Does your campaign have magic shops?

[MonsterMash]

I don't have magic shops per se, but you might find a village herbalist that can sell healing potions, or an alchemist who can craft a range of potions, or an armourer who can make magic weapons and/or armour (IMC I have a master smith PrC which can craft magic weapons/armour, rather than just spellcasters). Generally prices are set higher due to scarcity.

 

[Al]

I have magic shops, and to those who claim that they are "a silly idea IMO" or "NEVER anywhere to go plunk down cash for items. Bleh." seem to be running campaigns along lines based on their particular mood rather than a rational analysis of in-world considerations. Having no magic shops, to my mind, is DM-metagaming and actually serves to decrease campaign verisimilitude, particularly in a high-magic world.

Even in canon, one can assume that one in four thorps has a wizard, one in two hamlets and three in four villages. One in four hamlets and one in two villages have a wizard of high enough level to generate two additional wizards. Each wizard can scribe scrolls, at a profit of 12.5gp per day, ensuring that if he can get a constant supply of xp (and it's not very hard to obtain that amount of xp i.e. 1 per scroll) he can be assumed to have a good living working just eight days a month. For a practical village wizard, it seems extraordinarily unlikely that he would reject this easy cushy life in place of some austere and non-rational notion that "magic isn't for sale". It is therefore a rational assumption that magical items can be traded for gold.

As for "magic shoppes", I'd argue that the net accumulation of permanent magical items does indeed create a substantial net amount of items. We shall assume a conservative global population of ten million, in an approximately 90% distribution for villages, hamlets and thorps. We will extrapolate that these are distributed in 42 ratio, entailing over three thousand villages worldwide, and distributing the rest of the population in a ratio such that four metropolises, ten large cities, twenty five small cities, fifty large towns and one hundred small towns exist worldwide, it can be concluded that on average there are approximately 1200 wizards in the world of 3rd level or higher. We can assume a similar number of sorcerors, twice as many clerics and one-and-a-half times as many druids.

There are thus some 6000 spellcasters in the world capable of crating permanent magical items. Assuming one-in-four have relevant item creation feats, and half are actively adventuring etc., we have 750 "creation-active" casters, and if we are to assume that they craft permanent magical item every six months (very conservative, especially given the nature of the items crafted) we can assume an entry into the market of 1500 permanent magical items per year. Since permanent magical items do not rust or fall apart, we will assume a very low depreciation ratio, and hence assume that half of all magical items *ever* created have been destroyed, and half are languishing in private collections and dungeons. Given a civilisation lifespan of 200 years, there are thus 75,000 permanent magical items in circulation.

I think that that qualifies as a market. I think that there would be magic shops. Sure, they are luxury items, much akin to expensive art galleries today. But to simply flatly say "no magic shops" seems to repudiate basic analysis.

 

[Felon]

Can't find a suitable reason why magic shops would be hard to find? Check out the DMG. Looking section on world-building, you can see that most towns have a very low cap on what a player can actually buy. Even a minor magic--worth, say, 1,000 gp--requires a pretty significant population center with lots of diversity in terms of affluence and character levels. Frankly, in a bustling city of 40,000 people, it starts to seem a little odd that there wouldn't be some practicioners of magic congregating there.

So, if you don't want players to have easy access to cool magic items, don't give them a big metropolis to run around in.

It's been said before and it should be said here: the "magica; Wal-Mart" notion is patently silly. That's just a DM catering to a player's desire to have instant gratification, and making things a bit easier on himself (few DM's seem to actually track the passage of days and weeks). Considering that most items cost more than a commoner can make in a hundred lifetimes, it's rather impractical for a mage to invest his own funds to craft a wand worth tens of thousands of gold pieces and then just sit it in a display case in the hopes that someone will walk in the door with a fortune burning a hole in their pocket. If an item has a high production cost, then for the most part the crafter's probably only doing commissioned work. That just makes sense.

OTOH, D&D worlds where DM's intentionally make magic items incredibly scarce usually sound cool on paper bur are pretty lame in execution. This game is set up so that magic items are a great equalizer. If the fighter can't expect to ever get his hands on a magic sword or gauntlets of strength, then he's going to take a back seat in combat to the druid that has the inherent ability to shapeshift into a grizzly bear with a 28 Strength. Worse still, he'll be pretty useless in a lot fights where only magic will affect the opponent. A magic-lite D&D campaign requires a lot of work to not be lame.

 

[Jürgen Hubert]

I think that a "magical Wal-Mart" is the wrong metaphor for magic shops; it might be a better idea to look at the modern-day arms trade for inspiration.

Getting the harmless and cheap stuff should be relatively easy, but the big stuff will be commissioned by governments and other large organizations, and if you want anything dangerous (items that have the potential to cause large-scale devastation, such as those that recreate area-effect combat spells, or those who make it easy to assassinate someone) and you aren't a government, you will have to deal with a large number of highly suspicious people who will milk you for what you are worth - and then try to backstab you if they think they can get away with it.

In summary: I think it is possible to buy powerful magic items - but the purchase will be an adventure in its own right, and the contacts and enemies the PCs have made through this purchase will last a sufficiently devious DM for a long, long time...

 

[diaglo]

In summary: I think it is possible to buy powerful magic items - but the purchase will be an adventure in its own right, and the contacts and enemies the PCs have made through this purchase will last a sufficiently devious DM for a long, long time...

ditto.

but no physical magic shops exist. just virtual ones.

the players say what they want for their PCs. i tell them to ask their contacts/friends/NPCs in character. and we go from there.

it may mean quests. it may mean exploration of tombs. it may mean gathering materials for a powerful caster to make the items. it may mean a lot of things.

 

[The_Gneech]

(detailed economics figuring snipped)

Yes, precisely. Fantasy requires the suspension of disbelief, but not the ejection of basic human behavior.

-The Gneech

 

[Roman]

For those who don't want to have magic shops at all, are they low magic worlds?

Yes, I would say so if by low magic you mean rare magic (which has nothing to do with how powerful magic that does exist is).

Or have you managed to find a reasonable explanation for why they don't exist?

I ask that honestly. I would love to play in a medium to high magic world that didn't have a magic shop... there are a lot of negatives to them IMO. But I've never come up with a suitable explanation of why they wouldn't exist. And yes, I know I could in theory rule 0 it, but I prefer to keep my campaign as believable as possible.

In that case, why not consider making magical items somehow emotionally important to their creators? The sacrifice of XP to create them could be interpreted as themselves pouring parts of their souls to empower the magic item in question. This makes the creators emotionally attached to their creations which means they would only be willing to give them away to those whose friendship/love/sacrifice or whatever would generate a suitably high emotional response in the maker to enable him to overcome the bond with his creations and even then he would be reluctant to give them away.

But there is more that could go against 'magic shops'. Most reasoning in favour of 'magic shops' is based on market economics. Now, I am sure some campaigns might run their economics this way but I have a newsflash - market economics are not the only economic system! If you wanted, in a high magic world, you could have all magic controlled by the state with compliance being monitored through magical means. Magical items loaned on missions could be required to have magical activation by state authorities... The possibilities are endless if you don't want magic shops in a high magic society. More traditionally, most campaigns tend to have a feudal socio-economic order. This again is not the same as market economics and much of the market logic does not apply here...

 

[Raven Crowking]

Not a chance. Characters can start with magic items (potions, scrolls, sunrods) from the PH, but these are considered to be heirlooms, or goods gained from their training. Spellcasters are fairly rare in my world, and because I only award 1/2 XP, making magic items is effectively twice as costly to the creator.

That said, there are places one can buy minor potions and scrolls "off the rack" as it were. In most cases, though, characters need to commission work from a craftsperson, create the item they want themselves, or seek it out.

IMHO, having to truly work for magic items helps to keep them wondrous. YMMV.

RC

 

[Desdichado]

For those who don't want to have magic shops at all, are they low magic worlds? Or have you managed to find a reasonable explanation for why they don't exist?

1. Yes, absolutely low magic. I've removed all D&D magic systems entirely and replaced it with incantations and Call of Cthulhu style magic.
2. Have you come up with a reasonable explanation for why they do? Is there really a market that justifies opening up a shop, for instance? Even big city (by D&D standards) only has a coupla dozen folks tops that would be in the customer base. Opening up a "magic item shoppe" is a DM/PC convenience that is hardly believable.

Now that's not the same as saying there's no market and no supply of magic items. But going to the "magic item shoppe" is hardly a reasonable economic model.

 

[Rel]

In the last big campaign I ran, there were no "Ye Olde Magic Shoppe" style stores sitting on the corner, even in major cities. But magic was available for purchase if you knew the right people.

In the early levels, this was severely restricted due to the rural geographic area that the PC's were in. The only access they had to magic items for purchase was from a Wizard/Peddlar who was visiting the area. His selection was narrow but he did have a few items for sale and was willing to make scrolls for the party.

As the campaign progressed, the party began to gain access to faster travel magic. First long distance flight (thanks to the Druid's Feathers spell) and then Teleportation. That brought about an era when they could go to a large city during their down time.

At that point I eased up a bit on what could be purchased. Essentially I indicated that a broker could find them what they wanted that was under around the 10,000 GP mark but it might take some time. Above that it was still very rare. This was a function of the extremely small number of high level NPC's in my campaign world.

If I had more high level NPC's floating around, I'd have eased these restrictions even further.