Buying magic items???? and what can they buy???

[Blaise The Magician]

Hello!!

How do you allow your playes to buy magic items??

Do you have magic shops with everything in it??

Can you they order magic items from an NPC??

What kind of magic items can you buy??only items published in WotC or what??

Blaise The Magician

 

[Blaise The Magician]

Magic items

We are about to change the way that we handle this

We can now, buy random generated stuff from the shop or order any item that is published in a WotC book. Ordered items take generally normal time to make.
The problem with this is that items found adventuring is not that important as we can order anything... and this is not to fun...

Blaise The Magician

 

[shilsen]

Hello!!

How do you allow your playes to buy magic items??

Do you have magic shops with everything in it??

Can you they order magic items from an NPC??

What kind of magic items can you buy??only items published in WotC or what??

Blaise The Magician

In my Greyhawk campaign, most cities have mage guilds that are willing to sell magic items. One PC in the party has joined a mage guild to benefit from this. That does not mean any and all magic items are available, and costly items (basically anything over 10,000 gp or so) almost certainly won't be available. Some temples also sell holy water, healing potions, etc. In towns and smaller areas, it may be possible to find a local spellcaster willing to sell something, but it varies. Another option is trading with other adventurers, but it is a lot more risky. It is very rare for someone to be selling/trading magic items not in the DMG or WotC class books.

 

[Ravellion]

I adhere to the wealth limits in the DMG, and then I generate a few stores with a few magical items amongst the many mundane.

Ie: The city's master smith also has two magic weapons amongst all his mundane equipment. The alchemist has the potions etc.

Rav

 

[Blaise The Magician]

I might add that we are about lvl 18, so we have each alot of wealth as we use the recomended numbers that are in the dmg. Which is about 300-400000 gp each...

Blaise The Magician

 

[Ferox4]

I'm in the FR North and magical items can only be purchased in larger cities or on the black market.

There are alchemists shops that have most 1st level potions, and some 2nd, but rarely 3rd - these are specialty items and (depending how the PCs handle the transaction) I make them expensive.

If the PC's want a magical weapon they need to find a weaponsmith of the appropriate caliber to fashion a masterwork item. This is also expensive. Then they must either enhance the weapon with their own Creation Feats or find a Mage's guild, or independent magic-user to enhance it. Yep, more $.

Once in a while, if the PCs have handled situations well and I'm feeling generous I will allow them a splurge item now and again, making something available that normally would not be available.

The Black Market is unreliable but frought with adventure hooks. Try selling your PCs a cursed +3 sword and see what they do. Or potions of healing that are really invisibilty. You get the idea.

I want the PCs to adventure in order to obtain the powerful magical items. If everyone can go to the Magic Store and get whatever their greedy little PC heart desires then what's next, the Level Store?

 

[Astlin]

I want the PCs to adventure in order to obtain the powerful magical items. If everyone can go to the Magic Store and get whatever their greedy little PC heart desires then what's next, the Level Store?

So what do your players do with items that they do not want or need?
What are they going to do with that pile of cash that they are going to have by level 20?

I had a GM with the same mentality. Got silly fast with all the minor magic items stacked up to the rafters.

Astlin

 

[Kae'Yoss]

I don't DM (yet), but I play in two different d20 Games.

The first is Forgotten Realms, and it's on the strong side with most stuff: above-average method of ability score generation, quite fast leveling-up, no training to level up, and so on (although the treasures we get are below DMG Standards, we can't complain). In smaller Cities we only get cheap stuff, but in larger Cities (Silverymoon, Waterdeep), you can get practically every magical item out of the DMG and other Rulebooks and a couple of special items (our druid uses a ring of wisdom because he must a special amulet of the Verdant Grove, but beyond that, we don't use self-made stuff, and are content with the standard items). As we're 17th-level, we have no problem to travel across the continent quickly, so we usually get what we want. I have to say, though, that I'm tho only one in the party (including the DM), that has played RPG before, and even for me, it's my first 3e campaign. And we don't have problems finding motivation to go adventuring: We have a bladesinger who always seeks to further the cause of the People (that's me) and a wizard who leads a wizard's guild (which provides with steady problems, and the whole plot is somewhat tied to an artifact of that guild), so our DM doesn't hav to bait us with magical stuff.

The other game's the other extreme: it's ravenloft d20, and we have almost no occasions to buy magical items, or to find them, but that's OK, because we could not afford them, anyway. We're really poor boys. I'm about to start with a new character at 6th or 7th level (because I made the fault of playing a player whose strenghts are sneak attack and diplomatic skills, and the enemies consist mostly of undead and the DM thinks that CHA scores are something that happens to other people) and all I got is standard equipment (like bedrolls), FRCS character region starting equipment, one masterwork weapon and 200 GM (all in all 1000 GP, maybe 1500, standard per DMG would be 13000).

 

[Roland Delacroix]

I use the DMG wealth limits for cities and towns for most items. For magic items and rare items they may or may not find them. Magic items, other than scrolls/potions, are kinda like Extreme sports gear of the Middle Ages. Hard to find specialty stores, even then its expensive as hell, and its hard to find anything that small clique doesn't adore. Why would you want boots of Stridng and Springing when EVERYone KNOWS boots of Spider Climbing are so much more 1337.

Plus there are the occasional wealthy collectors who cringe in horror from the fact that people actually USE these items.

Its regional too. Depends what groups are seeking items or making items. In the northern adventurer town magic is hard to get, down south by the mage guild its pretty easy.

 

[radferth]

The way I run it is:

No "magic shops". Magic guilds and temples may have items for sale. Potions and scrolls of low-level, common spells may be had for cash, but supplies are limited. More powerful items are available, but only a vary limited, random selection of items would be available at any one place. For the most part, the wizards guild will only give permanent magic items in trade for other magic items, and it expects a clear profit from the deal. Temples may have items a well, but would only sell/give/trade them to the faithful, or those on a mission for them. If the players want a specific item, they will probably have to commision someone to make it for them. This might cost above book prices and/or require some favor or quest be performed. The mage or priest commisioned might not be able to start immediately either. This probably above average for strictness, but it has worked quite well in the past. If you want more magic items in your campaign, you would probably want to loosen these up a bit. I would advise all new DMs to ere on the side of caution with giving out magic. It is easy to give the PCs more if they need it, but once the PCs have it, it is hard to take away. Also, I don't like the idead of the players minmaxing there characters for a few thousand gps with a single trip to Mall of Greyhawk.