Players Whining that they Should be able to Buy Magic Items

[Storm Raven]

There are plenty of persuasve reasons for why you wouldn't have a magic shop -- and especially why you wouldn't have one conveniently nearby, that you could easily locate, that had what you were looking to buy sitting on a shelf.

Except that the original poster didn't talk about a magic shop. He talked being bothered by the idea that PCs could buy magic items, not about the particular mechanic of the market that they would buy them in.

 

[Storm Raven]

Permanet magic items are rare as hens teeth IMC, and are usualy family treasures or reveared relics.

Assumptions that make buying and selling magic items more likely, not less. The more valuable an item is, the more likely it is to have a market built up around it.

 

[fusangite]

The prices listed in the DMG are already double the creation costs.

Only if you think xp aren't worth anything.

I don't understand how in a world where something is plentiful that no one would ever think to buy or sell it.

Is the GM making the case that money or goods are never traded for magic under any circumstances? No. He is making the case that there are no magic shops. The two things are not equivalents.

Banning all sale of magic items lets the DM control when, how and what magic items the PCs use.

Did this DM ban all item creation feats when I wasn't looking?

And frankly, when I'm a player, I'm just fine with the DM "controlling" when I get magic items, kind of the way I am with him "controlling" what monsters I encounter.

 

[(Psi)SeveredHead]

My last campaign allowed the players to buy the equipment they wanted. It was a nightmare where they were easily 3 levels above the CR of any creature equal to their level.

Why did you let them have so much money? Buying gear shouldn't be a problem if they're not overloaded with cash.

 

[Storm Raven]

That's not an entirely perfect analogy. Historically, no one was forced to place their own life force into a manufactured good to make it, as is the case with magic items (XP).

In many cases people believed that certain things required portions of their life essence, or even their soul to make or do. And yet those things were bought and sold, just like any other valuabnle commodity.

I'm not saying it wouldn't happen, but it seems to me that it would be much more rare than its price would indicate (and its price would already indicate that it is rare).

The price pretty much already incorporates the lost xp required by the creator, giving him a 100% markup on an item that probably took him a couple of days to create. 1,000s of gold peices worth of return for a couple days work (which is probably enough, in most campaign worlds, that he would never have to do another day of work in his life if he didn't want to).

 

[jasper]

Diaglo… true enough the DM knew there were a lot of items.

the players did not….

Diaglo unlike you most of us back in the day had to worry about when PirateCat or Merric bought their own copy of the module. After all just because I was a dm who was I to tell the other teenagers what to do with their money since they DM too.

Diaglo I don’t think the 1e identify spell was limited to how long you kept the item in your presence.
1 hour per level francisa starting when you first lay eyes on it. This means I been miss reading the spells since 1980? Can you give me phb page number or dmg page number?


Imc low level items clw potion and like are generally available but the party can then buy the town out the current supply and be sol when they come back to restock. All other items may be available through magic brokers depending on the gp limit of city, the item, and other factors. Most of the time if it reasonable I will allow it to move game play along. Ex they use the last resurrection scroll in town the next one will be x% above the last one. But I haven't played full campaign mode (little less magic to be purchase but more land and rank available) in years. So my games are a little bit above beer and pretzels game play

 

[Storm Raven]

So no, no player can expect to buy or sell items in my game. Items can be found, commissioned, quested or made and that is it.

What do you think "commissioning" a magic item is that makes it different from one person selling it and another buying it?

 

[Storm Raven]

And again I take the pains to point out, we're talking about magic item shops here people.

No we are not. We are talking about the existence of a market for magic items. That is completely different from the idea of having a magic shop with piled of enchanted items lining the shelves.

 

[Storm Raven]

Unless you're playing D&D in some kind of weird Eberron, Faerun or Planescape kind of world where everybody is a modern liberal democrat and magic oozes out of everybody's pores, I'm guessing that the campaign world is the good old fashioned pseudo-medieval D&D world. If that's the case, the most important thing to realize is that in the pre-modern world, there aren't shops in the modern sense of the idea; anything expensive or worthwhile was commissioned. It wasn't part of the inventory. In a medieval-style city, you have skilled tradespeople who make things; they might have one or two display items in their shop or booth to show the quality of their workmanship but generally, there will be no inventory to speak of. Any item of quality will have to be commissioned.

And this is different from buying and selling magic items how? You are just quibbling over the mechanic of the market, not the existence of the market itself.

 

[Weyland]

I think a lot of whether buying/selling magic items is feasible rests in whether or not it fits into the campaign.

The last two campaigns I've played in handled it rather differently. In one, the PCs were working in an (admittedly large) underground resistance cell to overthrow the conquerers of the island they were on. There wasn't any buying or selling of magic items like in a shop, but the GM was pretty cool about letting us hand over items that we didn't need/couldn't use to the rebellion and either drawing some funds to compensate (since generally, some of the other resistance fighters could use them) or trade with some other units for items that they might have. It worked out pretty well, and actually gave us some good RP, as otherwise nameless/faceless NPCs got fleshed out.

In the current Eberron campaign, it's pretty established that with artificers and magewrights, the purchase of pre-made or commissioned magic items is possible in major cities (like Sharn). It still works out, since the GM has final say over just what can be easily found. If we as the players still really want a rare item, we can always negotiate with the GM (in the guise of whatever artificer we're dealing with) to either pay out the nose for it or aquire it through shadier means.

Now it's entirely possible that neither of these solutions will work for everyone, and that's perfectly cool. What I think the big thing to keep in mind is that if an active trade in such items exists in a world, what would the ramifications be? Would there exist an entire class of mages who do nothing but make/sell items? Would there be a grey market amongst adventurers who trade and sell items amongst themselves?

Just my $0.02

-Weyland