SDOgre said:
I ran a long lasting Greyhawk Campaign in 3E where there were magic shops in all major cities and most towns. The characters could buy and sell, but of course I controlled what was available. Some by my design, some by dice rolls.
I agree with your sentiments to an extent. However, I really feel that 4E does a better job of making finding a magic treasure important than anything since 1e (and I would maybe say house-ruled 1e at that, since a number of modules contained their share of the Phat Lewts).
First of all, the
only way to get magic items of above your level is to find them in the dungeon. And as DM you still control what items are available to find or buy, as well as the availability of ritual components and scrolls. What's more the fact that you can only recoup 1/5 of the cost of a bought item will make players think twice about buying them. And items are at least as expensive to manufacture as they are to purchase outright.
Now there is a 'treasure standard' to worry about. A typical party of five will acquire 4 special items (level above their own) in the course of a level, or 4 items per PC in 5 levels. If you only count items that are at least the PCs' level as 'significant' then by the end of level 5 the PCs will have topped out at 14 significant magic items, nearly 3 per character! Compared to most of the 1e games I played in or ran that's a ludicrous amount of magic... But compared to 3.5 or most of the 1e games I've read about online it's not too bad...
Of course players will likely have 'leftover' items from lower levels and/or lower-level items they have purchased. Personally I've come to terms with this by worrying not about how many items they have that are 'magical', but rather how many are 'special'. The intent of keeping magic items rare was to keep them special. 4E is much more tightly balanced and assumes a certain amount of extra "plusses" hanging on any given PC. So, personally, I've come to terms with the fact that a player might want (or need) to buy himself an extra +2 with some skill, or some such. Gold is a resource, meant to be used. Sure 6 or 7 levels ago that same item would have been a cool thing to find in a chest somewhere, but it's not that big of a deal anymore... I know that's not especially cool from an in-character / immersion perspective, but that's the price you pay for having 30 levels that will play out in the time it used to take for 9 or 10...
And once per level I still get to drop something in there that will (if I'm doing my job as DM right) make the players sit up and say "Wow!" I think I shouldn't have that much trouble making up custom items that aren't in the PHB, and I can still tie items into the plot. If I want an item to remain significant for more than 5 levels or so I can "upgrade" it (by replacing it's old effect for a new one or just raising it's level if appropriate), possibly doing so at a dramatic moment in the middle of a fight for that extra "Wow!" factor. (And if I want to I can balance the money side of the equation out by dropping an extra bit of treasure somewhere equal to the old version of the item's sale price.)
So overall (much like the rest of 4E) I don't see it as such a huge deal, in the greater scheme of things. The magic items that PCs can buy or create are really little more than powered-up equipment. It's the stuff that they find in the dungeon, that only the DM can place, that's really cool (at least for a few levels...)
