tips and tricks for doing magic items
The cleric lifts a shield emblazoned with the crest of their deity, and it glows with a holy firelight. The fighter rushes to the downed barbarian, healing potion in hand. As an arrow sails toward the sorcerer, her gloves glimmer, and she snatches the missile out of midair.
There are three ways magic items usually get to the Player Characters: ‘found items,’ ‘commissioned items,’ and ‘bought items.’
-found items style makes all magic items pretty rare, but is often hard to explain narratively. Did everyone quit making magic stuff? Why can’t you commission a wizard to enchant an object for you? Why haven’t all these standard healing potions been used up? Best used in dungeon-crawl type campaigns, where the PCs are exploring areas that haven’t already been excavated, looted, or inhabited. It makes the questions easier to answer.
-commissioned items style relies on the PCs choosing to pay exorbitant fees to have items custom-made for them. It’s not as exciting as finding loot in most cases, but if your players are particular about the kind of item they’re interested in, this is a good way to manage that desire. Best for parties with lots of money to spend, because magic items get expensive.
-bought items style suggests that there is an existing business of magic items. I like to use this style because not only can i fold the magic of the world into ordinary tasks like shopping, but then players have to sift through a lot of magical junk to find cool things. This is best for having shops selling ridiculous items with a mildly useful quality, often with a significant drawback.
In general, it’s best to mix these categories together to suit your campaign. Finding a health potion in an alcove of the dungeon can be clutch when the PCs are about to enter a boss fight, but buying enchanted arrows in advance can help defeat the “immune to piercing, bludgeoning, and slashing damage from nonmagical weapons” boss, too, and at some point finding everything you’ll need for success within the dungeon stretches credibility too far.
I imagine the way we find magical items to influence what kind of item it is. If it’s a loot-drop off a dead, low-level enemy or hidden in a niche behind a tapestry, keep the rarity to common or uncommon; the more difficult to get or find, the greater the rarity. Items that can be bought anywhere shouldn’t go above uncommon rarity, or you risk having businesspeople with insanely powerful magic gifts (although of course you can do that if you want to! Just be aware, great power and great responsibility, etc.). I recommend that commissioned items can go up to rare or very rare. Nobody should be able to commission a legendary item, and furthermore, a legendary item costs more than a small town.
There’s one last thing: certain spellcasters can craft their own magic items; the DMG has mechanics for how to run that which can be found under Downtime. That list also includes the cost of crafting such an item, which can give you a baseline not only for the cost for a PC to make an item, but also for the price tag if the PCs want to buy or commission such an item. I’ve reproduced it below:
Common items cost around 100 gp to craft, and you typically must be 3rd level or higher to be able to make one.
Uncommon items cost 500 gp to craft, and you should also be at least 3rd level to craft it.
Rare items cost about 5,000 gp to craft, and you must be 6th level or higher to craft them.
Very Rare items cost roughly 50,000 gp to make, and require an 11th-level caster to do this.
Legendary items cost 500,000 gp to make, and require a caster of 17th level or higher.
If the item can be used up, like a potion or a scroll, you can halve the cost (so a common healing potion would cost 50 gp to craft). In an 8-hr day of crafting, you can progress in 25-gp increments, so that 50gp potion of healing takes 2 full 8-hr days to craft, or longer in smaller chunks of time.
If the PCs buy these items from a dealer or enchanter, consider the time that the item takes to craft, the cost of crafting, and the skill level of the creator in totaling the final price. If they’re selling such an item, you can calculate the “going rate” in a similar fashion.
You can find a list of standard DMG magic items here. Some “dumb D&D items” that are perfect for a shopkeeper selling quirky junk can be found here, crafted by @sockablock.
