How do you buy and sell magic items?

[VirgilCaine]

IMC, if you want to buy a magic item, talk to the Guild. They might have what you are looking for on hand. If the spell is over 3rd level, it will not cost you money, it will cost you favors, gems, artwork, spell components, magic items, or service.

 

[fusangite]

Perhaps to the surprise of people on the other thread, there has been magic item purchase in all but one of my recent campaigns. However, this purchase is typically mediated through monopolies. Because wizards in my worlds, when they show up, tend to be organized into colleges or guilds and clerics are naturally organized into churches, obtaining magic items through any means other than plunder/salvage entails gaining the favour of one of these organizations and persuading its leaders that the party is on their side.

In my worlds, organizations with the capacity to produce magic items tend only to sell to their members or close allies.

 

[Geoff Watson]

I let the PCs buy magic items without too much trouble.

What's the point of running a solo adventure about a shopping trip while the other players are waiting bored?

The PCs are assumed to go through brokers and the like, and the have to be a big town for the not-really-cheap stuff, but we don't play it out.

Geoff.

 

[Afrodyte]

This is an interesting topic, and one that I am probably going to use the next time I GM.

From reading this thread, I think what I'll do is determine the type of magic items are available in a given area (not something generic like minor/medium/major/artifact, but the specific things somebody is likely to find depends upon where the PCs are. For instance, in an elven community, there won't be much in the way of +3 greatswords. You may, however, find cloaks of elvenkind and boots of elvenkind aplenty, and you'll more likely find mirthral armor and weapons there than in any non-elven area.

 

[Buttercup]

How I handle magic item commerce depends on the campaign. Generally though, even when I'm at my most generous, players will find for sale only a few things. Naturally I try not to be too mean, so if I have a fighter who uses longswords and daggers, I resist the temptation to have him run across nothing but magic axes. But this fighter may have to look for quite some time in game to find just that special sword. It's more likely that I'll plant an appropriate weapon as treasure than that one will turn up for sale. Also, I tend to be fairly stingy with magic items, so it's not like the PCs ever have bunches of them to sell. Maybe a small thing here and there.

About the only magic items that are freely available in my campaigns are low level potions and scrolls.

 

[Olgar Shiverstone]

IMC, selling is easy -- if the gold piece value of the item is less than the max item limit for a location, I allow them to sell it at 50% without wasting any game time (though I impose a time limit to find a buyer, which can cause campaign delays. They can lower the time limit by selling for less).

Buying is hard. A few individuals might part with a few specialized items -- the alchemist will have a few minor potions, the mage or seer might have a scroll. Otherwise, they need to find a capable spellcaster, and commission them to create an item --which will cost more and take longer than it says in the book, provided they find someone even capable of it.

If they want to create their own items, o even add capabilities to items they own, as long as they have the proper feats, time & cost are as per the core rules.

 

[ashockney]

We've played both sides of this fence. We played completely open book for one campaign. You could buy and sell anything in the book. (1/2 price to sell)

In our current campaign, we have restricted sold items, using many of the recommendations provided on this thread earlier. We've found the good spot to be right around 25k to 50k max value, depending on the size of the city, their access to magic items, and the DM's discretion.

 

[Herpes Cineplex]

It varies, obviously, depending on the setting and the style of game we're going for, but most of the time we gravitate to the same system:

Cheap, commonly-used items like potions of cure light wounds are not particularly difficult to find. A decent-sized town might have anywhere from 3 to 10 of them available every week, for example, generally through a local temple or alchemist or other "adventurer-friendly" shop.

More expensive or stranger items are always bought on commission: there are no magic shops with items on the shelves waiting for purchase. Sometimes the commission process is streamlined, as in the player asks the GM if he can find someone to make, say, a wand of cure moderate wounds, and the GM replies, "Yes, and it can be ready in X days for Y price."...where Y is usually a little above market value, depending on how urgent the commission is, how big the town is, how stingy the GM is feeling, and so on.

Sometimes the commission is something that actually gets played out, if the search for someone to build an item is somehow interesting in and of itself, or if it dovetails nicely with something else that's interesting in the game. But if it's just a straightforward "I give you money, you build me an item" exchange with no complications, we don't waste a lot of time on it.


Selling items is generally handled off-camera, along with the selling of other loot, just because no one in our gaming group is all that interested in obsessing over the mercantile side of adventuring. We list off what we want to sell and what the market value is, and the GM occasionally adjusts the actual sale price of a particular item up or down (usually down). The GM also says about how long and how much effort it takes to sell everything, and summarizes the result ("So after four days, you've managed to sell off all the treasure you wanted to..."). It takes maybe ten minutes of game time at the absolute most to square that away, and then we're back to the fun part of the game.

We also completely ignore the "magic items can be sold for half of their market value" rule, because it's obnoxious and doesn't make much sense in the settings we usually play in. I mean, if the market value is not in fact what the item is worth on the market, then what is it supposed to be? And why would a magic item depreciate in value, when many of them are much more durable than common items, much more rare and valuable, and possibly antiques on top of that? And why is it that PCs can never find someone who's trying to unload a magic item at half price? And if there are no magic item retailers who need to keep stock on their shelves, who exactly is getting to buy these items at wholesale prices?


Finally, PCs with item creation feats often take money from other PCs to craft particular items; usually the total price they charge is less than what the NPC crafters are asking, but still high enough that they can turn a useful profit for their time and XP expenditure. PCs crafting items for NPCs happens, too; generally when the PC needs cash to pay for other items or spells and is willing to trade a little time and XP to get it.

--
wizards, in particular, can make good use of crafting profits to re-stock their spellbooks
ryan

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

I figure, in any world where there are a reasonable amount of magic items, you'll have trade in them.

I don't think magic shops are likely except in the planar metropoli. However, I think a brokerage system is quite likely.

Let's say I'm a wizard, and I have some Crafting feats. Do I take the time to sell my items in a storefront? No; not only do I have better things to do (drinking, wenching, summoning foul powers from the Abyss and having them do my laundry, etc.), but I don't have the skillset for it. Same for the adventurers who found the Lost Kingdom's cache of Quaal's Feather Tokens; they don't need most of them, so they're not treasure until they can be turned into something negotiable, like cash, letters of credit, etc. Sure, the party bard (if there's one) can find people to buy them, but that takes time that could best be used wenching, drinking, and running out on bar tabs.

So, we have a middleman. A neutral third party who's more than happy to take orders and find buyers for a commission. No storefront, no stockpile of +2 Silver Longswords...just information, in his head, of who has what and who might want such.

In game terms, this would require a Gather Information check to find the guy (or girl). It shouldn't be too hard, though; maybe scale based on the size of the settlement, and if you fail, you don't find the guy. If you fail too much, you find someone else...which may result in more XP and items as a result, but not a guy who can find you items you might want, or find somebody to buy your items.

____________


Now, in the Planescape game I'm in, there are, of course, magic stores. You can find most anything 50k or less if you look long enough. Anything more expensive is unlikely to be found in a shop, and will probably have to be commissioned.

My character's fixing to commission a heirloom sort of sword, which'll cost *at least* 230k gp. The problem's going to be finding somebody who can make it for him, and in a timespan that will allow me to get it sometime before the last session. Oy.

Brad

 

[MoogleEmpMog]

Previously, I've run campaigns where magic items were generally available for sale in major cities, ala the Realms or Eberron.

In my current campaign, anyone found knowingly selling an actual enchanted item, even something as innocuous as a wand of mage hand, would be burned at the stake. Of course, no one who had a wand of mage hand would part with it, because magic items, like all black sorcery wrenched like some newborn blasphemy from the vastness of the outer dark, exert an eldritch compulsion on those who seek to use them...