Prices outside PHB

[jjordan]

Careful. You are on the edge of insanity to suggest DnD might actually have an economy, and that prices respond to market pressures.

Because gold isn't money in D&D, its primary purpose is to serve as a means of balancing the availability of magic. Which is why there's discrepancy in prices between sources, because scenario creators felt players needed more, or less, access to magic in order to balance their specific scenario.

It's possible to create generally correct economies for D&D settings but they ultimately end up running counter to designer intent and modern expectations of what an economy should be (or end up being modern economies superimposed on a society which doesn't support them and, thus, ultimately more glaringly out of place).

[Tanarii]

Because gold isn't money in D&D, its primary purpose is to serve as a means of balancing the availability of magic.

D&D went from Magic isn't available to make or to buy/sell, Magic can be made for GP and XP, but not bought or sold, to price to buy (and sell for 50%) in the core rules, then back to 5e's whether or not Magic can be bought or sold is up to the DM.

And it's worth noting that in 5e, gp isn't about balancing availability of Magic. It may or may not be available for any amount of gold. Gold might only be usable for living like a noble, buying buildings and ships, and hiring armies. YMMV per your DM.

[KorvinStarmast]

(or end up being modern economies superimposed on a society which doesn't support them and, thus, ultimately more glaringly out of place).

Yeah, it sure stands out like a wart on a baby's face.

D&D went from Magic isn't available to make or to buy/sell,

While I prefer "magic isn't available to buy or sell or even make" (I like magic items to be placed ...) strictly speaking, Original D&D, in Men and Magic, included 'you can make magic items" (if you are a wizard, and some items at lower levels) but there was a chance of failure.
(Excerpted from Men and Magic, page 6)

Examples of costs are:
Item---------------------------------Cost
Potion of Healing-----------------250 Gold Pieces + 1 week
Potion of Giant Strength--------1,000 Gold Pieces + 4 weeks
Enchanting Armor to +1--------2,000 Gold Pieces + 2 months
Wand of Cold --------------------10,000 Gold Pieces + 6 months
X-Ray Vision Ring ----------------50,000 Gold Pieces + 1 year

You could also research new spells. (Men and Magic, p. 34)

I suspect that you are referring to B/X or BECMI D&D?

[Man_Over_Game]

It might be outdated, but the expected cost of a spell cast as a service is: Square of the spell level, then multiplied by 10, add double of the consumed material cost, add 10% of nonconsumed material cost.

This was reverse-engineered by the known costs from Tyranny of Dragons and Storm King's Thunder, and the formula is accurate with the spells in those books outside of the Resurrection spell (which is priced at ~500g more than the formula would have).

As an interesting aside, Zealot Barbarians pay the same amount as anyone else to get revived (despite not consuming the item), unless they happen to be an Acolyte, which then allows them to be revived at no cost :

"A character possessing the acolyte background requesting spellcasting services at a temple of their faith can request one spell per day from the Spellcasting Services table for free. The only cost paid for the spell is the base price for the consumed material component, if any is required."

[SharkForce]

Yeah okay, I guess that's possible under the Replacing the Book clause. Egad the rules for Scrolls and Spellbooks are an incoherent mess. There doesn't seem to actually be a purpose to copying them from Scrolls, given that a Wizard can crank out a one-shot spell-for-sale for 50gp+50gp/level, at a time cost of 2 hours/spell level.

So there's your "by the book" bare minimum cost for buying a spell. It's right in the PHB spellbook section. Its utterly and ludicrously low, but hey, if you want God-Wizards, go for it.

less than that. 50 gp/spell level and 2 hours/level is to scribe a spell you don't know.

10 gp/spell level and 1 hour/level is the cost for spells you do know.

seriously, I've been mentioning this off and on for years. dunno why anyone ever talked about scrolls as if they matter from a perspective of selling spell knowledge. that would be silly. they're single-use, they're expensive, and they're useful for more than just copying into your spellbook. anyone selling spell knowledge should just be using spellbooks. I don't know if I would go *quite* so far as to suggest 1 spell per book, but it doesn't make any sense at all to go to the substantial effort to create a scroll for scribing when a spare copy of a spellbook does the job cheaper, better, and faster. especially if there is a variety of spellbook with far less space in it that costs significantly less (which there really should be, but I can certainly understand that people aren't generally interested in tracking specifically what spells are in what books and how much room is left in each book...)

scribing scrolls is for when you find a scroll of a spell that you *can't* just buy.