The Magic Item Shop: Creative Expression Through Capitalism

[Fauchard1520]

I've got a slightly longer write-up over here, but here's the crux of the argument:


I think that it takes more than power gaming to explain why players like magic item shops. Looking at the magic item lists like a Sears Catalog might not be especially interesting in RP terms, but it does represent an effort by players to have a demonstrable impact on the world. By contrast, building a temple or owning your own inn might be solid RP, but if it doesn't have mechanical consequences, it's going to feel a bit hollow.


This leads to a bit of a conundrum. If you want to include some kind of gold / power exchange rate in your game (read: a magic item shop), how do you balance that with gold-as-RP? In other words, if you can pay for magic items, new powers, or powerful minions who are willing to fight at your side, how do you balance those hard mechanical benefits against the guy that wants to build a city wall for the town?

 

[Celebrim]

In short, I don't think you do. I think however that good RPing by the GM requires the world to respond to the PC's for lack of a better word "realistically", which is something that for example the 2e Forgotten Realms adventures infamously set bad examples with respect to - PCs were treated in one moment like heroes that had saved the world and with no real reflection in the next moment were treated like petty criminals. I think that GMs should go out of their way to make real the changes in the social standing of the PCs, even if its hard to put an exact finger on what the mechanical consequences of that is. Simply having NPCs treat them differently as their status evolves over time is enough. You could actually track social status in some sort of rigorous way, but what I tend to find is that such systems are vastly too simplistic to really capture all the nuances of social standing and reputation.

I'm not a fan of magic item shops, and I feel like by introducing them you've created your own problem you now need to solve. For example, what if there were no magic item shops, but one of the more common ways magic items were introduced into the game was as gifts by powerful NPCs that either felt indebted to the players, or who wanted to induce them to be allies or vassals? I mean, thinking back on my own experiences as a high level PC, one of the main things we did with spare magic items was give them to henchmen. As far as mechanical reinforcement goes, by the rules that vastly increased henchmen loyalty! So one way to think of this is that there are magic item shops out there, but the coin that they take isn't gold or isn't just gold.

In my current campaign, the party cleric was invited by a high priest of her cult to undergo a rite that would confirm the cleric as a full priest in the priesthood. We RPed out that rite, and afterwards the high priestess revealed to the PC that it was the will of the deity that she would eventually succeed her as the new high priestess. To that end, the temple has been providing the PC with 'loans' from the temples stock of sacred vestments, including a spiffy suit of shiny mithril armor. No gold changed hands here. We were just confirming the PC's rising status in the world and particularly within her cult. Demonstrable impact on the world.

 

[CapnZapp]

Hello.

My name is CapnZapp, and I approve of this thread title.

 

[CapnZapp]

The thing me and my players like, isn't magic shoppes per se.

The thing we like is adding another layer of character customization.

Just like the "feats layer", the "skills layer", and the "multiclass layer", the "item layer" is the most fun when it provides the player with choices.

That items represent a money sink that players really are motivated to use (as opposed to downtime activities such as building a church etc) is a nice bonus (since there must a point to collecting all the gold or you can just leave it once you have 100 gold or so, enough for all the beer in the entire tavern).

But just like for feats or class abilities, the game falls apart if you're allowed completely free reign. Just as you probably shouldn't allow players to design their own skills, you better not allow them to create just any item.

That's where the Sears Catalog comes in, the magic shoppe. Just like you might get a choice between six different class abilities when you level up, you gain the choice between a large but ultimately finite number of items, limited by available gold (and particulars, like you can't wear two hats, or Attunement in 5E).

 

[Fauchard1520]

That's where the Sears Catalog comes in, the magic shoppe. Just like you might get a choice between six different class abilities when you level up, you gain the choice between a large but ultimately finite number of items, limited by available gold (and particulars, like you can't wear two hats, or Attunement in 5E).

My approach is to have a travelling merchant. Dude has maybe 15 things at any given time, three of which the PCs can't afford and another two of which are inappropriate to their classes. That leaves ten real items to sort through. In other words, my magic merchant is a Sears Catalog on wheels.

 

[Zhaleskra]

My feeling on magic item shops is "if it fits the genre". Final Fantasy CRPG? Sure! World Tree? Absolutely, but they're mostly going to be selling lowish complexity household or professional spells, easy enchantments a first year magical student could do for a term project. D&D or general fantasy tabletop RPG? Depends where you are. I'd prefer to have the armor and weapon merchants have a small stock of minor magic items, like in Might & Magic VI where if you went into a shop and selected their "Special" items, they had five magic items . . . that week, excluding the ones you already bought.

As I have said in a previous thread, or at least hopefully alluded to is "if there's a price for it in the book, I can buy it in a shop, in any town we happen to be in". While I have not seen that happen in play, it seems to me the way a lot of people here handle magic item shops.

 

[Lanefan]

The thing me and my players like, isn't magic shoppes per se.

The thing we like is adding another layer of character customization.

And that's just the sort of thinking that dooms magic shops for the rest of us: that it just becomes one more level of gamist character building without any basis in the reality of the game world.

Magic items should be available to purchase, of that there's no debate. But what's available at any given time should be completely* random (both in quantity and in selection) and not in any way tailored to the PCs. Even the biggest city isn't likely to have more than 15-25 items on the market at once, other than basic scrolls and potions. Sure, sometimes a PC will get lucky and find exactly the item she wants - but that's all it is: luck.

* - with allowances made for in-fiction goings-on e.g. if there's a war coming and magic weapons and armour are being snapped up then fewer of these would be on the open market at any given time in that region.

Regarding custom-to-PC items: the way in-game to achieve this is to commission the item's construction, pay up front, and then be prepared to wait an in-game year or two while it's being made...with the known risk that by the time it's completed you might not need it any more because you've found better, or your adventuring career has ended, or you're dead. (unclaimed commissions are a valid source of items coming on the open market)

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*

 

[Lanefan]

I dispute this premise. I will certainly argue against having magic items available to purchase in my campaigns. Not only will I argue against it, as the authority for such things in my campaigns, I will strike down with great vengeance and furious anger those who would attempt to poison and destroy my brothers with their magic shoppes.

For crying out loud, shoppes only exist in pretentious suburban strip malls.

Why oh why do people so quickly assume the ability to buy-sell magic items always represents the silly 3e extreme, that being fully stocked 'magic shoppes'?

Have your PC parties never come back from an adventure with a few magic items that none of them want, or can use? Have said parties never then tried to convert those items into something more useful - be it coin, other more useful items, or whatever?

Because if they have then boom you've got the germination of a magic item economy.

And if one then realizes there's almost certainly going to be items coming onto the market now and then from one or more of these other sources:

1 - other adventurers out there (a very reasonable assumption, or else where do replacement mid-high-level characters come from when needed?) who also occasionally come back from the field with things they don't need
2 - sales and transfers from current owners e.g. retired adventurers who don't need the items any more, or who have died without a will or family
3 - items commissioned (could even be by a PC) from an artificer or guild and then for whatever reason never picked up on completion
4 - items made by a PC with the specific intent of being sold, either to someone else within the party or "on spec" to whoever is willing to pay (and if a PC can do this, so can anyone else with the skill)

Then there's quite realistically going to be a) some trade in those items, b) little or no choice in what happens to be available at any given time, and c) no single 'magic shoppe' where those items may all be found at once.

And the (was it 4e? 3e? I forget now) idea of turning unwanted items into 'residuum' is almost laughable: who in their right mind would melt a perfectly good item down for slag when there's almost certainly someone out there who could a) put it to good use and b) is willing to pay to buy it from you.

 

[lowkey13]

*Deleted by user*