So A Player Wants To Rob Ye Olde Majick Shoppe...

[Vaern]

Let's say your stereotypical sticky-fingered rogue wants to break into a magic item shop and loot some of the gear that's sitting around. The wizard gets on board with the plan, and assists the rogue in thwarting any magical defenses that the shopkeeper has set up. Without fudging some rolls and declaring that the shopkeeper catches them via DM fiat, it's reasonable to assume that the players are perfectly capable of succeeding if they should choose to proceed with their plan.

Assuming the players do successfully steal some select magical items, what safeguards can be set up to prevent them from making use of their free, ill-gotten goods? In the DMG's section on cursed items there's a list of requirements that an item might be given, which cause the item to cease functioning if one or more requirements is not met. I'm thinking, based on the concept, that it might be reasonable for a shopkeeper's standard item creation process to include adding a specific requirement that prevents an item from functioning before it has been paid for.
For example, he might program a quick IF-THEN/ELSE script into the item's magical coding which states that if the item is being used by its creator then the items functions; else, if the wielder of the item is not the creator and the item has been marked by the creator's personal Arcane Mark then the item functions; else, the item does not function.
The shopkeeper is able to use his own wares and demonstrate their effects to a customer. Anyone else attempting to use the item would be unable to activate it, unless the shopkeeper first applies his Arcane Mark to disable the item's DRM and "unlock" it. Thus a stolen item would not function and could not be used, and other artificers who use similar defense mechanisms would likely realize that the item is stolen so the item could not be sold.

Thoughts?

[JeenLeen]

I think the 'DRM unlock' is a really cool, internally consistent in-universe explanation.

However, I think you should tell your players such is the case with crafting magical gear in your setting, since otherwise they are probably going on the default setting and would (I think rightly) be upset at this being a surprise. If you want to award their ingenuity and let them make the best of trying to steal without letting it break your game, this seems fair. (They could still try to fence the goods for a decent price, and there's probably some mages who work at breaking 'DRM' who'd be interested in buying.)

BUT... if you mean this as a punishment: basically, don't surprise your players as an indirect way of trying to punish them for something you'd rather them not do. Just to explain OOC that shopkeeps are not a logically-consistent part of the setting and do not play characters who think of stealing from Magic Shops.

Or, if this is a D&D 3.5 MagicMart that has every sort of magical gear... well, a wizard who has that is probably high level and has crazy good defenses, including potentially invisible guards. But if you go that route, remind your players that such is likely the case before the attempted robbery.

[legomaster00156]

Let them take the equipment. It works fine. It's just that now, mid-to-high-level law enforcement is working on tracking them down, using divination to determine their identities and locate them. If they ward off the law enforcement somehow (whether by successfully hiding from divination and/or by defeating the law enforcement), I'd say they've earned whatever they stole.

[Vizzerdrix]

Let them take the equipment. It works fine. It's just that now, mid-to-high-level law enforcement is working on tracking them down, using divination to determine their identities and locate them. If they ward off the law enforcement somehow (whether by successfully hiding from divination and/or by defeating the law enforcement), I'd say they've earned whatever they stole.

A few ideas along this vein.

Other seasoned adventurers who ordered that gear could come looking for it.

local gangs want their cut for poaching on their turf.

[Nifft]

What you're describing is the equivalent of putting a bag of emeralds & some military-grade firearms in a low-security mom & pop store.

The PCs should not be the first people in the setting to think about robbing such obvious and poorly guarded wealth.

== == ==

In my favorite high-magic home brew setting, the magic shops were actually auction houses like Christe's or Southeby's.

The party selling the items tended to have a strong vested interest in the items NOT being sold before auction -- and everyone who bought or sold magic items had a strong interest in eliminating theft of these items.

The buyers & sellers tended to be powerful parties of NPCs, rich & powerful monsters like dragons, or agents of various governments.

The three great families who ran these magical auction events were also rich & powerful, and had a lot of allies.

== == ==

Anyway, back to the mom & pop missiles & mithral shoppe.

The display items should all be cursed items, specifically to screw over potential thieves.

This is basically like how Blockbuster used to keep empty video cassette cases on the shelves -- you can steal it, but it's not what you want.

The shop's real magic items are all kept in a Handy Haversack which is worn by the shop-keeper. When selling an item, the shop keeper covertly exchanges the cursed item for the real item.

== == ==

Don't run an arms dealership like you would an apple cart. :cool:

[Jowgen]

I say let them.

Then tally up how many gp worth of stuff was stolen and bring down heat proportionate to the haul.

As soon as you're talking a few thousand gold, the law will have no issue expending resources to have some divinations done to find out their names. Then come the wanted posters, the blacklisting, the bounties, and the rival adventurers looking to bring them down for a payday. Heck, if we're talking 10s of thousands gp, even an Inevitable might take notice.

Maintaining order in a world of super-powered people is 90% deterrence. There is no point for a state or merchant guild to get in an arms race trying to build defences against every rogue and sticky-fingered wizard out there. Huge waste of resources. Much better to save your cash so you can later on pay specialists to make an example of the thieves.

TL,DR: If your players wanna pull off an Oceans 11, they better be ready to go through the trouble of Oceans 12.

[Falontani]

Arcane Marks on the items, Scry n Die the party. When that fails the wizard will go to his mage's guild and let them know what happened. Now 4 laters level and your wizard has yet to find a merchant willing to sell him even a single arcane scroll, no one will let the group buy spell components, and all magic items must be stolen or coerced somehow. All while avoiding law enforcement, bounty hunters, and hired help. You steal a pair of level 1 wands and your 1500 GP in debt, that is a pittance to a good magic shop, so you'll just have law enforcement looking for you to show that you can't steal from the magic shop. You steal a +5 Full Plate of Heavy Fortification, and you have Inevitables bound to find you, you have a bounty worth 25k GP on your head (more than enough to get even mid-high level adventurers to hunt you), you have the law enforcement trying to find you, and you have the mage's guilds of the world not allowing you service.

[Endarire]

Arcane mark: What happens if an item legitimately obtained using this method gets its mark dispelled in battle or by some other means? Does your Wizard5 or Artificer5 item creation workforce have access to (gasp!) undispellable cantrips?

[Vaern]

Arcane mark: What happens if an item legitimately obtained using this method gets its mark dispelled in battle or by some other means? Does your Wizard5 or Artificer5 item creation workforce have access to (gasp!) undispellable cantrips?
The Arcane Mark flag in the script is already set to =true. I don't know exactly how the code functions, but presumably it wouldn't have a reason to check its conditions again and potentially reset to default settings until someone new attempted to use it. But then again, it wouldn't be the first time DRM screwed someone that legitimately obtained something.
(Assuming you decide such a thing would reset at all; there's at least one item requirement listed in the DMG which, once completed, permanently activates the item regardless of what happens afterward.)

[BowStreetRunner]

I had a couple of thoughts after reading the OP's post and the various replies.


Good security isn't about making it impossible to break in and steal something. That tends to be impractical. It always comes back to the concept of making the effort outweigh the reward.
Security can exist both up-front (locks, traps, guards, etc.) and after-the-fact (bounty hunters, law enforcement, etc.). You can try to stop them from taking something or make sure they know they won't get away with it.
Not everyone is going to apply the first two principles to the same degree. There will be people who understand these concepts to a lesser or greater extent, as well as people who have fewer or greater resources to work with. So not every place will have security that is exactly consistent with what is being protected.


If you have players that want to rob some magic shops, then let there be some magic shops that can be robbed. There should be other magic shops where it's not worth the trouble.
Have some that use up front protection. A good job casing the place should turn up these. Have others that have a reputation that can't be seen physically, you have to use your social skills to find out tha no one robs that place because they are 'protected' after the fact.

Also, Locate Object and Discern Location define a good idea of the range of measures available to track down stolen objects. Is what was stolen worth the use of the higher level spell?

[Kelb_Panthera]

Once they've got them, they've got them. Unless you change something in the mechanics, like your magic DRM idea, there's basically nothing you can do to prevent them from using them.

Which brings me to the real question here; why the devil is there a shop that sells generalized magic items like a magic Walmart? Magic items for sale to individuals is a very niche market unless your setting is substantially different from the norm described in the core rulebooks. Magic items of even the cheapest variety are priced like a low-end used car from a reputable dealer. Adventurers of any stripe, never mind mid to high level ones, aren't that common. Between the exorbitant cost and low-demand, a shop like you're talking about just isn't a sustainable business model.

What gives?

[BowStreetRunner]

Which brings me to the real question here; why the devil is there a shop that sells generalized magic items like a magic Walmart? Magic items for sale to individuals is a very niche market unless your setting is substantially different from the norm described in the core rulebooks. Magic items of even the cheapest variety are priced like a low-end used car from a reputable dealer. Adventurers of any stripe, never mind mid to high level ones, aren't that common. Between the exorbitant cost and low-demand, a shop like you're talking about just isn't a sustainable business model.

What gives?I think I'm going to just clip this and send it to a couple dozen DMs I know. LOL It's hard to read the tone from a forum post, but you do know that the whole corner magic shop thing is pretty much a staple in lots of games these days, right? I mean, you are absolutely right in what you say here, and having these in the game tends to make it hard to stay immersed in the story and tends to remind you that it's just a game. But they are soooo common it's practically a meme.

[Kelb_Panthera]

I think I'm going to just clip this and send it to a couple dozen DMs I know. LOL It's hard to read the tone from a forum post, but you do know that the whole corner magic shop thing is pretty much a staple in lots of games these days, right? I mean, you are absolutely right in what you say here, and having these in the game tends to make it hard to stay immersed in the story and tends to remind you that it's just a game. But they are soooo common it's practically a meme.

Don't get me wrong, I still allow the players to get -almost- anything they want within a settlement's gp limit. They just don't get it all at Crazy Irwin's Magic EmporiumTM.

As for it being a meme, I've got what I think is a solid inkling of how it came to be but I just can't accept it. Economics, much less economic history, just aren't things most people think about so I bite my tongue if I must but it really bugs the crap out of me.

[Darth Ultron]

The vast majority of Magic Item Shops in my world only have magic trinkets, day to day use items and very low powered non combat things. So there is not much for an adventurer to steal.

Even the shops that do sell combat or adventuring items, don't just have them sitting in the window display. Those items are fakes, illusions or such. The real items are hidden elsewhere.


Also:

Animated objects, possessed objects, intelligent objects and objects that are monsters. Also ghost guardians, Ethereal guardians, construct guards or fey guards.

It's also possible the shop owner could keep the command word(s) secret...or change them. The rules don't say you can't add such things to an item. So to add something like ''the third times the item is activated you must say the command word backwards" for example.

[BowStreetRunner]

This discussion got me thinking about something I saw in a comic (http://www.giantitp.com/comics/oots1085.html) once. For that matter, I've encountered the idea in more than one place of magic items that only work if they are given freely and not taken by force. (And the corollary as well: items that need to be taken by force to work (http://harrypotter.wikia.com/wiki/Elder_Wand).)

[Endarire]

Regarding coding discussions, having done some coding in my Computer Science undergraduate degree days, whether something stays true is entirely up to details. (This (https://www.toggl.com/programming-princess) is a series of examples in various programming languages that might be handy.)

[Fizban]

The shop's real magic items are all kept in a Handy Haversack which is worn by the shop-keeper. When selling an item, the shop keeper covertly exchanges the cursed item for the real item.
Handy Haversack isn't much for security (unless you've say, trapped it with multiple self-destructs that will take all the items with it unless a trapguy knows exactly what to do).

In order for there to be standing inventory, there must be an equivalent challenge for that standard inventory. Assuming there is, if the players overcome the challenge then they're earned the loot.

In terms of actual magic item trade, there's still gotta be someone holding onto the items, and that's not gonna be some chump, it's gonna be a higher level caster. Probably a Wizard, because it's always a Wizard. Guess what spell Wizards have right in core for securing items? That'd be Secret Chest, which can only be accessed by the caster themselves*. So good luck stealing anything out of that.

*Someone who's touched the chest or an item in the chest could Discern Location, but random places on the Astral Plane don't exactly have an address to divine, and nothing prevents the chest from being further warded against divinations, say with a custom Mind Blank level effect. That leaves Wish, and if the DM or PCs are willing to use Wish to rip off someone's Secret Chest, then yeah you've reached the point where you need to start making the rules yourself.

[vasilidor]

magic item shops are filled with extremely valuable items, where a single sale can float the owners for a full decade or more, pending living conditions. there should absolutely be some security measures in place. I have actually done this once as a DM. the party was essentially run through a high level dungeon, there was a couple of deaths (got resurrected) and afterwords they were chased by bounty hunters, for a while any how. I have never told a party that they could not, but I made sure that they knew that the place had big time security comparable to an old dragons lair.

[Jack_Simth]

This question comes up occasionally... My answer:

The way I always figured....

The merchant you greet isn't the real merchant. The merchant you greet is a front. The actual merchant is underground somewhere, at the edge of the range of the ring gate (and, in fact, is feeding several different fronts that way). The actual merchant is a wizard.

A portable hole.
Half of a Ring Gate pair.
A catalog.
Several displays that are nothing more than thief bait. Cursed items that are pretty much unsaleable, but look impressive.A carefully shaped and Forbiddanced cave.
A few golems to handle labor.
A lot of Symbol spells on the walls, attuned to the wizard and the golems (possibly other traps as well).
A lot of Permanent Image illusions that the merchant has already disbelieved and can see through.
Permanent See Invisiblity.
Permanent Arcane Sight.
The other halves of the ring gate pairs, mounted on the walls such that you do not have line-of-sight or line-of-effect to the wizard through the ring gates, but as soon as you go through them, the Wizard has both line-of-sight and line-of-effect to you.
Contingency for a nice buff on the Wizard.
A combat loadout of spells.
Several all-day and hours/level buffs running.The front merchant takes your order and your money, puts it into the portable hole, and tosses it through the ring gate.
The real merchant sees the portable hole, orders the golem to open it and dump it all out, confirms that the paper is nonmagical, reads the order, makes sure the money matches, orders the golem to fetch the appropriate items, put them in the portable hole, and send them back through the ring gate.
The front merchant opens the portable hole, takes out your goods, and gives them to you.The front merchant takes your goods, puts it into the portable hole, and tosses it through the ring gate.
The real merchant sees the portable hole, orders the golem to open it and dump it all out, ID's everything via Analyze Dweomer, orders the golem to put everything on the shelves, fetch the money, load the portable hole, and toss the portable hole back through the ring gate.
The front merchant removes your money from the portable hole and gives it to you.When the goods are a bag of holding, portable holes, and related items: those just go straight through the ring gates as-is after being inverted. Because Portable Holes have negligible weight, the Ring Gate transport limit is irrelevant (except when dealing with Bags of Holding and related items, of course).

If you rob the front merchant: You get... a portable hole, half a ring gate, some highly cursed items, and the enmity of a powerful wizard.

If you sneak past the front merchant to try and get to the real merchant, you're facing a lot of Symbol spells (and possibly other traps) all at once, plus an angry Wizard.

Build that setup out a bit, and let them try.

[Reversefigure4]

We operate on the theory that the shop is not actually full of stock. The shopkeeper doesn't simply reach down under counter and pull out a +1 undead bane longsword. Instead he takes an order and around half the cash up front, writes out an order for the buying PC, contacts his wizard buddy, has the item made, and the PC comes back after the appropriate time to get the item picked up and pay off the outstanding balance.

Since nobody wants to play out that tedium at the table, it's usually just shorthanded as "you buy a +1 undead bane longsword", in the same way "Night passes uneventfully" describes 10 hours of watching, eating, resting, etc. Anyone who starts to abuse the system by trying to rob magic stores gets the full explanation, every time.

[Nifft]

Handy Haversack isn't much for security (unless you've say, trapped it with multiple self-destructs that will take all the items with it unless a trapguy knows exactly what to do). Wearing your inventory is great security, assuming you're powerful enough to defend your inventory. (And if you're not, then you're screwed no matter what.)


Secret Chest This is also a good idea, but it's a bit too restrictive in terms of who can use it.

[noob]

This question comes up occasionally... My answer:


Build that setup out a bit, and let them try.
Each time I hear about ring gates I want to connect one to the sun through a regular gate(of the gate spell) and laugh maniacally as magnetohydrodynamics destruction goes on the other side of the ring gate.(a behavior that is everything but good and results in mass destruction)
You do that right after stealing the portable hole and thus now you have a portable hole and won the xp for overcoming a wizard that would have been an opponent a few seconds later.(a travel gate scroll against a portable hole is a good trade)

[Jack_Simth]

Each time I hear about ring gates I want to connect one to the sun through a regular gate(of the gate spell) and laugh maniacally as magnetohydrodynamics destruction goes on the other side of the ring gate.(a behavior that is everything but good and results in mass destruction)You're trying to mix real-world physics with D&D. They're not really compatible.


You do that right after stealing the portable hole and thus now you have a portable hole and won the xp for overcoming a wizard that would have been an opponent a few seconds later.(a travel gate scroll against a portable hole is a good trade)
You're assuming he doesn't have a Craft Contingent Spell or an Astral Projection for that. You may have just become a thorn in his side. Keep in mind: He's a rich Wizard.

[Eldariel]

Anyone who's selling magic items beyond +1 armor/weapons also has the magic items to safeguard said items against incursion. The peddler need not be that powerful themself, but as anyone knows, a commoner 1 with 20th level WBL is able to beat CR20 challenges. Thus just have the shopkeeper use their own set of items, underlings, etc. (Golems & al. seem like appropriate defenders) to defend their hoard and expect at least Forbiddance-level blocking magic in any place with the items (and of course, the items themselves should always be in extradimensional storages that cannot be easily moved).

[Fizban]

Wearing your inventory is great security, assuming you're powerful enough to defend your inventory. (And if you're not, then you're screwed no matter what.)
It is pretty much the only option if you're facing people that can raid your chest, but before that the chest has insurance where they need you alive and either cooperative or mind-controlled to get at it, in addition to anything else, and you can threaten to smash your focus and render the contents irrecoverable to spite them same as the bag of holding/haversack.

This is also a good idea, but it's a bit too restrictive in terms of who can use it.
I mean, I wouldn't really find it appropriate to have anyone without serious magical ability running a "magic shop," but Sor/Wiz is a bit of a restriction.

For Clerics, there's Planar Ally (and maybe Sending to save on multiple casts). Simply call up and make an arrangement with an allied outsider to store your more valuable relics on the literal Seven Mounting Heavens of Celestia, hand them the items, then call them back later when needed. Same trick works with Planar Binding as long as you take the "actual negotiation" reading of the spell, and of course evil/neutral people will have more mercenary outsiders. Gods of commerce are the obvious bet for both running an item shop and having easy access to extraplanar vaults through their god.



Each time I hear about ring gates I want to connect one to the sun through a regular gate(of the gate spell) and laugh maniacally as magnetohydrodynamics destruction goes on the other side of the ring gate.(a behavior that is everything but good and results in mass destruction)
Uh huh, so the Ring Gate is destroyed a bagillion miles before it even reaches the sun, and you might want to read the Gate spell and how it doesn't actually let anything but creatures through. It's actually a serious problem for transporting matter, the only things that just send stuff through are DM fiat or the Planar Ring Gate (which has a larger but still finite limit and would be destroyed by the sun/black hole/whatever).

[TalonOfAnathrax]

Why punish the PCs for it? Make it an encounter or two and so give them loot!
Or let them have loot, but now the law is after them and so they'll later have to face a few encounters from which they'll get no loot.

And don't let them steal the entire shop: have the place rigged for that to be impossible somehow. Worst case use DM fiat "mysterious spell", then have them work to discover what it is and what its limitations are. While they do that (which is probably difficult and illegal and goes against the interests of various groups) then you can have them face a few encounters without much lootable stuff - and then let them get at the shop's stock (which coincidentally more or less matches the proper loot they should have gotten if they'd been in a dungeon).

And remember: the shop probably doesn't keep a large stock! They probably make stuff on comission and keep a stock of what was ordered but didn't sell, as well as various low-level items and one or two items to show off to prove their skill.

[skunk3]

Magical items are frequently items that cost more than what an average commoner would make in a lifetime. Someone already pointed out that one sale could keep a shop afloat for YEARS, and in a big city where adventurers are coming and going, these shopkeeps (really wizards) could be making astronomical amounts of wealth. Suffice it to say that they could afford to keep their place locked down like Fort Knox! There could be everything from nigh impossible-to-pick locks to mundane traps, wards, oil/grease, glyphs, runes, immediate effect spells, contingency spells, a familiar (like a cat) who lives in the shop, city guards, armed guards who stay there at night, cursed items, illusory items, hidden compartments, bags of holding, the list goes on and on and on. It would be like in "Home Alone" when the burglars tried to loot Kevin McAllister's house, lol. Also, there's lots of people who could potentially get pissed, like the individual(s) who crafted the items, city law enforcement, city leaders, merchant guilds, thieves guilds, etc. Really it just depends on how difficult you want to make it for them. I say if the PCs involved want to plan the heist very well and they pull it off nicely, then let them get away with some loot. Of course if they are detected in any way by any means they might have to deal with the consequences, and also this could change their alignment possibly... but I wouldn't punish the PCs. If they plan it well, do surveillance, gather information, and learn what they need to know and execute their plan, I'd let them have it!

[Fizban]

Speaking of how many sales are required to keep afloat- seriously, it's not very much. In fact it's so low that a low-level crafter is perfectly reasonable. The extravagant upkeep tier in the DMG is 200gp per month: profit from the sale and crafting of only two +1 weapons or a single +2 ability booster, is enough to last 10 months, with the xp compensated by a single CR 1/2 encounter (if the DM wants NPC crafting xp accounted for)- a few consumables, spellcasting fees, and/or payment for taking care of the CR 1/2 encounter can fill out the year.

Of course there's no measure of how many people are actually buying magic items other than the DM, no reason to assume every town has even that much magic item trade going on, but then that's only the amount required to support the highest standard tier of upkeep for someone who survives only on crafting (when profession can easily offset 28gp/month and you could merely live well for 100gp/month).

There's also the very significant question of: which magic shop? 'Cause that would be determined by the size of the city and the levels of the resulting NPCs. And city generation only gives so many NPCs of such high levels, and a city with powerful enough casters to sell magic items has equivalently powerful NPCs that could object. You rob the 10th level magic shop guy of a large city and there's three more 10th+ level guys of each class in the city, some of whom probably know, work with, or like the guy.

[Zombimode]

Let's say your stereotypical sticky-fingered rogue wants to break into a magic item shop and loot some of the gear that's sitting around. The wizard gets on board with the plan, and assists the rogue in thwarting any magical defenses that the shopkeeper has set up. Without fudging some rolls and declaring that the shopkeeper catches them via DM fiat, it's reasonable to assume that the players are perfectly capable of succeeding if they should choose to proceed with their plan.

Question: was the "Magic Mart" any more fleshed out in your campaign? Or was it hand-waved (which is fine) until now?

This is what you should answer first. Do not confuse a hand-waved Magic Mart with "Tio Pepe Magic Mart".


A good example for a fleshed out Version of the Magic Mart are the Thayan Enclaves in the Forgotten Realms.

[Tvtyrant]

Let's say your stereotypical sticky-fingered rogue wants to break into a magic item shop and loot some of the gear that's sitting around. The wizard gets on board with the plan, and assists the rogue in thwarting any magical defenses that the shopkeeper has set up. Without fudging some rolls and declaring that the shopkeeper catches them via DM fiat, it's reasonable to assume that the players are perfectly capable of succeeding if they should choose to proceed with their plan.

Assuming the players do successfully steal some select magical items, what safeguards can be set up to prevent them from making use of their free, ill-gotten goods? In the DMG's section on cursed items there's a list of requirements that an item might be given, which cause the item to cease functioning if one or more requirements is not met. I'm thinking, based on the concept, that it might be reasonable for a shopkeeper's standard item creation process to include adding a specific requirement that prevents an item from functioning before it has been paid for.
For example, he might program a quick IF-THEN/ELSE script into the item's magical coding which states that if the item is being used by its creator then the items functions; else, if the wielder of the item is not the creator and the item has been marked by the creator's personal Arcane Mark then the item functions; else, the item does not function.
The shopkeeper is able to use his own wares and demonstrate their effects to a customer. Anyone else attempting to use the item would be unable to activate it, unless the shopkeeper first applies his Arcane Mark to disable the item's DRM and "unlock" it. Thus a stolen item would not function and could not be used, and other artificers who use similar defense mechanisms would likely realize that the item is stolen so the item could not be sold.

Thoughts?

The big questions are: Who runs the magic shop and why? That will tell you everything you need to know about the encounter.

In one of my settings the big magic shops are run by Larimus Light (of Larry Light's Discount Emporium), a wizard and former adventurer who started the business to peddle off his dungeon findings, then got into making and selling magic items. Larry is a 12th level wizard who focuses primarily on making items now, distribution is done through his level 5-6 apprentices. Each shop is defended by a golem, his apprentice who works and lives there and 5-6 glyphs of warding (Larry is a Geometer) containing spells like Web and Solid Fog. If injured the apprentice will use a scroll of teleport to flee back to Larry in his laboratory/library and Larry will put a bounty on the thieves. The shops contain a number of random magic items and curios people have sold to them, along with potions and scrolls of low level spells.

But say the shop is run by Mon, a half-ogre who runs a local group of thieves. His pawn shop has magic items he is fencing for the group, all low level. It contains 2d6 magic items which are all but 1 tokens, scrolls and feather tokens. The 1 item is worth up to 1,000 GP, the rest of the shop is fake cards, collapsable hats and stolen clothing sold as "costumes." The shop is defended by Mon with a club.

[Xanyo]

Solution: Ye Olde Majick Shoppe has Ye Olde Majick Trappes.

Hey, they make loads from selling magic items. They can spare some defenses. Maybe they have an item that Dimension Locks the are, or perhaps Delays Teleportation, or even Diverts Teleportation. Each magic item has a Sepia Snake Sigil on it that the shopkeeper removes upon purchase. Or maybe Crystals of Return concealed and attached, also removed upon purchase. And I'm certain the shopkeeper has some divination scrolls and ranks in Use Magic Device. And can hire a wizard.

[vasilidor]

the various symbol spells, a dragon or two (type pending) a couple dozen high level npc guards, controlled undead and golems, not to mention mechanical traps...
all these things and more should be things you consider, a good rule of thumb is that the place should be an adventure dungeon comparable to the loot available.

[Troacctid]

If a Magic Walmart exists that just stocks a ton of magic items on shelves, it makes perfect sense for them to be cursed as OP describes. In fact, that's exactly how I ran it in my last campaign. (I just had it function only for a user who legally obtained it, without any Arcane Mark stuff.)

It also makes sense for magic items to be primarily sold by commission, or by auction, or from individual sellers who have to be tracked down on a per-item basis with Gather Information checks, or via a storefront that keeps the actual items in extradimensional storage instead of on the shelves. And it makes sense for different methods to be popular in different parts of the setting.

[Tvtyrant]

If a Magic Walmart exists that just stocks a ton of magic items on shelves, it makes perfect sense for them to be cursed as OP describes. In fact, that's exactly how I ran it in my last campaign. (I just had it function only for a user who legally obtained it, without any Arcane Mark stuff.)

It also makes sense for magic items to be primarily sold by commission, or by auction, or from individual sellers who have to be tracked down on a per-item basis with Gather Information checks, or via a storefront that keeps the actual items in extradimensional storage instead of on the shelves. And it makes sense for different methods to be popular in different parts of the setting.

On the other hand there are going to be a lot more magic items being recycled into the shop system then made by it. Every time someone needs a +2 sword they dump their +1 swords, so they are going to circulate pretty freely.

[Troacctid]

On the other hand there are going to be a lot more magic items being recycled into the shop system then made by it. Every time someone needs a +2 sword they dump their +1 swords, so they are going to circulate pretty freely.
A lot of people will probably have it upgraded instead!

But I imagine the Magic Walmart is not also doing the buying—or if they are, they're putting an extra enchantment on the item once it's in their stock.

[Andor13]

It depends very much on the setting. If it's a privately owned magic shop in some tiny princedom in a politically fractured land, then sure, rob away. If you get past the locks, and don't get eaten by the Mimic who works as a display stand, in exchange for all the dumb burglars he can eat, then go nuts.

If it's Eberron and you just ticked off House Canith, then god help you.

There is a continuous spectrum between these positions filled with guilds, bounty hunters, retired adventurers, and stuff listed in this thread.

[Nifft]

On the other hand there are going to be a lot more magic items being recycled into the shop system then made by it. Every time someone needs a +2 sword they dump their +1 swords, so they are going to circulate pretty freely.

That's valid, but the impact probably depends on the size of your high-level adventurer population.

(Also depends on the popularity of adventurers using Item Crafting to enhance a weapon rather than replacing it.)

[BowStreetRunner]

So just to sort of sum up some of the suggestions so far:

When PCs want to Rob Ye Olde Majick Shoppe, treat it as any other type of adventure. There are no freebies. They won't be the first to have thought of of robbing the place, and the owner will have taken some sort of measures to protect against such thievery. Some shops will be better protected than others. However, the following challenges may need to be overcome by the PCs:


Ye Olde Majick Shoppe may only be an auction house where the items are brought for sale but not stored otherwise. The PCs will have to deal with all of the NPC buyers, sellers, auction house employees and guards when they try to pull off a heist.

There are high CR guards present, with high Spot & Listen skills and possibly using Detect Thoughts, See Invisibility, and other such effects to ferret out thieves.

The shop is protected by locks, traps, wards, oil/grease, glyphs, runes, spells. This may include Dimension Locks, Delay Teleportation, Divert Teleportation, Sepia Snake Sigil, Crystals of Return, etc.

The display items are all Cursed Items put out for show, or illusory copies, while the sale items are stored out of sight. They may be stored in a Secret Chest or on the other side of a Ring Gate.

The sale items are all Cursed Items: Using either the 'Intermittent (Dependent) Functioning' rules or the 'Requirement' rules. While legitimate buyers will have way of making the items work properly, the PCs won't have this and may need some sort of research, legend lore, etc. to figure it out.

The shop-keeper carries the items on his person, using magical storage devices like bags of holding or a handy haversack.

Even if the PCs manage to get away with some loot, there is still a chance that someone will care enough to try to track them down and recover the goods as well as inflict some sort of punishment. This may include Law Enforcement/Bounty Hunters/Thieve's Guild/etc.. They will have access to spells like Locate Object, Scrying, and Discern Location.

There is no actual Majick Shoppe, but rather there are arcanists who deal in such items. Working out a purchase is less like walking into Walmart and more like making arrangements to purchase a high value work of art currently kept in a private collection. Just getting an introduction to the right person will require some effort, let alone arranging a meeting and figuring out what sort of offer to make. A middle man may be required who will handle the payment in escrow and arrange delivery of items by courier.

[Tvtyrant]

That's valid, but the impact probably depends on the size of your high-level adventurer population.

(Also depends on the popularity of adventurers using Item Crafting to enhance a weapon rather than replacing it.)

It is setting dependent for sure, but think of Forgotten Realms where literally hundreds of empires rose, peaked, and collapsed in any given place over 35,000 years. Magic items don't break down, so there are millions of magic items going back to the Sarrukh. When a farmer plows one up they sell it to a peddler, and they reenter the market at some point. Either someone is buying up all of those items or everyone has magic items sitting around their houses.

[Troacctid]

Magic items have hardness and hit points just like any other object. They can totally be destroyed.

The ones that aren't destroyed probably float their way into dungeons, thus maintaining the adventure-based economy.

[Tvtyrant]

Maintaining the adventure-based economy.

Which only functions if they then sell those magic items, which means someone is buying them.

Edit: You are quite right about the destructibility of magic items. I don't know why but I was sure they were immune to rust and mundane damage, but I was incorrect.

[vasilidor]

So, Vaern, has any of this been helpful?

[Vaern]

Whoops, I tried posting from my phone the other day, but I lost connection and forgot to come back and rewrite it when I got home...

The world I'm playing around with has no massive MagicMart™. Most suppliers of magical equipment are fairly low-level (1-6). In a city of sufficient size, there's basically assumed to be enough independent magic shoppes that, if they spend sufficient time exploring, the players can find basically anything from the DMG or MIC with a crafting requirement of caster level 5 or lower and whose market price does not exceed 2,500. +1 simple and martial weapons and +1 armor are generally readily available. There is a chance, determined by a percentile roll, that a few items exceeding these limitations may pop up, but usually the players must track down a higher level crafter and request to have more powerful equipment crafted for them.
So things like self-replenishing magical rations and water, low-level scrolls, and wands are readily available to adventurers passing through town, but the owners of the shoppes that pepper the city streets are not of high enough level to enslave dragons or bind outsiders to protect their shoppe, or to craft golems to do their heavy lifting for them, or cast trap spells with 500 gp material components on everything they keep in stock. The crafters that will be custom-making higher level equipment for the party might have some sort of elaborate defense systems set up, but a low-level shoppe isn't going to be able to do much to prevent a couple of determined PCs from breaking in.
A level 6 wizard isn't going to have the means to delay or divert teleportation, nor are they quite high enough level to scry their stolen goods to find the thief. The shoppe's inventory might be hidden somewhere when the business is closed, but Secret Chest is still two spell levels out of reach and the idea of afflicting every shopkeeper with a level of paranoia that forces them to keep all of their wares on their person at all times just sounds ridiculous. Letting the party steal an item only to tell them after the fact that it's a cheap piece of junk with a magic aura spell cast on it seems like more of a cop-out to take loot away from them than simply telling them beforehand that the item is unlikely to work properly if they don't purchase it properly. Building a defense mechanism into the crafting process of the item to deter potential thieves, which as far as I can tell wouldn't even modify the crafting cost of the item, would be a much cheaper, easier, and more believable tactic for the average Joe to employ than turning to more extravagant offensive countermeasures to combat thieves.

[FreddyNoNose]

Let's say your stereotypical sticky-fingered rogue wants to break into a magic item shop and loot some of the gear that's sitting around. The wizard gets on board with the plan, and assists the rogue in thwarting any magical defenses that the shopkeeper has set up. Without fudging some rolls and declaring that the shopkeeper catches them via DM fiat, it's reasonable to assume that the players are perfectly capable of succeeding if they should choose to proceed with their plan.

Assuming the players do successfully steal some select magical items, what safeguards can be set up to prevent them from making use of their free, ill-gotten goods? In the DMG's section on cursed items there's a list of requirements that an item might be given, which cause the item to cease functioning if one or more requirements is not met. I'm thinking, based on the concept, that it might be reasonable for a shopkeeper's standard item creation process to include adding a specific requirement that prevents an item from functioning before it has been paid for.
For example, he might program a quick IF-THEN/ELSE script into the item's magical coding which states that if the item is being used by its creator then the items functions; else, if the wielder of the item is not the creator and the item has been marked by the creator's personal Arcane Mark then the item functions; else, the item does not function.
The shopkeeper is able to use his own wares and demonstrate their effects to a customer. Anyone else attempting to use the item would be unable to activate it, unless the shopkeeper first applies his Arcane Mark to disable the item's DRM and "unlock" it. Thus a stolen item would not function and could not be used, and other artificers who use similar defense mechanisms would likely realize that the item is stolen so the item could not be sold.

Thoughts?

In the late great Craig Rickman's campaign in the major city we were in, robbing the magic shop carried the death penalty. According to the thieves guild, when a stolen magic item was taken through a portal a light flashed and the thief was disintegrated. And nobody had every successfully stolen a magic item. For the sake of the story, other information won't be brought in.

So a plan was put into place. I purchase a pair of boots of speed from the store and cased the joint so to speak. There was a ring of invisibility that I was interested in but had to get the money from the bank and get it the next day I told them. Using fellow players a thief and a magic-user we proceeded with the plan.

Friend thief would arrive after I did in the store and look around for items. While I was talking with one of the clerks, he would perform the reverse of pick pockets, we called it place pockets. Our mage would be whistling while walking to the store. This was the signal. Friend yells out pointing to the man whom he planted item with placed pockets "thief" as the mage opened the door, I tossed the ring through the door. A flash of light occurred, I ran wearing not only the boots of speed but was hasted from a ring I had so I was moving at 4 times speed in effect. I grabbed the ring and turned invisible while running away. Many clerks chased after me knocking down the mage in the process.

The aftermath: The mage, who knew the son of the king, got large discount on potions and scrolls for getting hurt (and to hush up about it all). The rogue got a discount on some items she wanted. The "thief" was hung right away. I got the ring but not any credit for it. See, even after that, nobody had ever successfully stolen from a magic store in town. At least I got the ring, but I was initially motivated by the fame of pulling it off.

[tyckspoon]

Building a defense mechanism into the crafting process of the item to deter potential thieves, which as far as I can tell wouldn't even modify the crafting cost of the item, would be a much cheaper, easier, and more believable tactic for the average Joe to employ than turning to more extravagant offensive countermeasures to combat thieves.

It can actually make the item cheaper, if you use the DMG's not-very-well-thought-out suggested rules for discounting an item based on usage restrictions. Craft an item with the restriction 'only works if the shopkeeper has written Paid In Full on the hilt', you get a measure of built-in security plus your profit margin increases because it now costs 20% less to make as a 'less useful' item! They're very silly rules :smallbiggrin:

That said, something as simple as a nice strong box (steel, iron, alchemically-reinforced wood, whatever's appropriate to the area) equipped with an Arcane Lock should be in reach of most low-level characters. The idea isn't to make it impossible to steal from, since that's going to be largely impossible without huge amounts of magic and higher-level effects to work with; you just want to make it more difficult than walking into the shop, grabbing something off the shelf, and walking back out with it. So some kind of secured storage that is easier for the proper owner to bypass than some random stranger - an Eternal Wand or Minor Schema of Arcane Lock could allow the shopkeeper to count as the caster and thus bypass the locks. Maybe combine with a 'security camera' to watch the shop during non-business hours: a magical trap of Silent Image linked to an Alarm. When the Alarm is triggered, it creates a Silent Image of whatever set it off, thus providing a visual record of the presumed-criminals to provide to whatever organization is employed to care about such things.