Curing "Ye Olde Magic Shoppe" Syndrome

[Kanthalion]

I imagine there might be some old threads about this cause I doubt I'm the only GM to struggle with this:

I have always found the "going into town to sell our loot and kit out at the magic shop" aspect of 3.5/Pathfinder to be immersion breaking and unrealistic. But how do you fix that without "going low magic" or breaking balance--especially with WBL?

[DeTess]

Maybe ask your players ahead of time what kind of items they'd like to have at level X, and make sure these items are included among the loot at appropriate times? That way, there isn't really any need for a magic shop for the big things. Scrolls and potions might be harder to get around, but probably aren't as problematic.

[flappeercraft]

By the time they can afford anything major they can already go to the city of brass. So that solved it for me

[noce]

A campaign I played settled in the desert, with few camps here and there.
Obviously, those camps had few magic items and they were overpriced.
Furthermore, they were quite primitive and did prefer barter instead of payment with money.

So, it was quite impossible for us to go shopping and to buy what we liked, since we were limited to few overpriced items available only when in a camp.
On the other hand, the setting was not a low magic one, since we looted several magic items in the encounters.

We did have a lot of magic items, but we were limited to what we found, with rare exceptions.

[Crake]

By the time they can afford anything major they can already go to the city of brass. So that solved it for me

Having access to a planar metropolis does indeed help a lot with alleviating this issue. Keep in mind that shopping for magic items does involve going all over the city in search of magic items. Pathfinder handles access to magic items quite differently to 3.5 as well, in a standard metropolis, anything up to 16,000gp only has a 75% chance of being available in town, in addition to only a handful of randomly rolled major and medium magic items, so the chances of coming across exactly what you want is actually incredibly low.

You can, on the other hand, allow players to instead commission magic items from crafters, which comes with waiting for the crafting time to finish, or just have the players pick up item crafting feats themselves.

[mattie_p]

I generally consider it to be an abstraction. If they are looking for a particular item, they have to check 5 different shops, 2 temples, 3 wizard/artificers, plus antique stores, oddities, thieves guild, make appointments at personal residences, etc. I generally handwave most of it unless they're looking for something near the go limits of the municipality.

[Grod_The_Giant]

One tweak that might help would be to use an automatic bonus progression for things like +x armor, stat boosting items, cloaks of resistance-- your basic number-boosting stuff. If those needs are covered, you can drop more interesting and random treasure, and there won't be as much of a balance problem if it can't be easily sold off. Pair that with a wishlist, and you should be fine without trade.

Fluff-wise, trading items directly with other adventures, artificers, and similarly high-wealth people is certainly a better explanation than a nebulous shop. Throw in a Gather Information check to track down your item(s), and a Diplomacy check to set up the trade, maybe?

[Sam K]

I imagine that magic item marts are really more like showrooms. The high level mage specializing in crafting magic items may keep a couple of +1 weapons around to showcase his work, but the really fancy things are custom made. After all, it doesn't make much sense to have a vorpal longsword in stock, the customer who wants a vorpal weapon may prefer a greatsword (or more likely, a spiked chain :P) So when you "go shoping", what you really do is visit the showrooms, see if anyone is capable of crafting what you need, negotiate compensation... I imagine that many of the magic items adventurers sell are actually given as payment to crafters in exchange for the crafting of custom items.

This also opens up some interesting RP opportunities. Do the PCs have a good reputation? If so, they may be able to get special treatment: after all, it's good for a crafter to be known as the one who supplies the greatest heroes of the kingdom, and they get to feel a bit like bigshots when they visit the crafter to see the progression on their item. On the other hand, if they're unknown or have a bad rep, they may not even get to meet the master craftsman (people who can craft minor artifacts may not wish to meet with people who have become known for disembowling those who give poor service). They may have to settle for buying generic items (a longsword +2 that was traded in from another adventurer with a better reputation) through brokers (who charge a fee) if they can't get the service of the cities best craftsmen.

[SorenKnight]

I second the Automatic Bonus Progression suggestion. Not only does it reduce the number of items you have to buy, it reduces their price. It strains credibility less for a flaming sword to be available in your average city than it does for a +X flaming sword.

You can also try fleshing out your shopkeepers more. Remember that they would need access to a high level crafter to have the kinds of stuff they do. What kind of person are they? Do they have any rivals? What if an elven line of wizards has supplied the magic items of an area for generations, but recently the dwarven mafia has moved in on their territory? You could

Another idea is just rewarding 'free' items with some story justification. The party paladin is approached by another in the guise of his faith, a fellow paladin just a few levels lower, but several decades older. He bestows upon them a Holy Avenger, as his beliefs demand that this powerful sacred weapon be used by the one who can make best use of its powers in the fight against evil. He is a bit melancholic to have lost his position as the strongest of the faithful, but is proud of the PC's accomplishment and is looking forward to what heights they might reach next.

[gooddragon1]

By the time they can afford anything major they can already go to the city of brass. So that solved it for me

Doesn't that city deal fire damage to people not protected against it? I think sigil might be a better choice.

[fire_insideout]

One tweak that might help would be to use an automatic bonus progression for things like +x armor, stat boosting items, cloaks of resistance-- your basic number-boosting stuff. If those needs are covered, you can drop more interesting and random treasure, and there won't be as much of a balance problem if it can't be easily sold off. Pair that with a wishlist, and you should be fine without trade.

Fluff-wise, trading items directly with other adventures, artificers, and similarly high-wealth people is certainly a better explanation than a nebulous shop. Throw in a Gather Information check to track down your item(s), and a Diplomacy check to set up the trade, maybe?

I just want to add to this that Grod has actually made a wonderful fix for this problem, available through his signature or this link. (http://tinyurl.com/k56jah9). Yes, I fully endorse it and no, this is not a duplicate account :smalltongue:

[Crake]

Doesn't that city deal fire damage to people not protected against it? I think sigil might be a better choice.

Nah, the city of brass is on the elemental plane of fire, which deals fire damage to those not protected, but the city itself is shielded from the fiery nature of it's home plane, allowing anyone to visit without issue.

[zlefin]

I third using one of the automatic bonus progression systems. I know pathfinder has one; i'm sure other people have made some as well.

http://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/unchained-rules/automatic-bonus-progression/

[Faily]

Another option could be to use something like the rules for a Samurai's Ancestral Daisho (either the Oriental Adventures version that uses GP, similarly to the Ancestral Relic in BoED, or the Rokugan d20 version that uses xp): the PC "bonds" to an special item and can improve it through time, devotion and some sacrifice (xp or gp). For some campaigns or settings, it can work better that the armor or weapon "grows" with you, so to speak.


I am personally always a little surprised that people find the idea of shops dealing with magic items to be "unrealistic", considering it would be a natural progress of a market if there is a possibility to create magic items+demand for it. But I acknowledge that all this varies from setting to setting :smallwink: Eberron should have different magic shops on every corner in major cities, and some places in Mystara we have certainly been able to spend a few days to shop and place orders for pricey items to our hearts content, while in Rokugan the idea of selling items imbued with the power of the kami sounds almost like sacrilege, and magic items in places like Dark Sun I guess would be super-duper-rare.

[Deophaun]

It's an abstraction. This is no such thing as a magic shop. The money you spend is not so much for the item as it is tracking down rumors, hiring low-level adventurers, funding expeditions, or employing brokers. It's the same with selling items. You aren't selling that +1 flaming sword to a shop keeper: that's given to an adventuring party that has to venture into the frozen wastes to retrieve the nightstick kept in the inner sanctum of a lost temple of Nerul.

Why don't you get it yourself? Because that's BORING. We don't do BORING adventures. Go to some other DM if you want to play Shopping Simulator 800 A.D.

[Triskavanski]

I imagine there might be some old threads about this cause I doubt I'm the only GM to struggle with this:

I have always found the "going into town to sell our loot and kit out at the magic shop" aspect of 3.5/Pathfinder to be immersion breaking and unrealistic. But how do you fix that without "going low magic" or breaking balance--especially with WBL?

Well if you want to go realistic..

Every single city, come up with every single shop that the players might want to go to for that town. Like the local alchemist, blacksmith, armor smith, weapon smith, the scroll keeper, the curios shops, black markets, theives guilds etc..

Make a few extras to add in on random if you realized you missed something.

Make a handful of traveling shops as well. Plot out the trade routes that they'll follow.

Create a handful of out of town shops. Like the weird wizard up on the hill. The witch in the forest. etc


Then create a knowledge skill dc for each shop. And a gather information check.

Also make a note of how much money each shop would have or would be willing to have. And what days/time they're open. Their upcharge costs etc And any other misc notes.



Then have the players roll their knowledge/gather information checks when they're in particular areas and are looking for something specific. Then a survival check to not get lost, especially in the witches forest.

If the shop is open, have the PCs roll diplomacy/appraise checks on the Shop keepers if they want to haggle the price down to buy something or up to sell something. Of course there are some items that people will never buy, like someone who is a scroll keeper would not likely buy a sword.

Thats just the off the top of my head there for making it more realistic. Lots of work, bookkeeping and other trouble. Its why adventurer's never really go to the bathroom in game.

[Faily]

It's an abstraction. This is no such thing as a magic shop. The money you spend is not so much for the item as it is tracking down rumors, hiring low-level adventurers, funding expeditions, or employing brokers. It's the same with selling items. You aren't selling that +1 flaming sword to a shop keeper: that's given to an adventuring party that has to venture into the frozen wastes to retrieve the nightstick kept in the inner sanctum of a lost temple of Nerul.

Why don't you get it yourself? Because that's BORING. We don't do BORING adventures. Go to some other DM if you want to play Shopping Simulator 800 A.D.

That is certainly one way it can be interpreted in a game. :smallsmile:

I just don't mind the mental image of the three girl-PCs in our long-running Mystara-campaign spending a week in the capital city of Alphatia, with lots of cash to burn after an exciting adventure, being pampered by shop-staff as they place their orders for scrolls, magic belts, magic rings, magic shoes (ALL THE SHOES!), and magic purses. :smallbiggrin:

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Generally they can find someone willing to craft the item for them. The crafter pays 1/2 the base price, and sells it for full price, so why wouldn't they take on the job? It takes one day per 1,000 gp of the base price, so they make 500 gp/day from commission work. The PCs need to wait for their items to be made, and they'll go that amount of time without any items that are being upgraded. This also gives PCs with item creation feats time to make their own items/upgrades, and forces everyone else to take some downtime so they're not going from one adventure to the next.


Regarding magic item shops, I'll often take it to the logical conclusion:

There's definitely supply and demand for magic items. Low-level items sometimes get upgraded into more powerful items and kept, but just as often they get sold. Someone is buying those +1 weapons and armor at half value, then turning around and selling them to someone for full value. They make a lot of money when it works out, but inevitably they need to have a better way to get into contact with potential buyers. Maybe several such merchants are in contact with each other, and if one doesn't have an item on hand they reach out to their contacts and see if someone has one, and negotiates a commission for the sale. Maybe those merchants get in contact with other merchants in another nation or on another continent, and use teleportation to deliver the items to the buyers. Maybe they decide to consolidate their inventories in a more secure location, so they don't need to worry about being robbed or even paying bodyguards.

The logical conclusion then is that none of those magic shops have any magic items on hand at all. The shopkeeper takes the gold and/or sold/traded items to a not-so-secret-any-more room in the back of the shop, and steps onto a permanent Teleportation Circle with them. He appears in a very sturdy room with no exits, only a small window. He knocks on the window, and one of the clerks who works this desk takes the order, tallies up the gold and trade to make sure it's correct, and documents everything. That window is closed, and the clerk takes the order and payment through a permanent portal to a very secure demiplane and to another window. At this window another clerk also tallies the payment and documents everything, places the gold and trade-ins into a bin, and has the order retrieved from the warehouse. That's sent back through to the other clerk, who delivers it to the shopkeeper. The shopkeeper then takes the permanent Teleportation Circle back to his shop and delivers the ordered items or payment for items sold to his customers.

Perhaps there's not a single warehouse, and that first clerk collects the payment/items from the shopkeeper and takes another Teleportation Circle to a more secure warehouse and starts the whole process over. Regardless, everything is unbelievably secured and protected by Dimensional Lock (or planar traits that emulate it across the whole plane), Private Sanctum, and whatever else you can think of. Walls of Force block ethereal travel (or the demiplane was made to not touch the ethereal plane), and there are effects that redirect teleportation and planar travel spells to put the creatures attempting to gain entry into a sealed room which may be filled with lava or acid without any oxygen, or it may just dump them into a very large Bag of Devouring. Attempting to rob one of the warehouses would inevitably fail, and nobody has attempted it and lived to tell about it.

The shopkeepers never need to worry about their store being robbed, they'll always have a steady or even luxurious income regardless of how little business they get, and they'll have peace of mind since they're part of one of the world's most powerful and far-reaching organizations. They would have every resource they could ever want at their disposal, since the inventory is sourced from all over the world and even franchises on other planes. Alternatively, the shopkeepers and/or clerks could be entirely autonomous, depending on how you want the setting to feel, or don't even worry about it if the PCs never make an attempt to rob the warehouse.

[gooddragon1]

Nah, the city of brass is on the elemental plane of fire, which deals fire damage to those not protected, but the city itself is shielded from the fiery nature of it's home plane, allowing anyone to visit without issue.

I was checking my dmg and it says that the iron cobblestones deal 1 point of fire damage for anyone in contact with them (I think the walls are 1d6).

[Ellrin]

I imagine there might be some old threads about this cause I doubt I'm the only GM to struggle with this:

I have always found the "going into town to sell our loot and kit out at the magic shop" aspect of 3.5/Pathfinder to be immersion breaking and unrealistic. But how do you fix that without "going low magic" or breaking balance--especially with WBL?

What one of my usual DMs likes to do is turn his shopkeepers into actual personalities—a mad experimenter, a dangerous potion master, a guy obsessed with crab armor. They don't run general stores, but instead make (and buy) items mostly attuned to their own interests and specialties. Since they aren't going to be a huge focus of the story, they can be pretty one-dimensional, as long as they're fun/interesting to interact with, and it gives you some solid ground for both RPing and keeping shopping a more realistic experience—maybe the only magical craftsman in town is a crotchety old fanatic who specializes in bows, for instance, and isn't even interested in buying the valuable paintings you ransacked from the vampire's manor.

As for availability when it's demanded, I think the trope of a magical store that only shows up when you need it, and happens to show up in several different places, is a pretty good one, and highly useful for the typical adventuring campaign where you spend no more than a few days in any given city. It could give you an excuse when the party desperately needs it to have high value magic items in that sleepy village that's exactly a thousand miles from anywhere else on the planet.

[Crake]

I was checking my dmg and it says that the iron cobblestones deal 1 point of fire damage for anyone in contact with them (I think the walls are 1d6).

Well, as we know, prestidigitation can dampen clothing, and damp things have fire resistance 1, so just walk around with wet shoes and you'll be fine, right? :smalltongue:

[ryu]

Well, as we know, prestidigitation can dampen clothing, and damp things have fire resistance 1, so just walk around with wet shoes and you'll be fine, right? :smalltongue:

It also makes you immune to lava.

[daremetoidareyo]

I have the players make a wish list and warned them that they will not get everything on their personal wish list. Then I populate encounters with the requested items. This has the bonus of me getting the play bad guys who have cool stuff.

[Nifft]

Psst! Just FYI:

http://i.imgur.com/AVpcTy2.png
Lots of people seem to be having an issue with this image host recently.



I imagine there might be some old threads about this cause I doubt I'm the only GM to struggle with this:

I have always found the "going into town to sell our loot and kit out at the magic shop" aspect of 3.5/Pathfinder to be immersion breaking and unrealistic. But how do you fix that without "going low magic" or breaking balance--especially with WBL?
What I did for a 3.5e high-magic setting was to treat "magic item" shops like real-world high-value auction houses: Sotheby's or Christie's, for example.

Then I made 3 of them, each one the family business of a very rich nobility, and treated them similarly to how Eberron treats Dragonmarked Houses -- if I'd had access to Eberron back then, I would probably just use those houses, since they're the right scale of business.

So, there are 3 competing auction houses, each of which is also a noble family with close (or at least good diplomatic) connections to the courts of various states. Each major city probably has at least one; the most important cities (e.g. an imperial capital) have access to all three.

Where more of them are present, there's more competition: in a smaller city, you'd have maybe one auction house, so they'd have the advantage in transactions.

Making the auction houses also a hefty portion of the aristocracy meant a lot more security for buying & selling. You're not robbing a merchant -- you're starting a war.

[Crake]

Psst! Just FYI:

http://i.imgur.com/AVpcTy2.png
Lots of people seem to be having an issue with this image host recently.


Honestly, who uses photobucket anyway, when imgur is so freely available without any issues.

[Necroticplague]

I have always found the "going into town to sell our loot and kit out at the magic shop" aspect of 3.5/Pathfinder to be immersion breaking and unrealistic. But how do you fix that without "going low magic" or breaking balance--especially with WBL?
Why is it immersion breaking? it might be possible to just modify the setting so that magic shops are a reasonable part of the setting.

For Example: I just use Sigil as a core of operation, a place where enough people who would trade in magic items naturally tend to at least pass through enough to create a magic item economy, with artificers wanting to stock up their craft reserve acting as buyers (they'll buy about any magic crap, because the XP in the item is what they're after, not its actual utility), those wanting profit as sellers. Chances are, if you want something, you aren't the first one, so you can probably find someone already selling in the City of Doors. Even if you do want something unheard of, rush orders from those with daily Wish abilities can get you what you want at a premium.

[Deophaun]

That is certainly one way it can be interpreted in a game. :smallsmile:

I just don't mind the mental image of the three girl-PCs in our long-running Mystara-campaign spending a week in the capital city of Alphatia, with lots of cash to burn after an exciting adventure, being pampered by shop-staff as they place their orders for scrolls, magic belts, magic rings, magic shoes (ALL THE SHOES!), and magic purses. :smallbiggrin:
Do not get me wrong: my post is not written for the people that like the idea of magic marts. You do you. I, personally, loathe the idea. But, my loathing of it has never been a problem for my players that are trying to get specialty items, because there are enough alternative avenues that a magic mart need not exist to allow unfettered access to items in the DMG and MIC.

It is instead written for those who think there must be a magic mart for such and since they have removed them from the game the party must put the campaign on hold and run side quests for the wizard to get his new hat. That is where I bang my head on the table.

[Dragonexx]

One option is the Wish Enconomy, which is based on the idea that powerful creatures have access to wish (demons have glabrezu, devils have pit fiends, celestials have solars, and of course there's genies, and thus have no interest in things that can be granted with it (like gold, for example) and only value things they can't get with it. So they won't trade mid to high level magic items for gold, only really barter them for other magic items or trade goods that can't be created with Wish, like souls, astral diamonds, elemenatal gems and so forth.

here: http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?t=53704

and here: http://www.tgdmb.com/viewtopic.php?p=354300#354300

As a side note, this frees up mundane wealth, so players can spend that stuff on flavorful things like castles, airships, and luxuries.

[Endarire]

I like Biff's interpretation.

OP: The point of convenience itemization or magic marts is that shopping and inventory are generally not fun. How much time do you want to spend converting between G and gear? Generally not that much. As GM, I've tried being strict on certain things that turned out not to be fun. Shopping wasn't one of them but I want to keep on topic by not mentioning specifics.

[bean illus]

There is no such thing as a magic shop.

High level item creation Masters have made custom divination items that know what the customer is going to need before they do. The sales rep appears as you get the loot, and completes the exchange in the dungeon.