Mundane Magic Items In 5th Edition D&D

“Sehr geehrte Damen und Herren,

Today I wish to discuss magic items as they are presented in DUNGEONS & DRAGONS 5th edition. The Dungeon Master’s Guide breaks down magic items by rarity: common, uncommon, rare, very rare, legendary, and artifacts. The book also presents the attunement rule, to make the item more unique for a character.

After plundering piles and piles of treasure, the first thing most players want to do is go unload it in town, and there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. However, as a DM, an influx of magic items could potentially make balancing content much more difficult. 

Furthermore, how realistic is it to go to town and find every item you could possibly ask for on sale there? It’s unlikely that even the largest city will have a department store for magical items. Page 137 of the DMG begins the discussion of magic item rarity, and I would like to quote - ‘Even uncommon items can’t be easily created. Thus, many magic items are well-preserved antiquities.’ Keep this in mind when your players decide to flaunt their treasure in town.

I believe that magic items give the DM the opportunity to reward characters in special ways. Furthermore, even the most mundane of magic items allows the DM the opportunity to set up roleplaying and adventure. One thing a DM should not do is pass out magic items like candy, nor allow players to sell them in the same way. A DM should review Chapter 6, Downtime Activities, in the DMG, before allowing the players to unload their wealth in town.

If the players do find a magical shop, the DM should consider the owner of the shop and what he/she might sell. Is the owner a wizard or does he/she employ wizards? Is the shop selling antiquities, or does it sell newly made items? Considering these two questions, start designing a shop based off of the information provided in the DMG.

Here is a new table to consider, showing how many days it will take to create an item based off of the 25gp per day suggested in the DMG:

Rarity	Total Cost to Make	Level	Days to Create (25gp per day)
Common	100gp	3rd	4 days
Uncommon	500gp	3rd	20 days
Rare	5,000gp	6th	200 days
Very Rare	50,000gp	11th	2,000 days (5 years 175 days)
Legendary	500,000gp	17th	20,000 days (54 years 290 days)

Let’s consider the overhead of a shop opened by a wizard who makes all his own stuff. He has been open a year and is only 3rd level, which means that he can only make items of Common and Uncommon quality. Let’s further assume that he is only selling Uncommon items, and that he only works 40 hours a week. Therefore, if he worked for 280 days creating items and spent 7,000gp, he could create 14 items a year, a meager stock. 

Also, since he can’t run the shop and create magic items at the same time, he would need help. The wizard will want to live comfortably, and if he wants quality help, they will too -- amounting to another 4gp per day or 1,460gp per year (now he's spent a total of 8,460gp for the year). Let’s say he sells everything at double the cost, 14,000gp. After expenses, that leaves our fine wizard only 5,540gp left to make items for the next year, so only 11 items for his shop. Every year, he will continue to suffer a similar loss until he cannot afford to make any more items and is forced to close his shop doors.

In a setting where 1,000 gold is unheard of, chances are he will not be able to sell all of the items he made. As a result, he would do better making cheaper items, such as scrolls and potions, where the costs are half as much to make. A potion of jump, for example, will only take two days and cost 50gp, which he can then turn around and sell for 100gp. Not only can he make more of these per year, but he can also sell considerable more of them. 

However, in a fantasy setting, how many commoners or even nobles do you see running around leaping about with potions of jump? Not many, I’m sure, so our wizard is still not making his money. So what would you find in a magic shop? What would a wizard stock his shelves with? How about foci, or components? Books? Pages? Quills?

So when your players step into a magic shop, is there going to be a wall of +1 weapons to look at? Unlikely. Furthermore, DMs, charging double for magic items should be the minimum a shop owner can be haggled down to, not the starting price.

Think about novels and stories, few characters run around with an arsenal of magical devices. Some have a few magic items, but they are usually special, something unique to the character. These characters will carry these items through an entire trilogy, in some cases through an entire series. Hence, the reason the attunement rules have been implemented, and can be fine tuned to making magic items truly special.”

~ Gerald der Zeichner, the Goblin Savant


Edit: After looking over the DMG a little closer, it suggests selling magic items (if you're going to) at the same cost it takes to create them. This being the case, the rules are a little janked for a wizard wanting to sell his creations. I understand why WotC wrote the rules this way and that is so the player must spend the same amount for a magic item, whether he buys it or creates it. This, of course, changes the math I previously posted, and makes it even more unlikely that a wizard would sell magic items that he creates at all.