Shopping for Magic Items

[dreaded_beast]

Last session, my players wanted to rid themselves of some magical loot that they found from their last adventure. They were in the town of Tilverton within Cormyr, in the Forgotten Realms. Anyway, it seemed like a pretty decent sized town so I figured there would be a few people around that would buy and sell magical loot.

Basically, they found 2 people who sold and bought magical weapons and armor and 1 person who sold and bought miscellaneous magic, like clothes and the like. Anyway, the PCs roleplayed a bit, asking if the vendor would buy something, which the vendor did usually for around half of market value. When the PCs wanted to buy magical weapons, they were able to purchase from the apporpriate vendor for around market value plus 10% or so.

I don't think it was too hard or too easy for the PCs to go "magic shopping", since they had to ask around for where to find things and the town wasn't going to carry anything beyond a +2 item.

I was wondering how hard or easy you make "magical shopping".

My goal is to run a "regular" 3.5 DND game, whatever "regular" means. I don't want "magical shopping" to be something that you can just go to the local Quickie Mart and pick up a +2 Greatsword for 9000GP, but I don't want the PCs to have go on adventure after adventure (jump through hoops) just to get a chance to buy a +1 Mace.

 

[Nareth]

I've put the Freeport setting into my version of the Realms, and in that city there is a shop that buys/sells magic weapons. He usually doesn't carry anything over a +2 weapon (mostly +1's) and he will buy for half market value, maybe more if he likes the characters. He also will extend the group credit if they request such toward future purchases.

My own feeling is that if the party goes to a large city, there should be at least one place that would buy/sell minor magics. Anything more powerful would require finding an individual willing to pay for the item. I think what you did is fine

 

[Talon5]

We don't worry to much about buying things. Find a town large enough to support your purchase and your good. Want to buy something of value thou and you have to find a bigger town. Usually we don't have the money for to big of buys.

One of my characters is a member of the Arcane Order so its a good excuse to go to the charter house.

We also very seldom role play purchases or selling, thou its pretty well understood that- we have 10k gp worth of stuff to sell, it ante happening in one day.

 

[dave_o]

If you wanna lift something from Gamma World d20, give towns stats. Most importantly, give them a Wealth bonus, which is something Gamma World d20 borrows from d20 Modern. In short, it's a sort of skill-check to determine if you can get something. This way, you can set a DC in your head for a magic item, perhaps something along the lines of 10 + Caster Level, and have the PC roll the town's Wealth check for it.

PC: "Is there a place I can buy a Bag of Holding?"
DM, holding out d20: "Iunno. Is there? "

Ever since I read the section in Gamma World d20 about giving stats to settlements, I've made a point of putting them in every d20 campaign I run.

 

[Lord Pendragon]

I run it similar to Nareth. Finding the one guy in the city with the money and interest in buying a +3 human-bane flail is an excellent time to call for a Gather Information check.

 

[Herpes Cineplex]

In our games, magic items are basically always made on commission; rather than have stores which buy and sell items, it's always a process of looking for a wizard or a temple that'll be willing to take money (market price or higher, depending on the setting and the city) in exchange for making an item. Usually this involves a little roleplay during the hunting-down-a-crafter and negotiating-a-price phase.

But on the other hand, we abstract the process of selling items to the point where it's all handled entirely "off-camera"; basically, whoever's keeping the list of the swag we've picked up runs through it with the GM to see what we can get for it, and no one cares (or even asks!) who exactly we're selling it to. I guess that shows where our priorities are: magic items we want to own are worth spending time getting, while items we don't particularly want or need just need to be cashed out as quickly as possible. (Some day I might indulge a rat-bastardy whim and build a plot entirely around an unwanted magic item being sold by the PCs to exactly the wrong person.)


One thing our group does which I think is kind of unusual, from what I've read here anyway, is totally ignore the rules saying that magic items sell for half their market value or less. Since our settings don't have stores with magic items sitting on the shelves, we generally let characters sell magic stuff for nearly full market value (or just flat market value if we're feeling lazy).

The alternative seems to be trying to come up with some reason why PCs never seem to find these amazing bargain-basement prices for magic items. I mean, why is it that my PC is never the guy who finds someone looking to unload an item for half of what it's worth? And yet every NPC who's out there buying magic items seems to always be getting a 50% discount from me! One of them should put together an infomercial to tell me how I, too, can acquire magical assets for a fraction of their actual value, and use it as my stepping stone to staggering wealth.

I joke a little bit, but it is a totally bizarre rule if your setting doesn't have Ye Olde Magic Item Shoppe on the corner. I can believe the "previously owned" markdown if we're talking about a merchant buying new stock for his store, because he wants to turn a profit. But if there's no middleman, there's no need for a markdown: magic items don't wear out (usually), so the +1 Barbecue Fork of Flipping you buy from an adventurer who pulled it out of Trogdor's hoard is every bit as good as the +1 BFoF you'd commission from the local Temple of the Grilling God, right? So if you found an adventurer who's willing to sell such a mighty cooking implement, why wouldn't he charge the actual market value for it?


Ignoring that rule works in our games mostly because our GMs are never at a loss for ways to get PCs to spend their money and there's usually a markup on specially-crafted items anyway, so the extra cash made from selling items tends to get bled off easily. Plus, having nearly all purchased magic items require finding someone who'd be willing to craft it just for you gives the GM a lot of control over whether a PC can even get a particular item or not, making the "oh no, you have too much money!" problem a non-issue. It doesn't matter whether you have 100gp or 10000gp if the item's not for sale in the first place, right? Possibly in other groups or in other setting types, this wouldn't work so well, but we're happy with it.

--
plus, we all kinda think that magic item shops are a dumb idea
ryan

 

[dekrass]

In my games the PCs almost always commission items they want. They normally handle finding a buyer by finding a mage guild or holding an auction, mostly for other adventurers.
In Realms games the party wizard or sorcerer usually tries to go to the annual Mage Fair, wherever it may be.
We, also ignore the half price sale rule, never made sense to us.

 

[VirgilCaine]

IMC, if you want something "off the rack"--that is, "this rack we put the jumbled blob of items we bought from many different customers"--then you go to the Guild brokers. They keep track of anyone who wants to sell a magic item.

If you want something made, you go to a wizard who does this for a living or a church/druid who you donate to/are known to as a good friend.
Then you describe what you want the item to do or describe a common item (i.e. a PHB item) and then they come up with a price--often not in gold pieces, but in unnamed favors, time of service, minor quests, property, gems, trade goods, or other magic items. Only if the item is very weak can cash be used when trading with wizards.

 

[Syntallah]

If you wanna lift something from Gamma World d20, give towns stats. Most importantly, give them a Wealth bonus, which is something Gamma World d20 borrows from d20 Modern. In short, it's a sort of skill-check to determine if you can get something. This way, you can set a DC in your head for a magic item, perhaps something along the lines of 10 + Caster Level, and have the PC roll the town's Wealth check for it.

PC: "Is there a place I can buy a Bag of Holding?"
DM, holding out d20: "Iunno. Is there? "

Ever since I read the section in Gamma World d20 about giving stats to settlements, I've made a point of putting them in every d20 campaign I run.

Is there an SRD for the d20 Gamma World? How do the rules fit in with the Community wealth rating from the DMG?

 

[cignus_pfaccari]

We, also ignore the half price sale rule, never made sense to us.

We generally did that in the Birthright game I was in. Several of the PCs had organizations that could do the legwork of finding somebody who'd be happy to pay full price for magic items...like, say, budding adventurers.

Buying magic items for us, though, was mostly through commission, and that was rare as it was. However, when we made it to the Planes, one of the Outlands gate towns had a magic item market, and we went berserk, buying anything that we thought was cool and selling all the loose crap we'd accumulated throughout the campaign, even at outrageously disadvantageous prices.

Oh, my, that was a fun session. The one moment that was closest to that was when I realized that my character could use his boots of teleportation to go buy a staff of lightning storm and go to town on these ice mephits that were harrassing him...if only the seller would've taken letters of credit. Alas.

Brad