Depends on the city. In one large city in my setting where a number of PCs have quasi-based themselves the mercenaries' guild (including gladiators, it's a thing there) has several hundred members plus a constant stream of visitors and transients. Most of the several hundred members aren't adventurers but the visitors and transients almost always are; and many of the non-adventurers still have a level or two of Fighter to them, built up over the years of doing what they do.
That would be OK for the largest cities, but there are not that many of them...
That's another thing 1e tends to do: quite a few items are restricted as to who can use them, most often by class but sometimes by species or a stat requirement. Further, in 1e a Fighter is proficient only with a small number of weapons chosen by the player (something I very much like), meaning there's going to be times when the magic weapon you've just found ain't gonna do you much good.
Yes, I remember that, and I understand the greater need for magic items trading, just hoping that you see my more 5e perspective as well.
Yeah, I'm distinguishing between small-a artificer (a person who makes magic items) and capital-A Artificer (the class). I probably haven't been clear enough on this; it's just that artificer is a good term to mean "person who makes and-or enchants magic items".
Ah, OK, let's get rid of the name, then, I hate it as much as the class.
I kinda prefer the easy come, easy go idea - that way, you're always getting new toys!
I remember that about 1e indeed.
Both the 3e and 4e strict-formulaic approaches overlook one very important thing: the item's actual usefulness in the field. In 3e, for example, a Wand of Cure Light Wounds is hella more useful than a Wand of Grease yet as they each replicate a 1st-level spell the formula sets their costs as the same
Yes, it was indeed part of the problem, and wands were an additional problem with the way they were implemented.
1e's pricing at least kinda looks at the field-usefulness piece but it's not perfect, and some famous typos in the DMG don't help either.
I remember that, after the years and the years we spend playing it, we had basically ended up with numbers (and rules) that suited us.
Oh, not for me! Downtime is when I get to have my PCs interact with the setting on their terms: making contacts, building structures, exerting some of that influence gained through adventuring, buying and selling items, researching spells (if of the right class), living high off the hog, etc., etc.
We have a few cases like that, but they are mostly dealt offline by mail or phone, because one of the main problems of downtime is that the adventurers are often separated, which means that you might wait a long while to get your turn to play. So, during the actual session, downtime is kept to a bare minimum.
