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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9325023" data-attributes="member: 4937">In my most recent D&D campaign, one of the characters wears armor made from the hide of a sea dragon that he slew.  On topic, in my setting you couldn't buy armor like this on the open market much less in a one stop shop magic mart of fungible magic, but you can probably find an individual who is both an armorer and a hedge mage (or two individuals that run a joint business) who could make the armor for you in one of the larger cities provided you could provide the hide.  Wait a few weeks and you have your armor.  No magic mart, but you do have some control over the equipment you have and the ability to fill in the gaps in your equipment that are filled in from loot.The point is that the setting has an explanation for how magic items come into being that fits with the lore of the game, but it doesn't have big shops where people can buy and sell magic items because demand still vastly exceeds the ability of the society to supply owing to choke points in the supply process - limited availability of things like dragon hide, high costs of production, limited ability to produce wizards of sufficiently high level to craft items more complex than scrolls or potions, limited availability of the XP required to power the creation of the object (the spending of which suppresses the level of the spellcaster in a negative feedback loop).   Because of this disparity between supply and demand, it's relatively easy to sell a magic item but very hard to buy one.  Magic items gravitate to the hordes of kings, nobles, major cults, and the rare adventuring class and stay there becoming family heirlooms or being gifted to trusted retainers and vassals and becoming their family heirlooms.  There are no shops filled with undesired magic items waiting for a buyer.  I mean, technically there are a few rare exceptions, but the vast majority of items in those sorts of magic curio shops are malfunctioning, cursed, esoteric items that no one can find an obvious use for and which the local authorities would probably destroy if they ever analyzed the collection because more than half of them are Evil nasty things that cause trouble.  And the owner of the shop knows that this is true, so he's unlikely to pull out the real collection and show it to you for fear you'll do something stupid that will get him arrested and burned on a stake as a warlock.   A magic shop of a sort might exist, but it's nothing like that scene in "The Highwaymen" where the Kevin Coster character goes into a gun store with a bunch of entries on a gun catalog circled and orders up his wish list of equipment. But in my setting, you can totally go into a shop that specializes in selling spell components, spices, rare plants, and animal and magical beast parts because you need to refill your spell pouches or want to make your own scroll of bull's strength.  Absolutely you could go into a hedge mage's shop and order a scale that chimed when something magical was weighed on it, a sail that wouldn't burn, a lock that opened only when a password was spoken, paper that was water resistant, a jar that kept its contents fresh for weeks, or a wand of light - but not a girdle of giant strength or a bag of holding.  The local hedge mage makes things that ordinary people want and need or could afford, not legendary items for heroes.  And the wizard that could potentially make a girdle of giant strength or a bag of holding, if one so powerful even exists in the kingdom, if he works for anyone at all works for the king and is too busy making stuff for the king to accept commissions from wandering mercenaries.The problem with magic marts is that they are anachronisms that get in the way of setting depth.  If you are going to go that far, you might as well have a crystal ball in every home and people gather around it to watch pastiche fantasy versions of "I Love Lucy" and "The Howdy Doody Show".</blockquote>

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