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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ariosto" data-source="post: 4952374" data-attributes="member: 80487">Rationally, perhaps. However, someone (Elise Gygax?) had an ear for alliteration -- and chose a name that is quite evocative as well!No, acquiring treasure was formerly not a mere means but the  end: how one literally scored points in the game.That's nice to know. My impression is that the "essential" ones could quite simply get changed to inherent powers if one preferred to keep items even scarcer for flavor.That's not my point, which is that shopping is not the point of D&D. I think we agree on that, disagreeing simply on the degree to which magic items should be mere commodities.Forcing players to do anything is a dead letter in campaigns I referee, but I do understand that (and why) it is much more common these days for joining an adventure to be "compulsory" by custom. Your remarks nonetheless demonstrate a relationship to adventures and treasures as utterly bizarre to me as I guess mine must seem to you.Going off on perilous quests to secure wondrous treasures is what the game is (or was) "about" in the same way as invading Western Europe is what D-Day is about. If you would rather stay home and raise pigs, then there's no need to pack your dice and hie to the game table.So, that's about everyone's satisfaction: we've all come to play D&D. And just as all members of a team contribute to victory, all share the spoils. Especially when the same PCs are teamed in one adventure after another, treasure helps the team go on to secure more treasure.The game has never led me to expect that each session should yield a magic item for each character as if someone were handing out candy to children!Since we're going to stir up trouble to get treasure in any case, why not stir it up where treasure that especially interests us beckons?I am not against commerce in magic items. In the old game, baubles enchanted with continual light are likely to be pretty common. Scrolls and potions are not dime a dozen if only high-level characters can make them, and they tend to get used up, but usually are produced in such quantities as to be readily obtained at least in certain regions. Arms and armor (especially swords) make up the next tier of frequency, in which it might not take very long to find something of the sort on the market (if only a +1 or +2, not quite the Intelligent Holy Flaming EHP-Slaying Two-Handed Sword of Sharpness +5 with which a PC would not part for any price).The more exotic stuff just seems to me more gratifying as souvenirs of exploits more impressive than finding a parking space at Wally Mart.It's a "flavor" issue. YMMV of course, and what's normative may vary not only from campaign to campaign but more broadly over time.I know for sure there's no rule against buying magic items in Original D&D or 1st ed. Advanced. In fact, that aspect of the economy makes more sense to me than what I've seen in 4e.However, it becomes in some eyes a bit too silly and deflating when fairy mail and blades of thunderbolt iron, caps of invisibility and seven-league boots, flying carpets and bottled jinns -- all the enchanted treasures from adventures Beyond the Fields We Know, secured at risk (and sometimes cost) of life and limb -- are reduced to mere commodities anyone with ready cash (or adequate credit) can order from the comfort of his armchair and have delivered within so many business days.Every magic gewgaw is thus reduced to the equivalent of the Stupid T Shirt in "... And All I Got Was ...".There's a middle ground between Nothing and Everything, between Never and Always, between automatically and instantly getting whatever one picks and depending purely on chance to drop into one's lap just what one wants.</blockquote>

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