Besides the 5e mechanic really does suggest that magic items aren't really all that rare at all. I mean you have classes like the Wizards and Artificers who can make magic items with minimal effort which would suggest that Artificers and Wizards are then so rare they are rarely seen, which again is not what any of the D&D settings suggest at all.
I know DM's sometimes insist that magic items are "exotic and rare" but absolutely nothing about D&D the game or D&D settings suggest any such thing. If anything, most of the time they are at best uncommon.
“Unless you decide your campaign works otherwise, most magic items are so rare that they aren’t available for purchase. Common items, such as a potion of healing, can be procured from an alchemist, herbalist, or spellcaster. Doing so is rarely as simple as walking into a shop and selecting an item from a shelf.”
That is a quote from the D&D 5e Dungeon Master’s Guide. One of the Core Rulebooks. Available right here, on this very website. So there IS something about D&D that not only suggests but outright tells you that by default magic items are too rare to be purchased off of a shelf in a store.
The reason DMs “sometimes insist” that magic items are exotic and rare is because we read the rulebooks.
As for Wizards and Artificers, they cannot “easily” create magic items according to the actual rules. Artificers are highly limited in the number of magic items they can create easily via infusions, and other than that have to abide by the same crafting rules as anyone else.
Crafting magic items requires large sums of money, a lot of time investment, and a formula that explains how to create the item in question. Plus, it suggests that you can optionally add exotic materials they need to take from powerful monsters or dangerous locations.
Again, this is all in the DMG, one of the 3 main rulebooks of the game.
I like how you left out the rest of the section that goes on to tell you
In a large city with an academy of magic or a major temple, buying and selling magic items might be possible, at your discretion. If your world includes a large number of adventurers engaged in retrieving ancient magic items, trade in these items might be more common. Even so, it’s likely to remain similar to the market for fine art in the real world, with invitation-only auctions and a tendency to attract thieves.
And
In your campaign, magic items might be prevalent enough that adventurers can buy and sell them with some effort. Magic items might be for sale in bazaars or auction houses in fantastical locations, such as the City of Brass, the planar metropolis of Sigil, or even in more ordinary cities. Sale of magic items might be highly regulated, accompanied by a thriving black market. Artificers might craft items for use by military forces or adventurers, as they do in the world of Eberron. You might also allow characters to craft their own magic items, as discussed in chapter 6.
I like how you left out the rest of the section that goes on to tell you
In a large city with an academy of magic or a major temple, buying and selling magic items might be possible, at your discretion. If your world includes a large number of adventurers engaged in retrieving ancient magic items, trade in these items might be more common. Even so, it’s likely to remain similar to the market for fine art in the real world, with invitation-only auctions and a tendency to attract thieves.
And
In your campaign, magic items might be prevalent enough that adventurers can buy and sell them with some effort. Magic items might be for sale in bazaars or auction houses in fantastical locations, such as the City of Brass, the planar metropolis of Sigil, or even in more ordinary cities. Sale of magic items might be highly regulated, accompanied by a thriving black market. Artificers might craft items for use by military forces or adventurers, as they do in the world of Eberron. You might also allow characters to craft their own magic items, as discussed in chapter 6.
I did leave those sections out. Because 1) they’re irrelevant to the specific things I was responding to and 2) I’m not trying to copy/paste an entire chapter of the book.
Even looking at those passages, there’s a whole lot of “might be possible” and “at your discretion.” Which supports the previous passage’s statement that the default is a lack of magic item shops. It even goes on to specifically say that they would likely be traded in situations like real world art auctions, supporting what other people here have been saying as a likely alternative to shops.
I like how you left out the rest of the section that goes on to tell you
In a large city with an academy of magic or a major temple, buying and selling magic items might be possible, at your discretion. If your world includes a large number of adventurers engaged in retrieving ancient magic items, trade in these items might be more common. Even so, it’s likely to remain similar to the market for fine art in the real world, with invitation-only auctions and a tendency to attract thieves.
And
In your campaign, magic items might be prevalent enough that adventurers can buy and sell them with some effort. Magic items might be for sale in bazaars or auction houses in fantastical locations, such as the City of Brass, the planar metropolis of Sigil, or even in more ordinary cities. Sale of magic items might be highly regulated, accompanied by a thriving black market. Artificers might craft items for use by military forces or adventurers, as they do in the world of Eberron. You might also allow characters to craft their own magic items, as discussed in chapter 6.
I did leave those sections out. Because 1) they’re irrelevant to the specific things I was responding to and 2) I’m not trying to copy/paste an entire chapter of the book.
Even looking at those passages, there’s a whole lot of “might be possible” and “at your discretion.” Which supports the previous passage’s statement that the default is a lack of magic item shops. It even goes on to specifically say that they would likely be traded in situations like real world art auctions, supporting what other people here have been saying as a likely alternative to shops.
They are relevant because that whole section is giving suggestions, not imperatives, on how the DM might do things in their campaign world. Both Eberron and Wildemount, which are official D&D settings, have magic item shops, so the "default" is only the "default" in the Forgotten Realms, not Dungeons and Dragons as a whole.
Quote from Golaryn>They are relevant because that whole section is giving suggestions, not imperatives, on how the DM might do things in their campaign world. Both Eberron and Wildemount, which are official D&D settings, have magic item shops, so the "default" is only the "default" in the Forgotten Realms, not Dungeons and Dragons as a whole.
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(I dunno exactly how the quote stuff works and keep messing stuff up in an effort to keep from having an entire thread quoted in my every response. It’s too late at night/I am at work and simply don’t have the time to figure it out, so excuse formatting shenanigans please)
The sections you quoted are options and examples for how you might change the default for your game that’s why they are listed AFTER the original statements about item rarity.
Eberron and Wildemount are examples of the creators of individual worlds exercising the freedom all DMs have to alter things for their games. They are the exceptions that all rules inevitably have. Specific cases, which throughout 5e and its design philosophy trump general rules.
But what I quoted IS the general rule. The default. That’s why the passage I quoted is written in definitive statements of what IS, while the ones you quoted are all about what MIGHT be.
With D&D 5E's move away from Magic Shops and normal items having a relatively low costs. What exactly does your groups spend their gold on? Do you have them spend it during campaigns on campaign related things?
I know you can add magic shops, but while I have allowed that. I started using 5emagic.shop to generate a shop quickly, but I actually much prefer they earn the items in the course of playing. I do like that the costs at the generated shops are very high which means they normally need to just find the items during session play.
Anyhow, what exactly do you spend your hordes of gold on?
In which edition were formal magic shops actual RAW? Portrayals in games or isolated incidences in specific modules do not count.
I thought they were raw in 4e, though I might be mis-remembering. Of course in 4e, there were assumptions in the math that you would have a+1 item in each slot by a certain level, and the shops were there so players could fill in any gaps. I didn’t play 4e like that personally, but I know that was the math assumption, and I’m pretty sure it was kind of the shop assumption. I never liked them, for the reason above about why they don’t make much sense, but I think their existence was assumed.
And to the OP, this edition doesn’t really do a great job of giving the characters much to spend their money on, so it comes down to DM and player creativity. Someone above mentioned starting a guild, which is a great example. Others are some other kind of stronghold, a business, buying their way into the nobility, there’s some 3rd party support for this, but not a lot in terms of official rules. There’s some but not much. PCs could always just be saving it for retirement.
They were present in 2nd Edition, 3rd Edition, and 4th Edition.
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"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
But what I quoted IS the general rule. The default. That’s why the passage I quoted is written in definitive statements of what IS, while the ones you quoted are all about what MIGHT be.
"The default" feels a bit silly when Eberron, Exandria and Ravnica quite clearly deviate from it and those make up half the published settings for 5E (I don't know Theros either, maybe Meletis has somewhat convenient avenues of purchase for magical items too). It may be the general rule for the default setting, which is the Forgotten Realms, but as soon as you step out of that setting nothing really IS and everything MIGHT be.
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But what I quoted IS the general rule. The default. That’s why the passage I quoted is written in definitive statements of what IS, while the ones you quoted are all about what MIGHT be.
"The default" feels a bit silly when Eberron, Exandria and Ravnica quite clearly deviate from it and those make up half the published settings for 5E (I don't know Theros either, maybe Meletis has somewhat convenient avenues of purchase for magical items too). It may be the general rule for the default setting, which is the Forgotten Realms, but as soon as you step out of that setting nothing really IS and everything MIGHT be.
If you go back to the beginning of this, you’ll see that I only brought it up in response to someone’s claim that “absolutely nothing in D&D the game or D&D settings” that even suggests magic items being too rare to be sold in shops, when in fact the core rulebooks outright state it as fact. Those are all exceptions to the rule, a rule which the DMG encourages you to change as is the right of all DMs.
But what I quoted IS the general rule. The default. That’s why the passage I quoted is written in definitive statements of what IS, while the ones you quoted are all about what MIGHT be.
"The default" feels a bit silly when Eberron, Exandria and Ravnica quite clearly deviate from it and those make up half the published settings for 5E (I don't know Theros either, maybe Meletis has somewhat convenient avenues of purchase for magical items too). It may be the general rule for the default setting, which is the Forgotten Realms, but as soon as you step out of that setting nothing really IS and everything MIGHT be.
If you go back to the beginning of this, you’ll see that I only brought it up in response to someone’s claim that “absolutely nothing in D&D the game or D&D settings” that even suggests magic items being too rare to be sold in shops, when in fact the core rulebooks outright state it as fact. Those are all exceptions to the rule, a rule which the DMG encourages you to change as is the right of all DMs.
Except that it doesn't, it only states it as a fact if you quote it out of context.
It states it as a fact if you read the words with your eyeballs. Again, the beginning is written in definitive statements of what IS and how things ARE while the following passages are written as what MIGHT be. Options to change the default.
And even if I was quoting it “out of context”, I’m not but we all play pretend here so I will for the sake of argument, the statement existing at all disproves your assertion that “absolutely nothing in D&D the game” suggests magic items being this rare, since that statement comes directly from D&D The Game.
Magic items existing in adventures doesn’t make them common. Adventurers are themselves rare, and therefore so are the items which they come across during their adventures.
That’s not a contradiction. “Magic items are gleaned from the hoards of conquered monsters or discovered in long-lost vaults.” That’s the adventures presenting the items in the exact way that the DMG describes.
Magic items existing in adventures doesn’t make them common.
Does them having the "common" rarity make them common? Or costing no more than one month's worth of living expenses for a wealthy lifestyle, less than a riding horse?
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Magic items existing in adventures doesn’t make them common.
Does them having the "common" rarity make them common? Or costing no more than one month's worth of living expenses for a wealthy lifestyle, less than a riding horse?
A riding horse costs 75 gold. A month of Wealthy Lifestyle is 120 gold. So the premise is a little flawed to begin with. But I would say any individual object that costs a Wealthy person the same as a month of their lavish lifestyle, paying for their home, their servants, their food, etc., wouldn’t be common and almost certainly not just sitting on a shelf.
A common magic item is called that for a reason and is more common than others are supposed to be. But as soon as you hit Uncommon the prices jump to 100-600 gold, up to half a year of Wealthy Lifestyle, and that’s only the second rarity.
Magic items existing in adventures doesn’t make them common.
Does them having the "common" rarity make them common? Or costing no more than one month's worth of living expenses for a wealthy lifestyle, less than a riding horse?
A riding horse costs 75 gold. A month of Wealthy Lifestyle is 120 gold. So the premise is a little flawed to begin with. But I would say any individual object that costs a Wealthy person the same as a month of their lavish lifestyle, paying for their home, their servants, their food, etc., wouldn’t be common and almost certainly not just sitting on a shelf.
A common magic item is called that for a reason and is more common than others are supposed to be. But as soon as you hit Uncommon the prices jump to 100-600 gold, up to half a year of Wealthy Lifestyle, and that’s only the second rarity.
I'm not talking about uncommon ones though. I'm talking about common ones, which don't cost more than 100 gold and can be as cheap as 50. That is cheaper than a riding horse. It's actually comparable to a month of 'merely' comfortable living.
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Magic items existing in adventures doesn’t make them common.
Does them having the "common" rarity make them common? Or costing no more than one month's worth of living expenses for a wealthy lifestyle, less than a riding horse?
A riding horse costs 75 gold. A month of Wealthy Lifestyle is 120 gold. So the premise is a little flawed to begin with. But I would say any individual object that costs a Wealthy person the same as a month of their lavish lifestyle, paying for their home, their servants, their food, etc., wouldn’t be common and almost certainly not just sitting on a shelf.
A common magic item is called that for a reason and is more common than others are supposed to be. But as soon as you hit Uncommon the prices jump to 100-600 gold, up to half a year of Wealthy Lifestyle, and that’s only the second rarity.
I'm not talking about uncommon ones though. I'm talking about common ones, which don't cost more than 100 gold and can be as cheap as 50. That is cheaper than a riding horse. It's actually comparable to a month of 'merely' comfortable living.
I slightly misread your comment as comparing the price of a month of wealthy lifestyle to being less than the price of a riding horse. Apologies for that.
A quick Google search places the cost of a decent horse at $5k-$10k usd. The average time to train them between 3-4 months at around $650/month. So a riding horse IRL would run you around $7k-$12.6k. So I would say even the common magic items are pretty damn pricey if they approach that.
Beyond lists a basic Healing Potion, a common magic item, at 50 gp. That’s 2/3 the price of a trained riding horse. That’s over $4000 usd for a single-use bottle. And that’s where this stuff starts. It goes up from there. (Edit: fixed the approx. price per healing potion as doing this math while also working is a minor challenge).
Magic items existing in adventures doesn’t make them common.
Does them having the "common" rarity make them common? Or costing no more than one month's worth of living expenses for a wealthy lifestyle, less than a riding horse?
It makes them broken.
Common rarity taken literally means things like Cast-off armour is common. So why would normal armour exist? Why spend all that gold for plate armour when one can pick up a magical suit for just 100 gp?
I house rule the purchase and crafting pricing for the magic version of any item to be at a minimum the same cost as the mundane version, because they clearly weren’t considering that scenario when they wrote those things out.
With D&D 5E's move away from Magic Shops and normal items having a relatively low costs. What exactly does your groups spend their gold on? Do you have them spend it during campaigns on campaign related things?
I know you can add magic shops, but while I have allowed that. I started using 5emagic.shop to generate a shop quickly, but I actually much prefer they earn the items in the course of playing. I do like that the costs at the generated shops are very high which means they normally need to just find the items during session play.
Anyhow, what exactly do you spend your hordes of gold on?
In which edition were formal magic shops actual RAW? Portrayals in games or isolated incidences in specific modules do not count.
I thought they were raw in 4e, though I might be mis-remembering. Of course in 4e, there were assumptions in the math that you would have a+1 item in each slot by a certain level, and the shops were there so players could fill in any gaps. I didn’t play 4e like that personally, but I know that was the math assumption, and I’m pretty sure it was kind of the shop assumption. I never liked them, for the reason above about why they don’t make much sense, but I think their existence was assumed.
And to the OP, this edition doesn’t really do a great job of giving the characters much to spend their money on, so it comes down to DM and player creativity. Someone above mentioned starting a guild, which is a great example. Others are some other kind of stronghold, a business, buying their way into the nobility, there’s some 3rd party support for this, but not a lot in terms of official rules. There’s some but not much. PCs could always just be saving it for retirement.
They were present in 2nd Edition, 3rd Edition, and 4th Edition.
Yeah, and I don't know why it really doesn't exist "officially" in 5th. Some modules kind of have stuff, but its not something that exists on an easy level.
Chapter 5 of Storm Kings Thunder for instance, gives the players roughly 8500 gold in treasure. Some of the most expensive items in the game that players will naturally buy is plate mail for 1500, Adamantine weapons for 500+ gold, or maybe some of the most expensive poisons. Officially, the most expensive stuff really boils down to ships starting at around 10k.
That being said, by chapter 5 most heavy armor wearers are probably gonna have plate. The main NPC in that chapter has plate mail +3 that specifically says it resizes to the wearer, giving the DM some sort of ability to potentially give it to a player if they wanted to.
What do they expect people to do with all that money?
Your characters are people. If you cannot think of what they’d spend money in, you’re not thinking of them as such. If I had a big ch of money and already owned like… a sword and some metal clothes? I’d want somewhere safe to keep them and my other belongings. A home. That costs money. If I had more than I needed for myself, I’d happily spend some on my family and friends. And that’s just considering the family I was born to, that’s not considering taking care of a spouse, children, pets, etc.
Well-rounded Characters shouldn’t need money sinks. Life is a money sink
For those struggling to understand how a magic item shop could exist, I think it's best to compare magic items to cars, only they don't change value as they get older.
Uncommon magic items are your standard, run of the mill cars. A Renault, a Honda, a Volkswagen etc.
Rare magic items are the luxury, but still affordable, cars. A BMW, a Mercedes, an Audi.
Very rare items are the cars that make you say "Oooh" when you see one ahead of you on the motorway. Porsche, Ferrari.
Legendary items are the ones that you may not see in your lifetime at all, and probably only in the richest part of the wealthiest cities in the world. They look like things from the future.
These are all stealable, and you see them in shops. The more common ones are found in smaller urban centres.
Cheaper magic items - uncommon and rare - will be available in urban centres in any setting where there's a possibility of manufacturing them. At some point, all magic items were made and it makes no sense for people not to buy and sell them. What do you do when you're a 12th level adventurer retiring at the age of 65? You sell any magic items you don't need anymore. What use do you have for those Boots of the Winterlands? You don't plan to leave Sleepyville. So you sell them to someone who can afford their $90,000 price tag and retire to Fantasy Florida. Maybe our 10th level wizard is sick of getting covered in acid, or no longer wants to kill. He retires and starts making magical swords.
Will you find a magic item shop in a small town where there is little recourse to law? Unlikely - but mostly because there won't be any demand. The idea that "You would just rob them" implies that everyone is a villain at heart. They are not. All of us could get away with shoplifting stuff we wanted, and we don't. Only bad criminals get caught, people who are good at crime don't unless huge amounts of money are invested into taking them down.
"Shop" doesn't have to mean it's like a bakery with goods on display. Maybe it's like a Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion, or hidden from view. Maybe it's Diagon Alley. Why don't the bad wizards steal all the wands? Because most people don't want to be criminals.
Ways to protect a magic item shop:
Golems. Powerful golems. In a city, a pair of Iron Golems seems pretty fair.
Every magic item shop should have powerful traps or golems to protect them.
The shop has actual security guards. Retired adventurers make perfect guards. Not everyone wants to fight forever. That woman sitting reading the newspaper in the corner? Yeah, try it punk and she'll Finger of Death you before going home to her kids and making them dinner.
Locks, vaults, doors.
Just because items can be bought it doesn't mean everyone wants them. That noble may well prefer an extension on his mansion to a +2 Longsword. How often will he really use it?
The more realistic you make a world with magic, the more likely there are to be people buying and selling items. If you inherit your father's Adamantine Plate Armour, but you chose to be a clerk, you'll want to sell it and get its full value.
I wrote an adventure once whereby the ruler of a city had bought a Deck of Many Things from another nation for 500,000gp. She set up a decoy of 100 guards to deliver it but really it was in the pocket of a man on a different ship. Before reaching the buyer, the man disappeared. The party then had to track him down and retrieve the deck.
Your characters are people. If you cannot think of what they’d spend money in, you’re not thinking of them as such. If I had a big ch of money and already owned like… a sword and some metal clothes? I’d want somewhere safe to keep them and my other belongings. A home. That costs money. If I had more than I needed for myself, I’d happily spend some on my family and friends. And that’s just considering the family I was born to, that’s not considering taking care of a spouse, children, pets, etc.
Well-rounded Characters shouldn’t need money sinks. Life is a money sink
Narrative concept spending like this is not enough of a sink. I mean let say you buy a home, take care of a family... if this cost more than a few gold per month, no one in the world could afford a home. To an adventurer things like this are pocket change. Adventurers earn tens of thousands of gold in a pretty short amount of time, they become super wealthy from their exploits. If the game becomes about them creating lives outside of adventuring, the game loses its purpose.
Sorry I disagree, I think players MUST have ways to spend their gold on things that benefit their adventuring life. "spend it on story" is not a very strong logic and most players will reject that all the gold they earn should be spent on something other then their character.
A few gold pieces a month could support a family, at a lower lifestyle level. But if I have the means, I want my family, the one I start, the one I’m in charge of taking care of, to live as well as possible. If I have more money than I can otherwise spend, they’re living in the lap of luxury.
Aristocratic, the highest lifestyle option in the PHB, is 10gp per day, minimum. Let’s stick with that minimum. I get married, have 2 kids. Now, we all live in the same place, so I save on housing some, though I need more space for more people, so I don’t save too much. Let’s say out of 4 people, I basically overall save the equivalent of one.
So that’s 30 gp/day. 900 gp/month. 10,800 gp/year. So if I, an adventurer, can make 10k relatively quickly, great, my family is taken care of for one year. Not counting unforeseen expenses like cleric costs for healing or something, repairs for damage done from a monster attack on the town.
Now, adventuring is dangerous work. I can’t do this forever, but I want my family to be set up for years to come. So I need to save. 10.8k per year, so, I wanna take care of my family at least until my kids are adults and able to take care of themselves right? multiply by 18 years, we get 194k gp that I want saved up, to make sure my children live well until they’re old enough to take care of themselves, regardless of what happens to me.
And what about after that? Let’s say the kids move out, are successful, what about my wife? I want her to continue to live comfortably. Let’s say we are around 30? Life expectancy around… 80? Her 3.6k gp per year for another 50, I wanna make sure I have a nest egg of another 180k gp to take care of her.
Now, this is ONLY lifestyle expenses. This is not anything else.
Your characters are people. If you cannot think of what they’d spend money in, you’re not thinking of them as such. If I had a big ch of money and already owned like… a sword and some metal clothes? I’d want somewhere safe to keep them and my other belongings. A home. That costs money. If I had more than I needed for myself, I’d happily spend some on my family and friends. And that’s just considering the family I was born to, that’s not considering taking care of a spouse, children, pets, etc.
Well-rounded Characters shouldn’t need money sinks. Life is a money sink
Narrative concept spending like this is not enough of a sink. I mean let say you buy a home, take care of a family... if this cost more than a few gold per month, no one in the world could afford a home. To an adventurer things like this are pocket change. Adventurers earn tens of thousands of gold in a pretty short amount of time, they become super wealthy from their exploits. If the game becomes about them creating lives outside of adventuring, the game loses its purpose.
Sorry I disagree, I think players MUST have ways to spend their gold on things that benefit their adventuring life. "spend it on story" is not a very strong logic and most players will reject that all the gold they earn should be spent on something other then their character.
Having their own castle and private army will not change their adventuring life? Sponsoring their own mage's guild will not benefit their adventuring life? These are things that a measly 10,000 gp are not going to so easily cover. You think way too small.
Well let's be fair, you said nothing about a Castle, Private army and mages guild, you said home and family.
Castles, Private Armies and Mages guilds goes to stronghold building and I totally agree that this is one of the big ways characters can and should spend their gold, its kind of a higher-level thing though (typically after 9-10th level). I think this is however a very different conversation and it doesn't change the fact that players are going to earn some gold at earlier levels and are going to be looking for ways to spend it on their characters.
Im also not saying "magic shops" is the only way it could or should work, but every setting has black markets, traders, powerful characters who might sell magic items. These things do exist in every setting, even ones in which magic items are indeed rare like Forogotten Realms and Dark Sun.
In classic D&D (I use Old School Essentials which is effectively 1st edition BECMI) characters would spend their gold roughly in the following ways. Now most of this stuff happens at certain levels, I added rough estimates when it typically happens.
1. Core equipment (1st-3rd) 2b. More advanced equipment (4th+) 2. Henchmen, followers, specialists. (1st to max level) 3. Magical Gear (if they can find a seller) (5th+( 3b. Magical Item Creation (Mainly scrolls and potions usually, but researching new spells and creating their own magical Items is often a player goal)(9th+) 4. Horses, Ships, Wagons and other traveling equipment to get around (3rd+) 5. Strongholds and Organizations (typically at higher levels) (7th-9th+) 6. Businesses (This isn't something that happens all the time, but many players assume their characters will retire). (5th+) 7. Empire Building (at much higher levels most characters will get involved in more global politics and become rulers of realms and people). (12th+) 8. Personal stuff (very often characters have something very specific they want to accomplish in a game that can cost money) (anytime)
I’m the one that said home and family, not Kotath, though while we are being fair 1) I brought up guilds back on page 1 and 2) if I’ve got “build a castle” money, I’m not gonna move my family into a little townhouse. I’m building us a castle.
I don’t think anyone, even the most vehemently anti-magic shop, are trying to argue that they shouldn’t be purchasable anywhere, from anyone, in any way, foe any amount. The DMG, right after saying how unfeasible a magic item shop would be, goes on to say buying them in something like an art auction could be an option. I think most of us are just saying you shouldn’t be able to walk into MagicStop and trade in last year’s MaddenSword +1 for credit toward this year’s MaddenSword +2.
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I like how you left out the rest of the section that goes on to tell you
And
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
I did leave those sections out. Because 1) they’re irrelevant to the specific things I was responding to and 2) I’m not trying to copy/paste an entire chapter of the book.
Even looking at those passages, there’s a whole lot of “might be possible” and “at your discretion.” Which supports the previous passage’s statement that the default is a lack of magic item shops. It even goes on to specifically say that they would likely be traded in situations like real world art auctions, supporting what other people here have been saying as a likely alternative to shops.
They are relevant because that whole section is giving suggestions, not imperatives, on how the DM might do things in their campaign world. Both Eberron and Wildemount, which are official D&D settings, have magic item shops, so the "default" is only the "default" in the Forgotten Realms, not Dungeons and Dragons as a whole.
She/Her Player and Dungeon Master
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(I dunno exactly how the quote stuff works and keep messing stuff up in an effort to keep from having an entire thread quoted in my every response. It’s too late at night/I am at work and simply don’t have the time to figure it out, so excuse formatting shenanigans please)
The sections you quoted are options and examples for how you might change the default for your game that’s why they are listed AFTER the original statements about item rarity.
Eberron and Wildemount are examples of the creators of individual worlds exercising the freedom all DMs have to alter things for their games. They are the exceptions that all rules inevitably have. Specific cases, which throughout 5e and its design philosophy trump general rules.
But what I quoted IS the general rule. The default. That’s why the passage I quoted is written in definitive statements of what IS, while the ones you quoted are all about what MIGHT be.
They were present in 2nd Edition, 3rd Edition, and 4th Edition.
Find your own truth, choose your enemies carefully, and never deal with a dragon.
"Canon" is what's factual to D&D lore. "Cannon" is what you're going to be shot with if you keep getting the word wrong.
"The default" feels a bit silly when Eberron, Exandria and Ravnica quite clearly deviate from it and those make up half the published settings for 5E (I don't know Theros either, maybe Meletis has somewhat convenient avenues of purchase for magical items too). It may be the general rule for the default setting, which is the Forgotten Realms, but as soon as you step out of that setting nothing really IS and everything MIGHT be.
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If you go back to the beginning of this, you’ll see that I only brought it up in response to someone’s claim that “absolutely nothing in D&D the game or D&D settings” that even suggests magic items being too rare to be sold in shops, when in fact the core rulebooks outright state it as fact. Those are all exceptions to the rule, a rule which the DMG encourages you to change as is the right of all DMs.
It states it as a fact if you read the words with your eyeballs. Again, the beginning is written in definitive statements of what IS and how things ARE while the following passages are written as what MIGHT be. Options to change the default.
And even if I was quoting it “out of context”, I’m not but we all play pretend here so I will for the sake of argument, the statement existing at all disproves your assertion that “absolutely nothing in D&D the game” suggests magic items being this rare, since that statement comes directly from D&D The Game.
Magic items existing in adventures doesn’t make them common. Adventurers are themselves rare, and therefore so are the items which they come across during their adventures.
That’s not a contradiction. “Magic items are gleaned from the hoards of conquered monsters or discovered in long-lost vaults.” That’s the adventures presenting the items in the exact way that the DMG describes.
Does them having the "common" rarity make them common? Or costing no more than one month's worth of living expenses for a wealthy lifestyle, less than a riding horse?
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A riding horse costs 75 gold. A month of Wealthy Lifestyle is 120 gold. So the premise is a little flawed to begin with. But I would say any individual object that costs a Wealthy person the same as a month of their lavish lifestyle, paying for their home, their servants, their food, etc., wouldn’t be common and almost certainly not just sitting on a shelf.
A common magic item is called that for a reason and is more common than others are supposed to be. But as soon as you hit Uncommon the prices jump to 100-600 gold, up to half a year of Wealthy Lifestyle, and that’s only the second rarity.
I wouldn't really expect a blanket rule for something that's essentially setting-dependent.
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I'm not talking about uncommon ones though. I'm talking about common ones, which don't cost more than 100 gold and can be as cheap as 50. That is cheaper than a riding horse. It's actually comparable to a month of 'merely' comfortable living.
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I slightly misread your comment as comparing the price of a month of wealthy lifestyle to being less than the price of a riding horse. Apologies for that.
A quick Google search places the cost of a decent horse at $5k-$10k usd. The average time to train them between 3-4 months at around $650/month. So a riding horse IRL would run you around $7k-$12.6k. So I would say even the common magic items are pretty damn pricey if they approach that.
Beyond lists a basic Healing Potion, a common magic item, at 50 gp. That’s 2/3 the price of a trained riding horse. That’s over $4000 usd for a single-use bottle. And that’s where this stuff starts. It goes up from there. (Edit: fixed the approx. price per healing potion as doing this math while also working is a minor challenge).
I house rule the purchase and crafting pricing for the magic version of any item to be at a minimum the same cost as the mundane version, because they clearly weren’t considering that scenario when they wrote those things out.
Yeah, and I don't know why it really doesn't exist "officially" in 5th. Some modules kind of have stuff, but its not something that exists on an easy level.
Chapter 5 of Storm Kings Thunder for instance, gives the players roughly 8500 gold in treasure. Some of the most expensive items in the game that players will naturally buy is plate mail for 1500, Adamantine weapons for 500+ gold, or maybe some of the most expensive poisons. Officially, the most expensive stuff really boils down to ships starting at around 10k.
That being said, by chapter 5 most heavy armor wearers are probably gonna have plate. The main NPC in that chapter has plate mail +3 that specifically says it resizes to the wearer, giving the DM some sort of ability to potentially give it to a player if they wanted to.
What do they expect people to do with all that money?
Your characters are people. If you cannot think of what they’d spend money in, you’re not thinking of them as such. If I had a big ch of money and already owned like… a sword and some metal clothes? I’d want somewhere safe to keep them and my other belongings. A home. That costs money. If I had more than I needed for myself, I’d happily spend some on my family and friends. And that’s just considering the family I was born to, that’s not considering taking care of a spouse, children, pets, etc.
Well-rounded Characters shouldn’t need money sinks. Life is a money sink
For those struggling to understand how a magic item shop could exist, I think it's best to compare magic items to cars, only they don't change value as they get older.
These are all stealable, and you see them in shops. The more common ones are found in smaller urban centres.
Cheaper magic items - uncommon and rare - will be available in urban centres in any setting where there's a possibility of manufacturing them. At some point, all magic items were made and it makes no sense for people not to buy and sell them. What do you do when you're a 12th level adventurer retiring at the age of 65? You sell any magic items you don't need anymore. What use do you have for those Boots of the Winterlands? You don't plan to leave Sleepyville. So you sell them to someone who can afford their $90,000 price tag and retire to Fantasy Florida. Maybe our 10th level wizard is sick of getting covered in acid, or no longer wants to kill. He retires and starts making magical swords.
Will you find a magic item shop in a small town where there is little recourse to law? Unlikely - but mostly because there won't be any demand. The idea that "You would just rob them" implies that everyone is a villain at heart. They are not. All of us could get away with shoplifting stuff we wanted, and we don't. Only bad criminals get caught, people who are good at crime don't unless huge amounts of money are invested into taking them down.
"Shop" doesn't have to mean it's like a bakery with goods on display. Maybe it's like a Mordenkainen's Magnificent Mansion, or hidden from view. Maybe it's Diagon Alley. Why don't the bad wizards steal all the wands? Because most people don't want to be criminals.
Ways to protect a magic item shop:
Just because items can be bought it doesn't mean everyone wants them. That noble may well prefer an extension on his mansion to a +2 Longsword. How often will he really use it?
The more realistic you make a world with magic, the more likely there are to be people buying and selling items. If you inherit your father's Adamantine Plate Armour, but you chose to be a clerk, you'll want to sell it and get its full value.
I wrote an adventure once whereby the ruler of a city had bought a Deck of Many Things from another nation for 500,000gp. She set up a decoy of 100 guards to deliver it but really it was in the pocket of a man on a different ship. Before reaching the buyer, the man disappeared. The party then had to track him down and retrieve the deck.
A few gold pieces a month could support a family, at a lower lifestyle level. But if I have the means, I want my family, the one I start, the one I’m in charge of taking care of, to live as well as possible. If I have more money than I can otherwise spend, they’re living in the lap of luxury.
Aristocratic, the highest lifestyle option in the PHB, is 10gp per day, minimum. Let’s stick with that minimum. I get married, have 2 kids. Now, we all live in the same place, so I save on housing some, though I need more space for more people, so I don’t save too much. Let’s say out of 4 people, I basically overall save the equivalent of one.
So that’s 30 gp/day. 900 gp/month. 10,800 gp/year. So if I, an adventurer, can make 10k relatively quickly, great, my family is taken care of for one year. Not counting unforeseen expenses like cleric costs for healing or something, repairs for damage done from a monster attack on the town.
Now, adventuring is dangerous work. I can’t do this forever, but I want my family to be set up for years to come. So I need to save. 10.8k per year, so, I wanna take care of my family at least until my kids are adults and able to take care of themselves right? multiply by 18 years, we get 194k gp that I want saved up, to make sure my children live well until they’re old enough to take care of themselves, regardless of what happens to me.
And what about after that? Let’s say the kids move out, are successful, what about my wife? I want her to continue to live comfortably. Let’s say we are around 30? Life expectancy around… 80? Her 3.6k gp per year for another 50, I wanna make sure I have a nest egg of another 180k gp to take care of her.
Now, this is ONLY lifestyle expenses. This is not anything else.
I’m the one that said home and family, not Kotath, though while we are being fair 1) I brought up guilds back on page 1 and 2) if I’ve got “build a castle” money, I’m not gonna move my family into a little townhouse. I’m building us a castle.
I don’t think anyone, even the most vehemently anti-magic shop, are trying to argue that they shouldn’t be purchasable anywhere, from anyone, in any way, foe any amount. The DMG, right after saying how unfeasible a magic item shop would be, goes on to say buying them in something like an art auction could be an option. I think most of us are just saying you shouldn’t be able to walk into MagicStop and trade in last year’s MaddenSword +1 for credit toward this year’s MaddenSword +2.