Magic Item Value

[Scott Adams]

At 06:57 PM 2/3/04 +0100, you wrote:
>I've been pondering the economics in P&P. One of the areas that has a big
>affect on Characters is the cost of magical items. As per standard
>economics the prices should vary according to scarcity and need. If every
>village has someone creating magic items the costs will be a lot lower than
>if there are only a couple enchanters in the whole kingdom. Similarly a
>Flask of Everflowing Water is a lot more valuable in the Parched Desert
>than it would be in the Land of Lakes.

Kinda hard to tell where your rules and the official rules end.  But
basically I take magical prices on a case by case.  A standard ruleset
doesn't seem to do good in many cases.  Besides the various things you
mentioned there are things like:

* Age: Age of item (price may increase with age like wine)
* Rarity: How rare it is (a named item more rare than a common water amulet)
* Creator status: How famous or infamous the creator was (a mighty arch
mage will have far more value than a apprentice who goofed on his homework)
* Land: If a land does not like magic and a item was done in that land it
might be more expensive there based on that alone (supply/demand).

Those are just some factors I take into account.

---

BTW as a gee whiz thing for the list -

Today was typing up a file for the maps.  Just a simple text file showing
the cultures in which map (per the PL map book).  Then sorted the file and
found out that Zen'da is on 7 maps, KAtai 6, Cerulean Empire 6...
Who'd think Zen'da was that large of an empire :)...or realm rather..


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