I'm currently running Old-School Essentials and now that the player characters have come upon some money, they started wondering if maybe they could spend it to buy some magic items. I quickly improvised a place that sold a whopping three potions and one medallion for ridiculously high prices, but it got me thinking if any of you have come upon a more methodical solution to this.

So... Do you allow your PCs to buy magic items? If you do, how do you price them? Do you have magic item supermarkets where everything can be found or are traders of magic items few and far between? Do you only allow certain magic items to be bought, such as potions or scrolls? And -- perhaps most importantly for me, since I'm lazy -- do you have any readymade tables for this on hand I could steal?

What I do is list for any organization the magic items that they could have for sale over a given time.  Usually, that's something like "1 minor healing potion per week" or "1 random minor item received in trade per month".  That is, not much.  Then the only way a person gets on their list of customers is to perform a service for said organization or something similar for someone else that the organization owes a favor.  

Mainly, this gets it down to a manageable number.  If you get in good with a group that has a little traffic in magic items, sooner or later you'll qualify to bid on what they've got available in the way of equipment.  That includes magic items, sometimes.  When a character approaches that point, then I'll make the exact magic items and schedule more concrete, whether with a table or something else.

For example, I have in my current campaign a consortium of civic, religious, and magical leaders in several city states that systematically make healing potions.  Each city has first dibs on the better potions, which they typically buy for their own forces and a reserve.  Others in the organization are next.  Then there is limited trade between city states during a crisis.  Only after all that can a character get in the loop, and only then if they've already performed sufficient services for the city, the local churches, etc.  It is, of course, a lot easier to end up with several such potions if the city hires you to do something important to them.  That's part of what the reserve is for.

Never.

Magic items are the subject of adventure in their own right. Ones that have been found/discovered/recovered (they tend to be from a bygone era) prior to the party's adventuring will always be highly valued and prized heirlooms. As such, they won't tend to be for sale.

Potions and the like aren't treated as magic items though. So if you need a potion or similar substance brewed, you may well be able to find someone capable of doing that for you.

Quote from: SavageSchemer;1141789Never.

Magic items are the subject of adventure in their own right. Ones that have been found/discovered/recovered (they tend to be from a bygone era) prior to the party's adventuring will always be highly valued and prized heirlooms. As such, they won't tend to be for sale.

Potions and the like aren't treated as magic items though. So if you need a potion or similar substance brewed, you may well be able to find someone capable of doing that for you.

Likewise on both counts. Magic items never, ever, ever available for purchase. But potions-making is one of the few legal "magical-ish" practices in my not-medieval setting, so many of those can be openly bought and sold  (not all though).

Rich people today buy Van Goghs and relics were sold in the middle ages. So I'd expect magic items would be sold in most any fantasy setting. I'm not sure you'd really have 'magic shops', except for selling trinkets and charms(often fake). But estates fall on hard times and if your grandfather's wand of magic missiles has no use for you(since you're not a magic user), you'd probably sell it to pay off debts.

I'm not sure what that market would look like though. Maybe sort of like today's high end auction houses where you can buy modern 'relics', like Mark Hamill's light saber from the first Star Wars movies.

Quote from: SavageSchemer;1141789Never.

Magic items are the subject of adventure in their own right. Ones that have been found/discovered/recovered (they tend to be from a bygone era) prior to the party's adventuring will always be highly valued and prized heirlooms. As such, they won't tend to be for sale.

Potions and the like aren't treated as magic items though. So if you need a potion or similar substance brewed, you may well be able to find someone capable of doing that for you.

Plus magic items need to be rare, or else you'll end with superheroes.

The 'magic shop' is one of my most hated D&D tropes.
There are places that sell some spell components, and agents who try to keep track of the last known locations of famous artifacts, and might share their info for a price.
Lots of hustlers claiming to have such things, but wise folks know it's just about always a con.
There might be occasional secret auctions of magic items. Invitation only.
Having such items and flashing them around in public will invite trouble from various individuals and organisations.

Option A - a player decides they'd like to have an item, locates a sage, gets leads on where items like that might be lost in old treasure hordes, and spends time at the table organically turning their character into what they'd like it to be

Option B - the DM runs a DLC shop for upgrades with the in-game currency.

Quote from: Zirunel;1141795Likewise on both counts. Magic items never, ever, ever available for purchase.

So, if I had an extra +1 sword, NOBODY would offer to buy it? Not even someone that was looking for a regular sword? I don't see how a game world could work like that.

Quote from: hedgehobbit;1141817So, if I had an extra +1 sword, NOBODY would offer to buy it?

If this is the kind of problem you have in your games, you're already describing the kind of game I don't want to play.  GeekyBugle had the right of it when he said such items should be rare. I'd go so far as to say exceedingly so. I get different strokes and all, but I can't be part of a discussion where this is a core conceit.

Quote from: SavageSchemer;1141818If this is the kind of problem you have in your games, you're already describing the kind of game I don't want to play.

Yeah, same here. Our weekly local game has become a bit like that and it has me thinking of finding another group or starting one. Magic has become far too common, reliable and safe... boring.

My system has a bit of nuance to it in that the line between magical and non-magical is blurry.

Item quality is a thing (ranked poor, good, fine and legendary) and the permanent magical properties that can be placed on items are similarly ranked (minor, lesser, moderate, greater, artifact).

A non-magical sword of legendary quality is pretty much superior to a good quality sword with a minor magical property placed upon it (it wouldn't be able to shed light, but it would be better balanced, sharper, more durable, etc.).

The basic setup is that you can scrounge poor quality goods anywhere, buy good quality items in most town, fine quality items and those with minor magical properties in cities, and there's one or two places on the continent where you can find each type of legendary quality item (i.e. there's probably one smith who produces legendary quality swords and one legendary armorer on the continent... and they're probably NOT in the same city).

Similarly, anything more potent than a minor magical property requires a ritual that may or may not even be available and also material components of creatures so dangerous that the only way those who could enchant such properties have to get them is to send out adventurers to gather them (the typical fee if such an enchanter can be found is to bring them sufficient components for TWO items of which the PCs get one).

So the PC's options for anything better than a minor property are to either quest for the components and someone with the ritual needed to enchant it or to quest for the item directly.

Quote from: SavageSchemer;1141818If this is the kind of problem you have in your games, you're already describing the kind of game I don't want to play.  GeekyBugle had the right of it when he said such items should be rare. I'd go so far as to say exceedingly so. I get different strokes and all, but I can't be part of a discussion where this is a core conceit.

The OP was talking about D&D. In D&D, a +1 sword no longer has use once you find a +2 sword (or, at all if you are a magic-user or cleric).

And in D&D, a +1 sword has only limited value anyway. It is +1 damage (the same as being strong) and only affects the chance to-hit 5% of the time. Even if it was the only +1 sword in the world, it wouldn't rate being a highly valued and prized heirlooms, except for sentimental value only.

If you are running a game that's not D&D where each magic-item is of great power then there might be a case where magic items are rarely for sale, but those conditions don't apply here.

Quote from: hedgehobbit;1141817So, if I had an extra +1 sword, NOBODY would offer to buy it? Not even someone that was looking for a regular sword? I don't see how a game world could work like that.

Kind of as Savage Schemer said above. I prefer magic to be rare. And because, in my setting, it is (very strictly)  religiously proscribed, magic is also clandestine.  Nobody wants to be seen to have anything to do with it. Which effectively makes it even rarer.

No judgement though, I'm just saying that's just how I happen to like it. D&D is what you make it. Plenty of other ways to play, and they can all be good.

This varies a lot for me by edition and how common I want to treat magic items at any given campaign. I also used to be a lot more permissible about magic items decades ago than I tend to be today, but I decided to tone them down because I found that access to too many powerful items unbalances the game. So I tend to be very careful about what sort of items I allow to exist in my campaigns in terms of what types of properties they possess. Permanent haste effects with extra attacks per round, for example, are off the table, but items with temporary spell effects that work on activation are more likely.

A +1 weapon for me is of little concern, however, and my general attitude about the sale of magic items is that what the public demands the market provides--always. Such it is in real life, so it is in fantasy. Unless magic is specifically illegal or persecuted in the world we're playing on, there will always be a market for magic because there will always be demand for it. And just like in real life, any laws against magic will guarantee that the demand for it takes the market underground.

My only issue is in terms of power and availability. I don't like magic items (particularly powerful ones, with spell-like effects) to be too common, and I prefer particularly powerful items to be rare. Potions and scrolls are more common, but even then they aren't exactly mass-produced, although most major settlements will have apothecary shops with potions in stock. Wand shops are also a possibility, but much less common. Other items might be sold in a case by case basis (usually only a handful of random mid to low powered items in stock), and particularly powerful mages may have access to more. But that usually depends on how generous I'm feeling and how common I'm willing to allow magic items to become in that campaign.