Pricing & Selling Magic Items
“You walk into a magic shop. The owner is a grizzled old—”
“Does he have 4 sets of Mariners armor? How much do they cost??” “What about a Potion of Superior Healing?” “I need to upgrade my armor to +1! Can she do that?!”
Nothing is worse than DMing a shopping spree where your players encounter a shop with potentially tons of limitless items. They may surprise you with asks that you have never heard of, or worse yet, give you a blank stare and just ask, “Okay, so what can we buy?” Either way, you need to be prepared.
First off, if you know your players will be encountering a large town or city in their next adventure, plan for them to want to spend some hard-earned gold somewhere. Most mundane things like inns, ale, and food are such a minimal expense once you get past level 1 or 2 that I don’t even tabulate it anymore. 1GP is more than enough to cover a one-night stay and meet all the basic needs a player might have. But what about magic shops, or advanced armories? For these, you may want to simply ask your group before the session even starts (if you have a Slack or Discord channel, or a group chat) what they may be looking to buy. This not only helps you prep costs and availability ahead of time, but it also cuts down on in-session shopping time as your players sit there flipping through the DMG for cool items or looking through their phones. I usually assign one player as the “Inventory Guy/Gal” and have them send me a comprehensive list of items the party may be interested in, sort of a “Wish List”. If your players are stuck and simply don’t know what to ask for, have them look in the back of the Dungeon Master’s Guide, or, if they don’t have a copy or a way to access it digitally, send them to my favorite go-to: Donjon. You can find a list of Magic Items in one of the many left-hand tabs under “D&D 5e”, and can even filter by rarity, attunement, item type, and source book.
Base the inventory on the size, scope, and design of the area they’re in. If it’s a small town of commoners, chances are they won’t have any magical items. Maybe a good blacksmith with some +1 weapons and armor. Larger cities will have more variety. Race matters too. Dwarves are keen craftsmen, so magical armor and weapons would not be unheard of in a dwarven town, whereas a treetop elven village may lean more into obscure magical (wondrous) items. A wizards’ keep may offer scrolls, potions, or magic tomes. You get the idea.
Additionally, the rarity and power of said items should scale both in price and with character level. Lower-level players really shouldn’t have access to anything above Common and Uncommon, and Very Rare/Legendary should be reserved for levels 12+, at minimum, and even then be sold sparingly if at all (most Legendary items, and the majority of Very Rares, should come as Quest rewards instead of purchase options). You as DM get to decide what a shop owner would realistically have, so don’t be afraid to tell your players that a certain item is simply too rare or powerful to be in a store. However, maybe your NPC store clerk, if asked with a high enough Persuasion check, may have insights as to where the group can find said items, or give tips about who may know. Try never to leave your players empty-handed; bread crumbs go a long way.
As for pricing, I love this handy-dandy chart below, which also helps manage item rarity vs. player level when considering what your players should have access to. Of course, this is a template, and many exceptions exist, based on DM discretion and the adventure theme overall. You may not give your players much gold because gold is super rare in your game, or your campaign may exist in a world rife with magic items. Maybe there’s a traveling salesman who your players encounter repeatedly, and by completing a certain quest he/she will give them a 25% discount.
This chart helps identify the relative rarity of spell scroll/potions by spell level (left), and what level the players should be for certain levels of rarity, as well as a range of prices for each rarity (right)
Using the Donjon resource linked above, I run a quick search for the magic item being requested (or if a spell scroll, I look up the spell level), look at its rarity and description, and decide where in the range of price the item would fall. A fairly weak Rare item could go as low as 500-600GP, while an OP Rare could climb to 5,000 or higher. Most items will fall somewhere in the middle. Again, you should read the description of the item and use your DM judgment for how powerful the item sounds to you. As for re-selling, the DMG states that items sold back to a store go for half-price. Easy enough.
I use a similar template for weapon and armor upgrades. Certain advanced smiths in my game may be able to turn a regular suit of armor into +1, +2, or maybe even +3 at high enough levels. I usually cap the upgrade bonus at whatever the party currently has on average, and use the DMG to pinpoint the rarity of each bonus. For example, a suit of +1 armor is considered Rare, so I plop it right in the middle/lower end of the Rare price range and charge the player ~2000-2500GP. If the weapon/armor is going from a +1 to a higher bonus, simply subtract what the original cost would have been from the new amount and charge your player that amount (e.g., +2 armor is Very Rare, so I subtract the aforementioned 2000-2500GP from Very Rare armor, which I’d charge about 25,000GP, bringing the new price to 22,500GP, give or take). If the weapon/armor has additional traits, bump the price but keep it within the same range (like Dwarven Plate, which in itself is already +2 Armor, on top of having additional benefits).
And that’s about it! If you have trouble with item pricing and similar, feel free to Contact Us and join our DM Academy to learn more about the ins-and-outs of running your own in-game magical shop!
