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Author Topic: Stance on Buying Magic Items  (Read 9024 times)

The Spaniard

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Re: Stance on Buying Magic Items
« Reply #45 on: January 24, 2022, 10:19:06 PM »
There are no "magic shops" in my campaign.  There are dealers in rare antiquities that people in the know, and with a lot of $$, can get certain things from.  Otherwise if they want magic, they need to earn it by killing bad things in a dungeon somewhere.

S'mon

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Re: Stance on Buying Magic Items
« Reply #46 on: January 25, 2022, 02:48:23 AM »
I found commissioning a good compromise in some of my campaigns, Mishihari. It becomes an adventure unto itself because good relations toward the manufacturer and components have to be gathered. It is like an almost self-writing side quest.

A self-writing side quest that is driven, for the most part, by the desires of the PC rather than the DM. While the DM can still put magic items into the game, commissioning lets the magic items be (to the extent they can find components and a fabricator, and have enough coin) what the PCs want them to be.

YMMV.
I always thought a good set of rules for what happens in between adventures would help. I'm thinking along the lines of Traveller's lifepaths (or Pendragon), where the player makes concrete choices, rolls, and there are specific results. The 4 year enlistments of Traveller wouldn't work, but a season (3 months) might be a good approach. This would allow downtime to be productive, whether someone decides to build a network of connections (an explicit favor system is assumed), seeks out adventure (minor benefits compared to a DM-run adventure), develops a business, builds a fortress, clears an area, trains with a master (borrowing from the weapon mastery system), creates a magic item, hear rumors, seek out components, or the like. This would also be the time required for prolonged healing, or developing certain skills. There would still be the serendipity of finding a new magic item in a dungeon, but you'd also have a structured way to develop a PC on your own. The goal would be to integrate masters and training, magic item creation and components, social networks, and the "end game" stuff with adventures.

5e D&D has this - the 'Downtime' rules in Xanathar's are pretty good, in conjunction with some from the DMG. I also added/extrapolated a few more, eg 50 weeks to learn a new skill. I use the (modified) crafting rules a lot. Seems like now whenever PCs kill a monster they're asking me what bits they can harvest.  ;D

Dropbear

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Re: Stance on Buying Magic Items
« Reply #47 on: January 25, 2022, 09:10:00 AM »
There are no "magic shops" in my campaign.  There are dealers in rare antiquities that people in the know, and with a lot of $$, can get certain things from.  Otherwise if they want magic, they need to earn it by killing bad things in a dungeon somewhere.

I’m with this one.

jmarso

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Re: Stance on Buying Magic Items
« Reply #48 on: January 25, 2022, 09:10:56 AM »
One other thing I'll allow in my campaign, if the players are in a big city with nobles, high level wizards, etc...

The trading of magic items for consumables like potions and scrolls. Say the party has a stray +2 sword that nobody is proficient with, or is of a type of blade that nobody uses. Based on the luck of the dice, they might be able to trade that weapon for some potions and/or scrolls. I basically use the XP value of a magic item to determine its 'worth' in cases like this, and like most transactions, the players always come out having lost a little in terms of value.

In very rare cases, a noble might purchase a magic weapon from the players for money, treasure maps, and if the weapon is valuable enough, maybe a land grant or minor title.

Shrieking Banshee

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Re: Stance on Buying Magic Items
« Reply #49 on: January 25, 2022, 10:29:30 AM »

One of the IMO big issues with D&D that I've been running my head into again and again over the years is the fact that there is no concrete temporal resolution outside of combat.

Call me a monster, but is is why I prefer measuring in 'scenes' with a understanding that a scene still has a somewhat limited degree of time (its like 15 min - 1 hour).

As for magic items I have a rarity system (not a MMO style), that determines how common the item is. Its not based purely on price. If its common/uncommon you can generally find it. Rare is rare.

Magic items should always be at-best items of barter, favors, or quest rewards.

This can also backfire where nobody just cares about magic items at all:

'You want me to fight all the orcs of octeran, and open the cursed lock of zoltan for 2 cure potions and a +1 sword? Yeah go blow yourself.'

A +5% chance to hit will NEVER feel magical (In my opinion). Nobody would comission one and nobody would spend money on it if its just 5% betterer.
« Last Edit: January 25, 2022, 10:33:36 AM by Shrieking Banshee »

Ghostmaker

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Re: Stance on Buying Magic Items
« Reply #50 on: January 25, 2022, 10:44:43 AM »
One other thing I'll allow in my campaign, if the players are in a big city with nobles, high level wizards, etc...

The trading of magic items for consumables like potions and scrolls. Say the party has a stray +2 sword that nobody is proficient with, or is of a type of blade that nobody uses. Based on the luck of the dice, they might be able to trade that weapon for some potions and/or scrolls. I basically use the XP value of a magic item to determine its 'worth' in cases like this, and like most transactions, the players always come out having lost a little in terms of value.

In very rare cases, a noble might purchase a magic weapon from the players for money, treasure maps, and if the weapon is valuable enough, maybe a land grant or minor title.
That is an excellent idea, and I will have to borrow it for my campaign.

GnomeWorks

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Re: Stance on Buying Magic Items
« Reply #51 on: January 25, 2022, 01:33:16 PM »
I don't know if you're familiar with 1e's DMG, but there are quite a few temporal rules in there. The book is packed with how much time things take, and it was clearly important in Gygax's games. The problem is, like everything else in the DMG, is it's almost completely disconnected. [...] But nothing pulls them together into a holistic system, it's almost obsessively granular and has a heavy wargaming focus, and a lot of the things I'm most interested in aren't really covered.

I'm aware that 1e has this sort of thing. But as you said, it isn't holistic, and it's very granular and kind of all over the place in terms of things it covers.

What I was talking about - and may have been unclear in conveying, originally - was the notion of nesting time structures. Sort of like how 1e defined "turns" differently based upon whether you were in combat or not, but more consistent, more nestings, and consulting a thesaurus.

So you would have combat rounds, then exploration "rounds" which might be like an hour, then travel "rounds" which might be parts of a day or a whole day, and so on and so forth. Effectively you are always "in initiative," but at different temporal resolutions. I'm not sure how much this impacts pacing at the table, in terms of real time spent in different round types at each of the higher levels, but it feels like a sensible answer to a lot of the time-keeping issues I've personally encountered.
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Bedrockbrendan

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Re: Stance on Buying Magic Items
« Reply #52 on: January 25, 2022, 03:29:07 PM »
So our OSE party lost its (8th level) cleric last night and was unable to bring her back.  It happened towards the end of the adventure so they weren't really affected by it in terms of healing and what not, but now the characters want to buy potions of healing and possibly a couple other magic items for their upcoming adventures, which will be the "Saga of the Giants" series for BFRPG.  My general policy is that potions and low level scrolls are pretty readily available, particularly in large cities, but more powerful items are both very rare and expensive.  I still generally use the prices in the DMG as a baseline.  So in the current situation, as the party will be starting in one of my campaign's larger cities, I have no problem with them buying potions of healing, though I'll put a cap on it.  Still pondering the bag of holding they want, though the 25,000 gp price tag in the DMG seems fair enough, I suppose.

What about you?  Do you let players buy magic items?  Or do they have to earn (or steal) them the good old fashioned way?

For me this is very setting dependent. If magic items are regularly available, I tend to think through the setting implications of widespread magic items and build the world around that. If I am aiming for something more grounded, or gritty, I will tend to restrict them.

Zirunel

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Re: Stance on Buying Magic Items
« Reply #53 on: January 25, 2022, 09:19:23 PM »
Varies by campaign, and how generally stingy the campaign is with magic items, and of what level.  Sometimes, very low-level items aren't even considered magic, and are available as much as the alchemist or other source can produce them, same as a sword or bow or food.  I've gone the other way where only high-level caster can even make the items, and thus they are rare. 

It also depends on how valuable something like a healing potion is in the game.  I think the later editions of D&D make the healing potions readily available because healing is already so available elsewhere.  In earlier games, healing is a real restraint.  Of course, you can tweak any edition to move it more one way or the other.

I've also done it where anyone can buy a lot of potions--if you know a producer and are in the good graces of the church, city, etc. that controls them.  That works well in a game with political factions.  (Also encourages potion stealing in some cases.)
Just me, but I'm not a big fan of buying and selling magical items. Not impossible as a private deal, but not a trade you'll find in shops or the market (not genuine items anyway). In my own setting arcane magic, along with necromancy,  is religiously proscribed with horrific penalties, so certainly no open trade. Magical practitioners must operate in secrecy, and they are super-cautious, so in practice it is exceedingly hard to find magic items for sale at any price.

 On the other hand, for me (and for the religious authorities), some items, as you say, like healing potions, aren't even considered magic. Just medicine.   You can buy and sell those.
« Last Edit: January 25, 2022, 09:32:20 PM by Zirunel »

Zalman

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Re: Stance on Buying Magic Items
« Reply #54 on: January 26, 2022, 09:40:41 AM »
Just as "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic," any sufficiently ordinary magic is indistinguishable from technology.

If my character can purchase a magic item as easily as I buy a cup of coffee in Seattle, don't expect me to more excited about it than I am about the coffee.
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HappyDaze

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Re: Stance on Buying Magic Items
« Reply #55 on: January 26, 2022, 09:51:37 AM »
Just as "any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic," any sufficiently ordinary magic is indistinguishable from technology.

If my character can purchase a magic item as easily as I buy a cup of coffee in Seattle, don't expect me to more excited about it than I am about the coffee.
The mundane cup of coffee may not get people excited, but coffee drinkers can get real damn unhappy when they can't get it, much like some players that suddenly find they cannot buy magic items when their previous experiences (for a few decades now) have been the opposite.

VisionStorm

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Re: Stance on Buying Magic Items
« Reply #56 on: January 26, 2022, 10:33:57 AM »
There's nothing quite as exiting as slaughtering an entire dungeon full of critters, only to finally find that +1 dagger you couldn't get at the store. It's only a plain +1 weapon, of course, but gating it behind a multi-level labyrinth really made it special, by virtue of its rarity, and the inability of shop keepers all across the land, to buy an old +1 weapon from an adventurer that no longer needs it and selling it forward for twice that amount. Cuz why would adventurers be pawning off all these excess +1 weapons that keep cropping up in every crypt they raid? Amiright?  :P

Personally I don't like handing out too many magical items cuz I find they can become a crutch or disrupt the game when overpowered. But at the same time if all an item has is a single +1 bonus in it I tend to have a hard time finding it wonderous, no matter how rare they supposedly are. A lot of this also depends on whether item creation is even a thing that's available to characters in the game. If so, at that point any limits on magic item trade are purely artificial, unless there's some sort of religious or historical restriction on magic (like in the case of Dark Sun, where the world was turned into a wasteland by Defiler Mages), and even then there's going to be a black-market for it (as is the case in Dark Sun, through the Veiled Alliance).
« Last Edit: January 26, 2022, 10:35:45 AM by VisionStorm »

Pat
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Re: Stance on Buying Magic Items
« Reply #57 on: January 26, 2022, 11:04:30 AM »
A +1 dagger can become very important if it's the only weapon you have that can hurt a gargoyle.

Ghostmaker

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Re: Stance on Buying Magic Items
« Reply #58 on: January 26, 2022, 11:05:20 AM »
I suspect some of this is left over from prior editions. 3E introduced damage reduction, which could be overcome if you threw enough dice and bonuses at it. 1E/2E and B/X-BECMI simply said straight up: you need a magic weapon of this many plusses or you're not going to hurt this critter.

Shrieking Banshee

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Re: Stance on Buying Magic Items
« Reply #59 on: January 26, 2022, 11:08:03 AM »
A +1 dagger can become very important if it's the only weapon you have that can hurt a gargoyle.
Then its more a Mcguffin then a reward.