Buying magic items

[Spudolas]

What house rules do people(DMs) out there use to decide what magic items players can buy from shops ?

There doesn't seem to be any guidance for this in the manuals so I'm guessing it varies a lot between DMs from the extremes of buy what you like to no magic items available in the shops.

Spud

[the Jester]

In my campaign I adjudicate this on a case by case basis, but in general, the pcs need to learn enchant magic item in order to get what they want. My campaign is NOT full of npc item crafters.

[BobTheNob]

I pretty much just put a limit on the level of item shops have available, normally well behind the standard players actually require.

If you follow the loot packages in the DM's (as I do, because correct loot allocation is required for players to be able to function) you will find that the loot they get from drops for outweighs anything they will be able to buy with the amount of gold they actually get.

So I dont mind the nature of what they ask for as a) I have level restricted it behind the standard they are currently at and b) They wont have the gold anyway.

This allows players to "Fill a gap" in there current loot without being able to create a game breaking combination. For instance, our cleric purchased a +1 Medics weapon. Cost him all the gold he had (and he owes most other party members something) meaning he aint buying anything for a very long time and most of party loot is at the +2 stage, teatering on +3. So he filled a gap, but didnt get a game ending loot combo.

Pretty happy with how it is working so far

[eriktheguy]

Generally I don't even monitor my players when they buy magic items, since I have a pretty good idea of what they can afford. If time is short or if they are in a particularly small location, I will limit what they can buy. At higher levels I would see this being more of a problem. There aren't many cities that can manufacture vorpal swords.

[chronoplasm]

Mimic Merchant's Shop of Used Wonders

Mimic Merchant's Inventory:
Look up enchanted items of the party's level +1.
Every one that starts with the letter 'M' is in Mimic Merchant's shop and available for sale.
If there are no items of the party's level that start with the letter 'M', Mimic Merchant asks them to come back later.

Buying from Mimic Merchant:
Have each member of the party do a Diplomacy, Insight, or Streetwise check contested by Mimic Merchant's Bluff check.
For each party member that succeeds their check, mark Mimic Merchant's prices down by 5%.
For each party member that fails their check, mark Mimic Merchant's prices up by 5%.
*For each party member that chooses not to participate in this check, mark Mimic Merchant's prices up by 10%

[Starfox]

I went the completely opposite way. I found selecting items for treasure parcels to be a PITA and got constant complaints on it on top of that, so I simply let my players trade items freely at full value.

So far, this has worked pretty well.

For a possible new campaign I think I'd overhaul the economy completely, butt hat's another day.

[cmbarona]

I'm running an extremely high-magic campaign, so buying magic items actually makes a lot of sense. I treat them similar to modern weapon shops, whose quality and exclusivity scales with level. For example, +1 items are available to the general public, +2 require registration, +3 and +4 are military/mercenary grade, and +5/+6 will likely be state-of-the-art weaponry reserved for specialist groups. All of these can be found through legal or illegal means, or from looting (which also has a legality issue of choosing whether or not to register the armaments). Wondrous items follow the same relative scale (e.g., level 11 wondrous items can only be found through military grade development labs).