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Message: <blockquote data-quote="mmadsen" data-source="post: 67550" data-attributes="member: 1645">We bought magic items at the magic store too...in fourth grade.Anyway, I don't think anyone's making the case that no magic should be for sale at any price, just that finding what you're looking for isn't trivial (you can't just go online and search), and that a simple gold-piece cost doesn't reflect the "realistic" price for magic items.Perhaps we should look at how other commodities are bought and sold in a quasi-medieval economy, because they're not bought and sold like commodities in a modern economy.There are no banks.  There's no financing.  There's no stock market.  In fact, loaning money at interest is usury, a punishable crime (for Christians).  Thus, any big purchase (castle, ship, business, magic widget) is problematic.Goods come from a guild with local monopoly power enforced by the local ruler (for a fee).  You generally buy from someone you know personally, and "buying" often involves barter.  You can't hold onto great wealth without military power.  Great wealth means large amounts of land.  Communication is limited to whom you can meet face to face, although powerful nobles and merchants have literate scribes capable of reading and writing messages.In a system like this, how would you buy and trade the equivalent of a nuclear missile?  Or perhaps a nuclear missile crossed with a work of art -- since it requires rare skills and rare raw materials mixed into a (fairly) unique end product of great power.I'm not saying it can't be done, but you certainly don't walk into town with a few chests of gold and ask someone where you can buy a Wand of Fireballs.That's up to the DM, isn't it?  And isn't that just what we're trying to decide?  What the DM should allow?  What makes sense, what makes for a fun game, etc.?A modern, monetary, market economy is quite new.  There's a lot of infrastructure that goes into producing a market where all the rules from Econ 101 about a perfect market in equilibrium come into play.We can debate how free a market is when most craftsmen belong to guilds with monopoly power enforced by the local government (the nearby noble and his men).  At any rate, it's still not an efficient market, because communication and travel are so limited/expensive.Like pirates or conquistadors.  May I recommend <a href="http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0306806975/" target="_blank">The Discovery and Conquest of Mexico</a> by Bernal Diaz Del Castillo, a first-hand account of Cortes' campaign in Mexico, as a wonderful example for a D&D campaign?</blockquote>

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