According to the PHB, half plate is 750 gp to buy. However, magic items of uncommon rarity cost less. If I was to craft a mithral set of half plate (a magic item), RAW, what amount would I pay?
[RPG] If I want to craft a set of mithral half plate, what is its cost
craftingdnd-5emagic-itemspricing
Related Solutions
Unless Warcraft changed something, mundane crafting does not cost XP
Mundane crafting requires Craft skill checks, but no Item Creation feats, and the costs are only time and money, not XP. Specifically, they cost a mere ⅓ of the base price of the item, but crafting takes a number of weeks equal to
(P×10)/(DC×check)
where P is the item's usual price in gold pieces, DC is the Craft DC, and check is the crafter's Craft check result. This formula results in phenomenally long times, but at ⅓ the cost there is a lot of savings.
Magic items require XP, but that is easily replaced
In many places, XP costs are replaced with gp costs or vice versa at a 1:5 ratio. Since magic items cost 50% the base cost in raw materials and 4% the base cost in XP, you can apply the same conversion: five times the 4% is 20%, which can be added on to the existing raw material cost to get 70%.
Thus if magic items simply cost 70% of the base price to craft, instead of 50%, but don't require XP, this is consistent with the original system. Taking an Item Creation feat only enables a 30% discount but doesn't leave you behind.
I have played in quite a few games that make this change; it didn't dramatically improve the popularity of Item Creation feats for players, but it does make them much less of a headache for the DM.
If playing with Eberron Campaign Setting (the book, regardless of whether you play in Eberron) in play, the artificer and Artisan feats do require a little more tracking: it is important to remember that 50% of the base price is the original raw material gp cost, while 20% is the "XP" cost. The artificer's Craft Reserve and Retain Essence class features, as well as the Artisan feats, should be applied before adding these together as the 70%. The Craft Reserve should also be multiplied by 5 gp/XP for consistency.
If either is too expensive, these items were not intended for characters of their level
These processes both result in significant discounts. The value of items is used to control the power of items that players have at a particular level, which is part of the system used to try to ensure that enemies the same level as the players are challenging without being impossible. Making items cheaper or giving players more gold may allow them to steamroll opponents; making items more expensive or giving players less gold, or giving them gold but no place to spend it, may leave players without the tools they need to contribute.
In my experience, there are many classes that just barely find the default wealth rules sufficient for their needs – if they spend carefully. Other, more powerful classes are not nearly so needy, and could do with less. As a result, reducing wealth is something I strongly recommend against – it disproportionately hurts the classes that were already weakest.
On the other hand, I tend to find the system has a fair amount of room for extra wealth before players really start to steamroll. Thus, your choice to make it easier to get items is a move in the better direction.
But do be careful; wealth expectations are a rather fundamental design assumption of the game. Great care should be taken when modifying it. I tend to recommend that new DMs stock fairly close to the guidelines. It takes experienced DMsa lot of care to get modifications to wealth to work the way they want.
RAW: Somewhere between levels 5 and 11
Six levels is a lot of variance, so let's see what we can discern. Looking over the expected results from the treasure tables in chapter 7 of the dmg and the "starting gear" table for adventures not starting at level one, a character (or party, depending on loot-sharing) should be able to obtain plate mail by around level 7; A level 5 party may be able to afford this by pooling their resources.
The tables are all somewhat imprecise, but we know that at level 5, you start with about 600GP and at level 11, you start with about 5600GP. Note that ~600GP is consistent with expected loot from CR-appropriate monsters during levels 1-4.
IF we assume that the scaling is actually linear and not tiered (meaning that a smooth-ish line can be drawn from each level's expected loot, rather than a 5th level character having 500 more gp than a 4th level character) and we use the two points mentioned above (level 5 with 600 gp and level 11 with 5600 gp), then we can find a distribution. (though, if such a graph were to exist, it would probably not be linear, but I digress)
5000GP over 6 levels is ~850 gp per level.
That gives us:
level 5 with 600GP
level 6 with 1450GP (just shy of full plate)
level 7 with 2300GP
level 8 with 3150GP
level 9 with 4000GP
level 10 with 4850GP
level 11 with 5700GP (close enough)
from which we can derive.....
Best Answer
500gp
The amount to buy half-plate is not the amount it costs to craft half plate—the smith needs to sell for more than it costs to make. Crafting half-plate would normally cost (per PHB page 187) half its list price: 375gp.
Your mithral version, at 500gp, therefore costs more to craft.
Also note that, as always, crafting magic items is an optional campaign rule, so check with your DM before investing in this plan, if you haven’t already.
A note on “magic items […] cost”: by default, magic items cannot be bought. It’s easy to skim the DMG and get the impression that they can just be bought, but that’s not what it says, and the price list isn’t guaranteed. If your DM has added buyable magic items to their game, they should also be following the DMG’s advice to consider the table of values listed on DMG page 135 as only suggestions. Mithral half-plate is a great example of an item which should have a higher price than the listed suggestion for uncommon items.