D&D 5E No Magic Shops!

[BoldItalic]

"Do you sell magic items in your shoppe?"

"I don't have any magic items to sell you, but I can give you my grandad's Ring of Magic Item Finding. It was all that was left of him after he found that Wand of Immolate Self he'd always wanted, just because it was Legendary and he wanted to complete his collection of Legendary Wands."

"How does it work?"

"It's easy to use. You just say what item you want, wave the Wand and a map appears showing you where it is. You can only use it once a day, though, otherwise you'd be snowed under in maps."

"How did your grandad come by it?"

"He bought it in a shoppe."

 

[Nevvur]

You can't be speaking of uptime venues of gold expenditure (pricing magic items), since that was core to the experience of D&D for close to twenty years, and I'm sure you don't want to come across as utterly dismissive and condescending.

WotC promised 5th edition would support the play styles of previous editions. In one major case, we're still waiting for that support.





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The developers promised to listen to players (i.e. using feedback from the D&D Next play test), and stated a goal of appealing to new players and fans of all editions. They didn't promise to support all play styles, and they certainly never promised magic item pricing. If you can quote me a source showing otherwise, I would like to see it. Until then, I will assume you've misinterpreted those statements to suit your position.

 

[ad_hoc]

The developers promised to listen to players (i.e. using feedback from the D&D Next play test), and stated a goal of appealing to new players and fans of all editions. They didn't promise to support all play styles, and they certainly never promised magic item pricing. If you can quote me a source showing otherwise, I would like to see it. Until then, I will assume you've misinterpreted those statements to suit your position.

Magic marts are actually against the design goals of 5e. One of the goals is to make magic items feel like a bonus. This is in complete opposition to how 3e did it with its treadmill approach.

That doesn't mean there can't be optional rules for it somewhere or that people can't make rules for their own games. It just means they're unlikely to devote much time and space to it. The downtime rules in XgtE is support for this. It's just not 50 pages of support.

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

The basic concept of RPGs supports every playstyle. People can hack any game to their own satisfaction. It's in the opening blurb of every RPG book I've ever read.

It's not the developer's responsibility to support each and every playstyle. I want a skill-point based character progression system rather than this proficiency bonus thing, but I'm not spamming public forums complaining about the lack of official support for it because I don't think WotC owes me that. To restate from my previous post, I don't fault people for wanting a thing. I do fault them for making a big stink over an issue they should be fully capable of handling themselves, and for throwing shade at the developers and players who don't share their gaming objectives. That's where the entitlement remark comes in. I simply can't share your sympathy for them.

Let's see if I can explain it to you. Playing D&D has at all times also been about finding loot. Many groups do not focus on this or don't care. But the long trasure tables, the gold=xp, the WBL and so on all indicate that finding monetary loot is an integral part of the game.
What we are complaning about is not the lack of magic shops, nor is it an entitlement that WotC should support magic shops. We are complaining that for parties not interested in downtime - building castles, establishing orphanages, raising armies, running inns and whatever gets offered as a solution - but just wants the campaign to focus on the 5 man party - like a majority of the published WotC adventures do - gold is worthless.
Yet, there are tables upon tables to roll on for distributing monetary awards. But who cares if you find 5000 gp or 500.000 gp, when there is nothing to spend them on in the party-focused campaign. And the WotC support for old school "endgame" domain management etc. is woefully lacking as well.
What we want (go ahead and say we are entitled) is for the maker of the game to support their own game and the contents they chose to put into it. So, give us something to spend the money on. Don't let it be up to the single DM to come up with all of these things. Son't make DMs roll endless rolls on treature tables, when the results are without consequences.
That's where our beef lies.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Krachek]

I think that the developpement in artificial intelligence is our only hope to finally produce a DnD rule set that would be sane and realistic.
A global AI can possibly produce a rule set where every single spend gold piece will have a just value.
Where every single xp spend on an encounter budget will be meaningful,
And all game options perfectly balanced.

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

But who cares if you find 5000 gp or 500.000 gp, when there is nothing to spend them on in the party-focused campaign.

Look, if the problem is money, there is a simple solution. Don't give it out. Or divide it by 1000. Or whatever.

Don't let it be up to the single DM to come up with all of these things. Don't make DMs roll endless rolls on treature tables, when the results are without consequences.
That's where our beef lies.

If the problem is that you don't like other solutions, such as downtime, or building keeps etc., then come up with your own.

What we are complaning about is not the lack of magic shops, nor is it an entitlement that WotC should support magic shops.

But it's very .... odd .... to say you believe there is a money problem, and instead of dealing with the money problem by, I dunno, lessening the amount of money or something, you think there can only be one correct solution, which is magic shops (or buyable magic items).

I guess I really didn't explain it well, then.

I hope you find what you like!

Thanks.

 

[CapnZapp]

Magic marts are actually against the design goals of 5e. One of the goals is to make magic items feel like a bonus. This is in complete opposition to how 3e did it with its treadmill approach.

No, now you're conflating two different things.

The "treadmill", that is, the math "needs" heroes to have certain bonuses at a given level, is bad and I for one am glad it has disappeared.

But that's only one possible reason for having (or at least optionally supporting) utility-based magic item pricing. Here are a few from the top of my head...:

a) fun
b) something to spend all the gold on that D&D has - by default and in core - rained upon heroes in every edition
c) uptime alternative to downtime activities, which is actually much mote important than everybody seems to think, since most official hardcover adventures provide little or no downtime
d) a sorely needed crunch dimension. By this I mean 5e characters are significantly less complex than 3e ones. This is not to everybody's liking; if you WANT lots of crunch, the ability to customize your three attunement slots is a significant deepening of your character's mechanical complexity
e) you control your hero's loot yourself by shifting the emphasis from finding random (or not so random) items to finding gold instead. Even AL is moving in this direction!

Well, that's just a few that comes to mind. While not all of them may apply to you, I'm sure you can think of more.

Buying magic items is FUN!


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[Warmaster Horus]

One thing to understand about magic shops is that they bump the power level up in your game if they allow you to focus items to your character's strengths. And that's fine if that's the game you want to play. Have at it! But then the next thing we'll hear is how the MM doesn't have monsters that are challenging enough for your new uber-characters. And of course the DM shouldn't have to put any extra work into their game & monster creation to account for the new power level. WotC should do that for them. Etc. Etc.

 

[Matrix Sorcica]

One thing to understand about magic shops is that they bump the power level up in your game if they allow you to focus items to your character's strengths. And that's fine if that's the game you want to play. Have at it! But then the next thing we'll hear is how the MM doesn't have monsters that are challenging enough for your new uber-characters. And of course the DM shouldn't have to put any extra work into their game & monster creation to account for the new power level. WotC should do that for them. Etc. Etc.

Cute.

Let me ask you then. For uptime campaigns, how would you make gold have use? How would you keep the gold-looting part of D&D meaningful for the party? I know you're not really concerned about it, and more power to you, but how would you go about it, keeping treasure worth something. Remember, no downtime