D&D 5E The Case for a Magic Item Shop?

[KarinsDad]

I'll say it again, a question of style.

I don't like the concept of the ACME Magic Artifact Co dropping off goodies. As this is the main thrust of the thread (although in chunks it has read very much like the Warlock gimping thread) that's where I stand. I, and most of the groups I've played with prefer a more roleplaying approach to problem solving, rather than just being presented with a queue of people to "talk" to. In these forums I've seen that described as blatant railroading.
As to sudden light have no mechanistic role to play, it falls in with a large number of situations that Mearls and Co have more than suggested be decided by individual DMs. Fiat is a strong element, I'd go so far as to say a necessary element, to fulfilling their original claims way back at the start to allow people to play in the style they want from Basic to 4e or even, the gods forfend, to allow 5e to stand as its own beast.
So, yes. At my table a sudden flare of light from dim to bright would give the party an advantage for a round or two assuming they were ready for it, when facing creatures that found glowing fungus a reason for wearing shades. I wouldn't expect that to be the case at everybody else's though.

At the heart of it, this is a roleplaying game with rules, not a ruleplaying game with rolls.

Although I am ok with a little bit of roleplaying for one single PC (and hence, one player out of six in our group), going down a PC rabbit hole (more than 10 minutes or so) can be boring.

I prefer my roleplaying being most or all of the team. I don't actually want to sit for an hour listening to a story about all of the things the one PC has to do to acquire a set of magical goggles. If I wanted to do that, I'd watch TV. I want to interact with a story and I want everyone else at the table doing the same thing.

I agree with Paraxis, a given player can do a lot of this offstage with the DM, or the DM can just go off and figure it out later. Let's get back to the real story.

Granted, 5 or 10 minutes, no big deal if one player takes the spotlight for that amount of time for some personal thing. If it starts getting to 15 or 20 plus minutes and the roleplaying starts becoming pedestrian (e.g. wooing the barmaid to get the info on which merchant to talk to), I'll start leaving the room for a snack, taking the dogs out, go to the bathroom, anything. If it's pertinent roleplaying (i.e. he is finding out about his magical goggles, and he is also finding out more info on the kidnapped shopkeeper), then it's all good.


In our last session, we took about an hour of time shopping. Zero roleplaying. We just sold the cart load of goods and the DM rolled to find out what percentage of net worth we got from it. We then took that stack of gold and everyone grabbed their PHBs and said what they wanted. We had a lot of gold, so it was a long list that took up a sheet of paper. Some groups split up every single gold piece. We do that for the small hauls, but for the big ones, we just go off and get what the group needs (which means what individuals like wizards need, like spell writing materials). If there is money left over, then we split it. The DM did not bother rolling to see if any given good existed in the town, it just did (with the exception of Potions of Healing where the DM rolled the max number).

If we would have roleplayed it out, it probably would have been four hours. Way too much time just to shop.

So yeah, I prefer "quality roleplaying" over "quantity roleplaying".


With regard to a magic shop, I tend to like them for the small common stuff. The PC fighter saved up enough gold over three levels for a +1 longsword? Great, go buy one.

But the really cool uncommon and rare magic items should rarely be found in a shop. The royals, or nobles, or temples, or armies, or wealthy merchants already snatched those up.

But, magic items exist. They have to come from somewhere. They are worth a lot, so there will be a market for them, even if in a given town it's a black market. Not having the ability for the PCs to purchase magic items makes the setting implausible and artificial. Commerce for magic items would exist because there would be a profit in it.

I also find it implausible that NPCs can craft them, but it is way too tough (time consuming, expensive, too rare of components) for PCs to do so. Meh. What makes sense is for PCs to be able to craft them, just like NPCs. It might require some significant effort, but making it nearly impossible is dumb in a game.

This is a game played by people to have fun. Let them have fun by buying and crafting magical items. At a cost, sure. But still, those elements should be in the game. Why make the game so restrictive? Meh.

 

[Random Bystander]

Restricting magic items to rare things that characters will almost never have, while also having casting classes who can call upon magic regularly...I think you see where I am going with this.

 

[Kaychsea]

I understand people don't like ACME Magic Artifact Co or Spellmart, but you don't have to have those in your world to handwave shopping....
Now that is my style and my players enjoy it, I also prefer this when I play because if an entire hour is spent dealing with selling and purchasing items I feel it takes away from the story.

Not calling it Walmart doesn't make it not Walmart.

Look at it this way, in 5e Goggles of Night are uncommon, wonderous items with slightly better effect than their 3e equivalents. In 3e they were 12,000gp medium wonderous items which meant that 6th level was the kind of range you would start to find PCs with them (all from DMG). Given the indicated increased rarity of magic items (Mearls et al frequent references), the additional range in dv for creatures with it I think if you are giving gold costs it would be substantially more. So you would need an active economy in these items in a large city to have a shop selling this sort of thing as a stock item, otherwise you are making an order which could take weeks to fill, either waiting for one to turn up or be made. In 3e 12 days plus time to find someone to start, in 5e the worst case scenario, where magic item creation is treated like crafting, that would be a wait of over six years. It's not like buying a tin of beans, it's more like buying a Ferrari and accepting that you'll have it in six months.

There is a story, running around clicking on every npc in the village seems more like a video game to me than going and talking to just the few that move that story forward. Railroading is shoving that story at the players no matter what, the trick is to make the story you want to tell the most interesting thing going on around the characters so they want to follow the story.

Here we agree, and as I have said we are talking about a difference in style, looking at the problem from different ends. Your table prefers a join-the-dots style and mine more that of a colouring book, I've had campaigns go off track for months because the party have wandered off to do something I didn't think was as interesting but they came across by talking to a guy in a pub. As long as people are enjoying themselves it's all good.

They don't wear shades around glowing fungus, they use glowing fungus to light their world like lanterns and candles, darkvision is not a weakness it is an advantage.

That is missing the point so hard it is difficult to interpret is as not being willful.

To me it is a Role Playing Game, the Game part is just as important as the role playing part or you might as well just have a cooperative freeform storytelling night, you don't need books for one of those.

That's quite a narrow point of view. It may have started as a skirmish game but it's become a lot more than that these days. To me the rules, the dice, are subservient to the story. Your own sig says "Use the rules. Don't let the rules use you." That's a good place to start.

 

[MoonSong]

This isn't about a class's primary feature being negated. The OP's character hasn't been able to scout as efficiently as the character did above ground. GM didn't take away their sneak attack dice, spells or Ki or whatever class ability the OP has.

You know, you cannot sneak attack if you have disadvantage in the attack roll, evne if you have a source of advantage....

 

[DracoSuave]

Source? In RAW surely there is no distinction between bright light from a torch or daylight, apart from range? of course the issue is that light won't blind anything used to living in the dark with no light at all as they would be blind to light to begin with, using other senses to get around. Those used to dim light only would possibly be the ones to find sudden bright light a problem.

The former's ability to detect is not affected--positively or negatively--by torches, and the latter would logically not be able to deal with an amount of light that is completely alien to it. I mean hell, people live in the daylight and staring at something as ubiquitous as the sun hurts. It hurts eyes to suddenly have a large amount of light if you're a species USED to bright light. Creative PCs should be able to exploit that for many [obviously not all] creatures.

Arguments about RAW in this regard are missing out on one of the features of 5th edition--that the GM has the flexibility to make judgement calls on this. 'The book doesn't say it' isn't a position one can take in this ruleset regarding situations such as these.

 

[Kaychsea]

Arguments about RAW in this regard are missing out on one of the features of 5th edition--that the GM has the flexibility to make judgement calls on this. 'The book doesn't say it' isn't a position one can take in this ruleset regarding situations such as these.

Pretty much my point. Certainly my general stance.

 

[Kaychsea]

In our last session, we took about an hour of time shopping. Zero roleplaying. We just sold the cart load of goods and the DM rolled to find out what percentage of net worth we got from it. We then took that stack of gold and everyone grabbed their PHBs and said what they wanted. We had a lot of gold, so it was a long list that took up a sheet of paper.

And there we have one of my major problems with the whole magical emporium schtick. It reflects a mode of thinking about buying that is incredibly modern. If we are playing in a faux-mediaeval world then the kind of shopping experience you describe there is unthinkable. Everything, beyond the basic staples of life, have to be made, not lifted off the shelf.

With regard to a magic shop, I tend to like them for the small common stuff. The PC fighter saved up enough gold over three levels for a +1 longsword? Great, go buy one.

But the really cool uncommon and rare magic items should rarely be found in a shop. The royals, or nobles, or temples, or armies, or wealthy merchants already snatched those up.

And apparently in 5e +1 anything is neither small nor common. The compressed range of plusses makes any additions to hit significant and it's a magic weapon.

But, magic items exist. They have to come from somewhere. They are worth a lot, so there will be a market for them, even if in a given town it's a black market. Not having the ability for the PCs to purchase magic items makes the setting implausible and artificial. Commerce for magic items would exist because there would be a profit in it.

I also find it implausible that NPCs can craft them, but it is way too tough (time consuming, expensive, too rare of components) for PCs to do so. Meh. What makes sense is for PCs to be able to craft them, just like NPCs. It might require some significant effort, but making it nearly impossible is dumb in a game.

This is a game played by people to have fun. Let them have fun by buying and crafting magical items. At a cost, sure. But still, those elements should be in the game. Why make the game so restrictive? Meh.

We'll have a much better view of that once the rules to do so come out (probably in December). The whole size of the market for magic items in 3e seemed a bit odd given the XP costs for their creation.
And as for having fun, not everybody likes Minecraft.

 

[KarinsDad]

And as for having fun, not everybody likes Minecraft.

A little hyperbole?

 

[Kaychsea]

A little hyperbole?

And of the four points that is the one thing you took from my post?

 

[KarinsDad]

And of the four points that is the one thing you took from my post?

You had four points?