The True Value of Magic



A recent conversation…

(names changed to protect the innocent and the guilty)



WORF: I’d rather have a watch that keeps time with the Atomic Clock than a Rolex watch. Give me a choice, and I’ll take the AC watch.



DATA: But why not get the Rolex, sell it, and then buy AC watch and have money left over?



WORF: Well, yes, but ultimately, I’d rather have the AC watch, which was my point.



DATA: My point also, except that by taking the Rolex, you get the AC watch with money left over.



WORF: But I don’t want the Rolex –



DATA: (interrupting) Look, it’s not like Atomic Clock watches are going to disappear overnight. It makes no sense to take the AC watch if the Rolex is in front of you; you’ll ultimately end up with the AC watch you wanted in the first place…



=================



What’s really going on here?

Well, for starters, our two debaters have made foundational assumptions at cross-purposes. All Worf wants is the Atomic Clock watch, because he wants the ultra-precision timepiece. Data prefers the Rolex, because he can sell it, and then get an AC watch (along with many other things) with the proceeds. Who’s making the correct decision? Which one of the items is more valuable than the other? Is it all about money, as Data seems to think?



Let’s pull it out of the modern world and start asking questions about magical treasure. We are gamers, after all.



1) Assume we’re in a no-stress situation, just as our debaters above. Stressful situations considerably simplify decision-making processes. If you’re in a red dragon lair, choosing between a Potion of Red Dragon Control and a Scarab of Protection is a no-brainer.



2) Avoid class/profession considerations, and assume that the decision-maker finds all items under consideration usable and motive-free. Normally, a paladin faced with a +5 Holy Avenger and a Staff of the Magi doesn’t really have much of a choice.



3) Avoid utility issues – that is, situations in which a magic item may be more or less useful. For example, a Hat of Disguise has uses in a much different arena than a Ring of Water Breathing.



4) Avoid differences in limited duration or “charged” powers. Under this scheme, neither a Wand of Detecting Secret Doors nor, say, a Dagger of Venom would have to worry about charges.



5) Assume no rarities exist, for any reason other than uniqueness (e.g., artifacts). All items are generally available, as long as you can afford to pay for them.



Guess what we’ve just done….

We’ve validated the standard d20 method (among many others) for item creation: Use a formula to determine the value of any magic item. Judge the worth of the item itself by its GP value. When you stock your adventures with magic items, be sure to put in appropriate GP worth of magic items to make the adventure worthwhile for the assigned Challenge Level of the adventure. When adventurers go to a town to sell or barter their items they make Appraise or Bargain rolls to negotiate optimal deals, thus modifying the book value of the items.



But is this really how a fantasy system is supposed to work? Judging the value of magic items by their book value generally works well, but numerous factors influence how players and NPCs value items. Regrettably, these factors are not concretely quantifiable, as is money. That does not lessen the validity of such factors, which includes stress accommodation, class considerations, intrinsic and extrinsic usage limitations, and rarity.



Stress Situations



Stress impacts the value of everything you carry. Two stress-related questions your character ought to ask when equipping items are:

1) Stress prevention: What might you need in the future?

2) Stress alleviation: What do you need right now?

Preparing for stressful situations is something everyone does to some degree. For example, here’s a cursory list of things it might be useful to have in your car at all times: first-aid kit, flashlight, basic toolkit, radio, blanket, oil, gasoline, food and water. Do we all do this? I’d guess not. We probably only do it for long trips, or when we travel to isolated places, such as remote campsites. Our preparation for stress differs from time to time, and from situation to situation.



Back to fantasy, and we find that most adventurers are, by nature or nurture, travelers. And we also find that most of them carry everything with them everywhere they go. (Bag of Holding, Portable Hole, Quiver of Ehlonna, we love you!) While this may be perfectly acceptable in heroic fantasy, thinking about it logically is impossible. Here’s where the follow-up questions for dealing with stress come in:

1) What can you reasonably carry?

2) What can you reasonably carry when the stressor finally hits you (perhaps literally)?

3) Are your items accessible in your time of need?



Weight and bulk both contribute to encumbrance. An item doesn’t have to be heavy to impair your movement or combat performance. A sword and an Igloo storage chest weight about the same amount – guess which one’s more encumbering? In my games I typically use common sense, and force characters to drop heavy or bulky items in combat. Those items then, (if not lost forever in a river) are of course available for enemies to abscond with, or use against the characters. Using this technique not only keeps characters from becoming ridiculously weighted down with items, but speeds up combat from both the player’s and GM’s points of view since there are fewer contingencies/items to track.



Compare the advances made in storage technology today with “normal” medieval equipment. A beat cop’s “utility belt” includes things like deterrent spray, handcuffs, pistol, ammunition, badge, and baton. The adventurer has a belt pouch, perhaps multiple belt pouches, and a knapsack, plus whatever loose weapons are slung over their shoulders or at their sides – and they’re armored to boot! Where are they fitting all their potions, their arrows, their swords and their magic items? Are you sure that the character can still move, let alone fight? Think about how long it takes to find a sheet of paper in a book bag, a woman to find something in her purse, or for a player to find an item on his character sheet. Granted, being organized helps, but I can’t imagine it helps so much that you can perform such tasks when something else has your full attention, such as when you’re in combat. I’m willing to bet that you could barely get your Player’s Handbook out of your backpack while trying to avoid pillows being flung at you. I suggest that even if your magical storage device can “read your mind” to know what you need when you reach into it, you still need a mind to decide what you need, and to keep hold of it once you’ve got it. The more stuff you have, the tougher it is to decide what you need, and the more distraction you’re suffering, the harder it is to keep hold of it. Concentration checks aren’t just for spellcasters.



Lastly, treating every moment as a global stress situation causes an incredible headache for law enforcement. The law doesn’t let anyone walk around openly brandishing or showing swords or guns in the real world. Why, then, in civilized fantasy environments, should adventurers run around carrying loads of deadly equipment in town? I surmise cities and townships that can afford to maintain a local guard would demand that unknown travelers check their weapons (especially large ones) at the main gates or be turned away from the city. After all, during crimes/incidents, it’d be easy to identify troublemakers as “the guys with the weapons” rather than trying to sort through anyone fleeing the scene. Severe penalties lie in wait for adventurers who circumvent the main gates for an alternative path into the city (bribery and sneaking in with innocents are excellent adventure seeds) and then get caught wielding weapons or using contraband magic items. Granted, as the characters go up in level, the townsfolk may be significantly weaker, but just wait until the PCs antagonize the wrong person, or the real “hero” of the story shows up to rescue the townsfolk from the rabid invasion of bloodthirsty travelers. Heroism is in the eye of the beholder, after all.



Valuable items, then, are those that help prepare for broad-spectrum stressful events, and are both portable and readily accessed in time of need. Of course, when you march off to face a Red Dragon (or if they grow on trees), you probably want that Potion of Red Dragon Control. In general, however, it’s virtually worthless.



Class Considerations



What class are you? Your motivations rely on your profession as much as they do on your base personality. Thieves are typically greedy, rangers typically travel light, and competent paladins and clerics consider their church when making decisions. Fighters and wizards have a little more leeway, but words like loyalty and fealty, training and research, and armaments and supplies direct their desires and responsibilities.



Put all these characters together to face a treasure hoard, and suddenly an aura of altruism and self-preservation hits all of them. Everyone makes sure that everyone else gets his or her fair share of treasure. But hey, life isn’t fair. Why should a game be? And yet, most bloodthirsty kill-addicted characters will go out of their way to make sure everyone is happy with their share of the loot. Of course, no one character wants to be the target of the other kill-happy party members. So take a number and draw your prizes in that order, and everyone will always choose what keeps them in good with the other characters. How nauseous.



We’ve got our standard Cleric, Fighter, Rogue, and Wizard looking at the treasure comprised of 10K in gems, +5 Holy Avenger, Ring of Spell Storing, Ring of Free Action, Vorpal Blade. Assume that the gems are divided equally among the party members, since they play so well together. Assume Rogue gets first choice from the items – is he going to choose the Vorpal Blade (snickety-snack for backstabs) or the Ring of Free Action (invaluable for a Rogue)? Unless you’re in an extraordinarily magic-heavy world, I’d hope that your Rogue is smart enough to choose the +5 Holy Avenger. Why, you ask, when he can’t even use it to full effect?



Ransom. You heard right. Don’t you think the Rogue (even a Neutral Good one!) could trade the Holy Avenger to the cleric for whatever item she chooses PLUS something else? (remember Worf and Data at the beginning of this article?) And if the party cleric doesn’t want to deal, don’t you think you can get a GREAT offer from a competing religion? Hmm. I think that Cleric’s got something in her throat…. Perhaps it’s a counteroffer to not heal the Rogue until he gives her the Holy Avenger. Whether that’s a bluff or not is for the Rogue to find out. Does the Cleric’s religion permit that sort of blackmail?



Let’s frame the situation even more clearly (and perhaps with less intra-party quibbling): your Paladin is faced with two treasures in a low-magic world – a +5 Holy Avenger and a +5 Unholy Avenger. Think hard now. Will you take the Holy Avenger for your church (ha ha) to spread the glory of your god, or will you instead rely on the faith and power of your god and church by taking the +5 Unholy Avenger? By taking the +5 Unholy Avenger, you can keep it out of the hands of an evil deity’s Paladin/Blackguard, and possibly destroy it completely with the help of some high level clerics and/or a quest. How’s that for serving the church? Does it boil down to whether your faith supports taking the Holy Avenger to possibly defeat the Unholy Avenger wielder some time down the line, or hoping that your god sees fit to provide you with another opportunity at a Holy Avenger later? Probably not – I think it boils down to whether your paladin wants that Holy Avenger for getting’ medieval on some unholy sucka’s behind. Or possibly – dare I say it – the player’s greed, irrespective of their character’s desires.



A magic item doesn’t become valuable just because your profession enables you to use it. It can also become valuable based on what your profession expects you to do with it. Extended, this thought implies that an item becomes more valuable based on the indirect social/financial leverage it provides to/for the people it interacts with.



Incidentally, although it’s reasonable to construe non-specialized items as more valuable than specialized ones, this isn’t the case in the real world. Razor blades are cheaper than scalpels. A calculator is usually less valuable than a computer. Crayons are cheaper than an airbrush and inks. Keep in mind, however, that this is partly a function of our industrialized society, where common items are also often mass produced and readily available, and specialized items are rare because fewer people need to use them. The laws of supply and demand ensure that products are made in a quantity that provide a return on the investment, and if enough specialists don’t exist to justify higher production quantities, individual unit prices will be higher. If a generically usable item, such as a Ring of Rest (wielder never suffers sleep deprivation effects) is manufactured in a limited quantity, its value will skyrocket.



Extrinsic Usage Limitations



A Wand of Fireballs and a Necklace of Magic Missiles aren’t really all that different. They’re both targetable attack items. Sure, the fireballs usually do more damage to more creatures. Sure, there’s no saving throw versus magic missile, but you can save versus fireball for half or no damage, depending on your class and level. The most significant difference, however, that we’ve known all along, is that the WoF is an Area of Effect device, while the NoMM targets specific individuals



Items may be useful in different places, at different times, and under different conditions. These are extrinsic usage limitations. Why cast Light under bright sunlight? Try casting Produce Fire underwater (useless). Then try casting it during high wind conditions, or when lighting a fire quickly, without fail, and/or quietly (incredibly useful). If you spend all your time in a city, certain items gain in value (Hat of Disguise, Amulet of ESP), while others drop in value (Quall’s Feather Token - Boat). The value of a magic item definitely depends on extrinsic factors such as your environment.



Intrinsic Usage Limitations



All other things being equal, items without intrinsic limitations are more valuable than items with intrinsic limitations. Charges are the most common intrinsic limitation, but range, number of targets, area of effect, and material component requirements can also be considered as such. Even if a limited-use item is more powerful than an unlimited-use item, it’s long-term utility may necessarily be stunted.



As an example, consider a 3rd-level Wizard who discovers and may only possess one of the following: a wand of Fireballs (created by a 6th-level Wizard) and a Ring of Fireball Storage (stores three Fireball spells). All other things being equal, as time passes, charges from the wand are used up, and are difficult to replace without resource expenditure. Also, as the Wizard becomes more powerful and faces more powerful foes, a 6D Fireball may be less potent than one he could cast at 7th level and higher. The Ring is the better long-term choice, as long as stress factors don’t demand that you cast 6D Fireballs right now.



Rarity



Artifacts are powerful, and singular. Left at that, it’s easy to say that they are consequently rare and valuable. But how is it so? Why are they so powerful? Why must there be only one? And is rarity exclusively relegated to artifacts? Can other items be equally powerful/singular, but not be artifacts? Of course.

Philately is a huge hobby, much bigger than roleplaying. Why? Much like card collecting, the price of a stamp/card goes up if it’s never been used. What’s the point? A stamp’s purpose is to pay for mail. Instead, we have people hoarding them without using them. Like many other “collecting” hobbies, philately and CCGs focus on property ownership and specialized knowledge to assess one’s superiority over his fellow man. “Hey, see how big MY collection is….” Bottom line folks are looking for ways to latch on to something valuable and sell it for cash. Others may see beauty, or use their hobby as a path to some spiritual fulfillment.



But how do these things become rare, and therefore valuable? Ultimately, there are two ways of perceiving rarity: objectively and subjectively. Objective assessments of rarity include the item’s functionality, its actual availability/scarcity, its potential to exist in the future, and consumption. Subjective assessments of rarity include historical significance, sentiment, beauty, and irrational desire.



Functionality – This is perhaps the most common reason to highly value items – simply because they’re more powerful. All other things being equal, a Ring of Three Wishes will always be worth more than a Ring of Three Limited Wishes simply because of the power level of the items in question. As an item grows in power, presume that the conditions/effort leading to its creation cannot easily be replicated, or that the creators of such items would be unwilling to profligate them. More powerful items, then, would have a variety of reasons for being in short supply and consequently would be more valuable.



Availability/scarcity – If bats are rare in your world, bat guano is rarer. If bat guano is rare, Fireballs are rarer. If Fireballs are rare, Wands of Fireballs are rarer. And if oysters are rare, then pearls are rarer still, and people will have trouble identifying magic items without clerical/divine assistance – the arcane spell Identify requires a pearl as a material component. As you create and personalize your game world, determine the impact that your ecologies and world interactions have on the availability of magic items. With the proper underlying circumstances, it would be perfectly reasonable to double or triple book values for such items. If an ultra-powerful vampire is hoarding all the bats on a single island, every time a player runs out of guano, it’ll be a challenge to cast that spell. Make them pay through the nose for others to risk their lives for supplies if they don’t want to collect it themselves.



Prototyping – a magic user may have made a single Shimmering Curtain of Prismatic Sonics. If he dies without revealing the secret of its creation, and the item required mystery components, there may never be others. The Curtain may have the effects of a Prismatic Spray, but only against creatures that can hear, rather than see. Not an artifact, to be sure, but definitely a unique, and therefore valuable item. If not for its inherent function, then at least for what item creation techniques it might impart to its studious owner.



Consumption – Many players choose to obtain items from fallen foes, or those who came before and failed. It’s usually true that those who braved dangerous ground before you did would have access to similar resources. As a player and a DM, however, you have to ask yourself what would logically be absent from their corpses before you discover them. Would the dead adventurers have used their necklace of magic missiles already in trying to fight off the gnolls? How about their potion of invisibility or haste? Unless they were caught completely off guard, it should be unlikely that such items would be fully charged/available - not to mention they might have been looted by the gnolls. Thus, while adventuring, those items may be rarer and thus hold higher value if discovered unused. And if items which ought to be consumed are instead available, it’d probably be smart to ask why they were still around.



Historical significance – A Continual Light coin is pretty mundane, but say you had the Continual Light coin the Great Wizard Ulmacht used to delve within the depths of Hell for the soul of his wife? Perhaps it’s nothing more than a Continual Light coin, but it’s rare because it’s a unique part of history. Fantasy games usually impart some other fantastic value to an item as a function of its history, rather than the simple flavor of the history itself. E.g., rather than Ulmacht’s coin simply illuminating an area, one might now use it to repel demons, given its exposure to the purity of his quest. It is possible, but totally unnecessary to artificially inflate the value or rarity of an item by giving it additional power when flavor will do quite nicely.

To drive this point home, consider the Constitution of the United States as just a piece of paper — it is, isn’t it? Last I checked, it was 5-10 cents per copy. Besides, it’s the words that are important, not the paper, right? I don’t even need paper to recite the words. And yet, I suspect that the word used to describe the original document is “priceless”.



Sentiment – Closely tied to historical significance is the concept of sentiment. The main difference between sentiment and historical significance, as used here, is that history is with a capital H, concerning the history of important personages. Sentiment is a purely personal viewpoint. Something may be meaningful to you, but not to anyone else.

I personally have dice that I used for one GURPS character only. When I retired that character, I retired the dice as well. The dice had dragons for ones, and the character, though weak and cowardly, had managed to save the rest of the party (and himself) by defeating a dragon through sheer luck. No one besides me will ever care, but I still won’t get rid of those dice or use them elsewhere.

Characters are equally entitled to such attitudes. Power-hungry players who seek nothing but the next most powerful sword make me laugh or cry, depending on my mood. Consider that your character’s father gave him a +2 sword, with which he’s defeated hordes of undead, murderous goblins, and marauding bandits. It even got caught on a cliffside bush once, and kept him from falling to his death. Most self-proclaimed “good roleplayers” would give it up in a heartbeat for a +4 ghost touch blade for its apparent power or value. Doesn’t the character feel lucky with the other sword that took him through such rough times? Get real: don’t supersede your character’s personality with your own rationality. After all, we don’t always act perfectly rationally ourselves. Let your character have… character.



Beauty – Beauty is a subcategory of sentiment and historical significance, clearly in the eye of the beholder. Unlike sentiment, which is generally static, beauty is subject to the fickleness of time and temperament. Think about art. While some of it is universally respected, other pieces or styles fall out of favor from time to time, and most definitely from person to person. Figurines of Wondrous Power can easily be guided towards expressions of artistic creativity with incidental adventuring use rather than combat items with an artistic flair. Given two Figurines of Wondrous Power, one may be more attractive (more competently or artistically rendered, or created by a more famous personage) so as to be more valuable, even though they may have the exact same magical effects.



Novelty/error – A Bag of Pebbles generates a non-uniform random-size (one-quarter to one-inch diameter) pebble each time the user reaches into it. The Conch of the Six Seas, when held up to the ear, surrounds the listener with the sound of the surf, the scent of salt water and a cool ocean breeze, without providing protection from hostile weather or other magical effects. The Ring of Immolation, when donned, maintains a Faerie Fire (full-body halo-like targeting spell) on its wearer; if removed, it damages the wielder to the tune of d6 points per level of the wielder. Ouch.

Sure, a sling expert could use the Bag of Pebbles, but some of the pebbles would simply be too small to throw. The Conch isn’t much more than a simple toy. And the Ring is undoubtedly cursed. To get any real function out of these items requires significant creativity or specialized interest. Perhaps a monk could use the Bag to build a rock garden. Perhaps a nobleman could court a woman with the Conch. Perhaps a villain could trap his hoard with the Ring.

Regardless, it’s unlikely that more than one of each of these items exists. Due simply to their anomalous existence and specialized uses, certain people would consider them priceless. Most others would consider them useless.



Irrational desire - Could we imagine a magic user saying, “I plan to collect one of each type of Pearl of Power”? Yikes. But of course we could. Smith-Soneen’s Tower of Magickal Implements and Curiosities, here we come. This is more or less the attitude of completist card and comic book collectors, not to mentions dozens of other collector-hobbyists. You’ve got to have one of everything, even the cards with errors, just because. And that last worthless item to fill out your collection may be worth much more to you than it is to anyone else because you’ve just got to have it! Woe to you if anyone finds out how much you really want it. Remember our discussion on ransom?



Who Really Cares, or Beyond the Fallback Position



Ultimately, I acknowledge that items must be valuated using a language common to people everywhere. That language is typically money - silver or gold pieces in most fantasy worlds. However, the intent of this article isn’t to get players and GMs to avoid valuing an item using gp, but rather to realize that every item, including magical items, has a personal value.



Returning to our example at the beginning of this article (about the watches, remember?), both Worf and Data can be correct. Worf finds the AC watch more valuable personally, while Data finds the Rolex more valuable because it would bring in more raw currency (also a personal motivation). For Worf, the intrinsic value of the AC watch outweighs the monetary value of the Rolex, not to mention the time and effort it would take him to sell the Rolex and buy what he really wants.



It’s not enough to make sure your adventurers are compensated for their adventuring trouble. If players just take whatever you give them and swap out their older items to sell in town, they might as well be playing a computer game. Use these ideas to make sure that some of the items become worth more than money to them. Make them work to include the items in their repertoire. Are the valuable discoveries too heavy for them to carry? Can you give a party member a single item that reduces their reliance on multiple items? Do your magical treasures work well for more than one party member, resulting in meaningful intra-party conflict (rather than petty squabbling)? Does some useless item fascinate one of the party members? Does the new intelligent treasure play well with other magic items the wielder holds? Is there some history to an otherwise dull magical treasure to lead the adventurers to their next quest?



Sure, to some people, the gp value is all that matters. Money can be everything. But it shouldn’t always be the only thing.