The thing is that you assume that because these places exist, all the NPCs gathering there are adventurers with levels. But (and see the discussion in the other thread), it does not have to be the case, I have many troubadours and trouveres congregating with bards, many fighters and gladiators without class level (and unable to progress much or indeed at all) in arenas, the same with mercenaries, etc. All of these are unlikely to have magical items or the fund to buy them, and even less to have them for sale.
If 10% - or even 5% - of the people at these places are adventurers with any field experience at all (i.e. not 0 xp raw 1st-level types) then you're going to meet enough of them that there's a likelihood of at least someone looking to buy or sell (or both!) some sort of item or other.
When was the last time your party encountered real other adventurers ? For me, it happens now and then in some campaigns, but there are not that many over the world.
In my game it's no big deal to meet other true adventuring groups or individuals either on the road or in town, and in town it's extremely common to meet non-adventuring people with class levels if you know where to find them, usually in the temples and guilds etc. noted previously.
Last session I ran the party were inteacting with a small group of Thieves who were initially the party's enemies but have since come to be, if not friends, at least neutral enough to let the PCs overnight at their remotely-located hideout a couple of times (and not even steal from them either!). En route to the swamp said hideout is in they met a small band of (probably lowish-level, the PCs weren't sure and didn't inquire too deeply) adventurers on the road, travelling from one town to another for reasons unknown.
Look at the FR, there are a few adventuring companies which are well known over the whole continent, they don't meet very often and I've never seen magic item shopping in any of the novels.
If you've never read Nicolas Eames'
Kings of the Wyld, give it a look. Adventuring parties in that setting are treated like rock bands.
And how would these places have the means to defend their vault ? Who would they employ to prevent adventurers to raid their stores ? Or even nastier people actually...
Most guilds and temples worth their salt have some pretty solid defenses against attack or theft just to protect their own goods, never mind any magic items being stored or sold through there.
For us, that class is very setting specific and we don't like it despite WotC trying to explain that they have been in all worlds all along, we do know the truth from previous publications, these abominations have thankfully not spread beyond Eberron (and maybe Krynn with the Tinker gnomes but noone sane goes there these days anyway)
Where while I don't have Artificer as a capital-C Class I do have it as a profession some non-adventuirng arcanists branch into. (if a PC wizard-type wants to become an artificer, no problem: just retire from adventuring, put in several years of training, and you're good to rock)
As for magic items, since they are quite resistant, they come from previous civilisations, or were created by powerful casters for themselves and their minions, and they have since passed away, the usual explanations.
Ah - that's another difference: I have magic items being a bit more breakable than that, particularly when hit with big A-of-E damage effects.
Cool. I suspect that, as usual, we are closer than our internet position comfortably allow us to state while arguing.
I'm not against magic items trade, actually, but I'm certainly against magic items shops, for two reasons:
- In game, as explained, I don't see how it would function and how it would be defended.
- Out of game, I don't want players to optimise their items for their build. 5e has thankfully gotten rid of the mandatory magic items of 3e and 4e just to get bonuses because they were not able to balance the game otherwise, so I can give fun items with a history and interesting powers, it's not for players to powergame, and come and buy exactly the right items to widen the power gap.
It's hard to optimize when everything on the shopping list is randomly generated (maybe with a push toward one thing or another depending on the situation e.g. if a major war has just ended there might be a few more weapons and armour on the market than usual, that sort of thing). That said, if a character wants a specific item and is willing to wait quite a while for it they can always commission an artificer to build it. The problem here is that the character's companions will 99+% certainly want to keep adventuring during the construction time, which can be months or even a year or two, meaning you either retire or risk being dead by the time your item is finished*.
* - yet another reason for items hitting the open market: unclaimed commissions!
And that I completely agree with, to a certain extent. In our settings, adventurers are not that common, and they have a tendency to die (except the PCs, of course, who are slightly less likely), which means that, in the general population of adventurers, they will be mostly low level, so without or with few items, and therefore unlikely to sell them.
Of course, if you have a world where there are tons of adventurers, including many high level ones, it's a different story, but then I'm not sure how the setting works with these powerful "free electrons" all over the place. Note that it looks impossible to run, but the world's organisation should take that into account, it's not even the case in the FR where most of the powerful bands actually settle (and it's the way I tend to run things again, I've been raised on BECMI and adventurers having dominions after a while, etc.).
Many of the non-hereditary nobles in my setting are retired adventurers.
I can go with that, it's just that for me it requires a really large city, you won't find it in the provinces. Waterdeep, Greyhawk, Sharn, that kind of city. That being said, I love city adventures and I am happy with that kind of process, and actually it's the one 5e suggests.
But all of that also means that it's not easy to get a reliable estimate for an item, since there are no lists to compare things to. Moreover, as mentioned above, I tend to give really singular items with complex powers, not ones out of the books (or after careful selection), and very " plusses" items, so how does one assess this ?
Easy: if you went to an artificer and commissioned an identical item, what would that artificer charge you. There's your base value; and I've always assumed that to be the basis for the price lists in earlier editions.
And I understand the way you are running things as well, we did it for a long time in particular under 3e, but the thing is that most of our players realised that they don't like this that much. It's a lot of bookkeeping, counting, etc. and they do enough of that in their job if not in their day-to-day life. So for me it's not a question or realism, these things exist and we assume the characters take care of it, they are simply under the radar and assumed to be done in the background, so that we can concentrate on what makes it fun for us.
But if your players prefer managing that and enjoy the details of the computation and the lists of things, good for them, have fun !
They may not necessarily prefer thise things in the moments they needs doing, but they do in general prefer the sense of realism they represent, as do I.
Not sure I saw it, but I believe you, no worries, it's just that once more we assume that training is done in the background and we move on directly to exciting adventures.
The training itself can be done in the background but the costs can't be waved away so easily, and IMO neither can the in-game time.
That, and downtime is important for numerous other reasons; and one very nice side effect of making characters train into levels is that it forces parties to get out of the field now and then and take some downtime.
