Magic Item Shops Make Magic Items Less Special
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- Опубликовано: 14 июл 2024
- This is a secret sequel to my last “Critical Role Demystified” video, because while I love Gilmore, I have a lot of thoughts about magic item shops in general…
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CW: Griffin McElroy says a cuss
Chapters:
00:00 - We Made It
00:56 - The DMG’s Advice for Buying and Selling Magic Items
01:58 - My Approach to Magic Item Shops
05:10 - Xanathar’s Guide to Everything’s Advice for Buying Magic Items
06:39 - Trying to Make Magic Items More Special
08:21 - A Word From Our Sponsor
09:42 - Magic Item Shops Make No Sense
10:46 - It’s About Taste
14:09 - Outro
Clips:
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In the campaign I’m currently playing in, there is a magic shop in the big city, but the owner doesn’t have any inventory. He can create bespoke items for you, but each one will require some exotic component that you will have to acquire and bring to him. The DM will then seed the opportunity to find that item over the course of other adventuring, or else create a sidequest for the player(s) to go and hunt down the material.
It nicely splits the different ence between no magic shops at all and Tome Depot and Wand-Mart.
I like (and encourage) the idea of getting items commissioned, especially requiring components the PCs need to acquire.
If I were to DM a game this is what I would do as well. Allows you to have the option of players purchasing Magic Items to spend the vast amount of gold they acquire, while also making them earn the magic items, letting them still feel special.
I do something similar and there is a chance the crafting can fail. The failure depends on the dice roll. A sword or suit of armor may get some of the qualities they are looking for but there is something wrong with it, like a curse or it develops a personality of its own.
Lol Tome Depot 😂
@@SupergeekMike What about Necromart and Prayers-R-Us?
The rationale for including magic shops is that 5e published modules give out heaps of gold with little to spend it on. Having magic items for sale at least gives players something mechanically relevant (as opposed to property) to spend their hoard on. I like the idea of an auction, though, or an estate foreclosure sale. If you're playing in Eberron, maybe the House Kundarak bank has a Storage Wars-style auction, selling the contents of vaults where clients defaulted in their rental payments.
I want to roll around in my hoard and sleep on it like a dragon.
A easy solution for this issue is downgrade all monetary awards, turn gp into sp, sp to cp. This fixes this problem.
So give out less gold? Make currency have weight? Tax players a fixed amount to account for food, lodging, and other necessities between sessions? There's plenty of options to keep money in line besides Magic R Us.
@@thraxbottom549 "So you want to enter the city of Taxformia? Well it looks like you're in the 90% tax bracket, so we'll just take the king's share now.
@@RedwoodTheElf If the word tax is triggering to you, we can say deduct an amount in between sessions for the same reason. It's a given adventurers need to pay for food, repairs, boarding, etc.
I always feel like if magic is relatvly common, so would be magicitms, maybe not he big +2 Swords, but the small stuff, like a feather that does never run out of ink, self cleaning shoes and littel toys you can break only to repair themself.
And these itms should logicly be sold in stores. Plus thats the kind of stuff players find cool to have but would not realy go on a quest for. The complex and big stuff can still be extreamly rare and special, but small wonderous trinkets would be just to comen in any world were the average person has regular contactswith magic useres to not be sold in shops.
Fun!
And makes perfect sense!
More people would buy these and it would be actual uses for magic that would make every world feel more fantasy.
I had a stroke reading this
Low magic worlds are superior to the high magic / high fantasy ones, imo.
i disagree. it would be highly adventitious for lords and monarchs to give thair retinues atleast +1 weapons and armour. as well as items that helps with the logistics when on a champaign like the decanter of endless water or alchemy jug since logistics are the worst part in a offencive war. something just as simple as a wand of detect magic or wand of cure wounds would be highly usefull so there seems to me that a culture of crafting magical items would spring up
My campaign has a crazy goblin who just appears in random locations with weird magic items he sells and swaps. This helps me as the players can’t ever just find him so he’s only there when I think he should be and he has a very small about of items that it isn’t just some plentiful thing
Yes! That’s the best
I play older editions, so it might not work with your game. I make characters that can make magic items. I also give NPCs magic items that were made specifically for them and don’t work for anyone else.
That wicked +5 sword your villain is using is just a masterwork weapon in the hands of anyone who can wrestle it away from him if he has an underling enchanting things for him.
Looking forward to this one! In general, I have magic shops that sell expendable like potions and scrolls. Nicer stuff either has to be found hidden, removed from someone's corpse, purchased from an expensive antiques dealer, or given as a reward. I don't feel like the classic magic item shop fits with my take on 5e.
I think you’re going to vibe with the video 😁
In literally any setting where artificers exist, there should absolutely be some small shops that sell magical trinkets and simple things. HAVE FUN WITH IT!
Gnomes are your best bets for NPCs for these, but I’ve given players items like:
- a wooden hand that, when activated, turns into a small disembodied hand that can perform simple actions and follow rudimentary commands. (Or just be used to freak out town guards or anyone shaking your “hand”)
- a box that replaces what you put in with a similar-as-possible object of equal or lesser value (by a small margin). Put in a spoon, get a slightly different spoon, swap books, anger the archivists at candlekeep when you put liquids into it!!!!!
I had a salesman that *exclusively* sold mundane items that all had the property “can turn into 30ft of hempen rope”
Clothes that turn into whatever (not armor) you desire them to be, once.
A spoon with an engraving in Sylvan that translates roughly to “eat dirt”. Gives the equivalent of one berry from the goodberry spell per 2 charges, except it’s a lump of dirt. Gains 1d4-2 charges each day at dawn, someone might just get a mouthful of regular dirt.
Ring or necklace that makes a potential thief (INT save) believe it is worth 10,000 GP and that nothing else on the character is worth the effort to obtain.
Silk handkerchief that can become as rigid as steel if you give it a command word, but still retains all other physical qualities. (Jam locks or gag someone with it and essentially lock them in an iron jaw or make an extra strong “battle bindle”.
Etc etc etc etc etc
Hahahaha I love the items that can turn into rope, and I love the clothes that can change ONCE lol
Personally, I am a big fan of magic item shops in world's and have several in my own game. I like high magic fantasy, so that's what I run, so magic items are a bit common place.
I like having shops for the players to buy essentially whatever item they want for the simple reason that it's fun. I think being able to further customize your character, in the same way you can with a feat, is very fun for players. It's not so fun to see all these awesome items in the books and knowing you'll never be able to use one in your game cause you only get a handful of items, chosen by the DM, per adventure.
I have a completely opposite view. In my world, magic items are very rare. Casting spells can be dangerous, requiring a spell craft roll each time a caster decides to use a spell. And a critical failure or having a spell disrupted in combat can be very bad indeed. Magic isn't tech--if anything it's anti-tech. You are tapping into spiritual forces to alter the physical laws of the world, and doing so has costs. The powers that govern the physical laws of the world take notice after a while. There are lots of ways characters can spend gold, setting up a base of operation, hiring henchmen and hirelings. Doing things to maintain good communications, like having boats and wagons to haul around their crap.
If monty-haul is your thing, by all means knock yourself out. But when magic is just another tech, to my way of thinking it takes the mystical and mysterious out of the game, and for me that's a very important flavor. Magic starts having all the wonder of the plumbing under your house.
@@andrewlustfield6079
You haven't seen the plumbing under my house. That shit *is* magickal. Ain't no law of physics that explains how that still works.
@@GnarledStaff laughs--I can't speak to your house. Perhaps there are little elves and brownies down in your pipes, making the water flow properly.
That said, when magic becomes common place, it loses it's wonder, mysteries, and mythic qualities. This is the same reason I'm not a fan of truing monsters into PC races. When your characters can fly, have breath weapons, or any number of other things---that quickly becomes as mundane as turning a key or hitting the ignition button to start your car, or pulling a phone out of your pocket to goggle some bit of trivia, or flipping a switch to create light.
I'll just hop on down to the magic shop, pick up a vorpal blade, a holy avenger and ring of regeneration, a robe of eyes, and how are we on +4 oil of sharpness? Are we low on that?
Nope, not a fan of magic shops. When magic items are awarded, the PCs should have to bleed for them. Even one shot magic items like potions and scrolls.
I include magic item shops in BIG cities only but they only sell consumables, common and a FEW uncommon magic items. Flavor stuff mostly.
Most uncommon or rarer items must be acquired other ways or through special auctions.
Same applies if they want to SELL a magic item harder to find than common.
I like in Ghosts of Saltmarsh how the magic items are constantly being moved and restock with completely different items since people across the world are making far off orders and that the merchant needs to make a profit in such a tense buisness
That's cool. I don't remember seeing that I'll have to go reread that book.
Same for me. Maybe they have the occasional +1 weapon. But most of the magic items in my shop are the flavor magic items like the mug of sobriety or glamour armors
The other thing I really like doing is allowing PCs to purchase either the materials they need to do the crafting themselves (possibly missing one key ingredient that they'll have to track down) or paying a finder's fee to someone who can direct or lead them to where a fabled item can be acquired, or combine those two and have them hire someone who can guide them through the Shifting Caves of Khalabasz to the caverns where veins of priceless Living Mithril can be found.
The way I handled this in my game was having a shop run by a warlock of the great old one. Rather than keeping an inventory, he acts as a broker and uses sending to contact the seller when a buyer shows up to buy the item (and proves they have the money to pay for the seller's asking price). Since his only real business expense is the building itself, he can just relax as long as he brokers a deal every once in a while.
Congratulations again on the new house and being there is giving you great energy. I don’t know if the premiere thing you did with the video was new, but either way, I really liked it.
All my experience currently with DnD is watching the actual play shows and I never really stopped to think about the magic shops not being a common thing. But I grew up with Harry Potter and other than super rare items, you could go to any shop in Diagon Alley and buy whatever. Obviously a totally different kind of fantasy but I do think it’s interesting how the games/books/etc you grew up with can really inform you fantasy play.
Thank you!
And that’s true, Harry Potter is a pretty iconic example of the magic item shop trope lol
In my current campaign, I'm planning to have a mysterious traveling salesperson who will appear once in a while that will sell two or three magic items so my players have some choice without making it seem like they can get anything they want
I love it 😁
like Sahara or Wendell in Animal Crossing 😊
@@daneroberts1996 Exactly! My actual inspiration was the traveling cart in Stardew Valley, because I like the idea of a little caravan being pulled by a pig. :D
in one of the MCDM Arcadia issues they have a travelling magic shop that is basically stealing from others to sell you items. You can place an order and they will go get it for you, but there may be consequences. A little different from the more traditional go find this for me and i can make it, or some tip about where that holy avenger might be located. Now you have an angry paladin order wanting their avenger back, or something.
I run my game in the Exandria setting, which of course does have two or three famous magical items shops, but outside of those, I’m sticking with the “potions and scrolls model” outlined late in the video here. I’m actually working today on reflavoring magic items listed in the sourcebooks to be more in line with my story, which is a fairytale inspired survival game of players vs nature when the nature is an Enchanted Forest. They will run across old ladies who are benevolent fae in disguise who will give them a gift for helping, there will be ingredients to harvest and craft into magical consumables (two of the players are interested in crafting), as well as stones, flowers, tree branches, etc that have magical properties. I think that fits better the tone of this story. I did have a traveling merchant enter the story last session, but given that the PCs range in age from 16-19 and they don’t actually look like they have much money, I had him treat them with poor customer service, just like my fellow wait staff used to treat kids who came in to the diner for fries and a shake after school but never tipped. It was TRULY very funny when they realized what was going on, it was great!
Ooh I like that!
For my current campaign world the previous empire had vast magi-technological items and tools they used. That culture is basically all but collapsed and what remains of their crafting is often little understood. It's rare to find these items and are often in the tombs or ruins of the fallen cities.
The way I like to frame it make the acquisition of the items themselves a quest. Most people are barely able to make a living let alone adventuring for lost treasure. It adds weight to the rare trinkets you find and supports the narrative of living in a shadow of a lost forgotten world
I have a magic shop branch in my world, but it's actually all the same shop, where you get transported into this sorta demi plane when you cross the door, but he only sells mundane magical items, like an automatic sweeping broom, or a self heating teapot, but you can commission a magical item, and it'll cost a lot of gold and take a lot of time to be completed.
Hahaha I do like that
Quite simply, I include a few magical item shops/auction houses for two big reasons. One is LORE related, one is GAME related.
Lore wise, beyond the more powerful and esoteric stuff, the NPC casters and historians of my world are able to figure out how to create basic magical objects. Research into them is as important as any science, because why WOULDN'T you want to figure it out?
And Game wise? It gives the players something to pour their money into, especially high level play. I constantly read about DM's who have players uninterested in coin as a motivator because they "Have nothing left to do with it." My current high level game has the players ravenous for coin because they actually have ways to use it.
Congratulations on the successful enhoming!
I don't fully agree with your second point about shops that exclusively sell very expensive things not making sense, and you actually made my point for me later on. Think of a luxury brand and do a "[brand] near me" search, they're out there. Of course, brands usually imply established lines of production and distribution, which may well not be realistic for magic items. That is where auction houses or traveling auctioneers come in, which is my preferred method for handling magic item purchasing because it's actually an adventure in disguise. The fighter desperately wants an enchanted sword? There's a rumor that Ranistor Goldspinner's Astral Auction Hall recently appeared in the Stormarsh, only three day's travel from the inn you're in now. Of course, the Stormarsh is a very dangerous place to travel because it's based on that one scene from The Neverending Story that gave me nightmares as a kid combined with the other scene from The Neverending Story that also gave me nightmares as a kid, but if anyone's got a Dancing Greatsword for sale, it's Ranistor Goldspinner.
I haven't had the change yet but I like the "Faithful Quartermaster of Iun" in the saltmarsh campaign. Things aren't readily available but they can be "acquired" over a certain amount of time on a smuggled ship. This opens so many doors for favors or for mini quests or fights to breakout because it doesn't specify where the items come from. And the amount of time it takes to show up can be dependent of the level of rareness and then on top of that it could show up late or get stolen...so many little things can spider web off of this...it makes for a little better function to make more things fun...instead of hey here's 1k gold, and now I can be invisible...
some of the ways in my campaign that i approach alternatives to magic item shops:
-custom pieces: sometimes, especially at a magic school or something, a player can commission a custom piece. depending on the rarity and power of the item, as well as the skill level of the person making it, it can take anywhere from a few days to a few weeks, with the price fluctuating in accordance
-curio shops: a fun alternative to magic item shops because they can be filled with random trinkets, odd versions of standard equipment, and then random magic items based on a percentile roll if a player asks about one
I had a magic shop that was one shop, but doors to it were all over the world. It was attached to a magic tavern called "the Fat Wizard's Tower" and was run by the son of the tavern owner. He was a warlock and his Patron was Mystra Goddess of magic, and he ran it as part of his pact. Mystra wanted magic to proliferate and so he was the go too for magic items, reagents and references.
Most items were not available for gold, they were available for secrets, knowledge, or favors. Sometime he would just give people items because Mystra told him to. ( This was a tactic to get new players to the item that suited their character and intended build since most didn't know what was what. )
Concept: a loremaster who collects deals in information. you can buy/sell/trade information about the locations of magic items, and what challenges might face those who seek them.
essentially, a quest shop where you buy quests. it gives purpose to money, but also gives the PC's agency to seek specific items, and rewards them for questing instead of accumulating gold.
also, I think the idea of "upgradeable" weapons is fantastic. abilities that can be added on to a weapon or enchants that can be applied if a PC brings a certain item or collection of items back to a shop owner who can enchant
DM'd my first session ever last night. I've never really been a player either. (Do two one-shots over a decade ago count?) Well, you know what? It was awesome!!! Your advice and insight on this channel has been super helpful and encouraging, so I just wanted to say thank you.
Grats!
I’m so glad it helped!! 😁😁😁
In my world, I borrowed the idea of gods deriving their power from the faith of their followers. Magic items are not powerful because of any enchantments places upon them, they’re powerful because they are *believed* to be powerful. This gives a convenient avenue for improving magic items - your item grows alongside your/its legend. It also allows for some interesting play with ‘forgotten’ items, which is a very real danger: if an item’s legend is forgotten, it’s power wilts and it begins to decay. Lastly, it gives a convenient explanation for why magic items can’t be disenchanted or targeted by Remove Curse.
In my world, there is an organization that acts much like a museum: they collect these items and preserve them, spreading their legends and stories that they might never be forgotten. Or in the event of dangerous, dark, or cursed objects, they can safeguard the items, locked away from mind and memory as they decay until such a time as they can be destroyed. This organization regularly contracts with adventurers and mercenaries the world over to add to their collection. Keeping so many powerful artifacts together makes a tempting target, however, so they’ll regularly lease out items to adventurers and agents that have proven their loyalty to the Collectorate, on the condition that they protect the items with their life. This organization can be used to deliver plot hooks with relevant magic items in numerous ways: collect a magic item, lock away a dangerous relic, hunt down a band of rogue adventurers and take back any leases items, etc.
it’s not perfect, but I like it as a way to introduce magic item shops in a way that adds to the narrative of magic items in the setting.
I think there is a third note, at least for Critical Role. All of the places they buy magic items after C1 have very limited inventories, so magic items remain relatively uncommon, even bespoke. Fjord bought a ring that nobody picked up, Yasha commissioned bracers that she never went back for, Cad haggled with a woman for a fan, and so on. I actually remember what they bought and commissioned better than what they found, because the conditions were often more fantastic.
It has been a long time since I ran a campaign, but the one I have outlined doesn't have magic item shops. Some retailers may have potions or scrolls, but everything else is on commission or out of a collection.
(I'm also toying with regulation of magic and magical goods, though, which is another level of complexity I may drop. But if magic is powerful and supercedes conventional limitations, the state will seek control over it. Tamora Pierce touched on this in Tortall a few times; there was a power struggle between the crown and the autonomy of mages, an attempted coup by a sorcerer, and by the time we reach the latest dates in the timeline, the crown operates a magical college. That feels similar to the crown control over military training through the centralized page and squire system.)
I'm personally more partial to the idea of crafting my own magic items. That's part of the fantasy of being a spellcaster to me; which is why it's so frustrating that there is so little support when it comes to crafting in general, and that any crafting at all takes absurdly long amounts of time.
You can’t assume the original designers like Gygax or Arneson had any interest in developing that part of their game. At some point the rule set doesn’t support your vision of the game.
I just use The Discerning Merchant’s Price Guide, with a pre-check to see if an item is available. The shopkeeper is a djinn with the power to be a warlock patron, but in disguise as a mortal. He’s written into the campaign guide, but so are a number of items important to the setting, so as those have been found, the group doesn’t buy so much from the shop anymore.
Hey Supergeek Mike, newer watcher who is loving the content. Thanks for this video, the idea of auctions hadn’t occurred to me before and has helped expand my options for the next Westmarch style game I intend to run. My plan/understanding is as follows. Magic Item shops do not exist in every hamlet or small village. However these villages might be expected to have a priest or apothecary that can make 1 healing potion a day or minor curative effects (protection from poison or disease, lesser restoration) with their spell slots as they would still prove useful for townsfolk in need, and provide a profit for the establishment (worker’s accident, attack in the forest, random illness, etc.) If there is a magic item shop it’s run by a low level mage or a merchant of decent wealth. They only have select uncommon items according to the power level of the characters at the time with maybe one rare that is the pride of their shop. The reason they don’t sell everything in the PHB is that these shops don’t tend to focus on adventuring gear, but items for townsfolk. Much like a medieval blacksmith wouldn’t form endless weapons but also be expected to make horseshoes, nails construction materials and other such “daily needs”. So rather than making stuff only adventurers could use, these shopkeepers are making magical pickaxes, farming tools, construction materials, bridles, saddles, bits, wagons, wagon wheels, etc. If magic can be added to your adventurer’s weapons why not your citizens gear too? However, they might get regular citizens on payment plans or trade agreements, whereas adventurers have to be charged large gold prices upfront because there’s no guarantee they’ll return. If you move to a mid size city you enter a shop that has several rare items and maybe a handful of very rare items. My most recent thought is using a gem system for weapons to add special abilities rather than an awakening system. Example: A rogue named Vix’aldan wants a flame tongue dagger. Rather than buying a whole different dagger, he buys a gem, that he can fuse/attach/attune with a dagger already in his possession to create a flame tongue dagger. However the magical binding process takes effort and magical rituals and the materials to make these uncommon (not every rock on earth, but not as rare as meteorite) justifying the prices charged to the buyer. For presentational effect I might make a minor illusion projector a relatively common item to make to project a picture of what the magic item looks like normally and it’s normal effect. Or for the more hag like shops use hallucinatory terrain to create the effect with a DC 25 to try to see through it. It’s harmless and more fun/flavor that way so I don’t see it being wrong setting it at a nigh impossible level. Additionally, these mid level shops if made into a chain, might have a gachapan machine where you can spend significantly less gold for a magic item, but the item you get is completely random. Hopefully this will lead to those shenanigans where an immovable rod saves the day. Finally, I’m now considering adding auctions or similar type events as the best way outside of dungeons to get very rare or legendary gear, but the only types of people at such auctions would be the real high rollers, bidding starts at the bare minimum of 50,000 gold per item kind of event (numbers subject to change, made it up on the fly). That’s
my plan for moving forward let me know what you think.
I've thought about this a lot, as I am running a low-magic pathfinder game, a system in which it is fundamental for characters to acquire new magic items regularly. As a part of my setting, I named one of the in-game weekdays "Auctionday." In every major city, there is an action hall that is open on this day. Here, magic items and other exclusive gear can be bought, in addition to whatever the auction hall has collected in the days leading up to the auction. It has worked great, and even makes my players keep track of the in-game calendar! Two birds with one stone as they say!
in my groups campaigns we dont have "Magic" Shops we have Enchanters Shops where we can take non magical items and get them enchanted or bring a magic item and get it disenchanted. some of the major cities ones have left over items that were sold or left so the owner of the shop sells them.
I have two magic item "shops" in my game. One is a traveling merchant who deals almost exclusively in cursed items. He'll buy cursed items, but will only give cursed items to those he thinks won't be corrupted by their magic. You can't buy them, you have to be worthy. The more traditional magic item shop is owned by a plane hopping witch who is generally disliked in much the cities she shows up in. With so much magic at her disposal she's considered dangerous, and the party gets into hijinxs whenever they deal with her.
My world's major magic item shop is an interplanar void space that was refurbished and is only accessible by portal. They sell literally everything you could want from across the multiverse, but finding what you want is hard, and you're not guaranteed to exit to the same place you entered.
Ok that sounds RAD
The way I always thought of it was that it goes in tiers according to how difficult/rare the magic might be.
Things like healing potions might be available in a decently sized town with a singular skilled person who runs an apothecary. A bigger city might have a shop that sells items with simple enchantments and scrolls, but it's all pricier. Then only really big cities few and far between have the really good stuff. After that it's auctions/private collections, and above that is stuff to center a quest on.
My games have always featured the party as part of an Adventurer's Guild (secretly multiversal) that allows players to commission magic items once they have enough money and clout. This feels right for my games, and gives players things they can strive for without it being as easy to access as a magic shop. The guild is also willing to either buy or take donations of magic items, but the latter is very good for your character within the Guild even for the most basic of magic items.
I like magic item shops. Personally i feel like if you're playing a non-spellcaster there usually aren't a lot of mechanical choices once you've chosen your subclass so having a magic item shop gives my players the opportunity to refine their character mechanically, kinda like a mini-feat. If I want a magic item to feel special, I'll just make a homebrew one. Whether these shops make sense or not is kinda secondary for me, but typically they're run by guild-like organizations that the party is part of or is aligned with.
I agree that it doesn't make sense for magic shops to base their entire business around magic items. Magic shops in my games make most of their money selling scrolls, spell components (both the standard stuff in a component bag and the more expensive consumed components), and mundane spellcasting foci like staves and wands. They have a few magic items, but they always keep them in a, Arcane Locked case behind the counter, and only have around 1 to 3 at a time. Once those are sold, they don't usually get any more for at least a month.
So glad you have a new space you feel comfortable in. Love your videos!
I do have one (1) magic item shop in my campaign, but that shop also sells scrolls, potions, spell scribing ink and minor spell components, which is in fact, most of their business. The magic items are about a dozen rings, trinkets and weapons the owner keeps in the shop but even those are basically display items that are rarely sold (and even these expensive pieces are mostly uncommon items with a couple rare pieces available for top dollar).
I ran a game of Into The Odd with a chain of potion shops. The thing was they only had what you wanted if you knew what to ask for. It wasn't enough to say "a healing potion" or "a strength boosting potion", you had to ask for "fortified skin rinse". So I had a 3 column chart that gave: The stat it affected, how it affected the stat and it's side effect. When players poked around the shop and grabbed a bottle I'd roll a d10 3 times, once for each column, and each square had 2 bits of info. The first was for my eyes only and gave the potion's effect, the second was an adjective which the players got to know. If they paid attention they could ask for what they wanted otherwise they were at the mercy of the dice.
The way we do it (are dm loves magic items) is you either find them on corpses or when we travel (he rolls to see if Mr.biggilsworth shows up. Then we either make a arcana check for 1 of 3 potential items to buy or you can have him roll a d100 for a random item,with the roll determining the tier (common,uncommon,rare,etc) )
What makes the intro to this video funny is that I just watched the one today about dragon hunts and in that video there is a quiet ever so subtle creeky wooden fence noise
As a DM I hated making magic shops. But at the same time, there are convenient to have the players offload items for cash. We had a DM have a long-running distant war so the nobles and the like were buying up all the magic items to send with their family and VIPs. Resulting in a drought of items to purchase. It was a neat idea to explain why the shops had money to buy things but none to sell. FYI in our game we charge money to train for leveling, so the players need cash.
I do a balancing act. My magic shops are Stocked with things like common and uncommon magic items and lower level spell scrolls, these shops also act as brokers and if you have a good relationship with the merchant and/or do a highly dangerous and not always above the law errand you can gain the opportunity to either get an item capping out at very rare crafted or sold to you, that way the party can get their bag of holding while still feeling like thy earned their mace of disruption or nine lives stealer
I guess I like the idea of a magic item shop. However I suppose that for the most part what I would expect to find in them are trinkets of relatively little power in comparison to what players can get elsewhere. I have no good reason to say that though. I guess I assume that magic is relatively common at a lesser level, but only gets very rare for spells and items that are more powerful. Completely agree that being able to buy an upgrade makes the tools much less meaningful.
That’s a great happy medium 😁
In the game I'm currently setting up there are very specific "mass produced" magic items that are only sold at specific shops in specific towns, some magic items that can be commissioned, and some magic items that you can pay to use just once (for example a modified deck of many things).
I don't have a problem with magic item shops, honestly. They don't strike me as any more or less arbitrary that random magic item drops during homebrew or published adventures - especially if the item drops are not specifically predetermined but are the result of random rolls.
I like the way Mercer runs his & how he's able to get the party to spend their excess cash. It also seems to me that the non-potion/spell scroll items are almost always limited & scaled to the party's level.
Back in my AD&D days, my DM made a +1 longsword very special to my mid level Paladin. He called it a 'Brightblade' & said that it shed light for 30' and that not all weapons were Brightblades. This immediately gave it a sense or, for lack of a better way to put it, being truly magical. And useful as my human paladin (as per the rules) didn't have Infravision.
So DMs can definitely add to making a magic item truly special.
I once ran a grim, low-magic campaign and generally had a rule that you can't buy magic items except potions, they would have to be found by going on adventures. There were two exceptions:
-The Undermarket. A secret criminal auction that specialized in the rare magic items that would be stolen by master thieves. Obscenely expensive and existed for plot hooks more than an actual place to reasonably buy items.
-The Little Shop That Wasn't There Yesterday. Not it's actual name, but the type of curious little shop run by a kind wise old man that will sell you trinkets or baubles or mogwai and be an empty lot or brick wall when you come back. Basically its entire existence is supernatural.
Hell. Yes.
thanks for the vid!
i found your channel a few days ago and have slowly started to look through your uploaded vids, watching those i considered interesting sounding. so far i was not disappointed (and left a few likes :-P )
this is the first vid i felt the desire to leave a comment on.
I've been a GM on and off for ... over two decades now in a wide variety of systems and settings
this is how i handle magic items in D&D (any of the editions, not including PF since that feels "lower" on the fantasy power scale and thus has its own way of me handling it)
in order to determine the rarity of magic items in general i need to determine how they come into existence and how they stop existing (in any relevant way at least - forgotten in a tomb basically counts as not existing until its found again).
first, where do magic items come from?
the answer to that is, just about always, "someone made it". might not be now, might have been ages ago, but ... at some point someone made it.
who makes magic items then?
the answer to that is in the rules - any magic user with the right feat and access to the right spell levels (and spells) can do so
so, how many magic users are there?
that answer depends on the world, but in mine the answer is around 1 in 1,000 ppl has the ability to learn magic
1 in 10 of those will actually do so. (1:10,000)
1 in 10 of those will get above cantrip level (1:100,000)
1 in 10 of those will get above 1st level spells (1:1,000,000)
etc.
that means in the entire world there might only be one or two people capable of making legendary items - if any
how does one make a magic item?
to me there are several ways of doing so
scrolls are the written on parchment or vellum, aka animal hides. these hides either need to come from magical creatures, or be treated alchemically and magically so they are infused with magical energy
on them one then writes with a special ink (several power levels, the standards of which are maintained by the locally dominant magical orgnaisation, usually the wizard guild/tower/academy)
potions i treat as "enhanced" alchemy, not enchanting
aka one needs ingredients infused with the desired effect, then alchemically combine them with other items to create a potion. knowing a spell that also resembles the desired effect helps make that process easier and allows one to use "lesser" ingredients (to a point anyways)
some of these recipes are widley known (low-level healing potions for example), others are trade secrets or even national secrets (think porcelaine in its early days), while others yet have been lost...
full on magical items are another step on that scale
these rely on a similar process as potions, but more so and they replace the alchemical process with arcane ones
they are usually created in specially prepared locations in mana rich areas
they need ingredients for
> the effect (aka a piece/all of something that had a similar effect)
> a power source (e.g. a crystal infused with elemental fire mana for a flaming sword ... or a dragonheart...)
> a catalyst (or several) to harmonize, balance and bind these effects together
> a carrier, aka the item itself. but it needs to be of such a nature as to be able to handle the power. trying to infuse a peweter sword with a legendary enchantment will result in a nice explosion, not a magical weapon.
the magical object is then to be crafted at the same time as these items are integrated/infused into it
while one (or more) magic practitioners control the process and infuse it with their own magic (aka spend spell slots) - this requries them to know magic with a sufficiently similar effect and of sufficiently similar power of cause
where does that leave us?
the above means that magic items are exponentially harder to make the more power they contain/provide and the more convenient they are to use
this also makes their rarity proportional to their combined rarity + convenience
but this also, inversely, means that low power magic items are fairly easy to make and fairly frequent.
e.g. i would assume that most farmer families own a low(est)-level healing potion (or two) for emergencies.
in D&D 5e terms this means the following
> common magic items truly are common and might be traded in some stores (though likely as a supplement to their main trade)
> uncommon ones can likely be made to order at certain (well known) locations - e.g. the local wizards academy (assuming sufficient standing with them and no obvious criminal record of cause)
> rare ones i'll likely make the focus of quest lines - either to get them or to gather their ingredients, they are traded on auctions with some regularity though (e.g. the anual magic item auction in the capital)
> very rare ones i treat as the focus of an entire (small-ish) campaign, or a lengthy and hard questline for high level characters. these are not openly traded and many are even considered national assets - and there are likely others also looking for them. others willing to be violent and criminal about it.
anything above this is so rare, its truly remarkable and more akin to the stuff of myth, legend and rumour, than fact.
in fact, i ususally treat legendary items as just about unique to the world, or at least the accessible world (e.g. the continent)
in addition to the above, i have the adventurer's guild
the guild provides, at hte basic level, a match making service between quest givers (aka those wanting a dangerous task handled and are willing to provide a reward for that), and adventurers - for a cut of cause (the posted rewards already got that cut deducted, aka adventurers wont see how much it is... but ... usually about 10-30%)
the guild also provides two other services of relevance to this topic
first, they provide an identification service free of charge
adventurers can just dump their loot at the nearest guild and get it identified and its value estimated for free
the downside is, that any items considered dangerous (e.g. cursed ones, or things like tomes of forbidden knowledge) will be withheld by the guild. in turn the adventurers will be given the "fair market value" of the item. and the guild truly tries to be fair about it - and are often offering above market value to ensure these items dont end up on the black market. they are often even sponsored by the local rulers for this exact purpose.
second, they offer a service where adventurers can place either outright buy orders (for low rarity stuff) or search requests (for higher rarity stuff) and then the guild will handle the aquisition of the desired item, good or service. though the higher the rarity, the more likely it is that the result of this isnt an item, but a meeting with someone that can provide the item/good/service ... or a piece of information which can be pursuit to track the item down
the guild also provides other services (messaging/post service, a bed for the night, a meal, laundry, etc - depends on the size of the local branch)
and yes, this means that adventuers are fairly common in my world - low level ones at least
just looking at the breeding rate of low level threats like goblins, kobolds, oozes, and the like makes it very clear that there is always going to be a demand for those willing to go out and cull/exterminate these threats ... at least for a while
above 1st tier (aka levels 1-4) these become significantly rarer though
and above tier 2 (aka levels 5-10) there are almost no adventurers and those that do exists are nation wide legends
i hope this was an informative comment for you an i am looking forward to consuming more of your content in the comming days :-PF
have a good day and until next time!
oh, i forgot to mention:
each magic item needs a "blueprint" of sorts to be made - finding (or inventing/researching) these can be quite the challenge on its own, and is likely to be worth more than the item itself (at least if the item is useful for a wider audience)
My party encountered a Sea Elf magic item dealer at an underwater resort ran by a Merfolk servant of a Marid that acted as a pit stop for sea vessels, they only bought 1 item for him but he offered to sell them a subscription that would let his sellers scry on them and teleport to them to sell their wears, basically wizard pop up adds that would show up at inconvenient times. Another time was when I ran Tomb of Annihilation in my setting and they bought some items from the Merchant Prince of Magic Items Wakanga in the city. But I made sure to let players know his merchants that work for him only sell healing potions and spell scrolls mostly and they were getting cool items because he was a powerful wizard and head of this business. Also the reason his business was booming was because specifically in this region their was a boom in expeditions to get the riches in that region
Basically, the way I'm planning on running mine is that Magic Item shops only carry Common and Uncommon items and are only in wealthy city-states like Waterdeep, Baldur's Gate, and Neverwinter. I'll probably also tailor the items available to each location. Rare items are found in auctions with a percentile roll to check if it's currently available. Anything higher than that must be commissioned by a specific NPC the players need to actively find or found in a dungeon or in an encounter.
Nice!
I personally use a magic item vendor who sells random things when she shows up.
She shows up in the dead of night, a lone wagon with no pack animals. The idea is she's a copper dragon who sells magic items as a way of building her own horde of gold while adding a little chaos to the world
I dig it!
I like the "Wish list method" where your players tell you what they want their characters want and you either include some of said items in loot or cause their own items become imbued with magic upon slaying certain significant monsters. The party kills a monster that has been terrorizing a town for years, upon it's death their weapons become infused with the spark of legend and become +1. Later they slay a red dragon, the fighter's weapon becomes a flame tongue, the barbarian's great sword gets a custom upgrade to deal an extra 2d6 damage while using reckless rage, the sorcerer's staff gains the effect of a wand of his signature spell, etc. This method is very creative and ensures they don't try selling off their items as they will hope that as their own legend grows they will keep getting upgrades, the magic items become a part of the character's tale. You could even have a magic item be lost only for the next heroic act the character who lost the item does infuse the replacement with the same magic and slightly more, showing that it's the magic of legend itself imbuing the character and not so much the item. Said items becoming Iconic of the character's own legend, or simply gaining a history and renown of their own. You could also have situations like the Barbarian challenging his older brother for the right to wield an heirloom weapon, like his grandfather's giant slaying hammer.
In my game I think I found a way of having my cake and eating it too.
The campaign is set in a very magical city known for it's magic items but the quest hook was the king had called for any and all adventurers to help the city in their issues.
So when the players first arrived there were magic shops a plenty but they were not able to afford more than 1 thing and they'd have to all chip in if they wanted that 1 thing to be something good.
Later with a further quest hook all the other adventuring parties started disappearing from the city and all the magic shops now had very little to sell from the other groups cleaned them out. While also making sure the group still got to spend their hard earned gold on a cool thing they were looking forward to.
They just weren't able to break the game by getting to much and there was a story reason for it.
The most important thing to consider to maintain verisimilitude regarding magical item distribution is the maximum possible cost of said item when compared to items found in the equipment section of the player's handbook, and structures and vehicles found in the Dungeon Master's Guide.
Common magical items (especially consumable ones) are very cheap, and are thus widely available, as they are "common." A potion of healing costs as much as a longbow, and a permanent common magical item can cost as much as a magnifying glass. They're expensive, but not extraordinarily so. Many shops that offer adventuring gear should have access to such items.
Uncommon magical items are still reasonably priced. The maximum value of an ordinary uncommon magical item is still half the cost of a spyglass, and 1/3rd the cost of a suit of plate armor. That said, there are some uncommon magical items (such as adamantine plate armor) that are more expensive than the "maximum" usual price for an uncommon magical item, so care should be taken by the DM to keep players from actually getting a discount by purchasing the magical variant of an expensive item. These are expensive, but not the moreso than the most expensive items offered in the PHB, so it stands to reason that a store might exist to sell "curiosities" - magical items that may be useful to collectors or adventurers, although their stock is probably fairly low.
Rare magical items are very expensive, but not actually the most expensive thing offered in the Equipment section. The maximum price of a rare magical item is 5,000 GP, while the maximum price of plate horse barding is 6,000 GP. We're entering a territory where only the most successful of knights and the richest of nobles would own these items, but they're still not so rare that a city wouldn't possess less than a dozen of them. The most expensive gemstones and art objects still surpass these in value, so care should be taken not to exalt the worth of rare magical items too much. Players should be forced to receive these items as rewards for difficult tasks, such as slaying dragons, and for delving deep and dangerous dungeons.
Very rare magical items are where the money is. A very rare magical item is equal in price to the construction of a temple, an abbey, a keep, or a small castle. Each one can be as expensive as 2 warships, or 2.5 airships. Imagine holding something with the value of 2 fully constructed and crewed warships in your hand. Such items are the treasure of kings and their kingdoms, often heavily guarded and squirreled away by the most powerful individuals of the world. Such items should not be attainable except through perilous adventure or promotion to a seat of leadership over a civilization already in possession of such items, which are destined to be inherited by each new ruler.
Legendary magical items are beyond expensive. One legendary magical item can be as expensive as an entire palace or a large castle. They are the treasure of emperors, and they should not be given to players at all. Such items should be retrieved after the defeat of an immensely powerful enemy, often fought towards the end of a campaign. They should not be given in advance to aid the players in an epic quest, as the character donating such an item could easily use it to fund an army to accomplish the same task. Such items need to be special, received in the most special ways, as something the players have earned after a great deal of struggle through their entire journey. These items are so rare that they are always named, and are talked about in heroic tales and bedtime stories across the land. These are the "unobtainable" items that can define a character on their own.
Artifacts cannot be priced. They should not be given to the players as a reward under any circumstance. Such items are the objective of entire campaigns, are targeted by great extraplanar deities who wish to acquire them, and are so important and powerful that only a few exist in each world. Players should only acquire such an item if it is relevant to the plot or campaign, or by permanently destroying an incredibly powerful entity after a long quest against them (such as retrieving the Wand of Orcus by permanently slaying the demon lord himself). These are those "unobtainable" items that define an adventuring party and their struggles.
DMs who carelessly offer magical items more powerful than legendary items or artifacts risk meaninglessly inflating numbers, destroying the impact and importance of all magical items retrieved. If there is a tier above legendary other than artifact, or a tier above artifact, or so on, then there is little to stop the players from expecting tiers above those, and so on until their characters are defined more by their gear than their build. There's a reason we don't have +10 swords of ogre slaying - those high numbers strip the importance of all loot received by the party, and start to make the game feel... like a game. Be careful not to destroy the immersion of your players by distributing such things. Instead, consider allowing them to level up past 20 with an alternative post-20 leveling system, such as the one found in Adventurer's League games, if you wish to allow them to continue their progression.
I love how well-considered this approach is! 😁
I have had a shop in larger cities that might have some magic items (mostly potions, scrolls, etc.), patterned on a blend of old-school comics shops & antique shops. No guarantee that it will have anything that you want-but the odds are good that you might find something that you will need in the future.
As for magic shops in smaller centres, if they exist, their main clientele will be the locals (well, the ones who have disposable income) and not random murder hobos.
You might find some good healing potions, the occasional explody thing for stump-clearing and the like, and various items that might be useful for hunters and… “hunters” I guess.
I have magic shops in my campaign world but they only sell things on the artificer’s magic item recreation list, but they also are spell component, scroll, and potion shops. Anything above uncommon are extremely expensive or really hard to find. One of my NPCs is a procurer of strange and wonderful things.
When it comes to the rare to legendary magic items that they want, we have developed crafting tables that also include time tables, component requirements, and costs. There is also a chance of failure in creation since a legendary sword involves reforging from multiple magic blades. Having an artificer in the party typically knows this process but is not skilled enough to do it on their own since they are still considered to be still learning.
I have a version of Whatcha Selling - Whatcha Buying from RE4 as a demon lord who can randomly appear during a long rest
I have a game world that my character and her husband run a magic shop and a tavern. She normally handles the tavern while her husband runs the magic shop. The husband character was a character made from one of my players (got permission from the player to do this). Both of them met when we played them in a game together. He's an artificer and normally makes said items or hires adventurers to get said items for him.
Now, the shop doesn't sell all magic items because it feels like too much.
But with the gold issue when the party has too much, I set it up where they have the opportunity to buy property and even fund other businesses. I've seen them enjoy that.
I agree with the scarcity of powerful magic items. I run shops that do exist as being full of the "Common" magic items from Xanathar's. Also mixing in some rarer or unusual material components and a few scrolls or potions, sometimes random, sometimes things I know the party needs or wants. These kinds of shops may have acquired a more powerful item from trading and maybe there is a magic sword on the wall, a wand in a case or some boots of speed that the owner of the shop is wearing, that he may part with for a price. I have also thought that a shop like this could be a place to stage an important item needed for a quest or even an item that would start a quest when they discover what it is. Whatever you do, make it a fun experience for the players, because it doesn't have to have powerful items to be memorable or worth the party visiting it again.
I'm running a campaign in Waterdeep with some of my PCs working as members of the Grey Hands/Force Grey. Since they're essentially working for the city's archmage, I set up a system where they can requisition certain magic items from her collection for a set period of time, and either have to pay a rental fee to keep them longer or a replacement fee if the item is lost or damaged.
I like it!
One thing I have been playing with is a large business conglomerate that hires people to go find magic items. Yeasin, Bollengard, and Knapp each are magic item collectors instead of competing against each other they stared a business. What every they don't want they sell. There is a very strict security protocol in place to even reach the island that the set up shop on. Agents are vetted and only a very few actually know the location.
I don't know if it is going to work. My players are real cheapskates. When they came to a village they tried to bum free blankets and food from a nunnery, which was selling soup for donations to fix their roof, despite having 1,000s worth of gold in gems and silver pieces.
My magic item shops tend to only have common magic items with a spattering of uncommon ones while the majority of the shop is magic necessities like inks and components. If there's anything of higher rarity, it comes from a collector, traveling merchant, or an artifact hunter, for example, Indiana jones, croft family, or Nathan drake.
My next campaign every magic shop will be run by the same shopkeeper: The Happy Mask Salesman from Majora's Mask.
In my setting, there are magic shops but they're rare and the first one I have my players visit is ran by a depressed acolyte wizard named Grimhilt and the shop is pretty empty. Only selling spell components for starting spells and 1 potion. If asked he would tell the players that he has to brew the potions himself and it takes days to make a batch. His wizard teacher hasn't returned in about a month, so he is struggling to keep the place running. Over time I would add more to the shop, but I keep it minimal like this, and it makes spell components easy to acquire so players aren't struggling with them.
I allow the purchase of scrolls for double the price listed in official sources, since scrolls are expensive to inscribe, take a lot of time to make, and are a controlled substance. Potions, however, are exceptionally rare, being mostly an “on-commission” sort of thing. I also added Healing Tonics as a replacement in the early levels for Healing Potions, and they heal 2d4+2 HP and are crafted from local herbs.
The making no sense argument: Eh, I don't know. If it's a major city, I can totally see a magic shop making sense.
Also I think Mercer did it pretty well:
In campaign 1 Gilmore would have a bunch of cheap knickknacks for average customers and tourists, potions for more low level adventurers and then just a few things of the really high end stuff.
Pumat in campaign 2 was a bit iffy, since that town was pretty small, but he did do a lot of work for the Cerberus assembly on the side and if I remember correctly some mysterious benefactor that never really came up again.
Campaign 3 shop keeper seems to be more of a scavanger, also situated in a massive city and her father kinda lucked into the shop location. Also we don't know that much about her yet.
So just saying, you can make a magic shop make sense.
I wouldn't call Zadash "pretty small", it's actually the 2nd largest city in the Dwendalian Empire, and the former capital of the Julous Dominon. To compare to campaign one, it's equivalent to Westruun.
I like running games with high magic content and high magic *item* content, and I will usually have at least one shop run by an Artificer who has a stock of magic items and takes custom commissions, as well as "goblin markets" which tend to be pop up affairs run by weird little guys with a lot of dubious magic goods for sale. The dubiousness of goblin market goods is essential: if you want a well crafted piece that does what you want with no or known drawbacks go to an artificer, if you want a shiny object of dubious utility and degree of curse keep an eye out for the goblin market.
What I’ve been considering for Pathfinder 2e, where magic items are more common, is for magic items to be distributed with other more conventional vendors. Like if you want to add a striking rune to your sword, you visit a blacksmith. If you want healing potions you see a herbalist or alchemist. A tailor or an outdoor supply store might have a section for magical items that relate to their mundane stock. Not sure who would have wands but I’m working on it. So there aren’t shops that deal exclusively in magical items, just various mundane businesses that would exist anyway who happen to have some magical items on the side - magical items in 2e don’t usually decay so a cloak of elvenkind can sit on the rack for years until someone with the need for it and the cash to afford it comes along.
Mind you; the game already has guidelines for how powerful an item would be found in a particular settlement, as well as a rarity system talking about how likely certain items would show up, whether because of difficulty of creation, cost, or just where they’re mostly made is a continent or two away from where the players happen to be.
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The latest game I've been running has been set in a world that is on the recovery from a devastating "Sorcerer's War" a millenia ago, and there's no such thing as magic shops. Players have been getting magic items mainly by discovering them during the course of adventuring. The players seem to appreciate them far more.
Instead of shops that sell the actual item-you can have a loremaster who runs a business selling INFORMATION on where lost magical items are now-with incomplete information on what they actually do.
“I’m the Abyssal swamp, there is said to be a tomb to a fallen warrior that holds his magical shield-said to be the source of his fortitude.”
They can even foreshadow traps and encounters with backstory on the item/person/places involved.
"It's been here the whole time!" Yep and this is why I have always said that the DMG is my favorite book. It literally is the book of "Hey... you have this problem in your game? Well we have a solution for that!"
It was especially shocking since I spend a lot of time going back to other sections of the DMG literally monthly - I think it might be time for another read-through cover-to-cover!
The way that I think about magic shops in my setting are that, they are available in the big cities, and while they have some inventory of things like minor weapons/armor + utility things like a bag of holding or an immovable rod, most of what they deal in is potions of healing and magical supplies for wizards like foci and spellbooks, paper, ink etc.
And, the local governing body through the Court Magician or whomever + adventurer's guild commissions and subsidizes these resources as well because the commonfolk certainly wouldn't be able to afford these things, but they would be incredibly valuable to specific niche groups.
And I don't think that takes away from the *special* magic items because what's available in these shops are supposed to be somewhat generic and common, but things like sentient weapons, storied artifacts, etc are rare and will only be found through the adventure
The way i run magic shops is usually in a way that services some bigger entity, like the empire, republic etc.. therefor whoever the enchanter/Enchantress is makes it for them for money, and any extra stock goes on a shelf. This leaves a limited-ish supply, that if my party bought out, would take a while to restock with anything, and it wouldnt necassarily be what they want. On the other hand they can order something specific, but its gonna cost them alot more than the spares of the shelf - and even that is costly, so they value what they curently have and have to work to get anything better.
The other way i've thought of doing it is having a wandering trader that sell what he aquires on his travels, but wont always be in the same place, and would be more of a chance encounter as the party travels.
Magic items make for great diplomatic gifts in my games. If the PCs wish to speak to someone or gain someone's favor, gifting them a magic item is a great way to get their attention and gratitude.
In my current Friday night game, I run small shops that occasionally have a magic item in the same vein. The armorours might have a mariners breastplate etc. But its not made to order and different societies deal in different things. Gives the players the reason to interact with other societies in the world and find out what makes that them unique.
If my players want magical items, they are encouraged to talk to me out of game. I'll tell them yes or no, and, if yes, then get it to them in story. Sometimes, there's a magical incident that changes their gear, sometimes they are covertly contacted by an interested seller etc. Obviously hags is another way I've done it, ironically. Most common potions can be found at a temple or arcanists' guild, but healing potions are at the general store, in limited quantity.
In my campaign, you could find a smith capable of enchanting weapons. He could enchant weapons up to +2, and armor to +1. He would only do it by order, and It would still take weeks, so players wouldn't be able to abuse him so much. Really special items could be made, but the players would need to come up with a formula first. Outside of that, there is a permanent tent outside the walls, where a group of Tabaxi from another continent always has wares (basically khajits), and they would find only potions mostly. This potions would be sold at a slighly cheaper price, but they have the side effect of a roll on the wild magic table (in hindsight, the wild magic table is mostly good effects so the potions shouldn't be cheaper. If anything, they should be more expensive). There are also scrolls and regular potion vendors in town, but they also had limited inventory. Like, sometimes the character could buy 1 or 2 scrolls, but then it would take weeks until that vendor had more to sell. And that was in the capital port city! That sort of thing wouldn't exist on a smaller city or town.
In my current open-world campaign, I'm using a Dark Souls-inspired reward system crossed with the crafting rules.
When the PC's defeat a world boss, they can...A.) take the xp divded equally among them; B.) if the boss's CR is higher than their current party level, gain access to a feat thematically tied to the boss that one character can learn via training; or C.) if the boss's CR is considered a deadly encounter to their current party level, learn a magic item schematic thematically tied to the boss that they can craft.
Some world bosses and random encounter factions tied to them "level up" every so often, and their magic items do too (vestiges are easy for this purpose); if they go for a tough adventure, they get rewarded with something extra sweet as opposed to something they're stronger than, but if they polish off something weaker they an easily cut down on the random encounters in the world.
When they craft an item using one of those schemas, they can pay craftsmen to do it so they can adventure; this is generating a good deal of discussion as to what rewards are more valuable, incentivizing them to try and punch above their weight, and when they craft items in this way it's a delayed gratification and excitement over finally getting their toy.
I've been DMing around a year, and in the beginning I was very much pro magic item shops. Now that I've been DMing and thinking about my world, I've realized that my DMing style draws that line you mentioned at magic items being easily bought and sold.
My current dnd campaign is an enclosed area that's very hard to leave/enter, and magic items above common rarity are impossible to find in shops. Even the common items depend on the city; they're basically only found in the capital city where there's a magic school that sells the student's experiments and work.
I love it!
The way one of my DMs does it, is we have a rotating magic shop. They roll after each session to see what's in there, and depending on our level will up the rarity. I really like this way of approaching it, because once those items are gone, they may not come back. At least not for a *very* long time. Plus, we don't always have access to this shop! It's in our quest hub, and if we're on a long adventure, oh well. They don't roll items for that week.
It think it's a good compromise, in a way, and it's let us see some items that a lot of us never would have thought of. Which also makes it really good for newer players to learn what's out there. (We have 3 new players.)
Very fun!
Note: The legend of zelda does not really have magic item shops. Unless you count consumables.
All magic items in LOZ are generally found in dungeons or in plot moments.
Magic armour in TP is bought. But that uses rupees to work and since it's a goron invenstion it might be more mechanical than magical... in some weird dwarven way (Gorons are basically Zelda's dwarfs, even though there are dwarfs in alttp, but that was before gorons existed)
Other than that I don't remember anything off the top of my hat. I guess the OoT protection tunics could be bought, but only in the specific cultures shops.
Usually you'll get magic shit from a great fairy or a dungeon, you are right.
There are definitely instances of magic or unique items being sold. However my point is that there is not a magic shop.
In a town there is usually a shop and it might have A magic item. Yes. Often armor/clothes
But there isn't a magic shop. When you get a magic item it is usually a very special and unique thing even when bought.
Oh, good to know!
Frankly I just like magic item shops because lots of campaigns I run are SUPER high magic or at least have the remnants of high magic, so for my world it makes sense that creating magic items is kind of just a profession, a really tricky profession which very few people are a part of, but still a profession.
I have an itinerant magic item broker, who keeps a lists of for-sales and looking-fors. Let her know what you have to sell, and what you are looking for. There is a percentage chance for buyers and sellers of a given item, and potential time and exchange complications. She has a helm of teleportation, and a circuit she travels throughout the continent. You might have to wait a week while she puts out feelers to see if you can make an exchange. Good roleplay, and a way to set up encounters and control availability. You have to be lucky enough to catch her in town, and be willing to wait around a while. She doesn't typically carry huge amounts of gold, but operates on a commission.
Hell yeah! Nothing better than getting a staff of bird calls for saving the city.
I do hope they’ll always remember where they got the magic items 😁
"Welcome to Sips' discount magic item emporium, where almost all of our items are probably not 100 percent cursed."
“Now with 1,000% more chance of a tarrasque interrupting karaoke.”
On my campaigns most of the Magic items shop are old people that were explorers and now they are selling the things they don't want to keep and are looking for good collector's items (ofc, this shops don't have really much outside common and maybe uncommon) or workshops of Magic crafters that work by comission, usually working for or close to some really Big Magic enterprise.
Other options come from what Magic items I consider to be not really MAGIC items but really fine pieces of work, like +X weapon or armor and things like that. Doing that I offer what my players want (a shopping base) without making the Magic loot less special.
That makes a lot of sense!
A campaign I'm planning only has magic item shops in the major cities. In minor cities there's magic item shops that only sell common and uncommon trinkets. Bigger magic item shops have magic weapons and even can take commission works.
My two favorite benchmarks for what is and isn't in shops are from Final Fantasy VIII and Final Fantasy IX.
In FF8, the vast majority of powerful items were craftable. You could not buy them in stores, you had to go out and win cards in card games, loot items from monsters or use the abilities from certain summon monsters to turn enemies into resource items or cards. Then, you had to use other abilities to craft and refine those items into usable consumable items or upgrade items. Then that changed when you got to the last continent on the world map and found the super advanced high tech city that had most of the end game resource items in its shops.
The rest of the world was living under post industrial social conditions. The isolationist nation on the "forbidden continent" was living in a mash up between I Robot, Ghost in the Shell, and the Jetsons. The shops reflected that.
In FF9 they had the standard video game progression of item power levels spread out across the various places you go in the game scaling in order of when you get to those places. Except for the high end invitation only auction house you go to early in the game but can't really buy anything from until much later.
Do you want the gemstone that teaches your summoner characters how to summon Odin? There's two ways to get it.
1. Complete a long ass chain of sidequests that ends with you finding the gem along with a few weapons for your other characters.
2. Go back to the auction house in large city 3 once you're half way through disc 2 and out bid the NPC with thr scripted purchasing habits.
For my games potions, scrolls below spell level 3, and common magic items are in shops in most big cities or mage colleges/communes. They might have the occasional uncommon item, but for the most part players will have to quest or craft for rare and higher magic items.
There's also hundreds of smithing hermits scattered throughout my game world, and at least 5 city-states or nations that are 2 to 10 tech eras ahead of the medieval dirt farmer provinces the campaign starts in.
The nicer toys from the "better" nations often go missing and wind up in the strangest places. A lot of uncommon to very rare items are in circulation because of this. They can be looted in battle or given by npcs as rewards.
I also use piety and renown as reward benchmarks. Get 10 points with a church, god, or faction and they'll put you in touch with a smith or trainer who will teach you a feat or craft you a rare magic item. For very rare items you are going to also need to be proficient in the tools to make the item, quest for the materials, and craft the item with the smith.
Legendaries are of course harder to find and might be impossible to craft. At least until tier 4 levels.
Auctions are fun in that you can use them to put high level single use items in the path of the PCs. Even if they can't afford to bid on them, they still might get any items stolen by rivals or enemies who attack thecauction house.
This is a good channel. I like Mike and his new digs!
Thank you!
I kind of do a middle ground. Large cities (which are often port cities) often have a shop that specializes in spell components that will sometimes carry common/consumable magic items. Except that one time I was distracted, rolled for a random table, continued to be distracted, looked at the wrong table, was taken aback slightly but figured "I already cleared this table, this must have been fine" and didn't double check a description and one of my players ended up with a helm of teleportation (since I mistakenly assumed I cleared this table, my distracted brain assumed it gave dimension door or something😅). It's less about the world being filled with heroic adventurers, and more that there are a lot of professions that can benefit from low level magics that these component shops can stay in business (and work with guilds and other organizations). But it's rare for them to have weapons or really strong magic items, and they're even less likely to buy them, though they also make a good starting point for an investigation into where to buy or sell them. Some can lead to work with national organizations, others to black markets.
I guess I just like over the top campaigns. I like worlds where city guards have at least +1 enchanted swords. So I like magic shops, but like everything it is all a matter of style and taste.
I think it really depends on your setting.
If you play a low magic setting, then I 100% agree with you.
If you have a high magic setting, then a magic shop with some common magic items is like a hardware store or a specialist store.
Idealy higher rarity of magic items require some player investments.
When I DM I usually ask my players beforehand to pick 3 magic items they really would like to have and over time I incorporate them into the adventures.
I like regular access to some amount of magic items because it helps players differentiate their characters more from each other than just class levels and such. Starfinder is built on this idea, and uses item levels to guide when things should be available, and it was cool to see how my players' characters changed based on the special items they decided to invest in. I was also part of a 5e game where I did an "every multiclass" gimmick build, and having regular access to some magical consumables and items (beyond stuff like health potions) is what kept my character able to keep up with everyone else in combat (since the build itself was so terrible for combat).
In a homebrew world I'm working on, there is only 1 magic shop in the world. has entrances in every major town that connect to the same extra-dimensional interior.
Nice!
In my main setting, that has a widespread use of low (very low cantrip/1st level) magic but very rare use of more powerful spell, the magic items shops are, more or less, small appliance stores mixed with an alchemist. You can might things like spell ingredients, more common potions and some low level spell scrolls and then a bunch of everyday uses magic items: soap that removes stubborn stains, cooler bags, curling irons that gives a pale hue to your hair, etc
Some of the shopowners might have contact in the magic item creation crafter or being one themself, but most of the time such abilities are more commonly used to repair damaged magic items or to assess/identify ones.
I like it!
In the campaign I'm currently running, there's an artificer who maintains a small storefront in the biggest city in the region (and it's implied she has locations on other continents, a workshop somewhere unspecified, and a Helm of Teleportation). You make an appointment with a little construct at the door which knows when she'll next be through town, and then if you're lucky, you get into the shop if you're able to come at a time she's available. The inventory is very limited - whatever she has made recently or acquired in trade. She'll take commissions but requires components and a hefty down payment for more powerful items, plus it takes time, of course!
Actually, the central conflict of the campaign right now has my players' party teaming up with her - they're hunting down a wild list of crazy expensive and rare components for her to make a magical item that is going to solve the city's biggest political problem.
So I guess the answer for me is, I like to have a magic shop! But I don't like to make it easy to access specific items - I'm pretty careful about what items I give out so that they feel special.
My magic shops are generally potions, scrolls and books. I have also made a point of making the shopkeeper extremely irritating to deal with. Most recently I have had a magic shop whose owner had anything more powerful than a novelty confiscated by the local militia, which added a side quest to a prison break. The party were given a list of items the shopkeeper wanted back, and will be rewarded with maybe one or two useful magic things for their trouble.
Weapons or wondrous items have to be found/won/fought for.
Ooh fun
In the campain I'm writing for right now (Pathfinder, not 5e but hey ideas translate unlike statblcoks), I plan to have low level magic be common enough (read as apprenice wizards and retired adventurers) that you can reasonably expect to find one or two magic item shops in a kingdom's capital, and that on average most larger towns will maybe have a single magic item if the town is a trade hub or has decent adventurer foot traffic. Where things start getting to rare to expect to find them in shops aren't the potions of healing or the beginner's spellbooks and magic writing supplies, is when you start getting into +4 enchantments or lvl 3+ spell equivilant items; magic items like wands and fireball grenade potions are considered a significant expenditure for a mage to take the time to make, a magic dimensional backpack is probably viewed conceptually in the same way we look at quantum physics. It's not something everyone is capable of making or is too expensive for most to consider making. Even retired adventurers who go into the buisness still consider it a significant expenditure since their not receiving king's ransoms anymore.
And of course such magic items (lesser potions asside) are usually behind locked casses or in backrooms, with most of the magic store's inventory being books of lore, specalty scrolls, self shining shoes, toys made with mending, and dolls made to help care for the busy mother's child by playing with them and keeping them safe from reasonable threats like cellar rats.
I have an idea for how to have a magic item seller but not have players just spend gold. Not sure how well it would work though. They could basically make faerie bargains like "you can have the magic item, but it will cost you some of your charm" and then the player loses a point of charisma. Or something similar.
I stock the magic shop with low level items like +1 swords and sheilds stuff like that and potions so the players never have a convenient way to upgrade but a convenient way to get starter magic gear and some healing potions, that didn't stop them from attaching themselves to the shop owner who's now helping them (from the sidelines ). (He's an Orc wizard/ barbarian (they don't know about the barbarian part))