Do *Players* like to buy magic items?

[Aaron L]

I love the idea of magic brokers. The idea that no one sells magic is ridiculous. I mean, adventurers find junk they don't want, and of course they realize it's worth something to someone else. I love looking for a broker and setting up deals as a player, and I love it as a DM. Just imagine RPing an auction of recently unearthed magic items!

Comissioning magic items is fun as long as it's in a big city were it's conceivable that there are wizards for hire. If there is a magic item that my character wants (either by name or just a flaming sword or something) then I want to be able to aquire it.

I hate the idea of common magic shops that sell things off the rack, however. It feels cheesy.

 

[PeterMikelsons]

For moderately powerful items, I like shopping for them. That way I can get the tools I need to survive in a hostile world and defeat the forces of evil (in other words, optimize my build). For minor items, like scrolls of cure light wounds, I just wish they would be there when I need them without boring players with the shopping. For detailed resource management like that I could just go balance my RL checkbook. For major items, shopping won't do. They should be won in memorable challenges, after having been used against me, and then either kept and used - possibly changing character concept to do so - or lost in a memorable way.

My last game session was mostly shopping/research. My bard has the best Diplomacy, so he got the job of trading our collection of strange magical loot for items party members wanted. I didn't even ask if there were shops with magic items, figuring that the mark up for buying and discount for selling would be too high. Mainly I tried to find individuals for straight swaps: my +1 Icy Great Axe for your +2 longsword. Gather Information helped. The DM kept it pretty abstract: "you find someone", "you don't find anyone", but that's his style. Often they wanted an extra fee, which seemed reasonable. It took about a half day of game time per item. As a bard, I made sure to ask about names and stories about all the items anyway. Since the DM struggles with names for cities and villains, let alone +2 swords, this was a bit mean of me , but he pulled through and it was fun for everyone. He even (I'm guessing) improvised that one of the items I asked about is intelligent, though whether that's a punishment for asking remains to be seen. So, yeah, as a player, I can enjoy buying items.

 

[blackshirt5]

I like the idea of a black market for more dangerous or contraband magic items and then a legitimate(but controlled) market for more street-legal stuff(like Rings of Protection and other knickknacks).

 

[Majere]

Definately, DEFINATELY YES !!!
For a number of reasons :

1) 3E is BALANCED about the buying and upgradin of equipment. Its in the rules for a reason, you are EXPECTED to melt down stuff you dont want/use for stuff you do want.
For those DM's who NEVER allow magic to be bought, what do the PC's do with their gold ?
If you are giving out the correct amount of wealth , and tailored items because the players cant upgrade/buy, what do they do with old items they sell and the cash that the generate via looting and adventuring ? Your players must have hundreds of thousands of gold sitting about doing nothing because there is nothing to buy.

2) To defeat the evil Longswordism. Longsword are veryvery boring, but something like 75% of all magical weapons are swords of some decription.
Noone will inverst feats in spiked chain, or mercurial longswords, or axes, if they expect that they are wasted because the DM will only give out swords. This detracts from the game IMHO. Anything that railroads players is bad, convincing players that to get good weapons they have to take sword feats is railroading.

3) Because its fun.
Nothing is more fun than achieving a goal, even if it is just saving up for that +3 flaming,acid,icy bow.

Im NOT saying there should be a Magik's R Us store. But all the items ALREADY have a rating of how common/uncommon they are. Currently our group is in a high magic game, and its been a whole lot of fun having to make the right contacts in the right city to get the items we want, or to have the items we want made.

Sure we cant get everything we want, but by making the right friends we can get some of the things we want. You can build whole sub plots out of small things like "getting a new spell book because this one is full", and this helps build up individuals as well as the whole group. My current PC has spent alot of time making friends in the local mage guild, in game terms I can pretty much buy scrolls and potions at will, but the roleplaying that went into getting into the guild was a whole lot of fun.

Just my 2c but I think that as long as you have sensible item availability (Eg 4 people want +3 cloaks of resistance, but your contact can only get one.. what will you do ? ) , letting players be able to build their character as an individual, and not as some level 8 fighter who fell out a mould, can only improve the game.

Majere

 

[Henry]

When I am a player, I enjoy it, for the same reason I like having the proper equipment for a job in real life. There's something that feels good about having the right tool for the job in your hand, versus having to make do with what you have.

I wouldn't mind commissioning more, but my DM's usually don't put a lot into magic item buying - 9 times out of 10, if you have the money, and the city is large enough, the item is yours.

 

[Remathilis]

I do like the idea of being able to buy some things useful to a PC, stuff like scrolls, potions, wands, +1/+2 items, etc. It does give the PC a chance to spend their gold, and get things they WANT! Not too many BBEG's carry around Holy Morningstars, but my cleric could go to his church and petition its creation. It also means you don't need your party Wiz/Clr to spend all his XP making you these common items constantly (you can supplement with some store bought or created items).

I also like the idea of the black market. YOINK.

As a DM, I try to give my PCs some options to dispose of unwanted magic and trade in/up for things they want. It makes for a happier PC and it means I can use more KEWL monsters against them.

 

[Beard in the Sky]

I’m glad you’ll let the players upgrade the items. Some DMs won’t even allow that.

I will, but it is expensive. If they have a +3 equiv. weapon, they have to pay dearly (as per the DMG) to have it upgraded. I agree with you though that there has to be some way to use unusual weapons without having ridiculous coincidences all the time. To me, allowing for upgrading is common sense.

 

[Mallus]

When I am a player, I enjoy it, for the same reason I like having the proper equipment for a job in real life. There's something that feels good about having the right tool for the job in your hand, versus having to make do with what you have.

But what about the joy of improvising; the pleasure of using the fairly-wrong tool for the job in a clever fashion becuase that's the only tool you've got?

Don't me wrong, as a player I enjoy a good shopping expedition as much as the next PC. But I can't help but remember how entertaining it was playing in older campaigns where magic wasn't rare per se, just less ummm, commercial. I had a lot of fun trying to turn the tide in combat with a Decanter of Endless Water or an Eversmoking Bottle. In a sense, I think being able to purchase what you believe to be your optimal magic-item loadout cheats you out of some of the fun of playing.

Besides, magic ought to be a little cantakerous, tricky, and spiteful. Never exactly what you need but always what you cannot do without.

 

[kigmatzomat]

I really prefer to have the option of buying magic items. The system already has an inherent "lose 50% if you sell loot" factored in to provide an incentive to stay with found toys so there's not much reason to double ding me by making it even more of a pain.

If the plot has a reasonable time limit and character motivation, I'm willing to forgoe waiting commission items; life gets in the way sometimes. But after a while the characters will end up with downtime where they can. Rather, they *should* end up with enough time to expend on acquiring/commissioning items; some GMs don't seem to make that leap.

Re-reading Feist's "Riftwar Saga" reminds me of good game pacing. The books read as if the action is wham-bam-boom! but if you actually notice the timelines, there are months and years of "downtime" that are handled in two or three pages. RPGs should be like that; a reasonable summation of downtime with the focus being on relevant actions.

But I diverge from the topic.

Yes, I do like to buy items.

 

[malichai]

I like it. More than that, what I really like is commissioning custom magic items/weapons. It adds another level of accomplishment to the game for me. Turning gold or a magic item(s) I wasn't going to use anyway into something I really want. Bam, I feel like I just achieved a goal, sweet.