What should something like Blackrazor be worth?

[MarkVIIIMarc]

I almost forget the math but I decided Blackrazor was worth 500,000 plus gold pieces or maybe $2,000,000 or more in modern dollars.

Does either seem right? D&D economics looses me.

[Gastronomie]

I feel this question is rather pointless when the amount of money the adventurers obtain vastly varies from table to table, as does the frequency of magical items within each world.

At least in a majority of the tables I've attended, it's impossible to buy magic items in the first place, save simple + items.

[NorthernPhoenix]

Answering that is hard because the amount of people who both want it and are capable of giving you what you want are usually limited. A lot of people would pay anywhere from 1000 to 10 000 for it, since that's all they have.

An item might be said to be "worth" 100 000 theoretically, but the real question is, can you find someone willing and able to pay that much?

[urandom]

I typically use a 50-100 $/gp conversion rate (so a copper can be considered about 1$), though any modern conversion rate is too simplistic considering the different economies. Blackrazor is legendary, and frankly beyond mere coin. How much can an individual buy or sell a nuclear missile submarine for? You might, perhaps, trade a trove of lesser magic items for it, but this should be in the realm of great powers and significant political deals. If you aren't on that level, those who are will more likely just take it.

[MarkVIIIMarc]

I typically use a 50-100 $/gp conversion rate (so a copper can be considered about 1$), though any modern conversion rate is too simplistic considering the different economies. Blackrazor is legendary, and frankly beyond mere coin. How much can an individual buy or sell a nuclear missile submarine for? You might, perhaps, trade a trove of lesser magic items for it, but this should be in the realm of great powers and significant political deals. If you aren't on that level, those who are will more likely just take it.

I think you've hit the nail on the head. Some noble, warlord or king is likely to either try to take it or barter off something ridiculous in exchange for it.

[Keravath]

I just want to support some of the other comments.

Blackrazor does not have a gp price. It is a legendary, one of a kind, sentient, heavily enchanted magical sword with very strong and totally unique abilities. There isn’t a sum large enough to buy it. Nations might send armies or teams of adventurers to recover it. Many of those who would be interested in the sword wouldn’t pay for it, they would just take it.

What is the Mona Lisa worth?

Bottom line is really that if some PCs have this come into their possession then they will become instant targets since weapons like Blackrazor are probably among the most valuable artifacts in the world.

[SirGraystone]

If someone had 500,000 gp he can afford to pay the group for Blackrazor why not pay a lot less to have someone murder them all and get it? War as been fought for less.

[Unoriginal]

Trying to put a fixed price on Blackrazor is a doomed task. The answer is "what are people willing to pay for it and who can afford it?"

Someone like Asmodeus, Mammon, Graz'zt, Pelor or the Djinn Lords may be willing to pay a kingdom's worth for it, for various reasons. But it's kind of like asking "how much would Galadriel or Sauron pay for one of the Seven Rings of the Dwarves?", "how much would Loki pay to get Mjolnir?" or "how much is worth Excalibur?"

Having Blackrazor in hands doesn't mean a shortcut to the next paycheck. It's holding some of the weight of the world.

Literal planar rulers walk around with worse weapons than this one.

[Wildarm]

Magic items at the level of power of Blackrazor don't generally have a real GP value. At that power/wealth level you'd be trading for influence/power/secrets. Gold can indirectly be a reflection of that but it would be rare indeed for anyone to have that amount of liquid cash available who could not simply take the sword for themselves(or hire/summon things that could).

[MilkmanDanimal]

With Blackrazor, I'm going to assume there are many good-aligned forces that would want the weapon to try to find a way to destroy it, and lots of evil-aligned forces that would want the weapon to use it. The number of people who would politely pay for it would be somewhere near zero, I would think, as it's an insanely powerful item. To me, it's basically a Deck of Many Things you stab people with, in that it's something the DM throws out when they have gotten tired of the campaign and want to end it in an entertaining manner. If you've got Blackrazor, you're going to be hunted to the point to where you never get a good night's sleep again.

[Chronos]

It's at least a strong contender for being the most powerful weapon in the world. High-level adventurers tend to accumulate far more wealth than they can find a use for, and (for good reason) highly value powerful weapons. So, how rich is the most powerful adventurer in the world? He's probably willing to pay half his net worth to get his hands on a weapon like Blackrazor, if that's what it takes. Note that I said "get his hands on", not "buy", because there are many ways to use money to get your hands on something.

And that's not even getting into the possibility of powerful entities out of this world. The likes of Asmodeus or Tiamat probably do have access to even more powerful weapons... but they also have a lot more resources at their command.

[greenstone]

A voice in your head.

"Excuse me? Am I to understand you are contemplating selling me?

FOOL! CRETIN! I am *Blackrazor*. I am the sharp edge of darkness that eats souls! I am not something to be traded for mere coin and trinkets.

Fair warning, mortal, if the person you give me to does not meet my approval then I will not grant them any of my powers and they will of a certainty come after you for fraudulent trade.

If, on the other hand, they do meet my approval then I will reward you by making your soul the very first one I eat while in their hands."

[MarkVIIIMarc]

A voice in your head.

"Excuse me? Am I to understand you are contemplating selling me?

FOOL! CRETIN! I am *Blackrazor*. I am the sharp edge of darkness that eats souls! I am not something to be traded for mere coin and trinkets.

Fair warning, mortal, if the person you give me to does not meet my approval then I will not grant them any of my powers and they will of a certainty come after you for fraudulent trade.

If, on the other hand, they do meet my approval then I will reward you by making your soul the very first one I eat while in their hands."

Thats pretty cool. Last session the Bard and Paladin traded Blackrazor. It gave the Bard quite the difficult time.

[ShikomeKidoMi]

That's like trying to sell the Crown Jewels of England. I mean, theoretically if someone was to sell them for some reason they'd get lots of money, but in practice things are much more complicated and it's extremely unlikely to happen in the first place.

Plus, very few people are going to have the liquid assets to pay it's value in cash. More likely, provided you fend off all the attempts to just take it, you end up having to trade it for a noble title and a duchy or sell it to Asmodeus so you can reincarnate in the relatively cushy position of a high-ranked devil instead of having to work your way up from Lemure when your damned soul goes to Hell for selling the wicked thing to the forces of evil rather than destroying it.

[Unoriginal]

That's like trying to sell the Crown Jewels of England.

Well, it didn't stop some people:

[Theodoric]

Imagine selling it to some antiquarian, only for Blackrazor to take over his weak-willed mind and start murdering people. That's how I'd run it. Pawning off sentient magic items to random people will have consequences. It might hurt their feelings, for one.

[Boci]

A voice in your head.

"Excuse me? Am I to understand you are contemplating selling me?

FOOL! CRETIN! I am *Blackrazor*. I am the sharp edge of darkness that eats souls! I am not something to be traded for mere coin and trinkets.

Fair warning, mortal, if the person you give me to does not meet my approval then I will not grant them any of my powers and they will of a certainty come after you for fraudulent trade.

If, on the other hand, they do meet my approval then I will reward you by making your soul the very first one I eat while in their hands."

This has a high chance of being a terrible idea, because it gives the players an incentive to keep Blackrazor, and artifact that gives +3 to attack rolls and damage, loads of temp hitpoints, and advantage on most rolls, so the players trying to sell it is an olive branch to the DM, whether they intended it to be pr not. A DM who breaks that olive branch deserve all the bad things that come their way from the party keeping Blackrazor.

[ProsecutorGodot]

This has a high chance of being a terrible idea, because it gives the players an incentive to keep Blackrazor, and artifact that gives +3 to attack rolls and damage, loads of temp hitpoints, and advantage on most rolls, so the players trying to sell it is an olive branch to the DM, whether they intended it to be pr not. A DM who breaks that olive branch deserve all the bad things that come their way from the party keeping Blackrazor.

Having Blackrazor to begin with is a terrible idea, It's a soul sucking sword that is required to be fed once every 3 days or it has a conflict with the wielder. Conflicts with sentient items are described in the DMG.

A conflict can result in the item making a demand. ranging from as benign as "carry me at all times" to "Give me away to someone who will obey me". The most difficult command to comply with (which I assume Blackrazor will make often) is "Pursue only my goals and ignore your own". I shouldn't need to remind you (again) that Blackrazor has the goal of absorbing souls. It may also force the wielder to find Wave and Whelm if they haven't already.

If you refuse this demand, the item can then impose more severe restrictions. It can refuse to attune to the wielder, lock away any or all of it's special features or (and this is the big one) attempt to charm and take control of the free will of the wielder and force them to carry out any desire that the item has for 1d12 hours or until the charm effect is broken.

Really the only one inviting "bad things" in this situation is any adventurer naive enough to carry around a sentient artifact bent on devouring souls.

[Boci]

Really the only one inviting "bad things" in this situation is any adventurer naive enough to carry around a sentient artifact bent on devouring souls.

No, the DM is also inviting bad things by not letting the players get anything for Blackrazor. Sentient or not its a powerful artefact, the players trading it is a good compromise. They get something, not the full value since its priceless, but something, and no longer have to worry about the more unsavory parts of sword upkeep and the evil sentience part, whilst the DM gets to not have to plan around the PCs having Blackrazor. Both sides get something, both sides are happy. Why would a DM want to screw with that?

And seriously, "If you ever don't kill something for 3 days straight, bad things could happen"? That is a terrible balancing mechanics to give PCs.

[GreyBlack]

Trying to put a fixed price on Blackrazor is a doomed task. The answer is "what are people willing to pay for it and who can afford it?"

Someone like Asmodeus, Mammon, Graz'zt, Pelor or the Djinn Lords may be willing to pay a kingdom's worth for it, for various reasons. But it's kind of like asking "how much would Galadriel or Sauron pay for one of the Seven Rings of the Dwarves?", "how much would Loki pay to get Mjolnir?" or "how much is worth Excalibur?"

Having Blackrazor in hands doesn't mean a shortcut to the next paycheck. It's holding some of the weight of the world.

Literal planar rulers walk around with worse weapons than this one.

Just putting this out there: pretty sure Excalibur is only a +1 longsword. The fun stuff comes from the scabbard.

[ProsecutorGodot]

No, the DM is also inviting bad things by not letting the players get anything for Blackrazor. Sentient or not its a powerful artefact, the players trading it is a good compromise. They get something, not the full value since its priceless, but something, and no longer have to worry about the more unsavory parts of sword upkeep and the evil sentience part, whilst the DM gets to not have to plan around the PCs having Blackrazor. Both sides get something, both sides are happy. Why would a DM want to screw with that?

And seriously, "If you ever don't kill something for 3 days straight, bad things could happen"? That is a terrible balancing mechanics to give PCs.

I never said that the player shouldn't get anything out of trading away or otherwise disposing of Blackrazor, I'm just pointing out that if you picked up that sort of weapon and attuned to it you've signed your name on the dotted line of "problems are coming" whether you intended to or not. You're not selling a sword you're selling Blackrazor, the devourer of countless souls and champion of the void between death and oblivion.

Even if you manage to break Blackrazor's control over you, if your first instinct was to pawn it off to someone ignorant of what it was, that's going to come back to haunt you. This is something that a good DM (opinion me) would craft a storyline around properly dealing with such an artifact. It shouldn't be as easy as "visit magic item salesman and forget about it". Doing it right should take more effort.

Sentient Magic Items are basically NPC's and crossing NPC's should come with associated consequences, otherwise what was the point in having that NPC around at all?

I'm also not really sure I understand your stance on the DM's fault for this. You seem to think that a DM would throw Blackrazor at a party without any thought of what would happen afterward. In the event that they did do that (which I find unlikely, considering the hoops you have to go through to get Blackrazor to begin with) they deserve all of the problems that come up just as much as the players do.

[Boci]

I never said that the player shouldn't get anything out of trading away or otherwise disposing of Blackrazor,

You kinda did. You gave the hypothetical players two outcomes: be hunted down as frauds, or attacked by whoever they sold it too with no indication you were allowing for a third option.

[ProsecutorGodot]

You kinda did. You gave the hypothetical players two outcomes: be hunted down as frauds, or attacked by whoever they sold it too with no indication you were allowing for a third option.

A few things:
-You're confusing me with greenstone. He was the user who posted the pretty entertaining hypothetical of how trying to sell Blackrazor would pan out.
-You took his anecdote far too seriously, as it was never implied in his post that a DM should default to "Keep doing evil things with me or suffer the consequences"
-As far as what I've posted, I've never implied that there were only two possible outcomes to dealing with Blackrazor. I thought I was pretty clear that a DM could create an entire storyline around it. Having to deal with the consequences of selling Blackrazor to an unwitting salesman is only one of those outcomes.

Your problems seem to stem around the characteristics that the designers wrote for Blackrazor's personality. If you have a problem with Blackrazor being in games that you're playing, that makes sense, but you have to understand that there are people who would find it entertaining as both a player and DM to have a sentient item like this stir up some storyline opportunities.

You can read up here about a similar type of weapon and how it was used to great effect for storytelling, despite being a significant spike in power for the wielder.

[Boci]

A few things:
-You're confusing me with greenstone. He was the user who posted the pretty entertaining hypothetical of how trying to sell Blackrazor would pan out.

Well, when you jump into conversations like that mistakes can happen, but fair, I should have checked the user names. If its not mean to be taken seriously than sure, no harm, selling blackrzor could indeed be difficult, but unless you know greenstone, you cannot say I am taking his anecdote too literally.

[Chronos]

Once something like Blackrazor exists in a campaign, every possible course of action is fraught with complications. That's what an item that powerful and evil is: It's a complication generator. It's problematic to use it, and it's problematic to hold it for safekeeping, and it's problematic to get rid of it, and it's problematic to try to destroy it.

[Boci]

Once something like Blackrazor exists in a campaign, every possible course of action is fraught with complications. That's what an item that powerful and evil is: It's a complication generator. It's problematic to use it, and it's problematic to hold it for safekeeping, and it's problematic to get rid of it, and it's problematic to try to destroy it.

Which is why I feel a DM shouldn't make too many hoops for the players to jump through to sell it: they might not want a complication generator in their game and would prefer to get back to adventuring. Sure, they could just drop it on the ground and walk away, but that's a pretty unsatisfactory conclusion and can be hard to justify from an RP standpoint. Selling it is a compromise, the easiest way out, without needing to twist too much to explain why the character did that, and it provides a reasonable conclusion to the story.

[Unoriginal]

Isn't Blackrazor described as a chaotic neutral intelligent item?

I mean, it wants to eat souls, but I don't think it's the kind to go "I'll make you kill little kids if you don't feed me".

[ProsecutorGodot]

Isn't Blackrazor described as a chaotic neutral intelligent item?

I mean, it wants to eat souls, but I don't think it's the kind to go "I'll make you kill little kids if you don't feed me".

This is true, and I might have exaggerated that quality. It does want souls, indiscriminately, and that includes the wielders. It would probably urge you to find anything to kill. If you refused to do so it would probably start with restricting your use of it's powers, although continuous refusal might cause it to attempt take your life instead.

It's still inconvenient to have to kill something every 3 days or risk your own soul, even if anything with a soul is enough to satisfy the weapon.

[Tanarii]

It's worth all of the marbles!

It's still inconvenient to have to kill something every 3 days or risk your own soul, even if anything with a soul is enough to satisfy the weapon.

Clearly you've never met adventurers before ... /dryvoice

[Imbalance]

[pawnshop]"I'll give you 50 silver. Best I can do."[/pawnshop]