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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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!
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)
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
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
@@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.
Do you know what box Mike's DM notes were in? Simple... the tiny rectangle he carries in his pocket, because he uses WorldAnvil! Is that a good joke, or a dad joke? Thanks so much to WorldAnvil for sponsoring this video! Visit www.worldanvil.com/supergeekmike and use the promo code SUPERGEEK to get 40% off any annual membership! www.worldanvil.com/supergeekmike
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 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...
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.
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'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!
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.
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. )
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).
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.
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.
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.
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) )
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.
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
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.
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.
Just moved house myself away from a loud road where people with unnecessarily loud engines like to rev as hard as they can and force me to rewind my video because I couldn't hear it... I feel this. Yeah I know it's 2 years ago but... mood
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 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 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.
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 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 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.
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 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.)
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
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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))
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.
Preface- most of my games are pathfinder based, though I use my setting with 5e too. Most major cities in my setting tend to have one or two magic shops, or more if its a particularly massive/ busy city, something truly special. But even occasionally the odd merchant or blacksmith might have an odd lesser magic item here or there. I try hard in my setting to put a clear difference between a -magic item- and a Magic Item. A small blacksmith might have put in an incredibly amount of work and produced a +1 weapon that is the pride of a small town, maybe even named because it was used to defend the town from an attack, or he worked with a passing mage to enchant the finest quality weapon he's made. Even then other than Special Magic Items the shops tend to have generic low stuff, a way for players to utilize some of their early gained gold to help them on the harder quests to find the Magic Items, or find a way to turn their gear into a Magic Item. I also tend to allow crafting and disenchanting, so if the party ends up with a magic item they don't particularly need or want, there's always some use for it, whether its trading it to someone with special interests or consuming it for Residuum to allow their party craftsman a discount when attempting to create something wondrous. But like you said its all about flavor and feel. To me magic shops make sense in my setting because its very much a massive setting with a lot of stuff going on outside of the scope of the players, and shops can always lead to fun quests and the like when the players surprise me with a request or something similar.
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.
my suggestion is if you make magic items not a thing you can buy off the cuff, give your martial classes feats as rewards, because the standard class features can really make martials feel subpar, I would also suggest making up some feats of your own to give as a reward, if you do though, I would suggest half feats (the ones that give a +1 to a stat, but without that, so if they win an archery context, then they can get say, the sharpshooter bonus minus the stat increase)
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 game I have a few different methods for aquiring magic items, but there are very few magic shops. 1. Pawn shops, places to pick up second hand magic items, that were sold for quick cash. You'll almost never find anything "good" but odds and end trinkets and a wand might show up from time to time. Typically I make a player role to see if anything close to what they're looking for is in inventory. 2. A secret black market. You have to be known as credible by them and finding someone with connections can be an adventure in itself. Usually items that the Red Wizards dont want in public hands (game set in Thay) but again nothing amazing, +1 swords and armour that are stollen and being fenced (always the chance the previous owner wants it back) 3. An auction for nobility and other wealthy indeviduals. Mostly rare and exotic items from far off lands, and everything gets incredibly expensive. These auctions only take place once a month. 4. Lastly a hidden shop run by a Rakshasa in human form. He is also capable of enchanting or creating magic items but always has a favor that must be done before he will sell something. (Players are slowely qued into his nature as they continue using the shop and have there morals compromised for the sake of power.)
I'm currently running witchlight and it's main setting is the Feywild so there's magical stuff everywhere, so if the players want a magic item it's probably floating around but every thing is done in trades or quests.I think a magic shop is more setting based than anything, but i'm not apposed to throwing a wandering magic shop in a "serious" campaign to spice things up. And if they get to powerful there's ALWAYS a bigger monster!
I completely agree with your stance on this. In my game, I don't have a shop where magic items can be bought. I allow basic healing potions to be purchased from herbalist/alchemists. My solution for magic items that are collecting dust in player inventories is an NPC who hops planes and worlds and will barter magic items, but doesn't accept coin. The players have a method to summon the NPC, though sometimes they have to wait when they call. I fill his inventory with items I choose if I am feeling like it, or I will randomly generate from the DMG if I am not. I try to have special, interesting magic items in the dungeons and environments being explored - but if something is a flop, there is recourse to maybe get something better. As for gold...building up a stronghold takes quite a bit so that is my players current money sink - definitely need money sinks if magic items aren't purchasable.
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.
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 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).
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.
The world I'm making isn't quite to creating shops yet, but this gives me great ideas on what I should do. I think I may run that typical larger towns would have maybe 1-2 magic items in the whole of the shops, and those are treated as high-end items that the players might save up enough to purchase eventually, and those might be common to uncommon at best. The busier cities, especially the wizard-based city, will be more frequent, with 4-5 different common options, 1-2 uncommon, and a chance for maybe 1 rare in the city. If you are looking for something that can't be found, you either need to go to an alchemist, or an artificer (which is currently a stationary position as artificers aren't a playable class in my homebrew, and the technology hasn't advanced to that level) and have them create it at high cost. I think that the really interesting thing would be how do your magic schools treat magic items? Perhaps the library has a common item lending program, which is a privilege that could be taken away with bad reputation with the school? Maybe everyone needs to complete an item (i.e. a bag of holding) for a class? Maybe there's a school supply store in the nearby city where you can buy basic wizarding necessities? Or does the school ban magic items, wishing you to learn your own power?
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
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.
one way Im thinking of making scrolls available is in response to player interest. They ask around at a market town, maybe the local bookstore has a couple of scraps. Next time around, the book keeper has been to the big city and found some promising scraps for them. Only some are actually scrolls. If they go searching in the big cities, however, they may find some tucked away in an old moldy book
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 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.
Agreed. It cheapens the experience of finding & earning magic weapons, etc. BUT since 5e skimps on treasure all the time, and makes even +1 weapons almost unavailable to find, *buying* them remains the only dependable option.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
The obscure 1985 SSI CRPG Wizard's Crown (Yes, I know this shows my age) actually handled all of these points in a brilliant system I've not really seen replicated but I greatly enjoyed--there was no magic shop in the city that was the setting of the adventure, but there was a hidden guild of wizards who, for exorbitant prices, would increase the power of your magic items if you bothered them. You could level a +1 Longsword all the way to +5 eventually, and this became the primary means of dispensing with your character's cash once you had all the basic equipment you needed. Hence, you got the 'it's special!' feeling when you found a magic item, you had a way to spend lots of money that, especially in a CRPG, is pretty much 100% focused on character empowerment, and you could carry along magic items you found early and not just replace them with the next best thing. There's even an early random encounter where you find a tween girl being chased by thugs, and if you come to her aid, she escapes and tells you to visit her father's, the duke's mansion, and going there later rewards you with a +2 Broadsword, usually your first magic item. It's definitely an interesting alternative to magic shops to try out (and I have before with good results) that also serves a feel of games like the Souls series where you enhance and empower your favorite weapons. And of course, rather than a simple flat money cost to upgrade the magic item some materials might be required, and could of course lead to (side)quests where the materials need to be found.
In my 3.5 game, the setting is an isolated barony, which has one small city of about 10,500 adults, one large town of about 5000, 5 small towns with adult populations ranging from ~1900 down to ~1200, and 36 villages with adult populations ranging from ~900 down to ~100. The 3.5 game assumptions may be a bit diffferent than those of 5e but this may provide an idea of how scarce "magic shops" are in the barony as I have postulated it. Alchemy is a craft skill which can be practiced by any spellcaster, including the NPC class "adept" and which is used to make "sort of magical" alchemical products, like alchemists' fire, acid, smokesticks, antitoxin, etc. These are cheap enough that middle class folks might acquire some and rich folks or the local guards might have, prices ranging from 1 gp for a tindertwig (ie a modern match) up to perhaps 50 or 100 gp for the more expensive goods. Adventurers can easily afford such things, and every town and most large villages will have someone who can at least make some of these things. Magical potions are more rare but can be found in any town, as the most accomplished alchemist is usually at least a 3rd level caster who has taken the Brew Potion feat. But any stock they actually have is likely to be potions of 1st level spells, things that rich folks might be inclined to invest in, costing 50 gp. 2nd level spell potions are normally available only by special order, and cost 300 gp. 3rd level spell potions, if the alchemist is even capable of making such, cost 750 gp. Scrolls are cheaper and easier to make than potions - wizards automatically learn the Scribe Scroll feat at 1st level, other spellcasters can learn it if they wish - but almost nobody writes magical scrolls as a business venture, most just scribe scrolls of spells they want to have available as backup spells or very situation-dependent spells in addition to their normally prepared spells. They may make scrolls for sale to others on special order, but they don't have shops per se. Those who make potions or scrolls often use them as rewards for people who do jobs for them - or provide them as tools to assist in getting a job done. In the capital city, there are two, and only two, locations where magic item buying and selling are treated like a business... One is the Magicians' Huild. Anyone can go to the guild with a request for a specific item they want to acquire or an item they want to sell. The guild clerk makes a record of the request or item offer, and will then pass on that info to the membership as appropriate. After at least 24 hours has passed, the "customer" can return to find out if anyone in the guild is willing and able to provide or acquire the item in question. The guild acts as a middleman and assures fairness, while the guild members remain anonymous. But there is one actual Magic Shop - in the Bazaar, no sign; the proprietor is a strange fellow named Xothan who has access to a variety of actual magic items guaranteed to work but he has some...quirks. This is what folks have heard about Xothan: ----- First, he never sells more than 2 items to a customer. Nobody knows why. Second, he never says what he has available; you have to tell him what you want and be willing to buy it if he has it, if you change your mind it counts as 1 item - he hates people trying to get away with asking about a long list of items and then trying to decide. Know what you are looking for and don't waste his time. (The odds of him having what you ask for is roughly one in three it seems.) Third, his prices are above standard market price, the extra being his 'acquisition fee', and will be +5-20% (d4×5%) of the market price. Fourth, he will also buy magic items at 55-70% (50+(d4×5)%) of the market price, a better deal than most merchants will offer. He has no interest in non-magical items, but he will purchase any number of magical items from whoever is selling them. Xothan has nothing on display, his items are stored 'in a safe place' and he will retrieve them once payment is agreed upon - show him the cash or have the magic items being traded available and he will fetch the item being acquired. Xothan has never been robbed. Those who have tried either failed to break into his little 'shop' - or else succeeded and were neither heard nor seen again... ----- Nobody is quite sure what sort of being Xothan is - he's been there a long time, keeps impeccable records, looks human but not quite, is extremely literal-minded and seems immune to sarcasm, flattery, provocation...and divination magic fails to work on him...
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.
My Spelljammer campaign has a bizzare bazaar in a large town in a motte and bailey castle floating in the center of the celestial sphere. My new Musketeer themed campaign only has a n apothecary with healing potions, antidotes, and if they're lucky maybe they made something else. Other magic items will only be able for purchase if they get really lucky, and mostly just +1 swords. I think this sets the moods for these different worlds well. I also have a town of Costco in my Mutant future game, but that's unrelated and the Costco itself is the Mayor's house
Speaking mostly from the 3E/Pathfinder perspective, as that's the last edition I played, to have +1 r +2 weapons (maybe +1 Elemental) could be common enough to appear on store shelves, especially for common weapons for the area, but likely still only a handful behind the counter, or for the elite soldiers in the armory. Makes sense the local clergy could have healing potions available that a player can buy, but only if at least one player is a follower of that deity. Scrolls and arcane potions could be available (or commissioned) but they will need to find the local wizard. In the field, such items should be obtainable, but bear in mind that classes other than wizards and clerics often get spells in either a higher spell slot or at a higher caster level and thus be more expensive (though admittedly slightly more powerful, but not by enough to justify the cost (probably)). Traveling entertainers would have potions brewed by a bard, while elven villages probably by a druid or ranger. Bazaars, like those often depicted in Arabian settings could have a plethora of magic items, but likely will still take some sleuthing to find out which vendor has it. Bigger cities could also have a back ally shop that deals in various trinkets and charms that can also have a variety of magic items, if still in limited quantities amidst a variety of items more purely for decoration or superstitious effect (e.g. does a dreamcatcher really do anything or does it snake oil?). Rewatched Grimm not too long ago and there was a shop that had mostly ingredients and created potions on order most of the time, so an ingredient shop with a few items (for personal use if not necessarily for sale) can also exist. But these are for just where players can find such items, and most of them of lower level. My bigger problem is going on an adventure and finding a +4 halberd of demon slaying when we're not fighting demons and (more importantly) no one in the party uses a halberd. Is it so unreasonable to try and tailor magic items found to what the party can use instead of always rolling on a table? Remember, also, that the best magic items are probably being held AND used by the commanding baddy of the encounter? Remember also that +1 and +2 weapons could also be used by the more elite soldiers, but the better grunt community will probably have basic or shoddy weapons. Treasure expressed in gold pieces is also kind of counter-intuitive. I'd much rather find art objects and gemstones (all of which needs to be appraised) to spend/trade for more valuable items. Coin is still important, but more "realistic" to be carrying around 10,000GP worth or gemstones than actual coin. I'm sure there are enough message boards and social media sites available in today's world where any GM can find a good number of descriptions (from basic to complex) for any number of art items (be it a golden comb with gems encrusted into it up to a detailed description of the Mona Lisa without actually stating it's name). If I could realistically have a base of operation I'd actually be inclined to keep art objects myself.
From 1E on, I had some version of magic item shop. After three plus robberies, I went to a magic broker. You ask/put at item up for sale and in three to five shipping days the items are swapped. Now generally most of my games were modules, so the players had excess magic items and gold.
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.
These are some really good points. Magic shops do make items feel less special. That said, settings where magic users are more common feel artificial if no one is making and selling magic items. Personally, I prefer settings with more moderate levels of magic in the world. I don't like to run settings where everything cool happened in the past. I was going to suggest magick shops that made consumable items. You touched on it in the video, mentioning that you like having potions and scrolls in shops. I agree, though I think this reflects the change from seeing potions as resources to be used between fights to ways to keep parties alive in combat. 5e is often not treated as a resource management game, as half the party can see in the dark, and many groups forget to track food and weight. Additionally, many groups allow easy long rests which magickally heal the party, meaning that hit points and spell slots are often really easy to replenish. DnD was created with resource management in mind. Magick items were super rare because they were shortcuts around deadly resource issues. An everburning torch allows a high level party to explore a dungeon for days at a time, making it invaluable, for example. Having a light cantrip, dark vision or forgetting to track the torch's burn time negates that. But if you do track those resources, you can make weaker items that arent as rare. A torch that 3 times as long as normal but weights the same as a normal torch. A weapon or tool that allows the use of a cantrip or low level spell before needing to be recharged with a spell slot. Minor Scrolls and healing potions that can be bought in major towns so that plauers do mot need to retirn to town to get healed. Personally, magic items help to flavor the setting, so as a worldbuilder, I'm ok making them slightly less special, if it makes the setting much more special. But I like having powerful items be rare too. I really like your idea of making powrful magick items show up in odd places and more informal shops than dedicated magic shops. I think I may keep lesser items in small businesses, but implement more commission type businesses. I like the idea of a craftsman being able to perform one or two minor enchantments amd selling those items in a town for high prices. Nobility willing to pay for cloaks that keep the rain from touching theor clothing? Hell, yeah! A theives den where someone will craft a specific disguise for a hogh price? That's great! Just need to work on making lesser items that have limitations... amd figiring oit a way around DnD's broken spell system. made worse by long rest I think low level items should be available for sale bit you have definitely convinced me that magick shops may not be the best aesthetic for this. Also, I was goong to suggest
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.
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 pulled this video up after yet another day of moving houses (almost done thankfully, got one more car trip plus cleaning and garbage to deal with) and the opening with the new set was just too real man.
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.
I have also started to feel largely the same about magic item shops in my own games, and one of my preferred solutions is giving the players the opportunity to at least hear about a local mage who specialises in crafting and enchanting items. Then if they manage to get friendly enough with the mage they find out they don't keep a stock of items for sale but do work on commission for certain people who can afford such services. This way the players get to more directly specify what they want and have a potential avenue to purchase the item but it isnt just handed to them on a platter. The mage might require the gathering of rare components as well as a substantial amount of gold and a layover of time while the item is being made. I also enjoy the concept of some eccentric noble or maybe collector of curiosities that doesn't only sell magic items but who may have an item or two come into their possession from time to time that might be bartered from them in some way. That's just my 2 cents anyway
In my games I got shop "Mage Hand" that specializes in history of the realms. If someone wants to get specific magic item they can try to trace it through history and who currently owns it or where was last seen. To get specific item it's adventure on it's own, negotiation, archaeology, heist...
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.
You actually just inspired me to finalize this stuff. In my world powerful magic items are rare because the source of all magic gets unstable at a certain intensity causing deadly repercussions. Because of this, reckless use of magic was practically outlawed, leaving behind a handful of relics that didn't end in disaster from an age long past either circulating through the hands of adventurers few and far between or lost in dungeons of old.
I am currently worldbuilding for a new campaign (We're not using the dnd system, though). Specialized magic item shops to me always seemed wierd. But I still want magic items to be available for sale. The way I plan to handle it is to have magic items available at whatever type of shop makes the most sense for any given item. For example healing potions might be found at an apothecary, and magic cloaks could be bought from a tailor. Some random items could always pop up at any type of second hand shop or flea market. Magic is very common in my world, so it makes sense to have magic items broadly available. However most of the stuff you can buy is going to be of lower quality and fairly simple in enchantment and mostly gimmicky, like magical waterproofing on a bag, or maybe the enchantment is going to waer of over time. That way I can still create magic items that feel very special to my players. I do plan on something along the lines of Matt Mercer's vestiges of divergence. Something that can level up with the players and has it's own piece of lore. Not every item has to be special. I think it's only realistic to put of the rack "mass-manufactured" and luxury, costom shop magic items into my world.
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
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
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.
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
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.
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!
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)
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
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
Do you know what box Mike's DM notes were in? Simple... the tiny rectangle he carries in his pocket, because he uses WorldAnvil!
Is that a good joke, or a dad joke?
Thanks so much to WorldAnvil for sponsoring this video! Visit www.worldanvil.com/supergeekmike and use the promo code SUPERGEEK to get 40% off any annual membership!
www.worldanvil.com/supergeekmike
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 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...
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.
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'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!
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.
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. )
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).
So glad you have a new space you feel comfortable in. Love your videos!
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.
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.
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) )
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.
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
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.
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.
Just moved house myself away from a loud road where people with unnecessarily loud engines like to rev as hard as they can and force me to rewind my video because I couldn't hear it... I feel this.
Yeah I know it's 2 years ago but... mood
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 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 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.
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 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 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.
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 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.)
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
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.
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.
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
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'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!
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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.
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))
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.
Preface- most of my games are pathfinder based, though I use my setting with 5e too.
Most major cities in my setting tend to have one or two magic shops, or more if its a particularly massive/ busy city, something truly special.
But even occasionally the odd merchant or blacksmith might have an odd lesser magic item here or there. I try hard in my setting to put a clear difference between a -magic item- and a Magic Item. A small blacksmith might have put in an incredibly amount of work and produced a +1 weapon that is the pride of a small town, maybe even named because it was used to defend the town from an attack, or he worked with a passing mage to enchant the finest quality weapon he's made. Even then other than Special Magic Items the shops tend to have generic low stuff, a way for players to utilize some of their early gained gold to help them on the harder quests to find the Magic Items, or find a way to turn their gear into a Magic Item.
I also tend to allow crafting and disenchanting, so if the party ends up with a magic item they don't particularly need or want, there's always some use for it, whether its trading it to someone with special interests or consuming it for Residuum to allow their party craftsman a discount when attempting to create something wondrous.
But like you said its all about flavor and feel. To me magic shops make sense in my setting because its very much a massive setting with a lot of stuff going on outside of the scope of the players, and shops can always lead to fun quests and the like when the players surprise me with a request or something similar.
I love it!
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.
my suggestion is if you make magic items not a thing you can buy off the cuff, give your martial classes feats as rewards, because the standard class features can really make martials feel subpar, I would also suggest making up some feats of your own to give as a reward, if you do though, I would suggest half feats (the ones that give a +1 to a stat, but without that, so if they win an archery context, then they can get say, the sharpshooter bonus minus the stat increase)
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 game I have a few different methods for aquiring magic items, but there are very few magic shops.
1. Pawn shops, places to pick up second hand magic items, that were sold for quick cash. You'll almost never find anything "good" but odds and end trinkets and a wand might show up from time to time. Typically I make a player role to see if anything close to what they're looking for is in inventory.
2. A secret black market. You have to be known as credible by them and finding someone with connections can be an adventure in itself. Usually items that the Red Wizards dont want in public hands (game set in Thay) but again nothing amazing, +1 swords and armour that are stollen and being fenced (always the chance the previous owner wants it back)
3. An auction for nobility and other wealthy indeviduals. Mostly rare and exotic items from far off lands, and everything gets incredibly expensive. These auctions only take place once a month.
4. Lastly a hidden shop run by a Rakshasa in human form. He is also capable of enchanting or creating magic items but always has a favor that must be done before he will sell something. (Players are slowely qued into his nature as they continue using the shop and have there morals compromised for the sake of power.)
I'm currently running witchlight and it's main setting is the Feywild so there's magical stuff everywhere, so if the players want a magic item it's probably floating around but every thing is done in trades or quests.I think a magic shop is more setting based than anything, but i'm not apposed to throwing a wandering magic shop in a "serious" campaign to spice things up. And if they get to powerful there's ALWAYS a bigger monster!
Nice!
I completely agree with your stance on this.
In my game, I don't have a shop where magic items can be bought. I allow basic healing potions to be purchased from herbalist/alchemists.
My solution for magic items that are collecting dust in player inventories is an NPC who hops planes and worlds and will barter magic items, but doesn't accept coin.
The players have a method to summon the NPC, though sometimes they have to wait when they call.
I fill his inventory with items I choose if I am feeling like it, or I will randomly generate from the DMG if I am not.
I try to have special, interesting magic items in the dungeons and environments being explored - but if something is a flop, there is recourse to maybe get something better.
As for gold...building up a stronghold takes quite a bit so that is my players current money sink - definitely need money sinks if magic items aren't purchasable.
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.
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 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).
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.
The world I'm making isn't quite to creating shops yet, but this gives me great ideas on what I should do. I think I may run that typical larger towns would have maybe 1-2 magic items in the whole of the shops, and those are treated as high-end items that the players might save up enough to purchase eventually, and those might be common to uncommon at best.
The busier cities, especially the wizard-based city, will be more frequent, with 4-5 different common options, 1-2 uncommon, and a chance for maybe 1 rare in the city. If you are looking for something that can't be found, you either need to go to an alchemist, or an artificer (which is currently a stationary position as artificers aren't a playable class in my homebrew, and the technology hasn't advanced to that level) and have them create it at high cost.
I think that the really interesting thing would be how do your magic schools treat magic items? Perhaps the library has a common item lending program, which is a privilege that could be taken away with bad reputation with the school? Maybe everyone needs to complete an item (i.e. a bag of holding) for a class? Maybe there's a school supply store in the nearby city where you can buy basic wizarding necessities? Or does the school ban magic items, wishing you to learn your own power?
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
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.
one way Im thinking of making scrolls available is in response to player interest. They ask around at a market town, maybe the local bookstore has a couple of scraps. Next time around, the book keeper has been to the big city and found some promising scraps for them. Only some are actually scrolls.
If they go searching in the big cities, however, they may find some tucked away in an old moldy book
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!
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.
Agreed. It cheapens the experience of finding & earning magic weapons, etc. BUT since 5e skimps on treasure all the time, and makes even +1 weapons almost unavailable to find, *buying* them remains the only dependable option.
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 😁
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.
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!
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!
The obscure 1985 SSI CRPG Wizard's Crown (Yes, I know this shows my age) actually handled all of these points in a brilliant system I've not really seen replicated but I greatly enjoyed--there was no magic shop in the city that was the setting of the adventure, but there was a hidden guild of wizards who, for exorbitant prices, would increase the power of your magic items if you bothered them. You could level a +1 Longsword all the way to +5 eventually, and this became the primary means of dispensing with your character's cash once you had all the basic equipment you needed. Hence, you got the 'it's special!' feeling when you found a magic item, you had a way to spend lots of money that, especially in a CRPG, is pretty much 100% focused on character empowerment, and you could carry along magic items you found early and not just replace them with the next best thing. There's even an early random encounter where you find a tween girl being chased by thugs, and if you come to her aid, she escapes and tells you to visit her father's, the duke's mansion, and going there later rewards you with a +2 Broadsword, usually your first magic item.
It's definitely an interesting alternative to magic shops to try out (and I have before with good results) that also serves a feel of games like the Souls series where you enhance and empower your favorite weapons. And of course, rather than a simple flat money cost to upgrade the magic item some materials might be required, and could of course lead to (side)quests where the materials need to be found.
In my 3.5 game, the setting is an isolated barony, which has one small city of about 10,500 adults, one large town of about 5000, 5 small towns with adult populations ranging from ~1900 down to ~1200, and 36 villages with adult populations ranging from ~900 down to ~100. The 3.5 game assumptions may be a bit diffferent than those of 5e but this may provide an idea of how scarce "magic shops" are in the barony as I have postulated it.
Alchemy is a craft skill which can be practiced by any spellcaster, including the NPC class "adept" and which is used to make "sort of magical" alchemical products, like alchemists' fire, acid, smokesticks, antitoxin, etc. These are cheap enough that middle class folks might acquire some and rich folks or the local guards might have, prices ranging from 1 gp for a tindertwig (ie a modern match) up to perhaps 50 or 100 gp for the more expensive goods. Adventurers can easily afford such things, and every town and most large villages will have someone who can at least make some of these things.
Magical potions are more rare but can be found in any town, as the most accomplished alchemist is usually at least a 3rd level caster who has taken the Brew Potion feat. But any stock they actually have is likely to be potions of 1st level spells, things that rich folks might be inclined to invest in, costing 50 gp. 2nd level spell potions are normally available only by special order, and cost 300 gp. 3rd level spell potions, if the alchemist is even capable of making such, cost 750 gp.
Scrolls are cheaper and easier to make than potions - wizards automatically learn the Scribe Scroll feat at 1st level, other spellcasters can learn it if they wish - but almost nobody writes magical scrolls as a business venture, most just scribe scrolls of spells they want to have available as backup spells or very situation-dependent spells in addition to their normally prepared spells. They may make scrolls for sale to others on special order, but they don't have shops per se.
Those who make potions or scrolls often use them as rewards for people who do jobs for them - or provide them as tools to assist in getting a job done.
In the capital city, there are two, and only two, locations where magic item buying and selling are treated like a business...
One is the Magicians' Huild. Anyone can go to the guild with a request for a specific item they want to acquire or an item they want to sell. The guild clerk makes a record of the request or item offer, and will then pass on that info to the membership as appropriate. After at least 24 hours has passed, the "customer" can return to find out if anyone in the guild is willing and able to provide or acquire the item in question. The guild acts as a middleman and assures fairness, while the guild members remain anonymous.
But there is one actual Magic Shop - in the Bazaar, no sign; the proprietor is a strange fellow named Xothan who has access to a variety of actual magic items guaranteed to work but he has some...quirks. This is what folks have heard about Xothan:
-----
First, he never sells more than 2 items to a customer. Nobody knows why.
Second, he never says what he has available; you have to tell him what you want and be willing to buy it if he has it, if you change your mind it counts as 1 item - he hates people trying to get away with asking about a long list of items and then trying to decide. Know what you are looking for and don't waste his time. (The odds of him having what you ask for is roughly one in three it seems.)
Third, his prices are above standard market price, the extra being his 'acquisition fee', and will be +5-20% (d4×5%) of the market price.
Fourth, he will also buy magic items at 55-70% (50+(d4×5)%) of the market price, a better deal than most merchants will offer. He has no interest in non-magical items, but he will purchase any number of magical items from whoever is selling them.
Xothan has nothing on display, his items are stored 'in a safe place' and he will retrieve them once payment is agreed upon - show him the cash or have the magic items being traded available and he will fetch the item being acquired.
Xothan has never been robbed. Those who have tried either failed to break into his little 'shop' - or else succeeded and were neither heard nor seen again...
-----
Nobody is quite sure what sort of being Xothan is - he's been there a long time, keeps impeccable records, looks human but not quite, is extremely literal-minded and seems immune to sarcasm, flattery, provocation...and divination magic fails to work on him...
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.
My Spelljammer campaign has a bizzare bazaar in a large town in a motte and bailey castle floating in the center of the celestial sphere. My new Musketeer themed campaign only has a n apothecary with healing potions, antidotes, and if they're lucky maybe they made something else. Other magic items will only be able for purchase if they get really lucky, and mostly just +1 swords. I think this sets the moods for these different worlds well. I also have a town of Costco in my Mutant future game, but that's unrelated and the Costco itself is the Mayor's house
Speaking mostly from the 3E/Pathfinder perspective, as that's the last edition I played, to have +1 r +2 weapons (maybe +1 Elemental) could be common enough to appear on store shelves, especially for common weapons for the area, but likely still only a handful behind the counter, or for the elite soldiers in the armory. Makes sense the local clergy could have healing potions available that a player can buy, but only if at least one player is a follower of that deity. Scrolls and arcane potions could be available (or commissioned) but they will need to find the local wizard.
In the field, such items should be obtainable, but bear in mind that classes other than wizards and clerics often get spells in either a higher spell slot or at a higher caster level and thus be more expensive (though admittedly slightly more powerful, but not by enough to justify the cost (probably)). Traveling entertainers would have potions brewed by a bard, while elven villages probably by a druid or ranger.
Bazaars, like those often depicted in Arabian settings could have a plethora of magic items, but likely will still take some sleuthing to find out which vendor has it. Bigger cities could also have a back ally shop that deals in various trinkets and charms that can also have a variety of magic items, if still in limited quantities amidst a variety of items more purely for decoration or superstitious effect (e.g. does a dreamcatcher really do anything or does it snake oil?). Rewatched Grimm not too long ago and there was a shop that had mostly ingredients and created potions on order most of the time, so an ingredient shop with a few items (for personal use if not necessarily for sale) can also exist.
But these are for just where players can find such items, and most of them of lower level. My bigger problem is going on an adventure and finding a +4 halberd of demon slaying when we're not fighting demons and (more importantly) no one in the party uses a halberd. Is it so unreasonable to try and tailor magic items found to what the party can use instead of always rolling on a table? Remember, also, that the best magic items are probably being held AND used by the commanding baddy of the encounter? Remember also that +1 and +2 weapons could also be used by the more elite soldiers, but the better grunt community will probably have basic or shoddy weapons.
Treasure expressed in gold pieces is also kind of counter-intuitive. I'd much rather find art objects and gemstones (all of which needs to be appraised) to spend/trade for more valuable items. Coin is still important, but more "realistic" to be carrying around 10,000GP worth or gemstones than actual coin. I'm sure there are enough message boards and social media sites available in today's world where any GM can find a good number of descriptions (from basic to complex) for any number of art items (be it a golden comb with gems encrusted into it up to a detailed description of the Mona Lisa without actually stating it's name). If I could realistically have a base of operation I'd actually be inclined to keep art objects myself.
From 1E on, I had some version of magic item shop. After three plus robberies, I went to a magic broker. You ask/put at item up for sale and in three to five shipping days the items are swapped. Now generally most of my games were modules, so the players had excess magic items and gold.
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.
These are some really good points. Magic shops do make items feel less special. That said, settings where magic users are more common feel artificial if no one is making and selling magic items.
Personally, I prefer settings with more moderate levels of magic in the world. I don't like to run settings where everything cool happened in the past.
I was going to suggest magick shops that made consumable items.
You touched on it in the video, mentioning that you like having potions and scrolls in shops.
I agree, though I think this reflects the change from seeing potions as resources to be used between fights to ways to keep parties alive in combat.
5e is often not treated as a resource management game, as half the party can see in the dark, and many groups forget to track food and weight. Additionally, many groups allow easy long rests which magickally heal the party, meaning that hit points and spell slots are often really easy to replenish.
DnD was created with resource management in mind. Magick items were super rare because they were shortcuts around deadly resource issues. An everburning torch allows a high level party to explore a dungeon for days at a time, making it invaluable, for example.
Having a light cantrip, dark vision or forgetting to track the torch's burn time negates that.
But if you do track those resources, you can make weaker items that arent as rare. A torch that 3 times as long as normal but weights the same as a normal torch. A weapon or tool that allows the use of a cantrip or low level spell before needing to be recharged with a spell slot.
Minor Scrolls and healing potions that can be bought in major towns so that plauers do mot need to retirn to town to get healed.
Personally, magic items help to flavor the setting, so as a worldbuilder, I'm ok making them slightly less special, if it makes the setting much more special. But I like having powerful items be rare too. I really like your idea of making powrful magick items show up in odd places and more informal shops than dedicated magic shops.
I think I may keep lesser items in small businesses, but implement more commission type businesses.
I like the idea of a craftsman being able to perform one or two minor enchantments amd selling those items in a town for high prices.
Nobility willing to pay for cloaks that keep the rain from touching theor clothing? Hell, yeah!
A theives den where someone will craft a specific disguise for a hogh price? That's great!
Just need to work on making lesser items that have limitations... amd figiring oit a way around DnD's broken spell system.
made worse by long rest
I think low level items should be available for sale bit you have definitely convinced me that magick shops may not be the best aesthetic for this.
Also, I was goong to suggest
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.
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 pulled this video up after yet another day of moving houses (almost done thankfully, got one more car trip plus cleaning and garbage to deal with) and the opening with the new set was just too real man.
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
I have also started to feel largely the same about magic item shops in my own games, and one of my preferred solutions is giving the players the opportunity to at least hear about a local mage who specialises in crafting and enchanting items. Then if they manage to get friendly enough with the mage they find out they don't keep a stock of items for sale but do work on commission for certain people who can afford such services. This way the players get to more directly specify what they want and have a potential avenue to purchase the item but it isnt just handed to them on a platter. The mage might require the gathering of rare components as well as a substantial amount of gold and a layover of time while the item is being made. I also enjoy the concept of some eccentric noble or maybe collector of curiosities that doesn't only sell magic items but who may have an item or two come into their possession from time to time that might be bartered from them in some way. That's just my 2 cents anyway
In my games I got shop "Mage Hand" that specializes in history of the realms. If someone wants to get specific magic item they can try to trace it through history and who currently owns it or where was last seen. To get specific item it's adventure on it's own, negotiation, archaeology, heist...
Nice!
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.
You actually just inspired me to finalize this stuff. In my world powerful magic items are rare because the source of all magic gets unstable at a certain intensity causing deadly repercussions. Because of this, reckless use of magic was practically outlawed, leaving behind a handful of relics that didn't end in disaster from an age long past either circulating through the hands of adventurers few and far between or lost in dungeons of old.
I’m glad I could help! This sounds pretty cool 😁
I have a version of Whatcha Selling - Whatcha Buying from RE4 as a demon lord who can randomly appear during a long rest
I am currently worldbuilding for a new campaign (We're not using the dnd system, though). Specialized magic item shops to me always seemed wierd. But I still want magic items to be available for sale. The way I plan to handle it is to have magic items available at whatever type of shop makes the most sense for any given item. For example healing potions might be found at an apothecary, and magic cloaks could be bought from a tailor. Some random items could always pop up at any type of second hand shop or flea market. Magic is very common in my world, so it makes sense to have magic items broadly available. However most of the stuff you can buy is going to be of lower quality and fairly simple in enchantment and mostly gimmicky, like magical waterproofing on a bag, or maybe the enchantment is going to waer of over time. That way I can still create magic items that feel very special to my players. I do plan on something along the lines of Matt Mercer's vestiges of divergence. Something that can level up with the players and has it's own piece of lore. Not every item has to be special. I think it's only realistic to put of the rack "mass-manufactured" and luxury, costom shop magic items into my world.