Players Whining that they Should be able to Buy Magic Items

[Ridley's Cohort]

Furthermore, items available for sale would vary wildy in price and certainly would not have a modern day walmart style pricing = intrinsic product value + x% margin markup (as they are presented in the DMG). There's no real way to judge the value of an item except through expectations on it's utility, which vary from individual to individual. In addition, many magic items might be bought by rich collectors who have no intention of using them and could afford t pay much higher prices than a PC, essentially removing many exisiting items from the market..

Sure. And this is already figured into the market by the standard sale price being 50% of the market price. The net effect is that PCs get taxed by a heavy transaction cost to cover the inefficiencies in the market.

 

[Staffan]

- One must never ignore the expenditure of XPs. While the DMG puts a value an XP (25 gp I believe?), it never directly addresses the "XP Limit" of a city (as it does GP limit). One can pretty much take this how one sees fit. In my experience (and this is my personal feeling on the topic as well), few players are willing to routinely expend XP just to make some money.

The normal rate of XP to gp is 5 gp per XP. And when I offered the artificer in the party to trade in XP for gold (at a rate of 625 gp per 30 XP, due to having the two feats from Eberron that let him make items for 75% of the normal creation cost in gold and in XP - normally, it would be 500 gp per 40 XP), his reaction was "Whee! I'm rich!"

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

Storm Raven, all of your above statements are true if your merchant is a person who thinks like a modern capitalist, living alongside other individuals who share his beliefs and assumptions in a world governed by the laws of supply and demand. Fortunately, this type of world is not the only type of world in which all (or hopefully even most) D&D adventures take place. (Besides, how would the item creation rules even work in a world governed by the laws of supply and demand and therefore subject to inflation?)

And seriously, are you arguing that because there is a substantial black market in children Central Asia that I, sitting here in Central Canada, can go out and purchase a child today?

Whether you can do that today or it take several weeks is just quibbling over mechanics. I believe the going rate for buying healthy babies is around US$30K on the black market. (These are often mostly legit adoptions, it is just the manner of involving money in the transaction is considered unethical & illegal -- for good reason.)

That is pretty cheap considering how many XP the mother sunk into making that baby.

 

[jmucchiello]

Too much to reply to to actually go back and quote it all...

Item Creation Feats: Do you allow the players sufficient down time to make proper use of Item Creation? I have stopped getting item creation feats for my mages and clerics because most campaigns I play in ramp up to rollercoaster speed in a hurry and you just cannot stop for a week to make an item.

Mideval Times and the lack of Inventory: Someone put forth that the modern concept of Shops in general do not exist in a feudal world. If this was the world put forth by the rules, then all items, magical and mundane, would be listed with a price and a time. "I'd like to buy a grappling hook, good sir." "Smitty can probably make you one in about 2 weeks time. You should go ask him."

Questing for Item Components: The inherent flaw with this is by time I have quested for the item components, I'm 3 levels higher than when I started out and I no longer desire that item, but a more powerful item instead. And again, this puts the main plot on hold for long periods of time.

Magic Item Shop: You see a nicely appointed room with a single desk in its center. There is a large, stuffed chair behind the desk and two smaller chairs on your side of the desk. In the far corners of the room are two finely carved statues of strong fighting men. A curtain blocks your view of the room off to the right. The middle-aged man behind the desk stands and greets you in the customary way. "How can I help you?" he asks.

The important fact here is that there are no magic items on display. Everything in the room can be commands to attack with a single word from the broker. His "stock" is located elsewhere in a place proof against detection and whose only means of entry is teleportation. There is also a similar room called the treasury. The stock room and the treasury are not connected. Behind the curtain is an empty room which he uses to teleport to the stock room. He casts teleport to get in and out of the stock room. He accepts payment up front and takes the payment to the treasury. Leaving it there for at least a week before moving it to his "bank" of money. If payment is not in gold, he takes the payment to the treasury, then goes to the stock room for the item. Thus trojan horse payments never arrive in the stock room. This is doable by a 10th-12th level wizard on his own. With a few partners and some ambition the number of shops can be very plentiful.

That's how I would establish a magic item shop. Ultimately, you could eliminate the stock room and have the shop keeper become a broker. He knows where to get the magic items and his job is to get the buyer and the seller to agree on a price (from which he gets a cut).

Purchasing Magic is a Video Game Idea: The 1e DMG has prices listed for magic items. Please reconcile these two contradictory concepts.

I've played in games where you could buy magic items in all editions of the game. It's just more commonplace in 3e.

Trading Rare Items: The Shroud of Turin is not for sale because it is unique, not rare. Individual paintings are unique, but Van Goth's paintings (on the whole) are merely rare. While each one is unique, any one of them could be on sale at any given time. How does one find out one is on sale? Any number of divinations would probably work.

 

[billd91]

Could you have done that as easily 100 years ago? How about 400? 1000? While few people's games strive for the kind of historical simulation someone like fusangite advocates, I think equally few run games that are pure 21st Western capitalist technocracies in Medieval drag...

But any civil society developed enough to have that kind of market economy is also going to have laws restricting the sale of goods that represent a massive threat to its stability. When you're talking magic the correct analogy is the arms trade. Often in WMD's. Try to buy a nuke, or surplus smallox cultures... while it may be remotely possible, such an endeavor requires more than a pile of cash...

And if you want to continue the art anology... there's a tremendous amount of art that isn'
t for sale. The instituations that hold it don't put it on the market...

Was it easy 100 or 1000 years ago? Depends. According to a reference in the Cartoon History of the Universe by Larry Gonick (and he has a substantial bibilography), there are records of Romans buying up Greek art with insurance policies that included replacement with art of similar value of the original is lost in transit. So, yes. It could be that easy.
But there are other issues at work. The church's most sacred relic wouldn't be for sale (note: that most sacred REAL relic and not pieces of the 'true' cross that we hear about in history) nor would some other things suppressed or monitored by the law under most circumstances other than the black market. And the trade in magic might decline from time to time based on the status of the economy, though it still might be possible to swing a purchase through some medium other than money.
That, however, does not deny that there might be a market for magic items just about anywhere. Most magic items don't come anywhere near the important relic level. A simple +1 sword? Not that hard to make, not all that pricey, not that significant in effect and probably not all that noticeable in use either, not hard to imagine these being relatively easy to find. Potions and scrolls really are pretty cheap to make and take relatively insignificant amounts of XPs.
The feats and resources for making many items aren't all that hard to come by either. So it's quite conceivable that general economic forces we are familiar with would create a cottage industry in making minor magic items... for cash as long as the cash economy is reasonably strong, for barter or other trade goods if not.
But even if we're looking at just a barter economy or even one based on trade in kind, we are still clearly indicating that there is a market for magic items and that characters can, in fact, buy them. Not being able to buy them at the drop of a had with a pile of cash doesn't mean we don't have a market in operation.
Nor does having significant historical works of art squirrelled away in museums really much of a counter argument. Art in general is still quite up for sale even if certain collectibles are being hoarded away. Maybe particular magic items by particular makers would fall into that intrinsically valuable category that it wouldn't be out on the market without the owner being in desperate financial straits. But other lesser works, reproduceable works, by other creators? Sure.

 

[Ridley's Cohort]

When I last played a Wizard I was happy to make items for my friends at a 10% discount. Then I would take the cash and make myself magic items. I figured I was getting a little better than 10gp per 1Xp (plus the expenditure of feats).

The net result was I trailed about half a level behind everyone else and I had a little over twice the wealth, most of which were carefully selected custom items. My survivability went way up as I could afford +4 Int, +4 Con, +3 Resistance items, a Stone of Luck, and a nice library of scrolls to cover emergencies.

 

[Hitokiri]

Picasso's are bought and sold. Perhaps you have heard of places like Sotheby's and Christie's? I can find a listing of Van Gogh's up for auction right now. Or works from just about any other notable artist out there. The simple economic truth is that items are more likely to hit the market the more valuable they are, there is just that much more incentive to make a pile of money by selling them.



For the same reason that the Catholic Church sold indulgences, pieces of the true cross and other relics and just about anything else they could think of: to finance church operations.

Ah, but now you are relying on modern technologies to reach a large enough audience. I said that these items do go up for sale, but buying them shouldn't be a matter of crossing off X gp from your sheet and writing down +5 sword of awesomeness. If we remove the instant communications, quick shipping, and many of the modern conveniences that help make these markets available, it is no longer as far fetched that tracking down a simple +1 weapon is going to an adventure in itself. If I were to drop you into LA, or London, or Paris right now, could you find a picasso for sale in the city without resorting to mas media? I doubt it, but this is essentially what the PCs want to be able to do. And yes, clearing houses for them would exists, but the volume of sales would be much less than it is today. You might have to bum around one of them for a year or two before the item you wanted came up for auction, assuming it ever does. Really powerful items are going to be like the great works of art (Mona Lisa, David, etc.), they will be considered treasures that are HIGHLY unlikely to be sold. As for selling bits of holy relics and indulgences, they cost the church nothing (or near nothing) to make (assuming the holy relics aren't real, and from what I've seen many of the one they sold weren't). The same can't be said for potions and other gear. The churches may need money, but they are hardly there to be a potion brewing factory for any wandering vagabond who can loot enough gp to afford them.

 

[mmadsen]

But even if we're looking at just a barter economy or even one based on trade in kind, we are still clearly indicating that there is a market for magic items and that characters can, in fact, buy them. Not being able to buy them at the drop of a had with a pile of cash doesn't mean we don't have a market in operation.

An economy where buyers and sellers must work hard to find one another is not a modern commodity market; that's the point: it's not easy to buy and sell goods in such an economy.

We seem to have two extreme positions presented as straw men: (a) no magic items could or would be sold under any situation, or (b) any magic item you might want is on the shelf at your local Wiz Mart.

I don't think anyone supports Position A (no magic market at all). I know plenty of people support Position B -- maybe not on this thread, and certainly without a sarcastic name like Wiz Mart, but plenty of people play with anything available from the DMG at list price.

And that's my point: if you can buy and sell any magic item at a known list price, with no extra effort, you've got a modern, highly efficient, commodity market. And modern, highly efficient, commodity markets don't just happen -- at least not in the lawless lands where adventurers thrive.

 

[GMSkarka]

Ah, Storm Raven. Good to see that nothing has changed, even if the forum location is different.

 

[Patryn of Elvenshae]

If I were to drop you into LA, or London, or Paris right now, could you find a picasso for sale in the city without resorting to mas media? I doubt it, but this is essentially what the PCs want to be able to do.

Actually, it'd be pretty easy.

You walk to the nearest Museum of Art, and find their business office.

Someone there will undoubtedly know which gallery in town has them available and for sale, and would be willing to share for the appropriate amount of money - and, likely, it won't be all that much.

Will it take you some time to do it? Absolutely.

Will it be particularly difficult? Nope.

No one - other than those arguing stridently against the ability to buy and sell such high-priced items at all - is saying that purchasing a "work of art" is as simple as crossing an appropriate amount of cash off of your character sheet after a visit to "Enchanted Weapons 'R' Us."

Rather, those who support the concept of being able to purchase "works of art" have acknowledged that finding a local Community College and buying a couple pieces from the Art Department's show is probably pretty easy (i.e., potions, scrolls, some wands), but that there's going to be some legwork if you want a Picasso. And if you want a *particular* Picasso, some of that legwork is going to be tracking down the current owner and convincing him - whether by large amounts of cash, other items, other works of art, special services, threats upon his person, whatever - to part with it.