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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Jdvn1" data-source="post: 5170860" data-attributes="member: 26424">Certainly, heroes and villains work very differently. But also, none of the sorts of organizations you mention are parties of 5. The ability to buy in bulk makes a big difference. Also, many of those organizations are notorious for stealing their supplies (also in bulk). Most heroes aren't going to do that.When taking cost into account you have to consider the xp cost as well. Especially considering that a magic item creator in 3.x reduces his ability to create with each created item. Creating in bulk is indeed either impossible or near-impossible. Either way, it's certainly impractical.And, of course I'm considering the possibility of trade. But, trading something essentially works the same way as purchasing something. You give a +2 sword in exchange for a certain amount of gold or its equivalent in other stuff. You're not going to make a trade for a loss in overall profit if you can help it, or you wouldn't make the initial investment to begin with (which is also true for the other guy in the trade).Certainly, a limited supply is more realistic than magically attaining anything you want. I agree with you there. The problem is with your assumption--realistically, anything the PCs want wouldn't be available. And it isn't fun not to be able to get the item you've been saving up money for. But, if you made your assumption true, then the whole discussion is moot--why come up with specific inventories if everything the PCs would ever want is available?On the other hand, I assume that given some time, the PCs can find someone somewhere who has or can make any item they want and can afford, assuming I've done a decent job in keeping their wealth close to their expected wealth. As the players become more advanced, their connections are more diverse, and they're able to travel to where ever they need to get what they want or special order whatever they want. And special ordering stuff can happen in the background (since they just need to talk to a guy and wait a bit). I just assume the players spend a little time talking to the right people and am liberal about time frames and letting players handle the transactions on their own.I think that's much more realistic, actually. There isn't a stock of items lying around someplace, you have to use your connections and find middlemen for special orders. And, if you know what you're doing (I assume my players are at least moderately careful), they'll be able to find people sympathetic to their cause or their gods' causes to take care of the otherwise possibly exorbitant price. If you think about it, this is how Achilles got his armor (via Hephaestus) and how Arthur got his sword (via the Lady of the Lake), but the characters are less likely to deal with immortal or divine beings except at the epic tier, but it might be a more relevant analogy since we're dealing with magic items.The way I see it, I care too much about this element of background, hence I don't want it to kill the verisimilitude of the game. I've listed a bunch of reasons why such a system is implausible.And, hate is a very strong word to use. I think limiting what your players can buy can screw them over (in other words, makes the game unnecessarily more difficult for them), which isn't fun.But, you used the term 'wrongbadfun.' I said, "If your players are happy ... that's great." And I stick by that sentiment--if you and your players are happy with your game and how you answer those questions, more power to you. Have fun. It isn't my style, but I appreciate that people have other styles.That's great. I've gamed with military guys as well. That doesn't mean they're experts in economics, and certainly most D&D players--intellectually curious or not--also aren't experts in economics or economic history.</blockquote>

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