Worlds of Design: The Problem with Magimarts

I dislike magic item stores. Here's why.

Picture courtesy of Pixabay.​

Magic items are a part of every fantasy role-playing game, and wherever player characters meet, someone will want to buy or sell such items. What the players do among themselves is their business, in most cases; but when non-player characters (NPC) are involved the GM must know where magic items come from, how rare they are, and how hard it is to produce them. [Quoting myself from 40+ years ago]

Magimart: Still a Bad Idea​

I don't like the idea of "Magimarts" -- something like a bookstore or small department store, often with a public storefront, where adventurers can come and purchase (or sell) magic items. I said as much over 40 years ago in an article titled “Magimart: Buying and Selling Magic Items” in White Dwarf magazine. My point then still stands: at least for me and in my games, magic-selling stores don’t make sense.

They don’t make sense from a design point of view, as they may unbalance a campaign or cause power-creep. From an adventure point of view such stores partly eliminates the need to quest for specific powerful magic items. From a realistic point of view they would only provide targets for those who are happy to steal.

The Design Point of View​

From a game design point of view, how experience points, gold, and magic fit together makes a big difference. For example, if you get experience points for selling a magic item (even to NPCs), as well as for the gold you get, adventurers will sell magic items more often. If adventurers acquire scads of treasure and have nothing (such as taxes or “training”) to significantly reduce their fortunes, then big-time magic items are going to cost an awful lot of money, but some will be bought. If gold is in short supply (as you’d expect in anything approaching a real world) then anyone with a whole lot of gold might be able to buy big-time magic items.

Long campaigns need a way for magic items to change ownership, other than theft. As an RPG player I like to trade magic items to other characters in return for other magic items. But there are no “magic stores.” Usability is a big part of it: if my magic user has a magic sword that a fighter wants, he might trade me an item that I could use as a magic user. (Some campaigns allocate found magic items only to characters who can use them. We just dice for selecting the things (a sort of draft) and let trading sort it out, much simpler and less likely to lead to argument about who can use/who needs what.)

The Adventure Point of Views​

Will magic stores promote enjoyable adventuring? It depends on the style of play, but for players primarily interested in challenging adventures, they may not want to be able to go into a somehow-invulnerable magic store and buy or trade for what they want.

Magic-selling stores remind me of the question “why do dungeons exist”. A common excuse (not reason) is “some mad (and very powerful) wizard made it.” Yeah, sure. Excuses for magic-selling stores need to be even wilder than that!

I think of magic-item trading and selling amongst characters as a kind of secretive black market. Yes, it may happen, but each transaction is fraught with opportunities for deceit. Perhaps like a black market for stolen diamonds? This is not something you’re likely to do out in the open, nor on a regular mass basis.

The Realistic Point of View​

“Why do you rob banks?” the thief is asked. “’Cause that’s where the money is.”

Realistically, what do you think will happen if someone maintains a location containing magic items on a regular basis? Magimarts are a major flashpoint in the the dichotomy between believability (given initial assumptions of magic and spell-casting) and "Rule of Cool" ("if it's cool, it's OK").

In most campaigns, magic items will be quite rare. Or magic items that do commonplace things (such as a magic self-heating cast iron pan) may be common but the items that are useful in conflict will be rare. After all, if combat-useful magic items are commonplace, why would anyone take the risk of going into a “dungeon” full of dangers to find some? (Would dungeon-delving become purely a non-magical treasure-hunting activity if magic items are commonplace?)

And for the villains, magimarts seem like an easy score. If someone is kind enough to gather a lot of magic items in a convenient, known place, why not steal those rather than go to a lot of time and effort, risk and chance, to explore dungeons and ruins for items? There may be lots of money there as well!

When Magimarts Make Sense​

If your campaign is one where magic is very common, then magic shops may make sense - though only for common stuff, not for rare/powerful items. And magic-selling stores can provide reasons for adventures:

• Find the kidnapped proprietor who is the only one who can access all that magic.
• Be the guards for a magic store.
• Chase down the crooks who stole some or all of the magic from the store.

Maybe a clever proprietor has figured out a way to make the items accessible only to him or her. But some spells let a caster take over the mind of the victim, and can use the victim to access the items. And if someone is so powerful that he or she can protect a magic store against those who want to raid it, won't they likely have better/more interesting things to do with their time? (As an aside, my wife points out that a powerful character might gather a collection of magic items in the same way that a rich person might gather a collection of artworks. But these won’t be available to “the public” in most cases. Still just as some people rob art museums, some might rob magic collections.)

Of course, any kind of magic trading offers lots of opportunities for deception. You might find out that the sword you bought has a curse, or that the potion isn’t what it’s supposed to be. Many GMs ignore this kind of opportunity and let players buy and sell items at standard prices without possibility of being bilked. Fair enough, it’s not part of the core adventure/story purposes of RPGs. And magic stores are a cheap way for a GM to allow trade in magic items.

Your Turn: What part do magic-selling stores play in your games?

 

[Voadam]

There's also a lot of syncretism in the Realms, where this god might actually be known as some other god by a different culture (Sune Firehair is also Hanali Celanil, don't tell Hanali worshipers on other worlds!) or start hopping pantheons (Bast, in becoming Sharess by way of absorbing Zandilar the Dancer) or even one god just offing another god and pretending to be them for awhile in order to claim their worshipers (Cyric being a repeat offender).

Also completely new gods can appear, like how Ra was "killed", pushing him out of the plane, but Horus claimed his mantle, becoming Horus-Re (another fusion dance, but this sort of thing happens all the time in Egyptian mythology).

And then there's the endless rabbit hole of Angharradh, a triple goddess made up of three distinct elven goddesses (two of whom may or may not be elven deities at all!).

I think the Realms' syncretism of anomalous stuff with different origins adds a lot of verisimilitude to feel like real polytheistic mythologies like the Greek and Roman and Egyptian pantheons and mythologies.

Desiring a logical coherence from the ground up and throughout in mythologies is understandable, but that is not how I generally expect these things to go based on what I've learned about ancient mythology stuff. It is a lot like superhero comics, a lot of different authors riffing on characters and themes and stories with reboots and retellings and different conceptions of things trying for different types of stories for different purposes which makes canon coherence a bit tough once enough material accumulates.

 

[James Gasik]

I think the Realms' syncretism of anomalous stuff with different origins adds a lot of verisimilitude to real polytheistic mythologies like the Greek and Roman and Egyptian pantheons and mythologies.

Desiring a logical coherence from the ground up and throughout in mythologies is understandable, but that is not how I generally expect these things to go based on what I've learned about ancient mythology stuff. It is a lot like superhero comics, a lot of different authors riffing on characters and themes and stories with reboots and retellings and different conceptions of things trying for different types of stories for different purposes which makes canon coherence a bit tough once enough material accumulates.

I mean, in the real world, we have multiple belief systems, tons of gods and god-adjacent entities people have believed in, conquering cultures forcing their beliefs on others (or swiping things they like, looking at you, Rome).

And sometimes a popular deity will spread from one culture to another, like the Inanna > Ishtar > Astarte > Tanit > Aphrodite chain.

 

[Voadam]

In a lot of D&D magic items are created by casters, so places with fewer casters will have less and places with more casters will have more and I expect that will vary significantly on what type of magical market if any that would support.

In 3e Ravenloft Lamordia where neither church nor magicians are welcome I would not expect to be able to buy magic items except on a really black market or individual basis.

A strong church organization with lots of clerics like the imperial Lothian church in the Ptolus setting makes sense that they will make items for their imperial church and/or the empire. Mithril in the Scarred Lands and Iuz in Greyhawk seems similar, I expect the priesthoods there to make useful items for their church states.

The Red Wizards of Thay have lots of Wizards so the 3e diplomatic enclaves where you can usually go and buy some items makes sense as that was a deliberate foreign policy tool of Thay in that era.

 

[RainOnTheSun]

*Yes, it is impossible in a fantasy adventure that there a multiple armed interests with differing agendas, and therefore, that there would be a market for magical weapons.

It is impossible that the setting’s backstory contains a fallen empire that relied on magical weapons whose ruins are being discovered now, leading to a glut of old magical weapons available.

It is impossible that the creators of magical weapons have access to other magic, that allows a single store to have storefronts in multiple locations, thus allowing them to profitably stock a large selection of magic items.

It is impossible that the creators of magical weaponry worship a god of battle and therefore the sale of magical weapons is an act of devotion, along with ensuring there is always demand for her wares.

I don’t have a problem with verisimilitude, but too often it is an excuse for a lack of imagination.

Two of these, the magic-corp with franchise stores and the god of battle, are not functionally that different from the baron I used as an example: the owner and distributor of magic items is the dominant power in the region. To get magic items you go through them, and stealing from either Magic Amazon or the literal god of battle is... dangerous. Not impossible, if it makes for a good story, but something that happens rarely and probably ends badly for most of the people who try it.

The other two examples, the power struggle and the fallen empire full of powerful weapons, suggest a region where there is no dominant power, but there are several people or groups who would very much like to fill that vacuum. Either way, my basic point remains: whoever has so many magic items that they're willing to sell some of their extras is the most powerful person or group around, almost by definition.

 

[Starfox]

Despite all I've said about having magic shops in my setting, playing 5E I've come to the conclusion that lots of magic items is not a good thing in this game. So, how to combine these conflicting ideas?

What I am planning to do is to say that there has been an inflation of magical items. Most characters of any level have magic weapons and armor, but since everyone has them, I'll consider these modifiers to cancel each other out. So, magic items significant enough to actually be significant will be very rare and expensive. Utility items ought to be relatively cheap with this reasoning, but likely I won't let them be too cheap, tough still less expensive than the weapons powerful enough to matter. Weapons magical enough to bypass resistance to non-magical weapons will be cheap.

By this kind of reasoning, magical emporiums can exist in the setting, while still not allowing players to purchase significant magic items.

Of course, my next Greyhawk game might use the Blades in the Dark rules, so this all might have to be reworked, but the principles can still apply. Most magic items in BitD can be mashed into tier advances.

 

[Starfox]

Society is going to see this and realize, "This is a thing. Magic Mart has thousands of employees sharing a central store with entrance and egress around the world." And then the whole world is going to be like, "If magic items can be sold this way, why not other stuff? The economic and military implications are profound!"

3E (including 3.5 and Pathfinder) actually had a scaling that helped this to not immediately explode. Summoned critters could not teleports, so you had to use Planar Binding/Ally. A Lantern Archon/Imp has unlimited use of Greater Teleport, which allows a cargo of 25 lbs. per trip. This is a lvl 5 spell, so requires a level 9 caster, but one casting can make the creature serve for quite a number of trips. Creating a permanent portal is a 9th level spell and very much in the hands of the GM. Teleport requires a level 9 caster, and greater teleport lvl 13 - both of which is quite rare and probably too busy to transport cargoes except in extremis.

 

[tetrasodium]

3E (including 3.5 and Pathfinder) actually had a scaling that helped this to not immediately explode. Summoned critters could not teleports, so you had to use Planar Binding/Ally. A Lantern Archon/Imp has unlimited use of Greater Teleport, which allows a cargo of 25 lbs. per trip. This is a lvl 5 spell, so requires a level 9 caster, but one casting can make the creature serve for quite a number of trips. Creating a permanent portal is a 9th level spell and very much in the hands of the GM. Teleport requires a level 9 caster, and greater teleport lvl 13 - both of which is quite rare and probably too busy to transport cargoes except in extremis.

Eberron is a good example of how true this is. Even in Eberron it took setting specific exemptions you actually had an (early) industralized society using magic for late 1800s up to ww1ish levels of tech analogs through magic. The way Eberron created loopholes them by declaring that some people born with a specific genetic lineage might develop a magical tattoo/birth mark that allowed that small fraction of the population to use magic items specifically created to work in tandem with a specific flavor of magical mark allowing them the ability to activate (sometimes room house ship or even full on tower sized) magic items to cast a specific spell.

 

[Aelryinth]

Hey there, Master of Economics degree. Some implications and things for you. SOme are covered elsewhere, some are covered here, but they are points to think about.

1E) The primary makers of permanent magic items would be clerics using divine power. The simple reason is the Permanency spell. It cost a magic-user a point of Constitution to make ANY magic item. This effectively means NO minor magic items, and anything the wizard makes is likely to be for their own benefit and rather powerful, to make losing that Con point worthwhile.
Magic-users would primarily supply Potions, Scrolls, and Wands that don't require a Permanency spell to make.
Corollary: There were no bonuses or penalties for Con 9-14, other than system shock/resurrection. So, an average wizard with no Con bonus who somehow reached level 11 could potentially make up to 5 permanent magic items over their life with no HP penalties. If their Con was above 16, they could actually make more, since HP benefits were capped at 16 for non-fighters!
Corollary II: There were no feats or instructions available for creating magic items, so you winged it or did it on the fly. Even potions and the like didn't come with official ways to make them. Making them was thus dangerous unless you inherited the knowledge, so magic items should be rarer.
Corollary III: It's no good asking what Gygax did. He regularly created powerful magic items, and the players lost them, mostly by having to sell them to pay to get nasty conditions inflicted on them removed by powerful casters.
Corollary IV: If you have a bunch of minor magical weapons, someone will want to buy them. Period. They are too useful NOT to be desired, especially since AD&D had absolute damage reduction: If you didn't have the magic weapon, you often couldn't hurt the creature AT ALL if you didn't have spells!
Corollary V: With no easy magic item production, AD&D/Greyhawk is a lower magic world, especially 'low magic'. Granted, the magic items made will last forever, and both Oerth and FR have tens of thousands of years of magical history. Since magic items last almost forever, there can still be tons of them lying around. In effect, AD&D is constantly recycling and reusing ages-old magic items.
Corollary VI: most classes were expected to settle down and become nobles at some point, and that's where all their excess gold was supposed to go. Gygax himself was a bit miffed when they would rather go dungeon delving than run their kingdoms/churches/whatever.
Corollary VII: Magic item pricing was more for xp purposes than anything. I know that my characters would take Girdles of Giant Strength over +2 swords any day, but the latter were worth more?!

3E: Easy magical item making becomes possible with a feat. Costs are clear, but availability restrained by city size. Magic items very necessary to get stronger as you go up in level, worked into the balance curve. Lots of available high level magic means generally speaking that low, broad magic should exist. Magical knowledge is widespread and easy to access.
Corollary I: A Caster needs only one Item Creation Feat to make money, essentially trading xp for gold. There is NO advantage to a Caster to make a powerful item, as the time/gold ratio is fixed. 100 +1 Swords take the same amount of time as a +10 Sword. Minor items that sell faster and more easily would be the norm, expensive items commission and probably pre-paid only, the Caster will get just as rich.
Logically, this means the high-level Casters required to make high-level items should demand a premium for being able to do so!
Corollary II: While technically Casters making items could 'fall behind' in levels and get more xp to keep up, making crafting free, WoTC and the Living campaigns also ruled that the xp spent on making magic items was to be counted towards your current effective level, which effectively removes this advantage. Given that having a crafter doubled the value of your gold going towards magic items, this still did not penalize the crafter or party at all.
Corollary III: Enforcing the limits of making magic items was variable. Technically, you had to have 3 levels for each +1 of a magic item to make it, OR have Caster Level/Spellcraft equal to the Level needed to cast the highest-level spell or meet the Caster Level minimum of the magic item. It meant minor Casters could only make minor items, even with maxed spellcraft to make sure they succeeded.
Thus, scarcity rules for high level casters would come into play again, since only they could make the powerful stuff!
Corollary IV: All that gold floating around was going to get eaten up by the costs of making magic items. magic items consume a LOT of gold. If you assume the gold is USED UP when making the magic item, that means it is constantly being removed from the economy, and inflation simply isn't an issue. The hoards of loot get burned away making magic items rapidly, so coming in and dumping a dragon's hoard means a short term surge in making magic items, -500 gp/day/artificer is removed from the economy, and in a month there's no gold inflation anymore.
Corollary V: If monster parts and odd components are usable in making magic items, they are worth gold, and if they are worth gold, there will be an active market in them and specialists who go out and get those components as jobs. Bonuses if they are minor or just tedious, as those are perfect for NPC's to 'farm' for a living. If the last leaf to fall from a tree before the Winter Solstice is worth 1 GP in making cold or plant-based magic items, that's a job for peasants who want to make some money!
Corollary VI: Gold consumption means that gold and platinum coins should be fairly rare, as nobody is going to give a damn that they shouldn't burn away said coins if they want a magical item. As a result, lower value coins will be MUCH more common, and gold and platinum coins would basically be minted with the idea that they are going to be destroyed sooner or later to create magic items.
Corollary VII: As a result of magical item construction, the 500 gp/day hard limit is an absolute number, and the 1:25 xp/gold ratio is also known. This value does NOT change based on economics. While the sale value of gold can fluctuate up and down vs other objects, it always takes the same weight of gold to make magic items. This means that gold (and the 500 gp/day limit, which I call a goldweight) would be a known quantity and the foundation of any currency market. it doesn't matter what the rarity of gold vs silver is: silver is worth 1/10 what gold is when making magic items, and that will absolutely form its value. Ditto platinum. If platinum is abundant... then it will be rapidly consumed until the relative value is back to 5x that of gold, and there it will stay. Also, all gems can be rated in terms of goldweight and how much they are worth in making magical items, so relative rarity, cut, and the like is either measurable... or irrelevant!
Gemcutting would exist to triple the value of raw gemstones, and precious metal jewelry exist to triple the value of said metals for burning away to make magic items! Making 'craftcoins' of gold to triple the value of gold would likely be a full time job for goldsmiths!
Corollary VIII: The Epic Rules and the Feat for being able to make 10k gp of magic a day meant your Epic Casters are likely your most prolific makers of magic items, and wherever they exist, magic items will rapidly become MUCH more common.
Corollary IX: Just because something SELLS for high gp value due to collector status/rarity would have no effect on its value for making magic items.

Pathfinder: As 3e, but all magic items cost gold instead of xp to make.
Corollary: the extra cost of the difference between making and selling a magic item is the profit to the Caster. That should be variable in a 'real' world, but if enough magic is out there, costs would be pretty much standardized, as underselling would hurt other Casters, who might come around to kill you for devaluing their time. We can thus be free to assume the 100% margin (which is actually less of a profit than the 200% CRAFTERS make on objects) is where the balance of demand and value of Caster time has come to rest. After all, the Caster could be out just Casting spells for profit, and not spending eight hours of boring time infusing a magic item.
Corollary II: Caster Level and Spellcraft Rank requirements were very loose in Pathfinder, so Feats that boosted your Spellcraft Check were actually smart investments for NPC's making stuff.
Corollary III: The Magical Artisan feat meant you could turn your Crafting skill into making magic items, which made you a LOT more money very quickly vs Crafting (which was measured in silvers/day). However, the amount of gold required to do so meant you'd start out VERY small. Also, there would be quite a demand for skill-boosting items to make those increasingly high Spellcraft checks!

4E: Magic items can literally be burned to create residuum to make other magic items. They are effectively tiered in logarithmic cost scales.
Corollary: Minor magic items don't need to be sold, and so they won't be. They'll be reduced to powder and used to make other magic items you want, gradually growing in power all the time. Undesired magic items will vanish quickly from the economy, made into something else, and low, broad items will be taken by thieves and brigands and burned down to make residuum that can be tracelessly sold. In 4e, the only magic items that should exist are those that everyone wants. Vanity items, random stupid items, and the like would all be quickly burned away and disposed of, and any stolen items treated the same way so they can't be traced.
So, 4e should have little low, broad magic. It all feeds constantly into making more powerful items.
Corollary II: Residuum would be a trade good that is being constantly depleted and renewed as magic items are made (gold converted to magic), burned (Converted to residuum, goodbye Shoes of Auto-Lacing), and turned into magic again. In short, the pool of residuum is always growing as magic items are recycled and gold feeds into it.
Corollary III: Gold inflation wouldn't be a thing, as it is constantly being converted into magic items and residuum and removed from the economy. This may not be the 500 gp/day/caster of 3e, but it will be constant the instant gold is available to do so.

5e: Most of the construction is hand-waved, prices are based on arbitrary rarity instead of usefulness/hardness to make. A clear move to restrict magic items used and reliance on them, as well as making crafting them for yourself much harder/non-existent.
Corollary I: Rarity IS how hard it is to make something, so it doesn't matter if you don't like it. It cost the maker X gp to make it, so that's what it costs to buy, or he wouldn't sell it... or make it in the first place.
That said, objects which are useful should sell faster, and there would be a clear bias toward making them, since they'd turn over and actually move. So, non-useful stuff should be rare, simply because no one is going to buy it, and thus the makers will lose money.
It also means that weird stuff is probably much older than useful stuff, since it was likely made on a whim by someone who could afford to do so and has been sitting around a long time waiting for some sucker to buy it.
In 4e, these items would promptly be trashed for residuum, and the market would ruthlessly get rid of them. If rules exist to reduce items for other items, these things should be eliminated rapidly.
Corollary II: it is non-realistic that NPC's can make magic items and PC's cannot, especially since PC's tend to be much more powerful than NPC's.
Corollary III: IF NPC's can't create magic items, than you're into recycling ancient goodies again, which is fine. Common ancient goodies will still be common. It's definitely a different flavor then having to make your own... and where did the knowledge to make the magic items go? Justify it.