Do you REALLY let PCs buy Magical Items?


Pathfinder First Edition General Discussion

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Because generic magic items are NOT something you pour your heart and soul into. And shouldn't be.

Liberty's Edge

Adventure Path Charter Subscriber; Pathfinder Adventure Subscriber

yes - Minor items yes. Major magic items - no.

Magic items and projected character strength is the math that is built into the game. Pathfinder is bumped up version of 3.x, so everthing is more powerful, which means that magic is necessary. I try to be generous with the minor items in order to have the major magic items seem special. In the groups that we are playing with, the GM's are using AP's which tends to set the bench mark for what the characters should have at a given level.

As a GM, you need to get use to the fact that PCs and monsters are going to have high hps, high AC's and do lots of damage. Its an up tempo game.


Blackerose wrote:


my point exactly..you need to ask the person running the game "can I have this" instead of saying "I have this because the book says I can". Its not so much a house rule, as much as common sense.

Furthermore, the rules don't say that "you can have this", IIRC the rules suggest you to roll for a 70% of finding a specific item in a city if its price is below a certain ammount, otherwise you roll a few available random items, far from MagicMart for high level items!.


Cartigan wrote:
Because generic magic items are NOT something you pour your heart and soul into. And shouldn't be.

thats fine..but players buying nongeneric items can become an issue..more so if you are trying to build a world around how creating a staff of swarms is not as simple as buying a masterwork staff and casting the right spells into it. Its a matter of some people saying well its in the rule book so this is how I am doing it, as opposed to working with the person running the game. Of course the same type brings a dwarf into an elven based game..because "he can".


The problem I see with many of the "scrolls and potions yes but not big stuff" is that you're not limiting everyone to the same degree at that point. I'm not saying those should all be hard to find, but a 7th or 8th level scroll (or higher) in a game I run is going to be as tough to find on the shelf as a +4 or +5 weapon. Because it takes someone just as powerful and specialized to make that scroll.

I really, really dislike the metagame in 3.5, pathfinder, etc. As such, when my players go to a shop I have them, in character, tell me what they want. Then we make it. If we're talking basic strength/dex/int enhancements, those are probably hanging around. That's a common need. If you want a sword that hurts stuff, that can work, and there's likely a good way to do that in character. As in "yes, this smith is actually competent enough to be aware of what a rakshasa is, and knows how to build a spear that will murder it. 2 weeks and 25,000 gold for materials and labor" (I'm making a number up there, no analyzing!).

Currently my players are probably lacking on the big six. However they have other items of interest. The melee monster is rocking a +2 equivalent sword at 9th. He also has a gauntlet that can make the sword into any alchemical material he needs at a given time.

The wizard is probably a bit low on scrolls and other stuff. He does however have a ring of wizardry (1st), several pearls of power, and an int boost item. Not a lot of defensive options, but he's become quite cautious as a result. He's also toting around a reduced-power version of the instant fortress.

The archer probably has the major level equivalent weapon, because he won a commission (at half price) for a major item. He's also rocking a few other interesting bits and pieces. Like a book that casts divinations.

The rogue has a +1 dagger and a nonmagical bow. As well as a cloak of arachnia, ring of sustenance, and a number of items that he wanted for the purpose of his skill monkeyness, not specifically combat

The last time the party went shopping they acquired a number of basics (cloaks of resistance, rings of protection, +2 or +4 stat items, etc), but horded the lion's share of their wealth. This they used to commission a series of pendants, which would do a couple interesting things:

1: message with a reasonable range, at all times.
2: the ability to dimension door one party member to another by activating the pendant. Usable 3x a day between all 5 items.

This was expensive, and the party sacrificed doing better armor enchantments, bigger weapons, etc. for it. But they still did.

That would not have happened if I were running a crippling low-magic game that made items like this only acquirable through GM fiat. Instead I get to reward creativity, and my PCs play creative because they know that this makes the game more fun, and that I'm not the opposition. If they're underpowered, the encounter might be, too.

Now, if they flat out wanted a mage mart? I'd probably do that. I mean, the fighter got his weapon commission in my game by beating the crowd on a black Friday sale (seriously).


At some point I want to remake the magic item availability to be based off of caster level, instead of cost. Just because its 200,000 doesn't mean a novice with enough time and funding can't make it, and thus you can find it, but if you need that expert who has been doing it for years, or the 1 guy in the world who can make it, availability tanks. Thus, high level scroll become rare even though they are cheap, while lower magic stuff becomes easy to find.

Some items may need some rework, like pearls of power scaling based off of level instead of being CL17, but I like the idea and think it would help reduce mage-mart while making it seam more real.


WOW!!!!

I never expected so many responses so quickly. Thanks everyone!! It will take some time to sort through these :)

Ken


mdt wrote:

I actually wrote a program to generate magical items for sale in cities, based on size/value. It's all from the Magic Item Compendium tables.

Then, I print out 'Visit 1', 'Visit 2', 'Visit 3' lists of pregenerated lists. If I think it's a city they'll visit often, I just print out a list before each game.

Then, when they reach a city and start looking around, and let it be kown they're looking for stuff, people crawl out of the woodwork offering things, shopkeepers pull out he special stuff, and they go shopping.

If they want a specific item and can't find it, they have to commission it at a large enough city, or make it themselves.

Awesome. Is that something you can share?


After thinking about this for a while, I couldn't get this quote out of my head...
"You can't always get what you want. But if you try sometimes, you just might find, you get what you need."

That about sums it up.

If the wizard in my campaign is kicking ass but the rogue is lagging, the wizard isn't going to find a shiny new headband of intellect, but the rogue will find a belt of dex.
(Before everyone starts whining up a storm, yes the wizard will get his item, just not for a level or two.)

If the party can custom outfit themselves for a specific adventure, I would say that would make things significantly easier so as to bump the CR down by 1 for many encounters.


Kenneth Cole wrote:
mdt wrote:

I actually wrote a program to generate magical items for sale in cities, based on size/value. It's all from the Magic Item Compendium tables.

Then, I print out 'Visit 1', 'Visit 2', 'Visit 3' lists of pregenerated lists. If I think it's a city they'll visit often, I just print out a list before each game.

Then, when they reach a city and start looking around, and let it be kown they're looking for stuff, people crawl out of the woodwork offering things, shopkeepers pull out he special stuff, and they go shopping.

If they want a specific item and can't find it, they have to commission it at a large enough city, or make it themselves.

Awesome. Is that something you can share?

No, it broke. But from the basic sound of it, it doesn't sound like something similar would be difficult to produce.


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Mortagon wrote:
Yes I allow my players to buy magical items according to the rules in the core book. That said I think it takes away a lot of the wonder from magical items (as do the crafting system), but the game is balanced around pc's having a certain amount of magical gear according to their level. If you remove the pc's chance of getting magical items you will upset the games balance and the pc's might not be able to handle appropriate challenges as written.

Interesting point.

That makes me wonder if the current XP/Challenge Rating system is too mechanized.

As a seasoned DM I can tell you that once you know the game well enough then you can adjust for almost any unexpected change to game balance. I've been able to put low level characters against high level monsters, simply by giving the advantage of terrain and a well placed magical item. I've also had high level characters taken captive by standard kobolds with the same sort of tricks.

I've always thought of the charts in the book as a guideline for beginning DMs and a reminder for long term DMs. Also, it makes the organized play easier.

So, the lesson from your point I think is that until you know the system well enough to be able to manage unbalancing events, don't mess with the game balance :)


Dire Mongoose wrote:

Yes. (Assuming they have access to a big enough city for what they want to buy, every exact thing they want may not be available instantly, etc. -- but basically, yes.)

The main problem with not (unless you try very hard to correct for it) is that scarcity of magic item choice impacts weaker characters more than stronger characters. I'd rather not kick the argument of which classes those are and why, but you can find numerous other threads about that piece of it around if you're curious.

Or, if you want to put that argument aside for a moment, it impacts characters that have a harder time crafting what they want more than characters who have an easy time crafting what they want -- and RAW, even with literally no downtime crafting still happens.

In the "big cities" seems to be a common answer. I'm curious how everyone sets thos shops up. Is there some purveyor out buying them up? Do the PCs go in and sell items? Is it a big pawn shop? Do the purveyors make the items? Are there particular shops for particular items?

I wonder how not having magical items available to buy impacts weaker characters. Could you go into that a little?

I'm curious because it would strike me to just offer more magical items as loot for success. That is, magical items have always seemed a reward system to me. Characters should earn them by either defeating the person who already carries them, or defeating the monster who defeated the person who carried them. Obviously that doesn't work for all magical items. Clothing, scrolls, and potions are the items I make available at most large cities.

Thanks!

Ken


Characters are assumed to have a certain amount of wealth at each level -- but this wealth isn't gold pieces it's equipment. The assumption of these equipment helps define the monsters of that level too -- after all at level 20 the difference between a +5 sword and a +1 sword is 20% to attack and 4 more points of damage. On anywhere from 4~7 swings that amounts to a lot more hits and a lot more damage dealt -- if the monsters didn't take into account that this would be there then they would fall much faster and easier.

Save throw bonuses for monsters compared to save DCs available for casters readily point this out too -- with the absolute best save you can have at each level the monsters stay (roughly) at a 55% chance of failing their saves -- without the items that help the casters have these save throw DCs the spells' success rate quickly plummets up to 35%.

Save throws for the players are vastly different too -- a fighter generally has a great chance of making his save throws -- but if he is lacking his +5 cloak of resistance and his belt of physical perfection (at level 20) and his headband of wisdom his save throw success rate against the best DC possible with a PC caster drops from 55~65% to a to a very poor 15~20%.

Magical items help make up for "poor" (mechanically speaking) choices by the characters by offering them the means to compensate for those choices.

Usually I do not worry about where the item is in the city they are visiting -- just if it is available. Only if my players really enjoy the haggling and tracking down of an item do I actually put that much work into it -- otherwise it's, "You find the item at this stall the guy wants this much for it, let's get back to the part you all enjoy."


mcbobbo wrote:


Call it 'old school' if you wish, but I still see the goal as to tell a heroic story along the lines of a book or movie. If the protagonist could simply buy all the solutions to the problems at hand, it probably wouldn't be very entertaining.

While you're right it wouldn't be very entertaining, that's pretty much how D&D (from 3.0 onwards at least) was designed. You can mitigate that issue by making 'problems at hand' happen in places and methods where the PC's can't just run off and buy an appropriate solution, but you'll never completely resolve it without redesigning the game.


Kenneth Cole wrote:
mdt wrote:

I actually wrote a program to generate magical items for sale in cities, based on size/value. It's all from the Magic Item Compendium tables.

Then, I print out 'Visit 1', 'Visit 2', 'Visit 3' lists of pregenerated lists. If I think it's a city they'll visit often, I just print out a list before each game.

Then, when they reach a city and start looking around, and let it be kown they're looking for stuff, people crawl out of the woodwork offering things, shopkeepers pull out he special stuff, and they go shopping.

If they want a specific item and can't find it, they have to commission it at a large enough city, or make it themselves.

Awesome. Is that something you can share?

Nope, sorry.

It got trashed with a computer death. However, it was only about 5 hours worth of coding. Granted I do database coding every day, so that's probably a very short time if you don't. But, a few days worth of work would do it. I just used the tables from Magic Item Compendium for random items.

I assigned each city a maximum CL rating of stuff available based on the city size. So, the maximum CL was 18 in a massive metropolis or a major port city. Anything above that was either random or required custom creation.

Then you just picked the city size, and it popped out a list of random items. I did a funky formula that had the number of magic items at a given level based on the maximum CL of items available. Basically, it was like 1d4 for max level, 1d6 for max-1, 1d8 for max-2, 2d6 for max-3, 3d6 for max-4, 4d6, 5d6, and then 6d6 for every level under that. Then loop through and print the random items.

Funniest look I saw on one of my player's faces was they came across a +2 tower shield... built for a colossal giant. :) I ended up having the tower shield be part of the guy's shop, the entire side wall. :)


I ran a successful low magic D&D 3.5 campaign for years. However, one problem I ran into was PCs would occasionally acquire magic items they had no desire to use yet were loathe to discard because of the perceived value of such items. The magic items would then become dead weight, eternally carried around because there was no way to get rid of them. I eventually succumbed and created a black market run by the thieves guild to trade in magic items so my PCs could unload their unwanted stuff. Unfortunately our group disbanded before I could implement it, but it would have ultimately introduced the magic item market into the campaign and may very well have been a mistake. Has anyone else run into this problem, and how did you handle it? Please discuss on this
thread.


Abraham spalding wrote:

...Good Stuff...

Usually I do not worry about where the item is in the city they are visiting -- just if it is available. Only if my players really enjoy the haggling and tracking down of an item do I actually put that much work into it -- otherwise it's, "You find the item at this stall the guy wants this much for it, let's get back to the part you all enjoy."

I just want to point out that what Abraham wrote about magic items at 20th level is not as drastic at the lower levels of the game. Up until about 10th level, +1 or +2 is fine. From 10th to 15th, things begin to ramp up fast, and this is when PCs will really start buying and selling on a scale that can affect the campaign world. From 15th on, magic items become a large part of game balance, and things can get out of hand quickly when the players are throwing around 10K's of gp.

As for magic shops, I kind of break it down by type. Potions and oils shop. Scrolls and spell books. Wands and other consumables. Armory and/or Weapon Emporium, and some sort of Wonderous Things Shoppe. All divine and or holy stuff is specific to churches, and a different economy in ways (you did tithe 15% of all treasure, right?) . I might also include some more high-end shops for higher level characters that might even be on other planes, or pocket dimensions. Basically the idea is to have it make sense that the 3rd level characters can visit the local herb-monger for a potion, but 100,000gp items aren't just sitting in some dusty mom and pop store.

As Abraham mentioned, you only need as much detail as your players require. Most of the time you can handwave the shopping, or run thorough it quick unless you want to role play the haggling and all.


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Fergie wrote:


As for magic shops, I kind of break it down by type. Potions and oils shop. Scrolls and spell books. Wands and other consumables. Armory and/or Weapon Emporium, and some sort of Wonderous Things Shoppe. All divine and or holy stuff is specific to churches, and a different economy in ways (you did tithe 15% of all treasure, right?) . I might also include some more high-end shops for higher level characters that might even be on other planes, or pocket dimensions. Basically the idea is to have it make sense that the 3rd level characters can visit the local herb-monger for a potion, but 100,000gp items aren't just sitting in some dusty mom and pop store.

As Abraham mentioned, you only need as much detail as your players require. Most of the time you can handwave the shopping, or run thorough it quick unless you want to role play the haggling and all.

Yep,

For something like a good sized port city, I like having 4-5 apothecaries in a city (spell components, alchemy, potions), a mage's guild (minor magical items, commisioned magic items, wands & arcane scrolls), 3-4 temples (divine scrolls, potions, minor magical items), 3-4 blacksmiths (magical arms and armor, horseshoes), 3-4 jewelry shops (worn magical items like crowns, etc), 5-6 tailors (magical clothing, capes, headbands, hats), 3-4 cobblers (magical boots and footwear, belts), and 1 or 2 small dusty 'Ye Olden Curio Shoppe' that has mostly junk but also the occasional rare magic item (and also the not so occasional cursed magic item), basically the Jimmy's Pawn Shop of the magical world.

A typical session might be something along the lines of :

Paladin : I really need a new sword, the one I have isn't cutting it anymore. (groans from the table)
Rogue : I need some sniper's goggles, really, seriously. And a magic bow, or to get my MW enchanted.
Sorcerer : I could use a cloak of resistance, bad.
Druid : Well, as long as I'm in town, it would be nice to find some dragonhide armor.
GM (ME) : Ok, so, you ask around about where the shops and such are. The merchant quarter is mostly in the northeast of town, near the nobles quarters. The blacksmiths however, as well as the tanners, are all down by the docks by city decree, nobody wants to live next to the noise or smell.
Paladin : Ok, then we'll all head down to the blacksmith and tanners row first.
Sorcerer : I don't, I don't need any of that, I head off to the merchant quarters and look for clothing stores and tailor shops.
GM : Ok, we'll handle the 3 group first. You head down to the docks area, and it's not hard to find the tanners and blacksmiths row, you just follow the stench of urine. The row is pretty nasty smelling, with the blacksmiths pumping out coal smoke on the left hand side of the road, the tanners reeking of urine on the other side. The largest of the blacksmith shops is not all that big, but it has a lot of stuff set up for sale on display, showing toward the street....

So, the whole shopping thing turns into RP, they interact with NPCs, and I see how they interact and if they take a liking to any of the NPCs. If they do, I stat up that NPC and use them as a hook later. Also the players will often go out of their way to make friends with a couple of people in each new town, in order to have local contacts. All this adds to the depth of the game while allowing them some opportunity to customize their characters without giving carte blanche to do anything under the sun. In other words, a nice balance. I also give XP awards for RP, usually if a whole game is nothing but 4-5 hours of RP (not unusual) then I give out a full CR encounter of their level, then bonus XP to those who do good jobs of RPing their characters.

Ok, cue the extremist crowd crying that RP has nothign to do with the game, and that giving out XP for it is like stealing +1 ogre hooks from goblin babes.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber

Nah mdt, my players just find rping the shopping boring.


Cartigan wrote:
darth_borehd wrote:
Kenneth.T.Cole wrote:

I've noticed repeatedly comments in various threads by players and the game developers that buying magical items is common place.

Now, Pathfinder Society ASIDE (please), how many GMs out there really have players buying magical items like most of us buy appliances at the local store?

A simple Yes/No is good, but comments and advice are appreciated :)

Thanks!

Ken

Kinda.

Merchants hawking "magical" wares are a dime a dozen in my world. However, my players quickly realize that anything they can buy is likely fake or cursed.

I roll some percentile dice. A roll of 1 to 50 means the item is fake. A roll of 51 to 98 means it is cursed somehow (I pick or roll for a random cursed property). A roll of 99 means that it mostly works as advertised but with a drawback (like being stolen and sought after by its owner). If they come up 00, I let the item they are being a real, uncursed, no strings attached item.

After 3 occurrences of this, I would stop buying things in your game and just buy socks to fill with gold to beat people to death with.

LOL. Yes, I have a player whose character constantly gets pissed off about this and smashes things when he realizes he got tricked yet again.

The point being is to lend some verisimilitude to the game.

In the real-world during medieval times, fake holy and magical items were everywhere. There were probably enough pieces of the true cross to build a house. (Even in modern times we have occult shops that sell magick crystals and junk). In a game were magic is real, but rare (this is a low-magic campaign), who would ever sell a magical item like they would sell clothes or livestock? It would be something to be cherished, used often, or passed down to new generations.

Items found hidden away in treasure hordes are usually the real deal (which is why they were so heavily guarded and locked up in the first place!) But I really wanted to discourage the "magic shop in the next town" cliché.

I encourage players to make their own magical items and give them plenty of opportunities to do so. That way, they know they are real.

Oh, and detect magic isn't always perfect and identify takes too long. Just because it has a magical aura doesn't mean it has the properties advertised. I imagine a merchant could get a dagger that has continual flame and magic weapon cast on it and try to sell it before the spell wears off.


Quote:
In the real-world during medieval times, fake holy and magical items were everywhere.

Presumably being bought by high level mages who could detect what the items were and what they did and turn you into a newt if you were being an ass.


Hello any magic item sold in this town = No sorry none sold here

Hello any magic items sold in this town = No sorry none sold here

Hello any magic items sold in this town = No sorry son, none sold here

Hello, any magic items sold in this village = No sorry, have your tried the local caves, dungeons, or underground tunnels?


For pedestrian magical items, which I would describe as a minor wondrous item or any weapon or armor of no greater than +2 enchantment with no more than one special ability, I'm fine with buying and selling without restriction.

And really, provided we're in a moderately well-developed area where they can find a very good craftsman and the right type of caster to enchant something, commissioned work of almost any type is possible - but they might have to wait days or weeks for it to be completed if it's not something you'd think of as commonly stocked.

Now, for really outlandish stuff, like rings of wishes or the old "I wanna buy an apparatus of the crab and retool it to fly in outer space" song and dance*, more intricacies are involved. The only legitimate reason for craft like that to exist is for industrial purposes or military ones - maybe even both. So a PC might have to seduce a dwarven merchant princess whose daddy has the contracts to buy military surplus apparatuses for mining or demolition. Then they might need to find a mage or engineer (or both) who can shield the craft against hard vacuum and figure out a way to propel the goshdarned thing. They need supplies to keep them from starving to death on the trip. They need to know how long it will take to get to the moon. No one is going to spend that much money on an item that is going to kill them as soon as they use it.

So nothing is out of bounds if you really want to buy it. Yay, magical consumer goods economy! But it ain't always as simple as, "Let's go down to SpaceKrabMax and check out the used models."

GMs have to have their fun, after all. We're players too!

* Don't laugh. My players are rough on me.


my saturday DM is such an Asshat. he places all these restrictions on magic items.

1% chance an item will be avaialbe for sale and only in a metropolis. buyingthe item also requires succeeding in a ludicrous diplomacy check

DC 30+caster level sqaured

and he is stingy with the treasure and we haven't seen a single metropolis the whole campaign, and we are curently 6th level.


Short answer: Yes.

Long answer, part 1:

One gaming group I’m in requires a percentage roll for some magic items to see if it’s available. I’m not sure of the DCs, but we roll for items 4th level or higher (or the approximate cost equivalent) in cities and for items 2nd level or higher in a large/trading town - the rarer the item and/or the greater its power, the harder the roll. Finding a magical item of any level in smaller settlements is very unlikely. If you do find it, it’s generally not for sale on a self – you have to buy, beg, borrow or steal it off a resident. Metropolises have whatever your heart desires available, but you’ll want to roll high on a diplomacy check or it will take you awhile to locate it.

It’s a good system for a group that likes a moderate amount of crunch. In practice everybody gets most of what they want when they want it, but has to put in some time and effort to be all decked out. The best part about it is how it takes the onus off the GM to ‘regulate’ magic items on an individual basis, which is pretty much impossible to do fairly and extra work besides. It only slows down the game when the wizard restocks his scrolls. :P

Long answer, part 2:

We will occasionally run in a setting that is grittier, where magic has ‘died’. These come in two flavors.

1) ‘Magic is at a low point in the cycle’. No spells over 5th level. The only magic items in existence are ancient artifacts whose power has mostly been leeched out over the years. Powerful magical beasts and immortals cannot survive long, the magic of their life-force is drained from them. The only way to cast high level spells or for magical creatures to survive is to feed off the magic of an item. This naturally causes any magic item to be desperately hunted and horded by the powerful.

2) ‘Magic has been lost’. Magical items and casters are rare due to arcane and divine knowledge being lost in a cataclysm or forcibly restricted by political leaders. Casters are reviled or feared by common folk and hunted or recruited by the elites. Magic items are extremely rare and attract a lot of attention. Spellbooks are priceless, most casters have to research spells on their own. Oppositely of the first flavor, most of magic users and items you come across will be quite powerful. When any show of magic may get you killed, you tend to keep it subtle so others don’t notice or you make sure your display gives them good reason to think you are too powerful to challenge.


i dont understand the statement "7th and 8th level scrolls are as hard to get as a +4 or +5 magic weapon"

every wizard can make scrolls at 1st lev.

every wizard who can cast those spells will be able to make scrolls of them, So by the time you can cast 7th or 8th level spells, those scrolls will essentially be pretty common, because your own wizard can make them.

Not every spell caster can make magic items. But spell storage at the same level as the party can cast is going to be no big deal.

Now allowing a 3rd level party get 7-8th level spells on a scroll?
It would have something to do with the adventure/storyline

can you imagine how hard the UMD roll would be at that level?


Pathfinder Roleplaying Game Superscriber; Pathfinder Starfinder Roleplaying Game Subscriber

Yes and yes, but generally they are not "shops" in the traditional sense.

Also, where are these great Pathfinder-compatible magical item generators I keep reading about? Can someone link to them? I have yet to find any worth using.


Pendagast wrote:

i dont understand the statement "7th and 8th level scrolls are as hard to get as a +4 or +5 magic weapon"

every wizard can make scrolls at 1st lev.

every wizard who can cast those spells will be able to make scrolls of them, So by the time you can cast 7th or 8th level spells, those scrolls will essentially be pretty common, because your own wizard can make them.

Not every spell caster can make magic items. But spell storage at the same level as the party can cast is going to be no big deal.

Now allowing a 3rd level party get 7-8th level spells on a scroll?
It would have something to do with the adventure/storyline

can you imagine how hard the UMD roll would be at that level?

This is based on the relative rarity of high level casters in most settings. Casters capable of casting spells of 7th,8th, or 9th don't exactly grow on trees. Further they are generally extremely busy doing high level mover and shaker stuff. It's not impossible to get them to make a scroll or two but scribe scroll to order should be relatively rare.

Further the fluff for most settings describes wizards as being jealous and possessive of their spells and thus exceedingly unwilling to give written copies of their spells to potential competitors.

For me and for many other old school DMs this means that high level scrolls are typically found off the corpses of former high level casters. Good spell scrolls and spellbooks are actually a pretty important source of wealth for wizards in many settings.

Now if you play in a high power setting like FR then basically you can't throw a rock without hitting an archmage but that setting is full of exceptionalism.


Yes. No Artifacts (Dragon orb's, etc.) and No Relic/Sets (Magic Item Compendium) are the rules I have pretty much always played by. ALL things not in the PFCORE book are ALWAYS reviewed by the DM first.

As others have said, the game is relatively gear dependent, denying players the ability to customize their character's gear is weak IMO. "My feats are all geared towards longsword and the only magic weapon we've found in 3 levels is a +1 trident? REALLY?"

This reminds me of the thread a while back about 'Monks and Treasure' found (or lack thereof)... "So the demi-lich just happened to have a set of +2 flaming burst nunchucks? That he WASN'T using? Riiiiiiight."

Liberty's Edge

TriOmegaZero wrote:
Nah mdt, my players just find rping the shopping boring.

I cannot wait to DM for you. The "shopping" has sometimes turned out far more eventful than some of the adventures in games I run. I'll introduce you to my friend who played at my table for years and he'll tell you stories.

My favorite: the party was in a town when they were having their monthly "market day" when vendors and whatnot came in to peddle their wares, real carnival atmosphere, lots of stuff going on. The rogue character wakes up, dramatically opens the shutters to his window and announces to the world, flamboyantly, "It's MARKET DAY!"

Ten hours later, he's in a jail cell, head in hands, mumbling "eff market day...".

Everything in between was pure insanity, and I didn't even have to force any of the action, just let stuff develop organically.

Grand Lodge

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Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber

At the same time, the DM Who Shall Not Be Named had us waste a whole session wandering around market stalls with nothing happening.


Kenneth Cole wrote:

In the "big cities" seems to be a common answer. I'm curious how everyone sets thos shops up. Is there some purveyor out buying them up? Do the PCs go in and sell items? Is it a big pawn shop? Do the purveyors make the items? Are there particular shops for particular items?

For me, it depends on the circumstances of the campaign. For example:

Currently, I'm running a Legacy of Fire game; at the point I'm at and the way things have gone, my PCs (who are low-mid level-ish and not extremely wealthy) have strong enough merchant contacts (people who are pretty well placed in that world and owe them favors, etc.) that they can buy anything they can reasonably afford via them. Katapesh (city) isn't all that far away and it's the kind of hive of scum and villiany where just about everything is for sale if you know where to look. They let their merchant allies know what they're looking for and, within reason and given a little time, said allies can track it down.

Kenneth Cole wrote:

I wonder how not having magical items available to buy impacts weaker characters. Could you go into that a little?

Sure: let me try to give you a simple example while trying to not provoke another class wars thread.

Adventurer A is a pretty reasonably optimized-for-damage barbarian. He has a high Strength, he's got good rage powers, he's wielding a two-handed weapon and power attacking and such and generally putting out a lot of damage per hit. He's not cranked to the nines but he does his job of putting martial hurt on the enemies pretty well.

Adventure B is some other kind of warriorish character not built as well. Let's say he's a sword-and-shield guy, but he's not put together all that well and doesn't do much damage or even have a great AC despite his defensive focus.

Both adventurers encounter a lich. Neither has a magic blunt weapon.

For A, that's 15 points of damage off each of his hits, which hurts, but his minimum damage is far above 15 so he's still at least hurting the lich with each hit.

B's not so fortunate; he might need to crit the lich to even hurt it.

Here we had two characters with something of a gulf of combat effectiveness between them; not having the right gear for the situation made it much wider.

I picked a DR situation because I think it's easy to imagine/see the difference without me having to crank out full builds to demonstrate it, but the same thing pretty much holds for all kinds of combat and non-combat situations.


houstonderek wrote:

The "shopping" has sometimes turned out far more eventful than some of the adventures in games I run.

"market day" ... carnival atmosphere

+1

Liberty's Edge

I feed off of really involved players. I let them drive the plot, make up the story the game is about. I figure they know what their characters want out of their lives, and what interests them, better than I do. I know what my NPCs want out of life and stuff, I made them, but the characters? Haven't a clue until they do something.

Grand Lodge

Pathfinder Adventure, Rulebook Subscriber

Sadly, my players are more the "I'm ready for the next scene, Mr. Director" types...

Liberty's Edge

TriOmegaZero wrote:
Sadly, my players are more the "I'm ready for the next scene, Mr. Director" types...

Some players need the DM to wear a conductor's hat, unfortunately.

Dark Archive Contributor

In general, I follow the guidelines in the books. If an item should be available based on the size of the city invovled, it is. I also tend to vary the purchasing descriptions based on the campaign I'm running. If we're playing beer-and-pretzels kick-in-the-door style, it's like a Magic-Mart out there. If I have a bit of concern, I'll introduce the PCs to rare item brokers and let them rely on their backgrounds to find contacts. In a very low-magic game (I'm playing in a Midnight campaign where food seems to be scarcer than anything), obviously anything useful simply isn't parted with.


darth_borehd wrote:
In a game were magic is real, but rare (this is a low-magic campaign), who would ever sell a magical item like they would sell clothes or livestock? It would be something to be cherished, used often, or passed down to new generations.

The average person has far more use for a big bag of money than most magical items. Only people in risky professions (adventurers) or dangerous levels of society (criminals, nobles, merchant lords) have an actual NEED for magic items. This is doubly true in low magic settings, where money is typically at a higher premium (I can't see a low magic, high money campaign, personally...what good would the gold be?).

As for the magic item scam, it's way too easy to get past, and way to cheap (relatively) to not do a proper Appraise/Spellcraft/Identify cycle.


This discussion makes me feel very old.

OT (in general): No shops, but that's not the same as saying magical items aren't sold. It's more like a magic shop would be akin to a shop that sold anything that starts with the letter "R." Instead, it's not unheard of for even a relatively small shop to have one or two special pieces, typically related to its mundane trade, obtained in the course of business.

One thing that is Not Allowed is assuming price = sale price. The Listed Price is used for creation costs and for ease of non-first level character creation. It's nothing to do with how much it goes for.

The goal is not to keep magic rare, but to keep it interesting, and not just the upper level version of the 10' pole. Everything's got a provenance, even if it's "that staff, well, let's see, it must have been the summer of '23, yeah, that's right, Marge had just been born, when this bedraggled lookin' wizard wanders in to town, desperate for cash..."

Now, as to why this makes me feel old, I have to say that I always considered the notion of random treasure just one of the elements of randomness in the game of D&D, no different than a to-hit roll. Uncovering uses for magic with non-obvious benefits is an exercise in creativity. Sought after replacement magical items were a plot hook ("hey, I really want a mace of disruption. Let's hit the library.") as opposed to the basis of a handicap.

And I can see the shifts in philosophy and culture that led here, but, boy is it weird to get it displayed so starkly.


J.S. wrote:

This discussion makes me feel very old.

OT (in general): No shops, but that's not the same as saying magical items aren't sold. It's more like a magic shop would be akin to a shop that sold anything that starts with the letter "R." Instead, it's not unheard of for even a relatively small shop to have one or two special pieces, typically related to its mundane trade, obtained in the course of business.

I remember those days. Magic was rather rare in First Edition because it didn't cost just gold and Xp like later editions, but gold and a point of CON. Since most wizards had average CON at best and it declined with age, few items were made at all.


Thane36425 wrote:
I remember those days. Magic was rather rare in First Edition because it didn't cost just gold and Xp like later editions, but gold and a point of CON. Since most wizards had average CON at best and it declined with age, few items were made at all.

The problem I always had with that system is that while it worked to keep players from crafting much, it completely fell down in terms of explaining why the world was the way it was.

Like: Why would anyone ever burn a point of con to make a paltry +1 sword? Yet that was about the most common permanent magic item.


Dire Mongoose wrote:
Thane36425 wrote:
I remember those days. Magic was rather rare in First Edition because it didn't cost just gold and Xp like later editions, but gold and a point of CON. Since most wizards had average CON at best and it declined with age, few items were made at all.

The problem I always had with that system is that while it worked to keep players from crafting much, it completely fell down in terms of explaining why the world was the way it was.

Like: Why would anyone ever burn a point of con to make a paltry +1 sword? Yet that was about the most common permanent magic item.

If I recall there was only a 5% chance of losing a point of con. Guaranteed con loss was for other uses of permanency. 1st edition had a lot more of a separation between rules for NPCs and rules for PCs than 3rd and later editions do---a lot of stuff was just attributed to really old or skilled NPCs, particularly demihumans in the fluff. The companion set actually had crunch (the elven trees, dwarven forges and the halfling crucible if memory serves) to go along with that fluff, but that never made it into AD&D.


Look in my games you can't buy or sell magical items because magic is rare and wonderful.

*Has a spellcaster that poops out rarity and wonder*
*Finds a sword slightly better then his current sword, throws the rare and wonderful slightly worse sword in the garbage because somehow nobody in the world would want it*
*Watches fighter become hilariously obsolete because monsters require magic items to defeat*

RARE AND WONDERFUL


EWHM wrote:


If I recall there was only a 5% chance of losing a point of con. Guaranteed con loss was for other uses of permanency. 1st edition had a lot more of a separation between rules for NPCs and rules for PCs than 3rd and later editions do---a lot of stuff was just attributed to really old or skilled NPCs, particularly demihumans in the fluff. The companion set actually had crunch (the elven trees, dwarven forges and the halfling crucible if memory serves) to go along with that fluff, but that never made it into AD&D.

You might be right about that. I haven't looked at the core books from first in ages, though I still use the Dungeon and Wilderness Survival Guides.


EWHM wrote:
If I recall there was only a 5% chance of losing a point of con. Guaranteed con loss was for other uses of permanency.

In 2E it's if you cast it at all; I don't have a 1E PHB handy at the moment.

Liberty's Edge

I'm using the 1e PHB as a mousepad. Let me check...

Permanency is an automatic -1 con in 1e.


I'd let them but magic items, or even pay to have magic items enchanted.

but I'd have only enchantments place on them at that point depending on how big the city is....

meaning that village, all you might find is a wizard able to enchant items, but only create +1 gear...


I really like the PF item availability chart. (In 3.5 merchants in the Free City were making thousands of GP per DAY if it only took them 10 years to cycle their stock)

The metropolis has exactly one +7 weapon, and it's a Bec-de-Corbin. (rolled randomly) You can have one made by the hedge wizard yonder, but that'll take 3 months. Plus he's got a back log.


No, there is no MagicMart in my campaigns.


Serpent Skull Spoilers:
We have gotten to part 3 in serpent skull, and are exploring the city of Saventh-Yhi. The GM has some system for magical items, rolling up random items that are found by the various factions, which we can purchase if we first seek out peaceful negotiations with the faction leaders.

This system allows us to barter our not so useful magical items for whatever the various groups have. Last session, we were able to trade in a bunch of minor magical weapons, a superfluous ring of protection, an armor no-one wanted and a hefty in-between sum of gold to obtain a belt of physical perfection +2. This makes us have to jump good finds when they become available, and makes the whole item-buying process more organic and believable.

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