Masterwork ammunition pricing confusion!

[Joe Eskimo]

I'm really confused at the pricing of masterwork ammunition. A set of normal arrows, 20 pcs cost 1 gp. A set of normal bolts, 10 pcs also cost 1 gp. The rules for masterwork weapons says to add 6 gp to the cost of a single unit of ammunition, such as an arrow and further says that a set of 10 masterwork arrows costs 70 gp. It just doesn't add up! It should cost 60 gp and 5 sp. 60 for 6 gp/arrow x 10 arrows, and 5 sp for the 10 arrows(half of 1 gp, the cost of 20 arrows). It makes it look like one single normal non-masterwork arrow costs 1 gp. Worse yet in the DMG the price for 50 units of masterwork arrows, bolts, or bullets are all the same at 350 gp.

Can anyone clarify this?

[ericgrau]

I don't see that in an SRD. It could be a mistake in the printing.

And if I reverse engineer the magic arrows in the SRD I get the mundane material cost to be... 7 gp. Hmm, curious.

Lazy rounding up maybe?

It is significant if you're picking up 50 masterwork arrows, but nobody would ever do that. You'd get a masterwork bow, or only a few masterwork arrows. For magic arrows you're looking at less than 1 gp out of 47 gp, or more likely you want some property on your arrow so it's less than 1 gp out of 167 gp. I wouldn't worry about it.

[Joe Eskimo]

I got it from the PHB btw. And yeah it looks like a case of lazy rounding up and confused developers. Still It'd be good to know which rule is the most legal. Either the 6gp/unit of ammunition or the block 350 gp/50 units of ammo which lacks a detailed explanation how it arrived at 350 gp.

I'm leaning towards 6gp/unit coz text trumps table but that'd make mwk cold iron ammo cheap(double base price 1gp=2gp+mwk component=62 gp for 10 mwk cold iron bolts while 10 normal mwk bolts costs 61gp) and mwk alchemical silver arrows reasonably more expensive(2gp/unit+mwk component=81 gp for 10 mwk alchemical silver bolts).

[Talderas]

I got it from the PHB btw. And yeah it looks like a case of lazy rounding up and confused developers. Still It'd be good to know which rule is the most legal. Either the 6gp/unit of ammunition or the block 350 gp/50 units of ammo which lacks a detailed explanation how it arrived at 350 gp.

I'm leaning towards 6gp/unit coz text trumps table but that'd make mwk cold iron ammo cheap(double base price 1gp=2gp+mwk component=62 gp for 10 mwk cold iron bolts while 10 normal mwk bolts costs 61gp) and mwk alchemical silver arrows reasonably more expensive(2gp/unit+mwk component=81 gp for 10 mwk alchemical silver bolts).

20 arrows cost 1gp. That means that each arrow costs 5 copper. So a masterwork arrow is 6.05gp.

Special material arrows are.... weird. Adamantine says that the cost of masterwork is included in the price modification. However the DMG does not specify if the cost for special materials is per arrow or per batch of 50 (as per magic item rules) or per a batch as given in the PHB. Cold Iron says it's twice as expensive, so it's relatively clear. Alchemical silver does not say it includes the cost of masterwork, it's just a flat +2gp. Once again, like adamantine, it doesn't specify the base unit that it is modifying. This could be 1 arrow, it could be 20 arrows, or it could be 50 arrows. Unless otherwise stated, a special material does not require masterwork quality.

A single adamantine arrow could cost 6.05gp, 3.05gp, or 1.25gp. A single cold iron arrow is 0.1gp. A single silvered arrow could cost 2.05gp, 0.15gp, or 0.09gp.

[Savith9]

At least you dont have a GM that says no 1 MW arrow costs 301 gp as the additional cost for MW items is 300 gp.... at the point it really gets stupid and thats why I now nolonger use ranged characters due to how my GM runs magic/mw ammo.

[ericgrau]

The 132 gp +1 sleep arrows must blow his mind.