Hi all,
To the GMs out there: If given a stat block for a city in a published product, using the new city stat format presented in the Game Mastery Guide, would you prefer to see something like "Minor Items 4d4; Medium Items 3d4; Major Items 2d4" or be presented with a pre-generated list of specific items (as was done for Ravengro in volume one of the Carrion Crown AP)? Any feedback appreciated. Thanks!
M
Hi all,
To the GMs out there: If given a stat block for a city in a published product, using the new city stat format presented in the Game Mastery Guide, would you prefer to see something like "Minor Items 4d4; Medium Items 3d4; Major Items 2d4" or be presented with a pre-generated list of specific items (as was done for Ravengro in volume one of the Carrion Crown AP)? Any feedback appreciated. Thanks!
M
Personally, I'd like to generate the items myself, either by rolling, using Nethys's excellent Random Item Generator, or picking items that make sense for my group.
Thanks! That's what I was thinking...and assuming others might want as well. Any contrary opinions?
M
I'm lazy. I like having the work done for me - or at least having a suggested/sample list pregenerated. Also, if a particular item *needs* to be included for an adventure-specific reason, definitely list it and mark it as such.
I like to see both, if there's space for them. Usually I enjoy determining what items a city holds on my own, but sometime's it's nice to have a pregenerated list instead.
I like having it generated. if I want to change it I can but it makes it easier. it also gives examples to compare to. if I make my own city.
I cannot exaggerate my hatred for the completely random item concept with no thought to actual trade involved.
When my characters get to town and find that there are no cloaks of resistance, no +1-3 armor, shields or weapons, no wand of cure light, no wand of lesser restoration, no scroll or raise dead, and so forth, but instead a wand of Erase, a siangham +5, a potion of virtue, a scroll of <insert save dependent divine spell here>, etc, I freaking rage. All but useless trash. Which begs the question: WHY? Why was these items even MADE? Why did the merchant think that THIS would be a wise investment of his gold? "Utter nonsensical garbage? Yes please! I want my shelves stacked with it! Who cares if adventurers come along with wagons of gold, willing to pay through the nose for the tools of the trade that keeps our village safe from the dragons and whatnot?"
More than meta-gaming, more than out of character talk, more than silly rules abuse, THIS breaks flow and immersion for me. Where is the internal sense? Where is the basic idea of supply and demand? Would it be so hard to make a function that made it 20-50 times more likely to get useful gear than garbage? I feel like I am going down to the computer store and finding that they do not have RAM, GPUs, or HDs, but they DO have vintage WW2 radios, cassette decks, used wheelbarrows and ice-cream.
/rant
Thanks for the feedback, guys. Very much appreciated!
M
To OP:
In a city stat-block I'd be more interested in what types of items can be made by crafters in the city, and what would have to be imported, in addition to what king of goods that are usually traded there.
EDIT: Even better, perhaps, would be to know specific locations in said city where one could get magic weapons/armor/etc up to a certain price level. Perhaps some things are just available from the local thieves guild and so on. /EDIT
On random magic items in cities:
I find that my players never bother with randomly generated items when shopping, and thus is needless use of adventure space/prep time. If they're buying things in the first place, then they usually know what they want. Random items in a city feels a bit out of place, like Kamelguru mentioned above.
We found that the best solution for our group was to go with the base value and 75% chance (or whichever percentage you think fits for a particular place/type of item) of any item below that value being available. Anything else can often be acquired by placing a special order (by crafting locally or importing from elsewhere) with an increased cost if they want it more quickly than what could normally be achieved.
In my current Kingmaker/Slumbering Tsar campaign my players' characters (lvl 11) have just begun taking shopping trips by teleporting to Absalom whenever they want to buy and sell in larger quantities.
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I cannot exaggerate my hatred for the completely random item concept with no thought to actual trade involved.
When my characters get to town and find that there are no cloaks of resistance, no +1-3 armor, shields or weapons, no wand of cure light, no wand of lesser restoration, no scroll or raise dead, and so forth, but instead a wand of Erase, a siangham +5, a potion of virtue, a scroll of <insert save dependent divine spell here>, etc, I freaking rage. All but useless trash. Which begs the question: WHY? Why was these items even MADE? Why did the merchant think that THIS would be a wise investment of his gold? "Utter nonsensical garbage? Yes please! I want my shelves stacked with it! Who cares if adventurers come along with wagons of gold, willing to pay through the nose for the tools of the trade that keeps our village safe from the dragons and whatnot?"
More than meta-gaming, more than out of character talk, more than silly rules abuse, THIS breaks flow and immersion for me. Where is the internal sense? Where is the basic idea of supply and demand? Would it be so hard to make a function that made it 20-50 times more likely to get useful gear than garbage? I feel like I am going down to the computer store and finding that they do not have RAM, GPUs, or HDs, but they DO have vintage WW2 radios, cassette decks, used wheelbarrows and ice-cream.
/rant
Remember that you have a 75% chance/week of finding any magic items up to a maximum price set by the city population and wealth.
With a price of 6.125 (costly component included) you can find a scroll of Raise dead in any Large city (population 10.001-25.000).Personally I hate scrolls of Raise dead as item sold by your "standard" merchant or as random treasure.
For me they are an item linked to the church of the priest that made them.
A scroll of Raise dead (or Resurrection) made by a priest of Asmodeus will not work in the hands of a priest of Cayden.
You can try to fool it using UMD but you have to be very sure you could make the roll. A failure would be messy.
So I prefer people buying the scroll from their church (and so it is not subject to the random" roll but from the highest available priest of the appropriate deity) or from a closely allied church.
As that home rule can be sometime penalizing for the players I try to enforce it in a soft way, so an appropriate priest in a large town (generally capable of casting level 5 spells) will have one at hand for emergencies and will be willing to part from it for a believer.
On random magic items in cities:
I find that my players never bother with randomly generated items when shopping, and thus is needless use of adventure space/prep time. If they're buying things in the first place, then they usually know what they want. Random items in a city feels a bit out of place, like Kamelguru mentioned above.We found that the best solution for our group was to go with the base value and 75% chance (or whichever percentage you think fits for a particular place/type of item) of any item below that value being available. Anything else can often be acquired by placing a special order (by crafting locally or importing from elsewhere) with an increased cost if they want it more quickly than what could normally be achieved.
If the characters have the time to wait for the oreder to be fulfilled (generally several months) and the item is i within the "purchase limit" of the city I use the same approach.
All that said I like to roll some random item. sometime that way I end generating the oddball item that no one has thought to search for or some item outside the normal price boundaries.
Naturally it require some pruning and adjustment of the items, as a randomly rolled holy, vicious, good outsiders bane sword would be a bit strange.
The random nature of the items reflect their origin. After all our players often found "useless" items during an adventure and try to sell them to local merchants.
Someone 300 years ago has thought that the +5 punching dagger was very cool and had the money have it made and now the characters have found it in a tomb. Most players would be happy to trade it for a more common +3 sword or axe and some extra cash (or even no extra cash).
Same thing for a lot of stuff.
The reason why magic items merchants by at 50% of the "new" cost is born from this kind of situation. For them the 100% markup from the price they paid make it worthwhile to spend the money and wait months or even years before selling. In the meantime the trade of "common" items still keep them in a positive cash flow.
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Hi all,
To the GMs out there: If given a stat block for a city in a published product, using the new city stat format presented in the Game Mastery Guide, would you prefer to see something like "Minor Items 4d4; Medium Items 3d4; Major Items 2d4" or be presented with a pre-generated list of specific items (as was done for Ravengro in volume one of the Carrion Crown AP)? Any feedback appreciated. Thanks!
M
Both. Even if I tend to limit the availability of the magic market a lot.
I like the pregenerated list, 'cause it gives me a quick reference of stuff available when I'm in a pinch, and it also works as a refence to thematically characterize the settlement in available goods (maybe lots of potions, or strange wands, perhaps mostly weapons and armors, a good selection of wondrous items, even a couple of powerful rings, etc.).
I like the generic random format 'cause if I have a specific idea in mind and enough time to rework the list from the ground up, I don't have to retro-engineer the exact number of dice I can roll to generate the list - a very minor hassle, but a hassle nonetheless.
Kamelguru, I would have used 8-track players instead of cassette players... :D
I cannot exaggerate my hatred for the completely random item concept with no thought to actual trade involved.
When my characters get to town and find that there are no cloaks of resistance, no +1-3 armor, shields or weapons, no wand of cure light, no wand of lesser restoration, no scroll or raise dead, and so forth, but instead a wand of Erase, a siangham +5, a potion of virtue, a scroll of <insert save dependent divine spell here>, etc, I freaking rage. All but useless trash. Which begs the question: WHY? Why was these items even MADE? Why did the merchant think that THIS would be a wise investment of his gold? "Utter nonsensical garbage? Yes please! I want my shelves stacked with it! Who cares if adventurers come along with wagons of gold, willing to pay through the nose for the tools of the trade that keeps our village safe from the dragons and whatnot?"
More than meta-gaming, more than out of character talk, more than silly rules abuse, THIS breaks flow and immersion for me. Where is the internal sense? Where is the basic idea of supply and demand? Would it be so hard to make a function that made it 20-50 times more likely to get useful gear than garbage? I feel like I am going down to the computer store and finding that they do not have RAM, GPUs, or HDs, but they DO have vintage WW2 radios, cassette decks, used wheelbarrows and ice-cream.
/rant
Personally, this is why I always use the random item generation tables as supplementary items to add color to a shop.
Let's say you've got a magic items trader. Half of his business is operating at a pawn shop for unwanted magical items--reflected in the random assortment of grot from the random item generator--but some of it is you as GM deciding exactly what this shop will have on hand. Recent game, the players went to a medium size town whose main business and attraction was a public gladiatorial arena. Consequently, I said that all manner of healing items, from wands of healing to potions of healing, were well stocked at all the shops. Why? Because they're an evergreen item that the merchants in town know that they're going to be able to move. Consequently they order lots of them and trade for more. I also added in a few more magic weapons, because it was reasonable and made sense.
Other towns? If there's suddenly a plague of undead descending on a town, you can bet that the magic items dealer is out of anti-undead items either because there's been a run on the market or because he's taken them off the shelves for his personal use. Yes, he's ordered more, and he'll happily buy any such items the party wishes to sell--and for more than the standard 50% pawn shop deal--but that's what makes sense.
You have to adjust things to fit the story you're telling or it seems nonsensical, but having intriguing and unusual things for sale actually helps with believability because that's what real merchants do.
I recently went to a little shop that sold fancy homemade beef jerky. They had all sorts of different flavors, and the shop was inside an old historic railway caboose. At one end was a display case filled with what is probably the world's foremost collection of antique electric railway signal lanterns. Why? Because the shopkeeper's grandfather was the inventor and the shopkeeper decided to display the collection.
Translated into a fantasy setting, this explains why the village witch who reads tea leaves, tells fortunes, and sells the occasional potion has a sword of dragonslaying on the wall of her tea room. Why? Because she inherited it from her great uncle so-and-so, the famous dragonslayer, but since she's old, and she doesn't have any children likely to go into the dragonslaying business, yes, she'd be willing to part with it for book standard price and go on that witch's dream vacation she'd always wanted.
Or maybe some goatherd found it in a cave in the hills and sold it to the witch because she was the only magic items dealer he knew and she either got it for a song or else is being somewhat more moral and is selling it on commission. Yes, a real dragonslaying sword, found in the hills behind our little village. Who woulda thunk it?
A little backstory and you can explain almost every item.
The thing that's unreasonable is to expect every magic shop effectively has a magic Fed Ex truck dumping items on their doorstep every day so whatever items the merchant wants to carry are always there.
@Diego Rossi: The scroll of raise dead was just an example of something that is actually useful. And there is a very good in-game reason that they are for sale; the church of Abadar exists.
The 75% system is OK for the most part, but it seems that after the new city rules, even mighty Katapesh and Absalom are stuck at a pathetic 16k limit. The places where people used to come by magic from across the world explicitly to trade, no longer holds any pull.
lots of stuff
While I agree that there should be some room for variety, my argument is that in a high magic setting, items that take a day or less to create, and are wanted at any given time, should be made available.
While I am all about having good flavor, and applaud in-game consistency, that also only goes so far. If you have an active enough imagination, you can think of a backstory of virtually anything. Heck, the mentioned wand of virtue could have been made by an abusive cleric who enjoyed hitting his children, but did not want there to be any marks. Bam, instant story. And maybe a side-quest to kill an evil cleric. But when half the list of pre-generated stuff is inane garbage, things go from "Oh, that is interesting" to "...seriously?", and I can't wrap my mind around the notion that someone sat down and spent time and gold to MAKE all this crap.
As for the outbreak and high demand, sure, that will explain why someone is out of something right then and there. But how will you sell that Katapesh do not have a scroll of Endure Elements for sale? It is always hot, such items are always in demand, which means the supply if naturally going to increase.
Just small nuisances, sure, but they are so easily remedied with only slightly more complex rules in place. Like 99% to find anything that is less than 1% of the purchase limit, so huge towns don't randomly run out of dirt-common lv1 scrolls, as there should be more than one shop that offers scribing on the spot. "Sit down, have some tea, and your scroll will be ready in 15 minutes."
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I like the variable number of items for the city.
What would be more useful is knowing how many crafters there are in the city: class/level/feat or craft skill
[Edit] OR - possible a variable number of crafters and a class level limit.
i.e. village/small town: 1d4 magic crafters, 2d6 mundane crafters level cap: 6th.
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@Diego Rossi: The scroll of raise dead was just an example of something that is actually useful. And there is a very good in-game reason that they are for sale; the church of Abadar exists.
The 75% system is OK for the most part, but it seems that after the new city rules, even mighty Katapesh and Absalom are stuck at a pathetic 16k limit. The places where people used to come by magic from across the world explicitly to trade, no longer holds any pull.
The scroll was a good start point for my meandering comments. And it was a good example how a decidedly powerful item was available in reasonably small town.
Without the costly component it would be available in a town with a population of 2.000 souls, if I recall exactly.I like to have a decent quantity of random stuff as it satisfy my idea that most of the market for pricey magic item is random recovered stuff.
As already said even in a medium city you will find most of the potions and scrolls 75% of the time. It is only reasonable that some stuff will run short. We aren't playing in a world with assembly lines but a world where the producers are artisans crafting stuff individually, so a minimal delay can make a item unavailable for a week or more.
Costly stuff generally will be recovered items or items made on ordination (and there the max wealth for the city is the limiting factor).
A gem of seeing is a very good item but I would not construct one, spending 75 days and 37.500 gp to sell it on the open market. Especially as I would not get the full sale price if I was working trough a intermediary and probably would wait for months before getting my money back.
My best bet would be to spread the word around that I was willing to take jobs and pay the magic shop owners a percentage on every job they find me. So I would not be giving pre-produced items to a shop to sell but waiting for specific orders.
Some item I have in my game world wasn't produced to be sold but because it was useful for some member of the group and one of the players had the spells and the feat. or because it was fun to produce it.
In the firs edition of AD&D the STR 6 mage was the proud owner of a girdle of goblin strength that gave him str 10 (so he was capable of carrying around his spellbooks).
The firs magic item produced by one of my player in D&D 3.0 was a cap of sleep. You had to put it on the head of someone to put him to sleep. It was never used for that function but the sorcerer that constructed it used it to get a good night of sleep even when there was some disturbance (we ruled that even if he was too high in level to be affected by the spell it helped him get to sleep).
There are plenty of +1 gauntlets of dexterity, circlets of intelligence and so on that were produced because they were sufficient get to an even value in the characteristic, so enough to get the next bonus.
Something that I would like to see more often in the magic shops are the oddball items that were produced for comfort, not for combat use.
The levitating hammock, the mosquito net that repel insects and so on.
I bet they would be much more common than a +1 icy burst evil outside bane sword.
lots of stuffWhile I agree that there should be some room for variety, my argument is that in a high magic setting, items that take a day or less to create, and are wanted at any given time, should be made available.
While I am all about having good flavor, and applaud in-game consistency, that also only goes so far. If you have an active enough imagination, you can think of a backstory of virtually anything. Heck, the mentioned wand of virtue could have been made by an abusive cleric who enjoyed hitting his children, but did not want there to be any marks. Bam, instant story. And maybe a side-quest to kill an evil cleric. But when half the list of pre-generated stuff is inane garbage, things go from "Oh, that is interesting" to "...seriously?", and I can't wrap my mind around the notion that someone sat down and spent time and gold to MAKE all this crap.
As for the outbreak and high demand, sure, that will explain why someone is out of something right then and there. But how will you sell that Katapesh do not have a scroll of Endure Elements for sale? It is always hot, such items are always in demand, which means the supply if naturally going to increase.
Just small nuisances, sure, but they are so easily remedied with only slightly more complex rules in place. Like 99% to find anything that is less than 1% of the purchase limit, so huge towns don't randomly run out of dirt-common lv1 scrolls, as there should be more than one shop that offers scribing on the spot. "Sit down, have some tea, and your...
I think you missed the part where I suggested that certain areas have evergreen items they always stock. Scrolls of Endure Elements in Katapesh are just one such example. If they're out, the explanation should be "Ah, worthy one! A thousand pardons! Not one but two caravans of foreign merchants came through and bought all my wares!"
As for stuff that you decide is insane crap that no one would ever make, just redline it and substitute something you consider more reasonable.
As for explanations for why people pay gold to make crap items, you might just explain that as a result of spells that go awry and item creation failure. So someone decides to make a Golembane Scarab and fails. The cursed version is supposed to be a Scarab of Death, but honestly, that's an A1 assassination item, so you decide that something else happens with the magic instead. You instead get, oh, let's call it a Scarab of Warding which is effectively an Alarm spell in scarab form. When you wear it, if anyone tries to pick your pockets, it starts wailing and honking and making loud noises like a Volkswagen bug that's had its car alarm tripped.
So you find this in a treasure hoard. The player asks "What sort of insane person would spend gold to make something like this?" Answer: No one did. They spent money to make a Golembane Scarab and got this instead.