Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 9332647" data-attributes="member: 4937">I don't think you are really contradicting me.  I think the OP makes clear that even in his default conception, there are "magic shops" of a kind and that certain low-level items such as potions might be available in limited numbers.  So yes, the argument is really about to what extent a magic item is available for sale the way other items are, but "to what extent" when we are not talking about "freely available" the way rations, torches and iron spikes are, is a broad topic with a lot of fine graduations.  The question at hand is something like, "Can I just expect to go into a town and buy a significant item like cloak of resistance or a girdle of health they way I would expect to buy torches, rations, and normal arrows?"  The OP isn't saying that there aren't magic shops, but that there aren't magic shops with an inventory of significant items.Sort of.  I mean in a broad way I agree with the 3e model that some gp limit based on the population of the settlement determines what sort of goods can be purchased in it, but I think both myself and the OP would balk at the price points that 3e sets because those price points imply the existence of magic marts and I think were commonly used to justify them.And here is where I get into an argument about "to what extent" because the 3e guidelines are much more generous than I would be even when playing 3e.Here is my reasoning.  In 3e a gold piece seems to be about the daily wage of a common laborer.   That is to say the economy works on a gold standard of super prevalent and abundant gold so that gold is not worth as much as you might expect.  But even if 1 gold piece is just a daily wage that could translate into terms easy to relate to the modern world to like a single gold piece being worth $80 or more.  So when you see a guideline that says in a town of 5000 people items of up to 3000 gold pieces can be purchased presumably "freely" what that is saying is equivalent to saying that in a town of 5000 people that items of up to $240,000 in value can be obtained relatively freely.  A common interpretation of that in the 3e era was that there existed a magic shop a town of 5000 people where any object the player could conceive of that was worth less than $240,000 was on the shelf.  I've lived in a town of 5000 people before.  I think the idea that in a setting presumably less industrialized than our own that there exists a shop for buying things worth $240,000 in every smallish town is unreasonable in the extreme.   Like maybe when you get up to the legendary metropolises of my world you might find a small selection of items in that price range available off the shelf.  Now, you could certainly try to commission the creation of objects in that price range in a legendary metropolis.  But in no fashion would I consider a town of 5000 people to be a place where somewhere there is a display rack of +1 magic weapons available.I think we are talking about this difficult to talk about concept of "extent" where we quantitize what is available.  I do agree that no one - not me, not the OP - is talking about the absolute existence of no magic shops as he gives examples of the sort of magic shops he'd be OK with.   But I also don't think I'm erecting a straw man to say that there was a sizable body of people that adopted the magic-mart based on readings of 3e like you provided, and I think it is worth critiquing what that does to the game when they are available and whether that is as "necessary" as some claim.</blockquote>

Verification