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

[Thurbane]

IMC, magic item shops don't exist - the occasional hedge wizards may sell low value items like potions and scrolls, and some items do come up for sale from private sellers.

But the concept of walking into a shop to custom order a +1 Keen Flaming Holy Burst kukri does not exist...

 

[MerricB]

IMC, magic item shops don't exist - the occasional hedge wizards may sell low value items like potions and scrolls, and some items do come up for sale from private sellers.

IMC, magic item shops don't exist except in the biggest cities, and those are mainly have a limited supply of things, e.g. "wand of fireballs for those going into the Ruins of Castle Greyhawk!"

However, there exist crafters for hire, so PCs can get many items made for them.

But, for the most part, they don't bother. Oh, yes, you see people getting their weapons and armour upgraded (less once I introduced Weapons of Legacy), but mostly they're having too much fun adventuring to be spending lots of time poring over the books.

Cheers!

 

[Rolzup]

IMC, magic item shops don't exist - the occasional hedge wizards may sell low value items like potions and scrolls, and some items do come up for sale from private sellers.

But the concept of walking into a shop to custom order a +1 Keen Flaming Holy Burst kukri does not exist...

Nor does it, I think, in most games.

But if a Gurkha Paladin really wants such a weapon, he can obtain it...maybe by seeking out someone to forge the thing for him, or by travelling to the Celstial realms to negotiate directly with Schick, the Archangel of Sharp Things, or...whatever.

And if you want to play that out, great. At that level of play, I'm more than willing to abstract it down to "A month passes, you have your kukri, what's your next step?"

 

[Nathan P. Mahney]

In roughly 20 years of gaming, I have never played in a campaign where magic items were available to purchase. It was always rare for someone to sell one, either - we held onto those things for dear life! I think my 20th-level halfling thief has something like four +1 short swords.

The current campaign I'm DMing doesn't have magic shops - partly because it's D&D-as-post-apocalypse, and partly because I don't like the idea of my players being able to buy whatever they like. I prefer magic items (aside from scrolls, potions and wands) as relics of a bygone age which current wizards lack the power to recreate - doesn't really mesh with a system that has Item Creation Feats.

Still, I'm planning on having a 'magic shop' in my next campaign. It'll be more of a cluttered shop full of weird crap, kind of like the store from Gremlins, that will have weird curios and cursed monkey paws and the occasional real magic item.

 

[Celebrim]

But the concept of walking into a shop to custom order a +1 Keen Flaming Holy Burst kukri does not exist...

To a large extent, the idea of custom ordering a +1 keen flaming holy burst Kukri doesn't bother me. It's the idea that there is a +1 keen flaming holy burst Kukri gathering dust on a shelf somewhere waiting for the PC to come along and buy it that I find both unrealistic and unhelpful to the game.

If the PC's can find someone who is capable of manufacturing a +1 keen flaming holy burst kukri, then the PC's are free to try to talk this person into making them one. I've no problem with that. Of course, manufacturing a magic sword isn't exactly like manufacturing a masterwork since you are investing some essential quality of yourself (whatever XP represents) into the work, so its not like high level crafters are just going to be jumping at the chance to make and sell something to total strangers. I mean, when's the last time you saw a PC crafter make items and sell them to total strangers?

One of the worst problems created by the idea of magic shops is such shops would represent an unbelievable level of wealth concentrated in a small area. Anything less than a dungeon protecting such a place would invite robbery. Adopting a CRPG approach to the problem would create CRPG problems. If the merchants must protect thier wares, so that plundering the dungeon is more attractive than plundering the town, then they must present CR equivalent challenges to the would be robbers.

One of the DM's who taught me my trade said that his PC party ended up plundering the Keep on the Borderlands rather than the Caves of Chaos, because the treasure was much better there. If you'll look at the design of the Keep in B2, for example the Bank, you can see some of PC proofing going on but to make such PC proofing really effective it must itself become absurd. In order to make the town secure from the PC's, the NPC's in the town must be made far more dangerous than the monsters that supposedly threaten them, to the point that it becomes versimlitude destroying. You can actually see this going on in alot of CRPG's. I remember the first time I played Ultima IV, Quest of the Avatar, I thought it was ridiculous to think that the Land of Britania needed me to protect them from monsters, considering that any given town in it had enough level 12 gaurds to polish off most any dungeon in the game. If you are going to have magic shops, you have to deal with the fact that 'Magic McWallyWorld's' security implies the existance of more high level NPC's than the tables would suggest, and that a significant portion of the wealth of every town is spent on highly devious traps.

But if magic items are custom ordered, this is much less of a problem.

And as someone else pointed out, every town is supposed to have these fantastic magic items available for sell, but strangely not every town has NPC's capable of making these items. If magic items though are custom ordered, this isn't a problem, since magic items will be available for sell only in the sort of place where they can actually be made.

Why would the retired NPC adventurer sell the party their old boots of striding? Because he doesn't need 'em.

Presumably all retired NPC adventurers are childless, friendless, and never suspect - as I'm certain my PC's would - that adventure might one day find them again whether they want it or not?

I'm very skeptical of any justification that relies on large numbers of NPC PC classed individuals acting in ways that I know my own PC's and the characters of players I DM would in fact never act.

 

[darkseraphim]

I don't believe that magic shops wreck the spirit of D&D, because the spirit of the game has changed considerably over the decades. But I do believe that they wreck the spirit of heroic fantasy.

To me, they're indicative of the momentous swing of the pendulum away from the DM, and toward the players and their character aggrandizement. The game since the late 1990s has shown a marked preference away from storytelling, and toward wish fulfillment.

This isn't necessarily a bad thing, although personally I prefer my D&D to be heroic fantasy, not wish fulfillment. For the latter I tend to turn to videogames (WoW or whatever).

In a campaign world with commonplace magic, shops are a logical extension of the availability. In a dark or heroic world where magic is rare, they should not exist. Each transaction in such a world should be an adventure hook, and played out as a dangerous enterprise. Sometimes the players will get something better than they expected, but will find their item was stolen and the original owner has assassins looking for it. Or, the item will be a fake and they'll have a chance for revenge. Or, they'll find that the item has hidden properties that only respond to a certain class/alignment, and the former owner will suddenly want the item back. Or ... (etc.)

The current game focuses on stat building, min-maxing and player empowerment. There's nothing wrong with that, if the DM and the players are all happy with that. I play stat-building games all the time (one of my faves being X-Com). But that theme is markedly different from that in the stories I try to emulate when I run a game. It all depends on what the players want, and whether they want immediate gratification, delayed gratification or actual challenge to acquire their riches. C'est la vie.

 

[MerricB]

I mean, when's the last time you saw a PC crafter make items and sell them to total strangers?

That's a bad justification, because the crafting rules are set up specifically to *stop* PCs selling items. It costs 1000 GP + 80 XP to make a +1 sword, which you then sell for 1000 GP.

D&D is designed around a game economy that keeps the focus on the game on adventuring.

Cheers!

 

[FireLance]

Really, it all boils down to:

1. What do the players want?
2. What does the DM want?

Assuming a group in which the players have specific magic items in mind for their characters, and the DM is prepared to give it to them, exactly how the DM puts the magic items in the hands of the PCs can be altered to suit the DM's taste.

Magic item shops is one option.

Putting magic item X in the main treasure room of the next dungeon is another option.

Having the PC make Gather Information checks and discovering that an ex-adventurer is prepared to sell magic item X is a third.

Having a patron reward the PC with magic item X is a fourth.

Having the PC commission magic item X from a spellcaster is a fifth.

Having the PC belong to a wealthy organization (possibly supported by the local lord or king) that keeps him supplied with equipment appropriate to his level (including magic item X) is a sixth. (This is the "Q" option mentioned by Stalker0).

I tend to adopt the last in the games I run as it frees me up from having to place treasure in my games, or crack my brains trying to guess what the players want. I just tell the players that their PCs have a budget equal to the standard wealth for their level and to equip them accordingly. Generally, the only restriction is that no single magic item can be worth more than half their wealth.

 

[MerricB]

The current game focuses on stat building, min-maxing and player empowerment. There's nothing wrong with that, if the DM and the players are all happy with that. I play stat-building games all the time (one of my faves being X-Com). But that theme is markedly different from that in the stories I try to emulate when I run a game. It all depends on what the players want, and whether they want immediate gratification, delayed gratification or actual challenge to acquire their riches. C'est la vie.

Actually, the game focuses on...

in play: Adventure!
out of play: DMs creating adventures; players optimising their PCs.

3e deliberately sets it up so that more than just the DM is interested in the game outside of the play of the adventure.

Cheers!

 

[Celebrim]

In roughly 20 years of gaming, I have never played in a campaign where magic items were available to purchase. It was always rare for someone to sell one, either - we held onto those things for dear life! I think my 20th-level halfling thief has something like four +1 short swords.

I have the same experience, and the two ideas go together. If you take away the ready supply of commodity magic items, then magic items - even relatively trivial ones - become too precious to sell. Instead, you horde them, never knowing when you might need a backup because your main weapon has been sundered, or when you'll want to gift them to a favored retainer or ally, or when you might want to present them as a present to an important NPC whose favor you want to win. Because magic items are irreplacable, you'd never dream of selling one.

And this creates an very ready explanation for why those magic wal-marts don't exist. The NPCs act in the very same way. Those that can afford to gather magic items do so. Almost everyone who comes upon a magic item protects it as the most valuable possesion that they have, because it is.

No, sure, the occasional item might come on the market - stolen goods to hot to retain, an item discovered which the discoverer has no use for, the occasional item from someone who had to part with it, or who died without heirs - but these items are snatched up quickly by the power brokers, and unless the PC's are themselves power brokers with good contacts, they'd never be a part of this. A market in magic items would be much closer to a market for weapons technology and national security secrets than a corner store, and its operation would be invisible and inaccessible on average. And in a fantasy universe, the merchants themselves likely to be quite bizzarre, powerful, and secretive individuals (and likely nomadic). For one thing, they'd have to be just to stay alive.

The sort of magic which would be available would be the sort of magic which ordinary non-adventuring wizards could make at very low levels - potions and scrolls mainly - and the sort of mundane 'technology' which would not raise them up to the level of something worthy of notice. For example, in larger towns it would be possible IMC to find 'hedge wizards' selling things like Pitchers which cooled (or heated) beverages, combs which untangled hair, candles that lighted themselves on command, mirrors which made the viewer appear more attractive to themselves than they were, and other sorts of mundane items which required no powerful spells to create. If there was someone who could make swords +1 in the town, and if that person was willing to sell such a product for a living, then they'd almost certainly already have an exclusive contract with the local government and the PC's business would by no means be welcome or needed.