3.5 Rebuild Poll Part 31: Magic Items for Sale

[bhu]

If you were rebuilding 3.5, how common would magic items be?

[Runestar]

I went for other. Basically, the DM is free to decide how the PCs procure magic gear so long as they are ultimately able to access gear reliably one way or another. Either they can buy them, craft them, expect to find decent gear in a monster's stash, commission a mage to craft it etc. Process is irrelevant.

[veekie]

I went for other. Basically, the DM is free to decide how the PCs procure magic gear so long as they are ultimately able to access gear reliably one way or another. Either they can buy them, craft them, expect to find decent gear in a monster's stash, commission a mage to craft it etc. Process is irrelevant.

Same deal, really, I figure this is campaign specific, once you manage to divorce magic items from PC power. As is, equipment is more than 80% of the class's power for non spellcasters, and not that much better for spellcasters. Dialing that down would do much.

[RobbyPants]

I voted other for two reasons:

1) it gives the DMs some flexibility.

2) I have yet to see any satisfying justification on why magical items couldn't be sold.  Basically, it's very hard to set rules in stone such as "magical items are priceless and people won't part with them for money."  As A DM, you can say that, and I guess you control how the NPCs react, but that doesn't mean the PCs won't try things.  As with anything else in the world, it's worth however much the market will bear.

[archangel.arcanis]

All magical items should be sold via auctions. That way we can really see how important that sword really is to the character. (Not really because they should be bidding against other people who want it as well)

I believe it should be a setting specific level. It wouldn't make sense for a +2 sword to be for sale in every city in Wheel of Time, but i would be disappointed if i couldn't get one in a major Ebberon City.

[Bauglir]

I voted other, because I'm looking at making magic items as they exist into an inherent part of a character. So meditate and be awesome enough and you get a +1 sword, or whatever. Pay for it with a resource other than gp, is my point. You can also have magic items and whatever, and they'd be totally DM dependent; by default, I'd say people don't actually sell them since making them requires an XP investiture and that's no longer exactly a good thing (if your wealth in current terms is determined by level, you don't actually gain in power with the ol' craft 1 levels' worth and gain XP faster trick). But it's up to the DM. Might leave the costs as they are now (making them exorbitantly expensive, as my next sentence will indicate) or lower the cost or whatever, but keep in mind that'll shift the power basis of the campaign by a fair bit. In any case, actual gold acquisition is going to remain at roughly the same level as you'd get from level 2 encounters.

[Dilvish]

Other. As it's already been said, it should be campaign specific.

[vermithrx]

Yeah this is campaign specific, though all these options aught to be explained in the 'DMG' wherever we decide to point this out to GMs.

[dman11235]

I agree with Bauglir on this one.  If magic items are a part of the character, then it avoids the christmas tree effect.  Better control on what items the players get, so they don't overdo it even accidentally.

You can also control how much magic items play a part in your campaign, but there's no saturation level available without an alternate mechanic.

[veekie]

Seconded, make items parts of characters, optional parts of characters. Handle item ownership with feats or some other truly permanent resource. Handle expendable items the same way, and hoarding won't be an issue. Realistic economy or not, you'd have your ammo, potions, etc, on steady supply.

[bhu]

I went for other. Basically, the DM is free to decide how the PCs procure magic gear so long as they are ultimately able to access gear reliably one way or another. Either they can buy them, craft them, expect to find decent gear in a monster's stash, commission a mage to craft it etc. Process is irrelevant.

Not entirely irrelevant.  People will want rules fro creating magic items.  We will be making some base set of ruls, and the cost of making an item will vary depending on how available it is (unless we make several sets of rules to be able to tailor creation to meet hte needs of different campaigns).

[Chemus]

Buying/crafting/finding/receiving magic items is mostly flavor for your campaign. As long as they give additional power to your character, they'll have to have a commensurate cost. The reliability of getting exactly what you want is up to the desired campaign style.

[PhaedrusXY]

I like having "lesser" magic items for sale, but not "greater" ones. At least, the greater ones can't be bought for gold...

[RobbyPants]

At least, the greater ones can't be bought for gold...

I think this can work okay as a general rule, but it really only works for one of two reasons:

1) Cuz the DM says so (if he controls every NPC in the game, he can just say no one will sell/buy the item just cuz).

2) Greater items are useful to everyone.

That last one is important, because if the fighter doesn't have use for an inferno wand of infernoness and the wizard doesn't have use for the ice sword of frostiness, then gold totally is more useful to them.  Really, all they have at that point is a priceless back scratcher.  Now, in a perfect world, these two guys know each other (or are in the same party), so they can just trade their priceless swag and get something cool.  If not, they have to hold onto their back scratchers until they find someone to trade with.

If they're having too much trouble trading, they might really want to trade it for some mundane gold.  I mean, if you have this priceless back scratcher, wouldn't you rather trade it for a bunch of gold, and then spend that gold on a mundane back scratcher, some beer and a few hand jobs?


TL;DR: The DM can make edicts like "no one buys/sells greater magic items", but I think that's hard to enforce unless it's not too hard to trade.

[PhaedrusXY]

It works if you use the rest of the Wish economy (or three tiered economy, etc). At higher levels, gold is worthless, because you can make bucketfuls of it for free (by chain binding Efreets). So of course no one who is powerful is going to trade anything that is actually hard to make/find for it.

And weaker guys aren't going to want the higher level stuff, just like most normal people wouldn't want a bazooka. It will only get them into trouble, as some more powerful guys come along and take it away from them (the police and/or military in the bazooka case), and maybe kill them while taking it. They might wind up with something way over their heads occasionally, but they'll live to regret it, and will probably want to get rid of it as fast as possible if they have any sense.

And the DM does control the NPCs. So he can totally say they won't trade stuff, if he wants to. And if you make up a good enough story (like the one above), it can even be believable.

[RobbyPants]

You make a good point about the wish economy.  In a world where the wizard can just make gold, he probably won't trade anything for gold.  Period.  I agree with you there.

What about those who don't have access to Wish?  If the fighter can't make gold, might gold be more useful to him than a priceless back scratcher?  I think this is largely meaningless in a party where someone in the group can fabricate gold and minor items.  I'm just curious how it would pan out for a single, mundane character.

[Havok4]

What seems to be really needed is a total economy fix for a game world. Possibly by making the primary currency at higher levels a form of credit or some such backed by a powerful supernatural entity. I like the idea of an elemental plane of finance. Which helps with the whole material wealth from nothing. As for how common magic items would be it seems like their prevalence and value should be based off the campaign world and the location of the characters. In a high magic world of a world minor magic items might be a dime a dozen like magic iceboxes or magic radios, magic weapons would be purchased like weaponry is purchased in the real world likely with the necessity of getting the proper permits if purchasing legally. While in a low magic world all magic items are ancient artifacts with multiple abilities (which add up to similar abilities to what a character would get from many magic items normally and progresses with levels).

[PhaedrusXY]

You make a good point about the wish economy.  In a world where the wizard can just make gold, he probably won't trade anything for gold.  Period.  I agree with you there.

What about those who don't have access to Wish?  If the fighter can't make gold, might gold be more useful to him than a priceless back scratcher?  I think this is largely meaningless in a party where someone in the group can fabricate gold and minor items.  I'm just curious how it would pan out for a single, mundane character.

That's an edge case, and not worth considering when designing the game. Also, the fighter can just buy a Candle of Invocation, and use the old "chain binding" trick to get his Wishes. In a game that uses the Wish economy, everyone should have access to it past a certain level. That's just a basic assumption you make when you decide to use it, just like the current game assumes people will buy appropriate magic items using the gold they get from monsters.

Also, I let everyone "craft" one level appropriate item per character level, regardless of class and without feat investment. So they can always get an appropriate number of high level magic items without assistance. They can describe the fluff however they want. If they want to say they bargained with a devil for it, that's fine. If they want to say the forged it in an ancient dwarven mine with the help of master smiths, that's fine too.

I'm also using the item attunement rules from the Tomes (you can only have 8 attuned items at a time, and it takes 15 minutes to exchange one or more of them, not including potions, scrolls, etc).

This is the first time for me running a Tome game (with a few house rules of my own). I'm pretty interested in seeing how it goes.

[DaveoftheRave]

One thing that seems to be overlooked is how dangerous it is to buy and sell incredibly powerful items.

If you have something very powerful and you want to sell it you have to find a buyer. Then you have to ensure that the buyer isn't just going to destroy you and take it. The buyer also has to ensure that the seller isn't just going to destroy them and take the payment.

Buying and selling magic items seems to be really high fantasy to me.

If I have something valuable I'm not going to advertise it.

[Chemus]

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