Do Magic Item "Shops" wreck the spirit of D&D?

[Reynard]

It may be that the background world of The Hobbit and LoTR is low magic and mundane, but equally well the background world of Keep on the Borderlands might be low magic and mundane. It's what's 'on stage' that matters...

LotR specifics aside, this is a very good point and something that I think a lot of people forget. it may be that the party consists of a half-dragon giantkin, a drow paladin and a centaur wizard. That doesn't mean any of those things are common in the world. The presence of a magic item on the list (or amonster in the manual, or even a spell in the PHB) doesn't necessarily make those things automatically common in the campaign setting. If PCs are special, and their adventures are special, then the trappings of the PCs and their adventures are special, too. One could reasonably play D&D RAW set in dark ages England and not change history one iota -- it just so happens that all the typical D&Disms exist only the the PCs' immediate sphere of influence and contact.

Hence unique Gloves of Dexterity and +1 swords. Just because it is "common" from a PC's perspective doesn't mean it is actually common.

 

[scriven]

But wait! Nethack HAS magic item shops. And clearly that didn't kill the wonder for you.

QED.

Perhaps you missed some of my previous posts? It has been quite a long thread.

I don't object to magic shops like the ones in Nethack or Diablo. They limit you to the relative handful of items the shopkeeper has on hand. You can't choose an arbitrary item and expect him to have it.

 

[Geoff Watson]

From my recollection, the magic items that actually showed up in LotR (and The Hobbit):

Certainly magical:
The One Ring
The elven rings
The palantir
The nine rings for men (they only show up in context with the ringwraiths)
The seven dwarven rings (which don't actually show up in the stories, but are talked about, some of these have been destroyed by the time the events of the books take place).
The phial of Galadriel.
Sting
Orcrist
Glamdring

Probably magical:
Anduril

Possibly magical:
The elven cloaks
The barrow blades
The "gift" bow given to Legolas by the Galadhrim

Arguably magical (although in my opinion, calling these magical is dubious):
The font of Galadriel
Elven rope
Lembas
The horn of Gondor

Don't forget the magical toys that Bilbo gives the hobbit children at his party.
If kids have magic items, why wouldn't adults? They just weren't important to the story.

Geoff.

 

[MerricB]

Pedantic. While not called "Rule Zero", the basic concept was pretty clearly written into the 1e DMG.

Were we talking about Rule 0 not being in the 3.5e DMG?

Cheers!

 

[MerricB]

Artifacts most certainly WERE statted out in the 1st Edition DMG. We had several of them in our group.

Artifacts, whilst in the DMG, were not given all of their powers. They had several blank spaces that the DM could fill in from the tables provided, so the artifacts could vary from campaign to campaign.

Spell descriptions were written up in exact detail in the PHB.

Not entirely true. The DMG had additional notes on several spells, containing material needed to adjudicate the spells. However, I think they rarely came up in actual play.

There are alternate rules for environment in 3rd Edition if you want to use them. Frostburn, Stormwrack, and alternate effects for magic items and spells in supplements like Ghostwalk where brilliant energy weapons can harm ghosts and incorporeal creatures.

Not to mention the changes in magic in the planes - though to a much lesser extent than in AD&D. (You were mad to go onto the planes in AD&D after Manual of the Planes was released, one of the biggest mistakes of Grubb's writing. Funnily enough, his 3e version shows he learnt from his mistakes, and is one of the more praised of the 3e canon).

Cheers!

 

[FireLance]

I don't object to magic shops like the ones in Nethack or Diablo. They limit you to the relative handful of items the shopkeeper has on hand. You can't choose an arbitrary item and expect him to have it.

It doesn't necessarily have to be a single shopkeeper, or even a shopkeeper at all - there could be agents or brokers who specialize in obtaining rare items for the wealthy and powerful (such as mid-level adventurers), for example.

Based on your previous posts, your objections seem to run along the lines of:

1. The PCs should not be able to customize their magical gear.
My question is, why the arbitrary distinction between magical and non-magical gear? If you are prepared to allow the PCs to purchase full plate armor or a spyglass, why not low-level potions and scrolls, or +1 bracers or armor, or a +1 breastplate? I can understand limiting items on the basis of price, but that's what the rules on community gp limits do, anyway.

2. The PCs should not be able to buy certain magical items because certain items should be unique.
I can understand the sentiment although I wouldn't have a problem with the PCs buying unique items myself (unique works of art are regularly sold at auctions in the real world, after all). The question is where you draw the line. Perhaps there has only been one holy avenger in the history of the world, but what about a +1 longsword? Even if each individual +1 longsword in the world has a name and a history, if there are 100,000 of them, you should be able to find at least one owner who is willing to part with it for gold.

Finally, there's nothing to stop the DM from just making the item available. If he can put the exact magical item that the player wants in a pile of treasure, he can just as easily have the exact magical item that the player wants show up in the inventory of a dealer in rare and wondrous items.

 

[Emirikol]

Were there Magic Shops in Lord of the Rings? I know I've never seen them in Melnibone and the Conan stories...

Now the MYTH series...there was a series with magic item shops!

jh

 

[Michael Silverbane]

Were there Magic Shops in Lord of the Rings?

I'm not sure that I understand the relevance of this question...

Later
silver

 

[MerricB]

Can magic items be something other than predictable technology or not?

Here's an interesting question, and a lot of it boils down to definitions. In essence, any item that can be written down must be predictable to some extent, even if its "make a roll on this table and see what happens". An item that has the DM make up an effect each time it is used isn't predictable, but is a little too much trouble for most games.

Let's take as our poster child of predictable unpredictability the wand of wonder. From the DM's eyes, this is a fairly predictable item. Roll the dice, get one of these results. The result may be unpredictable, but the mechanism of working it is predictable.

From a novice player's eyes, this is an utterly strange and unpredictable item. It's a great example for keeping the DMG out of the hands of the players. To the experienced player (who still hasn't seen the DMG), it is still unpredictable in effect, but a lot more of a known quantity. To the really experienced player (who has read the DMG), it's the same as the DM: a predictable unpredictability.

However, a question that needs to be answered is this: will the item get used? A wand of wonder is very much an item that get used once or twice and then gets thrown away. It may be kept in the party longer if they're very low level (a wand of wonder is great for a 1st or 2nd level party), but at higher levels they have more reliable technology to use: either their spells, or more predictable magic items.

We've occasionally debated that legendary thing called a "sense of wonder". I'm going to call it the "cool factor", being the number of times a player says "cool!" in relation to an item:

* Upon first learning of the item, there's a "cool!" (assuming the item is, in fact, interesting. A +1 sword qualifies. Obviously, we've moved past that point for +1 swords...)
* Upon first using the item, there's a "cool!".
* Upon first using the item in a new way, there's a "cool!"

A +1 sword really only gets two "Cool!" marks. "You mean I can hit for +1 attack and damage?" "Wow, I just hit for +1 attack and damage!" Ditto for gauntlets of ogre power and the like.

Meanwhile, an item that allows you to slide a creature 5' in any direction scores much higher. Move a friend into flanking? Cool! Move a vampire into sunlight? Cool! Move a friend out of harm's way? Cool!

Within the constraints of a game like D&D, unpredictable magic - or magic with drawbacks - really won't get used much. If a combat lasts 5 rounds, why spend two of those rounds doing nothing but watching the flowers grow with a Wand of Wonder? Predictable magic trumps that, and that's why we see the Big 6 so much.

What I think is important is magic that allows exploration of its uses, which is much harder to create.

Cheers!

 

[MerricB]

Were there Magic Shops in Lord of the Rings? I know I've never seen them in Melnibone and the Conan stories...

Were there actual mundane shops in LotR? Taverns, yes. Shops? Not so sure. The story doesn't cover them, so we can't make an assessment of their existence.

There are certainly magic shops in the Vlad Taltos books of Stephen Brust.

(And yes, the Myth series definitely has magic shops).

Cheers!