Worlds of Design: The Problem with Magimarts

I dislike magic item stores ("magimarts") in my games. Here's why.

I dislike magic item stores. Here's why.

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Picture courtesy of Pixabay.

Magic items are a part of every fantasy role-playing game, and wherever player characters meet, someone will want to buy or sell such items. What the players do among themselves is their business, in most cases; but when non-player characters (NPC) are involved the GM must know where magic items come from, how rare they are, and how hard it is to produce them. [Quoting myself from 40+ years ago]

Magimart: Still a Bad Idea​

I don't like the idea of "Magimarts" -- something like a bookstore or small department store, often with a public storefront, where adventurers can come and purchase (or sell) magic items. I said as much over 40 years ago in an article titled “Magimart: Buying and Selling Magic Items” in White Dwarf magazine. My point then still stands: at least for me and in my games, magic-selling stores don’t make sense.

They don’t make sense from a design point of view, as they may unbalance a campaign or cause power-creep. From an adventure point of view such stores partly eliminates the need to quest for specific powerful magic items. From a realistic point of view they would only provide targets for those who are happy to steal.

The Design Point of View​

From a game design point of view, how experience points, gold, and magic fit together makes a big difference. For example, if you get experience points for selling a magic item (even to NPCs), as well as for the gold you get, adventurers will sell magic items more often. If adventurers acquire scads of treasure and have nothing (such as taxes or “training”) to significantly reduce their fortunes, then big-time magic items are going to cost an awful lot of money, but some will be bought. If gold is in short supply (as you’d expect in anything approaching a real world) then anyone with a whole lot of gold might be able to buy big-time magic items.

Long campaigns need a way for magic items to change ownership, other than theft. As an RPG player I like to trade magic items to other characters in return for other magic items. But there are no “magic stores.” Usability is a big part of it: if my magic user has a magic sword that a fighter wants, he might trade me an item that I could use as a magic user. (Some campaigns allocate found magic items only to characters who can use them. We just dice for selecting the things (a sort of draft) and let trading sort it out, much simpler and less likely to lead to argument about who can use/who needs what.)

The Adventure Point of Views​

Will magic stores promote enjoyable adventuring? It depends on the style of play, but for players primarily interested in challenging adventures, they may not want to be able to go into a somehow-invulnerable magic store and buy or trade for what they want.

Magic-selling stores remind me of the question “why do dungeons exist”. A common excuse (not reason) is “some mad (and very powerful) wizard made it.” Yeah, sure. Excuses for magic-selling stores need to be even wilder than that!

I think of magic-item trading and selling amongst characters as a kind of secretive black market. Yes, it may happen, but each transaction is fraught with opportunities for deceit. Perhaps like a black market for stolen diamonds? This is not something you’re likely to do out in the open, nor on a regular mass basis.

The Realistic Point of View​

“Why do you rob banks?” the thief is asked. “’Cause that’s where the money is.”
Realistically, what do you think will happen if someone maintains a location containing magic items on a regular basis? Magimarts are a major flashpoint in the the dichotomy between believability (given initial assumptions of magic and spell-casting) and "Rule of Cool" ("if it's cool, it's OK").

In most campaigns, magic items will be quite rare. Or magic items that do commonplace things (such as a magic self-heating cast iron pan) may be common but the items that are useful in conflict will be rare. After all, if combat-useful magic items are commonplace, why would anyone take the risk of going into a “dungeon” full of dangers to find some? (Would dungeon-delving become purely a non-magical treasure-hunting activity if magic items are commonplace?)

And for the villains, magimarts seem like an easy score. If someone is kind enough to gather a lot of magic items in a convenient, known place, why not steal those rather than go to a lot of time and effort, risk and chance, to explore dungeons and ruins for items? There may be lots of money there as well!

When Magimarts Make Sense​

If your campaign is one where magic is very common, then magic shops may make sense - though only for common stuff, not for rare/powerful items. And magic-selling stores can provide reasons for adventures:
  • Find the kidnapped proprietor who is the only one who can access all that magic.
  • Be the guards for a magic store.
  • Chase down the crooks who stole some or all of the magic from the store.
Maybe a clever proprietor has figured out a way to make the items accessible only to him or her. But some spells let a caster take over the mind of the victim, and can use the victim to access the items. And if someone is so powerful that he or she can protect a magic store against those who want to raid it, won't they likely have better/more interesting things to do with their time? (As an aside, my wife points out that a powerful character might gather a collection of magic items in the same way that a rich person might gather a collection of artworks. But these won’t be available to “the public” in most cases. Still just as some people rob art museums, some might rob magic collections.)

Of course, any kind of magic trading offers lots of opportunities for deception. You might find out that the sword you bought has a curse, or that the potion isn’t what it’s supposed to be. Many GMs ignore this kind of opportunity and let players buy and sell items at standard prices without possibility of being bilked. Fair enough, it’s not part of the core adventure/story purposes of RPGs. And magic stores are a cheap way for a GM to allow trade in magic items.

Your Turn: What part do magic-selling stores play in your games?
 

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Lewis Pulsipher

Lewis Pulsipher

Dragon, White Dwarf, Fiend Folio

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Ready access to magic items is a fundamental part of Pathfinder 1e. Challenge ratings are based on PCs having the appropriate "wealth" for their level - and that doesn't mean throwing gold pieces at the monsters.

In my games, whenever the PCs are in town, they can buy and sell magic items to their hearts' content, so long as they do it "off camera" and don't take up any game time. (I'm not running a shopping simulator.) As to who is the other party to these transactions, I don't know and I don't care. Even upgrading existing magic items can happen instantly, if they are under time-pressure due to campaign events.

It's completely "unrealistic", and ignores Pathfinder's own rules for magic item availability, but it works for us.

It also sidesteps the whole question of robbing magic item shops - although I'd happily write an adventure around that if the players wanted one.
Yep. D&D 3rd and its descendants of 3.5, 4e, Pathfinder 1, and Pathfinder 2 assume that magic items are common and easily accessible, and incorporate into their math the assumption that players will have certain amounts of certain objects at a given level. Monster stats and DCs will fundamentally not work unless PCs have that access.

Magic items in those editions are not that Special nor Rare.

The main argument in the OP seems to be that you can't have a store with valuable items in it because it would just get robbed in its entirety... but we have things like jewelry stores, banks, pharmacies, art stores, car dealerships... all of these can and do exist without being constantly robbed.
 

Maxperson

Morkus from Orkus
Reminds me of the good old days of 1st / 2nd edition.

Player: I ask around town to see if anyone is interested in buying a +1 longsword
DM: Magic items are rare and precious. They aren't a commodity to be bought and sold. That +1 longsword is the result of a long and tortuous creation process by a powerful mage, who poured his very life-force into making it. No one here could possibly afford to buy it; maybe the lord of the manor, but he'd have to mortgage his entire estate to do so
Player: The how come I have a dozen of the (expletive deleted) things, and every random bandit chief we meet on the road seems to have another one?
Yeah. That's why I stopped doing that. Magic items, even minor ones, are still fairly rare.

3e was the edition most free with magic items. It expected a player to have a +1 weapon, a ring of jumping, a +1 shield and a cloak of balancing by the time they were level 5. Minor items were everywhere and it robbed magic items of their mystique. Instead of being rare and wondrous items, they were boring things and players yawned as the 21st +1 weapon showed up.

What I eventually did was to stop that cold. Instead of finding all those items by level 5, instead they would find Frogreaver, a +1, +1 defending sword that gave +10 to jump and balance checks. Instead of magic items being minor and common, they were suddenly rare and much cooler. My players became excited to find them again and would lean forward intently when their detect magic spell revealed an object with an aura.
 

Lord Shark

Adventurer
Reminds me of the good old days of 1st / 2nd edition.

Player: I ask around town to see if anyone is interested in buying a +1 longsword
DM: Magic items are rare and precious. They aren't a commodity to be bought and sold. That +1 longsword is the result of a long and tortuous creation process by a powerful mage, who poured his very life-force into making it. No one here could possibly afford to buy it; maybe the lord of the manor, but he'd have to mortgage his entire estate to do so
Player: The how come I have a dozen of the (expletive deleted) things, and every random bandit chief we meet on the road seems to have another one?

Yeah, that's one of the problems with banning magic item stores, especially if you also insist on handing out randomly generated treasure: the party is inevitably going to accumulate a pile of magic items they've outgrown and/or have no use for -- which contributes to magic items feeling boring. There's no sensawunda in finding a +1 glaive-guisarme that you're never going to do anything with, other than maybe turn it into a hat rack. And that was happening long before 3E.

The other problem is one you often see in 5E: players accumulating massive wealth and having nothing to spend it on. Not everyone is going to want to buy a castle or hire an army.

I don't use magic stores myself, but I also do tailor magic item finds to what the players need, and I give them opportunities to level up their items as they play so there are no forgotten +1 swords hanging around uselessly at the bottom of their inventory. And I don't bother tracking monetary treasure.
 

Horwath

Legend
also what we did during 3.5e where there were item creation feats in the game, we treated magic items magic as energy, it cannot be destroyed, only changed. So you could "drain" magic items of it's magic and use that magic to create new magic items on 1on1 GP basis.
I.E. you found +2 whip that no one will use, just drain it and put that magic into barbarians new +2 greataxe.
 

Oofta

Legend
Supporter
Short version:
Like others I do a barter system, with shops and brokers. A shop may have a few items on hand but for the most part it's for buying, trading items or selling items. Some items will not be available, others may take time to procure. Most uncommon items are relatively simple to procure (I limit a few) while legendary items are never for sale. I used to randomize prices, but now I just have a standard price list based on rarity.

Longer version:
I like to think what would be logical in my world based on assumptions of how it works much the same as the real world with magic. Magic items, barring something catastrophic last forever. That +1 sword someone lost in a river? The river changed course decades later, decades after that someone was digging down to put into a foundation for a house. The sword is still bright and shiny.

So it makes sense to me that even if the creation of magic items is rare, magic items could still be available. Since they are valued, there will be a market. Value of magic items doesn't even need to correlate to it's utility. After all, a 1938 Superman comic book just sold for $6 million.

The other aspect of this is that I don't care much for the "go to the dungeon for the sole purpose of finding loot". If there's a magic item recovered, it was likely something useful to the enemy, but not necessarily the party. They have to have a way of disposing of it somehow. In addition, while I occasionally give out magic items as rewards from grateful benefactors, I don't really think much about what magic items the PCs may want. I'd rather just give them gold to buy things, it's not like there's much to spend your money on in D&D in most cases unless you're spending it on real estate and construction of a keep.

I guess I just don't see a problem with a magic mart unless it's expected that you have a +x weapon by level y. Getting magic items is just part of the character build and as long as I limit the amount of wealth the PCs have I also limit how powerful the items are. Along with that I can curate the list of items and if I think something would be disruptive or overly powerful, it's simply not available. Meanwhile, having toys is fun and that's the goal of the game, right?
 

GMMichael

Guide of Modos
And for the villains, magimarts seem like an easy score. If someone is kind enough to gather a lot of magic items in a convenient, known place, why not steal those rather than go to a lot of time and effort, risk and chance, to explore dungeons and ruins for items?
Maybe they're like today's villains, and they just own the magimarts?

I do, however, have the smith who has a +1 longsword in his stock, either perhaps because some hard-on-his luck adventurer hocked it, the smith's skilled enough to have made it, or perhaps someone commissioned it and never returned to claimed it.
Now, I really don't think that +1 longswords would sell very well. Or at all.

"Hi. I'm looking for a longsword to buy."
(Blacksmith groans subtly at yet another newb.) "Ah, yes, milord. Would you be seeking more of a one-handed or two-handed longsword? Perhaps this nice piece: my hand-and-a-half sword?"
"Anything . . . magical?" (Winks obviously.)
" . . . yes. This one, over here, is magical. Only eight-hundred Goldpfennigs."
"Lovely!" (Huge purse jingles.) "What does it do?"
"It hits things. But better."
"How much better?"
"Just better."
"Better than this one?"
"Slightly."
"I'll take it!"

Okay, maybe they would sell. But only to PCs. Which sounds like a horrible business model.
 

Stormonu

NeoGrognard
Maybe they're like today's villains, and they just own the magimarts?


Now, I really don't think that +1 longswords would sell very well. Or at all.

"Hi. I'm looking for a longsword to buy."
(Blacksmith groans subtly at yet another newb.) "Ah, yes, milord. Would you be seeking more of a one-handed or two-handed longsword? Perhaps this nice piece: my hand-and-a-half sword?"
"Anything . . . magical?" (Winks obviously.)
" . . . yes. This one, over here, is magical. Only eight-hundred Goldpfennigs."
"Lovely!" (Huge purse jingles.) "What does it do?"
"It hits things. But better."
"How much better?"
"Just better."
"Better than this one?"
"Slightly."
"I'll take it!"

Okay, maybe they would sell. But only to PCs. Which sounds like a horrible business model.
"Also, it's good against demons and werewolves - you'll really feel the weapon bite into those foul things."
 

Vaalingrade

Legend
I love the magic items store. Takes away the players' dependence on the dice or providence of the DM to get something they find fun, removes the 'magic must be special' thing that reduces the fantastic nature of the world, and makes sense seeing that people will sell ANYTHING when they get a chance, from radioactive water to non-material concepts.

As for the idea that they'd be robbed; that's what magical storage and illusions are for.
 

The best way to do magi marts is to have them only selling equipment the average adventurer would have no use for. They're all out of +1 swords and potions of healing, but they have a 200 pound stone obelisk that magically folds your underwear. Great if you're a hausfrau, not so much if you're a dragonslayer.
 

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