Raven Crowking said:
You are conflating editions here, I think. Weapon vs. armor type was dropped in 2e, wasn't it?
It was present in 2e, but listed as an optional rule (that in my experience, was never, ever used).
Now, as for magic shops, it did seem awfully artificial that never under any circumstances would magic items be bought or sold. The 2nd Edition book DM's Option: High Level Campaigns was particularly condescending about it (in a book with otherwise good ideas), and even had a silly picture of a wizard shopping at a Wal-Mart like store for magic items with bargain bins of wands to show how magic shops are inherently ridiculous and against the core ideas of D&D.
I remember playing in a Planescape campaign where it really rang hollow. The DM took that advice to heart about never having NPCs sell magic items, in the highest magic D&D setting out there. Most monsters require magic weapons to hit, major parts of the campaign setting are devoted to cross-planar trading, and the campaign is built around a city where beings from across the multiverse come to conduct business, but nobody was willing to buy or sell magic items, because they are too precious to ever sell at any price.
However, why would a magic item shop automatically be like a late 20th or 21st century discount superstore? Even something cheap like a potion of Cure Light Wounds costs far more than the typical peasant can afford, much less the thousands of GP required for even a +1 weapon. Wal-Mart wouldn't look like Wal-Mart if even the most basic merchandise cost at least $500, and they stocked a few $500,000 items in the store that were small enough to walk away with. I always envisioned magic items shops as being one of several things, all of which being reasonable outgrowths of the culture and power level of a typical D&D world:
1. Kind of like a cross between a jewelry store and a gun store (stores selling expensive and dangerous items). Well protected glass cases protecting most items, display racks on the wall for the big things, very loyal guards keeping an eye on everything, probably numerous warding spells on the entire place to discourage theft and magical tampering. Every item Identified by the store and its magical potency and function vouched for in a statement sworn on serious legal penalty. A very heavy chest for all the money that changes hands, in a well fortified back room. The entire place in one of the best neighborhoods in town, with plenty of city guards around.
2. An auction house. A highly respected merchant company takes magic items to sell on consignment, and has a periodic auction. The items are identified and legally vouched for in identity and kept under the tightest security. The auction would attract interesting and wealthy people from all around: adventurers of all types, wealthy nobles, military leaders, powerful wizards and clerics, maybe a few intelligent monsters (depending on the local laws allowing them into town). Very hefty security discourages anybody from getting violent though.
3. A brokerage. They don't deal directly with the magic items, but they have ways of contacting many wizards and clerics (and other adventurers) who are interested in magic item creation or trading, and what they are looking for, have, or capiable of making. You go to the brokerage, pay a fee to become a client, then pay another fee to make a search of the records for suchandsuch item. They look for the nearest person who has such an item they are willing to sell or make, and contact them for you. If they are still willing to provide the item, they put you in touch directly with them to conduct the trade.
