Chapter Five

Explaining the System

When you look online at suggestions for magic item prices, the only consistent thing you’ll find is that those suggestions are lower than mine. Other than that, people have wildly disparate ideas of what magic items are worth in 5E. And there’s at least a semi-reasonable argument to be made for some of those suggestions, apart from instances where suggested prices are lower than the base creation cost associated with an item’s rarity.

So, if there are reasonable arguments for some pricing ideas, why are the numbers on this chart so high rather than somewhere in the range of the suggestions already in existence?

The reason is that those suggestions are based on people trying to find the “correct” price for stuff. They’re thinking about the money, specifically what they think is a fair amount of money to ask players to pay for any given item. But that’s the wrong approach.

Remember, economics is about the decisions a society makes regarding what to do with its scarce resources. More specifically, economics is about how people are incentivized to do certain things or use their scarce resources in certain ways. That means everyone, not just the players.

The price of any item, in any market, is based on where the balance lies between two opposing forces—sellers and buyers. In a magic item market, you have spellcasters making items for sale on one hand, and people interested in buying those items on the other. The interests of, and resources available to, both sides need to be taken into consideration. What price does a spellcaster have to sell an item for to make that item worth crafting? At what price does an item have to be offered for a prospective buyer to consider it worth purchasing? A functional economic system has to grapple with these questions.

And there’s one fundamental question we have to answer before any others:

What drives a spellcaster to start selling magic items in the first place?

The obvious answer is, of course, profit. If you can sell a magic item for 5,000 gp more than you made it, that’s a substantial chunk of wealth you’ve just earned. Of course, making 1,000 gp, or 500 gp, or even 100 gp is still profit, and at the lowest levels where spellcasters can start making items (3rd), even 100 gp can be valuable. But is that enough to make it worth the time?

This is where we need to introduce the idea of opportunity cost. Opportunity cost is something we’re all familiar with, whether or not we know the term or could define it off the tops of our heads. Simply put, the opportunity cost of a course of action is what you give up from the alternatives to that action which existed.

A common example that college students learn about is the opportunity cost of attending university. We usually contemplate the cost of school in terms of tuition spent (at least in America). And tuition is an opportunity cost—one alternative is to sit on your money, or not take out the loans necessary to pay tuition. However, another opportunity cost of going to university is the money you would have made if you’d held a full-time job instead. For example:

• Tuition: $15k/year

• Job offer if you don’t go to school: $25k/year

• Opportunity cost: $15k x 4 years ($60k) plus $25k x 4 years ($100k) = $160,000

Thus, the opportunity costs of going to college are substantially greater than just the tuition. Awareness of this can give students more to think about when making the decision to either attend college right out of high school or work for a little while to save money first.

The connection between this and the thought process of a spellcaster in D&D revolves mainly around time. If a spellcaster chooses not to spend the time necessary to make a magic item for sale, what could they be doing instead? What is the value of their time?

First, let’s acknowledge that each spellcasting class may have very different possibilities in what they can do with their time. For the moment, let’s focus on wizards (including NPC mages), since they have access to the largest number of spells by far, can thus make the largest variety of items, and therefore are most likely to open shops which market such items to the public.

Second, Wizards of the Coast doesn’t get into this kind of depth with how much people who aren’t adventurers make. The closest they get is to give the cost for a skilled hireling’s labor (2 gp per day), but the level of talent, study, and resources inherent in being a dedicated wizard makes them much more specialized and thus more valuable. By how much, though? In order to figure that out in a systematic way, we can’t just pick numbers that sound good to us and call it a day. We need a basis of comparison that people will understand and which makes sense.

Fortunately, we have one.

First, allow me to introduce this article. It’s an excellent dive into how much a D&D gold piece is worth in modern dollars. I recommend reading the whole thing, but for our purposes, it’s enough to know that the author’s best estimate is approximately $35 per gold piece. This is important because rather than guess the value of various goods, labor, and so on in a medieval-type D&D setting, we can make comparisons to the modern world and then determine D&D costs using this exchange rate.

The next task is to figure out which modern job is most comparable to a wizard’s. Let’s see… constantly has their nose in a book, deals with highly arcane descriptions, can be totally fucked if they misspell a word or get a syllable wrong…

Easy. Lawyers.

For our purposes, it also helps that lawyers charge an hourly rate. A court wizard might offer their services to a noble for an established monthly or yearly stipend, but anything that wizard makes or works on will be for the noble’s use. Most wizards will be comparable to lawyers in one of two ways:

• The wizard runs their own business like a lawyer runs their own firm. They charge whatever hourly rate they’re worth.

• The wizard works for a larger business, be it in a master-apprentice situation or something else, the same way a lawyer works for a larger firm. The wizard may be paid a salary, a portion of each job, or in some other way, but whoever runs the business charges the wizard’s full hourly value for whatever work they do. (It’s fair to say modern lawyers are much more common than D&D wizards, so lawyers will work for someone else for most or all of their careers in a way we wouldn’t expect from a high-level wizard. But a neophyte wizard could very plausibly start out in this type of circumstance.)

Using the information found here, we see a rough minimum of $100/hr. for a lawyer’s service. Think of this as comparable to the value of a 1st-level wizard. That wizard may be relatively new to the magic game, but they’ve still put in a lot of work and study to get to this point, and have an expertise in the subject that average citizens can’t match. Hiring a 1st-level wizard to work by the hour, therefore, would cost about 3 gp/hr (3 x $35 = $105). Good start!

Now that we have this baseline, how does a wizard’s value increase over time? It’s not as simple as them being worth 3 gp/hr more every time they level up. Lawyers aren’t suddenly worth $200/hr. after they have a year or so of experience; the pay scale of these jobs starts fairly high because both of them have noticeable fixed costs. For many lawyers, they need to make enough money to pay off expensive student loans on top of their normal bills. A wizard may not have student loans, but their laboratories are not cheap to build and maintain. Even if a wizard works for somebody else, that somebody else has to cover costs incurred by the wizard during both paid and unpaid time (every wizard experiments when they’re bored, right?). So, once these individuals get started in their professions, their incomes won’t skyrocket right away.

A lawyer is generally considered “high-powered” if they can earn $1,000/hr or more. The absolute top of the pay scale, at the time of writing, is pushing $1,500/hr. Of course, wizards and lawyers are less alike as they gain experience; a super-lawyer can work magic on a jury to save a client, but a level 20 wizard can remake the fabric of the universe so the crime never happened. A level 20 wizard also has very little reason to work for anyone outside of easy money and to stave off boredom. Still, those are valid reasons, so let’s make a table of what it might cost to hire a wizard of any level and see how it looks:

*-It is reasonable for wizards at these levels to expect a retainer before hiring themselves out. A retainer, for our purposes, is a down payment on future services rendered. For example, a level 11 wizard may ask for a retainer of 2,000 gp before agreeing to perform services, which would entitle the employer to 100 hours of work, minus spellcasting or other relevant costs.

**-Unless they owe someone a debt or have a personal reason for doing so, it is extremely unlikely that wizards at these levels will work for anyone without either a substantial payment up front or guaranteed in some type of contract. This could be in the form of a retainer, or they may require a guaranteed long-term stipend (measured in months or years) and whatever else it takes for them to agree to terms.

A long-term contract may be agreed to at a discount on the wizard’s daily rate over that time span (or not, if the wizard can get them to pay the full amount). Retainers should be much larger; for example, if a level 11 wizard wants a retainer equal to 100 hours of service, a level 17 wizard might want one equal to 1,000 hours. They might also define a term of service—if the hours aren’t used in one year, for example, the payer forfeits the rest of the retainer.

Note: These level guidelines are based on the tier system for ease of use—tier 3 wizards want retainers, tier 4 wizards want fat paychecks. You can absolutely change who wants or gets these kinds of deals as it makes sense for your campaign.

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Keep in mind, this table is not designed to include any military or mercenary service. This is for peacetime work only—research, crafting items, casting beneficial spells on the kingdom, teaching younger wizards, things of that nature. To give an idea of why, imagine the aforementioned bored, level 20 wizard decides to work for the wealthiest kingdom on the continent for a year. At 400 gp/day, that wizard would be paid a little under 150,000 gp for the year. Now, that’s a pretty solid salary—around $5 million—which befits a wizard who could almost certainly gather more wealth gallivanting across the multiverse, but is choosing to take it easy for a while. (The money available to cities, kingdoms, etc., will be dealt with later in the book. For now it will suffice to say that, because D&D populations are tiny fractions of the ones we see in the modern day, even very wealthy cities like Waterdeep do not have anything approaching the equivalent of a trillion-dollar economy. 150,000 gp in a year is a lot.)

But a level 20 wizard is no mere soldier. Level 20 wizards are weapons capable of winning wars all by themselves. They are brilliant, self-directed, and can do just about anything necessary to whoop an enemy army. If we’re drawing parallels in value with the real world, a level 20 wizard is a billion-dollar weapon, probably a multi-billion-dollar weapon. If they’re feeling nice, they might only ask for 150,000 gp for a single battle. And, likewise, the $3-4 million a less wealthy nation would have to pay a level 17 or 18 wizard for a year would never be enough to get them to fight perhaps the only wizard on the planet stronger than they are. Wizards that powerful will accept these pay rates to avoid risk, not fly headfirst into it.

While we’re on the topic of military pay, would a level 1 wizard accept 25-ish gp/day to serve in the army? Quite possibly! They’re not capable of much yet, and regular pay on that level with the occasional risk of battle might be appealing. Of course, an army may not think they’re worth it yet, and only be interested in level 3 wizards who can hit an enemy commander with good single-target spells or level 5 wizards who have fireballs and lightning bolts at their disposal. But are those wizards interested at the above rates, or will they want more?

These are questions for which the answers will be different in every campaign, and realistically with every wizard who might be called or tempted into service. DMs will need to decide those details for themselves. But hopefully this table can still serve as a starting point for such decisions.

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By this point, some readers will have done the math for what skilled and unskilled hirelings would make, translated into USD via the $35 = 1 gp exchange rate. If we assume a skilled hireling makes 2 gp every day for a year (that is, perhaps they make a bit more but have days off), they would make around $25k USD per year. It’s not great for what we might consider “skilled”—certainly below the median income in the U.S.—but people can and do live off that much money, so it doesn’t seem too far off.

Unskilled workers, however, make 2 sp per day. That’s 1/10th of a skilled worker, which equates to around $2,500 USD per year. Nobody lives off that in America. This must be a clear breakdown in the exchange rate system, right? Even though the article which pegs the exchange rate at $35 per gp makes some valid comparisons with regards to the prices of goods and services, income levels don’t work, and therefore comparing the income of anyone (such as wizards) to a real world job won’t work either.

That’s a valid concern. There are a couple of reasons why the comparison for wizards still works.

The main one, which has been mentioned before and will be mentioned again, is simplicity. As previously stated, it’s easier to make sense of the numbers being what they are if we have a solid point of comparison. There happens to be a real-life job that has several conceptual parallels to wizardry and a method for comparing their financial values, so it’s easiest if we just put that to use. After all, if we wanted to be really precise with what wizards make, we would have to account for both rich and poor economies and how that might affect what type of pay a wizard is able to command. That level of detail is outside the scope of this book. This is a system designed to give you baseline numbers to work with; the goal is not to have the most precise possible numbers or an answer for every situation, but to have a system that DMs can put to use as written which should functionally work in most game worlds.

Secondly, that level of pay does have a modern-day analogue. As the exchange rate article points out, the pay for unskilled laborers in D&D works out to approximately what a low-wage worker would make in a current developing economy. Even a wealthy medieval economy is, at best, what we would consider “developing” today. In addition, it’s not as though 2 sp per day is supposed to leave someone with a reasonably good life, even by the standards of those times—they would have to spend all their money just to live at a “poor” level, and if they intend to save anything or spend anything on more than basic living costs, their lifestyle in D&D terms would be “squalid”. And finally, while most skilled laborers would make much more than unskilled ones in that type of economy, it’s still in relative terms. Thus, the skilled laborers are considerably better off while still not making what we in a modern, well-developed economy would consider to be the equivalent of a “good” salary.

Finally, there’s the question of why it makes sense to use the pay for lawyers in a modern developed economy and maintain a wage for workers comparable to a modern developing economy.

The answer is that wizards are rare and awesome. They decipher your arcane secrets and also make your boomsticks? Pay them!

Keep in mind, while we in the U.S. (and probably most developed countries) consider lawyers to be relatively common, that’s not so much the case in developing nations. The level of education necessary to be a lawyer is more difficult to attain in those places. That’s why organizations like Lawyers Without Borders exist, to help improve the legal representation available in those countries. Unless your world has a Wizards Without Borders program that intends to have masters of the arcane in every town and on every other block in major cities, they should be rare enough to command quite high rates of pay for their services. This is also evidenced by the chart for spellcasting costs, which will come into play shortly.

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Let’s get back to magic items.

Now that we’ve run through what a wizard might expect to be paid for their experience and capabilities, we need to take a left turn for magic items themselves. The same type of magic item, after all, does the same thing whether crafted by a 3rd-level or 13th-level wizard. We can use the table above to determine the likelihood that any given wizard will consider the effort of making a given magic item worth their time, but the cost for the magic item itself is most reasonably based on what it can do.

In order to determine the value of an item, we have to take into account the material cost of the item, the time required to make it, and the value of the magic used in its creation. Item material costs are easy; those are listed in the DMG. The time required is the material cost divided by 25, in days. For example, working through 25 gp of material per day, an uncommon item requires 20 caster-days of work to cover the 500 gp total material cost.

Finally, we need the value of the magic. Although there are no exact prices for this in the core books, the PHB does indicate that spellcasting services are costly, and WotC has created an official table of NPC spellcasting prices elsewhere, so let’s start there:

This, however, is the price for a single spell. A spellcaster creating a magic item works on it for eight hours per day. How can we figure out the value of the magic involved?

As the DMG says, for each spell that will be replicated by the item, an appropriate spell slot must be expended each day. If we add up the price for every spell cast each day, however, the cost of some items, like an Instrument of the Bards, would spiral out of control. For pricing purposes, it still makes sense (and is infinitely easier) to calculate a value based on the highest-level spell cast each day. After all, regardless of the number of spells and spell slots required, it takes the same amount of time to make any item at a given rarity, and a caster who needs to save enough spell slots each day to make the creation of some items impossible probably shouldn’t make those items. (Unless they can get someone to pay extra…)

As noted, an uncommon item requires twenty days of effort. Depending on the item, it can replicate 1st, 2nd, or 3rd-level spells, or some combination therein. That gives us the following theoretical values:

• 1st-level magic item (Wand of Magic Missiles, Ring of Jumping, Helm of Comprehending Languages): 20 days x 10 gp = 200 gp, plus 500 gp creation cost: 700 gp value.

• 2nd-level magic item (Circlet of Blasting, Wand of Web, Slippers of Spider Climbing): 20 days x 40 gp = 800 gp, plus 500 gp creation cost: 1,300 gp value.

• 3rd-level magic item (Winged Boots, Broom of Flying, Amulet of Proof Against Detection and Location): 20 days x 90 gp = 1,800 gp, plus 500 gp creation cost: 2,300 gp value.

The obvious question, then, is why does the price chart have a single price for uncommon items when there are three reasonable values, depending on what the item does?

The are multiple reasons. The first has to do with the fact that spellcasters need to be at least 3rd level to make any magic items at all. If a spellcaster is going to make magic items for profit, it makes little sense to spend the same amount of time creating items with 1st-level magic if customers would expect them to cost several hundred gold less than items requiring 2nd-level magic. Therefore, logically, a spellcaster who can cast 2nd-level spells will charge a price for their magic items appropriate to those made with at least 2nd-level magic.

Of course, the chart says 2,500 gp for uncommon items. That’s based on items made with 3rd-level magic. With 3rd-level items, however. the incentives become a little more complicated. Items made with 3rd-level magic are worth quite a bit more than the rest, but a spellcaster needs to be at least 5th level to make them. This leaves some percentage of spellcasters able to make some uncommon items, but not the highest-value ones. Wouldn’t those spellcasters perhaps be willing to sell their wares at a price based on the 2nd-level value?

Truthfully, that’s up to you. But there’s one key question that needs to be answered: Why should they?

The customer base for magic items is very small. The money needed to buy even an uncommon item is a sum that the vast majority of people in these societies can barely even conceive of. The people or groups who will have an interest in them are few and far between. That being the case, the enterprising wizard needs to maximize their profit per sale, and selling one uncommon item for 2,500 gp results in the same profit as selling two items for 1,500 gp. Why would anybody do twice the work for the exact same reward?

In addition, because potential customers necessarily have serious wealth on hand, someone who considers spending 1,500 gp on an item will often consider spending 2,500 gp on it as well. If they don’t have the money at the time, they may very well come back when they do. Therefore, it’s in the interests of an enterprising wizard to set the higher price and see if they can make a sale. Even if they’re willing to accept a lower price, they may as well leave it on the customer to negotiate rather than unilaterally charge less. (For that matter, some wizards may offer uncommon items for, say, 3,000 gp, then let customers “negotiate” them down to 2,500 gp.)

The main structural reason for prices to go down is if there’s a location with a decent amount of competition and a need for lower prices in order to make any sales. For example, a major trading center on the border of three different countries may draw a large number of adventurers, merchants, and government officials who are wealthy enough to purchase magic items they find interesting. The trade-off for the sellers, then, is that they’re going to make more sales, but they have to accept lower prices due to the number of other spellcasters in the market. That type of situation is likely to be the exception rather than the rule, however, so the DM can make such alterations as they deem fit.

If you still feel it’s sensible for at least some items to be sold at a reduced rate based on the magic being replicated (be it overall or in the aforementioned high-competition areas), there are some considerations to keep in mind.

• If items requiring 1st and 2nd-level magic are sold according to their lower value, fewer wizards will consider it worth the time to make them—for example, if such an item is sold for 1,500 gp, that’s 1,000 gp profit, or 50 gp per day spent crafting it. Relative to the table above, this is only clearly worth it to wizards of 4th level and below. Therefore, it’s less likely the PCs will find such items for sale when they’re ready to buy them and more likely that they will have to negotiate for someone to craft it, meaning they will have to wait for it to be made. (It’s reasonable to think a wizard will take a reduced rate for a guaranteed sale, though to what extent is at DM discretion.)

• Similarly, because a wizard of 5th level or higher can make more expensive items, they’ll likely focus on those if 1st and 2nd-level-based items don’t sell for as much. Alternately, if they’re in a location with little or no competition, they may choose to make items with lower-level magic but still charge the higher amount—just because they used lower-level spell slots doesn’t make their time less valuable.

• Many items don’t have obvious connections to a particular level of spell. What magic goes into making an Immovable Rod? A +1 weapon? A Quiver of Ehlonna (or any extra-dimensional container)? Gloves of Missile Snaring? If you want variable costs within a rarity level, you have to make judgment calls along these lines. You can’t be “wrong”, per se, because it’s your campaign world and you make the rules, but it could cause unnecessary friction with players who disagree with your judgments.

The same potential dilemma applies to rare items. These are generally made with 3rd and 4th-level magic.

• 3rd-level rare item (Wand of Fireballs, Wings of Flying): 200 days x 90 gp = 18,000 gp, plus 5,000 gp creation cost: 23,000 gp value.

• 4th-level rare item (Ring of Free Action, Cape of the Mountebank): 200 days x 160 gp = 32,000 gp, plus 5,000 gp creation cost: 37,000 gp value.

(There are rare items which can replicate 5th-level spells, but those are very few in number. Basing the system on them would be inappropriate.)

Rare items take over six months of work to make. A wizard on their own, if they have any such items ready for sale, may not have more than one. They’re certainly not going to sell that item for anything less than they need to. If some rare items can sell for 40,000 gp, what possible reason would anybody have to offer an item of relatively equal usefulness for anything less?

Think of it like someone in the modern world buying a luxury car. 40,000 gp is equivalent to about $1.4 million USD. In 2018, that was the asking price for a McLaren Senna GTR, which was marketed as the most extreme road-legal car the company had ever produced. If you have something for sale which is not only that powerful, but that singular in its purpose, it’s not going to have a whole lot of competition. The people who are interested in it will either pay the price you’ve set, or they won’t.

The only way you’ll lower the price is if it sits there, and sits there, and sits there, and just doesn’t sell. Since even hyper-expensive cars usually have at least several hundred produced, this could happen to them—you sell some at the sticker price, or even most, but not all, so you start cutting deals to sell the rest. But if the only wizard at the only trading post within a hundred miles is selling one Wand of Fireballs, they can wait until a party that just smacked down a dragon and took its hoard comes through and wants to splurge.

Could that wand sit there for years, until the wizard is ready to cut a deal to get it sold? Sure. But again, that should very much be the exception. Nobody is going to spend the money and effort on making that type of item with the intent to sell it unless they’re quite sure it will be sold within a reasonable time frame (read: before they’re willing to lower the price to be rid of it). Such a situation is a mistake on the part of the wizard, and wizards in the business of selling magic items shouldn’t make mistakes like that very often.

With all that being said, if you’re in favor of having more and less expensive items within the same rarity, or if you want an idea of the boundaries within which someone is likely to negotiate, here’s an alternate chart you can use with reasonable cost ranges:

Let’s answer some questions that may be brewing.

Why are the prices higher than the values of the items? (That is, if uncommons are valued at 2,300 gp, why sell them for 2,500 gp?)

First, for the DM and the players, it’s simpler. We tend to do better working with numbers that involve zeroes and fives. An earlier draft of this book priced common items at 500 gp for that very reason, but the number was changed when it became apparent that was much higher than made sense in this system.

There are also several potential in-game reasons:

• Any spellcaster who keeps even a small standing inventory of magic items will need some heavy-duty locks and traps to deter thieves. 

• It allows someone who is inclined to negotiate to come down in price without giving up any of the core value assigned to the item. 

• It helps spellcasters who want to profit from their skills, but hate dealing with customers, to hire an assistant whose tasks include acting as a salesperson. 

• If something just doesn’t sell, the extra profit from items which do sell helps make up for the lost gold.

Finally, a later chapter deals with custom crafting, but for now it’s reasonable to point out that if the party contracts with a spellcaster to make something for them and is willing to wait, the spellcaster may well be willing to waive that premium (if it’s negotiated—a smart spellcaster’s not going to give away some of their service, after all).

What about the math for common and very rare items? Why don’t they have ranges on the alternate price list?

Common Items

Common magical items, like uncommon ones, require a 3rd-level spellcaster to make them. Therefore, while the effects are not terribly strong (and frequently just cosmetic), a spellcaster who can make them will still generally charge the same 40 gp per day that they would if they made more powerful items. The value is thus:

• 4 days x 40 gp = 160 gp, plus 100 gp creation cost: 260 gp value.

As stated above, an earlier version of this chart pegged the cost of common items at 500 gp. Since uncommon items valued at 1,300 gp are suggested to have a 2,500 gp price tag, why doesn’t going from 260 gp to 500 gp work, especially since it’s the same percentage jump?

• Given the limited pragmatic usefulness of most common items, they’re mostly just ways to soak money from rich people who want flashy things, and even fancy rich people may have a limit to what they’re willing to pay for pure flash. Uncommon items can all serve a purpose for people with dangerous lifestyles, and anything that can either help you get rich, keep you alive, or both can more easily command a higher price.

• Although casters who can make them are capable of casting 2nd-level spells and may expect to be compensated appropriately for their time, common items don’t have the power of 2nd-level spells, or really anything close to it, so expecting a price much higher than what the time itself is worth is difficult.

• The cheaper the item, the less likely characters are to haggle over its cost. Someone who’s willing to haggle down the price of a useful, 2,500-gp uncommon item may see a 500 gp common item and just walk away from it because getting it for slightly less isn’t worth the hassle. To them, it’s either worth the stated price or it’s not.

• Finally, selling common items is a reasonable way for a young wizard to build both a financial base and a reputation, which can give some intrinsic value to making a larger number of sales, even at a lower cost.

Of course, wizards who know, or at least think, they can sell common items for more than 300 gp may very well do so. A young wizard in a remote location may have no idea what they’re worth and want 1,000 gp for them (or 110 gp). A swindler might add effects while showing off the item, and if they make a sale, vanish without a trace. A wide variety of prices could make sense in these situations.

You might even create an NPC wizard who builds a magic brand and sells the same thing as other wizards for far more money just because their name is etched into it. Although they could technically do this with any magic item, it’s most likely their brand would rely on selling overpriced common items, because there would be more room to jack up the price. In that case, there’s no upper “range” to speak of; the wizard simply charges what people will pay for their popularity.

Very Rare Items

Very rare items are extremely unlikely to be made just to sit in a shop until sold. The listed price is actually on the low end relative to what very rare items can often do: a 5th-level spell, cast daily for the 2,000 caster-days required to make a very rare item, is worth 250 gp x 2,000 days, or 500,000 gp in spellcasting costs/labor. With the 50,000 gp material cost, that’s a 550,000 gp value. And something like the Staff of Power, which replicates numerous spells (including one of sixth level), could be valued much higher. Even though any given adventuring party could end up with that kind of money and want to spend it on a mega-powerful magic item, hardly anyone is going to spend six years making one and hope that such a party comes through their door one day.

The reason for including it on this list is to give a baseline idea of what a very rare item might cost if it makes sense that one is for sale. However, such a sale would be very special, like a major auction or a deal with a monarch selling the royal heirloom because their kingdom is broke, and the exact price that makes sense could vary wildly based on the item, the circumstances, and so on.

Some items of the same rarity are clearly not as powerful as others, regardless of what level spell they use. Shouldn’t that be taken into consideration?

It is taken into consideration. This is the reason why the list at the end of Chapter Four exists—it’s an example of items which are most likely to be of interest to adventuring parties and/or the wealthy (never forget that there are other rich people in most campaign worlds who may also want to buy some of these items). Put another way, those are the items most likely to sell. It’s not that an enterprising spellcaster is incapable of making, say, an Eversmoking Bottle; it’s just that such an item has very situational usefulness, would be less popular than many other items, and therefore will not likely be considered worth the effort unless the spellcaster is paid up front to make it. This approach allows you to both maintain a standard pricing system and also keep the number of different magic items available for sale to whatever you consider a manageable amount.

However, it’s arguable whether or not there’s truly a wide gap in item power within a single rarity range. What’s easier to argue is that items in a given rarity range, especially lower ones (at least up to rare), don’t have wildly varying degrees of power as much as they tend to be usable in more, or fewer, situations where the party is likely to find itself. As such, adventuring parties will often make purchases based on what they think they’ll get the most use out of, which is not necessarily connected to the pure power in the item. Additionally, players often underestimate the power of an item just because its uses aren’t glaringly obvious (especially items without a direct combat use). They don’t think about just how useful the less boom-centric items can be.

For example, compare a Helm of Comprehending Languages to a Doss Lute. The helm lets you cast Comprehend Languages, a 1st-level spell, at will—something just short of a constant effect. A Doss Lute, by comparison, lets you cast Fly, Invisibility, Levitate, Protection from Evil and Good, Animal Friendship, Protection from Energy (Fire), and Protection from Poison. That’s two 3rd-level spells (one somewhat limited), three 2nds, and two 1sts. Each one can only be used once per day, but that’s still a wide range of powers. On top of that, it inflicts disadvantage on saves against charm spells the user casts.

The lute is obviously more attention-grabbing. Look at everything it does! But only a bard can use it, it requires attunement, and it’s highly unlikely you’ll need most of the spells most of the time. Meanwhile, the ability to slap on a helmet and understand any language you hear or see (assuming you can touch the writing) is very useful for not only adventurers, but anyone who has reason to deal with foreign languages (scholars, government officials, etc). In terms of pure power, the lute is clearly stronger; it has several combat-friendly spells, whereas the helm is purely a utility item. The helm, however, is something almost any adventuring party would want if they could get one at a price they consider fair. It’s plausible that some enterprising spellcaster hires a bard to help make a couple of Doss Lutes, thinking they’ll be adventurer candy, then takes forever to sell them because it’s hard to find people who can use them. Meanwhile, another spellcaster fifty miles down the road sells a Helm of Comprehend Languages to every other band of adventurers with the money to buy one, because those groups are often experienced enough to realize how useful such a helm is.

In short, rarity is supposed to be an indication of general power level, and power is often relative to the use a person or group gets out of the item. The most logical way to set up spellcaster shops is for them to offer the things they think are most likely to sell; there are some obvious choices, others which might be slightly more of a risk (or more worth selling if the spellcaster has local competition and wants to offer something the others don’t), and others still just not worth the time. (From there, you can alter “logical” shopping lists to fit the flavor of whoever runs it; these lists can be a good way to develop the character of an NPC.)

The Chapter Four list had some items marked which should be sold for higher than the normal rarity price. Why those items? How much should the price go up?

This is one of my favorite topics. First, let’s talk about why the list has the items it does, and then we’ll get into variable prices.

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Note: When reading this section, please understand these are my explanations for including these items, not explanations for why you need to include them or should only use them. Use the ideas I’m putting forward to help you decide which items make the most sense in your world’s magic shops.

The common items consist of those most likely to A) thrill wealthy people with too much money, B) be pragmatically useful to adventurers light on magic items, or C) both. Because the creation time on these is short, it’s reasonable for someone to place an order for anything on the list, therefore I only included the things I imagine a spellcaster would be asked about with some frequency and expect to sell quickly if they have one available. These will mostly be available in centers of commerce and influence, where there are plenty of people rich enough to buy one on a whim. In theory, almost anyone with the spellcasting ability might make one just to do it, and they might be willing to sell those. However, from an ease-of-play perspective, it’s probably easiest for a DM to limit how many random people have a cheap magic item the PCs can buy. It might make more sense, in fact, for such items to act as occasional rewards for a lower-level party.

Uncommon items are those most generally useful or desirable, and thus most likely to sell without sitting around for an excessively long time. This is the easiest list to expand, since a spellcaster who sells several items should have the ability to experiment with something different and absorb the loss if no one buys it.

• Magical weapons are a big deal when fighting resistant enemies; longswords are probably the most common melee weapon type, and longbows are the most likely sellers for ranged weapons. You might want to add a two-handed type of weapon as well. +1 weapons may be the most likely thing for adventurers to find in dungeons, bandit camps, etc., but their value and universal appeal should still make them worth selling.

• Most adventuring parties have at least one person with a shield. 

• Bags of Holding are amazing. 

• Most groups have a stealth/scout type who could use Elvenkind items, and Elvenkind items aren’t easily replaced. 

• Gauntlets of Ogre Strength and the Headband of Intellect put the associated stats at 19 regardless of where the character starts, which is a potentially giant stat boost. 

• A Helm of Comprehending Languages can be used forever. It should cost more because in addition to its universal value to adventurers, wealthy nobles and kings will want them for their spymasters, diplomats, etc. 

• Wand of Magic Missiles: Pew pew pew! You know rich people are keeping these under their beds.

• A Wand of Secrets may not be a headline item, but like the Helm it’s useful for groups of any level, greatly broadening the potential market. 

• Winged Boots can be used by anyone and people love flying.

Rare items were the ones that would have the most potential customers, a primary concern given the time and expense of making them. 

• Half-plate and plate have the highest AC in the medium and heavy categories, so offering +1 versions of those makes the most sense. 

• +1 studded leather is a bit less useful than the heavier stuff—someone in light armor is generally trying not to be attacked in the first place—but the glamoured version adds a potentially very useful effect at no additional cost or attunement requirement. 

• Again, every group has someone with a shield, and that person is probably trying to bump their defense up as high as possible. If you want a +2 shield to be available but feel a simple +2 won’t make this as valuable as other rare items, you could add a minor magical effect, such as from the Shield of Expression.

• A Folding Boat is unbelievably valuable when someone has to journey down a river or across the sea. In general, these would only be available where a merchant is liable to buy one, and if an adventuring party wants it, that’s OK too. 

• The Wand of Fireballs and Wings of Flying are there because people love fireballs and flying. 

• No weapons were selected because, while +1 weapons are the difference between many monsters taking half damage or full damage, a +2 is just an attack and damage bonus over the +1. However, weapons with specialized functions, such as the Sun Blade or a Mace of Disruption, may be reasonable options.

The following items are recommended to be sold for more than the base rarity price. Keep in mind that this lists exists not only because these items are likely to be popular in any given campaign world, but also for game balance reasons—these are items groups are very likely to jump on if they’re the same price as everything else, and from the perspective of making all options about equally tempting, that means acquiring these items needs to soak up more of the party’s resources. Let that be your guidepost if you decide to make alterations to the list.

With regards to the specific prices suggested here: these are purely my feelings of what the average party will consider difficult, but tempting, prices. This is based on experience combined with an idea of how much money a party should have available to them (discussed in the next section). Also remember that high prices allow more room for negotiation, if you feel the seller will negotiate or offer discounts in return for some additional service, as long as they’re not so high the party walks away without saying a word.

• Bag of Holding: A forward-thinking adventurer will realize very quickly that for 2,500 gp, a Bag of Holding will pay for itself just in the extra scrap they can bring back from ruins, dungeons, etc. 5,000 gp? Given normal loot tables, a party should earn that type of scratch taking down two CR 5 lairs, so quite likely, so they’ll have the money relatively early in their adventuring careers for something which will benefit them forever. In fact, given the extreme utility of a Bag of Holding, a group might spend quite a bit more than that. The upper limit, really, is at what point the party would rather carry everything, or go negotiate with a spellcaster who will do the work for a reduced price, paid up front. This can very reasonably run anywhere from 8-10k gp.

• Boots/Cloak of Elvenkind: These are usable for a long time, even though they require attunement. Part of the determination of what this should cost may depend on whether or not the party can buy these items legally (see Chapter Nine), and how much of a difference you think that should make. Regardless, people love stealth, and these items can easily fetch 5k gp each from someone.

• Gauntlets of Ogre Strength: These will be wildly popular among not only adventurers, but wealthy people who consider themselves warriors and just need an edge to prove it. In addition, even if a group’s warriors stop needing them, these can be useful for anybody else who can attune to another item. The 8 STR rogue may be perfectly capable of getting along without them, but getting another +5 to strength-based rolls on a hand-me-down? Incredible potential value. Price it at 9,999 gp and watch them think about it in a way they might not if it was simply 10,000 gp.

• Helm of Comprehending Languages: As noted above, this is an extraordinary utility item across many sectors of society. You could have a market for them in a busy trade hub, where enough are made that they sell for the regular 2,500 gp, but 3,500-4,000 gp is very defensible. Think of it as the price bump in an item that sees a lot of government use.

• Wand of Secrets: If these are legal, they’ll probably cost the normal amount. However, if they’re illegal, they will likely be considered valuable thief gear and thus sell on the black market for more.

There are two more things to touch on.

One: Why are the Gauntlets so expensive, but the Headband doesn’t get a bump at all?

In short, the Gauntlets are much more broadly useful. Although barbarian is the only class which truly relies on high STR, numerous other classes—fighter, paladin, even ranger and monk—can make good use of it. In addition, paladins, rangers, and monks have stats besides STR (and CON) which are beneficial to them, and with the Gauntlets, all those classes can use ASIs on those other stats, or feats, if they don’t feel the need to push STR to 20.

On the other hand, only wizards rely on INT, and in general they want to push the stat to 20, meaning the headband won’t be useful forever (or even for very long, depending on their starting stats and when they acquire it). In fact, the reason it’s on the list at all is that some nobles and monarchs might want one for themselves. If you think leaders would buy multiple headbands for themselves and their main advisors (and have the wealth to do so), creating a serious demand for them, you might consider raising the price.

Two: Why do only uncommon items get the price bump?

Uncommon items, on the whole, offer the most return in terms of utility, power, etc., for the money spent. Common items are usually expensive toys. Rare items are stronger than uncommon ones, but are they sixteen times stronger? Even though the strength of magic items is somewhat subjective, that’s a hard argument to make. Thus, while only the most useful and desirable rare items are likely to sell for even the base price of 40,000 gp, many more uncommon items might have value at 2,500 gp, and the most desirable of those are liable to fetch a higher price.

By all means, change these lists to suit your world (e.g. if there are monsters famous for causing diseases, a local spellcaster might have a Periapt of Health handy). Just consider what all potential adventuring groups or the population around the spellcaster are likely to buy, not what the PCs specifically need, when determining the caster’s standing inventory. A 5th-level spellcaster who lives outside a small town on a trade road will probably stick to the most likely items an adventuring party passing through will need; on the other hand, a spellcaster in Waterdeep is much more likely to find a buyer for any particular item, and can probably afford to keep something around that would have a more niche market. And remember, you don’t have to make exactly what the party wants instantly available. If the PCs want something specific, they can always contract a caster or casters to make it for them.

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We started by focusing on wizards, because they’re most likely to make magic items for sale, run magic item shops, and so on. But, of course, any spellcaster has the potential to make magic items, and some items have to be made by different classes (e.g. Ring of Free Action). How might that affect prices?

First, assume that the standard prices are well known and that anyone who wants to sell items at a different price is cognizant of the fact they’re varying from the norm. Second, individuals might always have a reason to offer a different price. If a traveling bard gets in an argument with the local wizard, that might result in the bard making a Wand of Magic Missiles out of spite and selling it for 2,400 gp in order to undercut the wizard but still make as much money as possible. That’s not indicative of how bards might act, however; that’s simply an individual situation playing out. Finally, the ability to make an item is based on character level; this opens up possibilities for multiclass characters and non-primary spellcasters.

With that in mind, here are possibilities for how making and selling magic items may be different for different classes.

Bard: It’s reasonable to rule that making a magic item requires a steady hand, and a traveling bard on a horse or in a wagon won’t have as much time to keep their hands steady as a wizard in a lab. However, items don’t need to be made in consecutive days, so an uncommon item could be a project that takes a few (or several) months to complete. They might be happy to keep the items they make, but if work is short and they need money, their items may be available at a below-market rate (especially if they’re desperate).

Cleric: Probably most similar to a wizard, since clerics have access to a wide variety of spells. Prices will be similar, although an individual cleric or (especially) a church may offer goods at a reduced rate to the proven faithful. They may also charge extra, or deny sales entirely, to those they consider hostile to their faith.

Druid: Less likely to create items for sale. Most likely to create items that will benefit their efforts to tend to the land, with no intention of parting with them. Might sell a magic item that was discovered but serves no purpose for them as a way to collect resources for their circle, grove, etc. Could sell one of their own items if they need the money for a specific, immediate purpose, but may just offer it as a reward to whoever can fix their problem.

Paladin: As a non-primary spellcaster, the items they can make will not be worth much relative to what they earn adventuring. If they work for an organization, they may be asked to assist others in creating items, but those items won’t be theirs. Like a bard, a paladin with some downtime may decide to work on a magic item as a project. However, it’s less likely these projects will be undertaken with a pure profit motive unless the paladin needs the money for some other purpose.

Ranger: Similar to paladin.

Sorcerer: Resides somewhere between bard and wizard. Sorcerers aren’t necessarily as prone to travel as bards, so they may have more opportunity to work on magic items if they have the resources available. However, they know fewer spells than bards (and far fewer than wizards), so the variety of items they can make is potentially quite limited. Whereas a wizard may maintain a varied stock to appeal to many different needs, an enterprising sorcerer might specialize in one type of magical item and travel the land selling them.

Warlock: Similar to sorcerer, since they know approximately the same number of spells. Their spellcasting ability diverges more substantially after level 9, since warlocks cap out with 5th-level spell slots. However, a warlock’s decision whether or not to make magic items (for sale or otherwise) may depend heavily on the wishes of their patron. In addition, it may be riskier than for other classes, since warlocks who can make magic items only have two spell slots per day until level 11. This makes item creation potentially risky, if the warlock is liable to have enemies coming after them on any given day. (If you limit how many short rests a warlock can benefit from in a day, this may also limit what items they’re able to make at all.)

Note: Artificers are an interesting case, and I’m not sure what one should expect from them. On one hand, their entire class is built around magical gadgetry, and they seem like exactly the people who would sell magic items. On the other hand, their abilities empower gadgets for their own use or, temporarily, for the use of others. Their spell slot breakdown also defines them as secondary spellcasters, sort of like an arcane paladin. Since it takes substantially more experience for them to make rare items, an artificer might have a plethora of uncommon items available, but would only make rares on commission, since they want to keep the money coming in and not commit too many days and resources to a single thing. Or, a particularly accomplished artificer with a big shop and a whole team might work solely on rare items and have several available, since the team is working on easier stuff.

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Let’s return to the other side of the pricing equation: the buyers.

There’s an economic concept, known as equilibrium, that indicates where the supply and demand of a good are in balance. The equilibrium price, in our case, is where it’s worth it for both the spellcasters to make items and potential customers to buy them. We’ve already discussed the price table and why those prices make the creation and sale worth the effort for spellcasters. However, if a spellcaster could sell any given uncommon item for 5k, 10k, or even 20k gold, they would. So, why does the table also indicate a reasonable price for buyers?

There are several reasons.

1. Opportunity cost. Opportunity cost is as much a consideration for buyers as sellers. In addition to the obvious question of what other goods buyers could spend their money on, they may also think about what’s for sale in the context of the overall spellcasting economy. Given the cost of one-off spellcasting services—10 gp for a 1st-level spell, 40 gp for 2nd-level, and so on—item values that drastically outstrip the prices of the magic involved will be noticed and may act as a turn-off.

   Take the Helm of Comprehend Languages as an example. At 2,500 gp, it would take using the helm 250 times of it to match the value of paying a spellcaster to cast the spell every time the group needs it. Hardly any party will ever need the spell that often, so in terms of pure spellcasting value, the item isn’t worth the price.

   However, not needing to drag a bunch of stuff back to the nearest wizard can be, at minimum, a huge convenience. Then there are the helm’s uses in situations where the helm wearer is speaking with someone or reading something that needs to be dealt with immediately, or which can’t be removed from that location.

   Even if they only need it a half-dozen times in their lives, an adventuring group might well think 2,500 gp, or somewhat more, is a good deal for a helmet they can take with them that lets them understand any language, when the alternative is always dragging a wizard along with them at almost certainly greater expense (if it’s even possible) or being helpless in the face of many (or most) languages and buying a different item that isn’t necessarily more helpful.

   However, if spellcasters try to sell those helms for 10,000 gp, those same parties might just muddle along, bring everything they can carry back to the local spellcaster and pay for one-off services. If most items are 2,500 gp, the party may take that 10k and spend it on four items which will almost certainly be more useful in sum. And spellcasters who try to sell all their items for outrageous amounts may find that interested parties decide to devote time into basic wizardry themselves so they can have access to basic ritual spells on command. In short, these are prices that an adventuring party is likely able to afford while a given item is still useful to them.

2. The way the party’s power increases whether or not they purchase magic. If uncommon items are all 10,000 gp, the party may be willing to buy one once they have the money and nothing else to purchase, but by that point they may well have found enough magic in various dungeons and castles to make the 10k uncommon item obsolete or not worth the money.

3. Related to #2, 5E is designed so that magic items aren’t strictly necessary. Adventurers can be successful without dripping in magical gear, which they’ll find to some degree on their travels; this means they’re not compelled to buy magic items when they’re available for sale. Rarely is a party in a position where they see an item and say, “We have to have this in order to succeed.” This means they always have the leverage of walking away, which the proprietor of a magic item shop doesn’t want to see happen too often.

4. Although several items discussed to this point have utility for adventurers regardless of level, most items fade in effectiveness over time. Attuned items are replaced by more powerful items, and non-attuned items simply aren’t as useful (e.g. a Wand of Magic Missiles can see several uses at low levels, but later on may only be good for one giant burst per day, if that). The more an item costs, the more the party is likely to consider how long it will be useful for, and the more likely they are to feel they won’t get sufficient use out of it for it to be worth the money—even if they’re generally interested.

5. The most important aspect of all: expected adventurer income.

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Obviously, as the DM, you have control over what the characters earn. If you run a pre-made campaign, what the party can expect to make in terms of money, items, etc. at a given level changes with each campaign book. Even if you decide to stick as closely to the campaign book or whatever other source material you have available with regards to rewards, in the end, you are the one who decides what those rewards look like.

Therefore, we need to make use of the one book all DMs should have at their disposal: the DMG. The DMG comes with a suggestion for what parties will find in treasure hoards of various difficulty levels. We can use that as a rough estimate for how much characters can expect to make on an average expedition, and then calculate what a party should have made, to date, at any given level.

For balance purposes (and ease of math), this table makes a few assumptions.

• The “treasure hoard” includes any monetary rewards offered if the party is on a paid quest.

• The table calculates the average value of coinage, gems, and art objects per treasure hoard and includes that in the expected income per expedition.

• The magic items that are frequently found in treasure hoards are not included. 

• The party collects one hoard in levels 1 and 2, and two for each level thereafter. This should create a minimum expected income; at higher levels especially, it may take more than two expeditions to level up, but rarely less than two.

• The party earns a treasure hoard of CR equal to their level. Since a party is more likely to earn the hoard of villain with a CR above their level than below it, this also helps create a minimum expected income.

• The total income listed is for when the party reaches that level. In other words, the level 5 income is still fairly low because the party hasn’t done anything at level 5 yet.

• Although the average income per expedition is based on CR range, the Total Income chart is based on the assumption that parties make less earlier in a given range and more later. It is also rounded off somewhat for easier reading.

(Fun note: the DMG says the average party will earn one more 0-4 hoard and six more 5-10 hoards than this table assumes. By that measure, a party will have around 84,000 gp, not 56,000, when they hit level 11, and thus 28,000 gp more at each level as compared to this chart.)

Common and uncommon items require a 3rd-level spellcaster to make. Rare requires 6th, and very rare requires 11th. As such, uncommon magic items are generally associated with 1st-4th level characters, rare from 5th-10th, and very rare from 11th-16th. And, as we see on the table, a party cannot readily afford a magic item until they’ve moved into the level range (or tier) after the one appropriate to the one they want to buy.

What this means, in effect, is that either parties will be in the market for lower-end items which serve utility purposes or fill in a gap in their equipment/power level, or they’ll try to acquire an item of the rarity appropriate to their tier by dumping most of their resources into it, selling valuables and even other magic items, etc. For example, a 12th-level party can reasonably afford +1 plate for the paladin if he hasn’t found anything as good or better than that. On the other hand, an 8th-level party would have to sacrifice a much higher percentage of their resources for the same item, but it will almost certainly be more useful to them than the 12th-level group.

This serves the purpose of a game design where magic items should not be required for success. PCs are already going to find magic items as they travel, and should be able to manage with those, so their ability to buy more should be viewed as a luxury. This system is designed as a way for any party to spend the money that the game otherwise gives them little use for in the mid to late levels. If they’re forced to choose between magic items and, say, a merchant ship, or if you design other clever ways for them to spend money on top of buying magic items, that’s a good thing. Difficult choices are engaging, as long as the group has the ability to make use of some of them. (That is, giving them two options for spending 40,000 gp is meaningless and potentially frustrating if they’ve only earned 10,000 gp to date, unless the options are being clearly set up as possible long-term goals.)

From a campaign world perspective, if the PCs are expected to find magic items as they increase in power, so would other adventuring parties and NPCs of note. There would not be a market where lots of other people are desperate for magic and the PCs are simply special in how much they’ve been able to find in the dark recesses of the world. People who are successful in risky professions will have gold, and may want to spend that gold on goods which will improve their capacities further, but they are relatively few in number, making the market small, specialized, and expensive.

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My game tends towards much smaller gold rewards, so the suggested markup is still too high for us. No one will buy anything at those prices. How should I adjust it further?

It depends on why the gold rewards are smaller. There’s a difference between reducing the money the characters receive, and reducing the money in the world as a whole. If you think all other prices in the game are appropriate (e.g. other goods and services, including spellcasting, should all cost the regular amount), then the base prices for items should stay the same as well. You’re simply running a game where the PCs don’t receive as much of that money as the DMG anticipates, so they have to be more judicious about what they buy.

What you might do instead is let the players run into a seller willing to negotiate more than usual. Perhaps they’re short on cash, or maybe they made something that’s sat around the lab for too long and it’s time to be rid of the thing. A group might also earn a substantial discount by collecting and delivering something the spellcaster needs—items for a wizard’s research, relics for a cleric’s church, etc. Perhaps commissioning and paying up front for Gauntlets of Ogre Strength, then retrieving the ogre hands (or whatever) needed to make them can save the group thousands of gold.

If you want to go with lower party rewards because the world has less money, remember that means everything is cheaper. If your world has the same goods and services available but only half as much money, the price of everything is cut in half. Although that’s not difficult in theory, it does take some concentration to not forget to cut prices in half when you quote them. If you do that, though, then it’s certainly appropriate to lower the prices for magic items across the board. But if you just want them to more readily afford magic items, throw them more money. It’s the easiest answer.

What I strongly advise, in all cases, is that you make sure you’re basing prices on what the characters have earned, not what they still have when they’re looking to shop. If they’ve chosen to spend a bunch of gold on other things, it should be more difficult for them to buy a magic item. Again, difficult choices are engaging.

One circumstance under which you not only can, but should adjust prices is if you change the time or material cost necessary to create magic items. Changing material costs is simple—just reduce the final price by the reduction in material costs. If you think an uncommon item should cost 200 gp in materials rather than 500 gp, then the final suggested price is 2,200 gp rather than 2,500 gp. The value of the spellcaster’s labor hasn’t changed, and that makes up most of the cost, so the price difference won’t be substantial.

Creation time is a different story. The relatively long creation time for most items is the main obstacle to magic items being made en masse; reducing that will affect prices much more substantially than any other change. Start by changing the price in direct relation to the reduced creation time, such that the spellcaster makes the same amount of money per day of work.

Consider the ramifications of these changes, however. At half-time creation costs, common magical items will likely change from a rich person’s curiosity to a standard possession in any wealthy household. Someone trying to infiltrate high society, for example, might need a Cloak of Many Fashions if they want to be perceived as an equal. With regards to adventuring, successful parties (level 5+) may visit the local spellcaster after every mission to see what’s available. Rare items will still be rare, but not unthinkably costly at a level when they can make a huge difference to a party’s capabilities. While this certainly gives them an advantage over, say, a troublesome army of gnolls, it also allows a wealthy villain to outfit their key lieutenants with a broader variety of magic items. The balance of important encounters doesn’t necessarily change; if the lieutenants and the party each have a handful of magic items they otherwise wouldn’t, then the fight is the same, just with bigger numbers, and the possession of more magic items is less meaningful.

If creation time is dropped to one-quarter, multiple common items will be in every rich household. Uncommon items will no longer be optional; if the party wants something specific that is not immediately available, they may need to custom order what they want or else go into their next mission at a disadvantage. Rare items are not particularly rare, although they’re only wielded by powerful individuals (weaker people with mighty magical items tend not to possess them for long). Very rare items are more likely to be for sale, though the number would still be quite small. Bandits are much more likely to have magic items because their robbery victims will be much more likely to have had them.

I surmise that if a DM reduces item creation time in their campaign, it’s generally to help PCs who want to make something, not with the economics of the world in mind. But it’s worth considering that the more quickly something can be made, the more likely it will wind up in surplus, and then sold if there’s interest in the item. I imagine that’s why WotC decided multiple spellcasters can work together to make an item—if you want to make something powerful in relatively little time, you need a team. If default times are reduced to ¼, and collaborative item creation is still possible, a team of five 3rd-level spellcasters could make a +1 sword or Gauntlets of Ogre Strength every day. If that team works for a kingdom, imagine what their army looks like. If a rich kingdom hires five 11th-level spellcasters who make three Staffs of Power every year, imagine what that army looks like.

If that’s the kind of campaign you want, knock yourself out. Just understand that a world where magic items are relatively quick to make are much easier to buy, and it’s going to look very strange if only the PCs seem to benefit from this.

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There is a middle ground, however: adjusting the creation time on specific items. This can make the system quite complicated very quickly, but some DMs like that, so it’s worth offering up the idea.

The core idea itself is actually quite simple—if you think certain items should be cheaper but available for sale, reduce the amount of time it takes to make them. Take a Ring of Resistance as an example. It’s a rare item, but it’s unlikely many parties will fork over 40,000 gp for one. Commissioning a spellcaster or spellcasters to make one will take months, and is unlikely to result in a much cheaper price.

However, it’s very situational and based on a cantrip. Reducing the creation time on every rare item to fifty days would skew a lot of things, but maybe you feel this particular item might reasonably only take fifty days to make because the magic involved is at the lowest level. You can use the quarter-time chart for this ring only, creating a sale price of 10-15k, and boom, you have another item the party might want to buy.

The same considerations of what happens when creation time is drastically reduced still exist. If a wizard in a shop can make this ring in fifty days, so can the party. The book doesn’t require everyone to have the spell itself, only the primary creator, so anyone who can cast cantrips can help. Yes, this is an item which requires attunement, but if the group acquires the specific gems necessary for each type of ring, they could eventually have a whole bag of rings they can draw on if they know a certain area or enemy will rely on certain types of power (thunder, necrotic, etc.) to hurt them.

But if you feel that a certain item is simply underpowered or uninteresting for the rarity, you can reduce the time and expense of making it without changing those details for every item in the game. You can even make a list of different creation times for many different items so there’s a widely varied base price list—just multiply the days by the appropriate spell level and add the creation cost. That’s fine if it makes sense for your game. Remember, this system doesn’t need to be strict, it just needs DMs to take cause and effect into consideration.

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Back to more likely questions…

In Tomb of Annihilation, the magic items for sale are far cheaper than here. A +1 shield is only 450 gp, and a +1 dagger or spear is 500 gp. Likewise, before season 8, Adventurers League let players buy faction-specific uncommon items for 500 gp and rare ones for 5,000 gp. Even the DMG (p. 135) lists the trade prices of magic items, and the maximum value of each rarity is equal to the creation cost. Isn’t that more appropriate pricing, since they’re all consistent and from official WotC sources?

In my opinion, no. But I suppose that’s obvious, so let’s go through each of those examples in more detail.

• The system for buying magic items in Adventurers League varies from the one in this book in several ways.

  • You must be rank 3 in a given faction to buy their items. Although Adventurers League is much more hack-n-slash than full campaigns tend to be, there’s still a story going on in the background, and from a story perspective, there’s logic in them selling to you at cost because you’ve proven to be a loyal and useful supporter of their aims. This book assumes characters can buy any available item as long as they have the money.

  • You only have access to one uncommon and one rare item, so it’s not as though you can deck out your character head to toe with cheaply purchased magic items.

  • The AL rules were designed with the expectation that your character would buy these items with their share of gold from missions they went on, as opposed to a whole party chipping in, so it would take substantially longer to save up.

  • AL gold rewards are substantially lower than the DMG’s treasure hoard averages, which also increases the time it takes to save.

  • Downtime days are required on top of gold to buy magic items. This is (or was) often the limiting factor, so offering items for relatively low gold costs did not have a substantial impact on how often items could be purchased.

• Although I don’t have insight into the writing behind Tomb of Annihilation, I believe those prices were set because the campaign itself doesn’t offer much in the way of magic items, and they want PCs to have access to magic gear (especially weapons) just in case they run into the wrong thing at the wrong time. The cost for an uncommon item like a +1 shield, dagger, or spear is 500 gp before considering the time spent making it. And while the ToA book explains that Ekene has these items enchanted by Wakanga, nothing says that he has a way to make the process cheaper. I treat the situation as one similar to Adventurers League, where adventurers are able to acquire minor magical items at or near cost from the merchant princes because it’s in the princes’ interests to make sure adventurers investigating the Death Curse have what they need.

• Although I want to stick with the rules and guidelines in the core books as much as possible, the value list in the DMG simply doesn’t make sense in the context of creation costs. As the DMG says, many magic items are supposed to be “well-preserved antiquities”; if that’s the case, and we know what it would cost to create another similar item, why would anybody sell one for less than it would cost to make it? In terms of the game overall and campaigns from any background, you can make a reasonable argument that lower prices than I’m suggesting are appropriate, but not prices which don’t even exceed the cost to make the item.

There is one possible reading which makes these official sources very sensible and my suggested prices way over the top: that the creation costs listed include both material costs and labor. I did consider this possibility when formulating the ideas behind this book, and my conclusion is that such an assumption is both incorrect and, if used, makes what’s written in the DMG more difficult to work with.

• First, and most importantly, everyone who’s able to make magic items will value their time differently. The table in this chapter of what it costs to hire a spellcaster per hour or per day is one way to differentiate them, but there are others as well. A wizard with their own shop will have a certain perception of their own value. A church whose acolytes create items for the faithful may have a much different idea of how to value that time—is it being used to serve the faith directly or to raise funds for holy activities? There is simply no way that everyone who is capable of making an uncommon magic item will view the value of the time involved in the same way.

• If we assume the listed creation cost does include labor, how do you adjust it for a PC who wants to make a magic item? If the item is for their own use, presumably they’re willing to work for free. What’s the discount? Does it matter what item they’re making? Do you, as the DM, want to figure out material costs for every item on the list?

• Let’s go to the other extreme and say the creation costs are purely the value of the labor. That would mean there are no material costs. Let’s also say that the formulas mentioned in the DMG are purely an explanation of how to enchant an item and there are no expensive materials required. This creates the same issue as previously mentioned—that it assumes all spellcasters value their labor equally, when that is extremely unlikely to be the case—but also creates no real baseline level of resources needed to start making magic items. And how can that be? Permanent magic items are normal (if high-quality) objects covered in enchantments. Are we supposed to assume every wizard who wants to make a magical staff knows how to carve one good enough for the task? Where do the beads enchanted to be Beads of Force come from? Do we have to keep track of the cost of everything with a notable price that is enchanted to make a magic item? Although that makes sense for particularly expensive items (namely armor), for the most part we assume any materials involved in crafting a magic item are part of the process and the cost, so it’s illogical to treat the creation cost as purely labor.

The calculus here might be different if this system for pricing magic items put them out of reach of PCs according to the rewards they should get in the DMG. Above all else, this is a game, and there’s no use in creating a system that the players can’t reasonably interact with. But as long as we can treat material costs and labor costs as separate things, and still end up with totals that give the PCs access to magic items, then we’re fine.

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What about consumables?

Consumables. Right.

Fair warning: This involves a system that has been created for this book and does not exist in WotC’s material. As previously stated, I prefer to work with their rules, but the cost and creation times of consumables simply make no sense. (For our purposes, “consumables” refer to potions and ammunition, items which adventurers would want to use in quantity.)

Take the economic aspect out of it. If it takes half the time and cost for a given rarity to make a consumable versus a permanent item, why would anyone make the vast majority of them? Why would anyone have ever made them? Maybe common potions, since that includes Potions of Healing. A few uncommon potions, perhaps, which could serve an emergency purpose unlikely to be duplicated by anything else (e.g. Potion of Hill Giant Strength). But rare and up? Who’s making any of those? Who in the world is going to spend three years on one massively powerful healing potion (supreme) or a single +3 arrow (!!!) when they can make, literally, five permanent rare items in the same time frame for the same cost? And yet, not only do they exist, they’re relatively common rewards, especially if you roll randomly for treasure hoards out of the DMG.

That just deals with the lack of incentive to make potions versus permanent items. However, in a market for magic items, that lack of incentive extends to the buyer’s side as well. If everything is half the cost, then an uncommon potion should have a price of 1,250 gp. Who’s going to pay that much for any of those potions? Once a party is so flush with cash that 1,250 gp isn’t much, which uncommon potions are going to be of any use? A Potion of Growth might help with a very specific chokepoint strategy, and Potions of Water Breathing might let them explore the depths of the sea, but how many of those groups aren’t going to have a more cost-effective way of dealing with those problems? To be more specific: how many groups would prefer Potions of Water Breathing over Caps of Water Breathing? The answer probably isn’t zero, but it’s low enough that there simply wouldn’t be much reason to sell the potions rather than the permanent items.

Of course, you don’t have to change this system. You can stick with the DMG’s rules, come up with an explanation why potions of healing are sold at cost (50 gp, as in the books) or raise the price (probably 150 gp), and decide that no other potions get made anymore, outside of perhaps a handful of uncommon ones (greater healing, hill giant strength). Any other potions the PCs find were made with old techniques lost to time, and they just aren’t likely to see “fresh” ones. You might have a situation where a team of clerics make a Potion of Fire Giant Strength for the PC barbarian so the party can better serve the will of their god—and that might actually be quite cool—but this section is about a magic item market, and no market is likely to exist for these consumables under DMG creation guidelines.

However, there’s an alteration we can make to the creation of consumables that puts them on a much more reasonable footing: batches. Say that in order to make potions, they need to be brewed in large batches, such that spending the time and money for a permanent item of a given rarity nets you ten potions. Likewise, ammunition is generally sold in quivers, pouches, etc., with twenty in each container, so you could also make twenty pieces of enchanted ammunition. (Basic ammo only, ie. +1, +2, or +3. Specialty ammo like Arrows of Slaying still need to be made one at a time.) 

This works out well with the potion that already has a listed cost—the Potion of Healing. With batch creation as described, spending 100 gp and four days on the task nets you ten potions. List them at 50 gp each (just like in the PHB), and once they’re all sold, you’ve raked in 500 gp. This is more than a permanent common item costs, but potions of healing serve a more useful purpose, so that’s logical. It also doesn’t mean that permanent common items won’t be made—not everyone capable of making common items has the magic or skills necessary to make healing potions, and they have very different clienteles. Some noble might be wealthy enough to own an entire wardrobe of magical clothing but never see the need for a single healing potion, and there will probably be someone willing to make a living off that noble’s spendthrift ways.

The system holds up well at other rarities. For example, spend 500 gp and twenty days, and you get ten bottles of an uncommon-level potion. Sold at a cost proportional to permanent magic items, we get a base price of 250 gp per potion, which is reasonable without being underpriced. Better yet, it makes pretty much all of the potions viable for selling. 

You can see the trend—using this method, potions are 1/10th the permanent item price for a given rarity, and a stack of twenty pieces of ammo costs the same as one permanent item. As long as you maintain that ratio for a batch of consumables, you can play with some of the specifics. Examples:

• Consumables must be made in full batches or not at all. (Recommended.)

• Rule that making consumables in smaller amounts is less efficient—ten potions/twenty ammo equals the normal creation cost, but spending half only nets you four potions/eight ammo, and if you only want one potion/two ammo, it takes one-quarter the creation time and cost. (The PCs may be more inclined to make one-off potions themselves rather than buy them, which somewhat defeats the purpose of the market. In addition, spellcasters who spend more per potion to make smaller batches will charge more for those potions, which you should account for. But this can be fun if you like deciding what consumable formulas the PCs have access to and playing with the exact prices shops ask for their goods.)

• Allow any of these items to be made one at a time, at 10% the creation cost for a potion and 5% for a single piece of ammo. (Not recommended. A dramatically wider variety of potions is likely to be available in shops, which can be interesting. However, if the PCs include several spellcasters, they could take a few days off and make exactly which potions they want available at any given time. If that sounds good to you, great, but that’s not the purpose of this system, which is why this is not recommended.)

Finally, as with permanent magic items, you can raise the price on anything that looks like it could sell for more, such as Potions of Hill Giant Strength.

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A note on how changes to a game system, even when you’re applying a logical “fix”, need to be carefully considered and communicated. 

At the start of this section, I mentioned potions and ammo—one-shot items—and described how a batch creation system for those items would work. Many people will read that and wonder if this would work for other one-shot items, and perhaps wonder why I’m only talking about potions and ammo. There is a good reason.

Consider the following examples.

• An elemental gem made under DMG rules, with the pricing in this book, would cost 1,250 gp plus the cost of the gem used. For a level 6-8 party, being able to throw down a CR 5 elemental in a tough spot might be a reasonable use of 2,000 or so gold pieces. At one-fifth the price (batch creation cost vs. DMG creation cost), parties could make a small army out of them.

• A Bead of Force may not seem worth it at 20,000 gp, but a rich group who buys them at ten for 40,000 gp could abuse them terribly. 

• If scrolls required 1/10th the base creation cost to make, instead of one-half, low to mid-level scrolls would be everywhere. A party wizard that could make two Magic Missile scrolls per day for 10 gp each, or a Fireball scroll every other day for 50 gp each, would never run out of ways to attack enemies. 

As you can see, batch creation of these items would be potentially very detrimental to the game—your players could break encounters with them, leaving you in a position where either they roll over the hardest level-appropriate encounters, or you ramp up the challenge and begin a de facto arms race.

Then there are oils. If you find item lists online, oils are sometimes put in the potion lists because both are consumable liquids, and there are too few oils to justify them having their own list. Therefore, people tend to conflate the two in power. But there are substantial differences between potions and oils of the same rarity. 

A potion is immediately consumed, has an effect, and wears off. The effect is reasonably powerful for the rarity, suitable to characters of the levels intended to use items of that rarity. A Potion of Fire Breath can be a massive help to a 3rd or 4th-level party, but once they’re 6th, 7th, 8th level, it’s not nearly as good. Oils, on the other hand, have an effect worthy of at least one rarity above where they’re listed, and are downgraded in rarity because they take ten minutes to apply. Thus, they’re useless in a moment of immediate peril, but once applied they’re incredibly powerful for their rarity levels.

In fact, Oil of Slipperiness arguably has the single most powerful effect relative to rarity slot in the game. It replicates a 4th-level spell in the rarity slot designed for characters who can only cast 1st or 2nd-level spells; the spell, Freedom of Movement, can change the tide of any encounter, or even an entire dungeon; and it increases the spell’s duration from one hour to eight, which means this uncommon consumable is effectively casting the same 4th-level spell eight times, back-to-back, with no way to end the effect short of outright dispelling it. It easily has the power of a rare item, with the ten minute application being its only effective drawback.

If a group thinks there’s even a chance of paralysis or movement-impairing effects wherever they’re going, they have every reason to use the oil on critical members if they know they can always buy more. In addition, because the duration is so long, this is something which even high-level adventurers would want to keep handy. A Tier 4 group (levels 17-20) might consider them a steal at 5,000 gp each. Hell, the only thing that’s liable to put a cap on the price is if a lot of spellcasters start making them, and the supply gets too big for the number of people who can afford them. The only thing that would limit its use is scarcity. 

The purpose of allowing batch creation of some consumables is to drop the price down to a manageable level, bringing them into play as marketable items that can tempt a party without being must-have purchases. For example, the aforementioned Potion of Fire Breath might be quite strong in the hands of a 4th-level party, but at 250 gp, they’re spending 40% of the money they’ve made as a group up to that point to get one. That’s a substantial investment. The same can be said at other rarities—is a Potion of Fire Giant Strength worth 4,000 gp to a level 8 party? How about Cloud Giant Strength for 55,000 gp to a group of level 14s?

However, the Oil of Slipperiness is cheap, easy to make, and extremely effective for almost everyone. The question of market price is irrelevant; if it can be made in batches, adventuring parties with 7th-level clerics, druids, and even bards (if they know the spell) will spend a huge portion of their downtime brewing up barrels of the stuff. Likewise, villains with sufficient resources will hire alchemists who can do the same for their soldiers and henchmen (or just kidnap the alchemists and force them to do the work). 

By maintaining the line between oils and potions, you can avoid a more drastic change like not allowing oils to be crafted at all or doing the DM hand wave and claiming the ingredients needed for large quantities of oil are simply unavailable. If someone wants to spend ten days and 250 gp making one Oil of Slipperiness, over and over again, in order to build a stockpile, they’re welcome to do so. And if the creator is looking for profit, the oils will still sell for a considerable amount.

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A further note on scrolls.

The main value of a scroll is in a wizard’s hands, to copy into a spellbook, not as a single-use consumable. If scrolls are for sale at any level, wizards in your party will want (or at least hope) that scrolls for anything they want will eventually be available. Unfortunately, under DMG rules, it’s unlikely anyone will make a scroll for spells of 6th level and up (very rare/legendary), and nearly impossible to imagine someone doing it just to sell the scroll for gold.

That’s not a bad thing, though. Those spells involve powerful, complicated magic, and it should reasonably take a lot of time and resources to copy them down in a form that anyone can use. Just because party wizards want access to as many high level spells as possible doesn’t mean you have to put them on the market; a wizard with access to all, or even most, of the wizard spells in the game is absurdly powerful if they know what to prepare for. 

Besides, if you want a wizard to have access to Abi-Dalzim’s Horrid Wilting or whatever else, you can stick it on a scroll in a treasure hoard.

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The other issue that exists with consumables is listed rarity vs. perceived correct rarity. Specifically, some people have complaints about the rarity of certain potions, e.g. potions of invisibility and flying listed as very rare when they only replicate 2nd and 3rd-level spells, respectively. 

There is a reason for the boosted rarity, however—the potions don’t require concentration to maintain the effect, nor do they require attunement (like Winged Boots). For example, a Potion of Speed replicates the spell Haste, and one of the balancing points of Haste is that if the caster loses concentration, it can completely screw over the spell’s recipient. An item that lets a person cast Haste would certainly be considered rare; an unbreakable, one-minute haste is quite reasonably considered very rare. Likewise, if someone can fly for an hour and nothing can break the effect (short of actively dispelling it), it’s not crazy to set that on the very rare level.

If we maintain the given rarity for all potions, but use batch creation costs, this issue starts to balance out. Under this system, a very rare potion costs 55,000 gp. Obviously, that’s still a lot of money for a consumable, and few people would want to pay that for one. But that’s ok; it’s a high-level party’s type of luxury item.

Example: say a level 19 party has to assault the ancient black dragon’s lair on the top of Mt. Waytoohigh, a rocky crag that rises a thousand feet above a sea of lava, with a single road leading up to it guarded by a brood of smaller dragons. They might look at the mountain of cash they’ve collected over their careers and think that if ever they were going to spend a quarter-million gold on five potions, something that lets them fly and fight whatever’s guarding the air route without fear of blown concentration sending them into the lava or having to use an attunement slot on something like Winged Boots is worth the cost.

Or they won’t, because it’s a quarter-million gold for five potions. And that’s OK.

However, if you bump the potion down to rare, then they’re much more likely to be created, and will only cost 4,000 gp each. At that price, a high-level party might not use them constantly, but they can afford to use them anytime nearly-unbreakable flight would give them a substantial advantage. Many encounters (or entire portions of adventures) will be rendered easier than intended, if not bypassed entirely, if that happens. Then you, the DM, have to make a choice.

• Do nothing. The party is using the resources they bought with the gold they earned. It’s a fine mindset to have in general; however, when the resources are cheaply bought, the victory feels cheaply earned. The party may feel clever a few times, but it stops being fun after a while. The group may even forgo using the potions when they would clearly be advantageous, just to return the feeling of challenge to the game.

• Add more airborne and ranged threats. This helps in battles the party can’t or doesn’t avoid, but it does nothing to stop the group from bypassing encounters or rendering anyone without a ranged attack useless.

• Increase dispel or anti-magic effects. Although this might be explicable in some cases—a key villain knows the party loves potions of flying and defends against the tactic—it’s not likely to be plausible for most of what the party faces to have access to those types of defenses. And if those effects do show up a lot, the party will stop buying/using the potions, in which case making them cheaper and more readily available is pointless.

Basically, making these potions substantially easier to obtain will lead to them being frequently used. Then you’ll have to create defenses against the items that you decided it should be easier for the party to have. This is the same point made earlier when discussing reduced creation times for permanent magic items, except at least you know what permanent magic items the party has and can plan around it. Consumables are supposed to be one-shot items that confer a temporary advantage; planning around the use of certain consumables either happens because the party uses that consumable all the time, or you’re trying to force them to use it in a given circumstance. Both of those situations go against the reason consumables exist in the first place.

And remember, as always, you can make the consumables somewhat cheaper if you think that’s appropriate. If some old wizard spent ages brewing up a batch of Potions of Flying, and just wants a big chunk of money to retire on, he might be willing to part with his last five potions for 200k gp instead of 275k. (Maybe even less.) At least in that case, making the potions still required a long, drawn-out process, and the party isn’t going to find anyone else offering them for sale at that, or perhaps any, price. The scarcity means that no matter how much money the party has, they still need to carefully judge when they should use the potions, which gives their use meaning.

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With all that being said, here are the tables for selling potions and ammo (remember, all other consumables, including special ammo, are ½ the cost of a permanent item of that rarity, as in the DMG):

Finally, if you would like ammunition to be more affordable, here are a couple of alternative tables you can use: