What level of magic do you prefer in your AD&D world?

[Nifft]

My concept of "weak magic" is much stronger than yours, but there are still some limits on what the PCs can buy. So I chose "other".

Cheers, -- N

 

[Ed_Laprade]

Playing 1E we occasionally had a friendly shopkeep who had a magic item or three. Usually armor or weapons. But it was decided by the GM beforehand, so what he had, if anything, was all that you could buy. Later, but still 1E, we changed that to a percentile roll. The more powerful the item, the lower the percentage chance that one would be available. (More than one time a character went looking for something in particular and ended up buying something else because that was what was available.) Potions were usually bought from the clergy. (Mostly healing potions, of course.) After all, why wouldn't they sell them to people of the right alignment? (Unless there was great need of them in town for some reason. In which case our Cleric(s) would volunteer to lend a hand with the healing...)

 

[thedungeondelver]

IF the players have the time and patience (and money) they can hire a magic-user of appropriate level to cast enchant an item and/or do all the other fun stuff required to make magic items. Generally speaking, it goes (in order of ease):

Scrolls
Potions*
Weapons
Armor

*=depending on the potion; typically the party is after a potion of healing or stone to flesh. More complicated things - heroism, superheroism, and so on require stranger components.

 

[Hussar]

We almost never bought magic items. We didn't really need to since we played modules almost exclusively. We were constantly selling magic items though.