How do you buy and sell magic items?

[mmadsen]

In your campaign, can a player simply subtract 50,000 gp from his character sheet and add "+5 longsword" to his equipment list? Is it assumed that you can sell any magic item for half its DMG-specified market value, and that you can buy any magic item for "full" price (in a large enough city)? Does everyone know and accept the official market value for any particular item?

Is there a well-stocked magic shop in most towns? Or is there an implicit magic shop: the characters can always find a buyer or seller for whatever they want to sell or buy?

 

[mmadsen]

In Players Whining that they Should be able to Buy Magic Items, I described some of the difficulties in buying and selling magic items:

There are plenty of persuasive reasons for why you wouldn't have a magic shop -- and especially why you wouldn't have one conveniently nearby, that you could easily locate, that had what you were looking to buy sitting on a shelf.

Buying a powerful magic item is a bit like buying a man-portable F-22 built by da Vinci. It's a tremendously concentrated store of wealth (i.e., it's easy to steal), it's a potent weapon (i.e., the state expects to control it), very few people can create anything like it (there's no mass production), and very few people can legitimately afford to buy it (and know how to use it).​

Kast expanded on those ideas:

Permanent magic items (and to a lesser extent the charged ones as well) essentially have the same sort of market as art and antiques.

1) Unpredictable Supply and Demand
2) Low real utility
3) High inventory costs
4) High overhead for security, procurement and transportation of goods.

In addition they have the problem that dangerous magical items (and maybe even weapons in general) are most likely a controlled product with stiff local regulations on their sale and possession. To ensure security, the shop owner wouls probably have to pay the local crime syndicate protection monies further raising the prices and limiting market access.

Furthermore, items available for sale would vary wildy in price and certainly would not have a modern day walmart style pricing = intrinsic product value + x% margin markup (as they are presented in the DMG). There's no real way to judge the value of an item except through expectations on it's utility, which vary from individual to individual. In addition, many magic items might be bought by rich collectors who have no intention of using them and could afford t pay much higher prices than a PC, essentially removing many exisiting items from the market.

The creators of these items, wizards and clerics, certainly would not create expensive items for anonymous sale. The opportunity costs are too high. They would only do so on special request, with all of the costs (or maybe the whole price) payed up front. Local conditions such as gov't regulation and organized crime might even prevent them from selling direct to the public at all.

The kinds of entities that could actually afford to run a magic shop would have to have enormous resources and political clout to do so. This combined with the special treatment they receive by paying off the local mafia would mean a single entity would have a near monopoly on the market share. I could see maybe only one of these kinds of shops in a whole kingdom, certainly only one per large city or metropolis.​

 

[MerakSpielman]

I loathe "magic shops" as a concept, but yes, my characters can purchase whatever they can afford straight out the the DMG, presuming the town is large enough to have the item in question within their wealth limit.

I'm presuming there is a market for such items. Anything that can be created for a paticular cost becomes a commodity and has a purchase price. If you're in the market for a +5 longsword, you ask shopkeepers and weaponsmiths, they point you to a local agent who has connections with the people who craft or collect such items, and you make the purchase.

I would very much doubt that more than one or two items are ever kept in the same place, eliminating the absurdity of the "magic shop."

 

[Felonious Ntent]

Yes to a point.
DM usualy sets a price max for availablability.
IE in this town you can get any item 5000 gp and less from DMG with his aproval as final step.
We then give him list of what we want he then decides if he is ahppy with us getting those items if everything is good yes it is an errase gp add item. But if he doesn't want item in game at this time he vetos it stating not available, or more often it will take x amount of time to get that item.

Edited to add:
This ahs been the way we have played since AD&D 1st edition.

 

[francisca]

In your campaign, can a player simply subtract 50,000 gp from his character sheet and add "+5 longsword" to his equipment list? Is it assumed that you can sell any magic item for half its DMG-specified market value, and that you can buy any magic item for "full" price (in a large enough city)? Does everyone know and accept the official market value for any particular item?

Is their a well-stocked magic shop in most towns? Or is there an implicit magic shop: the characters can always find a buyer or seller for whatever they want to sell or buy?

This is a germain point, and perhaps *the* point in some cases, when it comes to setting the tone for magic in your game, and one that some of the other threads active right now may be missing.

In my homebrew, there were no magic shops. Apocathery shops, where common spell components could be found, but there were certainly no "Fineous' Magic Armor Emporiums". Some potions, scrolls, and minor misc magic items could be had by finding the right contact, or via tomb raiding, but you were'nt going to post something in the townsquare that said: "WTB: Mithril FullPlate, +3".

There existed a black market, where such items could be found, at incredibly inflated prices (compared to the DMG). Often, the high powered magic items, such as a holy avenger, were plot devices in and of themselves, being crucial to defeating an enemy, and required a quest to gain. In other cases, an expedition to find rare ingredients, say Troll's Blood, would be undertaken on behalf of a high level NPC, with the ingredient being used in the manufacture of some high-end item by a secret society.

So, no. In my homebrew, I did not accept the DMG pricelist. But, that was just my particular campaign. And here is the key: The players knew it before we genned characters. There is nothing wrong with playing it per the book, and having shops, etc.., as long as everyone is on the same page when the campaign starts. You only have trouble when expectations around the table are not in sync.

 

[Vchan]

I'm still in the babysteps of building my world, so this is a bit sketchy...

Magic is available for sale in 2 places. From some guy in a ratty cloak on the street corner, one eye open for the guard, and from the Guild/University.

In the main city of the realm, there is the centre of learning simply called the University. Magic isnt the only thing taught there, but its the largest congregation of mages known, and one of the few places magic is taught in a classroom setting.

Once a month, the University holds a 'faire' at the front gates. Low level magic items, scrolls, potions, arms, armor, wands and the VERY occasional ring, staff, or rod are for sale. All the work of students. The prices are all DMG standard.

Anything truly odd, powerful, or just plain weird has to be commissioned. For that the players can either find a mage not associated with the school, or one of the teachers or senior students. But in the case of anything comissioned, the price will rarely be in anything as simple as gold or gems.

From components to continue their experiments to a live beholder for their menagerie... it all depends on what they want.

 

[mmadsen]

Does you game world have a modern, monetary, free-market economy? Is someone enforcing the Rule of Law strongly enough that you can offer up 50,000 gold pieces for a +5 sword and expect the trade to go through? Or do you have to enforce the contract yourself (as on a black market)?

Fusangite had a few good points to make in Players Whining that they Should be able to Buy Magic Items:

Unless you're playing D&D in some kind of weird Eberron, Faerun or Planescape kind of world where everybody is a modern liberal democrat and magic oozes out of everybody's pores, I'm guessing that the campaign world is the good old fashioned pseudo-medieval D&D world. If that's the case, the most important thing to realize is that in the pre-modern world, there aren't shops in the modern sense of the idea; anything expensive or worthwhile was commissioned. It wasn't part of the inventory. In a medieval-style city, you have skilled tradespeople who make things; they might have one or two display items in their shop or booth to show the quality of their workmanship but generally, there will be no inventory to speak of. Any item of quality will have to be commissioned.

And even if you somehow live in a world where there are modern-style stores with inventories, how many of them are going to have an inventory exceeding 1000gp? Very few if their owners have any economic sense at all. Who is going to use up xp to create items that sit on a shelf, depriving their creator of xp he could be using to level or brew potions or whatever? Who, furthermore, is going to run a shop with thousands or tens of thousands of gp worth of stuff that could be stolen? Nobody with an Int or Wis high enough to create the stuff! Any rational actor would wait to make a magic item until such time as there was a potential buyer for it.​

More:

In my model, there is no presumption that:
(a) the characters have access to an NPC who can make the item
(b) the characters are deemed worthy by the NPC to have the item made for them
(c) the NPC is inclined at the time the characters want the item to part with the xp necessary to create it

Let me express what I mean in terms of silk:
(a.i) the characters might not be in a place that is receiving silk imports
(a.ii) there might not be anyone in the characters' region capable of actually working with silk
(b.i) the characters might find a merchant with silk who is saving up his limited supply for when a noblewoman or someone else capable of showing off his product in the right circles feels inclined to purchase it
(b.ii) the characters might find a merchant who is a member of a guild that only allows the sale of aristocratic clothes to aristocrats and deems it unlawful to sell aristocratic clothes to people of no rank
(c) the tailor might be keeping this bolt of silk on display in his booth in order to attract future customers; he might therefore decide that he will become just another tailor of he gives up his one bolt of silk and becomes just like all the other tailors in town

So, the fact that there exists a silk market in the world does not automatically mean that the PCs can go out and buy themselves silk outfits.

The ability of characters to purchase magic items is conditioned by at least three factors:
(a) the existence of the item
(b) the availability of the item
(c) the values of the individual capable of obtaining the item for the characters

Or better still, how about children? Children are much more abundant than silk. The fact that it is undeniably true that people are selling children in this world does not make it true that the purchase of children is an opportunity available to everyone.​

 

[MerakSpielman]

D&D worlds are much simpler than the real world. They do not operate by the rules of supply and demand. Prices are set in stone and stay that way, barring DM intervention. The price for a gem for a raise dead spell is always 5000gp, for example, regardless of the availability of diamonds or the availability of clerics to cast the spell.

Likewise, massive inflation fails to occur in the small town when the local adventurers uncover a trove of thousands of gold pieces and spend it all in one night of revelry. The next day, everything is still the same price.

Unless you want a real headache, that is, then you can do what you want.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

Mmadsen, why'd you start this thread if you're just going to re-post other people's responses from the original thread?

 

[mmadsen]

Mmadsen, why'd you start this thread if you're just going to re-post other people's responses from the original thread?

The question is, How do you buy and sell magic items [in you campaign world]. The cited passages raise interesting obstacles to such trade -- obstacles that may or may not exist in your campaign world (but that you might want to start including or explaining away).