Magic Shop Comissions

[Kotenkiri]

So my party is turning Trollskull manor into a magic item workshop of sorts so wanted to create interesting commissions ideas beside the whole Magic Item becomes money. So what ideas can you guys come up with?

Note, my magic item process is three steps, research and Design, material gathering and construction.

A few ideas I had was

Crow Mask - plague doctor mask with google of night built in
requires crystal for lenses from earth plane
reward: commissioner, a necromancy wizard, will exchange spell scrolls for items. (Which may include some homebrew spells).

Harness of Binding - armor pieces that anchors a being to a plane (prevents Banishment or Plane Shifting)
Requires planar binding spell and specials metal (tbd)
reward - blueprint for Harness as down payment and blueprints for other uniq

[Sparky McDibben]

Maybe creating some bound elementals? Like the elemental myrmidons in MToF.

Pretty much anything from a bad guy's lair.

OH MY GOD!! The BBEG hires the PCs as lair architects/contractors without knowing they're hunting them!

[Dalebert]

This is actually a great idea for a game. The PCs running a magic item shop that takes custom orders from wealthy clientele. The research and components needed to complete the items would send them on myriad adventures. They could have casters and artificers in their employ who do much of the busy work.

[Zhorn]

This is actually a great idea for a game. The PCs running a magic item shop that takes custom orders from wealthy clientele. The research and components needed to complete the items would send them on myriad adventures. They could have casters and artificers in their employ who do much of the busy work.
I like this idea. It's not for the whole scope of what the adventure is about, but serves the purpose of "why is this band of adventurers all in this area doing a thing?", "to pay their bills and they're business partners" is a much easier motivation to explain than working out the moral dilemmas that keep the rogue, warlock and paladin from just murdering each other.

Adventure 1: getting the funds to buy/build/repair the venue that is going to be used for the shop (or having it as a reward from the adventure)

Adventure 2: travel to a far off area to convince a skilled person to work at your establishment

Adventures 3 and onward: Collecting the rare components to complete the commissioned items

[JackPhoenix]

Realistically, most commisions would be for stuff like lanterns with Continual Flame inside, Magic Mouth-based anything from alarm to novelty doorbells, self-cleaning and/or repairing clothes, dishes that keep the food the same temperature, cupboard that prevents food stored inside from spoiling and similar utility items, not items with highly specific, adventurer-only use.

[Sparky McDibben]

Realistically, most commisions would be for stuff like lanterns with Continual Flame inside, Magic Mouth-based anything from alarm to cupboard that prevents food stored inside from spoiling and similar utility items, not items with highly specific, adventurer-only use.

So you recruit a few apprentices to handle the low-grafe magic while you take care of the "special orders."

[DarkKnightJin]

So you recruit a few apprentices to handle the low-grafe magic while you take care of the "special orders."

And keeping the option to handle some of the 'low tier' stuff when you have some downtime, to keep grounded in reality on why you started this thing.

That's what my character would do, anyway.
Help reinforce the workforce making the low tier stuff when he's not out collecting stuff for the specialty items. Not only because it's important to remember the basics, but also to stay grounded and not get full of himself. And being around to spark loyalty in the workforce is always a good thing.
Maybe even encourage some of the more skilled ones to strive for greater levels of skill, and one day they could be running the shop.

[Kotenkiri]

More details, the party consists of three level 10 characters, a Forge Cleric (he runs the shop), a Hexblade Warlock and Sun Soul Monk.The Warlock is a noble with retainer who are working in the shop.

The shop serves as their home base of sorts but like most businesses in D&D, it's run on its own unless the party uses downtime to help run it.

The commissions are mostly jobs that acts as plot hooks or tasks beyond the day to day staff to handle like ones that require plane shifting, which is where the party comes in. minor problem being money is not in need so can't encourage them to do these commission jobs based on just gold so trying to attract attention by having magic item they never seen or rewards they can't buy per say.