The group I'm running has amassed a few magical items that they would like to sell because money is getting tight.
Question:
What are the best practices for selling magical items? Do you follow XGE or DMG downtime rules or is there something else people use for this type of activity?
Note: I use Sane Magical Prices for my baseline on Magic Items pricing but some items, specifically XGE items, are not found that the list.
1) I don't use sane magic item pricing and most magic item pricing scales have issues.
2) What level of magic do you want for your game? What does the overall economy look like? How much gold to the character's have? How much do they earn in an adventure? What things do the characters have to spend money on? (Do they have a ship, land, housing, keep, servants, retainers?)
3) Allowing the sale of magic items also opens up the likelihood of purchasing them. I would lean towards making magic items rare and expensive unless you have already made them pretty common in your game. Relatively common magic items means that there likely will be a market to both buy and sell magic items but this could be operated by brokers who take a cut on the exchange. (Ghosts of Saltmarsh includes such a broker).
In terms of best practices, this entirely depends on the nature of the game YOU want to run.
Low magic - no market to buy and sell magic items - perhaps a rare opportunity for trade. Magic items cost so much that only 0.1% of the population would have the resources needed to buy something. This tends to be the 5e baseline.
Medium magic - no markets but perhaps a few brokers who can arrange for the exchange of magic items between the very wealthy including wealthy individuals, businesses and possibly adventurers. Most items exist and might appear on the market with variable frequency. Legendary and likely very rare items are probably never seen. Magic item trade requires coordinating over long distances with a network likely connected by teleportation circles and other mechanisms to move the goods around. Prices are high.
High Magic - magic items are common enough that upper middle class could probably buy the less expensive items. There are enough magic items around that the economy would support the occasional magic item shop. Prices are typically lower than a medium magic world.
Very High Magic - magic item emporiums in large cities have a decent chance of having or being able to obtain any magic item or device that a character might want. Prices are reasonable and even members of the middle classes may have an occasional magic item.
This is also why magic item pricing lists are completely useless except to possibly determine which items should cost more than others - the actual price you assign to it in your game is dependent on setting, character resources, and whether you want the characters to have the specific magic item or not.
P.S. depending on the game, an uncommon magic item could range in price from 100gp to thousands to priceless.
I'd say it's best to design a full magic shop for the party to interact with... come up with a shopkeep, and decide what items they already have in their possession that the party could purchase while they're at the shop. I think it would be good to lean into the idea of trade rather than outright purchase... Magic items are expensive, and even a magic seller often won't have enough cash on-hand to outright purchase magic items from a party. If the players are insistent on getting gold and platinum for their items, they could maybe get a quarter of the listed price, but if they trade items the prices would be more fair. I'd say pepper in a few very rare magic items you know will directly benefit at least one party member... something that they can trade multiple less-useful, less-rare magic items toward to clear up their inventory.
From an economics standpoint, very few people are going to have a use for a +1sword, so to those few it would be valuable, but to the average farmer, the thing is useless. Thats generally my problem with magic shops, average people might get hurt and make use of a healing potion, but magic armor is going to have a very small market, so how would a shop for magic items actually stay open? I also belong to the school that money isn’t actually very valuable for adventurers, at least not when they’re at the point they have so much magic they’re trying to sell it off. Though I guess that’s the problem here.
All that is to say I prefer to have it work in trade. Maybe the character can dump that +1 weapon they don’t use for a +1 they would use (rather than a shop, they meet another adventurer in a similar situation) Or if they have a stronghold they can use it to outfit their guards, or use it to pay for a month of food and supplies. So I’d go with cutting out the extra step of the money, and just have them swap the item for whatever it is they need to buy, and keep in mind how useful the item is. Everyone can use a bag of holding. Very few people will want a +1 glaive.
The group is in Neverwinter so I'm making the assumption that while Magic Shops exist they are not common to the city.
I can create some magic shops for them to have the party interact with and I see the point of them not having the amount of money on hand. Though this is all happening during downtime activities which I'm doing outside of the game session so the level of shop interaction may be slim.
What I do is have specialty merchants buy and sell particular types of magic items to the players, there isn’t one be all end all magic item “shop” per se. For instance:
The Blacksmith: buys and sells all weapons in the PHB and has one magic weapon for sale (rarity appropriate to character level) that rotates each session.
The armorer: buys and sells all armor on the PHB and has a magic armor suit on rotation
The alchemist: buys and sells healing potions while having 2 specialty potions on rotation
The Jeweler: buys and sells clothes, gems and art objects while having a magic ring on rotation
The Mage’s emporium: buys and sells spell components and scrolls while having either a staff, wand or rod on rotation.
The oddities shop: buys and sells anything on the d100 trinket list, or any other unusual item, while having a wondrous item on rotation.
Each town will have 1-3 of these shops depending on its size.
Rollback Post to RevisionRollBack
To post a comment, please login or register a new account.
Setup:
The group I'm running has amassed a few magical items that they would like to sell because money is getting tight.
Question:
What are the best practices for selling magical items? Do you follow XGE or DMG downtime rules or is there something else people use for this type of activity?
Note: I use Sane Magical Prices for my baseline on Magic Items pricing but some items, specifically XGE items, are not found that the list.
1) I don't use sane magic item pricing and most magic item pricing scales have issues.
2) What level of magic do you want for your game? What does the overall economy look like? How much gold to the character's have? How much do they earn in an adventure? What things do the characters have to spend money on? (Do they have a ship, land, housing, keep, servants, retainers?)
3) Allowing the sale of magic items also opens up the likelihood of purchasing them. I would lean towards making magic items rare and expensive unless you have already made them pretty common in your game. Relatively common magic items means that there likely will be a market to both buy and sell magic items but this could be operated by brokers who take a cut on the exchange. (Ghosts of Saltmarsh includes such a broker).
In terms of best practices, this entirely depends on the nature of the game YOU want to run.
Low magic - no market to buy and sell magic items - perhaps a rare opportunity for trade. Magic items cost so much that only 0.1% of the population would have the resources needed to buy something. This tends to be the 5e baseline.
Medium magic - no markets but perhaps a few brokers who can arrange for the exchange of magic items between the very wealthy including wealthy individuals, businesses and possibly adventurers. Most items exist and might appear on the market with variable frequency. Legendary and likely very rare items are probably never seen. Magic item trade requires coordinating over long distances with a network likely connected by teleportation circles and other mechanisms to move the goods around. Prices are high.
High Magic - magic items are common enough that upper middle class could probably buy the less expensive items. There are enough magic items around that the economy would support the occasional magic item shop. Prices are typically lower than a medium magic world.
Very High Magic - magic item emporiums in large cities have a decent chance of having or being able to obtain any magic item or device that a character might want. Prices are reasonable and even members of the middle classes may have an occasional magic item.
This is also why magic item pricing lists are completely useless except to possibly determine which items should cost more than others - the actual price you assign to it in your game is dependent on setting, character resources, and whether you want the characters to have the specific magic item or not.
P.S. depending on the game, an uncommon magic item could range in price from 100gp to thousands to priceless.
I'd say it's best to design a full magic shop for the party to interact with... come up with a shopkeep, and decide what items they already have in their possession that the party could purchase while they're at the shop. I think it would be good to lean into the idea of trade rather than outright purchase... Magic items are expensive, and even a magic seller often won't have enough cash on-hand to outright purchase magic items from a party. If the players are insistent on getting gold and platinum for their items, they could maybe get a quarter of the listed price, but if they trade items the prices would be more fair. I'd say pepper in a few very rare magic items you know will directly benefit at least one party member... something that they can trade multiple less-useful, less-rare magic items toward to clear up their inventory.
Watch Crits for Breakfast, an adults-only RP-Heavy Roll20 Livestream at twitch.tv/afterdisbooty
And now you too can play with the amazing art and assets we use in Roll20 for our campaign at Hazel's Emporium
From an economics standpoint, very few people are going to have a use for a +1sword, so to those few it would be valuable, but to the average farmer, the thing is useless. Thats generally my problem with magic shops, average people might get hurt and make use of a healing potion, but magic armor is going to have a very small market, so how would a shop for magic items actually stay open?
I also belong to the school that money isn’t actually very valuable for adventurers, at least not when they’re at the point they have so much magic they’re trying to sell it off. Though I guess that’s the problem here.
All that is to say I prefer to have it work in trade. Maybe the character can dump that +1 weapon they don’t use for a +1 they would use (rather than a shop, they meet another adventurer in a similar situation) Or if they have a stronghold they can use it to outfit their guards, or use it to pay for a month of food and supplies. So I’d go with cutting out the extra step of the money, and just have them swap the item for whatever it is they need to buy, and keep in mind how useful the item is. Everyone can use a bag of holding. Very few people will want a +1 glaive.
The group is in Neverwinter so I'm making the assumption that while Magic Shops exist they are not common to the city.
I can create some magic shops for them to have the party interact with and I see the point of them not having the amount of money on hand. Though this is all happening during downtime activities which I'm doing outside of the game session so the level of shop interaction may be slim.
What I do is have specialty merchants buy and sell particular types of magic items to the players, there isn’t one be all end all magic item “shop” per se. For instance:
The Blacksmith: buys and sells all weapons in the PHB and has one magic weapon for sale (rarity appropriate to character level) that rotates each session.
The armorer: buys and sells all armor on the PHB and has a magic armor suit on rotation
The alchemist: buys and sells healing potions while having 2 specialty potions on rotation
The Jeweler: buys and sells clothes, gems and art objects while having a magic ring on rotation
The Mage’s emporium: buys and sells spell components and scrolls while having either a staff, wand or rod on rotation.
The oddities shop: buys and sells anything on the d100 trinket list, or any other unusual item, while having a wondrous item on rotation.
Each town will have 1-3 of these shops depending on its size.