In which MetalJim once again ventures into economic theory…

Let’s see, it’s been a while since I talked about how “money” works in a fantasy RPG.  Today, I want to talk a little more about the “reality” of magic items in the marketplace versus the “list price” that we find in the Dungeon Master’s Guide.

It turns out that most gamers already understand the basic principles of dynamic pricing for magic items.  Anyone who has ever played World of Warcraft and bothered to watch prices at the auction house already knows what I am talking about.  You can usually get better value at the auction house, as either a buyer or a seller, than you can normally get from an in-game merchant.  Certain magic items are highly sought even though they have relatively tiny effects and low level requirements, since they are considered the “best” items for PVP at that character level.  Auction prices for those PVP items will be WAY higher than comparable but slightly worse items at the same power level. 

In the online shooter game Counterstrike, the designers tried an experiment with dynamic weapon pricing, where the cost to buy certain guns in between rounds of the battle would change based on a weekly “market” that reflected demand for certain weapons.  After six months, they dropped the experiment, because there wasn’t much drama.  The .50 Desert Eagle pistol went up in price and stayed there, and certain useless bonus items like nightvision goggles dropped to $1 and stayed there.  Still, it was a nice idea to try and encourage people to try out some different items within the game.

In your average D&D campaign, you might very well have a standing house rule about magic item prices relative to the prices listed in the DMG.  Usually, players expect to be able to sell items for half of the list price in the DMG, and they expect to be able to buy things from vendors in larger cities for the base DMG price.  Obviously, things might work differently in your campaign, but I am guessing that most people go by something close to this.

The problem, of course, is that this rarely takes into account the day to day economic realities of the particular game world.  The game designers made their best effort to come up with list prices for items that, in their opinion, seemed to fit the power level of the characters who would be using those items, and which made sense in terms of game balance.  Obviously, not every item was tested all that rigourously, and the pricing for some items just doesn’t make a whole lot of sense.

Let’s start with magical weapons and armor.  According to the DMG, prices for armor and weapons are determined in small part by the cost of the base item, but the real price is shaped by the total magical enhancement bonus.  Consider the relative value of scale mail +2 and a chain shirt +2.  Both have listed DMG values just over 4,200gp, with the chain shirt being just 50gp more expensive.  In practice, however, one of these two items is vastly more useful.  Both items may offer the same total AC bonus, but one is considered light armor and thus much more useful to barbarians, thieves, and warmages.  If both items were placed up for auction in a world with lots of heroes, then the final sale prices would show a huge gap.  Maybe there’s a wizard somewhere who would pick up the scale mail +2 on clearance to give to his half-orc fighter bodyguard, but in practice it’s still going to fetch half as much money as chain shirt +2.

How much would you pay to put padded armor +5 onto your fighter?  Especially when there’s a chain shirt +2 available?  Heck, you could wear non-magical banded mail and still have the same AC.

For a different example, consider the value of healing potions relative to conditions on the ground.  In an affluent kingdom with plenty of clerics to go around, healing potions would not be remarkable and might have prices at or below the value that we see listed in the DMG.  In a warzone, however, where healing potions are a valuable resource, you would expect prices to rise.  In a ravaged world where clerics have been a favorite target for evil assassins, you can imagine that the “street” value of all forms of clerical magic would go up quite a bit.

What is the cloak of the manta ray worth in the middle of a desert?  What is a scroll of remove curse worth in a world where mummies rise nightly from their graves and haunt the living?  The DMG says that an amulet of thought detection is worth 12,000gp.  In a campaign with high-level characters struggling to unmask the traitor among the king’s advisors, that sort of price would vastly undervalue the real usefulness of the item.

So, what should a well-meaning GM do about this?  Well, you shouldn’t get too upset over trivial bits of treasure, especially when the players just want to dump some swag and set off on their next quest.  The standard “half-off DMG prices” is still plenty useful in lots of situations, and you hope that it more or less balances out over the long haul. 

Consider, however, what happens when the players try to dump a high-price item onto the market.  Given the current location of the party, is there a merchant in town willing to take on such an expensive item, even as an investment?  It means tying up a lot of capital.  What if the item is actually an evil artifact, like a darkskull?  Just who is going to put down a chunk of change to buy that efreeti bottle?  Wouldn’t it be funny if the players sold an efreeti bottle to a passing merchant, only to have the merchant unwittingly set that efreeti free?  Who will the locals blame after the efreeti destroys an entire village?

Players will, of course, get upset if they think that their DM is just making arbitrary rulings to punish them and tell them that no one in town wants to buy a certain wonky magic item, or that a certain item goes for a low price at auction.  It’s just random to make a simple “auction value” die roll whenever the players try to sell something.  Doing all of the role-playing involved in a tedious bout of haggling just slows the game down and keeps the rest of the party from moving on to the next adventure.  However, by using the concept of a dynamic magical marketplace, the DM can create opportunities and adventure hooks for the players.

For example, imagine a city with its own combat arena, where guilds of fighters frequently clash.  It turns out that the combatants make wagers between themselves before each battle involving their magical gear.  Now, imagine a team that’s lost a few battles and needs some new swag to get back to full effectiveness.  Obviously, they are going to pay a premium for any gear that is potentially useful to their next battle.  The winning team, meanwhile, has to decide what to do with their winnings.  They might be looking to dump some of their prizes if the PCs are hanging around with ready cash.  Or, they might be offering to sell some very useful items at prices well above standard market value, since they figure the players are probably just intermediaries for the losing team anyway.

Imagine an adventure hook where a merchant in a cosmopolitan city tips off a high-level party to a big black market auction for magic items, being sponsored jointly by the wizard’s guild and the thieves’ guild.  The players might need to make some friends to get an invitation, and they will want to bring plenty of cash and moveable items to the event.  Maybe they will be surprised when one of their own items sells at a low price, but maybe they will be even more shocked when one of their items gets picked up for a good price at auction by someone who is obviously evil and up to sinister plots.  Will the players get caught up in the heat of the moment and get into a bidding war over a flametongue sword?  It’s a great encounter situation where the characters might actually get a chance to TALK to the bad guys instead of just killing them.

As another example, what if the players hear about a famous duellist who seeks the ultimate duelling rapier?  Will the players board a ship to go off in search of a certain “dread pirate”, knowing that they have a likely buyer for the pirate’s sword when they get back?

What if the players are in town conducting routine business when they discover that someone in town is buying up every single available curing potion (disease, blindness, and otherwise).  What is the story here?  Is a ruthless merchant trying to create a market panic?  Or is an evil necromancer getting set to unleash a deadly plague? 

Little hooks like this can do a lot to create the illusion that your game world actually has a dynamic economy, and your players will appreciate the realism, so long as you don’t get too heavy-handed about it.

 Have you ever found yourself running a game where you totally ignored the list price for a magic item in the DMG?  Feel free to post your own stories below…