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Message: <blockquote data-quote="KarinsDad" data-source="post: 6511175" data-attributes="member: 2011">This all sounds reasonable as well, but it introduces a new wrinkle.In a world where PCs and NPCs can craft the more powerful magic items, I agree with you that buying and selling makes sense. The safest way for NPCs to acquire items is to craft them and the PCs can use either or both methods.In a world where PCs and NPCs can no longer craft the more powerful magic items (or crafting the more powerful items becomes cost and time prohibitive), the scenario changes. Supply is cut. Demand is still high. So in such a world, the rich and powerful NPCs would still want those items and would hoard them. But in addition to this, they would hire out both PC and NPC adventurers (explorers, mini-armies, whatever) to go out and acquire the items for them. It would not just be adventurers acquiring the items for themselves, rather an entire market of hirelings would be created.Like in real world gold or diamond mines, wealthy patrons would hire other people to go do the grunt work and the wealthy patrons would reap the benefits. In the case of fantasy world magic item acquisition, adventurers / hirelings would take the risk and the nobility / wealthy merchants / wealthy clergy would reap the rewards: PC competitors (which could make for some really interesting adventures as more than one group tries for the same goal in the same dungeon / adventuring locale).The issues with this are twofold:1) Most  NPC / PC adventurers would want the magic items for themselves. They would not want to give them to the nobility. Most of them should be freelance.2) Players of PCs cannot buy magic items with their hard earned gold pieces. So, it removes a reason to go adventuring. Once the PC has enough money to retire, many PCs (not the players of those PCs) should want to retire. They cannot gain more magic without adventuring and they have tons of gold already. Alternatively, for PCs whose motivation is to acquire more and more powerful items in order to become more and more powerful, their gold is mostly useless to purchase items. So instead, in such a world, such PCs should be incentivized to hire their own adventuring parties. They have a ton of gold. Why take all of the risks when there might not be any magic items in a given dungeon? If the PC has a ton of gold, why not do what the nobility in such a world is doing and hire others to go adventuring for you?So yes, a DM can give a rationale (like the art of crafting powerful items has been lost) for why magic item buying and selling doesn't work in a given campaign, but the NPCs of his campaign should then behave in relationship to that reason. The laws of supply and demand should still be effect if the DM is attempting to model normal human behaviors.And, this sounds like a great campaign. The reason for no magic item shops is legit. And there are boatloads of NPC adventuring groups (or small armies) out looking for the same stuff as PCs. And when the PCs wipe out the small army, the Prince declares them outlaws and puts a price on their heads. Sweet! <img src="http://www.enworld.org/forum/images/smilies/laugh.png"  class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":lol:" title="Laughing    :lol:" data-shortname=":lol:" />But just removing buying and selling magic items as per the DMG, not having a good set of optional rules for those tables that do not want to do that, and saying that this makes magic items special seems a bit lacking and not well thought out. It's just a preference and one that without additional campaign framework seems subpar.</blockquote>

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