Stroking the Beard or Mage Stores

[JoeGKushner]

In the old days of D&D, you used to get XP for finding items, then for making them. Now you lose XP.

My friends and I always joked that the reason there were so many powerful mages about was that all they did was sit at home, stroking their beard. Each stroke worth 1 xp. Stupid joke but if you see some of us pretend to stroke our non-exsistant beards, it gets a little funnier.

Anyway, now that you lose XP for crafting magical items, how do you go about running a magic shop? There aren't any real sound rules for gaining xp for non-adventuring that I can recall off the top of my head, so all I can see are mages making items getting less and less potent as they continue to craft them.

How do you handle this in your game?

 

[Teflon Billy]

They only make items to spec, and the price markup is abominable (due to the XP loss).

The rest of the items are purchased from adventurers for whatever the lowest price the market will bear is.

This means that shops will have lot of niggly stuff that adventurers would usually sell off, but if the PC's are willing to pay top-dollar (or rather, GP), they can get what they need.

 

[Teflon Billy]

How do you handle this in your game?

I don't have magic shops. If PC's want to make items they can take the XP hit.

I've also increased the XP hit

Call me adinosaur, but I like to be in control of the number/potency of magic items in my game.