AD&D did have magic item shops. I understand your concern. I had a player once who demanded to be able to buy a magic item. This was more than discussed during the playtest, so if the DMG doesn't have the rules for magic item shops Wizards of the Coast has no excuse. Maybe half or more of the D&D community uses magic item shops, and I would add without any problem. There are many players who want to make magic item shops very rare or non-existent, but even then you should still be able to find individuals selling magic items. There may be no set prices, though. It's up to the seller unless there is a market which sets the prices.
D&D 5E Treasure Rolls & "a typical campaign"
- Thread starter I'm A Banana
- Start date
AD&D did have magic item shops. I understand your concern. I had a player once who demanded to be able to buy a magic item. This was more than discussed during the playtest, so if the DMG doesn't have the rules for magic item shops Wizards of the Coast has no excuse. Maybe half or more of the D&D community uses magic item shops, and I would add without any problem. There are many players who want to make magic item shops very rare or non-existent, but even then you should still be able to find individuals selling magic items. There may be no set prices, though. It's up to the seller unless there is a market which sets the prices.
Jester David
Hero
Assuming magic items in the balance of D&D was arguably a mistake. I'm not sure why they went in that direction as it caused more problems than it solved. But hindsight is funny that way.
The solution is there: allow magic item crafting and purchasing. Prices are on page 135 of the DMG and crafting is on page 128. They still exist in the game.
There was only so much room in the DMG. Despite suggesting low/normal/high magic games, there's only a single set of treasure tables. There's LOTS of options that didn't make it into the DMG, including the entire mass combat section. Hopefully alternate magic tables and pricing will make it into the Unearthed Arcana articles.
Pricing for magic items is finicky. Had they given set prices for items, that would have caused problems for people who wanted magic to be cheaper or more expensive. And there's the potential to misprice a magic item, making something too cheap or too expensive (a common occurrence in 3e/PF). And the formulas for making magic items in 3e/PF were laughably broken.
Guestimating pricing isn't that complicated. Looking at the magic item charts (pages 144-149), some items have higher odds than others. Pricing should likely be related to those odds. Anything with a 1% chance should be much more expensive than something with a 10% chance.
Any yet you're okay with people spending months out of the campaign crafting magic items? Aka a form of downtime. And a type of downtime that focuses on a single character doing something while the rest of the party sits idle. Why not let the fighter run a business while the wizard is making the +1 sword? Or the rogue operate a thieves' guild? Or the cleric build a cathedral?
You're being a little contradictory. You're against going straight from dungeon to dungeon to dungeon but against downtime.
This begs the question: why is the party adventuring?
If they're just getting treasure to buy more magic items so they can get better treasure so they can buy better magic items then there's no real gain. They never actually end up with any treasure. It's lateral advancement.
Except there are rules to support it. You can buy and make magic items with the DM's permission. If your DM is not permitting you then your issue is with him and not the rules.
But what's the point of treasure if you can't actually use it???
That's the thing with 3e/PF/4e, gold was redundant. Instead of gold, PCs could have conveniently received the gear they needed. RAW there's no reason for the party to receive a single gold piece. This is actually more efficient, as you're not selling treasure for half price or crafting and making items for half price, both of which can throw off the WBL. And the party never needs to go to town to sell/craft.
This was pretty close to how I ran my 4e game. The players had no interest in the metagame of picking items so their gold was never spent. I just switched to the inherent bonus system, threw a few magic items at them I thought they'd like, and pretty much ended up ignoring treasure. Which worked out fine as the story became a lengthy journey lost in the Underdark, so they never had time to shop.
As another example, right now, one of the games I'm running is Skull & Shackles for Pathfinder. And I very much AM handwaving away 90% of the gold. I stripped out the vast majority of the gold and am giving the players "points" they can use to buy small static bonuses. It's a math patch. The game is humming along quite nicely as I very literally ignore 9 out of 10 gold pieces in the modules.
But you're NOT improving your character. The magic item assumptions gave characters a +1 bonus while also giving monsters a +1 keeping everything even. It's the illusion of improvement.
And, yes, picking items to gain extra powers and options is fun... for some people. For other people it's a chore as they have to spend their free time looking through books of magic items to spend another 15,000 gp. Not everyone wants that bookkeeping. Especially when there's a thousand other things you can do for fun when away from the game table. And planning purchases is very much NOT FUN at the game table because that's time you're not adventuring or playing the game (and, as the DM, having the players spend 30 minutes shopping and coordinating the crafting schedules is boring and anti-fun).
Which is why information on buying and selling magic items is including in the game on pages 128-130 and 135-136 of the DMG.
CapnZapp
Legend
You keep mixing up facts and ascribing me opinions to support your position.
In fact, I would argue they exist only as a placeholder to protect WotC from complaints about not including any such rules.
It's a shame that strategy seems to be working on at least one person.
Anyone wanting cheaper/more expensive magic can just halve/double any prices regardless.
When was the potential for making mistakes ever a good reason for not trying?
Besides, the formulas might be broken, but the preset individual prices for things in the DMG (as opposed to stuff created by players specifically to abuse the system) are still way better than the sloppy randomness that is 5E.
Besides, it is a stupid idea. The base price of an item should be based on utility, power and function.
The actual asking price might well be modified (quite heavily) by rarity, but that doesn't excuse not having a rational base price to begin with.
Why not skip directly to the next adventure?
Oh wait, you must have confused me with someone else, since I have been VERY CLEAR I'M DISCUSSING THE NO-DOWNTIME PLAYING STYLE!
You are insulting my intelligence if you really believe that.
Gold, like experience points, are WORTHLESS in itself.
Why would you think we want treasure? To sleep on it like a dragon? To eat it like a first edition barbarian?
No, the only value in gold/xp is in spending it, in exchanging it for something worthwhile.
In your campaign, clearly a cathedral is worthwhile. But in mine, it is useless.
Why should the game support your expenditures but not mine, when all previous editions have done so?
Sorry but that preposterous argument needed what it deserved.
But to be exceedingly clear: the point of money is to transfer the purchasing decision from the adventure/DM to the player/character.
You gain gold and not stuff because:
1) the DM doesn't need to figure out exact items beforehand
2) the player gets to choose him or herself
3) the risk of getting stuff you can't or won't use is lessened
4) the character can focus his abilities in a certain direction, instead of relying on (semi-)random bonus categories
I thought we agreed 5E didn't work this way?
Why are you still arguing with me? Why are you still denying me the right to enjoy 5E just as much as you do?
Have I promised I would arrive at your house and prevent you from using the
random mess of a rule for magic items you seem to cherish so much just because WotC let me purchase a solid replacement?
I can't imagine I have, but if so, I deeply apologize and take it all back.
I consider those rules a sorry excuse for a real working system. The crafting rules can be summarized with "it takes too long". The purchasing rules are almost completely random.
In fact, I would argue they exist only as a placeholder to protect WotC from complaints about not including any such rules.
It's a shame that strategy seems to be working on at least one person.
That argument is complete bollocks.
Anyone wanting cheaper/more expensive magic can just halve/double any prices regardless.
Yeah, so it's better to start off with almost all items mispriced?
When was the potential for making mistakes ever a good reason for not trying?
If you hand these out to the players, yes they were. But who says you must do that?
Besides, the formulas might be broken, but the preset individual prices for things in the DMG (as opposed to stuff created by players specifically to abuse the system) are still way better than the sloppy randomness that is 5E.
You're only parroting the idea from the DMG. Please stop telling me things I already know.
Besides, it is a stupid idea. The base price of an item should be based on utility, power and function.
The actual asking price might well be modified (quite heavily) by rarity, but that doesn't excuse not having a rational base price to begin with.
No, what gave you that crazy idea?
Yes exactly.
Why not skip the cathedral-building and sword-creating altogether?
Why not skip directly to the next adventure?
Oh wait, you must have confused me with someone else, since I have been VERY CLEAR I'M DISCUSSING THE NO-DOWNTIME PLAYING STYLE!
No, I am not contradictory.
You are insulting my intelligence if you really believe that.
Let me tell you a secret.
Gold, like experience points, are WORTHLESS in itself.
Why would you think we want treasure? To sleep on it like a dragon? To eat it like a first edition barbarian?
No, the only value in gold/xp is in spending it, in exchanging it for something worthwhile.
In your campaign, clearly a cathedral is worthwhile. But in mine, it is useless.
Why should the game support your expenditures but not mine, when all previous editions have done so?
Sorry but the main value of those rules seems to be to draw out and expose the clueless and the apologists. In that, they seem to be working well...
Thanks for that straw man. No, I have no issues with myself.
So I guess you advocate a communist society then where everything belongs to everybody, and you don't need money since everything is provided for you?
Sorry but that preposterous argument needed what it deserved.
But to be exceedingly clear: the point of money is to transfer the purchasing decision from the adventure/DM to the player/character.
You gain gold and not stuff because:
1) the DM doesn't need to figure out exact items beforehand
2) the player gets to choose him or herself
3) the risk of getting stuff you can't or won't use is lessened
4) the character can focus his abilities in a certain direction, instead of relying on (semi-)random bonus categories
Sorry why are you discussing 3E now?
I thought we agreed 5E didn't work this way?
I did say any magic item pricing guidelines should be OPTIONAL, didn't I?
Why are you still arguing with me? Why are you still denying me the right to enjoy 5E just as much as you do?
Have I promised I would arrive at your house and prevent you from using the
random mess of a rule for magic items you seem to cherish so much just because WotC let me purchase a solid replacement?I can't imagine I have, but if so, I deeply apologize and take it all back.
Jester David
Hero
If it takes too long to make magic items by the baseline, reduce the baseline. You seem to have no problems suggesting that for prices:
The fact of the matter is the DMG has prices for magic items. And they provide a range so the DM can determine if they want a particular magic item to cost 500 gp or 5000 gp. There is NOTHING stopping you from letting your players buy magic items. Or making magic items.
Jester David
Hero
Except the Magic Item Compedium completely changed those prices. And relative power varies wildly, and combos between items make pricing difficult.
Setting a price on magic is super hard. And would have taken weeks of constant work. Would you have asked the DMG to be delayed to accommodate pricing? What pages would you gave omitted to include the pricing?
Neither 1e nor 2e assumed magic items or magic item stores. So hardly "all previous editions".
I was trying not to assume you were speaking from the position of a DM.
1st Edition gave you magic item prices in the core rules, from day 1 if memory serves. 2nd Edition tried to take the magic items are rare approach, but eventually published the prices. Not even 3rd Edition assumed magic item shops. They wrote them into town descriptions, but they still understood it was up to the DM and so it would vary from table to table. The math also did not depend on the magic items being available. Many tables ran the game with random magic item discovery, and enjoyed it nonetheless.
Wizards of the Coast should have included the relevant information, no matter how many extra pages and no matter how many days of work.
There is another solution for those that are incapable of operating using intentionally broad guidelines for treasure and the magic item economy: both the 3.5 and Pathfinder SRDs are readily available. Just import the item creation rules and item pricing whole cloth. Over time you 'll find inconsistencies and have to tweak them, but that's no different than converting adventures or monsters.
The idea that 5E somehow failed because of the lack of detailed item creating and pricing are missing the key fact that the game is not designed that way and you are just as likely to create problems for yourself trying to treat it like 3.x in that regard.
Psikerlord#
Explorer
5e is my favourite for magic items. Random treasure tables rock. And I am extremely glad any buying/selling is left for the table to determine.
5e magic items are more art than science, the way it should be. They're all bonus, not required at all, they straight up add to PC power with no downside. Couldnt be happier on this front.
5e magic items are more art than science, the way it should be. They're all bonus, not required at all, they straight up add to PC power with no downside. Couldnt be happier on this front.
Jester David
Hero
The DMG yeah, which came out two years after the Monster Manual and a year after the PHB.
Magic item sale prices are in there, as are the xp cost to gain, which are often very different. Since you could craft magic items for the cost in xp, making items and selling them was extremely lucrative. But, the book also says outright that players should not be told how to craft items.
I don't recall anything on stores though, and the game advises DMs to be stingy with magic items. And I hope magic items have a sale price, there's no purchase price I recall seeing. If you find it, please provide the page number. (The lack of a index hurts sooooo much.)
Jester David
Hero
I was going to suggest that as well.
