I think it isn’t unreasonable to say that a permanent effect should be at least x10 more than a consumable one, which would mean a +1 damage on a weapon would cost 35.7 gp. Not a lot for a single point of damage, but when you add 7 (2d6) you would be looking at an extra 249.9gp plus any rarity tax. So this means, to figure the cost of a common magic weapon with no bonuses, we can multiply 35.7gp by 1.5 (rarity tax) which is 53.55 gp. We can then minus that from 300gp to get 246.45gp. This is the cost of an uncommon magic weapon with a +1 to hit.

If we think that 100gp is the base cost for any common item, as talked about in Xanathar’s and showcased in Strixhaven with a common unlimited coffee mug, than that means a common magic weapon should only cost 100 gp. We can then multiply that by 1.5 (rarity) tax to get 150 gp uncommon magic weapon. If we take 246.45 minus 150gp we get 96.45gp for the uncommon +1 to hit bonus (if this was a common weapon, it would only cost 64.30gp).

So, we have now broken down the costs of all of this and now let’s see if this work was for not.

Magic Weapon / Common / 100 gp
+1 Magic Weapon / Uncommon / 300 gp / +1 bonus to hit and damage
+2 Magic Weapon / Rare / 600 gp / +2 bonus to hit and damage
+3 Magic Weapon / Very Rare / 1,200 gp / +3 bonus to hit and damage

Whew… that’s… not a lot of gold for a +3 magic weapon... But, that’s just the first try at it. What if, instead of simply the cost of increasing your to hit and damage on a magic wasn’t just cumulative. So, for a +3 to hit, it would change from the additional price of 64.30gp x3, but rather 64.30gp + 64.30(x2) + 64.30(x3) - and then add on the rarity tax. Let’s look at that in action now.

Magic Weapon / Common / 100 gp
+1 Magic Weapon / Uncommon / 300 gp / +1 bonus to hit and damage
+2 Magic Weapon / Rare / 728.60 gp / +2 bonus to hit and damage
+3 Magic Weapon / Very Rare / 1,778 gp / +3 bonus to hit and damage

That’s still pretty low for such a powerful boon to a character. Revisiting Xanathar’s, it suggests that we increase the cost by the power of 10 every time we increase in rarity. While I can’t say that that is right, as then you are looking at a +3 weapon costing 30,000gp; I can’t say that that is wrong for all tables.

But I think I’m approaching this from the wrong direction. We know that an uncommon +1 weapon costs 300 gp, but we can create a new formula to decide the bonuses. What if the +1 to hit and damage itself should be used in the formula. Let’s try something else where we take the bonuses of all previous versions and the current version of the weapon and add them together before multiplying the base cost…

common +1 weapon: 200 gp
uncommon +1 weapon: (200*1[bonus]) *1.5 (rarity tax) = 300 gp
rare +2 weapon (200*(1[bonus]+2[bonus])) *2 (rarity tax) = 1,200 gp
very rare +3 weapon (200*(1[bonus]+2[bonus]+3[bonus])) *3 (rarity tax) = 3,600 gp

So, it’s much better than before and makes it so that a +3 weapon requires a bit of an investment. Of course, in some games that could be pocket change, but then they can change the base cost of 200 gp to 500 gp and then a +3 weapon would cost 9,000 gp; or change the base cost to 1,000 gp, and then a +3 would be 18,000 gp.

All I’m doing here is looking for a formula, and I think we’ve found it. I’m happy with that formula and think that it scales quite nicely for our purposes and it makes some sense with what we are doing here, even if people probably aren’t going to like the price as even I don’t. With that said, I don’t want to feel too constrained by the sourcebooks as I think 300 gp for a +1 weapon is low, so I’d say the default cost for magic weapons in our formulas should be:

Magic Weapon / Common / 500 gp
+1 Magic Weapon / Uncommon / 750 gp / +1 bonus to hit and damage
+2 Magic Weapon / Rare / 3,000 gp / +2 bonus to hit and damage
+3 Magic Weapon / Very Rare / 9,000 gp / +3 bonus to hit and damage

That still might be too low for some, but the formula should still work for most people.

Conclusion…

Since I want to create a spreadsheet that can help do the bulk of the math, I don’t care that we are looking at weird numbers like 2.68gp or have strange formulas. Of course, someone might look at what we are doing and think that these prices are to low or to high, but that’s OK! That’s why I’m showing all my work so that they can take what I’ve done and then put in your own numbers and get your perfect costs! Next time we revisit this topic, I’m going to start looking at conditions, permanent effects, spell scrolls, and more!

If you are curious to see a work-in progress excel file, you can check it out here.