Items in shop; everything or a limited selection?

[DarkelvenSFi]

I run a large campaign with various shops in each city. Each shop has a selection of items based on the quality and type of the shop; items rolled randomly from a database.

One of the players is also in another group that.. for lack of a better word, criticized this approach, saying that each shop should have all items and allow players to choose what they wanted; after perusing the PHB, DMG and Magic Item Compendium.

My query is; what do you guys as players and DMs think is best? (keeping in mind my options may sound biased..)

1: All items available in every shop
2: Shops selling items based on the shop quality and type (a weapon shop selling only weapons, and only valuable ones if in a rich quarter of town - for example).
3: A variant of these; such as a shop for magical items, another for poisons/traps, another for mundane items, etc, but each selling everything in those categories (keeping in mind that a city may not have certain shops).
4: Something else...


What makes the game more enjoyable for you? Realism or accessibility.

 

[milo]

If a PC just walks into a shop and wants to know if an item is there I will give him a percentage chance of it being there. Normally I divide the cost of the item by 1000 and subtract that number from 100 and that is the percentage chance that it is there. That is the base percentage though(large town and large shop), I give modifiers based on shop size, town size, and things such as that. I make my shops somewhat specific. I split them into three main groups wand, scroll, potions, and staff shop. A weapons and armor shop. Then there is the wondrous item and rings. I will occasionally throw in specific shops such as a boot shop, a heavy armor shop, ring shop or any specific magic item type. I will give them a cut off such as 20k that they have anything in the book below that cost and will add a like amount to the % chance that they have anything that costs more than that.
There is always at least a 1% chance you will find any given item at any given shop though. If they want to research the location of a specific item they can find it fairly easily. I think it is a pretty lenient system, and once you get teleport you don't have any problem finding any item you want.

 

[aboyd]

To be honest, I've been playing for 25 years and I've never played in a game where "you can buy anything in town." Not ever. So a player advocating such a thing is very odd to me. I'm not suggesting my experience is the norm, however.

In fact, it goes against the core rules, now that I think about it. In the DMG, towns are given a limit of what they can sell, based upon the number of residents. I never follow those rules to the letter, but I do follow the spirit of the rules. My thinking is that very valuable items would be very rare, and any merchant that had such a thing would be in constant fear of assassination. So in my games, that stuff isn't easy to find and usually involves some back & forth before the players get the real item (this takes zero minutes in real life -- I just explained once that no merchant carried expensive items directly, and that was that).

One thing I do allow players to do as they explore my world is to gravitate toward towns that offer more. For example, if they are playing in Greyhawk city or Rel Astra, then there are going to be lots of shops and the odds of them finding whatever they need are pretty high. They have to do many Gather Information checks and spend days exploring the town, but they'll get what they want. The tradeoff is that they may be stuck with city adventures. It is only the smaller towns, the frontier towns, that have wilderness adventures, pirate adventures, and so on.

So yeah, I have very limited selection in small towns, and in larger towns the selection is great but still not perfect.

As an example of the imperfect selection in big cities, here is what happened in Rel Astra. My players wanted to get potions of bless weapon. That's a paladin-exclusive item. The problem? Rel Astra is ruled by an evil undead animus. And while many citizens are good or lawful, it's pretty rare to find people who are both. That kind of goodness just isn't fostered by the evil Lord Drax. What this means is that there is no paladin organization in town and thus, finding anything that is a paladin-exclusive is extremely difficult.

So yeah, I would never give players a free run of any magic item they wanted. However, I do allow my players to go where the loot is and try to make the best of it.

 

[DarkelvenSFi]

Thanks for the feedback.

There's a bit of 'baggage' behind the criticism.. hard to explain. But it's good to know that I'm not doing things that others find unusual.

I like the idea of specific items the players want having a chance to be available; based on cost. I'll be implementing that into my game.

 

[pawsplay]

The closest I've come is putting my high-level PCs in contact with a Mercane who is capable of acquiring a wide variety of gear. For the most part, I view selections as limited, at the very least by the DMG guidelines but also by common sense (there is no magic score in the world with a +1 and +2 version of each weapon in the PHB, to say nothing of flaming, silver, or bane variants). If the DMG guidelines suggest something is available, I try to make it available as a special commission if it makes sense.

 

[Aran Thule]

I would go for limited selection as well, consider how long it takes to make stuff and what it costs and who can make it.
Large cities would have adventurer shops stocking useful items but not many, there might be a network of traders that would communicate with each other and so know where items are located or they can ask a mages guild/temple/weaponsmith to make the item.

Saying that i remember something from forgotten realms which was like a mail order catalog. The company had outlet shops in most cities and if you wanted an item you placed an order and gave the money and the item would arrive the next day (assuming it was in stock)

 

[amethal]

It all depends on your play style.

I tend to hand wave most shopping, since it doesn't interest me. I use the town wealth guidelines from the DMG, but I might modify them a bit if the town is unusual - e.g. any magic item up to 3,000 gp, except that the local School of Wind Magic can supply elemental air related items up to 5,000 gp.

And if a player wants to buy a 3,100 gp item when I've just said the limit is 3,000 gp then generally I'll cut him some slack.

And once the PCs can teleport then, unless time is an issue, I assume they can pick up any item that I haven't banned outright.

On the other hand, if you like detailing your shops, and having a list of NPCs with the various craft magic items feats, then that should be fine as well.

Obviously, you have appear to be fair about it - players might object if all the anti-undead magic items mysteriously go out of stock just before the party are asked to investigate a mummy's tomb.

 

[Foxworthy]

I've always allowed players anything then want under the GP Limits of the town. I feel the players are penalized enough by selling magic items for half their value to turn around and tell them that the item they need isn't available feels like being a bit too hard. Plus I think the MIC suggest allowing the players to be able to buy what they want as well.

 

[Jack Simth]

Apparent, I double-clicked originally.

 

[Jack Simth]

To purchase:
Step 1: Make a gather information check.
For standard DMG Items: DC = 10 + Minimum Core level requirement for the item. No retry, although someone else in the party can ask around.
For items from other sources: Case-by-case only. They'll generally have a penalty to the Gather Information check. Some won't be available at all.

Step 2: Roll Diplomacy to bargain for costs:
40 or more = DMG list price
30-39 = DMG list price * 1.5
20-29 = DMG list price * 2
10-20 = DMG list price * 2.5
0-9 = He changed his mind, he's not selling.
Less than 0 = Not only is he not selling, he's decided to try and take you out subtly for tracking him down. How he does this will vary.
The Diplomacy roll has the same penalty as the Gather Info check for items from other sources.

To Commission an item's creation:
As above, but reduce all DC's by 5 (so finding someone who can Scribe a scroll of Teleport is Gather Info DC 14, rather than 19, and you only need a 35 on the Diplomacy roll to get DMG list price). Additionally, there's another option. If you get a 50 or better on the Diplomacy roll, you can get the item for materials cost.

Mundane stuff (including supplies for crafting) are available anywhere at list price regardless of charsima.

You can ask your buddy to find an item for you, if he's agreeable to do so. But then, he's the one rolling the check, and he's the one making the bargain. You can't be sure exactly what price he actually got for it.

By the way: It's usually a bad idea to dump Charisma in my games.