Money Money!

[Perseus]

Since I first started playing 3.X I've found that everything seems to be really expensive.

Specifically I've felt that magic items are over priced. Has anyone tinkered with the pricing system of D&D 3.X?

I get that you don't want entire armies or commoners with +5 Awesome Weapons but... The cost it take to buy some items, event consumables, is quite ridiculous.

Perhaps the problem isn't the prices that the items are at but the amount of money a PC has...

Has anyone tinkered with the price of items in 3.X?

[zephyrkinetic]

Since I first started playing 3.X I've found that everything seems to be really expensive.

Specifically I've felt that magic items are over priced. Has anyone tinkered with the pricing system of D&D 3.X?

I get that you don't want entire armies or commoners with +5 Awesome Weapons but... The cost it take to buy some items, event consumables, is quite ridiculous.

Perhaps the problem isn't the prices that the items are at but the amount of money a PC has...

Has anyone tinkered with the price of items in 3.X?

I think the prices are set up that way to prove a point. Magic items are supposed to be rare, or at least uncommon. A merchant, if he saves his whole life, might eventually be able to buy some low-level protection items, or maybe a Minor Wondrous item. Adventurers, meanwhile, are constantly coming into contact with huge sums of loot (it's a primary motive to adventure, after all), and therefore are able to afford such unusual items. It also ensures that a character has to progress a while - in other words, "earn" it - before they get access to some of the higher-level things. It gives the game a sense of realism. After all, a Level 1 character should be a dude with a sword with a little training, or a chick who knows a few spells, or a moderately decent cutpurse. It shouldn't be someone with even so much as a cape that allows him to fly, or a hat that changes his appearance at will.

[eggynack]

You may just be looking at the wrong magic items. Some of these things are ridiculously cheap for what they provide, like anklets of translocation, wands of lesser vigor, or belts of battle. Crazy power at low prices, especially the wand which can allow you to heal pretty much any injury for a decent amount of time. I mean, sure, there are a lot of apparatuses of the crab running around, but that's why you don't buy those.

[Lightlawbliss]

if you start realizing what people get paid for making this stuff, it is actually very little. You are paying for months of a higher level caster's time. Many of the guys making magic items can make a good thousand a day by selling spell slots.

[eggynack]

if you start realizing what people get paid for making this stuff, it is actually very little. You are paying for months of a higher level caster's time. Many of the guys making magic items can make a good thousand a day by selling spell slots.
That logic doesn't really make much sense. Crafting time is informed by cost, so were the price reduced then so would be the time of construction, and you could thus justify literally any cost for any item by looking at the crafting time. "Oh, of course this +5 sword costs so little. Look how little time it takes to make it."

[nedz]

IIRC the prices in MiC are quite a bit cheaper than those in the DMG for very similar items, so WotC did tinker with this. It's down to the DM though: they could create a setting where you pay for magical swords with cowrie shells if they wanted. Most DM's just go with the established price list though many ignore WBL, in my experience at least, in the misguided notion that this will make the game more low powered. The current system, at WBL, does seem to provide PCs with the kit which they need for their level — so there is a modicum of balance here. At the end of the day it's not real cash so you could change all of the numbers quite easily.

[Fouredged Sword]

There is also a level barrier built into the prices. WBL is non-linear so you find your wealth increasing by several POWERS OF TEN on the way from 1-20.

This means that things are priced to be expensive for one level of character, cheep for another level of character, and basically a throw away item after a point.

Anything that costs 1/1000th your wealth is cheep. Everything you have as a 2nd level character can be bought 1000 times over at 20th.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Since I first started playing 3.X I've found that everything seems to be really expensive.

Specifically I've felt that magic items are over priced. Has anyone tinkered with the pricing system of D&D 3.X?

I get that you don't want entire armies or commoners with +5 Awesome Weapons but... The cost it take to buy some items, event consumables, is quite ridiculous.

Perhaps the problem isn't the prices that the items are at but the amount of money a PC has...

Has anyone tinkered with the price of items in 3.X?

Question: by what basis do you come to the conclusion that they're overpriced?

They are certainly, extravagantly, even ridiculously expensive by the standards of ordinary commoners or even merchants that deal in mundane materials. However, in light of the absurdly dangerous activities that adventurers regularly undertake to acquire their obscene wealth, they can certainly afford to cough up the dough for these things.

A first level fighter can start his first adventure with nothing more than a wooden club, a tanned and boiled animal hide (leather armor), and a pack full of trail rations. He'll come back home a few days or weeks later with more wealth than the guy that owns the local inn in the form of looted equipment and coin collected from the corpses of his foes or their victims, depending on whether it's humanoid or monstrous. That is, however, -if- he comes back at all. In the course of that time he'll put himself at risk of death probably a dozen times. High-risk, high-reward.

From there it's just a matter of how far you want to go. Just how rich do you want to be and how often are you willing to risk your neck to get there?

If, on the other hand, you're asking from the meta-game perspective, the rate at which the game gives out treasure and the items you need to have to survive keep pace pretty evenly. If you're willing to accept a gap in your defenses or offense for a more interesting ability, that's your prerogative. That's not to say that a few items aren't grossly overpriced for what they do (looking at you wings of flying and amulet of might fists) but most of them are fine as they are.

[Drachasor]

There are a definitely a ton of magical items that are ridiculously overpriced. Most non-metamagic rods, for instance. The game has a ton of magical items that just aren't worth the opportunity cost by any stretch of the imagination. Most wands fit into this too.

[eggynack]

There are a definitely a ton of magical items that are ridiculously overpriced. Most non-metamagic rods, for instance. The game has a ton of magical items that just aren't worth the opportunity cost by any stretch of the imagination. Most wands fit into this too.
True enough. Certainly not a universal thing though. I think they started getting the pricing done better when MIC happened.

[Drachasor]

True enough. Certainly not a universal thing though. I think they started getting the pricing done better when MIC happened.

True. I guess it is a question of whether the OP really means all magical items and if he's seen the Wealth By Level chart indicating how much money a given character should have to spend on items.

[ZamielVanWeber]

I saw the thread and thought of, in order, ABBA and Hot Eye from Oracion seis. That being said: I just mostly leave it loot fixing. If there is some dire need for some items that are over priced they will just coincidentally appear more. It is a more dynamic process but it beats playing "guess my power level" with items. Also IMO.