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Message: <blockquote data-quote="EzekielRaiden" data-source="post: 9315538" data-attributes="member: 6790260">Most of these arguments only make sense if you presuppose several additional elements that are not universally true. Balance, for example, is perfectly capable of tolerating a magic item economy; it is only if there are unbalanced items that such a concern is warranted. Socially, it presumes that play rarely if ever goes to large cities where magic services would be commonly traded; IRL, jewelers and pharmacists still exist even though their stuff COULD be stolen, so that whole like of thinking is frankly ridiculous.I have magic items available for purchase in my Dungeon World game, because the PCs live in and work with the largest city on their continent, which has a heavily mercantile culture, and where small magic is commonplace but big magic is rare. As an example, a friend of the party is a Wizard and artificer who has become independently wealthy by devising a form of self-heating crockery, so that people can eat warm food at any hour. That sort of stuff sells big bucks. Basic magic weapons are not generally worth large scale production, they're too involved and expensive; instead, they're the kind of thing you give to officers or prized assets. Magic tools are more common, but still not something every Tom, Dick, and Harry would need or even want necessarily, just as you wouldn't expect every Renaissance violinist to have a Stradivarius, even though instrument-making is involved and expensive.If you want to go past basic stuff though, if you want fancy magic items? Those things are too rare to be just bought and sold. Most of them would be snapped up by collectors, museums, or (most commonly) Waziri mages who will destroy them in order to find out even just some part of how they function. Because that aforementioned self-heating crockery? Yeah that came from reverse-engineering the magic in an Efreeti-wrought sword, something a foolish group of mercenaries allowed to fall into others' hands.But where there is desire, there is opportunity. Ambitious players may find they can get what they want...if they're willing to collect rare or volatile materials from isolated, hazardous places. Or perhaps they can get on the good side of a Jinnistani noble, since that never has unintended consequences. Or...etc.By the time the party becomes wealthy enough to buy up whatever they might have wanted from a magic shop when they were level 1...they no longer have the wants and interests of level 1 characters. At which point, the magic item shop is no longer a free pass to fantastic power. It is, at worst, a way to fill in a gap that adventuring has, by coincidence, failed to fill up.</blockquote>

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