Small businesses in magic items

I don't get the whole "anti-magi-mart" thing.

Back in 2e (and before) Players got whatever the DM rolled up randomly and that was that. Unless you convinced your DM to let you quest for something. And this was fine, I guess, most of my old characters had next to nothing for gear that I cared about. My longest running 2e character had only his namesake (drowbane: greensteel +2/+5vsDrow katana)... and he went out of his way to get it... made.

3e made it alot easier to put gear into the PC's hands... and thats a good thing.
 

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Potion/Scrolls with up to 2nd level spells - Small quanities rolled randomly and available by commission in most small towns most places in the campaign, either from professional alchemists or temples of the more organized religions. In rural areas, there is often a 'witch' available within a half-days journey whose wares may or may not be effacious. Many sorts of spells and potions are illegal in most areas (for example 'charm person'), and will require contacts on the black market or successful persuasion attempt by buyer.

Scrolls with up to 5th level spells - Available generally only by commission in most large cities. Often dealers only do business with clients who are referred to them by trusted associates. Often payment includes services performed (quests).

Magic items gp value up to ~5000 gp - Available only by commision in some large cities. Often dealers only do business with clients who are referred to them by people they trust. Often payment includes services performed (quests).

Rarer magic items - Available to characters with sufficient social clout and good connections from auction houses that only deal with aristocratic (read entitled) clientel (straw purchases allowed, provided you can convince someone to be your buyer). Auctions are held roughly monthly, by invitation only, and will feature a small number of randomly generated items. Certain items at my descrestion are NEVER on the market (for example wishes).

Everything else - Either do it yourself or else available in treasure troves throughout the realms. Happy hunting!
 

Whizbang Dustyboots said:
...

Depending on the environment, there might be someone dealing in second-hand goods that came out of a nearby adventuring site, but their supplies will be very random. In the capital of the Barony of Midwood in my campaign, there's just such a shop (The House of the Transformed Toad, by Clockwork Golem, in fact). So the players can get a potion or three, maybe a wand, maybe a minor magic item. But if they come back a week later, the only things likely to be there are the things they sold themselves (maybe) and the things no one seems to want.

:thumbsup: to the HoTT. It currently sits between Daggerford and Waterdeep in my campaign. That pdf comes highly recommended.
 

I do not like super-convenient magic-marts in my setting, at least as far as permanent equipment goes, and don't care to argue the point. So to answer the question:

The way I handle it is, I make sure to introduce the party to someone who either would buy magical loot or knows someone who would by the time they get to the point where they'd be selling it. It's not that hard, it's usually a contact they've established by third level. I may play out the first such exchange to give them an idea of what it's like, and any subsequent exchanges that happen to be interesting or where time is an issue. The contact will either be an aristocrat, an alchemist, an underworld type, or a member of the world's very powerful and secretive archmage cabal, usually. Various possibilities but if the adventurers alienate all their powerful potential friends they do stuff for they are doing something wrong. Since there can be a lot of downtime (game years, possibly) between sessions there are opportunities to handwave some magic-buying, though as with found items I reserve the right to make commissioned items have properties that aren't exactly by the book. Limited-use items (potions, scrolls, wands, etc) are prevalent and permanent ones are not, so for potions, there really are "small businesses in magic items".

There are other ways I've beefed up the characters to counterbalance permanent-magic stinginess at low levels, so I'm not out to just punish players.

And by the time gear really starts to become an issue, the characters are pushing at the limits of the main setting, and are ready to break free to the planes beyond, where things open up a bit, and somewhere out in the multiverse if they ever get to 16th level they may well find some honest-to-goodness magic shops with glowing swords on the rack. By then they are near-deific heroes!
 

In my game, each town has a small collection of shopkeepers. Each town will have a weapon vender, an armor vendor, and a general shopkeeper for potions, gear, etc. A typical town will also have an two magic shops, where wizards and clerics can go to learn new spells, and a healer who can raise the dead or perform similar tasks. The purpose of having the shops separate is to make the players move through the towns and interact with the various peoples that they come across. This can lead to new quests, combat, or finding special items that might not me available at the shops. Of course, not all towns will fit the exact same mold. For example, in the town where a vampire had created a lair, the first thing he did was kill the towns healer.

Each town also has a different set of inventory. As the campaign moves along, the more advanced towns that the party travels to will have more powerful merchandice. Of course, this also means that the party may have to backtrack to a particular town if they're looking to buy a specific item. Again, this helps facilitate travel across the world and interaction with the townspeople.

Wait a minute... That's not my D+D game, that's Final Fantasy 1. Oops.
 

roguerouge said:
How do you give PCs the ability to barter/sell magic items without the dreaded Magic Wall-mart of Thay syndrome occurring? What kind of institutions do they go to?
When/if I get to run a campaign again, buyable magic items aren't going to be easy to come by, and certainly not just whatever the PC's want. A very well-to-do swordsmith MAY have a magic sword stashed away that he would be willing to sell, and a wizards' guild or temple may have a couple of low-power things that they would sell to either members or to someone who has the good word of a member to support them. A thieves' guild, if paid well enough, would probably keep an ear to the grapevine for clients looking for something in particular, and would probably be the easiest place to go to if someone wanted to fence a magic item. Particularly powerful or rare magic would require expensive consultation with sages and experts to learn what particular crypt, ruined castle, or mysterious tower the item in question is rumored to be found in.

Of course, I'm doing 1e these days, which doesn't really have the assumed magic level that 3e does. I like magic to be magical, not just a tool that PC's can automatically get if they have the gold for it. If I DID want to have a higher magic campaign, though, I would have the items found in item-appropriate places, not just an all-encompassing magic shop. Like my example above, the swordsmith would be the place to go for magic weapons, an armorer for any magic armor, etc. - maybe the owner is a high-level mage of a martial bent who gladly makes special order weapons and armor for his wealthy clients. Books, scrolls, etc could be found in a huge library run by the wizards' guild. Rings, amulets, and such are found at high-end jewellers. Cloaks, boats, robes are found at the exclusive and expensive clothing shop catering to the wealthy, powerful, and eccentric.
 

I run a vanilla, by the RAW, game and it works okay. Here's a couple of ways to deal with Magic-mart.

1) get rid of the concept that you can get anything from one merchant. Maybe one city, but that's about it. Casters can only make the items they have the spells/levels/materials/feats for. Only epic-type characters can make anything.

2) Forget the idea of a crafter who has a "stock room." Making magic items takes XP and a large cash investment. Nobody burns XP without a reason even if they had the cash. So only items that are really useful (potions of heal, neutralize poison, scroll of identify, etc) will be "in stock."

3) Item crafting takes time, and lots of it. A +5 vorpal sword takes almost 7 months to craft and you have to work on it constantly. Not something you do lightly.

4) Realize that an item crafter makes a fairly hefty profit on each item and can afford to be picky about who they sell their XP, errr, wares to. Elves may not sell to orcs and vice versa. Being a hero is a good way to convince people to sell to you.

5) If the item isn't custom, the item already exists and the current owner may not be attached to it. Maybe you can track them down.

6) No one person, or even government, has the cash and resources to buy up every magic item that comes along, even at 50% value.



So the answer is to have numerous craftsmen who have a couple of the most useful items on hand and that can be convinced to make something just for you. People in a hurry can put out feelers (*cough* Gather Information *cough) and see if anyone is out to sell such a thing. I generally roll up several random encounters worth of loot. Okay, I use a program for it. My simple rule is to find the highest level NPC in the city and roll for the level and every lower. (So a 4th level paladin as the highest NPC means generating an ECL 4 treasure, ECL 3 treasure, ECL2 treasure, etc.) Not perfect but it gets idea.

Maybe the seller is using an agent, who gets a commission, to help sell the item. If you want a vanilla game, could be the agent fee + taxes comes out to ~50% the item cost. (Hey, real estate agents take ~10% as their cut. And magic items are, by comparison, more costly than 99% of the real estate out there) In this case there's no "Magic-Mart" but there is "Magic Mark", the guy who knows all the crafters, the adventurers with stuff to sell, and the adventurers out to buy.

I'm a big fan of auctions, I started using them in my game many years ago.
 

roguerouge said:
How do you give PCs the ability to barter/sell magic items without the dreaded Magic Wall-mart of Thay syndrome occurring? What kind of institutions do they go to?
It's not a WalMart, it's General Dymamics and Boeing of Thay. They do not sell cheap stuff. It's there so the rogues do not try to steal from them.
 

For most of my games, there is usually a trade house or merchant in large cities that specializes in purchasing odd lots of magic items. These houses may also buy other others items as well, such as works of art, but magic items are their specialty. They ask few questions about the origins of the items and appear willing to purchase even the most obscure items.

These are inevitably fronts or jobbers for the transplanar merchant houses of the mercane. Preferring to work through local intermediates, the mercane themselves are rarely, if ever, seen. Once purchased, the mercane move items to other markets for resale. Working through other fronts and agents, the mercane then sell these items at a premium where they are scarce, whether that is the next city over or a distant plane.

I do use some of the methods mentioned above by other posters, but I like to have the mercane involved as well. It provides a rationale for the sale of oddball items, such as huge or greater sized magic weapons. Out on the infinite planes, there is always someone somewhere that wants a particular magic item, no matter how weird or obscure.
 

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