Rastor ran his claw gently down the length of the blade, as if caressing a lover. “The markings here upon the blade are not merely gold, but taurum – the true gold, mined from the Mountains of the East. And there is a thin core of it in the heart of the hilt. The enchantment worked upon this blade sings from the taurum, and its name is nainsyr.”
The subject of whether or not PCs should be allowed to buy magic items is a contentious one. It is felt by many that magic items are That Which Must Be Quested For. They believe that “magic item marts” and the like rob magic items of their majesty, and they consider it absurd that Excalibur might be bartered at some corner store.
Maybe so.
But I’ll note that the buying and selling of magic items has been part of D&D since before it was D&D: The stories of actual play from Arneson’s Blackmoor all suggest a robust magic market, and a number of major powers controlled laboratories and workshops that would crank out magical items for sale (and use!) on a weekly basis.
And as I mentioned in The Local Magic Market, positing a setting where wandering mercenaries go delving into dungeons in order to pull out vast hordes of wealth which frequently include magical treasures, having those wandering mercenaries sell those treasures for gold coins, and then concluding that there’s no way to buy magic items seems unreasonable.
(Although, as I noted at the time, a campaign in which the PCs truly are the only sellers of magic items would be an interesting one, albeit wholly different from a typical D&D campaign.)
In practice, I’ve also found that being able to buy a magic item doesn’t inherently detract from its mystique. Oddly many of the people lamenting the ability to buy magic items are also those who promote minimal backgrounds at character creation because the only thing that matters is what actually happens at the table. In quite a similar fashion, the place where you picked up your +2 sword is only the tiniest fraction of the tales you’ll forge with it. (If it is, in fact, destined to become a memorable and unforgettable treasure.)
At the word, blue lightning sprang from the hilt and ran along the length of the blade – crackling with a vicious smell of ozone. Under her breath Tee murmured, “Let there be lightning.”
You can see an example of this beginning in this week’s campaign journal: The sword Nainsyr goes on to become one of the most recognizable touchstones in the campaign, and its deeds are many and renowned. Perhaps even more remarkable, this specific incident – the shopkeeper pulling out the sword and saying its command word – seems to live quite vividly in the memories of the players who were there. (Most likely because the sword becomes so important.)
Obviously this all happened because I’d put a ton of loving preparation into this sword and was just waiting for an opportunity to give it to the PCs, right?
Well… not really.
Here’s how it went down in play:
- The PCs said, “Tor, you need to get a better sword.” Tor said, “You’re right.”
- They walked across Delver’s Square to Rastor’s weapon shop and said, “Do you have any magic swords?”
- They wanted something better than a basic +1 sword. (If I recall correctly, they’d already looted several of those.)
- I rolled a random magic sword, improvised some cool details about its appearance, and checked my modest lexicon of Elvish words for a command word.
- I delivered these details in character as Rastor.
I then reached for my dice to roll up the next random sword because I had been planning to give the PCs two or three different options to choose from, but never got that far because Tor had already fallen in love with the sword.
This particular incident was one of the anecdotes from actual play I offered in Putting the “Magic” in Magic Items, which I recommend checking out if you’re interested in a discussion about making the magic items in your campaign special… whether you’re buying them from a litorian named Rastor or not.
I think the most common complaint about ‘magic marts’ is with the expectation that players can look through all published magic items, point to the one they want, and expect it to be up for purchase in the game.
Whether that’s fun or not can depend on the group’s tolerance for player narrative power. To me, if it is super obvious that a specific item is found/up for sale just because the player wanted their character to have it, that feels unsatisfying. If it’s a random one, or work is done on seeking out where to find the specific one, it feels better.
The “Magic Mart” problem to me is mostly an issue of supply. Like, it doesn’t matter as much where they get the item as much as it matters that the item is limited. To me, What robs an item of it’s majesty is the combination of the assumption that players are entitled to a certain number of magic items in order to keep pace, and that in order to get those magic items all they have to do is walk down the street and go to the store.
A Magic Mart is fine if it has a randomized selection of items, and is not guaranteed to have any specific type of item. It’s even better if the players have to gain access to said Magic Mart through, say, making friends with a faction or discovering it in an obscure location.
(The best is auctions. I absolutely love auctions which give players the opportunity to bid on magic items and gain rivals in the process)
I agree magic shops can be pretty fun and, regardless of edition, will arise naturally from play. I generally give a shop with limited wares and access to at least one crafter who can make specific items given the time.
Even setting aside that it’s necessary for the game to work properly in most editions, those are game-mechanical hooks to hang NPCs on. D&D/Pathfinder doesn’t provide a lot of those, so turning one down seems like a waste.
> (The best is auctions. I absolutely love auctions which give players the opportunity to bid on magic items and gain rivals in the process)
My favorite one for this was a epic-level 2nd Edition game where the players got wind of a magical item auction featuring (among other things), the “ring of the mad wizard Gerald.” Gerald’s player was, naturally, pretty surprised about this because he only wore one ring and it hadn’t gone anywhere.
But he thought it was hilarious and went to the auction to buy “his” ring, both getting a new item with a fun backstory and accidentally making the huckster who’d passed off the ring into minor celebrity. And he ran into a number of people who were interested in his rise to power, seeing some of his actions from an outside perspective. It was a top notch session, entirely inside the magic shop.
Several years ago I cooked up a fairly simple d20 mechanic for handling PC attempts to purchase (or sell) magic items. Basically the base price and type of the item, along with the size of the settlement in which the attempt is made, determine a DC, and the party makes a d20 roll against that DC (with a few possible modifiers); the result determines whether that item is available for purchase (or whether a buyer can be found), and at what percentage of the base price. A natural ‘1’ or ’20’ on the roll could have further implications or complications (e.g. yes, there is one of those in the town — but the owner absolutely refuses to sell it to you). The intent was to streamline the process of shopping for magic items and avoid having to generate lists of everything available for sale in every random village. It worked reasonably well. Not a replacement for something the GM has detailed, but useful for situations where the PCs unexpectedly decide they want to buy some specific item in a random settlement, and you don’t want to just decide by fiat whether it’s available or not.
I get the idea of a magic weapon store, but my players never were really interested in that, for some reason. They are always attracted to enchanters. They get to the enchanter with a masterwork weapon they bought and ask him “What enchantment can you put on it?” Which is great because they have the sense that the sword or axe really is their own and is unique, but there are problems. With a magic item shop, you can either choose or randomize what the merchant has, but with if the enchanter can enchant a weapon with a fire enchantment once, he can certainly do so infinitely many times. I gave the players other cool items through loot, so they didn’t go that often, but at some point in the mid-beginning of the campaign every character had their own weapon with a standard and non-interesting enchantment. I really wonder what you think about the freedom but also dullness of hiring an enchanter.
Firox, you ask about how to do enchanting. Here’s how I do it, maybe it will help you solve your issues.
When players go to an artificer (item shop), they have three choices:
1. Purchase pre-created magic items (randomly determined).
2. Consign specific magic items (costs more and takes time).
3. Add enchantments to specific items (takes time and risks item damage).
My players have enjoyed it, and they have made all three choices several times in different circumstances, and the players always know the risks for adding enchantments to already magical items (and I have them roll to see if damaged). Also, the risk of item damage is dependent on the skill of the artificer, which means I have adventure hooks for the party to seek out expert artificers for specific types of items or enchantments. They can choose a higher risk of item damage or take the time to adventure to reduce the risk of item damage.
Losing an item in an attempt to create a super-item is *devastating* to players, but they also *love* to have the choice to try…
“…if the enchanter can enchant a weapon with a fire enchantment once, he can certainly do so infinitely many times.”
Sez who? Maybe the enchantment requires specific components which he only has a very limited supply of. This is exactly the sort of situation that lends itself to sending PCs on a quest to acquire rare components. Depending the PCs’ level and how much you want to challenge them, a flaming sword might require the glands from a giant fire beetle, or the blood of a fire giant.
Of course, if they bring the enchanter what he needs, they should get the sword at a hefty discount (since the normal market price would factor in how much it costs the enchanter to buy the components). Or if the PCs don’t want to spend time on that, roll a d6 in secret and that’s how many months* they’ll have to wait before the enchanter is able to acquire the necessary components from some other enterprising adventurer. (*If that’s too long for the time scale of your campaign, make it 2d4 weeks instead.)
I think the issue you raise here in part comes from something else I’ve noticed. It feels to me like there are two different ways you can treat magic items in D&D.
On the one hand, you have magic items as technology. In the fluff, the secrets of crafting magic items are well known and they are a standard part of the world, something that anyone with appropriate funds and access to the resources of civilization can lay their hands on. Even a +5 vorpal sword is something like a private jet or a Ferrari. Expensive and rare, but totally purchasable if you have enough money. In this approach, magic items become tools that the players should reasonably be assumed to have access to at appropriate levels, and the GM builds his monsters under the assumption that parties of level X will have appropriate levels of magic equipment and equips his NPCs with level-appropriate magic gear.
And then on the other side, you have magic items as wonders. These are the settings where magic items are rare and unique. Crafting a magic sword might require multiple session’s worth of adventures to retrieve rare and unique components and jump through hoops, and possessing one makes the PC stand out from his fellows. Magic items become things that bend the rules, that give the PCs capabilities few others possess and make players feel special and extraordinary.
Or you can combine these approaches: Perhaps potions and scrolls can be freely crafted and are available for purchase, but permanent items require unique components and jumping through hoops. Perhaps any wizard with proper training and resources can craft a +1 flaming sword, but no mortal could forge a +3 fiery burst sword and if you want one you’ll have to go on a quest to get one from an angel.
And I think the issue you raise in the first few paragraphs comes from not thinking through this distinction, and players who strongly favor the “magic items as wonders” approach lashing out against a “magic items as technology” setting. And then on the flip side you get players who favor a “magic items as technology” approach getting frustrated at their GM because he won’t let them buy or craft or acquire the magic items they want.