Magic item availability by RAW?

[Temet Nosce]

I've been discussing this with a friend, and mentioned that by RAW magic item availability is assumed. He argued that this was wrong, and asked me to produce a quote, so I broke open the DMG and to my surprise either my memory is failing me or the only place I can locate anything specifically mentioning it is page 137, is this the closest thing to a direct indication of availability or did I simply miss something?

Also, if this is the only such indication what about the mention in the previous paragraph as to this being a way to generate a town?

[Keld Denar]

Well, the CR system more or less assumes a character has an amount of wealth proportional to their character level. Now, this WBL (DMG pg 135) is by no means obligatory, but DMs should be aware that if PCs have lower than average wealth, they should be competing with lower EL encounters and vise versa. Thus, its generally a good idea to keep PCs relatively close to WBL for easy balance. Also, a goodly portion of that wealth should be represented as magical gear appropriate to their abilities. A fighter can only swing one (or two) swords at a time. Having all of his wealth tied up in 15 +1 longswords is going to leave him dramatically behind, powerwise.

So, while magic items aren't completely obligatory, they are factored in as a part of balance, more or less. DMs who starve their PCs of wealth should keep this in mind when planning and balancing encounters for PCs who deviate significantly from WBL.

Also, the DMG has guidelines for towns and cities and NPCs and wealth of cities and all that jazz. Its not OGL, so you'll actually have to crack open your DMG, but its all there.

[Coidzor]

GP of items available by town/city size.

[ericgrau]

The PHB sets a limit of 3,000 gp for a large city, and less for smaller cities IIRC. Above 3000 you hire an NPC to make it for you. There are tables on NPC availability by class, then you gotta figure out how many can craft.

Agreed that if DMs don't let the PCs get enough treasure, or if they limit their choices too heavily, or if they only give them made up items not from the treasure tables from limited categories, then it makes life suck for the PCs.

[Zaq]

MIC, 231: "A player points to an item published in this book or the Dungeon Masters Guide and asks, 'Can I buy this?' The answer should usually be, 'Yes.'
Magic items are an important part of every character's arsenal of abilities. Most monsters and encounters assume that characters have a certain amount of gear to make the challenge appropriate . . ."

[ericgrau]

Same logic, different means then. The PHB and DMG seem to also assume players must have a certain amount of magic items, but provide alternate ways of getting them like NPC crafters. Rather than implausibly rich magic item shops. The crafting downtime can provide adventures by itself, as seen in http://agc.deskslave.org/ . Or you can handwave it all, but I find every time you handwave something the game loses a little more realism, immersiveness, plot events, etc. and becomes a little more 2 dimensional. Handwaving is nice to make things easier when necessary, but I wouldn't do it excessively if you can avoid it.

[Coidzor]

Same logic, different means then. The PHB and DMG seem to also assume players must have a certain amount of magic items, but provide alternate ways of getting them like NPC crafters. Rather than implausibly rich magic item shops. The crafting downtime can provide adventures by itself, as seen in http://agc.deskslave.org/ . Or you can handwave it all, but I find every time you handwave something the game loses a little more realism, immersiveness, plot events, etc. and becomes a little more 2 dimensional. Handwaving is nice to make things easier when necessary, but I wouldn't do it excessively if you can avoid it.

You know, I don't think it's really going to cause the game to suffer if the PCs are, on the whole, able to get their orders in to the crafter in peace. :smalltongue:

But if you're going to force them to go through that, then you'd better be giving them the downtime where they can stick around that locale or come back to it rather than trying to rush them off again and just flush their WBL down the drain entirely.

[DonDuckie]

I've been discussing this with a friend, and mentioned that by RAW magic item availability is assumed. He argued that this was wrong, and asked me to produce a quote, so I broke open the DMG and to my surprise either my memory is failing me or the only place I can locate anything specifically mentioning it is page 137, is this the closest thing to a direct indication of availability or did I simply miss something?

Also, if this is the only such indication what about the mention in the previous paragraph as to this being a way to generate a town?

I don't think I'm allowed to quote the text.

DMG p. 142 under "Magic Items" it says magic items are rare but are bought and sold as any other commodity.

[Bhaakon]

I don't think I'm allowed to quote the text.

DMG p. 142 under "Magic Items" it says magic items are rare but are bought and sold as any other commodity.

Which means that they're available if you know where to look, not that they're easy to find everywhere. A PC shouldn't saunter into a Stinky Pete's Magick Shack in some five-house cow town and pick up a +5 sword any more than you would walk into your local mall's Generic Jeweler and buy the Hope diamond (which is what the settlement size guidelines are trying to explain).

[Coidzor]

Which means that they're available if you know where to look, not that they're easy to find everywhere. A PC shouldn't saunter into a Stinky Pete's Magick Shack in some five-house cow town and pick up a +5 sword any more than you would walk into your local mall's Generic Jeweler and buy the Hope diamond (which is what the settlement size guidelines are trying to explain).

Right. Because that they're available if it's within the gold piece value limit of the settlement means you can just go into any random shop regardless of city or town size and get what you want without having to look across several shops in the town. Yes, that's exactly what that means.

And you can't possibly look at more than one shop in town, because that would just take up too much session time.

[supermonkeyjoe]

And you can't possibly look at more than one shop in town, because that would just take up too much session time.

I think whether you do this or not depends entirely on the group, some groups love roleplaying shopping encounters and want every type of shop and shopkeeper to have a different personality. Some groups want to just say "we look around to find somewhere to sell all this swag, how much do we get for it"

I agree that the settlement of Podunk, population: 4 shouldn't have the funds to buy or sell anything of value but so long as the settlement size allows it I see no reason why the fine details of selling things shouldn't be glossed over if that's what everyone wants.

[DonDuckie]

Which means that they're available if you know where to look, not that they're easy to find everywhere. A PC shouldn't saunter into a Stinky Pete's Magick Shack in some five-house cow town and pick up a +5 sword any more than you would walk into your local mall's Generic Jeweler and buy the Hope diamond (which is what the settlement size guidelines are trying to explain).

True, but the issue was availability by RAW, and to that I gave my reference. Your argument goes just as well to waterclocks.

It is written above that if asked "can I get that" the answer should be "yes". And here I would add that the cost(price+trouble) should be equal to the listed price for the item.

All this is in a standard campaign with downtime and sidequests etc. A DM saying "sure, you have the money and the time, but no, not here and I won't let you go to where you can(should reasonably be able to) get it" just isn't supported by RAW without(IMO) defining an altered campaign world/setting.

[Drachasor]

I'd note that without magic items according to WBL (and the properly useful ones), then the mechanics of the game start to break down maybe around 10th level. Well, except for casters who can manage on their own better.

Without the various AC, save, to-hit, and ability boosts, things will start not adding up. Also, these things don't scale the same as each other. There are lots of sources of bonus AC, but not many for hitting things for example. So it isn't easy to compensate for by using different enemies.

[HunterOfJello]

The different campaign settings give specific information on this.

It's likely one of the DMGs (maybe II) gives info on how groups should discuss how they're going to run things like this before the first session ever really starts. If everyone is interested in a very low-magic game with magical items be an extreme rarity, then that's cool. If half the group isn't, and it's mainly the DM's idea, then things probably aren't going to work out too well.

RAW answers for how everyone should play their games aren't very valid anyway.

[Keld Denar]

I agree that the settlement of Podunk, population: 4 shouldn't have the funds to buy or sell anything of value but so long as the settlement size allows it I see no reason why the fine details of selling things shouldn't be glossed over if that's what everyone wants.

Unless those 4 residents happen to be Mordenkanen, Rary, Tensor, and Bigby...

Oh, what a happy villiage that would be. *BOOOM!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!*