The concept of some kindly old man running a shop having magic items mounted on walls or under a glass counter is just plain silly
This too.
I do like the idea of having some items under guard with a guild, and maybe you have to either have done them a service or have membership or affiliate status with the guild to shop in their "guild store." Since they can (a) trust the members who shop there (theoretically) and (b) mount an effective defense of it (to steal from the shop, you'd have to go up against the defenses of the guild).
I like this... I think I'm going to have the (few) magic items for sale in Rome be under guard of the various Collegia (guilds). Magic instruments may be for sale to other bards in the College of Erudition across the street from the Ulpian Library in Rome... in a private guild shop you won't ever see unless you join the College. But you're not gonna find them in a pawn shop. Now, if you want to do a major quest for the dean of the college, then maybe you can shop in their store....
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WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
There is no right answer, has to fit your group real world economics will only take you so far because we don't have magic items nor do we have magic users (and there is a ton of them in the average game) you can come up with a reason for it to work a certain way at your table but there is nothing inherently virtuous about playing low or high magic.
Is it really that the "on walls or under a glass counter" thing is silly, or is it just out of place in the world you want to run? There are actually several published settings I can think of like that. It just means that in the world in question magic items are less mythic. I might run a setting like that if I find most of my PCs are rogues or social characters. There are interesting characters you can't use outside of settings like that. Those settings can often accommodate the staples of D&D better than the reverse is true.
This leads to a tangent. The Eberron world and most of the D&D multiverse are totally incompatible. Magic, and magical items, are ubiquitous in Eberron. The artificer can break a small local economy with their creation of Magical Items. That is Artificer's will never be in my non-Eberron game.
But that is not how an economy works, as transactions between nobles and top merchants trading legal rights, businesses, political positions, magic items, etc. have little effect on the middle class and poor, if at all. The peasantry rarely, if ever, deal with coin, and they pay their taxes in agricultural products. The average urbanite deals with currency, but they are not adventurers and they generally do not personally have a stake in most magic items that adventurers sell. Nobles and merchants have been mentioned to make transactions measured in pounds of gold, so a shortsword +2 at 5,000 gp is worth only 100 pounds of gold (20 gold bars worth 5 pounds each), and that is in the Basic Rules and DMG, which assumes the default world is Toril. It is not outlandish to assume that income inequality is extremely high and the economy is stratified along class lines. Who Elon Musk sells Tesla too has little impact on the average Californian for example, despite TSLA being about a quarter of California's annual GDP.
While artificers might not be part of your non Eberron games and you do not have to include them, with the release of TCOE, artificers are officially part of every setting, just as wizards and fighters are.
I agree XXXGammaRay, but be careful of "that is not how an economy works" reasoning, both in real life and in fiction. In a fictional world you can alter how the economy works to whatever you need, much like how you can change the physical realities, like the length of the year and how many seasons there are. Don't assume the same rules are in play unless you specifically want them to be. You can as easily say that only the poor use coin, and the rich have transactions of ledger. The Aztecs had a stock market, so a fictional setting can work with complex securities. In my family's setting, Q'rath Set, for example, there's a stock market for souls.
It's particularly important to me to point that out because, in the real world, we tend to treat economics like a force of nature, when really it's something we created. That makes it more like the economy of an mmo then we tend to think of it. We really can alter it to suite our needs, because we created it to suite our needs. When it doesn't suite our needs, we need to change it.
I'm essentially a professional GM. My title is 'Community Minister', but most of what my ministry does is run rpgs. It's important to me because I see the way people use rpgs to explore who they will be, and build who they will be, but it's also important to see that in world building we reflect on the world we're building here in the real. Like Mark Twain said "That it is ain't that it ought". Don't limit yourself.
There is no right answer, has to fit your group real world economics will only take you so far because we don't have magic items nor do we have magic users (and there is a ton of them in the average game) you can come up with a reason for it to work a certain way at your table but there is nothing inherently virtuous about playing low or high magic.
This is not my take, unfortunately. I have played at incredibly high levels including (demi-)gods and in 3e had to create my own epic system for the game to continue being playable at these levels, in a world that was so inherently magical that there were not really planets, just broken demi-planes connected by portals. It was really high magic all around, but the magic items were still very much contained.
This is because races and classes come with inherent strengths and weaknesses and although there are already a number of combos to control, it is doable to avoid the bad effects of minmaxing (I know, I know, some people like to do it and it's fine as long as they enjoy it and don't bother their fellow players and DMs, but it is not the primary intent of the game, which is playing the game and it has bad side effects especially when some do it at the tables and others don't). If you allow uncontrolled items, it opens a whole galaxy of further combos and players patching up their weaknesses and focussing even more their strengths to the detriment of the balance of the game.
The short of it is that no campaign has ever collapsed from lack of magic items, ever. Some players might have become a bit bored, or might have wished for more, etc., but it never destroyed a campaign. On the other hand, I've seen many campaigns groan and sometimes collapse from magic items overabundance and overuse, usually with a DM being too inexperienced and too generous with (in particular) some of his players demands.
Although in principle you might be right, practically, it's not symmetrical, take it from someone who has played (not that much but still) with the original version of the Munchkin in France, Gros Bill:
Then playing high magic doesn't fit you, but you have already implied it does fit some, doesn't mean you or the minmax are right.
Ok playing with lots of magic items or playing with none, or anywhere in between, I am suggesting there is no one size fits all, decide on what fits your group, the campaign you want to play and what challenges you face, then decide how the economy of your fantasy world works to support that, not the other way round don't straight jacket yourself into no/some/many items because somebody thinks the economy of a fantasy world would look this way.
This is not my take, unfortunately. I have played at incredibly high levels including (demi-)gods and in 3e had to create my own epic system for the game to continue being playable at these levels, in a world that was so inherently magical that there were not really planets, just broken demi-planes connected by portals. It was really high magic all around, but the magic items were still very much contained.
Then playing high magic doesn't fit you, but you have already implied it does fit some, doesn't mean you or the minmax are right.
I'm sorry, but you did not read what I wrote if you still believe this. Extremely high magic or high fantasy does NOT mean magic items all over the place. You can have epic characters and spells all over the place, it does not mean that you have tons of magical items and that you can buy whatever you want wherever you want. Don't confuse the two.
It doesn't have too but it could, on the other hand extremely low or no magic would be odd if there was a ton of magic items.
Edit. Thinking about it low magic but relatively plentiful magic items sounds quite interesting, but its in effect the real world might have to try that some time.
I agree XXXGammaRay, but be careful of "that is not how an economy works" reasoning, both in real life and in fiction. In a fictional world you can alter how the economy works to whatever you need, much like how you can change the physical realities, like the length of the year and how many seasons there are. Don't assume the same rules are in play unless you specifically want them to be. You can as easily say that only the poor use coin, and the rich have transactions of ledger. The Aztecs had a stock market, so a fictional setting can work with complex securities. In my family's setting, Q'rath Set, for example, there's a stock market for souls.
This doesn't imply easily acquired magical merchandise breaks economies though - it implies such a thing does not break an economy unless the setting creator wants it to.
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Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Right, I'm not saying it has to be one way or the other. I'm more talking about how realism can be inspiration but shouldn't be a limitation. And, just to be clear, I'm not saying XXXGammaRay was making that claim either.
Oh, Bill, je me souviens de Bill. J'aurais pu être un petit Bill. Peut-être devrions-nous l'appeler le stade larvaire? Même si certains ne progressent jamais. Est-ce trop optimiste?
I have seen campaigns derailed by too few magical items, or specifically magical weapons. When you keep going up against things with resistance to non-magic weapons and the DM has been very stingy with them.
Gotta silver up. That is the very first thing I spend my first 100 gp on as a martial class is silvering up.
That is a useful strategy if you're fighting a lot of lycanthropes. And basically does nothing whatsoever if you're fighting anything else. I've had the misfortune of being in games where the GM threw a flesh golem at the party before we had any sort of magical equipment. Now that was an unpleasant fight: the fighter and rogue were completely useless as it ignored them while my wizard and the cleric attempted to peck it to death with our spells.
Also works on devils, wraiths, wights, and night hags. Definitely doesn't cover everything but can be helpful. I agree with the general premise that games can be derailed for a martial focused group if there are no magic weapons.
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This too.
I do like the idea of having some items under guard with a guild, and maybe you have to either have done them a service or have membership or affiliate status with the guild to shop in their "guild store." Since they can (a) trust the members who shop there (theoretically) and (b) mount an effective defense of it (to steal from the shop, you'd have to go up against the defenses of the guild).
I like this... I think I'm going to have the (few) magic items for sale in Rome be under guard of the various Collegia (guilds). Magic instruments may be for sale to other bards in the College of Erudition across the street from the Ulpian Library in Rome... in a private guild shop you won't ever see unless you join the College. But you're not gonna find them in a pawn shop. Now, if you want to do a major quest for the dean of the college, then maybe you can shop in their store....
WOTC lies. We know that WOTC lies. WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. We know that WOTC knows that we know that WOTC lies. And still they lie.
Because of the above (a paraphrase from Orwell) I no longer post to the forums -- PM me if you need help or anything.
There is no right answer, has to fit your group real world economics will only take you so far because we don't have magic items nor do we have magic users (and there is a ton of them in the average game) you can come up with a reason for it to work a certain way at your table but there is nothing inherently virtuous about playing low or high magic.
Is it really that the "on walls or under a glass counter" thing is silly, or is it just out of place in the world you want to run? There are actually several published settings I can think of like that. It just means that in the world in question magic items are less mythic. I might run a setting like that if I find most of my PCs are rogues or social characters. There are interesting characters you can't use outside of settings like that. Those settings can often accommodate the staples of D&D better than the reverse is true.
But that is not how an economy works, as transactions between nobles and top merchants trading legal rights, businesses, political positions, magic items, etc. have little effect on the middle class and poor, if at all. The peasantry rarely, if ever, deal with coin, and they pay their taxes in agricultural products. The average urbanite deals with currency, but they are not adventurers and they generally do not personally have a stake in most magic items that adventurers sell. Nobles and merchants have been mentioned to make transactions measured in pounds of gold, so a shortsword +2 at 5,000 gp is worth only 100 pounds of gold (20 gold bars worth 5 pounds each), and that is in the Basic Rules and DMG, which assumes the default world is Toril. It is not outlandish to assume that income inequality is extremely high and the economy is stratified along class lines. Who Elon Musk sells Tesla too has little impact on the average Californian for example, despite TSLA being about a quarter of California's annual GDP.
While artificers might not be part of your non Eberron games and you do not have to include them, with the release of TCOE, artificers are officially part of every setting, just as wizards and fighters are.
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At risk of turning this into a bit of a rant...
I agree XXXGammaRay, but be careful of "that is not how an economy works" reasoning, both in real life and in fiction. In a fictional world you can alter how the economy works to whatever you need, much like how you can change the physical realities, like the length of the year and how many seasons there are. Don't assume the same rules are in play unless you specifically want them to be. You can as easily say that only the poor use coin, and the rich have transactions of ledger. The Aztecs had a stock market, so a fictional setting can work with complex securities. In my family's setting, Q'rath Set, for example, there's a stock market for souls.
It's particularly important to me to point that out because, in the real world, we tend to treat economics like a force of nature, when really it's something we created. That makes it more like the economy of an mmo then we tend to think of it. We really can alter it to suite our needs, because we created it to suite our needs. When it doesn't suite our needs, we need to change it.
I'm essentially a professional GM. My title is 'Community Minister', but most of what my ministry does is run rpgs. It's important to me because I see the way people use rpgs to explore who they will be, and build who they will be, but it's also important to see that in world building we reflect on the world we're building here in the real. Like Mark Twain said "That it is ain't that it ought". Don't limit yourself.
Then playing high magic doesn't fit you, but you have already implied it does fit some, doesn't mean you or the minmax are right.
Ok playing with lots of magic items or playing with none, or anywhere in between, I am suggesting there is no one size fits all, decide on what fits your group, the campaign you want to play and what challenges you face, then decide how the economy of your fantasy world works to support that, not the other way round don't straight jacket yourself into no/some/many items because somebody thinks the economy of a fantasy world would look this way.
It doesn't have too but it could, on the other hand extremely low or no magic would be odd if there was a ton of magic items.
Edit. Thinking about it low magic but relatively plentiful magic items sounds quite interesting, but its in effect the real world might have to try that some time.
This doesn't imply easily acquired magical merchandise breaks economies though - it implies such a thing does not break an economy unless the setting creator wants it to.
Want to start playing but don't have anyone to play with? You can try these options: [link].
Right, I'm not saying it has to be one way or the other. I'm more talking about how realism can be inspiration but shouldn't be a limitation. And, just to be clear, I'm not saying XXXGammaRay was making that claim either.
Oh, Bill, je me souviens de Bill. J'aurais pu être un petit Bill. Peut-être devrions-nous l'appeler le stade larvaire? Même si certains ne progressent jamais. Est-ce trop optimiste?
Also works on devils, wraiths, wights, and night hags. Definitely doesn't cover everything but can be helpful. I agree with the general premise that games can be derailed for a martial focused group if there are no magic weapons.