Worlds of Design: The Problem with Magimarts

I dislike magic item stores. Here's why.

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?

 

[James Gasik]

Eventually, you sell it.

If you can. I mean, that's kind of what this thread is about, right?

 

[Maxperson]

Once he's much higher level, that is.

We're talking about magic item economy, which means we have all the wizards in the world available throughout all of history. I bet a fair number of those could churn out magic items.

I'm still against the idea of magic mart, but the parts are there to build one. At least in 1e. In 3e the xp cost destroys it. You guys pointed out that the way xp works keeps the wizard close to the rest of the group, but it's not the PCs that would make a magic mart. It's the sedentary wizards who have the time and safety to do so. They aren't out there gaining more xp, so they wouldn't want to mass produce items and lose all of their power.

 

[Maxperson]

The world doesn't stop, but the party might, depending how useful they saw the new item as being.

Sure, but the rest of the group is hearing rumors and learning stuff that is likely time sensitive. If they don't jump on it, someone else will get there first. It's amazing how quickly the rest of the group decides that they really would rather go do things, and then the player of the wizard inevitably joins them. At least in the groups I've been a part of.

 

[Lanefan]

I imagine in your games, you let Backstab be useful more often, too, lol. Played "by the book", including stuff found in non-PHB sources (like Dragon), it can get to the point where you might as well scratch the ability off your character sheet!

We're probably more liberal than the RAW would have it, but a Thief still has to hide between strikes so absolute best-case is once every other round.

That said, using Gauntlets of Ogre Power and a damn fine sword, my Thief (Black Leaf, of course ) just last month annihilated our all-time damage record that had stood for over 30 years with a max-critical backstrike: 240 points.

I don't mind items that are class specific in general, but I feel there needs to be a reason for it. AD&D's reason is mostly "so non-Fighters don't outshine the Fighter before they get extra attacks", lol.

There's Mage-only items as well, also Cleric-only.

Even 5e retains some of this, with items that require certain traits in order to attune to them, though I'm leery about that one- if you find an item nobody in your party can use, what then?

Then so be it. You sell it, or keep it in case you ever take in somebody who can make use of it.

 

[James Gasik]

We're talking about magic item economy, which means we have all the wizards in the world available throughout all of history. I bet a fair number of those could churn out magic items.

I'm still against the idea of magic mart, but the parts are there to build one. At least in 1e. In 3e the xp cost destroys it. You guys pointed out that the way xp works keeps the wizard close to the rest of the group, but it's not the PCs that would make a magic mart. It's the sedentary wizards who have the time and safety to do so. They aren't out there gaining more xp, so they wouldn't want to mass produce items and lose all of their power.

Decks of Many Things and Augury abuse.

I'm kidding, but you're overlooking that NPC's don't earn xp the same way PC's do. An 11th level Wizard is 11th level because the DM decided he needs to be, he didn't have to go adventuring and slay monsters to get there.

The same holds true for that 5th level Expert Weaponsmith the party buys their masterwork swords from. The xp cost for magic items is a (not well thought out) limitation for PC's.

I'm not saying you can't run your game with NPC's having to worry about xp, but in the PHB you can buy spellcasting services for spells with xp costs from NPC's, it just costs more money to do so (5 gp per xp required in the cost), which wouldn't happen if NPC's actually had to worry about losing levels.

 

[James Gasik]

We're probably more liberal than the RAW would have it, but a Thief still has to hide between strikes so absolute best-case is once every other round.

That said, using Gauntlets of Ogre Power and a damn fine sword, my Thief (Black Leaf, of course ) just last month annihilated our all-time damage record that had stood for over 30 years with a max-critical backstrike: 240 points.

There's Mage-only items as well, also Cleric-only.

Then so be it. You sell it, or keep it in case you ever take in somebody who can make use of it.

Yes, but most of those are things that wouldn't benefit other classes very well (but not always, I mean, most people wouldn't want a Phylactery of Faithfulness, but who wouldn't want a Phylactery of Long Years?)...at least with regards to permanent items.

While there are Wands anyone can use, it probably makes sense to limit access to Wands that can shoot fireballs at people (though there are other ways, like Necklaces of Missiles or the Helm of Brilliance).

 

[cbwjm]

If you can. I mean, that's kind of what this thread is about, right?

Even without a magicmart, you can still normally sell something eventually, it doesn't have to be a dedicated reseller. You can use the 5e rules to find someone willing to buy, maybe a local lord or a wizard who wants the item.

 

[Starfox]

They're on a magic item creation mission from god?

Right! He even turns blue in honor of Boccob, the god of magic!

 

[Starfox]

No I don't think so. First let's both acknowledge the objective fact that blacksmiths level 10-20 NPCs (many being retired adventures) were fairly (clerics and bartenders especially) in forgotten realms and maybe greyhawk used in 2e & 3.x when the whole "wizard's Don't let folks copy their spell book" thing really got cemented. I'm going to continue assuming that you acknowledge that.

The idea that anyone worldly enough to know which direction the nearest village/town/city or two is wouldn't also be able to point a traveler in the direction of the nearest monastery or someone who could like a village head or the local feudal lord they deliver crops to until the renaissance period is not at all plausible until you get to darksun style mages are illegal & hunter down type worlds.

A wizard would logically be able to find somewhere that facilitated cross copying just as easily as a peasant finding the nearest monastery. But unlike the peasant, a wizard with any spells worth copying and the gold to do it could easily make the trip.

Sorry, I cannot follow your argument. I don't understand what you're trying to convince me of.

If the people with all the magic items get attacked, they're already more dangerous than anyone else they could call. It's a very different power dynamic than you have buying mundane goods from somebody.

This is also a part of my renaissance development, where bankers, and in this case magic item traders, can outcompete feudal lords.

 

[FrozenNorth]

Oh, I see! I think I was a bit too vague, initially. I didn't mean that the faction with the most magical items wouldn't be willing to sell any of them. If anything, somebody with a dozen magic wands is probably more willing to sell/trade one of them than somebody who only has one. My point was that, if a jewelry store, a museum, or some other storehouse of valuable objects gets attacked, they'll turn to the city watch for help. Or the royal guard, or whatever the local peacekeepers are called. If the people with all the magic items get attacked, they're already more dangerous than anyone else they could call. It's a very different power dynamic than you have buying mundane goods from somebody.

Fair enough. My belief is that anyone selling magical items would likely rely on their own countermeasures before calling the guard. As well, it seems likely that most thieves would think twice before robbing someone who is known to be able to create magical items.