Re: SJD20 question - Cost to the pilot?

Niall Hosking wrote:
>
> Well, helms were always massively overpriced in the
> original game.

        Hardly.  What magic item lets you fly a ship at the speeds given for a
spelljammer?  Hell, a flying ship alone would be 100k+, and that's
without the ability to fly in wildspace.

> Really, for most people who didn't have
> a spare 100,000 gp (the price of a reasonable size
> /castle/ for goodness sake!)

        For a reasonable-sized tower, maybe.  IIRC, a reasonable castle is on
the order of 10x that much or more, by the Castle's Guide.

> the only practical
> methods of getting a helm were to be gifted one, rent
> one, or to steal one. Certainly the prices were WAY
> too high to support the kind of numbers of ships and
> the trading, exploring and pirating levels portrayed
> in the game.

        I don't disagree with that, but there are better ways around that
without cheaping helms.

> Imagine that your options to cross America are to fly
> in a plane you have to buy (for a few million $),
> maybe to rent one (limited to commercial routes) for
> $500+ a trip... or to walk. Then anyone who offers up
> the option of even a horse-drawn cart is going to make
> a killing...

        So your solution is to offer airplanes at the same cost as a car?

> This just makes helms available practically to people
> without being stupidly expensive, and therefore
> requiring massive inflation of gold rewards, which 2E
> could survive, but 3e isn't designed to bear.

        But 3e has a designated system for determining the costs of a magic
item.  They chose to ignore this system, it seems.  For example, brooms
& carpets of flying have the exact same creation process (craft
wonderous item, fly, permanency), but have different weight limits and
thus different prices.  A large carpet of flying costs more, but moves
less mass slower.  Has the rules from the DMG been thrown out?
        So my question is, can I enchant an item that will move Bral across
Toril's surface and only cost 100,000 gp?  I want to be able to be able
to crush cities by simply landing on them ;D

--
Adam Miller