D&D 5E No Magic Shops!

BoldItalic · Jan 25, 2018

Personally, I buy all my magic items from Amazing!.com

delericho · Jan 25, 2018

Fauchard1520 said:
5e has been out for a while, and it's been a bit since I last wrote about the cash/power economy. Are you guys happy with the lack of magic shops in 5th?

Sure. But then, even the assumption in previous editions that you could freely buy and sell items didn't necessarily imply the existence of magic item shops.

(And it's also worth noting that the concept of magic item 'shops' goes right the way back to Appendix N. There's a reason Dragon Magazine had an article series called "Bazaar of the Bizarre". And it's also also worth noting that the 'shop' in that case wasn't exactly what it appeared to be...)

Do you find yourself itching to homebrew systems for turning gold pieces into magic items, or do you prefer to play it as written, thank-you-very-much?

The one thing I wish they'd put more thought into (and, actually, in 3e as well) is a more integrated progression of equipment upgrades (magical and mundane) - in most was, the Fighter upgrading from chain mail to splint armour is equivalent to him upgrading to chain mail +1, so the levels at which these upgrades become available should be similar if not the same.

That doesn't necessarily mean that there should be some sort of "Wealth by Level" table to be followed rigorously, or even that the DM should be advised to make sure certain items automatically become available. Indeed, there's an argument that the solution to that particular issue is actually to get rid of the useful-but-dull +X armours from the game, in favour of "armour of fire resistance", "armour of shadows", or similar.

But there's a design space there that allows for the development of weapons and armour, and indeed other types of equipment, that are more powerful than those that are available/affordable for low-level PCs, but which are still strictly-speaking mundane.

CubicsRube · Jan 25, 2018

BoldItalic said:
Personally, I buy all my magic items from Amazing!.com

Not from amazon?

I mean, a giant muscular woman who lives in the fae forests...

Thats where I shoppe!

NaturalZero · Jan 25, 2018

I'm generally fine with the system running without the magic christmas tree effect of 3e and 4e or the implied magic item market.

That said, I've always thought that magic in DnD was basically the physics of that fictional world. Wizards use specific formulas with exact components to produced repeatable, mathematically predictable empirical effects, and that's been the default flavor of the rules since conception. In that light, the logical conclusion I see for any DnD world is that someone, and probably a lot of someones, are going to become the magic Bill Gates, Steven Jobs, or Elon Musk of that world. Unlike the real world where visionaries and business men are bound by mundane science, in the world of DnD, scientist-wizards would be making huge leaps in tech and production in a short period of time and since the ostensible assumption of DnD is that humans still have real-world human nature, it would turn into a large scale industrial revolution pretty quickly. I can't really see too many wizards or clerics or bards or sorcerers wandering around a planet without anyone trying to turn magic into big business.

CapnZapp · Jan 25, 2018

Not using or even liking magic shoppes is entirely fine.

Actively opposing an utility-based magic item economy as an optional variant for those who prefer it, on the other hand, is reprehensible.

Acting as if gold being worthless in official campaigns where there is no time for downtime isn't a huge problem is ridiculous.

Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app

Lanefan · Jan 25, 2018

I'm not a huge fan of "magic shops" as such but I see it as very logical and realistic that there's going to be some trade in magic items - often between different adventurers or groups who have found magic they have little or no use for, or who need the coin instead.

Thus, in any decent-size town there's a chance of finding things for sale if you ask around a bit...but what's for sale is almost completely random and may or may not bear any relation to what you actually want.

Commissioning items from an artificer is also OK, but they take a long time to make and most of the payment is usualy required up front.

Lanefan

The Big BZ · Jan 25, 2018

CapnZapp said:
Not using or even liking magic shoppes is entirely fine.

Actively opposing an utility-based magic item economy as an optional variant for those who prefer it, on the other hand, is reprehensible.

Acting as if gold being worthless in official campaigns where there is no time for downtime isn't a huge problem is ridiculous.

Sent from my C6603 using EN World mobile app

Never played AL. How is there no time for downtime?

Li Shenron · Jan 25, 2018

Fauchard1520 said:
5e has been out for a while, and it's been a bit since I last wrote about the cash/power economy. Are you guys happy with the lack of magic shops in 5th? Do you ever miss them? Do you find yourself itching to homebrew systems for turning gold pieces into magic items, or do you prefer to play it as written, thank-you-very-much?

Notes:

- it's not so that there are no magic items shops in 5e, but rather than 5e is built around the assumption that magic items are not required; whether you have zero magic items or lots of them, the system still works (which doesn't mean that an encounter difficulty doesn't change)

- the problem related to magic shops is not about magic item prices, but more about magic availability. Example: if I let the PCs buy a vorpal sword for 1gp everyone will scream "broken!", but the truth is that in a vacuum this is going to have a much smaller effect on the game compared to using reasonably higher prices but also allowing the PCs to find anything they want on sale (and letting them have treasure enough to buy multiple items)

That said, I am very happy about the first point above. It makes me totally free to set the matter differently in different campaigns, instead of having to comply with a fixed standard.