So I have a player who wants to buy resources from a magic shop and then he wants to make it a uncommon to rare magic item and then go back in the shop to sell it for more. But doesnt want to do much of anything else leaving the whole party to wait while I time skip the crafting so I can continue the story. But should the vendors have unlimited currency. No right??.. the only way I thought of defusing it was making the shop he was trying to sell his items that he bought the resources, I made the store clerk just a "shady" buyer who will sell resouces for cheap and also buy magic items for cheap but sell magic items for a ridiculous price. Is this a good way to go about it?
Keep in mind the shop keeper will know what’s going on and will limit the character’s profit...you shouldn’t allow him to abuse arbitrage to just start putting gold in his pocket. You can also limit material availability and buyers....maybe the shop owner will only sell at a loss to the character, or almost zero profit for the character...finding buyers should take time beyond the crafting times. You can also think about giving the other players a large enough penalty that they’d leave the crafter behind...either high room/board or someone gets in trouble, etc.
I appreciate the advice. And I'll start from the top and if it escalates then I'll go down. And another thing I made a good magic shop difficult to find which is why he got a shoddy magic shop but then one of my players made all my tedious rolls to make to find a good magic shop and then found one a day later. Which I'm sure he will in-game show him where it is. And I will try to limit the characters profit. And material.
Have you checked the DMG on this subject? Crafting magical items for profit is largely not worth it, just following the official rules. Chances aren't great for finding buyers that will pay a good price and the whole deal takes ages. Crafting an uncommon item costs 500 gp (there's no "buy resources cheap" option), a rare one costs 5,000 gp. Crafting takes 1 day/25 gp, so 20 days for an uncommon one and 200 for a rare one. Putting up some sort of deadline to meet usually suffices to dissuade players, pointing out that they're likely to make more than a couple hundred gold actually adventuring for three weeks can also help.
Finally, the bottom line is that you, as the DM, control the rewards and loot they get as well as the prices for things they buy and their other expenses. If they make 300 gp crafting, you can reduce their rewards for the next month by 300 gp (or have the money stolen or extorted or whatever) and the whole thing is a wash financially. Maybe he'll absolutely want to craft, maybe he won't; maybe the rest of the party is ok with 3 weeks downtime for this, maybe they aren't (they shouldn't be ok with 6-7 months of twiddling their thumbs, not if you send a quest their way). In the end it's immaterial: you decide their wealth regardless. Go through the whole processif it makes them happy, compensate afterwards if you feel you have to.
Crafting Magic Items. Creating a magic item requires more than just time, effort, and materials. It is a long-term process that involves one or more adventures to track down rare materials and the lore needed to create the item.
To start with, a character needs a formula for a magic item in order to create it. The formula is like a recipe. It lists the materials needed and steps required to make the item.
An item invariably requires an exotic material to complete it. This material can range from the skin of a yeti to a vial of water taken from a whirlpool on the Elemental Plane of Water. Finding that material should take place as part of an adventure.
The Magic Item Ingredients table suggests the challenge rating of a creature that the characters need to face to acquire the materials for an item. Note that facing a creature does not necessarily mean that the characters must collect items from its corpse. Rather, the creature might guard a location or a resource that the characters need access to.
Long story short he should have to go on some kind of quest for a recipe and exotic ingredients in order to make the magical items. Plus holding up the whole party while he does it sounds like a selfish move.
I would try to figure out what they player actually wants here. Do they want money? Do they want to feel special because they can make items? Do they want to play Fantasy Magic Shop Simulator?
If it's the last one, you need to remind them that everyone else showed up to play D&D. If it's one of the first two, maybe you can find another way to give the player what they're wanting.
But he needs to understand that crafting and selling magic items is intentionally slow and low profit per unit of time because the game wants you to go out and adventure. That's what the game is about. Crafting is just there to fill a void if the story requires a span of downtime.
No worries. This is honestly one of the things 5E got absolutely right. Crafting is a good option for making stuff the PCs want for themselves, if they can find the time; it's an easy tie-in to a sidequest; crafting for money is pointless. Works like a charm.
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You're well within your rights as GM to determine that shopkeepers are simply not interested in buying magic items that cost 5000 gold. That's a huge investment on their part, after all, and not one that they can be guaranteed to find a buyer that will let them make a profit on it. Though make sure you let the player know before they actually start with their scheme.
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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.
Another few ideas I've heard floated around before:
If he starts doing this, maybe a powerful "Magic Item Crafters Guild" gets peeved with him and sends people to bully, attack and/or assassinate him and/or the shop keeper(s) for flooding the market with "knock off" magic items.
Maybe a powerful Lord/King buys the item they made and is unhappy with it, leading to unpleasant consequences.
Maybe you just throw enemies at him to interrupt his crafting.
Maybe you just have all shopkeepers refuse to buy his "unproven" items, or just offer less than the cost of the components/ingredients.
You're the DM. If you don't want him to do, you control the world he works in and can make sure it isn't worth it.
If there aren't many magic item creators in the world, then he is liable to be kidnapped by some powerful guild and forced to make items to their bidding. :-)
Okay so I had the debate with him using the DMG, but he is going off of scribing a spell scroll cause, spell scrolls and magic items are supposedly different ?.... but other way. It still has a chart about cost and amount of time the cost is for the resources but if they stick to their school with the savant trait, would it still halve the time and resouces required or no?? I checked the players hand book, DMG and now the XGE. but so far I dont see anything about it reducing the cost for copying into a spell scroll it says so for spell book but couldn't those be said to be the same??
I'd say no due to the fact that putting it in the spell book for personal use wouldn't require the same precision as making a spell scroll that would have to be clear and articulate for any user. Making a spell scroll for anyone to use would require much more precise penmanship and be more carefully written, at least in my opinion, which would take time. I know when I'm writing notes to myself I can write fast because I understand my writing but writing notes for my kids or their teachers requires different style.
A spellbook is not a magical item. A spell on a page of a spellbook is like a recipe for a dish, while a scroll of that same spell is that same dish microwave-ready on a plate. Writing a page in a spell book doesn’t involve actual magic, creating a scroll does. It’s barely comparable.
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Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Well I had the talk with my player, he debated me and he had his mindset that he had won yesterday. And then today I saw him and I brought up d&d he seemed to have gotten quiet. I had read the XGE about spell scrolls and i couldn't get my point across yesterday. So afterwards he went and researched it and then today when it was brought up. He just took a moment of guilt and apologized and said "my bad I looked and you're right". And we proceeded to make arrangements of how he is able to still do what he wants and still follow what I have planned for them. He referred to the "get with your dm" which made me feel better that he was reasonable afterwards and I wouldnt have to be extreme about consequences. 👍👌
So I have a player who wants to buy resources from a magic shop and then he wants to make it a uncommon to rare magic item and then go back in the shop to sell it for more. But doesnt want to do much of anything else leaving the whole party to wait while I time skip the crafting so I can continue the story. But should the vendors have unlimited currency. No right??.. the only way I thought of defusing it was making the shop he was trying to sell his items that he bought the resources, I made the store clerk just a "shady" buyer who will sell resouces for cheap and also buy magic items for cheap but sell magic items for a ridiculous price. Is this a good way to go about it?
Keep in mind the shop keeper will know what’s going on and will limit the character’s profit...you shouldn’t allow him to abuse arbitrage to just start putting gold in his pocket. You can also limit material availability and buyers....maybe the shop owner will only sell at a loss to the character, or almost zero profit for the character...finding buyers should take time beyond the crafting times. You can also think about giving the other players a large enough penalty that they’d leave the crafter behind...either high room/board or someone gets in trouble, etc.
Guide to the Five Factions (PWYW)
Deck of Decks
I appreciate the advice. And I'll start from the top and if it escalates then I'll go down. And another thing I made a good magic shop difficult to find which is why he got a shoddy magic shop but then one of my players made all my tedious rolls to make to find a good magic shop and then found one a day later. Which I'm sure he will in-game show him where it is. And I will try to limit the characters profit. And material.
Have you checked the DMG on this subject? Crafting magical items for profit is largely not worth it, just following the official rules. Chances aren't great for finding buyers that will pay a good price and the whole deal takes ages. Crafting an uncommon item costs 500 gp (there's no "buy resources cheap" option), a rare one costs 5,000 gp. Crafting takes 1 day/25 gp, so 20 days for an uncommon one and 200 for a rare one. Putting up some sort of deadline to meet usually suffices to dissuade players, pointing out that they're likely to make more than a couple hundred gold actually adventuring for three weeks can also help.
Finally, the bottom line is that you, as the DM, control the rewards and loot they get as well as the prices for things they buy and their other expenses. If they make 300 gp crafting, you can reduce their rewards for the next month by 300 gp (or have the money stolen or extorted or whatever) and the whole thing is a wash financially. Maybe he'll absolutely want to craft, maybe he won't; maybe the rest of the party is ok with 3 weeks downtime for this, maybe they aren't (they shouldn't be ok with 6-7 months of twiddling their thumbs, not if you send a quest their way). In the end it's immaterial: you decide their wealth regardless. Go through the whole processif it makes them happy, compensate afterwards if you feel you have to.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Out of XGE:
Crafting Magic Items. Creating a magic item requires more than just time, effort, and materials. It is a long-term process that involves one or more adventures to track down rare materials and the lore needed to create the item.
To start with, a character needs a formula for a magic item in order to create it. The formula is like a recipe. It lists the materials needed and steps required to make the item.
An item invariably requires an exotic material to complete it. This material can range from the skin of a yeti to a vial of water taken from a whirlpool on the Elemental Plane of Water. Finding that material should take place as part of an adventure.
The Magic Item Ingredients table suggests the challenge rating of a creature that the characters need to face to acquire the materials for an item. Note that facing a creature does not necessarily mean that the characters must collect items from its corpse. Rather, the creature might guard a location or a resource that the characters need access to.
Long story short he should have to go on some kind of quest for a recipe and exotic ingredients in order to make the magical items. Plus holding up the whole party while he does it sounds like a selfish move.
I would try to figure out what they player actually wants here. Do they want money? Do they want to feel special because they can make items? Do they want to play Fantasy Magic Shop Simulator?
If it's the last one, you need to remind them that everyone else showed up to play D&D. If it's one of the first two, maybe you can find another way to give the player what they're wanting.
But he needs to understand that crafting and selling magic items is intentionally slow and low profit per unit of time because the game wants you to go out and adventure. That's what the game is about. Crafting is just there to fill a void if the story requires a span of downtime.
My homebrew subclasses (full list here)
(Artificer) Swordmage | Glasswright | (Barbarian) Path of the Savage Embrace
(Bard) College of Dance | (Fighter) Warlord | Cannoneer
(Monk) Way of the Elements | (Ranger) Blade Dancer
(Rogue) DaggerMaster | Inquisitor | (Sorcerer) Riftwalker | Spellfist
(Warlock) The Swarm
Thank you all for the advice. I am taking downtime activities in writing these pieces of information down in my quick go to notebook. I appreciate it.
No worries. This is honestly one of the things 5E got absolutely right. Crafting is a good option for making stuff the PCs want for themselves, if they can find the time; it's an easy tie-in to a sidequest; crafting for money is pointless. Works like a charm.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
You're well within your rights as GM to determine that shopkeepers are simply not interested in buying magic items that cost 5000 gold. That's a huge investment on their part, after all, and not one that they can be guaranteed to find a buyer that will let them make a profit on it. Though make sure you let the player know before they actually start with their scheme.
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.
Another few ideas I've heard floated around before:
If he starts doing this, maybe a powerful "Magic Item Crafters Guild" gets peeved with him and sends people to bully, attack and/or assassinate him and/or the shop keeper(s) for flooding the market with "knock off" magic items.
Maybe a powerful Lord/King buys the item they made and is unhappy with it, leading to unpleasant consequences.
Maybe you just throw enemies at him to interrupt his crafting.
Maybe you just have all shopkeepers refuse to buy his "unproven" items, or just offer less than the cost of the components/ingredients.
You're the DM. If you don't want him to do, you control the world he works in and can make sure it isn't worth it.
If there aren't many magic item creators in the world, then he is liable to be kidnapped by some powerful guild and forced to make items to their bidding. :-)
Okay so I had the debate with him using the DMG, but he is going off of scribing a spell scroll cause, spell scrolls and magic items are supposedly different ?.... but other way. It still has a chart about cost and amount of time the cost is for the resources but if they stick to their school with the savant trait, would it still halve the time and resouces required or no?? I checked the players hand book, DMG and now the XGE. but so far I dont see anything about it reducing the cost for copying into a spell scroll it says so for spell book but couldn't those be said to be the same??
I'd say no due to the fact that putting it in the spell book for personal use wouldn't require the same precision as making a spell scroll that would have to be clear and articulate for any user. Making a spell scroll for anyone to use would require much more precise penmanship and be more carefully written, at least in my opinion, which would take time. I know when I'm writing notes to myself I can write fast because I understand my writing but writing notes for my kids or their teachers requires different style.
Just my thoughts though.
https://www.sageadvice.eu/2018/05/16/would-detect-magic-detect-spell-scrolls-or-wizard-spellbooks/
A spellbook is not a magical item. A spell on a page of a spellbook is like a recipe for a dish, while a scroll of that same spell is that same dish microwave-ready on a plate. Writing a page in a spell book doesn’t involve actual magic, creating a scroll does. It’s barely comparable.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Well I had the talk with my player, he debated me and he had his mindset that he had won yesterday. And then today I saw him and I brought up d&d he seemed to have gotten quiet. I had read the XGE about spell scrolls and i couldn't get my point across yesterday. So afterwards he went and researched it and then today when it was brought up. He just took a moment of guilt and apologized and said "my bad I looked and you're right". And we proceeded to make arrangements of how he is able to still do what he wants and still follow what I have planned for them. He referred to the "get with your dm" which made me feel better that he was reasonable afterwards and I wouldnt have to be extreme about consequences. 👍👌
Excellent outcome!
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Great to hear it turned out well.
It's always best when people can work things out like that.
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.
ah. thanks
Guide to the Five Factions (PWYW)
Deck of Decks