Akbar's Discount Magic Items (Not knockoffs)

[I_Got_This_Name]

This store, suitable for insertion into pretty much any medium to high magic game, has two cardinal rules:
1) No touching the merchandise until it's payed for
2) No returns, no refunds

However, it offers high-quality magic items at low, low discount prices. They are, however, off-the-shelf, so availability of specific types of items, especially weapons, may vary.

Bracers of Armor +4: These discount bracers, sold for 5,000 GP, cast a Mage Armor spell, caster level 1, just before their wearer is first struck by an attack. After the spell's duration expires, these bracers burn out and become worthless; if they are removed before then, the spell is suppressed until they are replaced.
Cost to create: 50 GP, 4 XP.
Prerequisites: Craft Contingent Spell or Craft Wondrous Item, Mage Armor

+1 weapon: This weapon, decorated to look Masterwork (worth 50 GP beyond the price of a normal weapon), casts Magic Weapon when it is first used in combat, caster level 1. After the spell's duration expires, the weapon becomes worthless. It is typically sold for 800 GP, plus the price of the normal weapon (decoration included in the 800)
Cost to create: 50 GP, 4 XP + weapon
Prerequisites: CCS or CWI, Magic Weapon

+3 weapon: This weapon is exactly like the +1 Weapon, except that it casts Greater Magic Weapon at 12th caster level. It usually sells for 6,000 GP above the cost of the weapon.
Cost to create: 1,800 GP, 225 XP + weapon
Prerequisites: CCS or CWI, Greater Magic Weapon at a caster level of 12th or higher.

Keen Weapon: This addition to the +1 or +3 weapon adds the Keen Edge spell (CL 5), in the same conditions. The price of a +1 weapon increases by 2,000 GP, and the price of a +3 weapon doubles.
Cost to Create: 750 GP, 60 XP
Prerequisites: CCS or CWI, Keen Edge

Bracers of Wraithstrike: These bracers, passed off as an absurdly-powerful item allowing you to make every attack as a touch attack, instead allow the wearer to make all attacks as a touch attack for the first round in which the wearer attacks while wearing them. They are usually sold for somewhere around 10,000 GP.
Cost to Create: 300 GP, 24 XP
Prerequisites: CCS or CWI, Wraithstrike (Complete Adventurer)

All items have a Magic Aura spell on them to make them appear to give the right aura until after being taken out of the store.

[Lord Iames Osari]

Nice. Almost as good as that Zogonia strip in Dragon 341 about the illusion of the pipe. Though you realize, of course, that once they realize what's happened, the PCs will hunt these people down and reprimand them.

[Bob_the_Mighty]

Unless, of course, the party got totally screwed over and the items got them killed.

As a DM I think this is a cool shop, but as a player I'd have to kick some ass once I found out that the items were fake.

[Kamakazee_Gnome]

What I'd probably have to do to the shopkeeper

[Matthew]

Very amusing. Perhaps even better if the NPC Shopkeeper himself does not know the faulty nature of the items he is selling (being supplied by a third party or somesuch thing).

[I_Got_This_Name]

Akbar knows that what he's selling is crap; that's the prime reason why nobody touches the merchandise until it's payed for, and why he doesn't allow returns (no chance to Identify it, no matter how quickly, until you're a sucker). Still, if you want to change the concept away from having him be a conman into having him be some wizards' dupe, that could be a fun adventure.

Yes, he'd make a lot of enemies doing this. However, he moves around, coincidentally putting him in big cities with lots of heavily-armed guards wherever the PCs are.

[Lord Iames Osari]

Hah! To sufficiently determined and powerful PCs, that presents almost no obstacle... And if they have a patron, they can warn others about this guy.

[I_Got_This_Name]

He also posesses Shopkeeper Invincibility (unless you want him to die, which is probably a good thing. Of course, he might just have a bunch of scattered identical cousins with the same name).

Also, for a limited time only, he has this sweet deal on an Apparatus of the Crab:

This Apparatus of the Crab was resold by some clumsy adventurers to Akbar for 30,000 GP; he's reselling it at 50,000. The old owners had not been kind to it, however, and Lever #9 is jammed; it can only be set to sink or off, not to rise, and Lever #10 does not function in water. It has been crippled in one further way: its horizontal movement function was damaged, and it cannot climb up any grade steeper than 0.5% (although it can descend such grades as well as normal). Akbar has not bothered to repair it since its previous owners, although he did repaint it for display. Additionally, it leaks; while submerged, it lets in water displacing one minute's worth of air per round per 10 feet of depth or fraction thereof.

[ExHunterEmerald]

Akbar's items, eh...
I think I get the reference.

IT'S A TRAP!

[I_Got_This_Name]

Not that Akbar.

[ExHunterEmerald]

Drat.
Oh well, I like the items. But I'll be watching my DM like a hawk now...

[Eighth_Seraph]

Of course not, there is no Akbar in 8-bit Theater, and he definitely does not sell items (magical or otherwise) that appear useful at first glance and then completely screw you over. [/sarcasm]

It is that Akbar, isn't it?

[Gralamin]

of course its him.

[I_Got_This_Name]

This is, indeed, 8-bit Theatre's Akbar.

I figure he's got to have Shopkeeper Immunity, or an irresistable Suggestion set up over the entire world to make people not take revenge, or something; otherwise he'd have eaten a Hadoken by now.

[Eighth_Seraph]

Well, if you notice, people in 8BT don't seem to remember Akbar's stores and he's usually long gone by the time they realized he's been gone. Maybe you could set up a memory charm with an impossibly high will save to remember where you bought the item, then have Akbar change stores after every few sales in case someone rolls a nat 20.

[I_Got_This_Name]

Will add.

(Edited: I just remembered, then looked it up; in episode 411, Black Mage shows that he does, indeed, remember being ripped off by other Akbar stores.)