Players Whining that they Should be able to Buy Magic Items

[Arnwyn]

How do DMs who don't allow purchasing magic items explain why no market develops for them? That would take some pretty bizarre behaviour on the part of just about everyone with any wealth to speak of in the entire campaign world.

By having an adequately described combination of demographics, economics, and culture. A few people's games out there don't perfectly follow the RAW word-for-word, y'know. Guess you really haven't thought all that hard about it.

 

[Bregh]

Actually, you'd be surprised as to how many slave children end up in the U.S. Since the U.S.-Canada border is a joke, smuggling a kidnapped child into Canada would be quite easy.

Try it sometime.

Really.

Even with your own children.

I'm in the tourism industry, and you simply would not believe the number of father-son (where the son is a minor) fishing trips I've seen cancelled because the parent did not have sufficient documentation with him (including written permission from the mother) to bring the boy across the border.

And this is at the Sault Ste. Marie crossing, where you'd expect Northern Ontarians and Youpers to be fairly relaxed.

I should dig up the reservation slips from last year and compare the ratio of fathers and sons who got through and those who were turned back and had to cancel or re-schedule.

Honestly, you would not frigging believe how hard it is. (Not to say there aren't cases that fall through, obviously, but these are the exception, not the rule. And SR distinctly said that children on the black market were one of the "easiest" commodities. I don't dispute one bit that it exists, I dispute his disgusting hyperbole of it--even in Asia, where narcotics and high-seas piracy account for far more units of volume moved in the black market than the despicable trade in children.)

Anyway, let's quit derailing this marvellous thread and get back to the matter at hand.

 

[Belen]

The funny thing about this thread is that is further highlights the 3e divide. Even in an area where the GM should have full control, magic item distribution, you get a rules argument that a certain level of items are owed to the players and that it is a rule!

Nevermind that the entire wealth by level chart and the CR charts are in the DMG and thus the province of the GM. Nevermind that the entire issue is meant to be handled by the GM, we still get the argument in favor of more "player" options to help trick out their character.

Funny that this also seems to apply to the fluff versus crunch debate and that most people who are against the magic shop/ item market approach are giving fluff/ story reasons, while the proponents of the shop idea are focusing on crunch.

The entire argument seems to revolve around a GM/fluff vs. player/ crunch approach that seems inherent in 3e.

I am sure that the next edition of the game will further isolate the role of the GM until we eventually get replaced in favor of adventure rules and pregen scenarios that run with a rules judge.

 

[Storm Raven]

I'm in the tourism industry, and you simply would not believe the number of father-son (where the son is a minor) fishing trips I've seen cancelled because the parent did not have sufficient documentation with him (including written permission from the mother) to bring the boy across the border.

If you are smuggling children across the border, do you really expect to be doing it at a border station? The U.S.-Canada border is huge, and easy to cross illegally if you want to.

 

[Rodrigo Istalindir]

I operate most of my games on the assumption that adventurers are rare. The players are an oddity -- when they blow through some small hamlet, people will be talking about it for years. The magic items that they may find along the way account for a significant chunk of all magic items in the world.

Few adventurers means few NPCs with the level, experience, skills, abilities, known spells, and feats to create magic items. While technically PC's may buy and sell magic items, there is not enough volume to constitute a market (either in the economic sense or the 'farmer's market' sense).

Want a flaming sword? Ok, find the best blacksmith you can (cause you sure don't want some hack screwing up and wasting the material), journey far and wide to find the purest iron. Find a mage with the proper feat, and then adventure into the haunted mage's tower to retrieve the 'fireball' scroll to present to the mage so he can learn the proper magic to enchant the sword.

 

[Storm Raven]

As for magic items being on sale BECAUSE they are rare and valuable....I'll give that one to the first person that can show me the going price for the Shroud of Turin. Heck, I'll even give the argument to someone who can tell me who to talk to about purchasing the Mona Lisa. My point is that magical items in my games are like Picasso's. Do the ever get sold, yeah, but it's not going o be a regular occurance, and it is definately not something which my players can just assume is on the open market once they reach the amount of gold listed in the dmg.

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.

Even minor items are hard to get ahold of (Hey, clw potions take time and effort to make, why would a church sell them to every two bit adventurer that walked through the door, especially when they may not even follow the churchs precepts).

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.

 

[Bregh]

If you are smuggling children across the border, do you really expect to be doing it at a border station? The U.S.-Canada border is huge, and easy to cross illegally if you want to.

You're quite something.

In an age of Amber Alerts, round-the-clock news networks, rapid communication, e-mails, sensitivity to missing children, and where American license plates and funny accents stick out like sore thumbs (especially in a country used to noticing their presence simply because y'all are so different from the norm) there's nothing easy about the market for smuggling children. (Which is how you described it.)

Does it happen? Assuredly.

It acquiring a child from such actions easier than buying nicked video or hard drugs from the guy across town? Most. Frigging. Assuredly. Not.

Naive, indeed.

 

[Storm Raven]

Don't bother responding to any of my posts, as they won't have much relevance on the world you live on. Here, on my planet, at least, alcohol for minors, MP3 and DVD players, narcotics, firearms, and automobiles are far more readily availble on the "black market" than children.

Children are probably easier to get as a black market commodity than firearms or automobiles (cheaper in general) and depending on the bulk that you want easier to get than most significant narcotics transactions. I think you are underestimating just how easy trade in children truly is in the world, and how awfully omnipresent it is.

 

[Storm Raven]

The difference is that the PCs have to ask for it. They have to go to someone qualified, then dicker with them in order to have it made. It will not already be made and the person who makes it will want something in return other than mere money.

Anything that a person wants can be replaced by sufficient qualtities of "mere money".

 

[Belen]

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.

There is a big difference between art and items that are meant to be useful. The simple truth is that people will hold onto a valuable, useful item unless they have a large number of them.

And Sotheby's and Christie's exist because a communication network exists that allows them to get the items and make it known that they have them.

That does not exist in a fantasy world with a medieval tech level.

You cannot equate a modern economy with one where the vast majority of the wealthy nations are also on a subsistance level.