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#11 |
Join Date: May 2015
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Yes, even if you didn't increase the difficulty of making a Blur ring and were just thinking about supply & demand, the price would tend to go up as pretty much all people who see combat would benefit greatly from having a Blur ring.
In this case, that would be a massive advantage, since each turn the user could choose to either maintain their current bear, or create a new uninjured bear anywhere in creation range, for the same 1 ST. |
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#14 |
Join Date: May 2015
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#UnanswerableQuestions
I would say no more than other magic items are, because they require an enchanter/lab/apprentice to spend a week making it, and the item is consumed when used, and it's just a wolf. But summoning gems can tip the scales of an important battle, and if you have several, it can be quite an effect. It's unanswerable because you cannot reduce everything to one "correct" cost. It's not a one-dimensional situation by a long shot. |
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#15 |
Join Date: Dec 2017
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I feel like you get pretty close to the right cost when in-game transactions come up. I don't present my players with anything like a standard market for items, but there is nothing that prevents them from offering someone money for something they own, or trying to sell an item, or having someone else try to buy one of theirs. You will quickly find out what the real value is in your campaign (also, of course, influenced by how available cash is in your game).
e.g., two sessions ago in my regular game, the players tried to sell a magic box that they knew acted as a sort of key to a labyrinth door, and which they also suspected had other powers. They spent an hour or so of table-time trying to track down a plausible buyer and then they bargained with that NPC. I set a 'sticking' price of about 50% more than the official value of the item, based on its material costs (including gems, etc.) and approximate value as a magical item. The players wouldn't take it because they felt like the thing was worth more. And I suppose in some purely market-economy sense it was - it was worth more to them (for reasons they probably couldn't articulate). |
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#16 |
Join Date: May 2015
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^ Yes, I think magic item transactions become much more interesting when they're turned into game situations and played out.
I like to include multiple NPCs in the considerations, including whoever the GM knows of who might be in the market. This tends to mean that the local powerful and wealthy wizards, nobles, military and other wealthy/powerful people tend to be in the market for magic items, and that their social status/power/influence and relationships tend to put them at a major advantage in such deals. After all, the richest and most powerful local people probably have as much interest and more means to buy magic items than practically any adventurers, and as someone with a magic item to sell, would you rather sell it to some adventurers, or to someone with influence and power who might tend to appreciate it if you'd sell it to them (and who might have additional non-monetary ways to reward you), and not be so happy with you if you sold it to adventurers instead? |
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#17 |
Join Date: Jul 2018
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Why have prices on magic items at all if people are not supposed to buy and sell them? Why have rules for creating magic items if they are not supposed to be created without too much power imbalances and so forth.
You can always ignore rules, but it is much harder to make up a comprehensive set that are neither underpowered nor over powered. And if those rules have holes in them, they should be plugged. Not brushed aside as if they are not important. What if it was pole weapons that were too powerful, so powerful that many Gms didn't allow them. Would you consider changing the rules or just say, it is not important and no GM worth his salt would ever allow pole weapons anyways. Or combat works best with out Pole weapons, so the strange rules doesn't bother us, or any other inane excuse? Nah. Identify the holes and fix them. It is only if the whole system is so borked that it can't be fixed that you should throw it away. And then once you have a working system, can you decide if you like the now balanced magic items or don't want them in your campaign. Claiming that players can buy and bargain and find items in game, or that they are rare, talk about market value, etc. Is just a lot of other words for GM decides. And it is basically the same as saying we don't need rules for this or that because we have a GM that can decide what happens. An answer that can replace any rules. And Pole arms where just an example. They used to be a little bit OP, now they are quite balanced. But one could have said they were just hard to get hold off, or that they were forbidden or what ever. I think it is better that they were fixed. Personally I like a magic system that actually work. It would be even better if it turned out that XP and gold had a fictive ratio of 1:1. That could help with a lot of balancing issues, be it in between adventure XP gain, training costs, return on investment for people creating magic for a market, time spent building your own castle or any other time/gold/resource/Xp transaction, etc. TFT is far from such a comprehensive system, but it was a very early and a big step in the right direction when it was published. |
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#18 |
Join Date: Dec 2017
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TFT's magic item creation rules seem really good to me; actually, I can't think of many other games that just lay it all out so you can have an enchanter as a player character without making up a bunch of details. The prices are what I consider pointless.
'To my regular campaign', I suppose obviously has to be added. It's a big world out there, so I imagine there are plenty of people who would have fun buying and selling all kinds of items, sort of building up your character as a collection of special gear. If I knew what I was getting into, I can imagine this being a blast in its own way. Sort of like gearing up your 'Mech' for a game of mechwar, or building your ride for a game of car wars. Last edited by larsdangly; 07-24-2020 at 04:13 PM. |
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