Magical items

[Dausuul]

The thing I always to know about 1E was "If I can sell you this magic item, why can't I buy it from you?"

Because I don't have it; and if I do have it, it's not for sale.

The "no magic shops" system is based on the idea that adventurers, who find new magic stuff on a semi-regular basis, are extraordinary people. In the larger economy, magic items are very rare indeed, and they have a way of settling into place. When you find a decanter of endless water in a dungeon, it's just a magical toy, albeit a useful one. When you find one in town, it's a vital water source and the whole town will line up to defend it if you try to take it. A +3 sword in the dungeon is a rich find; a +3 sword in town is the ancestral weapon of House Gorgodon, handed down from father to son over generations. A potion of cure disease in the dungeon is something that might be handy sometime if you run into otyughs or dire rats; a potion of cure disease in town is someone's emergency defense in case there's an outbreak of plague.

This situation is especially the case in a points-of-light world, where the usefulness of money to most people is somewhat limited. If you buy my potion of cure disease, and I live in a points-of-light town where the only cleric is too low-level to cast the spell, odds are that I will never, ever see another one. Sure, I'll be the richest man in town--but there's only so much I can buy with all that gold, and no amount of gold will save me when the plague comes.

Finding somebody who has the item you want may be a quest in itself; persuading that person to part with it may take another.

As for trading with other adventurers... what other adventurers? The idea that adventuring is a profession so common that you can wander about and run into bands of fellow dungeon-crawlers seems very dubious to me. Dungeons are deadly places. For the vast majority of people, professional dungeon-crawling would be suicidal. Successful adventurers are, once again, extraordinary people who beat the odds repeatedly. I'm not saying you'd never find another adventuring party, but it isn't something that would happen every day, or every year.

 

[Revinor]

I'm not saying you'd never find another adventuring party, but it isn't something that would happen every day, or every year.

In one of the FR countries (Cormyr?), you have to get your adventuring party registered with authorities and then tax all your gains from dungeons (plus pay yearly fee), often standing in a queue of adventuring parties to get your turn in tax office. Which is one of the reasons why I hate FR.

Similar thing happens in Pholtus (Monte Cook setting). You have organized crime industry around recovering artifacts from the depth of the dungeons.

Same for Egypt in XIX/XX century in real world.

City of Greyhawk also hosts a lot of adventuring parties on average.

I never played Eberron, but I think situation is quite similar.

Dark Sun - to even move outside of the city you have to be a kind of adventuring party - normal caravan won't cut it.

Spelljammer - every non-monster spaceship will have adventuring party on board.

Dragonlance and Ravenloft are probably more like you describe. Ravenloft is too specific with it's limited areas (in most cases even players adventuring party is a lot more than should be there realistically). Dragonlance is low magic, low adventuring part world in books, magic-sword-on-every-corner in original adventures.

I would say that MOST of the D&D worlds suggest adventuring parties are quite common. You are free to create different worlds, but I'm free to create world where you can only play hedgehogs - I should not expect the rules to bend my way.

 

[Dausuul]

In one of the FR countries (Cormyr?), you have to get your adventuring party registered with authorities and then tax all your gains from dungeons (plus pay yearly fee), often standing in a queue of adventuring parties to get your turn in tax office. Which is one of the reasons why I hate FR.

Similar thing happens in Pholtus (Monte Cook setting). You have organized crime industry around recovering artifacts from the depth of the dungeons.

Same for Egypt in XIX/XX century in real world.

City of Greyhawk also hosts a lot of adventuring parties on average.

I never played Eberron, but I think situation is quite similar.

Dark Sun - to even move outside of the city you have to be a kind of adventuring party - normal caravan won't cut it.

Spelljammer - every non-monster spaceship will have adventuring party on board.

I'm not talking about "mercenaries" or "people who do dangerous stuff for a living." I'm talking about people who make a profession out of going down into dungeons, battling horrible monsters, and coming back with piles of gold and magic items. Cormyr, Ptolus, and Greyhawk I will concede. Eberron I don't know. Dark Sun and Spelljammer have lots of tough travellers, but there's a big difference between occasionally having to defend your caravan or spelljammer from marauding monsters, and making a living out of actively hunting down monsters in their home territory.

And 19th/20th-century Egyptian tomb robbers don't count even remotely, unless you can show me where they had to fight mummies instead of just hauling them off to museums.

I would say that MOST of the D&D worlds suggest adventuring parties are quite common. You are free to create different worlds, but I'm free to create world where you can only play hedgehogs - I should not expect the rules to bend my way.

I'm... not quite sure what your point is here. 4E is doing away with magic item shops, so the rules appear to be bending my way, if anything. I simply gave an explanation for why they don't exist.

 

[Spatula]

There's all kinds of mistakes in those AICN posts, so I would take anything said therein with a hefty grain of salt.

 

[Dausuul]

There's all kinds of mistakes in those AICN posts, so I would take anything said therein with a hefty grain of salt.

This one was posted firsthand by a playtester. I take your point, but it's not like this is coming from a guy who knows a guy who sat in on a DDXP session for ten minutes.

 

[Syrsuro]

Also, good to see you on the D&D / ENWorld side of the house; you might remember me (but probably don't!) from Bioware's NWN boards. Unless, of course, you're a different Carl / Syrsuro, but I'm wagering that the number of imitators is small.

I am indeed he (who else could imitate my obsessively wordy posting style), and I recall you as well. My group is planning on making the switch to 4E, so I've been hanging out here to see what I can learn.

Then who the hell is making all the items which litter a D&D world, and why? The world is filled with magic, including many trivial items of low power. Who spends a year of their life making, say Murlynd's Spoon or Feather Token -- anchor? And if it doesn't take a year -- if it takes a week -- then why can't the PCs learn it? SOMEONE is making all this crap, a LOT of someones to account for it all, and it's hard to image that PCs who can figure out who the leader of the assassin's guild is with two Gather Information checks can't figure out where the +1 swords are coming from.

If you reread my posts, you will see that my major objection is to the existence of this 'crap' and the goal, first and foremost, is to get rid of that 'crap' 'litter[ing] the D&D world' (and thus devaluing magic and removing any sense of wonder). In fact, I object to the item creation RAW because they imply the existence of that crap and the changes I propose are specifically to eliminate the crap. Magic shops are a symptom of the problem, not the problem themselves.

Again: It is NOT the useful magic that is on the PCs I really object to, it is the usesless magic that they find and discard as pointless that I really object to. (And thus stores are not needed because the players aren't finding that 'crap' and thus don't need to sell that 'crap'. And they can't buy it because it is too rare and too valuable to be sitting on a merchants shelf.

And, as has been pointed out already, a continuous stream of logic connects the 3E Magic Item Creation RAW to junk magic to magic stores (and, imho, this stream of logic also connects to the 'NPCs are built by the same rules as PCs' - but afaik I am alone in making that specific connection).

I am specifically not talking about either the FR (a setting I never had much love for) or Greyhawk (not much better), or even the RAW. I am talking about what I think the RAW should be - at least imho, and what it sounds like the 4E RAW might be more like.


Also, if you reread my post, you will see that I don't object to the PCs learning how to make it. I just think it should be prohibitively costly in terms of time and effort that adventurers will typically decide that they have better things to do with their time (although for occasional projects - why not. To modify what Patryn said (somewhat ironically since I it was intended as a counter) ""For a sword +1, you must [insert annoying difficult process] ... or, ya know, pull it from the cold, dead hands of [it's prior owner]," Sure, you can go overboard with the weirdness in the process. But I have no problem with requiring -at a minimum -access to a Permanency spell. It is the routine creation of magic, by anyone - PC or NPC - I object to. Magic items should never (imho) be routine.

In short, there isn't "SOMEONE is making all this crap, a LOT of someones to account for it all" - because there shouldn't be alot of it to account for in the first place.

In my ideal world/ game system.

In summary - I think it comes down to whether you see magic as a necessary part of the players toolkit, routine and simple upgrades to their daily equipment - and thus nothing special; or as something wondrous and special, something earned at great cost and memorable when found.

(And yes, among the many things I dislike about the FR/ Greyhawk setting is that there are way too many adventurers running around - I find it hard to imagine that the PCs can even find anything to do with all the competition. I thought the players were supposed to be heroes, not adventuring party number 2345.

Carl

 

[hong]

Then who the hell is making all the items which litter a D&D world, and why?

People offstage.

(If you argue "They come from the long long ago, from the before time", you still have to explain how knowledge so common became lost, especially when other magical knowledge -- such as, say, spells -- is still around. And of course, if there's "lost knowledge" to be found, PCs will find it.)

Not thinking too hard about fantasy is a most elegant theory. It explains so many things.

 

[Lanefan]

People offstage.

Exactly. People offstage whose "class", if you like, is Artificer rather than Fighter or Wizard or Bard. People who may have done some time in the field adventuring, then settled down to a career of artificering; or people who have done their time as apprentice artificers and earned their journeyman's ticket, who later became masters. (3e's rules regarding ExP costs to make items really blow up this idea; the assumption is that in order to make items you have to adventure and earn ExP, which to me is wrong. I'm glad to see 4e is doing away with this)

And, if an Artificer doesn't have any custom orders on her plate, what's to stop her making an item or two on spec., for later sale? (yet another way items can enter the market without first having been found in a dungeon...)

Lanefan

 

[VannATLC]

I have always tried, for generic + weapons, to leave 'magic enablers' as a generic treasure.

Something that caries an arcane charge, can be used, by the right person, after much study, to imbue any given item, depending on the enabler/runestone/whaterver with a particular ability, which is again dependant on the enabler type.

I find this gives me the best degree of flexibility, and makes the most consistent sense.

Especially seeing magic weapons are not that hard to destroy, really. Mine are highly resistant to time.. but not impervious.

People with the appropriate feats can also craft these enablers, though I've usually required an adventure, after much research, to rediscover the lost lore allowing this.

 

[Balgus]

If the magic items ability is based off from the level of the character using it (which I believe it is), it takes away the need to have magic shops, etc. That magic +1 sword you found at 3rd level (Because swords go up by 1 every 3 character levels I believe) will do you fine at 18th level (being a +6 in your hands at that level!!). Then finding a magic item is truly magical.
...
That system in an of itself would bring back the mysticism of magic items, and it keeps them simple. It also gives reason why people VALUE them. If you had one, you do not want to sell it! You do not need to sell it.

Thats my 3.5 cents worth.

I agree with you. I really didnt care for magic shops where you have a golf bag of magic +1,+2 random "crap" to trade in for that shiny +6 sword of awesomeness o the wall- just to trade that in as soon as you reach the next town.

Having the sword of your grandfather the great adventurer that has served him until he was devoured by a great sea serpent and the sword was fished out of the sea by some random fisherman... and you inherited it, but dont know its full potential so can only use some of its powers. As you grow, you learn more and the weapon becomes more potent in your hands...

I also like the idea of taking magic weapons to high level craftsmen to improve the weapon. A flame shaman who imbues it with the power of fire, or a master blacksmith who forges the blade out of valyrian steel, thus razor thin and forever sharp, or attaching the eye of a frost giant to the pommel, giving it the power of protection from cold...

ritual magic that takes time an adventuring.. not just I killed some rats in the cellar and they had full plates and rapiers on their backs. Can I trade it in?