Magic item cleanup project

[hcobb]

I'm going to take a broom (enchanted to carry buckets of water) to the magic item table to rectify costs vs utility for my uses at least. Let me know if you want to help.

As a start let me know what you feel about the costs for magic items that produce a megahex of Fireproofing, Darkness and Shadow.

[Shostak]

The easiest thing to do is to never assign a Suggested Manufacturer's Retail Price.

[hcobb]

Not giving GM's guidance results in a fragmented experience.

[Shostak]

I think any predetermined price will be problematic in the long run. The guidance is that magic items should not be readily available for purchase at prices easily obtained by player characters.

[hcobb]

Will you give guidance on how to create magic items?

If so how does that not resolve into selling prices?

[Shostak]

I would caution against letting PCs create enchanted items other than staves (which are now pretty amazing at higher levels, and may just be about the only magic item a wizard really needs). If you choose to allow them to craft magic items in your game, I'd advise that you leave determining the market value up to the players, awarding XP (or not) based, in part, on the character-appropriateness of their decisions. Punish metagaming ruthlessly.

[Nils_Lindeberg]

It is better to have rules that give good prices than have rules that give bad prices. And it is just as easy to say that you can't buy magic items in either case.

I definitely want good prices as a guide, both as a reference to the power level and as a reference when trading items.

The first thing I would like to change is the ingredients. You should be able to use alternatives for many hard to come by ingredients, but they will cost more. So you get a premium "price" if you have the right stuff, but can do without. Or you need a slightly different version of a ritual for a magic item. Either way, it should be available, if for no other reason than it will have a very strange world effect and not all worlds have all things mentioned.

[Steve Plambeck]

This is the Simple Solution:

(1) Postulate that in your campaign world's history there was a Classical Age Of Magic many centuries ago.

(2) Postulate the 3 enchantment spells were forgotten and entirely lost at the end of the Classical Age (religious persecution might be a good excuse, but be as inventive as you want).

(3) All extant magic items are rare antique relics from that age, the few that are even remembered all hidden away, buried, or closely guarded, and none are for sale anywhere. Only the GM can introduce one, allowing it to be found or stolen in the course of a highly dangerous adventure.

(4) The PC lucky enough to find one can sell it for whatever they can get for it, but as it's irreplaceable they are highly advised to keep it. (Just thought of a new spell, Vanishing Coins (C) with which NPCs could buy expensive items from PCs... they would look, smell, feel and taste just like real coins for 24 hours.)

The End

(It's way too late at night to offer up my complex solution, so another time perhaps :-)

[hcobb]

Just as PC don't start with Mana, what if they only started at Staff I and had to buy the higher levels with XP?

[Shostak]

Originally Posted by hcobb

Just as PC don't start with Mana, what if they only started at Staff I and had to buy the higher levels with XP?

Do you mean that they do not power spells with ST, but instead with a Mana stat?