Magic items are a HUGE part of 5E Dungeons & Dragons, but answering even simple questions such as what magic items cost or where to buy them is no easy task for the DM!
In this article, we help you answer the first question as we discuss how to price magic items in 5E D&D!
Wanderer’s Guide to Merchants & Magic has 166 pages of magic shops and new magic items, including price lists for all magic items in the 5E SRD!
Magic Item Prices in 5E
One of the biggest issues with magic items in 5E D&D is how to price them.
Every magic item has a rarity: Common, Uncommon, Rare, Very Rare, Legendary, or Artifact. This rarity is supposed to give the DM a rough estimation of the item’s relative power level – and, via the Magic Item Rarity table in the Dungeon Master’s Guide – determine the rough value of the magic item.
The Issue
Rarity, in other words, is meant to measure not only the availability of an item (how difficult it is to find) but also how powerful and valuable it is.
While it would make sense that a magic item’s rarity would correlate with its power (and thus also its value), a quick analysis of the magic items found in the 5E DMG easily proves that rarity doesn’t always reflect how powerful or useful a magic item is.
A pair of winged boots, for example, are Uncommon and thus have a value of 101 – 500 gp, while a potion of flying (that can only be used once!) is Very Rare and thus has a value of 2,500 – 25,000 gp (the price of a consumable magic item is half that of a permanent magic item).
It’s hard to believe that a potion of flying should be worth more than a pair of winged boots (item cards from the 5E Magic Item Cards box set)
The issue is that we’re using ONLY scarcity to determine value. Just because something is rare doesn’t mean that it is in high demand, and if no one wants it, it’s likely not very valuable. Rarity covers supply, the missing link here is demand.
Of course, determining the value of a magic item will often be subjective – as it is with fine art in the real world – and it’s logical that a rare item that is only useful in a very specific situation can be more expensive than a much more sought-after but mass-produced item.
But this can only be the case to some degree, and there are quite a few cases where you can objectively say that in nearly all situations, one item is clearly a lot better than another, even though it is more common.
Take a potion of invisibility as another example.
A potion of invisibility is a Very Rare, consumable item, so by the official guidelines, it should cost between 2,500 gp and 25,000 gp.
I’m not saying a potion of invisibility can’t come in handy, but if you really think about it, all it does is mimic a 2nd-level spell – yet we’re supposed to believe it has the same value as at least five cloaks of protection? (A cloak of protection is an Uncommon magic item that grants +1 to AC and all saving throws).
And that’s if you sold the potion for the lowest price, and bought the cloaks at their highest price! If you took the highest estimated value for a Very Rare item and the lowest for an Uncommon item, one potion of invisibility would be worth almost the same as 250 cloaks of protection!
The Solutions
I personally like the simplicity of having items sectioned by rarity; it’s easy, and it’s something I’m familiar with from other games. But in 5E, rarity clearly can’t be the only thing that determines a magic item’s value.
One solution is to decouple value from rarity and instead base an item’s value on your perception of supply and demand, and the item’s power. However, this means you’d have to price each individual item on the fly at the table, which is easier said than done.
You could also just accept that rarity reflects an item’s value and go ahead and change the official rarities on specific items accordingly. Maybe a potion of flying is Uncommon instead of Very Rare, and vice versa for the boots of flying?
Wanderer’s Guide to Merchants & Magic takes things a step further by providing values for all the most popular magic items in 5E based on a combination of their rarity and their power level.
List of magic item values from the Wanderer’s Guide to Merchants & Magic.
Negotiating
When dealing with player characters buying or selling magic items, you should also consider their skills (or lack thereof) at bargaining.
When the characters are buying, I’d recommend starting out at the maximum value for an item (based on its rarity) and then letting the player character’s bargaining skills determine how low it can go.
The DMG doesn’t provide hard rules for bargaining, but discounts of up to 50% should be attainable – which should also be taken into account if you price each item individually!
You can allow characters to haggle by making a Persuasion or even Performance check, perhaps with an opportunity for advantage or a lower DC if the merchant takes a liking to them for one reason or the other.
As for characters selling magic items, it’d make sense that the characters’ best possible sale price is half the listed maximum price. It’d start out even lower than that at the lowest price range for that rarity.
By doing this, you also avoid over-inflation and characters constantly swapping out magic items and getting insanely rich with every lucky loot drop.
Don’t Forget the Gold!
Finally, there’s the matter of determining what gold is actually worth.
If you stick to the prices in the DMG, or close to it, the value of magic items is still relative to how much gold the PCs have, but in one game 500 gp could be a dragon’s hoard, while in the other, it’s barely pocket change for a 2nd-level PC!
If you allow magic items to be bought and sold in your game, the more gold you give the characters relative to the items’ prices, the more magic items they’ll have! In the end, the most important thing is picking a level of relative wealth and being consistent with it.
For a high-magic campaign you can use the wealth guidelines on the page below from the Wanderer’s Guide to Merchants & Magic.
Conclusion
I love magic items, I love to give them to my players (maybe too much!), but pricing them can be really hard as a DM. Just remember:
- Rarity doesn’t always reflect relative power and shouldn’t always determine the value of an item when dealing with buying or selling it at the table.
- You can change the rarity of some items to better match their perceived power level, or even price each item individually.
- Use the highest value in the value range when players are buying magic items and start at half of the lowest value when they’re selling them!
- Be mindful of how much gold your characters have when allowing buying and selling magic items!
I think that covers the basics when it comes to pricing magic items in 5E. And, if you want set values for the most popular magic items, and detailed rules for handling price negotiations in a fun and easy way at the table, be sure to check out Wanderer’s Guide to Merchants & Magic.
Haggling and bartering for a better (or worse!) price is also something we will cover in greater detail in our next article where we open the door to magic shops, how to design them, and how to run them at your table!
S. K. Valeur
Creative engine, cheerleader, and co-founder of Eventyr Games, S. K. Valeur is the beating heart of the Eventyr team. When he isn't busy brewing up magical marvels – or equally magical craft beer! – he's either exploring the wonders of VTT, managing logistics and manufacturing, or writing articles about 5E.
Well the selling cost depends on how used it is
My players earned a random magic item in an arena if they were to take it to where the arena bought it they could get 75% back cause it hasn’t been used