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Worlds of Design: The Problem with Magimarts
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<blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9324351" data-attributes="member: 4937"><p>Actually, no. Especially when it comes to potions and scrolls, there is no particular reason to think that they are more transactional in 3e than in 1e/2e. And indeed, there is good reason to think they are less transactional. That's because unlike 1e/2e, minor items like potions and scrolls required the investment of a non-commodity item, namely "experience points". That items in 3e require experience points to create means that making them is a serious endeavor and there is an inherit limit on their production because each one is trading a bit of your life away.</p><p></p><p>Things that you mention like "you needed to figure out how to make each individual item type, which would require long and expensive research and/or the use of dangerous magic like contact other plane. And once you had that figured out, you needed to acquire various more or less exotic ingredients, ranging from something relatively mundane like troll's blood to something esoteric like the dreams of an illithid. In other words, creating a magic item in 2e was likely to be the focus of not just one but several adventures all by itself" is actually implicitly built into the 3e system as well. The gold required to acquire those exotic ingredients like troll's blood or displacer beast hide is what the 3e system is modelling in the abstract. Third edition assumes there exists a trade in exotic ingredients and crafting recipes for magical ink and potions and that the cost to make an item is abstractly representing obtaining those ingredients like blue dragon's bile or tiger hearts on the open market. </p><p></p><p>You absolutely in 3e can as a GM insist that a particular item is so exotic and powerful that it's not available for gold on the open market and therefore since you can't buy the "dreams of an illithid" locally that you must go on a quest to find it as part of standard 3e item construction. 3e never insists magic items are made of gold, only that it's likely that you can use gold to buy the ingredients that magic items are made of it. Likewise, you absolutely can assume in 1e that you can go to an alchemist and buy a vial of troll's blood.</p><p></p><p>That sort of "magic ingredient mart" existing in major cities to trade in plundered and brined and embalmed monster body parts, exotic plants, and other such ingredients I'm perfectly happy to have existing in major metropolitan areas in a way that I'm not happy with the "magic item mart". There are even particular places in my game world where you could go to buy dreams, memories, souls, bottled spirits, and other extremely exotic commodities. It makes perfect sense that the ingredients for crafting magic items would be traded, but that the magic items themselves would not normally be available on the open market because the manufacture of those items involves investing something precious - not gold but XP.</p><p></p><p>This is what I'm talking about when I say 3e better described the AD&D setting as observed than the rules of AD&D did, because there isn't anything in 1e AD&D to explain why magic swords are one of the most commonly observed items given that making any permanent magic item required not only a caster of a level that was supposed to be extraordinarily rare but also required sacrificing a non-commodity ingredient - CON points.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Celebrim, post: 9324351, member: 4937"] Actually, no. Especially when it comes to potions and scrolls, there is no particular reason to think that they are more transactional in 3e than in 1e/2e. And indeed, there is good reason to think they are less transactional. That's because unlike 1e/2e, minor items like potions and scrolls required the investment of a non-commodity item, namely "experience points". That items in 3e require experience points to create means that making them is a serious endeavor and there is an inherit limit on their production because each one is trading a bit of your life away. Things that you mention like "you needed to figure out how to make each individual item type, which would require long and expensive research and/or the use of dangerous magic like contact other plane. And once you had that figured out, you needed to acquire various more or less exotic ingredients, ranging from something relatively mundane like troll's blood to something esoteric like the dreams of an illithid. In other words, creating a magic item in 2e was likely to be the focus of not just one but several adventures all by itself" is actually implicitly built into the 3e system as well. The gold required to acquire those exotic ingredients like troll's blood or displacer beast hide is what the 3e system is modelling in the abstract. Third edition assumes there exists a trade in exotic ingredients and crafting recipes for magical ink and potions and that the cost to make an item is abstractly representing obtaining those ingredients like blue dragon's bile or tiger hearts on the open market. You absolutely in 3e can as a GM insist that a particular item is so exotic and powerful that it's not available for gold on the open market and therefore since you can't buy the "dreams of an illithid" locally that you must go on a quest to find it as part of standard 3e item construction. 3e never insists magic items are made of gold, only that it's likely that you can use gold to buy the ingredients that magic items are made of it. Likewise, you absolutely can assume in 1e that you can go to an alchemist and buy a vial of troll's blood. That sort of "magic ingredient mart" existing in major cities to trade in plundered and brined and embalmed monster body parts, exotic plants, and other such ingredients I'm perfectly happy to have existing in major metropolitan areas in a way that I'm not happy with the "magic item mart". There are even particular places in my game world where you could go to buy dreams, memories, souls, bottled spirits, and other extremely exotic commodities. It makes perfect sense that the ingredients for crafting magic items would be traded, but that the magic items themselves would not normally be available on the open market because the manufacture of those items involves investing something precious - not gold but XP. This is what I'm talking about when I say 3e better described the AD&D setting as observed than the rules of AD&D did, because there isn't anything in 1e AD&D to explain why magic swords are one of the most commonly observed items given that making any permanent magic item required not only a caster of a level that was supposed to be extraordinarily rare but also required sacrificing a non-commodity ingredient - CON points. [/QUOTE]
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