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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 926607" data-attributes="member: 3146">The way I ran my campaign, there were very very few magic shops (if any). However, there were merchants and powerful merchant families. Items that are useful to everyone or which are very commonly desired would be commonly carried by those merchants. If Cordwellyn took a merchant caravan back from the Republic, for instance, he might well carry a wand of cure light wounds or two or a number of healing potions (of varying efficiency). Those are the kind of things that will pretty much always sell. Even non-adventuring types would probably want them.Now, the merchant might also have some other magic items. Some of them, he probably bought off of estates, others might come from the corpses of the orc raiders who attacked his caravan on the way back from the Republic, tomb raiders, thieves, old families in financial trouble, or anyone else who might need quick cash more than a +1 longsword. These were pretty much random, but if the players were in a large city, there would be more than one merchant house and possibly more than one gang of thieves so, depending on how good one was at gathering information--and how many principles one was willing to compromise--a variety of things would be available. And there was also the possibility of approaching NPCs (whether the church, the court wizard, or the wizard's apprentice) and commissioning items. I never had any PCs try this, but I'm sure PCs in any city with a few apprentice wizards would be able to find a steady supply of 1st (and possibly 2nd level depending upon how long apprenticeships last in your campaign world) level scrolls if they paid for apprentice's tuition or booze habits.If I were to start running again, I'd probably have an official market day where the city permitted magical wares to be sold in the market and a government-appointed priest verified that everything that was claimed as magical actually was. (Of course, there'd be a certain tax on all items sold there for that service; PCs could also take their chances on non-market days if they felt confident in their ability to deter or detect thieves).NPCs weren't the only ones to get into the magical economy, however. One merchant offered the PC a discount upon an apprentice spellbook if he would identify several items for him. (The [chaotic good] PC was rather disturbed when he found that the +2 greatsword gave him a negative level while he held it and, for some reason, never trusted the merchant after that). Another PC who took the craft arms and armor feat offered his services to some of the local nobility through the local bishop and ended up making a knight a suit of +1 fullplate for an upcoming tournament.</blockquote>

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