How would you calculate the market price of a magic item when only the crafting price is given? Some books like Magic Item Compendium give market prices, I know, but other books still have magic items not represented in that book, e.g. the Crown of White Ravens (and other related martial items) from Tome of Battle. Is there a standard way of making a purchase price for it as opposed to a crafting price, or is it more or less DM's call?
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1\$\begingroup\$ Doesn't the DMG somewhere suggest 10x crafting price for a market price, if it's even on the market at all, but basically say, yeah, it's the DM's call? \$\endgroup\$– SevenSidedDieOct 30, 2013 at 19:51
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2\$\begingroup\$ @SevenSidedDie Close, but your factor is off by quite a lot. It’s typically 2×, not 10×. \$\endgroup\$– KRyanOct 30, 2013 at 20:56
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\$\begingroup\$ @KRyan I may be thinking 3e rather than 3.5e. There was a significant culture shift between those two. \$\endgroup\$– SevenSidedDieOct 30, 2013 at 20:57
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\$\begingroup\$ 3e was the same ratio in this respect as 3.5: 2x for magic items, and 3x for craft-skill items. If you never did much with the craft rules beyond scan them (very very few people ever do), you probably mixed it up with another ratio in those rules, wherein crafting by the day instead of by the week produces 1/10 of a week's progress per day. The only other place I know of where the 1:10 ratio shows up in crafting is in Airship engines, which if I remember right, cost 1/10 of market price per week spent making them (so final cost actually depends on time taken, and thus on skill modifier.) \$\endgroup\$– Matthew NajmonOct 31, 2013 at 7:25
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\$\begingroup\$ @SevenSidedDie Am AFB, but I seem to recall a 10x rule for magic items in 1E or 2E when they used to give XP vaules in the magic items tables, but not $ figures. IIRC, the sell value was nominally 10x the XP value. Perhaps that's what you're remembering? \$\endgroup\$– Zimul8rOct 31, 2013 at 12:50
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1 Answer
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The crafting rules have you spend 1/2 base price in materials and 1/25 base price in XP. Thus you can determine the base price from the crafting prices by multiplying the crafting material cost by 2 or the XP cost by 25.
Most of the time, the base price is the market price. Only in very rare cases would I recommend fiddling with that too much, unless you’re very careful.
Magic supplies for items are always half of the base price in gp and 1/25 of the base price in XP. For many items, the market price equals the base price.
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\$\begingroup\$ There are exceptions to this. Specifically, items that replicte the effects of spells with experience point components, focus components or expensive material components add a bit more to the market price without necessarily increasing the crafting price by half that - but I've not got my rules here to remember exactly what the changes are that need to be applied. \$\endgroup\$– GMJoeApr 8, 2014 at 3:39
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1\$\begingroup\$ @GMJoe It's 5 gp for each XP spent, but there are exceptions (when crafting items with N-per-day uses) \$\endgroup\$– ZachielApr 8, 2014 at 10:20