So Magic Marts are strictly banned - what to do with heaps of useless +1 items?

[Jon_Dahl]

In my campaign, buying and selling magical items is banned. I have simply decided not to trivialize magical items by making them commodities, and my players accept that. We have a consensus on the matter.

However, the PCs have a ridiculous amount of +1 items. I have no clue how many, but the exact number is ridiculous. The situation only gets worse.

What would you do? I am willing to listen to any advice, but I'm afraid I will skip ideas that point to having Magic Marts, because we have already agreed not to have those, so there is no way that I will bring the subject up again.

[Cygnia]

Donate them to their church or village barracks of choice?

[schreier]

If you get an artificer in the party as a PC or follower, they can break items down for the xp then use it to make new items

Another option is to get a stronghold, then equip your guards.

You could also find a kingdom/city with which you want to ally and make arrangements to provide them with low level magic items in return for favors or elevated status

[Keltest]

Found a militia of some kind to follow behind the PCs and secure whatever territory they carve a bloody swath through?

Although really, I think you may want to reconsider whether your non-magic-mart rule is achieving what you want it to. If they have so many +1 weapons they don't know what to do with them, you've already turned them into a commodity. I can totally understand not wanting them to just be spending down time browsing for some random magic trinket, but regular +x weapons and armor are going to be so unbelievably common over the course of a campaign that you really need some way for the party to make them useful.

[Ramza00]

Ancestral Relic Feat from Book of Exalted Deeds. It does not require you to be exalted merely good. Via prayer you can drain magic and wealth from other items and grant it to a specific item as new wealth and abilities.

Perfect recycling in a feat form.

It benefits all classes. Which classes it benefits the most is up for debate. Ancestral Relic could make melee and ranged have better weapons or grant them a mobility which they crave. The counter arguement is it gives spellcasters early access to magical staffs and runestaves, turning a stick into greater magical versatility not neccessary increasing total magical power with higher level spells but instead giving even more flexibility to your spellcasters.

[False God]

Aren't magic items trivialized by the sheer abundance you've handed out though?

[Doctor Awkward]

In my campaign, buying and selling magical items is banned. I have simply decided not to trivialize magical items by making them commodities, and my players accept that. We have a consensus on the matter.

However, the PCs have a ridiculous amount of +1 items. I have no clue how many, but the exact number is ridiculous. The situation only gets worse.

You are perfectly describing a situation in which magical items are trivialized. The players have a gigantic pile of them and they serve no function.

Your best option to rectify this is to simply allow them to buy and sell magic items.

[heavyfuel]

It could work with a Throw Anything build. Just start chucking magic weapons at your enemies.

If not, I second donating them to institutions that will help forward the PCs' goals. Churches and their weapon-wielding armor-wearing spell-casting clerics should make for excellent allies.

Wondrous items can also be given to PCs minions, like an Animal Companion or a paladin's Mount. Otherwise, keep the ones you think are situationally useful and donate the ones that strictly inferior to what you already have.

[Ashtagon]

In my campaign, buying and selling magical items is banned. I have simply decided not to trivialize magical items by making them commodities, and my players accept that. We have a consensus on the matter.

However, the PCs have a ridiculous amount of +1 items. I have no clue how many, but the exact number is ridiculous. The situation only gets worse.

What would you do? I am willing to listen to any advice, but I'm afraid I will skip ideas that point to having Magic Marts, because we have already agreed not to have those, so there is no way that I will bring the subject up again.

If you want a campaign with no magic marts, there are two steps you need to take. You've done the first, which is to not create any such retail outlets in your setting. You failed on the second task, which was to make sure any magic items made available to the PCs is not a mere commodity.

Basically, every single magic item, no matter how low-spec, must be a unique item in its own right. There is no such thing as a +1 longsword. Instead, the PCs might have found Glimdrang, wielded by the legendary dwarf warrior Lorin, who was fully five feet tall. It dimly remembers the ancient deeds of its first owner, and provides an additional +1 when defending his homeland or when fighting an elf (an additional +2 if both conditions are satisfied). Similarly, that ring of protection +1 was made famous by Karisa al-Hsab, the queen of thieves. The ring now grants a +2 bonus to Stealth checks made while above ground outdoors in warm climates at night, in addition to its bonus to AC.

It probably requires some heavy retconning, but I would suggest that every +1 item be either changed to being a masterwork item, or else (if it already has even the barest trace of story), some petty and niche bonuses and a backstory.

[Silvercrys]

So... usually what happens is, when you want to remove magic marts, you also discard the standard treasure tables. Magic items are solely the province of special quest rewards or buried within ancient tombs. By the end of a character's career they may have found 2-3 suits of armor and 4-5 magic weapons total, and there is maybe a wealthy buyer for your old stuff or a collector you can pawn your unused stuff off on -- the restriction on magic marts come from the supply side, in other words. You just don't acquire enough of them and there aren't enough in the world for there to really be a market for them as a commodity.

You seem to have done the opposite, where the world is still lousy with cheap/low-level magic items but there's no demand for them to be sold somehow.

How to fix? Depends on whether you want your players to get a power up from your fix and on the kind of game you're playing.

If the players are based out of one town/city, maybe a blacksmith who knows how to work with magic items moves in and they can break down the "junk" items to enhance other ones with the blacksmith's help. Or maybe the wizard discovers a spell that can do the same thing during their next adventure/in the next dungeon. Or they find clues about an ancient Dwarven technique for doing it and have to go on a quest.

If you don't want to give them a power up, though, it's really on them to stop carrying around junk items that aren't useful. Without doing heavy handed stuff like retconning all of it to masterwork items or something there's not a whole lot you can do.

[Psyren]

Remove extradimensional storage and track encumbrance, that will really teach your players not to hoard junk on their persons.

Assuming you're dead set against any changes to your economic system for whatever reason, "donate useless old items to churches" is probably the next best recourse available to them.

[Troacctid]

Have you considered not dropping heaps of useless +1 weapons in the first place?

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

Honest question, why wouldn't they be able to find some lower-level adventurers or a well funded city guard/militia who would be willing to take those items off their hands at a discount? A +1 weapon is worth 2,300+ gp, a masterwork weapon is 300+ gp, so who wouldn't buy a surplus +1 weapon for 500-800 gp instead of a masterwork weapon?

Second, if magic items aren't being created for sale, where are all of those coming from? Why is there such a surplus of magic items in the setting with zero demand for them?! None of that makes any sense at all, both in-character, out-of-character, and from an economics standpoint.

For a solution, assuming they effectively have zero market value, maybe allow them to recycle items to put a portion of a given item's magical value toward the creation of new items. So they can sacrifice ten +1 weapons worth 20k total to craft an item with a value of say 10k gp (but it still costs 400 xp to craft). So it's like they're selling that 20k+masterwork worth of items for just 5k (less than 25% of value) and putting that value toward creating new items, but skipping the step of selling them.

Or they could just build a throne from thousands of +1 swords, or something equally silly and nonsensical.

[Efrate]

There is a magic mart now. It's the pcs. Advertise in a big city and you now monopolize the entire magic item trade. Your pcs are the new magic mart, they hire an artificier and you have now a setting where suddenly magic items are now available and for sale. Or they just becoming legendary travelling merchants, get rich, other adventures do the same and now you have magic marts.

[Rynjin]

Literally all I could think of on reading the OP:

{Scrubbed}

If you want magic items to be 'special', don't give out useless magic items. Basically you have accomplished the precise opposite of what you set out to do, like building a wall around your house to keep everyone out, but forgetting to actually go inside before laying the final brick.

Generally when someone wants to get rid of "magic marts" they also put in the work to obviate the NEED for them in a game. And I don't mean need in game terms, I mean need in worldbuilding terms. If magic items are commonplace and largely worthless, they will have a market. You have essentially created a world where LOGICALLY "+1 longswords, two for the price of one!" is a phrase you should be hearing hawked at Rolf's Discount Swords...but you have arbitrarily restricted the sale of magic items, so now the world no long makes any sense.

In trying to increase verisimilitude and fantasy, you have decreased both.

The thing you wanted to do here was make magic items a rare and expensive commodity. There is no 'magic mart' because the business would be unsustainable. You could potentially sell magic items to private collectors, but there's no way to bulk offload such treasure if it's rare and valuable. This also requires a lot of work on your part because you then need to go out of your way to modify every single creature in the bestiary that you plan to use. Their AC, attack rolls, damage, and save DCs all need to be reduced because your players will not have the numbers the system math expects them to have to survive certain things. Consider using a variant of Automatic Bonus Progression (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/unchained-rules/automatic-bonus-progression/) to obviate the need for the boring "big 6" items you you can focus on giving out weird, lesser used magic items like a Crown of Blasting or similar.

{Scrubbed}

[GrayDeath]

In my campaign, buying and selling magical items is banned. I have simply decided not to trivialize magical items by making them commodities, and my players accept that. We have a consensus on the matter.

However, the PCs have a ridiculous amount of +1 items. I have no clue how many, but the exact number is ridiculous. The situation only gets worse.

What would you do? I am willing to listen to any advice, but I'm afraid I will skip ideas that point to having Magic Marts, because we have already agreed not to have those, so there is no way that I will bring the subject up again.

Soooo, you "fobid" Magic marts, but do not solve the reason for magic Marts (lots and lots of semi useless magical stuff)?
What did you expect would happen?


Have you considered not dropping heaps of useless +1 weapons in the first place?

Said it best and shortest, I think.

THe ball is in your court, either allow the palyers to open the First Magic mart and be at the forefront of the worlds revolution, or find a solution for them to profit from the stuff, and from now on DONT drop stupidly useless low Power Items.

Seems obvious.

[noob]

+1 items are not all useless: they have the same odds to glow as other items so grab the ones that glows and it makes awesome torches for your castle or house.
+1 daggers that does not glows are probably cool kitchen tools(possibly never dulling and tougher than any normal tool and sharper too)

[Caelestion]

Use Grod's Cutting down the Christmas Tree (http://www.giantitp.com/forums/showthread.php?357810-Chopping-Down-the-Christmas-Tree-Low-Magic-Item-Rules) rules to eliminate all the boring magic items and then you won't need to not have magic marts to trivialise items.

[Calthropstu]

Guys, insulting him isn't helping, and little of this is constructive.

That said, it isn't the best move banning magic marts and throwing useless magic items at the party. But you came here for ideas to fix this so I will give some possibilities for you to consider.

A gambling system:
Place an artifact or some sort of shrine or whatever that allows you to rank up items by sacrificing numerous weaker ones. You place a masterwork item to recieve the enchantment so you get to pick what type of item you will use but randomize an enchantment apropriate to that type.

An enhancement system:
Similar to the above, but the selected item starts magical and recieves a logical power increase.

Give them some henchmen to use the items:
Give them each the leadership feat so they can equip them with the items.

Have them look for an army general who may be willing to buy the bulk.

Have an event that requires the sacrifice of many minor magic items.

I hope some of these prove useful to you and wish you luck.

[RatElemental]

What exactly is preventing the players from selling the magic items to some random magic fanatic who is tooootally a wizard (honest, but you can't see his spellbook because reasons) or even offload them to a city guard at the rate they could sell a masterwork item of the same type for?

If it's "Because no one can afford to pay what the book says the item is worth" well nuts to the book. The players are the ones who can set the price for their items, they could sell their +5 vorpal sword to a peasant for 2 coppers and some pocket lint if they wanted.

If it's "because I'm the DM and I said no" well, that's a whole can of worms right there, innit?

[Tiktakkat]

Why is having heaps of items a problem?
If the PCs do not want to carry them they can just buy a house and store them. Or invest in an underground complex filled with traps and guards - either hired mercenaries or trapped monsters, in order to keep them safe. It's not like anything could go wrong while the PCs are away, with the guards or monsters starting to escape and attack nearby communities for food and such, and those communities have to hire some group of vagabonds hanging around in the local tavern on the verge of becoming troublesome indigents themselves. Wait . . .

Anyway, as for "solutions", the best have already been noted. And they are generally the ones we used back in AD&D times when magic marts had not even been invented. Namely, we gave them to our henchmen and followers. I once noted that assuming reasonable (i.e. "shame a swarm of locusts") level looting in the original Temple of Elemental Evil, by the time the PCs reached the lowest level they should have found enough +1 weapons, +1 armor, and +1 shields to fully outfit the dozen 0-2nd level men-at-arms types freed from being prisoners with left overs for back up weapons and enough +2 or better items for the PCs. And do NOT get me started on how crazy the Drow series gets when the PCs realize they have enough plunder to outfit enough freed slaves to go mass battle on Erelhei-Cinlu. And win.
If none of the PCs can be bothered with Leadership, just get a bunch of hirelings and over-equip them. Or give them to some local authority figure to gain influence. Or whatever equivalent is possible.
Picking up an artificer, either as a PC or from Leadership has been mentioned, and combines the best of the first option with potential customization of the leftovers.

And then there is the "mean" version. Doesn't anyone ever fail a saving throw? Aren't there monsters with Improved Sunder? Are there no competent thieves? Well . . .
Use them! And make the PCs appreciate the value of a dozen backups for each item.
Give the party a nice solid one right in the WBL, and all those "surplus" items are no longer as surplus as they once seemed.

In the long run, "extra" magic items are only a problem if you do not have enough extra-dimensional spaces to carry them. And even then, bags of holding may not get you good magic, but good magic will always get you bags of holding.

[noob]

Guys, insulting him isn't helping, and little of this is constructive.

That said, it isn't the best move banning magic marts and throwing useless magic items at the party. But you came here for ideas to fix this so I will give some possibilities for you to consider.

A gambling system:
Place an artifact or some sort of shrine or whatever that allows you to rank up items by sacrificing numerous weaker ones. You place a masterwork item to recieve the enchantment so you get to pick what type of item you will use but randomize an enchantment apropriate to that type.

An enhancement system:
Similar to the above, but the selected item starts magical and recieves a logical power increase.

Give them some henchmen to use the items:
Give them each the leadership feat so they can equip them with the items.

Have them look for an army general who may be willing to buy the bulk.

Have an event that requires the sacrifice of many minor magic items.

I hope some of these prove useful to you and wish you luck.

saying that glowing weapons makes awesome decorations for an house is not an insult and actually indicates a way to do stuff with the magical items.

[Mr Adventurer]

Bit confusing, if there's no market for +1 items to be bought, why are so many wizards, clerics etc. making so many of them to be found?

Those reasons are probably the aims the PCs can have with these weapons, too.

[noob]

Bit confusing, if there's no market for +1 items to be bought, why are so many wizards, clerics etc. making so many of them to be found?

Those reasons are probably the aims the PCs can have with these weapons, too.

Imagine a level 5 wizard adventuring with his level 5 fighter and for the tenth time this week they meet incorporeal undead from the recent shade apocalypse.
That wizard starts by casting magic weapon once more and thinks "if only I could not cast this spell at the start of each fight against shades"
A few days after the outbreak there is one more +1 sword.
There is a lot of people who can make +1 swords(just grab one feat) and that will do that for personal use due to a lot of things that are annoying to fight without magical weapons.
Afterwards when you have a +1 weapon you will not necessarily want to sell it then later when you are defeated the evil overlord grab it and equip one more servitor thus explaining how over time there is more and more +1 weapons.

[nedz]

This is a problem for the players to solve — not the DM.

Also, I don't know how the economy works in your setting, so I can't really give any advice ?

[Particle_Man]

Make a deal with a metallic dragon; they give the dragon excess +1 weapons, the dragon protects the town.

[DeTess]

They could find a rich merchant and strike a deal with him. He finds buyers for their excess gear and they split the profit. The merchant earns a very nice sum from this and soon realizes he could earn even more if he where to strike similar deals with other wandering adventurers. Soon enough he is a broker for a wide variety of magic items, which the PC's can then buy stuff they actually want from.

[noob]

Except there might be a problem with the amount of currency.
Knowing that a chicken cost 2pc it means that for a gold coin to exist it means there is a currency that can be traded for 50 chickens which is a lot and then imagine buying something that costs 1000 times that?
You can suddenly see why people having the money to buy a +1 magical weapon for its crafting cost minus xp are rare enough that it might make trading those hard.
If the adventurers are used to find gigantic piles of gold then maybe they can try to inject the money into the trading system slowly so that a few decades later there is enough gold for people to be able to trade around magical items enough for shops to be created(instead of being a system where when you want a magical item you recruit a crafter and give them the supplies to craft the item you want).(If they inject money fast the economy might crash hard in a way that hurts commoners a lot)

[DeTess]

Except there might be a problem with the amount of currency.
Knowing that a chicken cost 2pc it means that for a gold coin to exist it means there is a currency that can be traded for 50 chickens which is a lot and then imagine buying something that costs 1000 times that?
You can suddenly see why people having the money to buy a +1 magical weapon for its crafting cost minus xp are rare enough that it might make trading those hard.

Which is why you need the broker to find those people. And I doubt people able to afford such weapons with relative ease are rare in that world, because if each +1 weapon was a priceless artifact that only emperors could afford, they wouldn't be lying around in dungeons for PC's to find. The moment such an item got lost, a lot of powerful people would be willing to expend a lot of resources to get it back otherwise.

[Fizban]

Everyone else has already covered the root problem. As for solutions, if you want to give out piles of stuff that can't be converted into the primary currency, you've got yourself a crafting economy. From now on all magic items can be scrapped for points towards crafting new items (don't use the Eberron Artificer's mechanic, it only negates xp, which is not the actual limit people need negated, items must scrap for gp worth and possibly also xp worth). Coincidentally, they scrap for half their market value.

But how do the players craft items? Well in this case it would be better if crafting no longer required feats, because you've taken away the no-feat-cost method of selling items, so it should be replaced wit no-feat-cost crafting. However, I expect you'll consider that too soft, so instead allow people to craft without feats at double cost.

So now you've got magic items that are scrapped for half-price, crafted for full price, and crafted with feats for half-price. Back to the original expected numbers, though even more suggestive of the idea that crafting feats double your money. But that's to be expected when you remove the other half of the system.

I would say that your players will immediately go ham on crafting feats, but knowing your caster players' history, they'll probably just refuse to craft anything for the rest of the party (another reason for scrapped items to provide both gp and xp). Thus, you'll also need to allow non-casters to scrap and craft items, with no feats. This will need to be done at the same speed as magic item crafting, and any skill checks must be easily passable for a normal character.


The main alternative is to go full hands-on and take care of the problem without mechanical changes. This means the players find NPCs to gift their surplus gear to, in exchange for assorted favors, and from now on you take maximum care in placing the loot. Ensuring no extraneous duplicates, having NPCs upgrade certain items as a reward rather than finding new stuff, and just generally never relying on random generation or what's in the module (most of which is random anyway). This is more work for the DM and requires certain skills, because you have to craft a significant part of the game progression by hand. Just like a video game designer has to make sure all the items are good and fun and so on, so do you.


In addition to the Ancestral Relic feat from BoED, DMG2 has Bonded Magic Items, which let anyone have a single item that they essentially craft themselves through some more or less complicated ritual after various events. It's a cool idea, but the limitations are many as written: there aren't very many rituals given- so you/the players need to come up with more, the ritual still has nebulous gp costs equal to crafting the item (1/2 market price)- so you need liquid cash and a town, and the limit to one item means that it can't replace the entire inventory. It can shift a considerable amount however, and it's possible that with a couple big ticket items per character you can get the rest of their inventory down to small bonuses. If there are rituals people can manage to complete reliably (I expect the combat ones will be a no-go as your non-magicals die a lot, the trial by literal fire requires teamwork to manually trigger safely, others take a long time, etc).

Which comes to another point- duplicate items have no effective party worth. So you can just pretend those items don't exist, because they aren't actually making the party more effective. And if they can't be sold, they really are worthless. So the party should probably have more treasure than they do, because the vendor trash is not contributing towards letting them beat more powerful foes. The other side of refusal to allow selling of magic items is to make it because those items are literally worthless, no one buys them because everyone has them, and the PCs get their necessary increases because their foes just happen to have the correct next level of bonus right when the PCs should be finding it.

So you could have everyone walking around with a Bonded item of high value, another item their patron has upgraded for them, and then the rest of their WLB, their flat bonuses, are level-appropriate trash that doesn't matter aside from being level appropriate.


But really, and most especially for converting an ongoing game, the easiest and most effective answer is to just replace the buying and selling with scraping and anybody can crafting.


Also, it occurs to me that "magic item economy" is not the right way to refer to this problem. Better to use the terms from the book: Treasure. It's a treasure problem. Change one part of the treasure system (randomized or DM placed cash/magic items/art, cash can buy magic items and items can be sold for half, DM is expected to ensure the party has sufficient items to progress) without changing the rest, and you're gonna have a bad time.

[noob]

Which is why you need the broker to find those people. And I doubt people able to afford such weapons with relative ease are rare in that world, because if each +1 weapon was a priceless artifact that only emperors could afford, they wouldn't be lying around in dungeons for PC's to find. The moment such an item got lost, a lot of powerful people would be willing to expend a lot of resources to get it back otherwise.

I did not say it was priceless only that the costs were so high that you might as well pay yourself the person who crafts it.
After all 50.000 chickens is possibly lesser in cost than the cost of the lives of the people who does into dungeons to fight opponents with those.(I mean you do not have an unlimited amount of fearless skilled fighters)

There is multiple countries in real life that had problems(in a distant past) with not having enough gold in their system and that actually got richer from getting more gold because they simply did not have enough gold for their economy to run well.

[Mr Adventurer]

Use them as payment for Planar Bindings and Allies.

[pabelfly]

You don't want to trivialize magic items by making them easy to sell, which I can understand, so you could make selling magic items a quest. They need to travel to a place that wants to buy some items, they might have to travel through dangerous terrain to get to a particular city in another continent or even another plane. Players don't have free reign to buy and sell whatever they want, they can buy and sell items based on what suits the setting in question.

My other suggestion is... have someone come to the PCs saying that they want to buy a whole bunch of magic weapons and armor. Turns out the person buying the gear is evil, and the players have helped enable said plans by outfitting the evil guy's henchmen.

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

This is a problem for the players to solve — not the DM.

Not exactly, when in literally every other game ever, such items could just be sold off to fund useful upgrades. This is a problem created by the DM, who has arbitrarily prohibited the PCs from using the solution that makes the most sense.

[AvatarVecna]

Getting rid of magic iteme you don't want is easy. Just...drop them. Don't take them. Hell maybe if you're worried about them being used against you, have them get broken. Any solution that involves exchanging them for some measure of in-universe replacement is going to end up being a magic mart with extra steps, trading items for items in a barter system instead of for cold hard cash...and that's still going to result in a magic item economy.

A +1 weapon or a +2 stat booster is more money than a human unskilled laborer will make in their whole life. That's demand scarcity built in. Adventurers are just the 1% of the 1% because they are, even at the best of times, murderhobos with a more philosophical bent than others. They murder monsters and take their hoarded wealth, and then themselves hoarding the wealth in a form that is simultaneously more compact and enables them to better defend it (as opposed to just having a useless pile of gold). They sell the old models when they buy or stealt newer ones, and they sell them to others like themselves who have more wealth than any normal person could ever hope to amass living a life of honest labor instead of making their blood-soaked fortune by profitting off the cycle of death between adventurers and monsters.

[Kelb_Panthera]

This right here is -exactly- why I hear "low-magic" and "low-wealth" and immediately hear alarm bells. {Scrubbed}

As others upthread have pointed out, you've broken verisimilitude in your world building. If magic items are common enough that going through typical adventures gets you a pile of them that you have no use for, why is no one willing to buy them? It's certainly not because they lack value. Divine intervention?

{Scrubbed}. Whether you retcon the pile they already have or no, stop using the standard treasure tables to give out piles of junk-loot. Stop giving out simple +X items altogether except -maybe- the ability boosters. Don't forget you're going to need to account for the absence of such items, while you're at it. PF has a table for "automatic bonus progression," IIRC. If you use that then the numbers will work out like they're supposed to. Sticking to humanoid enemies and no higher than level ~12 or 13 should also help quite a bit.

Also know that, by doing this, you're exacerbating the imbalance between casters and non-casters and, unless your casters are fairly competent and team oriented, a -lot- of mid-to-high level creatures are going to have abilities that your players are going to struggle with. I -reallly- hope one of them is playing a cleric or you're being -really- careful on encounter selection. Both, really.

{Scrubbed}

[Rynjin]

A +1 weapon or a +2 stat booster is more money than a human unskilled laborer will make in their whole life.

Why are you basing the economy off of what an unskilled laborer makes in their lifetime, for one thing? Yes, of course a stablehand isn't going to be making much. The average person (who HAS Profession ranks) however could afford one surprisingly quickly by saving their wages a bit. The bog standard Farmer (http://www.thegm.org/npcs_display.php?selected_npc=345) out of the NPC database makes on average 9 gold pieces per week. A common meal costs 3 sp, so assuming no other pressing expenses they're left with 7.9 gp per week of disposable income. They'd have to save up for close to a year (254 days, rounding up) but they could afford that +1 sword just fine without especially depriving themselves. Hell, they could even treat themselves once in a while and buy necessaries like new nails and stuff and push it back about 3 months.

Is it the best use of their gold? Likely not, but the idea that the average person cannot afford lesser magic items is fairly bunk; if they wanted them, they could get them.

And that's just the average person. A relatively wealthy merchant, nobleman, Wizard, etc. can afford them even easier.

[Jack_Simth]

In my campaign, buying and selling magical items is banned. I have simply decided not to trivialize magical items by making them commodities, and my players accept that. We have a consensus on the matter.

However, the PCs have a ridiculous amount of +1 items. I have no clue how many, but the exact number is ridiculous. The situation only gets worse.

What would you do? I am willing to listen to any advice, but I'm afraid I will skip ideas that point to having Magic Marts, because we have already agreed not to have those, so there is no way that I will bring the subject up again.
Ancestral Relic recycling, Artificer Cohort (or hireling), arming minions, and cutting a deal with someone who has minions to arm have all been mentioned. I think Item Familiars also have a crafting clause that might be useful.

That said: The listed problem is the fundamental why magic item trading would develop: It's quite natural that when you end up with more than you need, you try to sell off the stuff you don't want to get stuff you do want (even if it's just materials to do your own crafting).

[NNescio]

Have you considered not dropping heaps of useless +1 weapons in the first place?

This.

@OP, you are the DM. The problem is of your own creation.

Though, alternatively, one can trade magic items in exchange for favors, I suppose. Calling spells let the players create their own opportunity to do so, though you can also throw in mercs or other NPCs that the players would want to hire or negotiate with.

Another alternative is to just let the players sell their items. There will be demand, somehow, unless they are useless joke items. Effectively, just let your players set up their own magic mart (for selling), hiring contacts and runners (and guards) along the way if necessary.

You can also introduce an Artificer as an NPC or cohort. The class gets to recycle XP from unneeded magic items. Granted, the Artificer itself is a one-man magic mart, but its output is limited by time.

[Hand_of_Vecna]

So in my Homebrew world there aren't any Magic Marts, but you can buy and sell items. The trick is keep items special. I follow just a few simple rules.

Rather than coming from casters the xp cost of items has to come from special reagents. Some things like dragon parts or souls can be used for almost anything barring blatant contradictions like using a red dragon thigh bone to craft an icebrand weapon, but most materials can only be used thematically Like displacer beast hides and glands for crafting displacement cloaks.

The gold cost to craft an item can be paid with readily purchasable materials (just pay the gold cost as normal) or by spending more special reagents. Why would you want to spend these materials instead of gold?

Reagents explain why items nobody would pay the listed cost for exist. Some mage got ahold of some hide that was suitable for making armor, but not for making gloves of manual dexterity or belts of giant strength that are in much higher demand. They won't be able to get near the list price for the armor, but they can get enough to make it worth the crafting time.

On the flip side the big six will cost a bit more than the list price since the mages crafting them will expect to make a profit and the required reagents for those items will go for half the list price of the item ( or a smidge more) and will be readily tradeable as currency by those in the know. The same will be true of any items listed in Bunko's assuming you can find them. Ironically this will mean that Magic Mart kinda does exist, but only for big six items as nobody will use the most fungible reagents for anything else but these items being over priced will encourage keeping anything remotely usable by the party.

When you roll treasures add artistic flourishes to items and sometimes add a small mechanical twist. Whenever you stock or restock a trader in magic items roll up just a few items.

Finally remove +1 magic swords from the game. Either eliminate them entirely or make them just a higher grade of masterwork and drop the price to 600ish gold. Barring an encounter with a shadow I've always found +1 swords incredibly banal when you already have a masterwork item. If you have to use a Shadow at level 2 let torches do 1d3+1/2 str mod so they can be Aragorn on Hilltop like they want to. Let the first magic weapon the party finds be something cool.

Edit: Oh I forgot another fun side effect of this is softly tying enchantments to various regions. With items made from the more common local monsters being more readily available and somewhat cheaper. Obviously these differences in price have to be small enough to prevent teleporting there for trade being more profitable than item crafting at home.

[Malroth]

Simply have Magical rituals be so commonplace and well known that anyone can create their own magic items that function only for themselves with no investment except time. The swords Function as a +1 because the bandits spent a month performing prayers to the god of Larceney, The Farmers ring provides +2 ac because of the years of good luck charms cast using it.

[AvatarVecna]

Why are you basing the economy off of what an unskilled laborer makes in their lifetime, for one thing? Yes, of course a stablehand isn't going to be making much. The average person (who HAS Profession ranks) however could afford one surprisingly quickly by saving their wages a bit. The bog standard Farmer (http://www.thegm.org/npcs_display.php?selected_npc=345) out of the NPC database makes on average 9 gold pieces per week. A common meal costs 3 sp, so assuming no other pressing expenses they're left with 7.9 gp per week of disposable income. They'd have to save up for close to a year (254 days, rounding up) but they could afford that +1 sword just fine without especially depriving themselves. Hell, they could even treat themselves once in a while and buy necessaries like new nails and stuff and push it back about 3 months.

Is it the best use of their gold? Likely not, but the idea that the average person cannot afford lesser magic items is fairly bunk; if they wanted them, they could get them.

And that's just the average person. A relatively wealthy merchant, nobleman, Wizard, etc. can afford them even easier.

Firstly, I'm not sure a 2nd lvl character is a good representation of the "average person", given the guidelines we have on creating populations in the DMG.

Secondly, as far as "optimized for making money", that's about the best you're getting with a member of the common folk - full ranks, bonus in the relevant stat, and skill focus. While I don't think that "unskilled laborer" is the average either, I think more likely what you're going to end up with is somebody with +4 by various methods (mix of ranks, attributes, and feats). It's about halfway between the unskilled laborer and what the farmer build you posted would have if they were 1st lvl like the majority of people are, so it feels like a more solid average as far as bonus goes. Profession gives you gold pieces per week equal to half your check result, so assuming you're taking 10, that's 7 gp per week before expenses.

(Incidentally, I'm unsure how you arrived at the total you did; 9 isn't half of 19 and there's nothing in the Profession description saying you round down the ["half your check result", but also even if you were making 9 gp per week, 9-2.1=6.9, so I'm not sure where you got 7.9 from. Speaking "what the hell's wrong with your math", 7.9 gp per iteration and 254 iterations would make 2000 gp, which is enough to afford enchantment but not the required masterwork or the base cost of the weapon, and at this level of play, those are relevant costs because we're talking about at least another 38 iterations. Oh and the reason I'm using "iterations" instead of "days" or "weeks" like you did is because you apparently forgot that it's 7.9 gp per week, not per day. Assuming you make 7.9 gp per week (which even your build doesn't, and the average person isn't going to have that build, and the average person is going to have other expenses)...but assuming you make 7.9 gp profit-per-week, buying a 2305 gp +1 dagger is going to take 2042 days, or 291 weeks, or 5.6 years.

Assuming you don't have to pay for lodging (reasonable, I feel; commoners probably live with their family in a family home? but you don't share a food budget, just lodging, so they don't eat into your profits) and assuming you have no regular expenses besides food (...doubtful, but for the moment let's pretend), that's a profit of 4.9 gp/week. That guy, instead of taking the 5.5 years your more optimized lvl 2 build is taking, is going to be theoretically capable of affording that +1 dagger after 3292 days, or 470 weeks, or 9 years. Before we go further, this seems like a good place to stop and ruminate on the mindset necessary to just have a steadily-growing pile of gold pieces in your commoner house for 9 years, such that at some point in your life you could even contemplate buying a +1 dagger.

This is assuming you're only providing for yourself. If you're more a man raising a family, you've maybe got a wife and three kids to feed. Even assuming the wife is working just as well as you are, 5 people eating increases food expenses enough that your household's profit has shrunken to 3.5 gp/week.

This is assuming you don't have to pay for maintenance of the house, or any tools involved with your profession, or just...replacing clothes now and then. These expenses probably aren't too significant overall, even though vermin threats and pillagers are probably a more common threat in D&D-land than IRL, but let's assume this all amounts to just like...1 sp/week in repair materials (it's probably more like 1 gp every few months or so, but that amounts to the same thing on a long timeframe). Now we're down to 3.4 gp/week profit.

This is assuming you don't have to pay taxes. If you do, that's moving a portion of your profits from commoners to aristocrats across the board. What proportion is fair? DMG suggests one-fifth of your income pre-expenses, so 2.8 gp? Putting weekly profit 0.6 gp per week, and putting "time to afford +1 dagger" at 26891 days, or 3841 weeks, or 73.87 years. That is a lifetime of effort for most races if they're dealing with taxes, maintenance, self-defense, and feeding a family. A lifetime of effort, for a +1 dagger.

But let's be honest here: even if you don't have to provide for a family and you don't get raided and don't have maintenance costs...if you only have to worry about your personal food budget and taxes, that's 5.1 gp/week, and it takes about 3163 days/452 weeks/8.7 years. Pretending they're gonna have that money sitting around waiting to be turned into magic items, as opposed to spending it on (for example) masterwork tools, a nicer house, commoner-level gifts for friends, maybe some basic armor/weapons to defend yourself, maybe masterwork armor/weapons if you're particularly extravagant, is absurd. Life's just...more complicated than that.

But how many people are in that situation? Well, the smallest that percentage gets is in a very small metropolis (25k people) that rolls maximum for highest-level characters per class on all rolls. Assuming that all NPCs lvl 2+, and all lvl 1 NPCs that aren't commoners or warriors, use NPC WBL instead of profit like this, this minimizes the percentage of people in this situation. (I'm assuming that lvl 1 Experts are dealing with Craft/Perform skills, and tend more towards a higher bonus even if they're going profession, making calcs more complicated.)



Class
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
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25
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28


Adept
113
64
32

16



8








4












Aristocrat
113
32

16



8







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Barbarian
64
32

16



8







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Bard
128
64
32

16



8








4












Cleric
128
64
32

16



8








4












Commoner
20533
64

32


16






8













4


Druid
128
64
32

16



8








4












Expert
677
64
32


16





8











4






Fighter
128
64
32

16




8









4










Monk
64
32

16



8







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Paladin
64
32

16



8






4















Ranger
64
32

16



8






4















Rogue
128
64
32

16




8









4










Sorcerer
64
32

16



8







4














Warrior
1128
64
32

16




8









4










Wizard
64
32

16



8







4
















21661 people in a 25k population city are in the situation I've described. 86.644% of the population lives like that. If you took a random sampling of 8 people from throughout the city, 7 of them would be in the situation I've described here...and honestly, NPC WBL still means that a +1 dagger is affordable to lvl 3 NPCs and up (since masterwork costs put it above the 2000 gp that NPC WBL 2 would have). If we adjust the percentage for that, then instead of 21661/25000 people unable to realistically afford a +1 dagger, we're looking at 24388/25000 people (or 97.552% of the population). And that's just the ones with enough cash they could theoretically splurge all their savings for it; a smaller percentage (probably half as much, so something like 1.224% of the population) has significant wealth enough to actually purchase such items without bankrupting themselves.

And that's the best the odds get in basically any settlement; in a larger metropolis, in a metropolis where you didn't roll maximum on every roll for every class, in a smaller settlement, that percentage is going to be higher. In a larger metropolis, the maximum number of high-level characters would remain the same 2436, while the number of 1st lvl NPC classes would increase proportionally; as the population in the metropolis increases, the percentage of the population that is 1st lvl commoners and warrior approaches 96% (although never quite reaching it).

And even then, that's not wealth just sitting around waiting to be spent, it's the value in crops and crafted items and training that exists within the settlement. You can't realistically expect anybody in this town to be buying or selling anything worth more than the GP limit of 100k. Temporary exceptions will exist, certainly, but there's not just some dude sitting around on a million+ gold pieces waiting for a high-level adventuring group to roll into his store and sell him a couple dozen 50k items. If you're offloading that many old items because you've got new ones from spoils of war, you're probably gonna have to actually do some shopping around to find somebody who's 1) capable of buying an item like the one you've got on a whim, and 2) hasn't already done so. If you're just trying to sell a crapload of +1 weapons or something, then maybe the city guard as an institution has the funds for that kind of purchase en masse, but paying an extra 2000 gp for just +1 to damage when they could more easily commission masterwork weapons from local smiths is equally ludicrous unless they just have an excessive amount of wealth to spend on cool swords.

Most people just can't afford magic items, or at least human/halfling/half-orc commoners certainly won't. Elves live so long that even slow gains can turn into significant fortunes over the centuries, while dwarves/gnomes have a racial craft bonus that lends itself well to increased profits via crafting items (and are also much longer-lived than humans) and can thus make quicker profit over a longer timeframe and afford big purchases quicker/more frequently.

[Fizban]

The people with the money to buy magic items right now are the ones whose NPC gear does not actually reflect the entirety of what they control. Who live in houses full of art objects. The people collecting the 10-20% taxes on thousands or tens of thousands of subjects, when each make a fair number of gp per year. People who have their own small groups of they'd like to be as well-armed as possible. The people in charge (of cities).

[Malphegor]

Get yourself an ancestral relic, then pray really hard, and the force of your prayer will melt down the gold value of those useless items to reforge your ancestral item into something suitable for your level!

[Quertus]

I agree with those who say that this is a poorly thought out implementation. OP, is this actually accomplishing what you intended?

Personally, in this situation, as a player, I would likely take a route already mentioned (donate weapons, leadership, kudos to glowing weapons as torches, etc). Or work with the GM to invent something new.

For example, a Weapon Golem. Requires 100 +1 swords to create (200k GP body), Animate Objects and Blade Barrier spells.

Or a new spell, Absorb Item, that basically duplicates the Artificer ability to reuse magic potential (perhaps limited to powering my Sculpt Self).

Or a new item, like some sort of huge metal Ioun Stone, that is created by melting down dozens of +1 swords.

Take the boring commodity, turn it into something fantastical.

[Duff]

OD&D had this issue baked in - Both the "No market for magic items" built into the rules and enough low level items rolling in that the party fighter was likely to reach into the "Golfbag of holding" for the sword +1, +x against [current foe], where x>1.

As name level characters, we did indeed equip our personal guard and our officers with magic items out of our own spares

[Bartmanhomer]

Donate the items for charity. That's one solution.

[Calthropstu]

Donate the items for charity. That's one solution.

Build a sword throne for chair-ity.

[Bartmanhomer]

Build a sword throne for chair-ity.

LOL! Good one. :biggrin:

[Grim Portent]

If the items can't be sold they're pretty inconsequential things to donate to most charitable organisations. Orphanages, homeless shelters, temples, doctors and so on need money, food, reagents, medicine and so on not marginally improved swords. Especially not swords they can't even sell for more immediately useful things.

Sure you could gift them to militias or guards or something, but 99% of the time it won't really matter for them either when most of their time is spent dealing with pickpockets and goblin bandits.

[rel]

This is a challenge for the PC's to overcome, not something for the GM to solve.

I can't give much advice without a better explanation of the setting but here are a few ideas:

Cast magic aura on the items and sell them to a rube as Totally Mundane masterwork items

Use them to pay or equip some mercs. Again, you don't need to mention that they are magical unless it's obvious they are.

Bribe monsters to ignore your allies or attack your enemies

Repurpose the spares into tools like wood axes or ploughshares.

Donate them to a friendly faction that is likely to harrass your enemies

Assemble full sets of weapons and armour, animate them and have them attack your enemies.

Upgrade the traps and guards on your base with some enchanted steel

Fill a portable hole, reinforced bag of holding or barrel with weapons and empty it over an enemy.

Make sure everyone actually has a golf bag full of weapons.

[noob]

Make sure everyone actually has a golf bag full of weapons.

If someone have the str score to carry 10 weapons without slowing down it is generally a good idea to so so because switching to the appropriate weapon by dropping the previous one is a good advantage.(unless you have one weapon that outperforms by a wide margin the others)

[Biffoniacus_Furiou]

This is a challenge for the PC's to overcome, not something for the GM to solve.

No, this is an unreasonable problem created by the DM. It’s not reasonable to expect the players to solve it when the best solutions are arbitrarily prohibited.

[Bartmanhomer]

Sure you could gift them to militias or guards or something, but 99% of the time it won't really matter for them either when most of their time is spent dealing with pickpockets and goblin bandits.
That would be my second choice.

[RNightstalker]

trivialize magical items by making them commodities


In this game magic items ARE commodities. If you're going to remove one of the biggest things in the game by making it worthless, then I would go back to the drawing board. And yes, you're making them worthless. If you can't buy it, sell it, trade or barter it, then it has no value, and it's worthless.

You're actually trivializing magic items by giving out "ridiculous" amounts of worthless goods. You have to give them some value otherwise they are completely trivial and the PC's might as well toss them by the wayside on the way out of town.

The only solution I see would be some sort of compromise about the class that can break down unwanted magic items into some base components that can be used to craft desired magic items. Baldur's Gate II had that kind of a system, and Gauntlgrym even had a forge that could combine magic items: so you can forge 10 +1's together to make a +2 or something like that.

[rel]

No, this is an unreasonable problem created by the DM. It’s not reasonable to expect the players to solve it when the best solutions are arbitrarily prohibited.

There is nothing unreasonable about it. The GM defining a games theme and tone, then designing a setting to match and pitching it to the other players is a valid way to set up a game.

In D&D I would even say it is the most common way to set up a game.

If the GM is using that method restricting material, adding house rules or changing fluff is all quite reasonable. None of these things are problematic on their own.

Magic items supplied by the GM only as dungeon loot is on its own neither unreasonable nor unusual and it's more restrictive than what the OP has actually described.

Remember the OP started the thread by saying that the players are all happy with the house rule. It's reasonable by definition since the people using it are happy with it. It generates the play experience they want.

[AvatarVecna]

The impression the original post gives isn't that they were happy with it as much as "didn't have a real problem with it at the time", but as is obvious by making this thread in the first place, problems have arisen from the rule.

It's obvious to us what happened. The DM wanted to make magic items special, and felt putting a price tag on them made them un-special, so he took off all the price tags. But that's not how economy works. The problem is that when you combine "magic items can't be sold" and "you have a lot of magic items", the only economic model that makes sense is "you can't sell these incredibly awesome items not because they're priceless, but because they're worthless". If you can't even sell your horde of excess magic weapons for a pittance, the only logical explanation is that everybody who might want to buy such a weapon already has a dozen as well that they're trying to offload too.

The DM tried to implement rules that would foster a certain feeling about magic items that they felt was more appropriate to their game, but the way they went about it ended up with "how am I gonna get rid of this pile of garbage nobody will buy", which feels like the opposite of what they were trying to go for. That's just not how economy works. If the government declared that currency can't be bartered for goods anymore, and then kept printing money and paying government employees in money, those employees would be rightfully upset at getting "paid" with something that's effectively worthless.

It's not the player's fault the DM caused a recession. It's not their responsibility to fix the in-universe economic issues that the DM's meddling caused.

[Psyren]

Remember the OP started the thread by saying that the players are all happy with the house rule. It's reasonable by definition since the people using it are happy with it. It generates the play experience they want.

If everything was really all sunshine and rainbows this thread wouldn't exist. The OP also wouldn't be saying things like "the situation is getting worse." Furthermore, OP only ruled out having magic marts - not changing the treasure composition that led to this problem, which seems to me to be the most common suggestion.

Of course, until the OP reappears we have no way of knowing if those parameters changed or can be clarified.

[Kelb_Panthera]

There is nothing unreasonable about it.

This is where I'd usually give my spiel about screwing with game mechanics you don't fully understand but I've already given it several times in the last week or two so I'll just say: it doesn't have to be but this particular implementation was.


The GM defining a games theme and tone, then designing a setting to match and pitching it to the other players is a valid way to set up a game.

In D&D I would even say it is the most common way to set up a game.

It's necessary, really. The problem we're running into here isn't that the GM has made a decicision about tone and setting but that the decision he made is at odds with other subsequent decisions. He has inadvertently contradicted himself in a way that causes some of his setting elements to fall apart under scrutiny.



If the GM is using that method restricting material, adding house rules or changing fluff is all quite reasonable. None of these things are problematic on their own.

This one actually is. The decision in question isn't -just- one of setting and tone but a mechanical one. It can be handled in a way that has -minimal- impact on the mechanics in play but the OP failed to do so and is now trying to ask what to do about the error he's made.


Magic items supplied by the GM only as dungeon loot is on its own neither unreasonable nor unusual and it's more restrictive than what the OP has actually described.

No it isn't. It's, in fact, exactly what the OP has described. If magic items cannot be bought, sold, or bartered then the only way they can find themselves in player hands is by either falling into them from defeated enemies and dungeon looting or by players crafting them. This isn't inherently unreasonable but if the ostensible reason that they can't be bought and sold is their supposed rarity (which, itself, doesn't make sense) then the fact the players have a pile of them that they don't want is completely at odds with that.


Remember the OP started the thread by saying that the players are all happy with the house rule. It's reasonable by definition since the people using it are happy with it. It generates the play experience they want.

He said they've accepted it. Whether it's because they share his view on magic items not being special enough under the default rules or if it's just that no one was willing to jump on the "you think you can do better?" grenade and GM in his stead is neither known nor relevant.

=========================================

The problem is:

Magic items are supposed to be rare and special. So much so that they are not a commonlly traded commodity.

The PCs have a pile of +1 weapons that they have no use for and don't want to keep.

How do we solve the latter without changing the former. Further, how do we prevent this problem from recurring.


The easiest solution from a PC perspective is to sell them as raw material. A +1 dagger is about a pound of steel no matter how you look at it. That's not worth much but it's better than carrying around a pound of dead-weight. This presumes that the inability to sell magic items stems from people's unwillingness to buy them rather than some direct divine intervention. Even then, melt it down yourself and sell the ingot.

That does absolutely nothing to prevent recurrence though. That is wholly on the GM. The first and foremost thing to do for that is exactly what I said before: stop giving the damned things out so freely. They're supposed to be rare and special but the way they're currently being handled in the process of looting enemies and dungeons is at odds with that idea. They're, at least apparently, common enough that some adventuring has left the PCs with a pile of little nothing +1s. That's not rare or special. That's so common that it begs the question of why no one wants to buy or sell them very, very loudly. So stop doing that. Switch to -only- giving out magic items that have particular special functions; no more +X to Y bonus items; and a lot fewer of them. The BBEG and his highest lieutenants might have a couple items each but the common soldiery should have nothing but mundane gear and monsters should only ever have magical gear in their lair as a matter of either plot or GM convenience.





That said, let's really look at the whole "can't be bought, sold, or bartered" paradigm.

First off, and this needs saying; you can buy and sell -anything- from the most powerful artifacts ever created right down to a blade of completely ordinary grass unless something that cannot be reasoned with deliberately steps in to prevent it. If it's well known that selling a magic item breaks some ancient covenant and the kolyaruts will be coming for anyone involved in such a transaction then you at least have -something- to explain this situation. Otherwise, the price of magic items are set by the laws of supply and demand, just like with everything else.

Let's explore that:

First there's the question of demand. That's not even a question here. The world in question is dangerous and there are people who willingly, happily throw themselves at that danger. Anything that would let them overcome or at least survive such dangers or go at them again with minimal downtime would certainly be something worth purchasing if the price is right.

Then there's supply. How common are these items? The OP says rare enough that they're not commonly traded commodities. That doesnt' mean they don't have a price. It means the price has to be negotiated on a per item basis and that it will tend towards much higher than common goods. If someone has a given item, there is -some- amount of money for which they'd be willing to part with it in the vast majority of cases. The question is whether there's anyone willing to pay that price. There usually is if the current owner is asking for a reasonable sum based on the value of the item, as percieved by the two parties.

Naturally, extenuating factors such as ability to secure the item in question against theft, the cost of doing so, and the percieved threat of attempts to do so will cause fluctuations in both the percieved value of the item and the current owners willingness to part with it.

Let's use a RL example: DaVinci's Mona Lisa. It is a -unique- item. There's only one of it in existence and demand for it is actually quite low. However, there are still those who would very handsomely pay the Louvre to acquire it. Because the Louvre is what it is, though, they will not sell it for any price and they have the French government backing their security both fiscally and with personell in the form of police. If, however, it were stolen then there are unscrupulous collectors that would happily pay the 10s of millions of dollars that they, the theives, the blackmarket dealers, and even the museum curators would all agree that it's certainly worth; the exact figure likely being either the function of some illegal auction or perhaps a ransom demand from the theives. Hell, whoever purchases it may even return it to the Louvre.

If you can sell a unique item that is of no intrinsic worth for a king's ransom, then selling one of a few thousand magic knives should merely be a matter of picking a price and finding someone willing to pay something in the ballpark of that number. Someone who's recently slayed a dragon and intends to seek out another or perhaps such a person's son or protoge who wants a leg up in living up to the legacy would likely fit the bill, even if that price is something like several times what it's listed as being in the DMG.

[Fizban]

Otherwise, the price of magic items are set by the laws of supply and demand, just like with everything else.
*And the default for 3.5 DnD is that there is sufficient demand to sell just about anything for Xgp, or buy it for 2Xgp, where X is given cost of materials to create the particular magic item. Actually it's phrased in the other direction, but this is the reading if you want it to look logical. So they're clearly in enough demand that there's always a buyer willing to to buy at-cost, and there are enough people willing to craft or sell their owned items that you only have to pay twice the materials cost to get one (in real life many things are sold for more than twice the material or even material+labor cost).

The obvious primary item sellers, the crafters, still have reason to buy at-cost when the opportunity arises, because it saves them time and xp. DnD's buy full and sell at 1/2 are not realistic rates, but they're simple, and most importantly they line up with the crafting system to allow players to sell an item in order to craft one of equal power more suited to their needs.

[Feantar]

Okay, since magic items are supposed to be special for the world but not for the players this gives them an interesting opportunity. Now, magic items cannot be sold for gold, possibly in the same way that during the middle ages in some places you couldn't buy land. But you -could- marry into it and happen to give a large dowry. (Don't quote me on this, it's just an inspiration)

So, magic items might be a symbol of prestige. And your players can deal in prestige. From "donating" it to a merchant who wishes to raise his/her status in society in return for a severe discount, to offering it to a church order (which will offer a free resurrection), to presenting it to a king in exchange for a title... to just equipping their subordinates with it giving them an insane boost in prestige (and thus access to services and opportunities they wouldn't normally have).

This is all for low levels. In high levels you can have your cake and eat it too. Just have them bind a Mercane(Arcane) and make a trading deal with it. Or take a portal to a planar metropolis. That definitely includes magic marts, but the majority of people do not have access to any of those.

Finally, normal magic marts might not exist, but a black market could. That being said, this is the most boring of solutions.

[Mr Adventurer]

Cast magic aura on the items and sell them to a rube as Totally Mundane masterwork items

Interesting - presumably you could even skip the Magic Aura part, it's not as though someone would suddenly flee from you if they found out the "masterwork" swords you're selling them for 300 or 150 gold per piece also did +1 damage and could overcome the resistance of certain monsters.

[noob]

Interesting - presumably you could even skip the Magic Aura part, it's not as though someone would suddenly flee from you if they found out the "masterwork" swords you're selling them for 300 or 150 gold per piece also did +1 damage and could overcome the resistance of certain monsters.

They would say "witchcraft" then form a mob and try to kill you regardless of how many of them you kill and even the last kid equipped with knife would still try to rush at you for revenge.

[AvatarVecna]

This plan only works if the governing principle the DM implemented is "nobody buys magic items". Far more interesting would be if the change was actually literally "magic items can't be sold". :smalltongue:

[noob]

This plan only works if the governing principle the DM implemented is "nobody buys magic items". Far more interesting would be if the change was actually literally "magic items can't be sold". :smalltongue:

Some time later.
"so do you sign that contract for borrowing that magical sword forever in exchange for 2315 gold?"

[Calthropstu]

Actually, it'd be a real problem no matter what. Say you destroyed an army of 1000 each carrying +1 short swords and +1 longbows. Do you honestly think any individual town or city would be able to buy that? The price would plummet into the abyss and even then, they'd never be able to unload all of them.

Frankly, the pcs would have a problem unloading them no matter what.
Maybe the pcs could START a magic mart? They could open up a storefront to sell such items directly to the public... Slowly circulate through their stockpile?

[noob]

Actually, it'd be a real problem no matter what. Say you destroyed an army of 1000 each carrying +1 short swords and +1 longbows. Do you honestly think any individual town or city would be able to buy that? The price would plummet into the abyss and even then, they'd never be able to unload all of them.

Frankly, the pcs would have a problem unloading them no matter what.

If there is a city full of artificers(like with one hundred of those or more) you can sell all those swords for a gold cost roughly equal to five time the xp cost of the swords.

[Lorddenorstrus]

"I don't want magic mart." "But im going to drop so many magic items that it's as if magic mart is still in effect."

... You do realize the problem inherently created yes? Also, the removal of access to magical items breaks the functionality of 3.5 the game depends on players having necessary magic items. If you want a no/very little magical item version of the game. Perhaps you should be playing 5e?

[noob]

"I don't want magic mart." "But im going to drop so many magic items that it's as if magic mart is still in effect."

... You do realize the problem inherently created yes? Also, the removal of access to magical items breaks the functionality of 3.5 the game depends on players having necessary magic items. If you want a no/very little magical item version of the game. Perhaps you should be playing 5e?

No it is not the same thing.
If you have 19439235934956947056092399439459349694569239 +1 whips and nothing else then it is not the same thing as magic mart at all because with magic mart you have what you want while with the former you have only things that are useless to you.

Do not confuse magic mart and high magic presence those are two things that does not have the same results in gameplay and in the setting.
You could have a setting where there is a magic mart but where only nobles and adventurers ever saw a magical item because of their rarity and where rich adventurers can get exactly the magical items they want.
You could have a setting with no magic mart but where all the shoes ever are +1 magical weapons and where nobody can ever get what they want unless what they want is +1 damage shoes.

Magic mart vs frequent item drops is a matter of whenever you let adventurers buy what they want or whenever you give a ton of things the adventurers can not do anything with.
With the latter magic can be omnipresent without making adventurers become super powerful.

If each time you hit a monster a thousand +1 weapons drops on the ground you do not make adventurers more powerful.

What is useful in magical items is magical items that have a powerful effect or an effect that is different from the other effects you have on your magical items but many instances of nearly the same thing is utterly useless for an adventurer.

Essentially item variety or power > item quantity.

And no 5e is not made for having less magical items: it is just made to have easier challenges in general and to have more challenges per day and most gms do not like having to manage the 6 to 8 encounters per day you are supposed to have in 5e(it is a design forced by the short rest class vs long rest class balance and it is an harmful restriction but if you break that expectation the game breaks down entirely and completely and it becomes either impossible or so trivial it is silly).
Also you need a way to fit the short rests because it becomes silly if it is "Hello sir can you let us go and rest for an hour because we had two encounters and so we are supposed to take our short rest" and the opponent says "oh yes I am going to wait quietly instead of pursuing you because I do not want to die from the hand of the adventurer syndicate since I heard the last person to have died this way suffered particularly horribly for a decade"

If you want 3.5 with less magical items what is needed is using an automatic bonus progression and not switching to 5e because if you play 5e like you play 3.5 with no magical items the game is completely broken.

[Lorddenorstrus]

And no 5e is not made for having less magical items:

To long cutting to just the important part... Yeah the system which literally has a limiter in it of X what is it 3 equippable items allowed? At system release the first set of items were garbage other than 19 statters. They had to expand with splat books to make legit usable items for the system lmfao. lol One of the designer notes was that it can be played with out magical items entirely. That was part of the design goal because people complained about not being able to play older systems w/o magical items the game was designed around them. So uuh wrong on that one.

And 3.5 is inherently designed for magic items. And why does everyone assume Magic mart means EVERY item in the game is buyable / sellable? If that's the case, you're either capable of handling the repercussions, or you're not and that was a stupid decision. The DM should be choosing what items are / aren't allowed to be bought / sold. It's THEIR job to maintain a level of power / balance that THEY want in the world. But not having an existing system in place to handle the creation and distribution of said items is a fault on the DM. Where did those +1 weapons come from? Why are there a ton yet apparently no market for them? Do no other adventurers exist, if so why? Because other existing adventurers means this problem exists for other people.
If other people have a ton of items, inevitably a market is created. I mean there's a limit to lazyness when it comes to world generation. At least bother to think about the basics.

[Crichton]

{scrubbed}

[noob]

To long cutting to just the important part... Yeah the system which literally has a limiter in it of X what is it 3 equippable items allowed? At system release the first set of items were garbage other than 19 statters. They had to expand with splat books to make legit usable items for the system lmfao. lol One of the designer notes was that it can be played with out magical items entirely. That was part of the design goal because people complained about not being able to play older systems w/o magical items the game was designed around them. So uuh wrong on that one.

And 3.5 is inherently designed for magic items. And why does everyone assume Magic mart means EVERY item in the game is buyable / sellable? If that's the case, you're either capable of handling the repercussions, or you're not and that was a stupid decision. The DM should be choosing what items are / aren't allowed to be bought / sold. It's THEIR job to maintain a level of power / balance that THEY want in the world. But not having an existing system in place to handle the creation and distribution of said items is a fault on the DM. Where did those +1 weapons come from? Why are there a ton yet apparently no market for them? Do no other adventurers exist, if so why? Because other existing adventurers means this problem exists for other people.
If other people have a ton of items, inevitably a market is created. I mean there's a limit to lazyness when it comes to world generation. At least bother to think about the basics.

It can be played without magical items not because it is made for that but because it is intended to have a different encounter balance.
The fact you can play without magical items in 5e is linked to bounded accuracy and not to a deep desire to remove magical items.
meanwhile high level monsters becomes annoying to fight because more and more have non magical weapon resistance which suggests you are either supposed to have a caster or to have magical weapons.

It was not designed for having less magical items it was instead designed for bounded accuracy and an encounter balance where you are supposed to have tons of encounter per day which change how it works so radically it makes magical items a secondary concern.

so no do not play 5e if you want 3.5e with less magical items: you should play 5e if you want to fight 6 to 8 encounters per day and to have bounded accuracy.

[AvatarVecna]

Actually, it'd be a real problem no matter what. Say you destroyed an army of 1000 each carrying +1 short swords and +1 longbows. Do you honestly think any individual town or city would be able to buy that? The price would plummet into the abyss and even then, they'd never be able to unload all of them.

Depends.


COMMUNITY WEALTH AND POPULATIONS

Every community has a gold piece limit based on its size and population. The gold piece limit (see Table 5-2) is an indicator of the price of the most expensive item available in that community. Nothing that costs more than a community's gp limit is available for purchase in that community. Anything having a price under that limit is most likely available, whether it be mundane or magical. While exceptions are certainly possible (a boomtown near a newly discovered mine, a farming community impoverished after a prolonged drought), these exceptions are temporary; all ccommunities will conform to the norm over time.

To determine the amount of ready cash in a community, or the total value of any given item of equipment for sale at any given time, multiply half the GP limit by 1/10 of the community's population. For example, suppose a band of adventurers brings a bagful of loot (one hundred gems, each worth 50 gp) into a hamlet of 90 people. Half the hamlet's GP limit times 1/10 its population equals 450 (100 ÷ 2 = 50; 90 ÷ 10 = 9; 50 x 9 = 450). Therefore, the PCs can only convert nine of their recently acquired gems to coins on the spot before exhausting the local cash reserves. The coins will not be all bright, shiny gold pieces. They should include a large number of battered and well-worn silver pieces and copper pieces as well, especially in a small or poor community.

If those same adventurers hope to buy longswords (price 15 gp each) for their mercenary hirelings, they'll discover that the hamlet can only offer 30 such swords for sale, because the samel 450 gp limit applies whether you're buying or selling in a given community.

(It might work differently in PF, but...TBH I'd be surprised if it did. Core PF isn't exactly the height of originality.)

So a small town can handle between about 36k-80k, so exhausting their cash reserves could buy some 15-34 of the +1 weapons from the adventurers. A large town can handle between about 300k-750k, so exhausting their cash reserves could buy some 125-320 weapons (this is the community where you would start finding magic weapons for sale here and there...at least, in a world that allowed magic weapons to interact with the economy; this is also the step where you can potentially find an item worth more gp than there are people in town). A small city could handle between about 3.75m-9m; this is about the range where, if the community pools all their cash, they could buy all 2000 weapons off the adventurers, but they probably don't want to? Not enough people in town who want the better weaponry for that price, if only because even at this point there's not that many people in town (5k-12k population).

A large city is probably where this could be accomplished: 12k-25k people, with a 40k GP limit, so there's probably some +4 weapons floating around for sale anyway; with total cash reserves in the city totalling in the 24m-50m range, even a small Large City has enough funds that such a purchase wouldn't bankrupt them, and we're finally at the scale where both they have enough guards/concerned citizens to warrant so many magic weapons, and enough value they want to protect that such weapons aren't a bad investment. Probably don't expect every guard in a large city to have a magic weapon, but certainly if an army wielding such weapons was recently defeated nearby, the superior firepower will have found its way into local hands one way or another.

A metropolis is the point at which it becomes an easy sell: the 5 million or so it'd cost to purchase 2000 +1 weapons is affordable for even a 25k metropolis like the one I described further up-thread, which would have some 125 million in currency floating around the city (most in government/aristocratic hands, no doubt)

[DeTess]

Actually, it'd be a real problem no matter what. Say you destroyed an army of 1000 each carrying +1 short swords and +1 longbows. Do you honestly think any individual town or city would be able to buy that? The price would plummet into the abyss and even then, they'd never be able to unload all of them.


The fact that that army existed in the first place means that someone somewhere has the means to buy those weapons.

[noob]

The fact that that army existed in the first place means that someone somewhere has the means to buy those weapons.

who knows: maybe being sufficiently evil makes the weapons of your soldiers accrue magical properties?

[Calthropstu]

Depends.



(It might work differently in PF, but...TBH I'd be surprised if it did. Core PF isn't exactly the height of originality.)

So a small town can handle between about 36k-80k, so exhausting their cash reserves could buy some 15-34 of the +1 weapons from the adventurers. A large town can handle between about 300k-750k, so exhausting their cash reserves could buy some 125-320 weapons (this is the community where you would start finding magic weapons for sale here and there...at least, in a world that allowed magic weapons to interact with the economy; this is also the step where you can potentially find an item worth more gp than there are people in town). A small city could handle between about 3.75m-9m; this is about the range where, if the community pools all their cash, they could buy all 2000 weapons off the adventurers, but they probably don't want to? Not enough people in town who want the better weaponry for that price, if only because even at this point there's not that many people in town (5k-12k population).

A large city is probably where this could be accomplished: 12k-25k people, with a 40k GP limit, so there's probably some +4 weapons floating around for sale anyway; with total cash reserves in the city totalling in the 24m-50m range, even a small Large City has enough funds that such a purchase wouldn't bankrupt them, and we're finally at the scale where both they have enough guards/concerned citizens to warrant so many magic weapons, and enough value they want to protect that such weapons aren't a bad investment. Probably don't expect every guard in a large city to have a magic weapon, but certainly if an army wielding such weapons was recently defeated nearby, the superior firepower will have found its way into local hands one way or another.

A metropolis is the point at which it becomes an easy sell: the 5 million or so it'd cost to purchase 2000 +1 weapons is affordable for even a 25k metropolis like the one I described further up-thread, which would have some 125 million in currency floating around the city (most in government/aristocratic hands, no doubt)

I am well aware of the purchase limit of towns and cities. But what is the +1 shortsword limit? This is the kind of thing you need to track down a specific entity for... A warlord, a king, a rebellious noble...

Although, I could see a wizard teleporting to 100 different towns over the course of a month and telling merchants that so and so should buy the 10 +1 shortswords he is selling them for full price.

Alternatively, you could simply contact mr mcubervillian who contracted the swords in the first place and offer to sell to him.

[rel]

This plan only works if the governing principle the DM implemented is "nobody buys magic items". Far more interesting would be if the change was actually literally "magic items can't be sold". :smalltongue:

That is an interesting idea.

Magic items cannot be made, they must be found in the deep places beneath the earth but once you find one it bonds to the person (or small group) who found it. For anyone else, the magic doesn't work.

[nedz]

This has been an amusing thread but I'm now going to discuss how I implemented no Magic Marts in my games. By Magic Mart I mean you can buy anything you want - if it appears in any book.

Campaign 1 — Military Fantasy game - strongly mission based.
I would generate a list of items which were available using a random treasure generator. This list would be customised and then circulated. The players could only buy what was available, but sell anything.

Campaign 2 — Game set in a small Kingdom.
Players can only really buy stuff at one of the few towns. They get to make a Gather Info roll to see if what they want is available — I also roll for availability. They have a limited ability to get things made, but they have long lead times.

In both games certain items are never going to be for sale ù they are affectively soft banned.

[Kelb_Panthera]

This has been an amusing thread but I'm now going to discuss how I implemented no Magic Marts in my games. By Magic Mart I mean you can buy anything you want - if it appears in any book.

Campaign 1 — Military Fantasy game - strongly mission based.
I would generate a list of items which were available using a random treasure generator. This list would be customised and then circulated. The players could only buy what was available, but sell anything.

Campaign 2 — Game set in a small Kingdom.
Players can only really buy stuff at one of the few towns. They get to make a Gather Info roll to see if what they want is available — I also roll for availability. They have a limited ability to get things made, but they have long lead times.

In both games certain items are never going to be for sale ù they are affectively soft banned.

Riffing on this because these are solid approaches to justify severe limitations.

I'm quick to defend the game's default assumption of "if it's in the settlement's gp limit, it's available for purchase" but that doesn't mean you have to allow -everything-. As a GM you're not just allowed but encouraged to give a hard "no" to any particular item or even class of items that would be a detriment to what you want to do or can handle as a GM. That's not limited to magic items either.

If you don't want to deal with a plane-hopping campaign but also don't want to cut off the possibility somewhere down the road, making the focus for planeshift straight-up unavailable for purchase is a perfectly reasonable move (though you'll want to give other extraplanar material the same treatment for consistency). Likewise, if you like to play up the whole man v nature angle, banning things like the ring of sustenance and its ilk makes perfect sense too. Banning the helm of teleportation and flying carpets is a solid move if you like travel based adventures. You'll still have to do something about the spells those items are based on as well but that's your prerogative as the GM too.

The problems start when you go so far as to say "no" to simple +X to Y bonus items. Their existence and availability is so important to the system's baseline that they're actually heavily weighted in the treasure tables. If you're handling treasure from encounters as written, you'll get the +s that you're expected to have... several times over.

And then you have the OP's problem; what do you -do- with all the extras. The obvious, expected answer that comes to mind for anyone that's ever played -any- RPG, tabletop or computer, is to hawk 'em for cash. That's where the "half value sales" comes from, btw: it's what a pawn-broker will offer you for most things as his final offer: half what they intend to sell it for. The gods know there's -someone- willing to buy a +1 longsword out there somewhere and a pawnbroker will happily pay you half of what he intends to charge that guy (though he'd be a lot happier to pay you less). Or you could sell it directly to whomever by approaching a mercenary or military outfit or the like who will -also- offer you half since there's always gonna be another one just like you to come along sooner or later. Or you could open a shop and become that pawnbroker and -be- the magic mart. Then you can get full price for it but you're effectively retired from adventuring since running a business is a full-time job.

So, yeah, my advice is this: there's nothing wrong with limiting things that can cause problems just don't limit things so much that it becomes a problem in itself and if you -must- do the thing where magic items are "rare and special" for pete's sake think it -all- the way through and make the appropriate adjustments to the system.

[AvatarVecna]

Alternatively, you could simply contact mr mcubervillian who contracted the swords in the first place and offer to sell to him.

...man, what a ****ing power move. Imagine raising an army, and then dropping 5 million gp on arming said army with magic weapons to try and ensure that the hated enemy party died. Five days later, they Message you informing you of the army's defeat, and also informing you that they've entered the "door-to-door magic weapon salesman" business and wanna know how many +1 shortswords and longbows they can put you down for.

[Deadline]

That is an interesting idea.

Magic items cannot be made, they must be found in the deep places beneath the earth but once you find one it bonds to the person (or small group) who found it. For anyone else, the magic doesn't work.

Regarding the bolded, I'd add "until the currently bonded person or group is slain". That way you can still preserve the core "kill the bad guys and loot their stuff" mechanic of D&D. It also kinda makes highly coveted magic items a liability too (because why go quest for one when you can just kill someone who has one?).

[nedz]

So, yeah, my advice is this: there's nothing wrong with limiting things that can cause problems just don't limit things so much that it becomes a problem in itself and if you -must- do the thing where magic items are "rare and special" for pete's sake think it -all- the way through and make the appropriate adjustments to the system.

Well I wasn't that strict, but I do have some players who seem to prefer shopping to adventuring.

The Military game was Dwarven so most of those +X Longswords became +X Waraxes — which is a flavour thing.

The small Kingdom has a capital with a shop called "Aelven Apparel" which stocks a wide range of Boots, Cloaks and Gloves — again flavour.

I mainly removed things which are a headache to DM for book-keeping reasons, and things which don't fit the setting.

Going back to one of your other points: I'm not sure how this helps the OP who appears to have lost patience with boutique PCs.

[rel]

Regarding the bolded, I'd add "until the currently bonded person or group is slain". That way you can still preserve the core "kill the bad guys and loot their stuff" mechanic of D&D. It also kinda makes highly coveted magic items a liability too (because why go quest for one when you can just kill someone who has one?).

Good call, I like it.

If you are heavily restricting item availability, having an alternative use for treasure that still increases your personal power is helpful.

XP for GP (basically paying for training to level) is a method I've had success with.

[Palanan]

Originally Posted by rel
XP for GP (basically paying for training to level) is a method I've had success with.

Can you elaborate on this? Is this a variant rule in one of the books, or a houserule you developed? Either way I'd like to hear more.

[Kelb_Panthera]

Can you elaborate on this? Is this a variant rule in one of the books, or a houserule you developed? Either way I'd like to hear more.

I'm pretty sure it's a holdover from 1e. Don't know the exact details but it's exactly what it sounds like. You don't get xp from overcoming challenges. You get xp by buying it. You adventure to get treasure, you sell treasure to get money, you use money to buy xp so you can take on stronger adventures for even more treasure.

[Feantar]

I'm pretty sure it's a holdover from 1e. Don't know the exact details but it's exactly what it sounds like. You don't get xp from overcoming challenges. You get xp by buying it. You adventure to get treasure, you sell treasure to get money, you use money to buy xp so you can take on stronger adventures for even more treasure.

You just managed to justify the existence of adventurers. Paying of their student loans.

[Fizban]

That's where the "half value sales" comes from, btw: it's what a pawn-broker will offer you for most things as his final offer: half what they intend to sell it for. The gods know there's -someone- willing to buy a +1 longsword out there somewhere and a pawnbroker will happily pay you half of what he intends to charge that guy (though he'd be a lot happier to pay you less).
Again, the difference being that in real life, the pawnbroker wouldn't be able to sell the thing for original market value. The lack of depreciation of magic items might mean a higher "bluebook" value, but there's still risk in buying secondhand (game mechanically enforceable or perceived) which means the reseller simply can't guarantee it will sell for full price. The wikipedia article on pawnbrokers (yeah I know) gives an example where a $1,000 laptop might only fetch 50$, because they still have to manage the inventory and might end up offloading it to a wholesaler who only pays them $100 for it (which if they know there is low demand, is probably likely). Used cars are similar, where depreciation can happen faster than you pay off the car itself, with a sell or trade-in still leaving you owing money. I learned the sad way when I was a kid that the card shop will only give you a couple bucks for that rare promo card which is supposedly worth $20. Modern MtG cards can be offloaded to a reseller for a good fraction of their value. . . which may drop drastically over time if you don't sell it immediately. But the reseller will have it on a website by morning ready to mail to any customer (potentially worldwide), for minimal risk.

In DnD you want to offload a bunch of "vendor trash" items, the likes of which are either too specific to have any serious demand (that wacky +z exotic weapon), or are in bulk that will take dozens of customers to clear out (dozens of +1 short swords). Said resellers have access to far fewer people far slower than The Internet. The reason you can sell them for half is not because it's actually a realistic price- it's because the rules say so, and one must assume that the invisible economy is somehow backing it up with sufficient demand that not only is there always a buyer, but so much demand there's no need for wholesalers to undercut newly crafted items, so they buy at crafting cost. Which is backed up by the crafting mechanics which suggest crafters should avoid crafting too much, keeping supply as arbitrarily low as it needs to be, which is undercut by the apparently availability of anything you could want, which means either existing supply is ludicrous, perfectly networked, or the crafters are indeed always ready to craft. Which cycles back around to limiting item purchases to DM generated available lists and/or willing crafters, because you need some sort of supply block to justify the apparently perfect demand.

Reducing the value you can offload vendor trash for is the easiest way to account for everyone having vendor trash- every +1 whatever past the first one you get is valued towards personal wealth at whatever the actual amount of cash you can get is, which could be 1/4, 1/5, or even 1/10 "market" price (and bought by the PCs for similarly less), allowing you to equip 4, 5, or 10 times as many people the PCs are going to loot with those items. The only problem is that this means no one should ever be crafting these items under the given crafting mechanics, because they pay more gold (plus xp) to craft something they could just buy for less. Andt if you apply the trash tag to everything (by equipping all NPCs, monsters, etc with higher and higher +'s as the PCs level, or intending to), then the PCs should be able to buy those +'s far earlier than normal, and now you've borked the important part of the treasure progression. And wantonly equipping all foes with bonuses kinda negates the bonuses the PCs were supposed to have over them, so CR should be recalculated manually.

Note also that DnD's other prices are pretty ridiculous. Swords were not rare expensive things, not after generations of smiths over hundreds of years kept building up a supply of usable goods, they only take a day or two to make. But DnD only has one price, brand new sword, with weapons having wildly different and most likely super arbitrary prices. Though this can account for why the PCs start with such value in goods- not just the usual gifts, savings, providence, but they could be secondhand and thus within budget.

[NNescio]

Regarding the bolded, I'd add "until the currently bonded person or group is slain". That way you can still preserve the core "kill the bad guys and loot their stuff" mechanic of D&D. It also kinda makes highly coveted magic items a liability too (because why go quest for one when you can just kill someone who has one?).

Welp, time to commit suicide to free up old magic items for 'selling'.

Also make sure to arrange for resurrections beforehand (ideally Revivify if possible).

[Jack_Simth]

@Fizban:
Perhaps the culture doesn't have that "new = better" mentality that modern folks often do? If they didn't, and magic items stick around basically forever, then new crafters would have to cut prices down to match the second-hand store.

Also keep in mind: Non-masterwork weapons are cheap. Your basic Longsword is only 15 gp (and costs 5 gp in materials). That's two-weeks' pay for a trained professional (Expert-1 with 4 points in Profession(Scribe) and a masterwork quill has a +6 modifier; taking ten, earns 8 gp/week).

[weckar]

In my opinion, there is a world of difference between the blacksmith having one magic weapon he might be able to part with and full-on Magic marts. Similarly, common traders being willing to buy your +1s while not selling any makes sense too.

Make your world less black and white.

[Quertus]

*And the default for 3.5 DnD is that there is sufficient demand to sell just about anything for Xgp, or buy it for 2Xgp, where X is given cost of materials to create the particular magic item. Actually it's phrased in the other direction, but this is the reading if you want it to look logical. So they're clearly in enough demand that there's always a buyer willing to to buy at-cost, and there are enough people willing to craft or sell their owned items that you only have to pay twice the materials cost to get one (in real life many things are sold for more than twice the material or even material+labor cost).

The obvious primary item sellers, the crafters, still have reason to buy at-cost when the opportunity arises, because it saves them time and xp. DnD's buy full and sell at 1/2 are not realistic rates, but they're simple, and most importantly they line up with the crafting system to allow players to sell an item in order to craft one of equal power more suited to their needs.

Sort of? That works for PF math, but in 3e, the "cost" of an item is 70% of its retail price: 50% (components) + 20% (XP / XP components).


They would say "witchcraft" then form a mob and try to kill you regardless of how many of them you kill and even the last kid equipped with knife would still try to rush at you for revenge.

I chuckled imagining a world in which desperate adventurers cast Mordenkainen's Disjunction on their gear to afford a night at the inn without fear of reprisal from superstitious villagers.


...man, what a ****ing power move. Imagine raising an army, and then dropping 5 million gp on arming said army with magic weapons to try and ensure that the hated enemy party died. Five days later, they Message you informing you of the army's defeat, and also informing you that they've entered the "door-to-door magic weapon salesman" business and wanna know how many +1 shortswords and longbows they can put you down for.

I totally want to play with that party :smallbiggrin:

[Tiktakkat]

Paying for training from AD&D was not "buying" xp.
You got xp for killing monsters, and, depending on which particular way you read the rules and the DM felt, for getting gp and magic items.
When you had enough xp, you had to pay for "training" for your next level of class abilities. This of course required spending some of the gp you had just acquired.
Due to the quirks of individual class xp progressions, and the "role-play limits as balance" of "training" requiring longer times if you had not acted according to your class and alignment (the chaotic neutral thief boldly leaping into combat and not stealing from the party, the lawful good fight skulking in the back and demanding extra treasure, the neutral wizard always taking sides and not greedily snatching up every scroll and wand, and so forth), it often required adventuring for more xp and gp than required to advance by your class chart in order to pay for training.
Yes, it worked as poorly as it sounds except for the most obsessive of RAW groups.

As for magic item economics, just don't.
D&D economics has never been anything but a vague nod to keeping score by how much gp you collect. It is not a functional system, and appealing to it as RAW is nice, but thoroughly unsatisfying, and not much more convincing.
If there are so many +1 swords, armor, shields, cloaks of resistance, rings of protection, and amulets of natural armor as treasure because the PCs keep meeting NPCs with such loot, then replacing gp with said +1 items as "currency" becomes functional. Yes, that chicken costs two rings of protection +1. Why? Because they are more common than copper pieces.

Regarding "restricting" all those items by some "bonding" mechanism or what not - drow weapons.
Yeah, just make them out of the equivalent of unobtanium that requires exposure to handwavium radiation every month or they lost their powers, while exposure to ludicrous speeds (most commonly encountered when teleporting or being placed into or taken out of extradimensional spaces) makes them go to plaid and disintegrate. And there go all those surplus items, crumbling to dust and keeping the "rare" unique item intended for PC use functional.
Or, "bonding" from the other end as it were. Any item not worn or used by a PC for 30 days loses its magic permanently. And since items need to be worn or used for 1 day before they become "active", there is no cycling through every item to keep them "active".

[Rynjin]

Haven't been on the boards much last couple of days, I'll skim through this.


Firstly, I'm not sure a 2nd lvl character is a good representation of the "average person", given the guidelines we have on creating populations in the DMG.

I think it properly represents someone in a position to be making money. I read "farmer" as "owns a small farm", and similar would expect any other level 2 peasant to be a small business owner of some sort, which I think well represents the average person at least when it comes to 'townies'. Not that it matters a ton; a single level difference is only a -1 to the check in any case.




(Incidentally, I'm unsure how you arrived at the total you did; 9 isn't half of 19 and there's nothing in the Profession description saying you round down the ["half your check result", but also even if you were making 9 gp per week, 9-2.1=6.9, so I'm not sure where you got 7.9 from. Speaking "what the hell's wrong with your math", 7.9 gp per iteration and 254 iterations would make 2000 gp, which is enough to afford enchantment but not the required masterwork or the base cost of the weapon, and at this level of play, those are relevant costs because we're talking about at least another 38 iterations. Oh and the reason I'm using "iterations" instead of "days" or "weeks" like you did is because you apparently forgot that it's 7.9 gp per week, not per day. Assuming you make 7.9 gp per week (which even your build doesn't, and the average person isn't going to have that build, and the average person is going to have other expenses)...but assuming you make 7.9 gp profit-per-week, buying a 2305 gp +1 dagger is going to take 2042 days, or 291 weeks, or 5.6 years.

Long and short of it is I brainfarted on multiple things at once; I conflated the sp per day that untrained laborers get as how it worked for everyone else (a daily check), erred on the side of caution as far as rounding (since in D&D you typically round down), and somehow added .3 7 times and forgot the number 2 existed. Don't post after midnight kiddos.


Assuming you don't have to pay for lodging (reasonable, I feel; commoners probably live with their family in a family home? but you don't share a food budget, just lodging, so they don't eat into your profits) and assuming you have no regular expenses besides food (...doubtful, but for the moment let's pretend), that's a profit of 4.9 gp/week. That guy, instead of taking the 5.5 years your more optimized lvl 2 build is taking, is going to be theoretically capable of affording that +1 dagger after 3292 days, or 470 weeks, or 9 years. Before we go further, this seems like a good place to stop and ruminate on the mindset necessary to just have a steadily-growing pile of gold pieces in your commoner house for 9 years, such that at some point in your life you could even contemplate buying a +1 dagger.

This is assuming you're only providing for yourself. If you're more a man raising a family, you've maybe got a wife and three kids to feed. Even assuming the wife is working just as well as you are, 5 people eating increases food expenses enough that your household's profit has shrunken to 3.5 gp/week.

This is assuming you don't have to pay for maintenance of the house, or any tools involved with your profession, or just...replacing clothes now and then. These expenses probably aren't too significant overall, even though vermin threats and pillagers are probably a more common threat in D&D-land than IRL, but let's assume this all amounts to just like...1 sp/week in repair materials (it's probably more like 1 gp every few months or so, but that amounts to the same thing on a long timeframe). Now we're down to 3.4 gp/week profit.

This is assuming you don't have to pay taxes. If you do, that's moving a portion of your profits from commoners to aristocrats across the board. What proportion is fair? DMG suggests one-fifth of your income pre-expenses, so 2.8 gp? Putting weekly profit 0.6 gp per week, and putting "time to afford +1 dagger" at 26891 days, or 3841 weeks, or 73.87 years. That is a lifetime of effort for most races if they're dealing with taxes, maintenance, self-defense, and feeding a family. A lifetime of effort, for a +1 dagger.

But let's be honest here: even if you don't have to provide for a family and you don't get raided and don't have maintenance costs...if you only have to worry about your personal food budget and taxes, that's 5.1 gp/week, and it takes about 3163 days/452 weeks/8.7 years. Pretending they're gonna have that money sitting around waiting to be turned into magic items, as opposed to spending it on (for example) masterwork tools, a nicer house, commoner-level gifts for friends, maybe some basic armor/weapons to defend yourself, maybe masterwork armor/weapons if you're particularly extravagant, is absurd. Life's just...more complicated than that.

Don't forget that buying masterwork tools and having kids actually increases your profits considerably, unlike in real life for the latter. You put your kids and wife to work on the homestead and that's 4 whole Aid Another checks to your Profession. That's another 4 gp per week; the Masterwork tools add an extra 1 gp per week, and so on.

But all that's really getting lost in the weeds. Yes, it's fairly unlikely, but it is not typically going to take "a lifetime" for the peasant to get a +1 sword. It takes an unreasonable number of years if we assume 9, but it's doable. And the point I was making is it's even MORE doable for people who are above the average, and not even the rich aristocracy or some high grade merchant.

With your next bit though we're getting past the point where I can really comment; I don't really play 3.5 (I play Pathfinder) and I've never particularly cared about the Settlement rules in any major capacity, so I've never bothered to learn them; the only time they've ever been relevant for a game I've run is when my players were selling loot in a Skulls and Shackles game and I needed to know which ports could actually afford to buy what they were selling. I'm just going off of what NPCs I can quickly find on the d20SRD website, which says a farmer is a level 2 character. According to you that is inconsistent with Settlement rules, but what that tells me is that if you go to any town on the planet, random farmer man is going to be a Commoner 1/Expert 1, so a level 2 character is the baseline I chose as "average".

[Fizban]

@Fizban:Perhaps the culture doesn't have that "new = better" mentality that modern folks often do? If they didn't, and magic items stick around basically forever, then new crafters would have to cut prices down to match the second-hand store.
I could see it for "ancient relics of the fallen empire," but it's just too easy to have in-character justifications. Could be stolen, damaged, cursed, and simply the fact of being previously owned means certain (extremely specific) magical tracking could have someone looking for you instead of the previous owner. And "normal" people are much more likely to buy into superstitious notions than people with actual spells. The fact that the reseller is selling at the same price as the original seller means there must be massive demand.

Also keep in mind: Non-masterwork weapons are cheap. Your basic Longsword is only 15 gp (and costs 5 gp in materials). That's two-weeks' pay for a trained professional (Expert-1 with 4 points in Profession(Scribe) and a masterwork quill has a +6 modifier; taking ten, earns 8 gp/week).
Most of my gripe on weapon prices is the variance in all the weapons: a scimitar is 33% more expensive than a longword, which is 7.5x the price of a dagger, but a falcion is 100% more expensive than a greatsword, and all the other little variations. Hafted weapons should be a bit cheaper, sure, a point is easier than a blade and blunt is easier than either (depending on how fancy the mace is), but I highly doubt they actually found a medieval guild charter with accepted weapon prices (some research unquestionably, but if anything they're more likely based on the starting wealth values for different classes). Either way, it shouldn't take a skilled professional two weeks to buy what an equally skilled professional can make in a day (ignoring 3.5 mundane crafting times because they're super bogus). Checked my bookmarks for a video on it, here (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9SvgWJNSd8) scholagladiatoria mentioned the cheapest sword they've found record of at 1 pence (with enough others that he's clearly confident anything form 1-5 pence is easy), compared to an archer's daily pay of 3 pence, the lowest paid soldier in the medieval English army. In DnD, the lowest paid mercenary is 2sp per day*. In another video it comes up that the cost of a pile of crossbows was way less in comparison to the bushels of bolts than DnD's numbers.

The core books don't support an actual economy, because that would be madness. I don't have a problem with the fiat standard price and standard 1/2 sale price (it works, it's good), but it's just not possible to justify it as a result of logical constructs (aside from a similar in-world fiat system based on a complete monopoly or divinely enforced mandate). Even if you assume almost no one crafts magic items so there's both stable supply and stable high demand (vs low population growth), mundane items don't have that fig leaf.

*Of course, back then soldiering was generally a position you took up because it had decent pay followed by shares of loot, while in DnD it's terrible pay compared to even an untrained craft check- this highlights the fact that you shouldn't be able to just roll the check without a proper business presence, and that all "business" mechanics are thus bogus because the original craft/profession check was already for a functioning business. Laboring or mercenary work at least provide some income when you can't even roll an untrained check due to not having a foot in, and mercenary beats labor. And mercenaries can't mercenary if a sword costs nearly a month's pay. Which is why I'm glad I've noticed the sort of hack about starting gear being a total original value of what were bought as secondhand/etc items.

Sort of? That works for PF math, but in 3e, the "cost" of an item is 70% of its retail price: 50% (components) + 20% (XP / XP components).
Not really. 5gp/1xp is for spells with xp costs, not for normal crafting. NPCs have however much spare xp the DM says they do, and will presumably charge full price for items, but there's never any mention of an NPC convinced to craft "at cost" charging for the xp, I've only ever seen that on forums. But I have seen examples of NPCs made friendly that will craft for just the material cost, no mention of paying for xp.

[Jay R]

One member of the party should have an Ancestral Relic, which will absorb all the lesser items the party picks up, turning them into a single item that the character values.

[weckar]

I notice that in nearly 100 replies, the OP has yet to respond...

[Fizban]

I notice that in nearly 100 replies, the OP has yet to respond...
John_Dahl usually lets the thread run for a good while before "coming back," but it doesn't help that we don't really have any revolutionary advice. It's a simple problem with simple but fairly non-negotiable solutions.

[Jay R]

I notice that in nearly 100 replies, the OP has yet to respond...

No problem. We are advising him. He needs to read, not respond.

[Lorddenorstrus]

No problem. We are advising him. He needs to read, not respond.

I think the advise got adequately summed awhile ago. The problem is of his own origination he's created excess of magical items in a world that by his own admission they shouldn't exist in as their is "no market".

[Jay R]

I think the advise got adequately summed awhile ago. The problem is of his own origination he's created excess of magical items in a world that by his own admission they shouldn't exist in as their is "no market".

There are any number of ways that this could happen, starting with having more magic items 1,000 years ago, that are only now being discovered. Or a wizard might have made a few hundred for her own army 200 years ago.

The only real problem is that they are concentrated in the hands of too few people.

If there aren't a lot of them in the world, and the PCs have too many, and there is no market, then they make wonderful gifts to Kings, Queens, great Lord and Ladies, and anybody else who employs guards and whose good will the PCs could use.

[Jon_Dahl]

I'm sorry that I haven't responded. Like Fizban said, I usually wait for the discussion to reach a certain point before I answer. However, this time I felt that some people were too aggressive towards me, and if you don't believe me, just look at the amount of scrubbing that has happened in this thread. Please, just look at it. I am not here to fight!

From the information that I have gathered from this thread, I will do the following:
- The PCs do not have a cleric. If they join a church that will heal them (restoration etc.), they will have to pay with magic items and perhaps with gold too.
- The PCs belong to an Adventurers' Guild. The guild will offer a substantial award for the adventuring group that regularly sponsors a group of beginners with magic items. This way they will have to equip a group of bare-naked 1st-level adventurers, but they will be rewarded really well if they do that.
- Planar Allies and similar called creatures will accept magic items.
- Most importantly, lower level magic items can be melted to produce greater magic items. It doesn't have to make sense. You can melt a greatsword +1 to produce a ring of protection +2. So what?

If I have overlooked some advice, please tell me.

[Calthropstu]

I'm sorry that I haven't responded. Like Fizban said, I usually wait for the discussion to reach a certain point before I answer. However, this time I felt that some people were too aggressive towards me, and if you don't believe me, just look at the amount of scrubbing that has happened in this thread. Please, just look at it. I am not here to fight!

From the information that I have gathered from this thread, I will do the following:
- The PCs do not have a cleric. If they join a church that will heal them (restoration etc.), they will have to pay with magic items and perhaps with gold too.
- The PCs belong to an Adventurers' Guild. The guild will offer a substantial award for the adventuring group that regularly sponsors a group of beginners with magic items. This way they will have to equip a group of bare-naked 1st-level adventurers, but they will be rewarded really well if they do that.
- Planar Allies and similar called creatures will accept magic items.
- Most importantly, lower level magic items can be melted to produce greater magic items. It doesn't have to make sense. You can melt a greatsword +1 to produce a ring of protection +2. So what?

If I have overlooked some advice, please tell me.

This seems reasonable, though, in the spirit of dnd I think dice should be rolled to determine what is actually gotten. Even create a new feat to allow a "roll 2 pick one" scenario. The enchantments are based off the final item fashioned which they can pick. This way it's not just replacing "magic mart" with "essentially magic mart"

[Quertus]

I keep forgetting to say that "no magic item Walmart" harkens back to the days of 2e, best RPG of all time. Just - and maybe it's just my bad memory - it never seemed like 2e had quite such an overabundance of +1 gear.


I'm sorry that I haven't responded. Like Fizban said, I usually wait for the discussion to reach a certain point before I answer. However, this time I felt that some people were too aggressive towards me, and if you don't believe me, just look at the amount of scrubbing that has happened in this thread. Please, just look at it. I am not here to fight!

3 posts in 3 pages? Not the craziest I've seen, by a large margin.


From the information that I have gathered from this thread, I will do the following:
- The PCs do not have a cleric. If they join a church that will heal them (restoration etc.), they will have to pay with magic items and perhaps with gold too.
- The PCs belong to an Adventurers' Guild. The guild will offer a substantial award for the adventuring group that regularly sponsors a group of beginners with magic items. This way they will have to equip a group of bare-naked 1st-level adventurers, but they will be rewarded really well if they do that.
- Planar Allies and similar called creatures will accept magic items.
- Most importantly, lower level magic items can be melted to produce greater magic items. It doesn't have to make sense. You can melt a greatsword +1 to produce a ring of protection +2. So what?

If I have overlooked some advice, please tell me.

So, is this the feel that you were going for? Does this meet your intentions in saying "no magic item Wal-Mart"?

[Caelestion]

If I have overlooked some advice, please tell me.

Those still seem like trying to treat the symptoms, rather than the disease. Why not simply hand-wave away the excessive amounts of magic items? Grant NPCs the necessary bonuses with which to provide a threat and curate which magical items get passed onto your PCs.

[Bohandas]

In my campaign, buying and selling magical items is banned. I have simply decided not to trivialize magical items by making them commodities, and my players accept that. We have a consensus on the matter.
It occurs to me that there's a possible middle ground here. You could use the old trope of the spooky shop that mysteriouslu appears one night and is gone just as mysteriously the next day, and have one pop up about once per level or once per adventure.

[Tiktakkat]

From the information that I have gathered from this thread, I will do the following:
- The PCs do not have a cleric. If they join a church that will heal them (restoration etc.), they will have to pay with magic items and perhaps with gold too.

I had forgotten that "option".
Back in my last AD&D campaign we had a cleric in the party, and the other PCs "foolishly" made him responsible for keeping track of equipment. "Naturally" he applied a tithe to his church to reflect his services without mentioning it to anybody. There was outrage when it was discovered until it was pointed out all the preferences they got from the church for higher level healing and magic item support.
Without a dedicated PC cleric, and without requiring membership, having a church charge in magic items for healing is a great way to bypass the standard "economy".


- The PCs belong to an Adventurers' Guild. The guild will offer a substantial award for the adventuring group that regularly sponsors a group of beginners with magic items. This way they will have to equip a group of bare-naked 1st-level adventurers, but they will be rewarded really well if they do that.

I usually put guild dues in the category of taxes, but this ties it in with guild prestige and potential rewards, an excellent combination.


- Planar Allies and similar called creatures will accept magic items.

I recall notes on planar allies from some of the articles in Dragon Magazine that indicate preferences, including for magic items. This fits in neatly with that, as well as taking pressure off the need to find another hoard of gold to try and pay the fee. Another good option.


- Most importantly, lower level magic items can be melted to produce greater magic items. It doesn't have to make sense. You can melt a greatsword +1 to produce a ring of protection +2. So what?

I think 99% of perceived "problems" with anything in D&D can be resolved with "It doesn't have to make sense. . . . So what?"
The only thing I would suggest with that is trying to keep the values roughly equivalent, perhaps with some nod to "merging" similar items. A weapon +1 is 2K (and change), a ring of protection +1 is 2K. Or, a cloak of protection +1 is 1K, a cloak of protection +2 is 4K, four cloaks of protection +1 can be "layered" and "merge" into a cloak of protection +2. A further 5 cloaks of protection +1 can be added to make a cloak of protection +3, and so on.

[Andry]

It doesn't have to be a Magic Mart. If you go to a big enough city there will be enough buyers to buy up magic items. Especially low level ones. Just make them use gather information checks to find buyers. That is how the system is set up. Problem solved.

[Rynjin]

This seems reasonable, though, in the spirit of dnd I think dice should be rolled to determine what is actually gotten. Even create a new feat to allow a "roll 2 pick one" scenario. The enchantments are based off the final item fashioned which they can pick. This way it's not just replacing "magic mart" with "essentially magic mart"

Ha. So you set it up like reforging an item in a game like Vermintide 2 or something of that nature.

I can dig it.

[mouser13]

Well epic handbook said they started using +1 dagger as currency because of weight and cost ratio. I would suggest the same. Though don't know what you do with money if you don't have magic items to buy. Suggest maybe funding your own town or country?

[Lorddenorstrus]

I'm sorry that I haven't responded. Like Fizban said, I usually wait for the discussion to reach a certain point before I answer. However, this time I felt that some people were too aggressive towards me, and if you don't believe me, just look at the amount of scrubbing that has happened in this thread. Please, just look at it. I am not here to fight!

From the information that I have gathered from this thread, I will do the following:
- The PCs do not have a cleric. If they join a church that will heal them (restoration etc.), they will have to pay with magic items and perhaps with gold too.
- The PCs belong to an Adventurers' Guild. The guild will offer a substantial award for the adventuring group that regularly sponsors a group of beginners with magic items. This way they will have to equip a group of bare-naked 1st-level adventurers, but they will be rewarded really well if they do that.
- Planar Allies and similar called creatures will accept magic items.
- Most importantly, lower level magic items can be melted to produce greater magic items. It doesn't have to make sense. You can melt a greatsword +1 to produce a ring of protection +2. So what?

If I have overlooked some advice, please tell me.

What's the difference between getting loot (+1s) and selling it, then using gold to buy X item you wanted. Your example is a +2 ring of protection.. And getting a +1 loot, and then using them to make the item I wanted in the first place. It sounds like magic mart with extra steps involved. And still goes back to my point of, a magic mart won't have every item the DM chooses what's there. <_<

[RNightstalker]

I'm sorry that I haven't responded. Like Fizban said, I usually wait for the discussion to reach a certain point before I answer. However, this time I felt that some people were too aggressive towards me, and if you don't believe me, just look at the amount of scrubbing that has happened in this thread. Please, just look at it. I am not here to fight!

From the information that I have gathered from this thread, I will do the following:
- The PCs do not have a cleric. If they join a church that will heal them (restoration etc.), they will have to pay with magic items and perhaps with gold too.
- The PCs belong to an Adventurers' Guild. The guild will offer a substantial award for the adventuring group that regularly sponsors a group of beginners with magic items. This way they will have to equip a group of bare-naked 1st-level adventurers, but they will be rewarded really well if they do that.
- Planar Allies and similar called creatures will accept magic items.
- Most importantly, lower level magic items can be melted to produce greater magic items. It doesn't have to make sense. You can melt a greatsword +1 to produce a ring of protection +2. So what?

If I have overlooked some advice, please tell me.

I think you've got some good ideas there to address your OP.

[StSword]

The thing about the buying of magic items in DnD is to take more sure that PCs have level appropriate abilities.

So if you don't want to bother with the selling and buying of magic items?

Don't use magic items, use another system to make sure that the PCs have the ability to handle appropriate threats.

It's not that radical, I've seen several ways for games to get around it.

Complete Gear (http://dsp-d20-srd.wikidot.com/complete-gear), where "magic items" are temporary manifestations of the character's power. For example, a fighter can just grab a stick and meditate hour after hour until it becomes a +3 stick.

Practical Enchanter has talent rules, where instead of possessing magic items, characters are their own magic items, if Complete Gear's system is too much for you. Practical Enchanter is available for free by the by.

Pathfinder has the alternate rule system Automatic Bonus Progression (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/unchained-rules/automatic-bonus-progression), where you get magic item like bonuses just as a benefit from leveling up.

And the Third party book Alternate Path Ascetic Characters, by Little Red Goblin Games, has the Investiture system, a RWBY like system where characters can invest their aura into items to make them temporary magic items. So say someone can learn how to invest a fiery aura to make fire resistant armor, or make their sword a flaming sword.

[Bartmanhomer]

The thing about the buying of magic items in DnD is to take more sure that PCs have level appropriate abilities.

So if you don't want to bother with the selling and buying of magic items?

Don't use magic items, use another system to make sure that the PCs have the ability to handle appropriate threats.

It's not that radical, I've seen several ways for games to get around it.

Complete Gear (http://dsp-d20-srd.wikidot.com/complete-gear), where "magic items" are temporary manifestations of the character's power. For example, a fighter can just grab a stick and meditate hour after hour until it becomes a +3 stick.

Practical Enchanter has talent rules, where instead of possessing magic items, characters are their own magic items, if Complete Gear's system is too much for you. Practical Enchanter is available for free by the by.

Pathfinder has the alternate rule system Automatic Bonus Progression (https://www.d20pfsrd.com/gamemastering/other-rules/unchained-rules/automatic-bonus-progression), where you get magic item like bonuses just as a benefit from leveling up.

And the Third party book Alternate Path Ascetic Characters, by Little Red Goblin Games, has the Investiture system, a RWBY like system where characters can invest their aura into items to make them temporary magic items. So say someone can learn how to invest a fiery aura to make fire resistant armor, or make their sword a flaming sword.

I agree with everything you said. :smile:

[Asmotherion]

Leadership Feat and lead an army?

[Eladrinblade]

If you have the ability craft magic items, you can use items of that type to fuel the creation of another item of that type, at the expense of the first item. If you meet the prerequisites of item creation for both items, you can use all of the material component and exp costs of the first item to help make the second item. If you dont meet the prerequisites for the first item, you only get (1d4+2)x10% of its materials/exp, and must supply the rest on your own if these are insufficient. If the salvaged item provides more materials/exp than is necessary for the 2nd item, the remainder can be used on another item as long as creation of that item begins immediately after the first is done. You cannot use an arcane item to make a divine item, and vice versa. Items salvaged in this manner lose their magic, but are not otherwise harmed. The process takes 20% longer than creating the 2nd item normally would, rounded down to the nearest day.