Thought I'd toss in some thoughts on this subject. Although I'm one of Piratecat's players, I think I can keep my opinions unbiased.
Regarding the "economic" issues of magic items creation and sales: Piratecat's world is one of widely varying economic strata. We come from relatively small kingdom, where magic items aren't readily for sale. (No demand means no incentive to supply). But in our travels we have found places in the world with increasingly large economies, and increasingly large demand for magic items. Far to the east of our "starting point" we travelled to a city called Oursk, bigger by far than any place we had seen in our own lands. As a consequence, it has a larger population of high-level characters, all of whom wouldn't mind owning/buying/stealing/creating magic items. Other adventurers, high-level politicians and noble-persons, members of secret societies, wizards in their guilds, army commanders -- the demand for magic items is higher, and so is the supply. There is more money in those places as well, so if the head of the thieves' guild wants to secretly commission half a dozen Amulets of Nondetection or something, he can afford to pay the price. More recently the party has reached Sigil, and of course Eversink, a nest of powerful and unsavory types, many of who have come to own magic items and are always looking for more. (Even if it means taking them from us!)
Regarding the number of magic items in the world: unless there's some strong force at work that destroys items, there's a good reason that there are lots of magic items lying around. With the exception of Potions, Scrolls, and charged items, a magic item will usually (not always, but usually) be around forever. Some wizard 600 years ago made himself an Amulet of Health +2, went out adventuring, got killed by an owlbear, and 600 years later it's made its way into a dragon's hoard. Or into the hands of an evil mercenary captain. Or whomever. Sure, some magic items are destroyed in combats, but most non-pershable magic items ever made are still around
somewhere. That's a lot of items! That a limited market has emerged for these items does not seem to be a stretch for me. No, I don't envision a chain of Ye Olde Arcane Item Shoppes on every street corner. But maybe there's a rich retired adventurer who just died, and his widow would rather have a new mansion and servants than Dimensional Shackles and a +3 bastard sword. Or a Wizard's Guild requires its members to create three magic items a year, which are sold to raise money to research new spells and buy fine wine for the guild cellars. Or a storeowner in Sigil or some other large city has a stock of a couple dozen miscellaneous items, which he sells out of the back room of his alchemy and spell component shop. Or the temple to which your adventuring cleric often makes donations is willing to have a 6th-level priest there make you some small-to-mid-power item to order, in return for all of your tithes. Or the the local church of some good deity will make you a longsword +2, if you give them the Mace of Nasty Evil +3 you took from a recent villain, so that they can destroy it properly. In a large universe with large cities, I could imagine dozens of places an adventurer could go to acquire magic items, some of them to order, and some on a take-what's-available basis.
Sigil is an interesting case -- it's a city connected to an infinite numer of primes. You'd have thousands of adventurers arriving, wanting to buy or place orders for magic items. As PC has said, we can usually find what we're looking for in Sigil, or have it made for us, but the waiting period can be months long or longer, since 28 other adventurers showed up first all wanting a
Ring of Freedom of Movement.
Anyway, I could easily imagine a cash- and magic-poor world where there just isn't the demand for items. But in PC's world, it makes sense. For the record, I recently compiled a long "shopping list" of items that I thought would be of benefit for our upcoming descent into the underdark to stop any army of improved ghouls. I sent it to PC, but not as a "list of things we're going to go buy," obviously. It was a list of "things we're going to go see if we can find someone selling, or someone willing to make." While I don't know what PC will do with that list, it wouldn't surprise me if he came back with something like:
"These three items you find for sale. These other four items could be made for you, but will cost you X gold pieces and Y weeks. These two items aren't for sale, but you find some similar items for sale if you want to buy them. An NPC has this item you want, and will trade it for [some exotic item or monster part]. These three items are rumored to be in a Cryohydra's lair 130 miles west of [some city.] This item is the offered reward for anyone who brings in the head of the local crime boss in [some city]. And these other 17 items... no dice. You'll have to make them yourself."
Not that I'm one to tell PC how to run his game... he may very well have -- ok, probably does have -- all sorts of other nefarious ideas in mind. In fact, there happens to be this *other* convenient military campaign vs. undead going on now, which may dampen the local availability of anti-undead items.
On making items ourselves: I'm of the opinion that few additional restrictions should be placed on the creation of Magic Items. It already costs days or weeks of time, experience points, piles of cash, and (most importantly, lest people forget), at least one FEAT. I know this will sound flip, but imagine if a fighter had to go on a quest for every month they wanted to use two-weapon fighting, or great cleave. I like the idea of cool quests as much as anyone, but there are all sorts of good reasons a DM can come up with to send adventurers on quests, without requiring extra ones in order to make use of an ability that already comes with a cost. Sure, if a wizard wants to make something extraordinary, like a Helm of Brilliance or a Staff of Power or a Ring of Elemental Control, then sure, include a quest for ingredients/formulae/whatever. But if I just want to use my Item Creation feat (along with most of my treasure share from the last adventure, along with hundreds of XP) to make a Belt of Giant Strength +4 or a Wand of Fireballs, I don't think there necessarily *should* be a large additional onus. It's the DM's job to regulate the amount of money the PC's acquire, and the amount of free time they have, if they want tight controls on the proliferation of magic items.
As for "coolness" and "unique flavor," that's still a fine thing to strive for. If your PC's want to make items, encourage them give you a full description, of the color, materials, special affects and name. So instead of a simple Amulet of Health, they have Treandle's Jewel of Vigor, an emerald that glows softly and pulses with living energy.
Also, remember that the game balance of 3E
assumes that these feats will be selected and used. There's nothing inherently wrong about restricting the creation or discovery of magic items in any way you want; just remember that if you add additional obstacles, you should lower your campaign difficulty accordingly.
Lastly, I'm of the personal opinion that if you're going to have grand adventures resulting in piles of gold coins and gems and priceless objects d' art, the PC's should have something fun to spend that money on. There's only so long one can bathe in loot, fun though that is. Eventually you want to turn it into tools to better let you go kick more evil butt.
-Sagiro
I would assume that throwing around large sums of money in Sigil can produce many unwanted consequences...
