5e highlights reel?

[Voss]

So basically it's Numenera all over again, with magic items so "priceless" that they're actually worthless.

Not as far as I can tell, unless you mean when trying to pawn them. I'm not sure what even leads to that conclusion, actually. Granted the progression steps are overly simplified, but you'll want to go from basic equipment to plate mail to +1 plate mail to plate mail of etherealness, or whatever. And based on the playtest versions you'll definitely want to find things like a hammer of thunderbolts or a holy avenger, since they have higher bonuses (+2 or +3 rather than the standard +1) plus bonus damage against various things, and other abilities. Some of the design decisions are definitely off, since you'll want a hammer of thunderbolts for giants and dragons, and a mace of disruption against undead and fiends (bonus damage against those types, respectively), which leads to the golf bag, but they're definitely desirable.

If the quest reward or goal is a very rare or legendary item, you'll definitely want to sign up for that. Common and uncommon items aren't that interesting, but you the value (to the players & characters) of the rarer stuff is very high and obvious.

[animea90]

Sure, but you're going to want money for the first few levels, so you can buy that plate mail, half-plate, or start accumulating money for expensive spell components and for healing potions. Once you've got a couple grand under your belt, it is going to stop mattering, but initially you can run hooks based on cash. Then you run hooks off of how the campaign has played out so far.

I really don't see it as a big deal- even a single background hook from each player can go far, and players being players, they're going to piss people off just through normal interactions. If the campaign keeps going on for a while and you're still relying on cash as a plot hook, there is something wrong, either with the players or with you.

I'm not sure where the 'magic items are considerably less useful' comes from though. The murder hobos will happily slaughter hundreds for Efreet Chainmail rather than +1 Chainmail.

Imagine that your PCs want to play pirates or bounty hunters. Neither of these professions are supported in a game where gold becomes useless fairly quickly.

Unless they get paid in magic items. Or want to steal magic boats. Or... any number of things. Playing pirate becomes a non-issue with level anyway as it is pretty mundane low-level stuff (fireball and fly pretty much void any challenge from mundane piracy), and bounty hunters explicitly have a reason to get piles of magic from the people they hunt. As they level, the prey is going to get more difficult and have more stuff.

You're reaching too hard to make this an issue. There are literally thousands of ways to motivate players. And I have never once encountered murder-hobo players that need a reason to go kill shit. Do anything complex? Sure. But not go adventure and kill things.

From what we have seen, magic items are supposed to be very rare. Thats the entire reason you can't buy them.

If magic items are common enough that people carry them around on magic boats and offer them as rewards for missions, then why can't I buy them with gold?

If this turns into "Pretty much every group has a few magic items in their treasure horde, but nobody will sell them no matter how much gold you offer", well thats even dumber than I though.

[Lago PARANOIA]

If this turns into "Pretty much every group has a few magic items in their treasure horde, but nobody will sell them no matter how much gold you offer", well thats even dumber than I though.

How much is the boxed set of the very first LEGO kit ever made? How much is an ashcan copy of Bill Watterson's attempt at making a hentai manga? How much are John Lennon's glasses he was wearing on the day he was murdered?

In the real world, you could buy all of these things with some amount of money less than infinity or even a billion dollars. However, you can't just waltz into the store and buy these things. There's not even a defined price. You have to find someone who owns it and special plead your case. I mean, you can whine all you want that Ebay says that the average price of an authentic Ming Vase is in the several thousands but they don't have to give it to you at that price even if they're willing to give it to you at some price. They might sell it for a song or a favor or for three grand or half of a million or never. You don't know and you have no other paths to get this thing. In a TTRPG, this would be represented by the MC just arbitrarily assigning a price for an ancestral copy of a lightsaber or Gram ranging from either 'you give me that Griffin feather, I'll give you this tool' to some made-up value. And you can then embark on a unique adventure to steal the item or convince him to name a price or whatever.

If we were talking about getting things like chickens or suits of armor or houses, you could just tell the seller to eat shit and die if they want something above market price because there's a market you can go to instead. But if you don't like that you can't just unilaterally force your character to own an item in a system with no coherent market for Excalibur or Masamune, feel free to fuck your grandma's dogs.

[animea90]

If this turns into "Pretty much every group has a few magic items in their treasure horde, but nobody will sell them no matter how much gold you offer", well thats even dumber than I though.

How much is the boxed set of the very first LEGO kit ever made? How much is an ashcan copy of Bill Watterson's attempt at making a hentai manga? How much are John Lennon's glasses he was wearing on the day he was murdered?

In the real world, you could buy all of these things with some amount of money less than infinity or even a billion dollars. However, you can't just waltz into the store and buy these things. There's not even a defined price. You have to find someone who owns it and special plead your case. I mean, you can whine all you want that Ebay says that the average price of an authentic Ming Vase is in the several thousands but they don't have to give it to you at that price even if they're willing to give it to you at some price. They might sell it for a song or a favor or for three grand or half of a million or never. You don't know and you have no other paths to get this thing. In a TTRPG, this would be represented by the MC just arbitrarily assigning a price for an ancestral copy of a lightsaber or Gram ranging from either 'you give me that Griffin feather, I'll give you this tool' to some made-up value. And you can then embark on a unique adventure to steal the item or convince him to name a price or whatever.

If we were talking about getting things like chickens or suits of armor or houses, you could just tell the seller to eat shit and die if they want something above market price because there's a market you can go to instead. But if you don't like that you can't just unilaterally force your character to own an item in a system with no coherent market for Excalibur or Masamune, feel free to fuck your grandma's dogs.

But this isn't the system that 5e uses. They explicitly say you can't buy magic weapons and armor with gold. There is no room for bargaining with someone or offering a ton of gold. They just won't accept it, no matter how badly they need the money.

[tussock]

If this turns into "Pretty much every group has a few magic items in their treasure horde, but nobody will sell them no matter how much gold you offer", well thats even dumber than I though.

Really? Try building yourself a heavily fortified bunker with anti-tank and anti-aircraft weapons in your place of residence, or building up a private army of foreign mercenaries. Just because you have "money" doesn't mean everything is for sale or permitted, historically far fewer things purchasable than today.

[Voss]

If this turns into "Pretty much every group has a few magic items in their treasure horde, but nobody will sell them no matter how much gold you offer", well thats even dumber than I though.

How much is the boxed set of the very first LEGO kit ever made? How much is an ashcan copy of Bill Watterson's attempt at making a hentai manga? How much are John Lennon's glasses he was wearing on the day he was murdered?

In the real world, you could buy all of these things with some amount of money less than infinity or even a billion dollars. However, you can't just waltz into the store and buy these things. There's not even a defined price. You have to find someone who owns it and special plead your case. I mean, you can whine all you want that Ebay says that the average price of an authentic Ming Vase is in the several thousands but they don't have to give it to you at that price even if they're willing to give it to you at some price. They might sell it for a song or a favor or for three grand or half of a million or never. You don't know and you have no other paths to get this thing. In a TTRPG, this would be represented by the MC just arbitrarily assigning a price for an ancestral copy of a lightsaber or Gram ranging from either 'you give me that Griffin feather, I'll give you this tool' to some made-up value. And you can then embark on a unique adventure to steal the item or convince him to name a price or whatever.

If we were talking about getting things like chickens or suits of armor or houses, you could just tell the seller to eat shit and die if they want something above market price because there's a market you can go to instead. But if you don't like that you can't just unilaterally force your character to own an item in a system with no coherent market for Excalibur or Masamune, feel free to fuck your grandma's dogs.

But this isn't the system that 5e uses. They explicitly say you can't buy magic weapons and armor with gold. There is no room for bargaining with someone or offering a ton of gold. They just won't accept it, no matter how badly they need the money.

That isn't what it says, however.

Magic Items. Selling magic items is problematic. Finding someone to buy a potion or a scroll isn’t too hard, but other items are out of the realm of most but the wealthiest nobles. Likewise, aside from a few common magic items, you won’t normally come across magic items or spells to purchase. The value of magic is far beyond simple gold and should always be treated as such.

You can find some really small stuff, but real magic power is on the favor economy, not the gold economy, which is something fairly familiar to anyone around here.

Elminster gives no fucks if you have a giant pile of gold.* But if you go find the Zhent spies hiding out in Harrowdale, he'll give you his old Crotchpiece of Protection.

*And since Fabricate is in and survived to the Final, actually released version of the Player's Handbook, no one who can call on favors from a 7th level Wizard has any reason to give any fucks about gold. They can take 10 minutes and just make art objects, trade goods or jewelry, which do sell at full price. Not sure how it happened after the debacle that was 4th (probably accidentally), but the game actually justifies mid and high level characters giving no shits about gold. They can make a 1500 gp suit of plate mail over lunch (really honestly 10 minutes), rather than 10 months.

[Koumei]

"How much can I get by selling the magic stick?"
"Nothing, it says nobody will ever sell it, so you can't do that."

[hogarth]

You can find some really small stuff, but real magic power is on the favor economy, not the gold economy, which is something fairly familiar to anyone around here.

Indeed -- it's familiar nonsense when Frank says it, and it's familiar nonsense when 5E says it. Saying that demand for magic items is infinite (so you can never afford to buy them) and zero (so you can never sell them) simultaneously makes no sense.

[Kaelik]

You can find some really small stuff, but real magic power is on the favor economy, not the gold economy, which is something fairly familiar to anyone around here.

Indeed -- it's familiar nonsense when Frank says it, and it's familiar nonsense when 5E says it. Saying that demand for magic items is infinite (so you can never afford to buy them) and zero (so you can never sell them) simultaneously makes no sense.

You can totally sell items that are worth infinite gold for finite gold if you want. Good thing you have all that gold now that you can't use to buy an item worth infinite gold unless you find someone as stupid as you.

Nothing in the Wish economy prevents you from selling your priceless items for a price other than being intelligent.

Likewise, when you have infinite gold in 5e, and nothing to buy with your infinite gold, the game technically says you can't sell the item, but I would totally let you, just because you are a dumb and it would be funny.

[Laertes]

The important thing is to remember that you can't exchange your infinite gold for an infinite number of things worth a finite amount of gold. Even if maths says you can, there's only a certain number of them in the economy. This matters for stuff like land or the services of skilled professionals.

[Username17]

You can find some really small stuff, but real magic power is on the favor economy, not the gold economy, which is something fairly familiar to anyone around here.

Indeed -- it's familiar nonsense when Frank says it, and it's familiar nonsense when 5E says it. Saying that demand for magic items is infinite (so you can never afford to buy them) and zero (so you can never sell them) simultaneously makes no sense.

No one who wants to buy your house can afford to purchase your house in nickels or pennies. They just don't have enough small change. And if someone drove up to your house with enough nickels and pennies to nominally equal your house's market value, you'd tell them to go fuck themselves.

This is not because there isn't a demand for houses, it's because physical currency stops being linearly additive after a point. Your house is valuable enough that it is well beyond the point at which physical currency stops being twice as valuable when there is twice as much of it. The inconvenience of having piles of it stops being negligible when you can no longer see over the piles. Hell, the inconvenience is pretty noticeabe when the piles are merely large enough that you can't quickly enumerate how much is in them. If someone wants to buy your house, they need to use cheques or bank transfers or some other kind of portable form of large value. No number of copper coins is going to be accepted as a fair exchange. Nor should it.

Which is entirely independent of the 5e thing. The Wish Economy postulates that larger value mediums of exchange are required in order to buy and sell high value items like flying carpets. 5e so far hasn't bothered explaining what mediums of exchange exist to handle the exchanges of large value goods, meaning that even discussing 5e's economy right now is impossible.

I strongly suspect that it's not actually going to be resolves and that Mearls is just going to punt. But that's because I despise him and he has a long history of failing to do basic design work. But technically it's too early to say whether the explanation of what you would have to do and what you would get for trading away your magic dagger for trade goods makes any sense. Because so far there isn't any explanation at all.

-Username17

[ishy]

You can find some really small stuff, but real magic power is on the favor economy, not the gold economy, which is something fairly familiar to anyone around here.

Indeed -- it's familiar nonsense when Frank says it, and it's familiar nonsense when 5E says it. Saying that demand for magic items is infinite (so you can never afford to buy them) and zero (so you can never sell them) simultaneously makes no sense.

Whoa, you're making a mistake there.
Voss was talking about not being able to buy magic items for gold pieces, which is different from not being able to buy magic items at all.
For example in videogames with the 'wish economy' (well not literally wish, but similar), people are far more likely to hand out magic items that have a value in gold pieces out for free, since selling it would require effort. And that effort is not worth it for gold pieces.

[Grek]

As usual, Kaelik and Laertes come to the correct conclusion through the incorrect means. The key realization here isn't that magic items aren't worth an infinite amount of gold or that demand is infinity and zero at the same time, but that gold does not have a fixed value.

According to the expense rules, absolutely anyone can afford a poor lifestyle just by doing manual labour. If you are proficient with an instrument or artisan's tools (and you can buy proficiency for just 500 gold) you can support yourself as a baker or a musician for the rest of your life. Going above that requires wealth, but honestly not much of it: A single ton of gold (about the same volume as you are) is enough to retire at age 30 to life of luxury without any further work. Three tons (about the same volume as your party) will let you and your family have literally any convenience available at the setting's tech level for the rest of your natural life. Beyond that point, the marginal value of gold goes very quickly down to zero.

The reason why major magic items are not sold for gold is because it is easier to obtain more gold than you could ever spend than it is to obtain a single major magic item. They're only part of the same economy in the sense that empty beer bottles and aircraft carriers are.

[Kaelik]

As usual, Kaelik and Laertes come to the correct conclusion through the incorrect means.

...

The reason why major magic items are not sold for gold is because it is easier to obtain more gold than you could ever spend than it is to obtain a single major magic item.

Umm...

That is the reason I came to the conclusion. That is super obviously the reason I came to that conclusion. The entire reason that the Wish Economy is called the Wish Economy (Even though it is really the post wish economy) is because you can obtain infinite amounts of gold really easily (such as with Wish), but you can't obtain major magic items as easily.

The entire reason I just compared 5e is because Voss just pointed out that Fabricate does nearly the same thing, giving you tons of gold super easy.

For fucks sake, if you want to insult someone try to not directly contradict your insult yourself in the exact same fucking post.

[animea90]

You can find some really small stuff, but real magic power is on the favor economy, not the gold economy, which is something fairly familiar to anyone around here.

Indeed -- it's familiar nonsense when Frank says it, and it's familiar nonsense when 5E says it. Saying that demand for magic items is infinite (so you can never afford to buy them) and zero (so you can never sell them) simultaneously makes no sense.

You can totally sell items that are worth infinite gold for finite gold if you want. Good thing you have all that gold now that you can't use to buy an item worth infinite gold unless you find someone as stupid as you.

Nothing in the Wish economy prevents you from selling your priceless items for a price other than being intelligent.

Likewise, when you have infinite gold in 5e, and nothing to buy with your infinite gold, the game technically says you can't sell the item, but I would totally let you, just because you are a dumb and it would be funny.

This brings up bigger issues. Namely, if nonmagical resources are trivial to create, why is anyone fighting over them? In a world where one guy can decide to overinflate the gold supply to the point of worthlessness, nobody is going to use it as currency. If food, water and crafted goods are also trivial, then there aren't going to be any bandits raiding caravans or pirates robbing merchants.

[Username17]

Yeah, as I understand the spellbook casting thing, any wizard can just sit down with a spell book and hack out a fabricate without even using a spell slot. All they have to do is be high enough level to understand the ritual (which is... 7th?) and spend 10 minutes fucking around with their book. Since you can get a return on a casting of fabricate of a couple dozen pounds of gold, any Wizard high enough level to do that commands an hourly wage of "more gold than they can physically carry."

Since even the item creation revealed so far takes at least 10 days, there is literally no amount of gold you could physically give to a Wizard to buy his time for long enough to make any magic item unless he's so weak that all he can write is a low level spell. Every magic item made must be made by a Wizard who wants the intended recipient to have the item or be purchased with a commodity more valuable than gold.

5e hasn't connected those dots, but it's technically too early to condemn them for not doing so because the DMG isn't out yet.

-Username17

[animea90]

As usual, Kaelik and Laertes come to the correct conclusion through the incorrect means. The key realization here isn't that magic items aren't worth an infinite amount of gold or that demand is infinity and zero at the same time, but that gold does not have a fixed value.

According to the expense rules, absolutely anyone can afford a poor lifestyle just by doing manual labour. If you are proficient with an instrument or artisan's tools (and you can buy proficiency for just 500 gold) you can support yourself as a baker or a musician for the rest of your life. Going above that requires wealth, but honestly not much of it: A single ton of gold (about the same volume as you are) is enough to retire at age 30 to life of luxury without any further work. Three tons (about the same volume as your party) will let you and your family have literally any convenience available at the setting's tech level for the rest of your natural life. Beyond that point, the marginal value of gold goes very quickly down to zero.

The reason why major magic items are not sold for gold is because it is easier to obtain more gold than you could ever spend than it is to obtain a single major magic item. They're only part of the same economy in the sense that empty beer bottles and aircraft carriers are.

In that case there should be some other currency that characters can use to buy magic items with. People would use diamond dust or faery jewels or whatever. I strongly suspect that no such currency is going to exist because the purpose of this rule is to stop players from ever buying magic items. They want magic items to be something the GM hands out as quest rewards or at the end of dungeons(like in early DnD). A second currency that you can use to buy magic items would defeat the purpose of that.

Which means my initial point will still stand. Magic items are common enough for 5th level party to acquire them, but so rare nobody will sell or buy them.

[animea90]

How much is the boxed set of the very first LEGO kit ever made? How much is an ashcan copy of Bill Watterson's attempt at making a hentai manga? How much are John Lennon's glasses he was wearing on the day he was murdered?

In the real world, you could buy all of these things with some amount of money less than infinity or even a billion dollars. However, you can't just waltz into the store and buy these things. There's not even a defined price. You have to find someone who owns it and special plead your case. I mean, you can whine all you want that Ebay says that the average price of an authentic Ming Vase is in the several thousands but they don't have to give it to you at that price even if they're willing to give it to you at some price. They might sell it for a song or a favor or for three grand or half of a million or never. You don't know and you have no other paths to get this thing. In a TTRPG, this would be represented by the MC just arbitrarily assigning a price for an ancestral copy of a lightsaber or Gram ranging from either 'you give me that Griffin feather, I'll give you this tool' to some made-up value. And you can then embark on a unique adventure to steal the item or convince him to name a price or whatever.

If we were talking about getting things like chickens or suits of armor or houses, you could just tell the seller to eat shit and die if they want something above market price because there's a market you can go to instead. But if you don't like that you can't just unilaterally force your character to own an item in a system with no coherent market for Excalibur or Masamune, feel free to fuck your grandma's dogs.

But this isn't the system that 5e uses. They explicitly say you can't buy magic weapons and armor with gold. There is no room for bargaining with someone or offering a ton of gold. They just won't accept it, no matter how badly they need the money.

That isn't what it says, however.

Magic Items. Selling magic items is problematic. Finding someone to buy a potion or a scroll isn’t too hard, but other items are out of the realm of most but the wealthiest nobles. Likewise, aside from a few common magic items, you won’t normally come across magic items or spells to purchase. The value of magic is far beyond simple gold and should always be treated as such.

You can find some really small stuff, but real magic power is on the favor economy, not the gold economy, which is something fairly familiar to anyone around here.

Elminster gives no fucks if you have a giant pile of gold.* But if you go find the Zhent spies hiding out in Harrowdale, he'll give you his old Crotchpiece of Protection.

*And since Fabricate is in and survived to the Final, actually released version of the Player's Handbook, no one who can call on favors from a 7th level Wizard has any reason to give any fucks about gold. They can take 10 minutes and just make art objects, trade goods or jewelry, which do sell at full price. Not sure how it happened after the debacle that was 4th (probably accidentally), but the game actually justifies mid and high level characters giving no shits about gold. They can make a 1500 gp suit of plate mail over lunch (really honestly 10 minutes), rather than 10 months.

Elminster is a great example of how not to create characters. The dude makes the party pointless. He is basically a 15th level wizard asking my 5th level party to deal with problems he could handle in a few minutes because he is too important to for this sort of thing.

More realistic quest givers are going to be people who can't handle the problem themselves. And they will have use for gold because they aren't uber powerful wizards.

[Voss]

That wasn't the point. That was a simple illustration, though every D&Dland land everywhere is filled with characters just like that, so you might as well get used to the idea. As unrealistic as it is, the game and genre (and 20+ years of the game being played) really do assume that parties actually spend time suckling at the cock of Mt. Wizard for quests and rewards.

No one has to be high level anything- the gold economy is demonstrably gone at 7th level. It is breaking down long before that, as any spell caster can make 10gp for a single action by selling gold spells as 'services,' while a skilled craftsman requires 2 full days to make that kind of money. 4 if the character sells 2 spells, which a first level character can.

Anyone with class levels starts out with the ability to trade renewable daily abilities for more than peasants are worth. Adventurers just innately start out with the ability to leverage themselves into national economies and trading networks, or sell art objects to the nobility. Petty cash is just something they can generate when they don't have anything important to do.

[Grek]

Yeah, as I understand the spellbook casting thing, any wizard can just sit down with a spell book and hack out a fabricate without even using a spell slot.

Fabricate isn't a ritual, so (as of the PHB leak, at least) a wizard can't literally do this with Fabricate. That said, Mending, Minor Illusion and Prestidigitation are all wizard cantrips that have obvious market applications, and higher level spells can do more of the same. Not quite "more gold than they can physically carry" but easily "more gold than is particularly useful" if you have even an ounce of business sense. And even if you don't, there's always extortion.

That is the reason I came to the conclusion. That is super obviously the reason I came to that conclusion. The entire reason that the Wish Economy is called the Wish Economy (Even though it is really the post wish economy) is because you can obtain infinite amounts of gold really easily (such as with Wish), but you can't obtain major magic items as easily.

You can totally sell items that are worth infinite gold for finite gold if you want. Good thing you have all that gold now that you can't use to buy an item worth infinite gold unless you find someone as stupid as you.

This is the claim I'm disputing. There's two very different senses of the word "worth" being used in this conversation.

In one sense, magical weapons are not, in fact, worth an infinite amount of gold. They're not even worth 5000 gold. A normal person, in character, would get much more personal satisfaction out of spending the gold on food and comfortable clothing than they would from owning a more effective weapon.

In another sense, magical weapons are worth more than any amount of gold because there's no amount of gold that you can name which would be more difficult to obtain than a major magic item. Consider, as an analogy, the relative value of air versus a diamond. Obviously, the diamond both much more valuable and much more difficult to obtain than air. But if you had to pick just one or the other, very few people would choose suffocation.

Is it a paradox that people won't sell diamonds for air, and yet they won't give up breathing to own a diamond? No, obviously not. The same concept applies with magic items and gold without resorting to arguments about if Fabricate lets you make "infinite gold" or about any other kind of money making scheme.

[animea90]

That wasn't the point. That was a simple illustration, though every D&Dland land everywhere is filled with characters just like that, so you might as well get used to the idea. As unrealistic as it is, the game and genre (and 20+ years of the game being played) really do assume that parties actually spend time suckling at the cock of Mt. Wizard for quests and rewards.

No one has to be high level anything- the gold economy is demonstrably gone at 7th level. It is breaking down long before that, as any spell caster can make 10gp for a single action by selling gold spells as 'services,' while a skilled craftsman requires 2 full days to make that kind of money. 4 if the character sells 2 spells, which a first level character can.

Anyone with class levels starts out with the ability to trade renewable daily abilities for more than peasants are worth. Adventurers just innately start out with the ability to leverage themselves into national economies and trading networks, or sell art objects to the nobility. Petty cash is just something they can generate when they don't have anything important to do.

In my decade of DnD I never felt like I needed to suck the cock of Mt. Wizard, because you could buy magic items with gold, and normal people have gold. Most of our quest givers were people who couldn't solve the problem themselves and hired someone else.

I will be surprised if the whole "you can make massive amounts of gold without adventuring" thing survives to release, because if so it drastically changes the tone of the game.

Primarily, because of bounded accuracy low level characters remain relevant for a long time, so an adventurer who buys an army with gold can send the army to solve most quests more effectively than he could handle them himself. And the fact that PCs can basically become rulers simply by being 10th level and casting fabricate a few times a day.

[ScottS]

BECMI was the nostalgia touchstone that was also like this. You couldn't buy gear, there wasn't that much to spend large amounts on other than castles and warships, and you didn't get xp for loot. However, they gave up on that once they added dominion rules, since you got free xp for collecting taxes from peasants (and the incentive for investing was: larger kingdom = more families/taxes = more free xp).

[animea90]

there's no amount of gold that you can name which would be more difficult to obtain than a major magic item.

This bit is where it breaks down for me. We aren't talking about buying Excalibur, which even 3.5 would say is not something you can simply purchase. We are talking about +1 magic longswords. If +1 longswords were that rare, then the low level band of orcs we looted this from would never have gotten the magic sword in the first place.

A 5th level adventurer is going to have one of these "major magic items" that no amount of gold can buy, yet gold could buy me 50 level 1 mercenaries who could kill the adventurers party(bounded accuracy makes it very easy for a large group of small enemies to kill higher level characters).

And 5th level adventurers aren't that rare. There are going to be hundreds of these adventurers all around the world.

[Grek]

At that point, though, you're not so much buying a magic sword as hiring a team of novice adventurers to go steal one for you.

[Heisenberg]

How similar is 5E D&D to 3E D&D? What are the major differences?