Do you allow magic to be purchased in your 1E AD&D games?

[tx7321]

I allow players to buy potions only (and usually just the weakest) when available. I pretty much limit it to heal unless the PCs have big bucks to blow and are in a big city. I make potions expensive (heal around 3-500 GPs) and allow only a few for sale.

 

[Rhun]

Minor items, yes. Potions, +1 weapons, that sort of thing.

 

[Crothian]

Ya, but it was a craps shoot on what they would find. Kind of like now.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

On the whole, nope. I did have this antique shop in one campaign that claimed to carry items of magic and renown, but most of it was overpriced junk.

 

[Philotomy Jurament]

Minor items, yes. Potions, +1 weapons, that sort of thing.

Same, here. Even that was rare.

 

[JRRNeiklot]

Potions, low level scrolls, the occasional odd item. No magic shops, though. Pretty much the same way I run 3e games.

 

[cildarith]

No.

 

[T. Foster]

Very few, always judged on a case-by-case basis and roleplayed out. If there's an alchemist in town he might have a few potions for sale, high level NPC magic-users and clerics likely have a few potions and/or scrolls, a high level fighter might have some low-end magic weapons or armor, etc. But the players can never assume that magic items are available at fixed prices in unlimited quantities the way I generally allow them to do with non-magical gear -- if a player has the money and wants to buy 200 arrows or 30 flasks of oil or a dozen longswords he can do it automatically (cross of the money, write the items on the equipment list) but this doesn't apply even to the least of magic items. No one in my games can ever automatically say "I've got 3000 g.p., I'm gonna buy 6 potions of healing" or "I've got 3000 g.p., I'm gonna buy 20 +1 arrows."

 

[Ed_Laprade]

Sure. I never could accept the 'no buying or selling magic items' rule in 1e. Not that there were actual magic shops. You had to ask, and there was no guarantee that a shop would have what you wanted, or anything magical at all. (But they might have something magical that they weren't even aware of.) And temples were happy to sell healing potions and scrolls.

 

[Mark Hope]

Almost never. I said to the players "How often do you sell magic items that you find? That's how often you'll find them for sale." And to find items, the PCs had to hunt high and low for places that hadn't already been looted. My 1e and 2e games were somewhat magic-rare (although when found, magic tended to be pretty potent).

I did have a large magocracy that would sell scrolls (at an exorbitant price, from a restricted list and with a loong bureaucratic waiting list) and a few temples that would make potions or other minor services available. But as for more potent, permanent items, I am almost tempted to say never - can't remember a single instance off-hand (although there may well have been one).

I eased this restriction a little for Dark Sun games and allowed PCs to buy low-power single-shot items from elven traders, as this fitted the setting (and as temples, alchemists, mages and other usual points of access generally don't exist in DS games). I've kept this approach for 3e DS games as well. (My 3e homebrew, by comparison, is a barbarian game, so the PCs don't even have any money, let alone somewhere to spend it... )