I am now well into running the first chapter of Shackled City (located on Golarion, in Sargava, about 50 miles east of Eleder). I have made judicious use of the various community resources, including the (slightly modified) version of Skie's Treasury thereof.
The PCs have just found Starbrow and made a quick jaunt to Skie for the first time before they go back down to try and search for the "R" and "A" keys...
Now, while I made sure to enable the PCs to be able to buy a Wand of Lesser Vigor, they want Skie to see if she can get them another one.
I had, in my own mind, sort of considered that the PCs should be able to put magic items on order, for stuff that is not immediately available in Skie's shop (especially for stuff like that that is basically standard gear these days). I wanted to make it so they they couldn't just buy anything they wanted (for once, normally I'm pretty lenient), but at the same time, I don't want to completely block them from stuff.
So, I had half figured that Skie (and/or the merchants, especially Maavu's Imports) should be able to have such items imported. I thought I had made a proper note somewhere, but apparently not!
So then: how do we think this is best handled. At the moment, the PCs have left Skie with the full market price (and expect to pay the rather small current import tax), which was a fair spur-of-the-moment decision.
(One of the PCs knows Skie quite well - his mother was part of Skie's adventuring party, but she retired to have him a little before it all went pair-shaped, so she's Auntie Skie and thus they are quite happy to trust her.)
What I'm looking for suggestions on is:
a) what extra price (if any) ought to be on top of the market price (in terms of a cut for any importer (if we decide that it is unlikely skie has her own contacts)) and what tax the city will put in on it.
(Taking the comjunity tax notices, the tax on magic items coming in on Chapter Four is still pretty small, about 1 gp per magic item, so at this stage, it's not likely to be more than a few copper or whatever.
I noiminally said that as the current import tax is 1 cp per 100lbsm, magic items would probably be more like something like 1 cp per 100gp's worth as a starter for ten 9bvut also told the players that I needed to go away and think about ot properly.)
b) How ong should this ought to take? I'm thinking there should be a (randomised) time-frame of weeks involved (less for an item like this which would be assumed to be a common item in our paradigm (as or more so than a wand of CLW), higher for other items (like, say, stuff out of the Magic Item Compendium etc).
What do you think?
Those are all workable options. Another idea I used was to let the party shop from the Bluecrater Academy which has (in my world) a bin of items created by students pursuing magical studies. The items may not work exactly as intended all the time but they are available at reduced rates and generally available if on the lower end of the power spectrum.
IIRC The hardcover suggests that if your players want something that Skie doesn't have, she can get it through Maavu's imports in 2d6 days. This is the approach I'm taking.
Skie likes helping young adventurers. I think that whatever tax the city places on the items she may just eat. She's not out to get rich, just to live comfortably.
The hardcover also says that the Temple of St. Cuthbert has an abundance of healing items. Mostly potions and scrolls I think. But you can add in wands. It can help endear the party to Jenya and St. Cuthbert.
I take these questions as more World Design, less PC management. As in, I'm going for a "realistic" feel to my campaign setting, rather than worrying about how it impacts the PC's.
So my approach with Skie's magic shop is:
1) Skie has a certain inventory, that I'm getting from fan-written material. It is what it is. It's a medieval game, and these are high-cost items, so limited choice is logical to me.
2) The taxes I've imposed (I'm in Zenith Trajectory) are 10%. I think that's from the book. Some of my PC's hate this and protested to the Mayor, because the players aren't used to taxes impacting their purchasing power. Role-playing fun-ness.
3) Some magic items I treat as "fast moving consumer goods" that Skie tries to always have in stock. Specifically, if you buy all the CLW potions or the Fireball scroll, wait a week and it will be in stock again.
4) The prices magic items are sold for are non-negotiable and the same anywhere there's a legitimate dealer in the World of Greyhawk, set by the Mage's Guild in Greyhawk City. People don't mess with the Mage's Guild.
5) Ditto on robbing a magic store. You probably can, but nobody wants to find out what threat the Mage's Guild really is.
6) Every magic shop can BUY for whatever price they want. The rules in SCAP are fine on this, as I remember. Since it costs 50% of value to make an item, 60% of "guild retail price" is the minimum, and from there is negotiable to a max of about 80%.
7) If you want something Skie doesn't have in Cauldron, you could ask her to get it for you. Some items could be locally made. Others would need to be imported from Sasserine, and if Sasserine doesn't have it, imported from across the Azure Sea -- most likely from Keoland, but it could be from Greyhawk City or Ahlissa. A ship carrying it could be waylaid by pirates from the Scarlet Brotherhood, and Skie would need the money up front. I think we're talking a few weeks delay from overseas, and 20% "shipping and handling fee".
8) The other possibility would be to contact Saeker, a retired PC from a different campaign, whose player wanted to retired him as an NPC trading magic items. He was active as an NPC in one of my campaigns, trading magic items for the small fee of his Greater Teleport spells to bring them from the great city of Rel Astra or another contact elsewhere. My SCAP party doesn't know Saeker yet, but it's a possibility they could learn about at higher level. The "Saeker option" is fun to me, and basically means: if you got the money and connections, and it exists and is for sale, you can get it.
+1 Flaming Mighty +4 STR Composite Longbow? No prob.
+5 Holy Avenger, nope, none currently for sale, even through the Saeker network. Give him a couple months, and he might someone willing to trade it for a quest . . .
Have you used the Skie's Treasury document/thread? It changes per chapter/adventure. I would use this as a base and then add in a couple of items specifically suited for your party.
I've never liked the idea of players requesting/demanding specific items. In my humble opinion, magical items should be scarce and treasured not just commonplace pieces of equipment. If they really want an item I would make it either extremely expensive, time consuming to track down and/or requires a challenge to acquire (ie track down a rare material, seller or alchemist).
If you need any resources such as all the Skies Treasury Documents, Cauldron Coins, City of Sasserine etc please let me know
Forgotten about this thread...
Have you used the Skie's Treasury document/thread? It changes per chapter/adventure. I would use this as a base and then add in a couple of items specifically suited for your party.
If you need any resources such as all the Skies Treasury Documents, Cauldron Coins, City of Sasserine etc please let me know
I was using Skie's treasury documents, and when I got to either Chapter 2's list, I discovered that I'd answered my own question months and months in advance of th quest and just completely forgotten about it.
Starting with this chapter, the total amount of money the PCs have spent buying items from the treasury less the amount they have sold (in both cases, ignoring the Adventurer’s discount) functions as a floating value of items not listed. There is a 50% chance of any item under 3000gp being in stock and a 5% chance of any item under 15000gp being in stock. Skie can order in any such item through Maavu Imports in 2D6 days.
Any items over 15000gp require D6 weeks to import (again through Maavu’s Imports) anf require a 50% deposit of the base (not dicount) price.
Should the PCs ever wish to re-buy an item they have sold, there is a 25% chance per month that it has been sold on.
I've never liked the idea of players requesting/demanding specific items. In my humble opinion, magical items should be scarce and treasured not just commonplace pieces of equipment. If they really want an item I would make it either extremely expensive, time consuming to track down and/or requires a challenge to acquire (ie track down a rare material, seller or alchemist).
Trouble is, 3.x ties a little too much capability (especially for the non-casters) to the numbers they require. So, in general, I allow them to buy what they want. (Within reason. Prior AD&D-converted-3.5 modules taught me the hard way to keep half an eye on treasure handed out, lest you get into an impossible loot spiral, like that game that ended in low Epic[1].) And I do enough work DMing, I can't be arsed to go through and personalise all the trasure to the PCs (no do I feel versimilitudially, I should) when they know better than I do what they want/need.
I am also, if I'm honest, not at all a fan of the "make the best of a bad job" philosphy in general, and that extends to equipment. (After all, as the DM, i get to chose all the stuff I want for my NPCs - when I'm not running stuff out of a book - so why should I do that for the PCs as well?)
Said rules above, then, are a reasonable compromise.
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In my own campaign world (which I only run for day sessions, since it takes me a *loooot* of prep-work for even a day quest, as opposed to the APs I run on Golarion as my weekly sessions), as I was tossing out the entire bestiary and starting from scratch, I took the oppotunity to instead have a "it's you, not your gear" policy. Wherein I used the wealth-by-level to approximate a standard progression of magic weapons/armour/deflection/natural armour/resistance and stat bonuses, and just gave everything that progression, with some tweaks. So everyone above 2nd level that picks up a sword is using a +1 weapon, and everyone gets a level bonus to AC (extrapolated bonuses for the ACs). Magic weapons and masterwork stuff still exists, but enhancement bonus have been made to be non-magical and magic gear now grants untyped bonuses (but is approximately two pluses more expensive). This has the added benefit of making DR/Magic actually meaningful again, and magic becomes almost another sort of material. (And a +0 magic weapon is viable; it's basically just a masterwork weapon which will penetrate DR/Magic.) Magic items, therefore, can be rare and meaningful, because they Do Stuff and opposed to having basically be there so the characters aren't underpowered. (Given that *I* am basically the most mechanically adept of the group, the monsters are well optimised, so they need it!)
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[1]Thanks to Vecna Lives!, Vecna Reborn and Die Vecna Die!, the PCs had enough cash from selling stuff in Sigil that when a NPC guiding them towards a (stupendously level-buffed) Dragon Mountain that formed the end of the campaign got killed, they didn't bat an eyelid forking over for a True Res. I mean, at that point, they were literally taking shopping trips to Sigil. The archer chap has capped his weapon out with extra enchantments at +10 and every non-plus add-on he could find...! (Because, of course, to make the denizens of Dragon Mountain work, I'd had to buff *them* up with more gear and the PCs then got that and so on...!)