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?

 

[Xeviat]

The way I reconcile magic stores in my games is this: Magic is a part of the world.

Basic, inexpensive magic is common place. The "Magic Shoppe" is a place to buy spell and alchemical components. You can probably buy low level scrolls (common enough spells might be on hand, while spells less used by the public might require having it be scribed for you) and common potions.

Generic +X weapons and armor are master craft and special materials. An experienced smith can make a +1 sword. Mostly you'll need to custom order one from a Smith, but often a renowned smith will have one or two premade as show pieces to demonstrate.

I use the 3E pricing system and am slowly building my own list of magic items. This started because I was converting Red Hand of doom to 5E and needed to use the magic items there. Generally I'd half the enhancement bonus on an item and round down if it has another feature of up if it was just +X (so a +5 weapon with nothing else would be +3, while a +5 flaming weapon would be a +2 flaming weapon).

I like systems, structure, and regularity. I like the world to be cohesive, and not just generic "medieval" with magic thrown on top.

 

[Kurotowa]

One underlying premise I hold in any campaign is that the PCs are not the only adventurers in the world. There's at least some other adventurers out there now, and have been before, and will be again. And many of those adventurers will, if any good at it, eventually end up with some magic items; and sometimes (or often?) those items won't be things they themselves can use. Add to that the various magic items that hang over fireplaces as trophies that might hit the market in estate sales if-when their owner or family dies off, and there's always going to be some random things out there looking for new owners.

A second underlying premise is that pretty much anything has - or can be given - a cash value. This would simply be an outcome of a combination of a) eons of trading assigning fairly consistent relative values to items and b) the absolute cost to get one made. If for example it costs a small-a artificer 450 g.p. for the materials required to make a +1 dagger, it's unlikely said dagger would go on the market for less than 500 g.p.; and thus 500 g.p. quickly becomes the base value of a +1 dagger. Lather-rinse-repeat for every magic item out there, and now you've got a table of bespoke-to-item values (short-cutting by valuing items formulaically by "level" or rarity, as 3e and 4e did it, leads to some garbage numbers mostly because usefulness isn't considered); malleable by the DM to suit the situation e.g. a +1 dagger with some nice jewels in the hilt might go for 600 g.p.

A third underlying premise is that what's found in the field is not necessarily going to be tailored to the PCs in any way. I should probably also note that despite running a 1e-adjacent system I've never given xp for treasure found, thus that's not a consideration in any of this.

I'm mostly on board with all of this. Barter is what people resort to when the common currency can't be trusted, for whatever reason. Political instability, dealing with strangers arrived from a far off land, whatever. As long as people can reliably spend their money, they will likewise accept it. And that means that when you're looking to buy magic items, the two important limitations are price and availability. Both of which depend heavily on your specific location and general campaign setting.

The last major campaign I was in, we were playing in Eberron and based out of Sharn. So based on the "wide but low magic" principle the DM ruled that any common or uncommon magic item was easily available, but for rare or above you had to go through a process. You'd go to a broker with the general details of what you wanted, and then an adventure or so later they'd come back a short list of available unique items and their asking prices, and you'd decide which sale you wanted to go through with. And that worked very well for an Eberron campaign.

Would I suggest importing that identically into your standard pseudo-medieval campaign setting that's usually some flavor of post-post-apocalyptic where the ancient high magic civilization crashed but everyone's past the immediate aftermath? Probably not. A magimart with infinite variety of stock and only nominal security measures is entirely out of place. But some method for relic hunters to liquidate the ancient relics they uncover, and some method for rising adventurer parties to spend their loot on better tools? It would be more out of place to NOT have those existing.

 

[Staffan]

I have a few problems with having strongish magic items for sale (potions and scrolls and such are a different issue).

The first is that it creates an equivalence between economic power and personal power – if you're rich, you can get powerful items, and if you have powerful items you are, in a sense, rich. This creates weird situations, such as making banditry infeasible and creating a cycle where you adventure to get money to buy magic items that make you better at adventuring to get more money to buy better magic items and so on.

The other is that it turns even mid- to high-level characters into penny pinchers. So, you just returned to Waterdeep after trudging through the Mire of Dead Men for a month, culminating in killing a dragon that was bossing around a tribe of lizard folk, and now you're laden with gold and gems and stuff... and instead of spending the next tenday living it up and getting it on with all the fine ladies/gentlemen at the Purple Palace, you're going to find a cheap inn, because who wants to spend money on wine and orgies when you could put that money toward the "upgrade my sword to +3" fund? Bah!

I think Earthdawn has some neat ideas in this regard, where minor magic items can be found for sale, but the good stuff are what's known as Thread Items. These are items with specific history, and in order to unlock their powers you need to both spend XP, learn about aspects of the item's history, and sometimes even perform specific deeds. 3e tried something similar with Weapons of Legacy, and Pathfinder 2 has something along those lines with Relics, but both are handicapped by an obsession with game balance that forces said cool things to be kept in line with other items. That said, I haven't really had the opportunity to either play or run Earthdawn, but thread items strike me as a strong spice best used sparingly, lest the whole campaign becomes about upgrading the party's Cool Stuff.

 

[tetrasodium]

Barring hard-line no magic & historical RPGs, most RPGs have some expectations of magic items or Clarketech that needs to be met to avoid problems between PCs and system expectations. One of the more interesting ways of handling magic item shops for items beyond the system expected baseline stuff others have mentioned is described in

Spoiler: this cool video

That imo also solves some of the problems mentioned in the OP... Unfortunately 2014 5e makes some efforts★ to nullify the benefits it gives

With some of the others like why dungeons filled with magic items exist, it's It's actually surprising that d&d hasn't adopted even a sidebar talking some of the tropes commonly found in "dungeon core" fiction and related anime by now. Some of them are some vague general idea that dungeons somehow cleanse filter redistribute or even generate magical energy (ie mana/ki/souls/etc as appropriate to the fiction). It doesn't need to be actually inserted into official settings for a useful sidebar to talk about things like that Vance's dying earth from appendix N and Athas's pre-cleansing war civilizations/Eberron's abandoned last ear spoilsim general terms where a gm could point to when awkward questions come up where the real answer is "because it's a game bro"

★Like dmg136 ¶4 & the identify spellbeing too complete in what it reports.

 

[Richards]

In my current campaign, I have The Hidden Market, an extradimensional magic item procurement center run by a group of ten gnomes calling themselves the Gnomish Consortium. For a price, they can - after a bit of searching - pretty much find whatever you might be looking for. The secret behind their success is they're not really gnomes, they're dragons in alternate forms, and they have an enormous "client list" of allied dragons more than willing to trade in some magical gewgaw from their treasure hoards (that they generally can't use in their draconic forms) for a mass of coins and gems, which makes their hoards all that much more impressive looking. So whatever you magic item you want, some dragon somewhere probably has one he or she is willing to sell, and the Gnomish Consortium can act as the brokers, assuring anonymity to the dragons "upgrading" their personal hoards.

Johnathan

 

[Lalato]

I've done it a few different ways, but lately have used brokers to find items. Tried to use the rules in Xanathar's Guide for a while, but it left a bit to be desired. My players didn't love it.

So now I think Brokers will have a random list of items (Uncommon and Rare) they can source immediately from nearby clients. And if that happens to be what players want, then it works out well.

If the broker can't easily source it, then the broker will get back to the PC in a set amount of time on info about the item. If the broker finds they can source it directly they are paid a brokerage fee. If they can't source it directly they will share the info they found... and the PC will pay a lower finders fee. This could then lead to side quest for the PC to get the item.

I like the idea of potions and scrolls being readily available in guilds, temples, universities... so I think I'll add that.

 

[Lanefan]

I have a few problems with having strongish magic items for sale (potions and scrolls and such are a different issue).

The first is that it creates an equivalence between economic power and personal power – if you're rich, you can get powerful items, and if you have powerful items you are, in a sense, rich.

Yes, which (like it or not) very closely reflects reality: it's far easier for the rich to get richer than for the poor to get rich.

This creates weird situations, such as making banditry infeasible and creating a cycle where you adventure to get money to buy magic items that make you better at adventuring to get more money to buy better magic items and so on.

Banditry against those of your own standing, or close, is always feasible. Peasant bandits can rob peasants; rich adventuring bandits can rob rich adventurers (and could also rob peasants, but what would be the point?), etc., and the world goes on.

As for the adventure-->money-->magic items-->adventure cycle: that's a feature, not a flaw. It - along with various other money sinks e.g. training - gives an always-on in-character reason to keep adventuring; which at the table means the game continues.

The other is that it turns even mid- to high-level characters into penny pinchers. So, you just returned to Waterdeep after trudging through the Mire of Dead Men for a month, culminating in killing a dragon that was bossing around a tribe of lizard folk, and now you're laden with gold and gems and stuff... and instead of spending the next tenday living it up and getting it on with all the fine ladies/gentlemen at the Purple Palace, you're going to find a cheap inn, because who wants to spend money on wine and orgies when you could put that money toward the "upgrade my sword to +3" fund? Bah!

Again, this is IMO a feature rather than a flaw. Some characters will blow their hoards on fine wine and expensive company while others will save it up for something - a stronghold, an orphanage, a +3 sword; doesn't matter what. Edit to add: and even if you are saving up for something later, a +1 ring of protection is hella more efficient to carry around now than the 3000 gold coins it otherwise represents.

And as a pleasant side effect, all of this somewhat forces players to closely track their characters' finances.

 

[Shadowedeyes]

The big issue I have with that is that the +3 Sword is the obviously correct choice in most campaigns, which generally leads to it really being just one choice.

 

[Lanefan]

To expand on my edit to the previous post: one of my own PCs in currently in process of retiring and trying to build a stronghold as per the 1e guidelines. Done conventionally, the cost for this would run into the tens of thousands of g.p., maybe even into six digits.

How is he planning to pay for it? By selling some (most?) of the rather impressive load of magic stuff he's accumulated during his adventuring career, of course.

 

[Kurotowa]

The big issue I have with that is that the +3 Sword is the obviously correct choice in most campaigns, which generally leads to it really being just one choice.

The way I see it, if the PC goes through a process of Participate In Epic Adventure -> [Middle Step] -> Obtain Swank +3 Sword, it doesn't really matter what that Middle Step is. It can be "looted from an ancient tomb" or "received as a reward from a grateful king", or you can add an additional step where you got cash money from the tomb or king and used that to turn around and buy the sword. The extra step doesn't devalue the end result as long the proximate cause was still going on an epic adventure.

So it doesn't matter if your +3 Sword of Awesomeness came out of the king's treasure vault as a reward, out of a deadly dungeon as loot, fresh out of an artificer's workshop because you slew a dire skogg and brought back its magical gizzard, or from another adventurer who's retiring and cashing out their gear. If you're getting the gold to buy the gear by being an adventurer, it's still fairly earned.