Standard DM behavior?

[ExploderWizard]

"We"? Who invited you?

Cheers, -- N

It's the Royal "we".

 

[Vyvyan Basterd]

It's the Royal "we".

Not sure that's "Grandma-freindly" there EW.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Not sure that's "Grandma-freindly" there EW.

Well if you want to tack on an invisible exta e sure.

 

[Janx]

I just think having magic shops with hundreds of items available, each costing a small fortune, is implausible and senseless.

It's all about inventory and volume.

If in your campaign, there are ZERO magic items, then there will be ZERO magic shops

If in your campaign , there are FIVE magic items, there still won't be any magic shops, and odds are good nobody's buying or selling (prolly killing for).

However, if you play in a world where NPCS clerics and NPC wizards are cranking out minor magic items (potions and scrolls), you have the foundation of justification of a magic shop.

Note, I define magic shop as a place that sells magic items, not services. It's also entirely plausible that you can only buy magic weapons from an arms merchant. The nature of the shop is unimportant, only that there is an NPC that PCs can go to, and buy some magic items.

When you consider how many extra items the typical PC gets by 5th level, 10th level, etc, you start getting into having a SUPPLY of magic items.

From there, obviously the PCs want different magic items or money (so they can get different magicitems). This is the DEMAND.

Consider the old rule of thumb that 10% of the population is leveled (i.e. NPC adventurers, etc with level appropriate loot). This means that in a large enough population, there are NPCs with similar piles of unwanted magic loot. Once again, creating supply and demand.

At that point, some enterprising individual (likely an NPC adventurer looking to convert his unwanted magic items) will start a business selling and trading items. And making money off it.

All it takes to justify this is two categories of people:
1) minor item makers who crank out commodity items like potions and scrolls selling to adventurers (PC or NPC)
2) higher level chars with items they don't use, looking to trade them in for stuff they can

Given how easy it is to crank out the small stuff, that justifies a "magic shop" that sells the small stuff.

And if I was a new PC, I'd be looking there for magic stuff in general, because those folks are in the know.

And if the campaign I played in was fairly generous with items, I'd easily have stuff I don't want (yay, I found a +2 sword, maybe I can trade in my +1 for something else).

Businesses exist because of SUPPLY and DEMAND. There is DEMAND for magic items, it is the number one reason PCs go adventuring for (that and XP and gold). The SUPPLY is the total magic items in the world. They are not all sitting in a dungeon, waiting for a PC to find it.

There is a demand for a whole lot of things in our real world. And there are people making businesses out of it. Just because you don't like the idea, doesn't make it unrealistic or unfathomable. Otherwise there wouldn't be the gambling, drug trade or human slavery. If people want it, somebody will find a way to get an inventory and sell it.

I suspect that the real root of not wanting magic shops in a campaign has more to do with GM control. The extreme example of anti-magic shoppism is that a PC can declare what he wants and walk into any magic shop and buy it. These types of GMs seem to loathe the idea of a player getting whats he wants. Whereas, all the examples by GMs who accept the idea of magic shops point out that the DM has full conrol of the inventory and prices. Many of these examples include some rather clever integrations with other real world business ideas. I've not seen one example of a magic-walmart, where a PC can buy whatever they want and run rampant over the campaign.

In short, barring a low magic campaign where there isn't enough excess magic items to sell, it defies logic and real world comparison that there would NOT be some form of magic shop.

 

[ExploderWizard]

Consider the old rule of thumb that 10% of the population is leveled (i.e. NPC adventurers, etc with level appropriate loot). This means that in a large enough population, there are NPCs with similar piles of unwanted magic loot. Once again, creating supply and demand.

That's just it, it is an old rule. The default assumption in 4E isn't that the PC's are just one of many groups of adventurers seeking thier fortune.
The PC's are somewhat unique heroes in world filled with darkness dotted with occasional points of light.

In this world the PC's are really the only ones with a need and desire for a great many types of magical items. An entire economy of millions of gp in assets effectively exists to serve a half dozen people. If adventurers were very common then magic shops might have actual customers but then the PC's wouldn't be the special snowflakes they are supposed to be.

 

[pawsplay]

Nothing you can say will convince me that every town of sufficient size will have a +1 thundering kukri for sale.

The DMG says that anything under the GP limit is readily available. Scrolls of animate dead, +1 brilliant energy greatclubs, wands of touch of fatigue, robes of the archmagi (his and hers), all available. Staff of evocation with 8 charges? No problem, we got lotsa that. Oh, you want a cursed spear that stabs its owner? We'll have to go get that from storage.

Multiply every common and uncommon weapon by every available enhancement bonus by every special property, and even a city of a million people doesn't have that many weapons. Longswords, +1 to +3, with or without fire or frost, is nine different longswords. Excuse me, sir, can I see your longsword catalog for the season?

 

[billd91]

Nothing you can say will convince me that every town of sufficient size will have a +1 thundering kukri for sale.

The DMG says that anything under the GP limit is readily available. Scrolls of animate dead, +1 brilliant energy greatclubs, wands of touch of fatigue, robes of the archmagi (his and hers), all available. Staff of evocation with 8 charges? No problem, we got lotsa that. Oh, you want a cursed spear that stabs its owner? We'll have to go get that from storage.

This is one of the reasons it's important to keep things in context. The DMG does say that anything under the GP limit is "most likely" available on page 137 under the topic of Community Wealth and Population. But the topic on Magic Items on page 142 says that magic items may be available in markets and shops "occasionally".

It's important to consider when the DMG (and other rules) are speaking most generally and when more specific guidelines should apply (specific usually trumps general) and to hold firm when a player pulls a particular statement out of context in an effort to get that oddball magic item.

3e gets a lot of blame for the magic shop issue, but nuts to that. The advice to the DM is there to allow shopping but to make it reasonably low level, uncommon, rare, or significant. The fact that plenty of specific campaigns and DMs haven't followed that advice, and that many DMs have not done so since the days of 1e, is not the fault of 3e in the slightest.

 

[Ariosto]

Consider the old rule of thumb that 10% of the population is leveled.

I don't know where you got that, but consider the 1st ed. AD&D DMG, page 35: "Human and half-orc characters suitable for level advancement are found at a ratio of 1 in 100. Other races have an incidence of 1 in 50."

The basic assumptions have been changed, eh? One can point to changes in what the concepts of character class and level mean, but those are just byproducts of more fundamental alterations.

I suspect that the real root of not wanting magic shops in a campaign has more to do with GM control.

The starting point -- the environment to which other assumptions have adapted -- is more DM control. I'm currently a player in a game that uses 1e/2e books, but in the sort of constrained scenario that has long predominated. This DM has a number of house rules and conventions adjusting the game to that. There's a "social contract" that we go on "the adventure" the DM has plotted out. That means that we really do encounter only what and when the DM chooses -- in magic items as in all else.

When we get back to town, magic seems pretty readily available -- but mostly at AD&D DMG prices, so mostly too rich for our purses. (Our characters are presently 3rd level.) That so far has not been a big deal to us, because (a) the DM is pretty lavish (even Monty Haul-ish) with findings in adventures; and (b) we are all old-timers to whom getting precisely what we want to fit a "character concept" is simply not a priority.

This is a novel experience in D&D to me, but one stemming from practical considerations I can appreciate. I can see further that, having given up the strategic potential of choosing where to go and what to do, players might well be glad of the chance to plot their courses in picking magic items (and feats and so on) out of books.

There's a similar effect creeping up on me regarding fights. When the big decision is whether to go man-to-monster in the first place, I delight in the speedy abstraction of the basic combat system in old D&D. Contemplating a session that is in any case going to be one battle after another, I see a motive for elaborate rules. If it's all the same in terms of time consumption, then fewer but more complex "encounters" might well be preferable.

 

[Janx]

That's just it, it is an old rule. The default assumption in 4E isn't that the PC's are just one of many groups of adventurers seeking thier fortune.
The PC's are somewhat unique heroes in world filled with darkness dotted with occasional points of light.

In this world the PC's are really the only ones with a need and desire for a great many types of magical items. An entire economy of millions of gp in assets effectively exists to serve a half dozen people. If adventurers were very common then magic shops might have actual customers but then the PC's wouldn't be the special snowflakes they are supposed to be.

Bear in mind, I don't do 4e, I'm talking generalities...

If there's not a lot of NPCs with items, (and there's a very small and finite number of PCs with items), then you should have a low magic campagin (because there's not that much stuff floating around.

If 4e says there's a ton of magic items floating around, but only PCs are using them, I'd say that's a little odd. There's a lot of risk and overhead in running a shop in a world where there's only 4 customers.

Really, my whole point is that if there's a lot of magic items, then a lot of people have them. Maybe they're not all leveled (though the survival of the fittest would encourage that). If a lot of people have them, then somebody's going to sell them. Unless of course EVERYBODY has them (too much supply).

 

[Janx]

I don't know where you got that, but consider the 1st ed. AD&D DMG, page 35: "Human and half-orc characters suitable for level advancement are found at a ratio of 1 in 100. Other races have an incidence of 1 in 50."

10%, 1%, whatever. I'm talking about the concept that leveled people are likely to have magic items appropriate to their level (because they can take them from lesser leveled, and defend them from others).

And that based on that principal, a population of sufficient size will have some items. This means there is a supply.

And that because EVERYBODY loves magic items (well not everybody, but there's plenty of folks who could have a use for any given item, given the means to get one), there is demand.

When demand exists and supply exists, you got a market. Arguing against it goes against human nature.

The way you AVOID having a market is to make supply so small, that there's not enough product to put on shelves. If trading is so light, you won't have markets. Private sales would be rare, because there's not a lot of items to be moving.

Mostly, what I'm saying is that folks who argue that a magic shop is unrealistic tend to be ignoring economics and human nature. Its very easy to justify a magic shop to exist, just play in a game with enough supply for folks to have extra items. That's realistic, and will make sense.

It's very easy to justify not having magic shops, decrease demand or supply (and probably both).