Using the Pricing System to Your Advantage

So lets talk about the elephant in the room; Fifth edition doesn’t have an overly defined pricing structure for equipment in game. There are tables in the Player’s Handbook for your everyday mundane items like swords and shields etc but they don’t feel overly realistic or nuanced. This is a good opportunity to show your players something about the area they are in without hitting them over the head with all the important lore you have built into your game. If we start off with someone wanting to buy a rapier from a shop then we can use a sliding scale to give a little more realism to the game world. There are a few factors that can affect the actual price of this 25gp item.

Lets start with scarcity, this will drive up the price of any mundane item. The further away you are from a city or large town the harder it is to find items that you need! This will put a premium on any item as it becomes a seller’s market, couple this with the area being potentially more dangerous and the cost of replacing your main weapon will make it more expensive for you. I usually add up to a 20% cost onto items depending on the item and distance from civilisation causing our little rapier to cost 30gp now.

Pricing structure can also tell us a lot about the local economy without having to tell your players that the area is prosperous or impoverished. I have used this to show that an inland trading hub they were now based in was doing very well in comparison to other rural areas they have been to before. Mundane items were a lot more expensive than they would imagine and that their looted items weren’t up to snuff and as such making sure they weren’t becoming so rich as to destabilise an area’s economy. The City showed off it’s wealth through clothing and ornate weapons, if you wanted to be taken seriously your armour was adorned with fancy metal work and your weapons had inlaid gems and filigreed pommels and baskets. These extra flourishes don’t come cheap as they take extra time, skill and materials to make. The pressure of a social system can lead some players to go all in on peacocking their character (I’m looking at you Bards) whilst others will reject it and some may even actively fight against it. These are the social roleplaying interactions you want at your table as it gets the players to think about how their character would react and then they can bounce off each other and the NPCs you put around them.

From my game the ranger was confused by the high price for mundane items and so went to another sword shop and found that they were similarly priced there as well, they started asking questions about the swords and I got to do some prewritten descriptions of an acid etched Damascus steel blade or the mother of pearl inlay on the scabbard or the rubies on the basket. He then asked if they had any if there were any plain ones and I got to roleplay out the distain this artisan had at the question! This all prompted the bard to look around the city some more and find out that the social structure was overtly materialistic and if they wanted to be taken seriously in high society then they’d better look the part. They then spent most of the session roleplaying a spa day and fancy shopping spree much to the confusion of the Firbolg druid who had no concept of material possessions and Half-orc fighter who was a former mercenary and had grown up in the woods and never seen a city before! This really helped break the ice with the characters socially and made a nice change of pace from the dungeon crawl that had taken up the four previous sessions.

The pricing structure can go the other way of course. If the market is flooded with a particular item then the price will go down. In a port like Waterdeep if a large enough shipment of rapiers comes into the city then the supply has now massively outstripped demand causing a price crash as the shops are just trying to clear out store room space so they can stock the more profitable items and keep themselves afloat.

A fun little idea I’ve got stored away for a campaign is a moral conundrum for my players. How would they react if a large new franchise shop opened in the town they are based. Taking in the whole social issue IRL of chain stores opening and undercutting all of the local independent businesses and using their larger bank balance to absorb the losses until their opposition folds due to lower revenue streams. I want to see how they would react to the NPCs they have been dealing with suddenly being put into harms way through something they don’t have 100% control over however their actions can lead to them succeeding or failing in a changing economic climate. I feel like this will test the players and their characters’ connection and attachment to their social environment in a unique and interesting way. They can look at this from a purely fiscal point of view and the bottom line is that they will save money by buying at the franchise but if they like the NPCs or even just have fun interacting with them is a few extra gold coins in game worth that in the long run?

I hope that this has invigorated you to delve into what is often an overlooked or glossed over part of world building and player engagement. Small details can create a greater sense of realism to your world. Showing your players and not telling them is usually a path to better story telling.

Let me know how it goes or your examples in the comments below and as always:

May you roll well!