Ilbranteloth
Explorer
OK, fine. I'm happy to engage, so let's try another approach (so we can all possibly respond in a way that you find meaningful).
What system worked that is no longer supported? Can you point me to the actual books that explain how magic item sales/shops work in the system you prefer?
Once a system is identified, what do you expect from the rest of us? That we'll all agree that it should be part of 5e and petition WotC to add it to the rules? I guess at this point, I'm (we're?) confused.
The usual approach is to present a theory and have it torn apart by everybody else. No, I'm kidding. I find these conversations enlightening, and usually get a number of ideas out of them, even if they are ideas about what I don't want in my campaign, it helps clarify my own approach here. That doesn't mean my approach applies to everybody else, far from it. I like to share my thoughts, not necessarily because I think everybody will agree with them (that's been far from the case), but under the assumption that if there's something I prefer, there are probably a few other folks that might as well. In addition, I get a lot of good feedback of how to improve them.
I don't want to deny you anything. And I have said that you are welcome to have whatever you want in your campaign. Of course, you don't need my permission for that. If you want us all to agree with you, that's probably not going to happen. Not necessarily because I don't want it to happen, there just isn't any way I could make that happen. We can certainly provide ideas, point you in a direction for either a DMsGuild or other home-brew (often converted from earlier editions, earlier editions themselves, or help parse the 5e rules because I've found they've done an amazing job of incorporating a lot of what was in earlier editions, if not always as you expected.
So is it this, from the 3.5e Magic Item Compendium starting at pg 231?
"A player points to an item published in this book or the Dungeon Master’s Guide and asks, “Can I buy this?” The answer should usually be, “Yes.”
Magic items are an important part of every character’s arsenal of abilities. Most monsters and encounters assume that characters have a certain amount of gear to make the challenge appropriate. Furthermore, at many levels magic items represent a character’s only option for customization; picking up a new magic ring or bag of potions is signifi cantly more fun than allotting skill points."
It doesn't entirely apply anymore since characters get some sort of feature or ability almost every level now, but that's not really a problem. It goes further to say, "In general, though, you should allow characters with sufficient funds to equip themselves as they desire. Even the most thoughtfully constructed series of treasure hoards almost certainly fails to provide all your players the items they want to maximize their enjoyment as they advance in level."
There's a lot of things in that paragraph that I disagree with, but that's why you as the DM are free to make choices as you see fit.
It also mentions shops: "Large one-stop-shop “magic emporiums” are unrealistic and rare even in metropolis-sized cities. Instead, a community’s total stock of magic items for sale is widely distributed among dusty alchemist’s shops, bookstores, scribers’ boutiques, pawn shops, elixir brewers, the residences of retired adventurers, the old mage on the corner, curio shops, and so on."
There's a little more, including some potential restrictions, or determining by town size what items they might have. But it's not all that different that adapting the selling magic items information in the 5e DMG. Other than 4e which specifically built gaining, and purchasing upgrades to your magic items as part of the character advancement itself, which would be much more difficult to port into 5e, I don't really recall a specific magic item shop/purchasing rule in any earlier edition. Probably because we never used it if there is one. So enlighten me.
