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?

 

[Starfox]

4E: Magic items can literally be burned to create residuum to make other magic items. They are effectively tiered in logarithmic cost scales.

Most of your post is excellent, I am just nitpicking.

If I recall, you get 20% of your investment back when you reduce items to residiuum. This means that magic marts selling used magic items are still worthwhile, there is room for each part of the supply chain to take out a premium to re-sell the item rather than recycling it.

 

[Starfox]

There's a few known typos and errors in the 1e DMG price list; the Girdle may have been one such.

I come back to my favorite DMG1E quote (from memory).

When trading with another magic-user to be allowed to copy spells from their spellbook, you may have to give them a minor magic item, such as a girdle of giant strength.

 

[FrozenNorth]

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.

My post was given in response to your post:

This is why comparing magic item shops to jewelry stores or banks doesn't really work for me. A magic item shop, at least one of the sort that PCs would want to use, isn't just a collection of extremely expensive things, it's a collection of extremely expensive things used for fighting, and we generally call that a military base. If there are 50 magic swords lying around town, 45 of them have probably found their way into the hands of the local baron, who has given them to 45 of his best men. And a large part of how he stays the local baron is probably having 45 trained warriors with magic swords. Anyone you can buy significant magic items from (where "significant" varies depending on where you are) almost has to be one of the most powerful and dangerous figures around. Sure, you can try to steal from them. But if you slip up you'll have a target on your back for the rest of your life.

You seemed to suggest that having a magical item shop was unrealistic because anyone in possession of magical weapons wouldn’t sell them, but would instead stockpile them to be the most powerful faction around.

This ignores a host of other possibilities:

• the seller has other priorities than outfitting and army and wielding temporal power (selling magical weapons to multiple sides to exacerbate and prolong a conflict);
• the seller isn’t meaningfully around (a djinn in the plane of air with a teleportation circle in Neverwinter, Baldur’s Gate and Waterdeep);
• the seller is one of several high power factions so stockpiling and taking over isn’t an option;
• what the seller receives in exchange for the weapons is more valuable to them than the weapons sold;
• there are other forms of power that trump being able to create multiple magical weapons.

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.

No. A person that is able to create and sell multiple magical weapons is powerful, but it doesn’t follow that they are the most powerful group around.

Take Waterdeep. It is a location with multiple 20th level NPCs. Is an 11th level spellcaster that focuses on creating and selling magical items the most powerful person around? Not in a city with Elminster and the Masked Lord.

 

[Voadam]

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.

Overall fun analysis of some economic impacts of the different edition mechanics.

I am not quite sure if you are thinking that gold is literally sacrificed and gone in crafting 3e items.

From the SRD the cost is for unspecified magical supplies and materials used in crafting the items. The gold still exists, it is just spent on stuff that gets used up.

"Magic supplies for items are always half of the base price in gp and 1/25 of the base price in XP."

"The character must spend the gold and XP at the beginning of the construction process."

"A character can work on only one item at a time. If a character starts work on a new item, all materials used and XP spent on the under-construction item are wasted."

"To create magic armor, a character needs a heat source and some iron, wood, or leatherworking tools. He also needs a supply of materials, the most obvious being the armor or the pieces of the armor to be assembled. Armor to be made into magic armor must be masterwork armor, and the masterwork cost is added to the base price to determine final market value. Additional magic supplies costs for the materials are subsumed in the cost for creating the magic armor—half the base price of the item."

"To create a magic weapon, a character needs a heat source and some iron, wood, or leatherworking tools. She also needs a supply of materials, the most obvious being the weapon or the pieces of the weapon to be assembled. Only a masterwork weapon can become a magic weapon, and the masterwork cost is added to the total cost to determine final market value. Additional magic supplies costs for the materials are subsumed in the cost for creating the magic weapon—half the base price given on Table: Weapons, according to the weapon’s total effective bonus."

"The creator of a potion needs a level working surface and at least a few containers in which to mix liquids, as well as a source of heat to boil the brew. In addition, he needs ingredients. The costs for materials and ingredients are subsumed in the cost for brewing the potion—25 gp × the level of the spell × the level of the caster."

"All ingredients and materials used to brew a potion must be fresh and unused. The character must pay the full cost for brewing each potion. (Economies of scale do not apply.)"

and so on.

So more like spending money on food that gets eaten for economic analysis purposes. The money sill exists in the economy and is not removed, no?

 

[Maxperson]

This is exactly what they are. There isn’t a monster round every corner, that makes no sense. Most people in the world will never see a monster, probably don’t believe monsters exist.

I don't think that's true, but there definitely aren't anywhere near the concentration of monsters world wide that PC encounters would seem to indicate.

Whether PCs are special, cursed or whatever, they encounter a far higher concentration of monsters than the rest of the world. If everyone encountered monsters at the rate PCs do, the PC races would have been driven extinct millennia ago.

 

[Starfox]

I am not quite sure if you are thinking that gold is literally sacrificed and gone in crafting 3e items.

From the SRD the cost is for unspecified magical supplies and materials used in crafting the items. The gold still exists, it is just spent on stuff that gets used up.

Very much this. A secondary effect of all this gold spent on magic items is that the talismongering business is thriving! The gold will still be in circulation, and thus an abundance of gold could still cause inflation. On the other hand, gold is usually considered magical in itself, so if there is a shortage of talismongers, enchanters may use directly. Which is cheaper in each situation comes down to economic factors that are below the simulation horizon of a game.

The word talismongering comes from Shadowrun is essentially the trade of collecting magical components. I used this as a major part of the motivation why the city of Sasserine wanted to colonize the Isle of Dread in the Savage Tide adventure path.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Sure it does. The market for magic items doesn't mimic the real-world market for "weapons". It resembles in some ways the real-world market for jet fighters or tanks. You don't expect open markets in jet fighters. Those are specialized highly restrictive markets with a limited number of buyers and sellers.

This is a circular argument.
« There wouldn’t be magic stores that sell magical weapons »
« Why not? »
« Because the sale of magical weapons would be highly restricted «
« Why? »
« Because the sale of magical weapons is analogous to the market for real world jet fighters and tanks »
« In what way is the market for magical weapons similar to the real world market for tanks »
« Because it is highly restricted with limited buyers and sellers! »

Let’s look at why the real world market for tanks isn’t analogous to the market for magical weapons.

Let’s start with the big one. Highly restricted markets are an outgrowth of the modern administrative state with a large bureaucracy that has both the will and the means to effectively regulate the sale of products. This isn’t the case in many fantasy settings.

Second, one thing that makes tanks and fighter jets easy to regulate is their size and cumbersomeness. It is a lot easier to regulate the transport of a tank when shipping it to a location requires a dedicated aircraft and a team of 20 people. This isn’t the case for a magical sword which may be indistinguishable from a non-magical sword, or, even if obviously magical, is more easy to conceal than a tank.

Third, the creation of a tank or a fighter jet requires a tank factory, support infrastructure and hundreds of skilled labourers. This makes it very easy for a state to know what is being built within their borders, and have a good idea what is being built outside their borders. A spellcaster with a couple of apprentices is sufficient to run a magical shop, so they could operate with a kingdom without the leaders ever being aware.

Finally, magical weapons aren’t as dangerous as fighter jets or tanks warranting highly restrictive regulation. A commoner with a magical sword is less of a threat than even a mid-level fighter, and a mid-level fighter is dangerous regardless of whether they are wielding a magical sword.

There are no ungrounded assumptions in assuming magic items in D&D are relatively rare, relatively expensive, relatively difficult to produce. That isn't an assumption. That's the default state of magic items. The relative scarcity of magic items is a function I think of how relatively rare PC type individuals are and how stingy their production of such items would be if they were making their own.

Assumption 1: Magical items are relatively expensive and relatively difficult to produce.
Assumption 2: PCs are rare.
Assumption 3: Only PCs are making magical items.
Assumption 4: Only PCs would purchase magical items.

See the problem with your argument is that it isn't consistent. Up above you say access would be limited based on the unavailability of high-level mages. But now you say that they don't dominate the world because of the economic and military advantage that they provide because they are numerous. My argument is based on a consistent paradigm, that magic items are rare, expensive, valuable and (above the level of low level potions or scrolls) not commodities because magic tends to have restrictions on its production that mere technology does not.

No, it isn’t. Assuming that magical items are rare, expensive and valuable is ONE paradigm. Your mistake is assuming that it is the ONLY consistent paradigm.

It’s the fallacy of the excluded middle: either magic is so extraordinarily rare that a magical shop is impossible or it’s so omnipresent that kingdoms have ready access to teleportation circles to transport their army safely and effectively across the continent. It ignores the possibility of magic being common enough for there to be the occasional shop that sells magical items, but rare enough that powerful people can’t reliably call on the power of high level wizards.

Could a level 11 mage with a couple of apprentices run a magic shop? Probably. Does this imply that they are the most powerful creature in the kingdom? Of course not.

Can a djinn based on the Elemental Plane of Air have teleportation circles that lead to his palace where his sells some magical trinkets? Yes. Does this mean that every fort on the Material Plane has a teleportation circle inscribed that enables the army to teleport from place to place? Not necessarily.

I don't understand the counterpoint here. The deities you list don't engage in the behavior you describe and aren't congruent to the "god of arms dealers" you postulate.

Selling weapons to two factions and then goading them into fighting each other seems right up the alley of Asmodeus, as god of lies. Also seems on brand for any god of greed.

And that's not even getting into the valid complaints that Green Ronin's "The Book of the Righteous" makes against the typical D&D pantheon, of which Forgotten Realms might really be the worst offender.

The claim was that such gods don’t exist. They do, in many published D&D settings, including Forgotten Realms (Cyric’s another good contender for running this scheme).

The fact that you personally think they are unrealistic is irrelevant.

 

[Lanefan]

I come back to my favorite DMG1E quote (from memory).

When trading with another magic-user to be allowed to copy spells from their spellbook, you may have to give them a minor magic item, such as a girdle of giant strength.

I think ol' Mr. G must have been smoking the funny cigarettes the day he wrote that...

 

[tetrasodium]

I think ol' Mr. G must have been smoking the funny cigarettes the day he wrote that...

I think that it's also a silly idea that wizards wouldn't cross copy spellbooks with all the gravity of bumping elbows at a bar with a total stranger you might exchange a few words with. The old editions that set the standard there were overflowing with ultra high level NPCs & retired adventures of all stripes, it's weird to think that none of them got the bright idea to setup a fusion tavern slash scrivner with zero tolerance go directly to being pasted for antics while interacting with another paying customer's book. There might not be one in every town, but a wizard spellbook matchmaking cross copy business could trivially make their own customers make sure that everyone could say "oh yea, there's one a couple towns over.... Head out that way on a tuesday & follow the big arrow in the sky once you see the clouds shaped like a bunch of spellbooks"

 

[Baron Opal II]

I come back to my favorite DMG1E quote (from memory).

When trading with another magic-user to be allowed to copy spells from their spellbook, you may have to give them a minor magic item, such as a girdle of giant strength.

I think ol' Mr. G must have been smoking the funny cigarettes the day he wrote that...

Not really. It's not that great unless a) you need to carry a lot of stuff, or b) you're a fighter. If you are a fighter, it just brings your damage more in line with what is expected at a given level. I believe, but can't really prove, that is was one of the "Essential Two" of 1E fighter characters. The other would be a magic weapon of sufficient strength to harm the targets you encounter.