Ye Olde Magicke Shoppe: If I See That Damn +1 Kama One More Time...

[Keneth]

Ok, so in one of the games where I'm a player I plan to open a shop (and semi-public market) that sells mostly magical items. Backing the shop is gonna be an organization of craftsmen (mundane and magical), which will ensure a steady supply of goods. What I am trying to determine is how much profit a shop like that can turn in a day, as well as the profits I would receive from the market.

As far as the shop is concerned, a naive answer would be 500 gp per day per magic item crafter, with the mundanes being almost negligible. Looking at it more realistically though, that value would be considerably lower on account of bartering, discounts, lack of demand, supply shortages, planned losses, etc. The question is just how much lower would the value be? I'm thinking somewhere closer to 250 gp, but I'm not basing that value on anything solid.

As for the market, I imagine the simplest way to handle it would be charging a fee for any merchant setting up shop, as well as demanding a small portion of their profits at the end of each day.

I have only a loose grasp on the economy (skipped business economics back when I was in college), but I don't really want to complicate things to the point where it becomes more of a pain than it's worth. So basically I'm just looking for some general guidelines and values, running a business in a roleplaying game should be fun after all.

Since I'm playing Pathfinder with the new downtime system, I think mundane crafting and market stalls can be pretty much covered as rooms/teams that give a bonus when generating capital each day. There are also very few crafting cost/time reducers in Pathfinder, so that shouldn't affect the base profits too much.

So what are your experiences with running a magic shop/market? Did you keep it simple? Did you turn it into an economist's nightmare? Have any interesting stories? I imagine thieves, thugs, accidental (and not-so-accidental) fires, hostile takeovers, and the like are things I should expect and prepare for.

[Deophaun]

3.5's DMGII has rules for running a business. You might want to check those out.

[Slipperychicken]

DMG2 has rules for running a business.

Alternatively, you could use a Profession check to represent his take-home pay.

[MilesTiden]

While I'm not familiar with Pathfinder's rules for all this stuff, I used a combination of the Stronghold Builder's Guidebook (3.0) and the DMG 2 (3.5) to do it. I would strongly suggest those, if you are not adverse to the idea.

[Keneth]

I'm quite aware of the 3.5 business rules, but they cover about as much as Pathfinder rules. The only difference is, they use monthly checks, which is basically useless in a game that doesn't span years with large amounts of downtime, and as far as I can tell they cover neither magic item crafting, nor running a whole market. Which is why I opened a thread asking for advice. I'm sure someone has run a magic shop before.

[Deophaun]

The only difference is, they use monthly checks, which is basically useless in a game that doesn't span years with large amounts of downtime
Then make the checks more frequent. Weekly, for instance. Assume a 28 day month and divide by 4.

and as far as I can tell they cover neither magic item crafting
Because that's covered in the DMG.

nor running a whole market.
What, exactly, does this mean? Is this a place where you own a bunch of stalls and lease them out? Make up a landlord business. Are you investing in a bunch of magic item crafters? Well, there's a moneylender business already set up. Are you providing a service that matches crafters and buyers? Well, there's the service buisness.

[Slipperychicken]

What, exactly, does this mean?

He means representing the market mechanically, with things like rolling for demand and supply modifiers, and having it all elegantly work out in a believable way.

ACKS does that quite well since it takes into account things like population density, level distribution, and such (and is also much more grounded in terms of power levels), but D&D 3rd edition economics are broken at every level; trying to make sense of it is a fool's errand.

[Deophaun]

He means representing the market mechanically...
I excluded that possibility because that's what the DMGII rules do. Very simple, yes, but the OP allowed for simple.

[Slipperychicken]

I excluded that possibility because that's what the DMGII rules do. Very simple, yes, but the OP allowed for simple.

They simulate a single business trying to stay afloat, not the whole market. There is little to help understand what other actors in the market might be doing, how much tax is removed from the gross income, and so on.

[Deophaun]

They simulate a single business trying to stay afloat, not the whole market.
The market in D&D is static. All that needs to be simulated is how a business interacts with it.

[Keneth]

Then make the checks more frequent. Weekly, for instance. Assume a 28 day month and divide by 4.

Pathfinder already offers me daily mechanics which are fine, but it provides no rules that are sufficient for a magic item business, which is very different from almost any mundane business, seeing how magic items can range in price from "a life's worth of comfort" to "I'll take two of those islands once I'm done building my sky castle". I can make my own rules fairly easily, but I'd like to base those rules on the experience of people who have actually run a magic shop before, or at least recommendations of someone who knows how to estimate the average profits of such a business.


Because that's covered in the DMG.

Yeah, but the rules end where the crafting does. I know how to craft magic items, I want to know how I can trade with them on a larger scale. I don't plan on actually crafting any items myself or even note specifically what items are being crafted since that's besides the point.


I'll have a look ACKS to see if I can salvage something. Broken or not, I'm sure I can figure out something that makes sense even in the D&D universe. :smallsmile:

[JusticeZero]

Thing to remember : When selling D&D magic items, you are not an analog of John's Jewelry. You are instead something like Halliburton or Lockheed or some such - you aren't making knickknacks, you are selling arms and military hardware. Your security and business model isn't "cute little shop", or even "bank", the modern day equivalent is a place where you sell tanks, stealth bombers, low yield nuclear weapons and other WMDs out of along with other troop equipment. You won't just be "opening up a shop" for those.

[Slipperychicken]

I'll have a look ACKS to see if I can salvage something. Broken or not, I'm sure I can figure out something that makes sense even in the D&D universe. :smallsmile:

You can straight-up ask the creator (http://www.autarch.co/forums/ask-autarchs). He's usually pretty friendly about this stuff.

[Keneth]

You won't just be "opening up a shop" for those.

Of course not, my character is actually more of an anti-villain, and the "shop" is the start of her plan to gain some powerful allies from all sides (for the longterm overarching goal), as well as her primary resource, and a base of operations until there comes a time to progress the story. I absolutely intend for this to be more of an arms dealer thing, rather than some town shop with trinkets (it won't actually be located in a human settlement at all), and getting it going (and then keeping it going) is gonna be a challenge of its own. But fluff is more or less irrelevant for the general mechanics of running a magic item shop.

This thread is more about how to deal with things after it's up and running, although I'd be more than happy to hear any advice on how to go about things in-universe as well. We've already "acquired" (as in violently) a secure location underground, and I've started hiring workers as well as guards to keep things running smoothly. There are traps and hidden doors inside the complex, as well magical alarms to guard against trespassers. Later we'll probably be adding a teleport trap (http://www.d20pfsrd.com/magic/all-spells/t/teleport-trap) to guard against magical intrusions. I'll probably have to protect the whole thing with a private sanctum spell as well at some point, though scrying doesn't concern me as much.

Of course there's no such thing as perfect security, and dealing with powerful entities is always gonna be risky. I'm just hoping that I make more allies than I do enemies. :smallbiggrin:


You can straight-up ask the creator (http://www.autarch.co/forums/ask-autarchs). He's usually pretty friendly about this stuff.

That's cool, I just might. :smallsmile:


Anyway, I'm working on a system for this thing, but I'm a little surprised no one can offer any insight on what the profits should be. I guess not many people have ever bothered to turn their item crafting into an actual business.

[Slipperychicken]

Anyway, I'm working on a system for this thing, but I'm a little surprised no one can offer any insight on what the profits should be. I guess not many people have ever bothered to turn their item crafting into an actual business.

D&D is a game about heroes fighting evil, not starting your own business. Last time I checked, there's not much interest in Shopkeep: The Haggling.

You have raw materials cost for a magic item (1/2 base price), and presumably sell it at full price (10% lower if the buyer succeeds a Diplomacy check to haggle as per CS). You can reasonably assume you lose 10% of your gross sales in taxes, fees, and licenses. You put.. some amount into warehousing, maintaining a storefront, and other costs of doing business.

[Keneth]

D&D is a game about heroes fighting evil, not starting your own business. Last time I checked, there's not much interest in Shopkeep: The Haggling.

Really? I though it was about playing a role in a fantastic reality simulation. :smalltongue:

But running a magic item business doesn't actually imply you have to be the shopkeeper or the item crafter. I do think that Pathfinder is the first D&D iteration that provides an interesting system for running an organization as an adventurer though, so in the absence of that, I can understand the reluctance or lack of appeal.


You have raw materials cost for a magic item (1/2 base price), and presumably sell it at full price (10% lower if the buyer succeeds a Diplomacy check to haggle as per CS). You can reasonably assume you lose 10% of your gross sales in taxes, fees, and licenses. You put.. some amount into warehousing, maintaining a storefront, and other costs of doing business.

Well, for one, bargaining works differently in PF, and we even have our own custom rules for it. Plus, I need the business to stay competitive, so the asking price is always gonna be around 90% of the market price to begin with, which means the sales are generally gonna fluctuate between 95% and 70% of market price. But on the other hand, you can spend magic (as a type of capital) in PF, which can reduce the crafting costs by as much as half.

But let's ignore magic for now and assume that items will be crafted at their normal cost and that I'll be selling them for an average of 83% of market price. That's about 330 gp per crafter per day in profit. Now let's say 100 gp of that is invested into crafting ever more powerful magic items since the starting capital isn't gonna last very long, and 30 gp goes for various expenses, leaving about 200 gp of profit. A sizable portion of that should also go towards paying the wages of the craftsmen; Let's say at least 50 gp per day.

So that's roughly 150 gp of profit without accounting for crafting cost reductions. I should think that's a pretty good baseline. I'll start here and see what I come up with.

[ericgrau]

Nothing to see here folks.

Well don't go overboard. Magic items are rare and expensive. Not even like cars so much as houses. In the affluent part of town there could be a ferrari dealer, but he has about 10 or 20 items available. With a lot of walking in a capital city you might find a handful of places, if even that much.

Even the 25-100 gp "cheap" expendibles are like a used car. You could have 100 of them in a major place but not thousands and thousands.

If you have a lot of free time you could customize the few items available. As in 5-30 depending on city size. Browsing through them and picking could be like picking through treasure for the players.

As for the "cheap" items, rather than customization I heartily encourage heavy randomization. Make a cuttoff in the magic item compendium wondrous item, scroll and potion lists at the appropriate price (fortunately they're sorted by cost), number and make tons of random rolls. Or list them on an excel spreadsheet in column A and copy-paste "=INDEX($A$1:$A$100, ROUNDUP(RAND()*100,0))" into several cells. Replace 100 with however many there are. If you want a few more expensive ones you can replace RAND() with RAND()^2 or RAND()^1.5 or etc. to bias towards the cheaper ones. Random cheap wondrous items especially are fun.

If players want something else then that's what NPC crafters and downtime are for. And for any powerful item that means the NPC should be a major figure in the city. Not Senor mc crafts-a-lot, but Doomdark the king's mage.

[Keneth]

Erm... did you post in the wrong thread or just misunderstand the intentions here? :smallconfused:

[ericgrau]

Gawdammit I skim too fast.