Quote from: Simlasa;1141854Just because D&D lists such things does it require their use in a game?
Do we need to include ALL the creatures from the monster manuals?
Just because a GM never hands out crap like a +1 magic sword, does that that mean they've moved away from running real D&D?

Whining about it and bitching at people in online forums for having the audacity to bring up facts isn't going to remove the number 1 from existence. And +1 weapons exist because the number 1 exists and D&D uses sequential modifiers to rate magic weapons. Even if you want to skip a number (because...reasons) that still doesn't tell me what in your infinite wisdom a magic weapon's properties are supposed to be or WTF am I supposed to do with an older magic weapon once I find a better one. All that tells me is that you like to bitch at people for bringing up facts you don't like and that I'm not supposed to sell magic items I don't need (or establish an in-game economy that includes the sale of magic items) because someone online might bitch about it for completely arbitrary reasons they refuse to elaborate on.

Quote from: VisionStorm;1141861Whining about it and bitching at people in online forums for having the audacity to bring up facts isn't going to remove the number 1 from existence. And +1 weapons exist because the number 1 exists and D&D uses sequential modifiers to rate magic weapons. Even if you want to skip a number (because...reasons) that still doesn't tell me what in your infinite wisdom a magic weapon's properties are supposed to be or WTF am I supposed to do with an older magic weapon once I find a better one. All that tells me is that you like to bitch at people for bringing up facts you don't like and that I'm not supposed to sell magic items I don't need (or establish an in-game economy that includes the sale of magic items) because someone online might bitch about it for completely arbitrary reasons they refuse to elaborate on.

I remember when my friends and I went through the stage of making magical swords more magical by not telling the player what the "plus" was.

That resulted in fights where the Player would say "I hit AC 5 plus what ever the magic sword bonus is" and  "I do 6 points damage plus what ever the magic sword bonus is".

It is amazing how fast the wonder of a magical sword with an unknown bonus fades when it comes into conflict with the mechanical parts of the game.

Quote from: EOTB;1141856Selling magic items is to decide to not play, or at least "not play all".  That's boring.

No more boring than being able to build a castle or retain an army. Any of those can be boring or it can be a fleshed out part of the setting full of possibilities.

Quote from: Shasarak;1141862I remember when my friends and I went through the stage of making magical swords more magical by not telling the player what the "plus" was.

That resulted in fights where the Player would say "I hit AC 5 plus what ever the magic sword bonus is" and  "I do 6 points damage plus what ever the magic sword bonus is".

It is amazing how fast the wonder of a magical sword with an unknown bonus fades when it comes into conflict with the mechanical parts of the game.

Yeah, even when it's only temporary, till the party manages to get the weapon identified, keeping track of unknown magical "pluses" becomes tedious and annoying. And at the end of the day not knowing what your "plus" is doesn't make that whooping +1 bonus any more meaningful or magical. It's just an additional layer of annoyance.

I'm at the point where I don't even care if players know their enemies AC. It's not like you can't guesstimate how difficult an opponent standing right in front of you, bashing you with a hammer, is to hit. You're flailing your sword at it, you can see how quick it moves or how much armor it has. Meanwhile, if they know they need 15+ to hit you can see the excitement at the table the moment that 15+ comes up, rather than wait for the DM to pretend to make some extra calculations at the back end before getting the combat rolling.

Asking a rhetorical question doesn't remotely equate to whining and bitching.

The point is that some of us play D&D in a way that rejects some of the assumptions many of you are making about the game. When I answered upthread about having "an extra +1 sword to sell" not being the kind of game I want to play in, I was reinforcing the statement that I don't play in games where +1 swords are so common you'd expect to find more than one the entire length of the game; that such items are *that rare*. Some games might be played without any "magical weapons" in them ever making any kind of appearance. Likewise the monsters that require them to be hit (fun little aside: I've literally never run a single monster from the Monster Manual as written - a fact I'm betting would make some of you foam at the mouth). When I have used monsters like that in games before, usually the party must retrieve one specific magical item in order to have any hope of beating the creature. Having any old "junk" magic item simply will not do. When said monster is dispatched, the magical item is likely nothing special anymore beyond being a curio - its magic having been spent or rendered dormant.

Going back to the premise of the thread, I have no problem with people selling such items. The idea that there are organizations our there who might collect such curios is perfectly valid. It's that the idea of wandering into Swords-R-Us and selling such a thing to Mr Rando Shopkeeper is a patently absurd idea for such a setting. And items like this in some NPC's private collection stand a better chance of being stolen than sold to the players (assuming it's not sitting in Joe Farmers attic, long since forgotten).

If I played in settings like Eberron or whatever, I'd be nodding my head in agreement with all the high fantasy assumptions in this thread. It's just that I don't tend to play in Eberron-like settings.

Quote from: SavageSchemer;1141866It's that the idea of wandering into Swords-R-Us and selling such a thing to Mr Rando Shopkeeper is a patently absurd idea for such a setting. And items like this in some NPC's private collection stand a better chance of being stolen than sold to the players (assuming it's not sitting in Joe Farmers attic, long since forgotten).

Which is why I mentioned the various historical trade in luxuries. None of them involved going into Swords-R-Us and meeting Mr Rando Shopkeeper. The details of how this was handled in the Middle Ages provides a lot of opportunities for fun adventures.

However if magic items are that special none of that applies. I will say having worked extensively with the OD&D and AD&D treasure types. The default has magic items just common enough that not having some luxury trade is implausible.  Of course you can do what Matt Finch did with Swords & Wizardry and tweak the treasure types so that they are indeed special and rare.

Finally as a side note, this is one of the issue that was an issue of contention from day one. It was not helped by the actual rules themselves or the published modules from TSR. Use any published module 'as is' is to hand the PCs imaginable wealth and power by the standards of the magic items are special and rare crowd. The Treasure Types both OD&D and AD&D use work against this as is. Then at the other extreme you had the Judges Guild side where NPCs have level and there are magic items shop in City State of the Invincible Overlord, and the City State of the World Emperor. A whole page of the Ready Ref sheet is devoted to how make magic items.

So the only right answer is the one that is right for how you view your setting.

But if you decide to allow trade in magic items then I suggest looking at how silk, spices, porcelain, jewelry, teak, and other similar rare goods were handled in medieval Europe.

Quote from: Shasarak;1141860If there are large swathes of monsters that can not be hit without a magic weapon then either there are going to be plenty of magical weapons or there are going to be lots of dead people killed by said monsters.

Which is why I previously referred to them as shittily designed monsters. It's one thing where it's a puzzle monster where you have to figure out its weakness (and that weakness is something relatively common, but not always obvious... ex. wights and fire in Game of Thrones), but most of the magic weapon only monsters are just "you must be this tall to ride this ride" monsters.

If the PCs lack the prerequisite weapons (which the GM controls access to) then they're unstoppable. If they have the required item then the monsters aren't all that special (ex. Wights are 4HD if I recall)... it's the Ur-example of an MMO gear check for a raid.

If magic weapons are as rare as some make them out to be (where they cannot be bought at any price) then a single Wight is a kingdom killer... they're immune to non-magical weapons, inflict level drain and turn anyone they kill into more wights that also are immune, drain levels and make more wights.

If there aren't enough magic weapons that each lord can afford at least a few you either need no wights in your world or your world is a zombie apocalypse with nearly unkillable undead dominating all but the few places fortunate enough to have some magic that can hold them at bay.

No.  In none of my D&D campaigns has magic ever been so common that magic items could be found for sale.  Nor was there a reason to try selling one. Magic items only "work" if the item feels that it has been "earned" through daring or heroism.  That is part of all my settings and dates back to a Dragon magazine article about sentient magic swords and their egos.

Quote from: EOTB;1141856There's large swathes of monsters that PCs can't hit without a magic weapon.  They may not think that sword is garbage tier when it's all that hurts the wight.

Grounding the sale of not-sale of magic items in whether its internally inconsistent with imaginary economy is to place the thought exercise above the play.  Selling magic items is to decide to not play, or at least "not play all".  That's boring.  I don't care if it's logical; we're not here to have a thought exercise, we're here to have fun around a dining room table.  Buying a DLC is never as fun as playing the game (or at least, I'd hope it wasn't).

IF in your world (not in the DMG) there are "large swathes of monsters that PCs can't hit without a magic weapon" then it follow that either magic weapons are so common as to render any and all adventurers useless or that only the monsters remain.

This is kinda like the traveling discussion a while back, how common are those monsters? because if confronting a wight is really common then I would expect to find magic weapons in almost every household. Or mankind was erased from the world.

Quote from: Chris24601;1141874Which is why I previously referred to them as shittily designed monsters. It's one thing where it's a puzzle monster where you have to figure out its weakness (and that weakness is something relatively common, but not always obvious... ex. wights and fire in Game of Thrones), but most of the magic weapon only monsters are just "you must be this tall to ride this ride" monsters.

If the PCs lack the prerequisite weapons (which the GM controls access to) then they're unstoppable. If they have the required item then the monsters aren't all that special (ex. Wights are 4HD if I recall)... it's the Ur-example of an MMO gear check for a raid.

If magic weapons are as rare as some make them out to be (where they cannot be bought at any price) then a single Wight is a kingdom killer... they're immune to non-magical weapons, inflict level drain and turn anyone they kill into more wights that also are immune, drain levels and make more wights.

If there aren't enough magic weapons that each lord can afford at least a few you either need no wights in your world or your world is a zombie apocalypse with nearly unkillable undead dominating all but the few places fortunate enough to have some magic that can hold them at bay.

Pretty much. I tend to avoid creatures immune to non-magical weapons, grant them some other benefit in place of weapon immunity or treat it as some degree of damage resistance instead of outright immunity, precisely because I consider it to be a lame mechanic that's boring and would guarantee the end of civilization if you follow it to its logical conclusion. But I'm assured that I run monsters from the Monsters Manuals as written. Someone should tell my goblins that they don't have class levels or are more than 1 HD monsters.

I also don't get what making +1 weapons specifically rare is supposed to accomplish if you still expect magic weapons to be more powerful than +1. Or how the existence of +1 weapons is proof that magic is too common, when they're the crappiest magic weapons in the game. Or even why magic items need to be exceedingly rare in the first place, assuming that magic users exist in the campaign. I rarely hand out magic items willy-nilly, but I also tend to assume that if spell casters exist in the world then magic items probably exist as well, unless there is a setting specific reason to keep them limited (which I already specified in my first post I take into account, but apparently that's not enough).

If folks are interested I appended a text file with 5 results for each of the OD&D treasure results.

Here is a listing of what monster has what treasure type.

Looking at the Original D&D treasure we see the following

B,C,D, E, & F are in order of increasing value. Although D&E are roughly equivalent, D has less potential value but greater odds, while E has greater potential odds but lesser odds.

A, G, H, I are all all special treasure basically assigned to only one monster each.

A: Men & Centaur and is divided into Land, Desert, Water subcategories.
B:Skeletons, Zombies, Wights, Hydras, Nixies
C: Ogres (+1,000 GP), Gargoyles, Lycantropes, Minotaurs, Pixies, Gnomes
D:Orcs, Hobgoblins, Gnolls, Mummies, Cockatrices, Manticoras, Purple Worms, Dryads
E:Giants (+5,000 GP), Wraiths, Spectres, Gorgons, Wyverns, Elves, Griffons
F:Vampires, Basiliks, Medusae, Chimera
G:Dwarves
H:Dragons
I:Rocs

Sample treasures
[ATTACH]4714[/ATTACH]

Quote from: hedgehobbit;1141824The 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.

The above is part of the reason that I do what I do with factions and favors:  If there is a any substantial amount of magic items in the setting, then it seems to me that there will be limited trade in it.  However, as others have said, I don't find that trade all that interesting compared to the alternatives.  So I set it up so that there is, in fact, trade, but engaging in that trade is either something that requires different kinds of questing and other typical play or something that is more difficult than just going on the quest to get the items the old-fashioned D&D way.  

Every now and then, the players have a huge need for something in particular and trade might be viable--especially if they've got some other item they are willing to give up. But the vast majority of the time, they are better off adventuring.  

Though I also tend to hand out items with minor curses on them--bad enough to be felt, but not so bad that the players is willing to give up the item and it's mostly useful qualities in order to escape the curse.  The items with the most curses on them are, you guessed it:  Really powerful items and the less powerful ones that are on the market.

A lot really does depend on your setting;

In low-magic settings where the number of wizards and spellcasting clerics might be 1-in-a-million then "rare as hen's teeth" makes sense... but critters immune to non-magical weapons will be similarly rare (or otherwise have some limit that keeps their population from completely overwhelming everything... the Ringwraiths were all-but unkillable, but also only existed due to the power in their rings and, as Sauron's generals, were too important to just send out for any but the most important matters... like recovering The Ring).

On the other hand, a high-fantasy settling where dragons, giants, werewolves and pixies are available as PCs and Arcanists (non-combat spellcasters) are 1-in-200 in the population (so a large city of 15,000 probably has an entire guild with 70-80 members and even a small village of 300 people probably has an arcanist's shop) then at least some level of magic (ex. weapons that shed light and can harm wights) being obtainable via ordinary commerce would similarly be plausible.

My ballpark is that basic magical weapons are in the price range of what a new car is for us... i.e. in the ballpark of the annual salary of the middle-class. Even today there are precious few people who can afford to just buy a new car outright, but the upper 1% can and large companies and governments often provide company cars to employees of sufficiently high importance (or which need them to do their jobs).

Similarly major magic items are varying degrees of aircraft and military vehicles. Sure, if you have the resources you can buy a Lear Jet (or major item), but it's NOT something you just stop in and pick up at Walmart... it's something where you have to contact the manufacturer or a specialized dealer and there's probably either a wait-list or some sort of auction process you'll need to go through to obtain it.

In terms of acquisition by PCs, my default placement is about one major item over the course of a level (EDIT for clarity: one per level for the entire party, not per PC). Sometimes I'll do caches of several items at once (ex. Pull a Hobbit where the group finds a whole cache of elven magic weapons), but then nothing else for several levels (i.e. the only other magic item found in the "Hobbit campaign" was The Ring... which in the story itself was only another major item... it didn't get retconned into a major artifact until Lord of the Rings).

And I'm definitely going to side with those up thread who pointed out how you could turn that into an adventure or even a campaign... i.e. you're going into all those dungeons specifically to recover long lost magic items for one of those specialized dealers who resells the finds to kings and princes (noble and merchant). You could even have fun with competing dealers... say a wealthy buyer is seeking a rare item and two rival dealers each set their retrieval specialists to the task, making it not just a quest... but a race to get it first.

Quote from: Chris24601;1141884A lot really does depend on your setting;

In low-magic settings where the number of wizards and spellcasting clerics might be 1-in-a-million then "rare as hen's teeth" makes sense... but critters immune to non-magical weapons will be similarly rare (or otherwise have some limit that keeps their population from completely overwhelming everything... the Ringwraiths were all-but unkillable, but also only existed due to the power in their rings and, as Sauron's generals, were too important to just send out for any but the most important matters... like recovering The Ring).

Its funny.  I read stories like the Hobbit and I see a character that gets a shit ton of magical items (including an artifact and a named magical sword!) over the course of one adventure.

Quote from: SavageSchemer;1141866Asking a rhetorical question doesn't remotely equate to whining and bitching.

Thank you!

Quote from: estar;1141869Which is why I mentioned the various historical trade in luxuries. None of them involved going into Swords-R-Us and meeting Mr Rando Shopkeeper. The details of how this was handled in the Middle Ages provides a lot of opportunities for fun adventures.

Agreed. I've read a few books now on the history of the relics craze in Europe. Lots of wild stuff to draw off of. The stuff was often gifted around in a network of prestige and authority.

Another influence of mine, for how I've handled magic items, is the old Syfy show 'The Lost Room'. All about a detective who stumbles onto a set of seemingly ordinary objects with surprising powers... and the underground network of hoodlums and religious nuts that has grown up around them.