interwyrm said:
Every game I have played in, people assume that if they go into a big enough city, they should be able to buy anything.
I was looking at the tables in the DMG for creating cities... the highest level wizard/sorcerer that will appear in a metropolis (by random generation) is 16.
This means that you will never be able to buy 9th level scrolls or items that require a caster level of 17 or above.
This one is easy - DON'T LET PCs
BUY MAGIC ITEMS!!! As a DM of more yerars than I care to remember, the first rookie mistake I got rid of in campaign building is the magic item five and dime. If magic is powerful enough to want, it is powerful enough to steal, kill and lie for. Does this mean they aren't available for purchase, no, but Vinny and Guido don't have the nicest of reputations, if you know what I'm sayin'. And there is an old saying about assumption... Go find it out.
interwyrm said:
Also... why would anyone ever build a ring of three wishes or a tome of ability score, and not immediately use it afterwards.
I love this question, as a DM it brings about two continuity questions about certain magic items and how they fell into certain hands. Disney's version of
Aladdin, did a great job with back story to describe the lamp and why people didn't just keep on rubbing it. When anyone starts amassing enough power to construct an item of such force (or finding one's hidden location) they must first locate certain objects, spell components, etc, which will draw the attention of certain undesirable NPCs (see Vinny and Guido above). I would imagine that most
Rings of Three Wishes will likely be down a charge or two. And that the books would be buried in secret hordes. As in both cases, the owner/operator met an untimely demise after creation/before use and that the takees, also very liekly had to stash the goods before they met the same untimely end. (Of course any decent detective movies of TV show will give you the end result. "I'll never tell you where item X is located, I'll die first! - BANG! BANG! - That can be arranged.") Make sure that these items never just HAPPEN to be in a treasure trove, there should always be a quest to find them.
interwyrm said:
How do item crafters get the experience to craft their goods? Are they all adventurers?
Former adventurers, professional casters (use modified/alternate XP systems from DMG), Christmas, Kwanzaa, Chanukkah, birthdays, anniversaries...
