D&D 5E I don't care anymore! The Magic shope is OPEN!

[cthulhu42]

Well, not a magic shop, really, but I've decided to go against the 5E grain and implement some sort of way to purchase and sell magic items.

My party is 11th level, and starting to amass some serious coin. They just wrapped up a big adventure story line and finally got back to a major city loaded down with gold and not a darn thing to spend it on. I know this issue has been brought up multiple times, but 5E really does have an issue with PC's not having much to throw their riches at, and I can tell that's it's becoming a bit of a bummer for the players.

They're not really interested in buying property and castles and such, and you can only live it up so many times at the best inn in town.

So I've decided to give them something to buy, or at least work towards.

In the aforementioned city I had the mage meet a rather shady character who deals in arcane items. Now myself, and most of the players are used to a 3E magic item world wherein you sold your sack full of stuff for half price and then bought whatever you could afford out of the DMG. Not so this time around.

This shady character has only a few items, most of which are uncommon to rare, but he's also got a couple of very nice pieces for sale, but they are VERY expensive. Plus, he's only buying items at about 1/5 what he'd be willing to sell the same thing for. So, for example, he had a +1 longsword he'd sell for 5000, but he only offered 1000gp to the dwarf that wanted to sell his own +1 sword. I'm also factoring in relative usefulness of items to their value. I'm kind of making it up as I go, but suffice to say, really juicy magic is very expensive.

Our dwarf had his eye on a Belt of Dwarven Kind, but I slapped a 35,000gp price tag on that sucker and the dwarf was not pleased at all! But, he suddenly has a use for his gold and a reason to start saving up, and even though none of the party could afford any of the really phat lewt, they were all really happy with the idea that there was at least some opportunity for them to get the item they really want, even if they have to save up for it.

And of course the shady character's inventory is subject to change, so that Belt of Dwarven Kind might not even be there when our dwarf finally gets the cash together.

I guess the point is, despite the 5E philosophy of magic being crazy rare, I feel like magic sales can still be done if you're careful with it. My plan is to make these shady characters very rare in the first place, with random wares, the best of which will be a constant carrot on the stick that keeps the party moving. There will be no set prices. Every shady character decides what his items cost and what his market can bare, and their inventories will fluctuate. My hope is to make even purchasing a magic item a special event in and of itself that has it's own kind of satisfaction.

To be honest, my players were really happy about this, even though they couldn't afford the things they really want. I think they enjoy the possibility of having some control over their own fates and a reason to horde gold.

Has anyone else done something like this? I know that magic sales is deeply frowned upon in the 5E community, but I have to believe that I'm not the only one. I'm curious what others experiences were.

 

[Cap'n Kobold]

I run Eberron, and allow sales of a lot of magic items similar to those in Xanathar's: quality-of-life items without direct combat or adventuring application.
(The plot reason is that Cannith has shifted to sell to the now-more-affluent middle class and trying to shake the arms-dealer image they had during the Last War. They are still producing magical weapons and similar, but most of these are bespoke to nations with exclusive contracts. The nations are stockpiling magical weapons because they are both preparing for a resumption of hostilities, and also because they are shifting focus to peacetime espionage and special-forces-type operations.)

The party have obtained some 'adventuring' magical gear and weapons, but that has generally been as a reward for services rendered. They did however specifically research where they could find a magical weapon of a certain type, discovering and delving into the tomb of a hobgoblin warlord to obtain it. (And really snorking off his descendants, who are going to be making their displeasure known one of these days.)

So: in short, I've not really done anything quite like you have yet. Your shady dealers are definitely something that I'm thinking of implementing though. Prices would vary between fairly pricey, to worryingly cheap. "Sure guv'nor. Got a couple of magic swords wot fell off the back of an earthglide cart here. Don't mind the "Property of the Karrnathi armed forces" stamp, that's just, like, a manufacturing defect. Doing a special deal for you here, like, 'cos of said defect and 'cos I'm leaving town very soon."

Oh, and in before someone using this thread as a platform to air their attacks on WotC's magic item pricing and availability policy.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Well, not a magic shop, really, but I've decided to go against the 5E grain and implement some sort of way to purchase and sell magic items.

My party is 11th level, and starting to amass some serious coin. They just wrapped up a big adventure story line and finally got back to a major city loaded down with gold and not a darn thing to spend it on. I know this issue has been brought up multiple times, but 5E really does have an issue with PC's not having much to throw their riches at, and I can tell that's it's becoming a bit of a bummer for the players.

They're not really interested in buying property and castles and such, and you can only live it up so many times at the best inn in town.

So I've decided to give them something to buy, or at least work towards.

In the aforementioned city I had the mage meet a rather shady character who deals in arcane items. Now myself, and most of the players are used to a 3E magic item world wherein you sold your sack full of stuff for half price and then bought whatever you could afford out of the DMG. Not so this time around.

This shady character has only a few items, most of which are uncommon to rare, but he's also got a couple of very nice pieces for sale, but they are VERY expensive. Plus, he's only buying items at about 1/5 what he'd be willing to sell the same thing for. So, for example, he had a +1 longsword he'd sell for 5000, but he only offered 1000gp to the dwarf that wanted to sell his own +1 sword. I'm also factoring in relative usefulness of items to their value. I'm kind of making it up as I go, but suffice to say, really juicy magic is very expensive.

Our dwarf had his eye on a Belt of Dwarven Kind, but I slapped a 35,000gp price tag on that sucker and the dwarf was not pleased at all! But, he suddenly has a use for his gold and a reason to start saving up, and even though none of the party could afford any of the really phat lewt, they were all really happy with the idea that there was at least some opportunity for them to get the item they really want, even if they have to save up for it.

And of course the shady character's inventory is subject to change, so that Belt of Dwarven Kind might not even be there when our dwarf finally gets the cash together.

I guess the point is, despite the 5E philosophy of magic being crazy rare, I feel like magic sales can still be done if you're careful with it. My plan is to make these shady characters very rare in the first place, with random wares, the best of which will be a constant carrot on the stick that keeps the party moving. There will be no set prices. Every shady character decides what his items cost and what his market can bare, and their inventories will fluctuate. My hope is to make even purchasing a magic item a special event in and of itself that has it's own kind of satisfaction.

To be honest, my players were really happy about this, even though they couldn't afford the things they really want. I think they enjoy the possibility of having some control over their own fates and a reason to horde gold.

Has anyone else done something like this? I know that magic sales is deeply frowned upon in the 5E community, but I have to believe that I'm not the only one. I'm curious what others experiences were.

Yeah, we've done things like this at my table too. IME, it works fine.

IMO, what you describe isn't the type of magic shop 5e cautions against. It's the, you can find any item here or the you can find any item here up to some rarity.

What you're really doing is simply introducing magic items outside the "dungeon". They can't cherry pick whatever they want, which is where problems might arise (ie, every finesse weapon user is suddenly sporting a Sun Blade, and every strength user has a Belt of Giant Strength). They still have to earn the items (by saving up to pay this guys outrageous prices). As long as you continue to curate what they have available to them, I see no issues. You just need to keep in mind that, as with all magic items in 5e, they are not factored into the power curve for encounter building, so you may need to adjust the difficulty yourself (which I imagine you were doing already anyway).

My favorite is when the DM offers unique items this way. For example, we once came across a trader of oddities who had a stone sword with holes across the blade that constantly dripped acid. It was a weaker version of a flame tongue that dealt acid damage, but it was so much cooler to us. No one knew the command word to stop the acid, so it would drip down the blade constantly, and we had to work around that too (I don't remember exactly how we got around that, I think the fighter invested in heavy leather gauntlets that he replaced regularly).

There was a good thread along these lines a while back; I'll see if I can dig it up.

 

[ClaytonCross]

My GM runs magic shops as a pop up rare commodity. Due to the value of the items the shops move to prevent robbery and are deliberately hard to find. We role an investigation check or a higher perception check to find the shop each time. So even if you find a great shop you may not be able to find it again. Then when you do in the shop you have to know what you want, the GM roles percentile dice to see if they have it. Pass or fail each time you ask the odds of finding the magic item you want drops. In other words, the first person to know what they want has the best chance of finding the item your looking for and as each player asks it gets harder and harder until he says ...at this point your done looking through the magic items and nothing else suites you or your party... He roles for the starting difficulty and 1s cause the percentage to drop faster 20s let the next person get the same percentage. The prices are set on a rarity value then adjust with "sales price roll" and the character can do a persuasion role to try to lower the price but a bad roll causes it to go up.

Because we pick the items he doesn't have to create anything for the shop or know the items and uses the same tables every-time.

Then he usually adds a story element for the sales man... one had deck of many things and you could draw one card for 200gp... he said your characters don't know this but your dealing with Loki the deck is real and you are taking on fate if you buy a card. ... someone did... that demon should show up any day now. lol

 

[cthulhu42]

That reminds me, the party actually had a deck of many things and after getting burned by it those who hadn't drawn yet decided to leave well enough alone, so our wacky rogue just threw it in his pack. At some point he sold it to a pawn broker for 500gp.

Fast forward to them meeting this shady character. As they are haggling over prices the guy says, off hand, "if you ever come across a deck of many things I'd easy pay 100,000 gold for an artifact such as that!"

The looks on their faces was priceless.

 

[Fanaelialae]

Here it is; it's a thread on auction style magic shops. Obviously, what you're doing is fine and good; just thought it might be useful or interesting to you.

http://www.enworld.org/forum/showthread.php?555875-quot-Auction-style-quot-magic-shoppes

 

[Mr. Wilson]

My homebrew world that has existed for the last 17 years has always included magic shops (all run by an overarching Wizard's guild), so I continue to run them. Most of the time there's mainly uncommon and a few rare items, but they exist mostly for the players to come up with their own magic items (Alis' Thundering Bowstring, Roarin' Raughley's Ramparts, etc), have the Wizards figure out what kind of special ingredients are needed and then go out and quest for those items.

 

[Warmaster Horus]

You can choose to have all the magic stores you want. It's your game!

 

[Tormyr]

I allowed the players to purchase up to Legendary from any magic shop. Aside from healing potions, they had to roll 1d20 to see if the shop had the item (DC 10 Common, DC 12 Uncommon, DC 14 Rare, DC 16 Very Rare, DC 18 Legendary). The DC went up by one level for each copy already in the party's possession. The prices were:

50gp Common
500gp Uncommon
5,000gp Rare
50,000gp Very Rare
500,000gp Legendary

Stores accepted items for cash or credit at half value.

It isn't the most accurate system, but it was simple, and everyone knew what something was worth.

 

[TwoSix]

The downtime rules in Xanathar's have guidelines for both buying and crafting magic items, you might want to take a look there.