They're not for sale in our games. They are available by request which then turns into a quest, e.g. a player says he wants his character to have gauntlets of ogre power at which point I gin up an adventure in which he has a shot of acquiring it.
I tend not to hand out a lot of treasure in my games. The wizard is still toting 70 platinum pieces of Ardhan credit from the one time I did. There are various ways to part PCs from wealth (taxes, tolls, tithes, adventures that warrant hirelings to pad numbers or requisitioned spells to raise that poor sap and another who's turned to stone).
Something fun for them to spend money on could be crafting that special item, perhaps with a quest to find its key thematic ingredient or technique required to start. PCs could also work to establish things they wished existed in their area, donating to build a bridge across that inconvenient chasm, to erect a base for themselves, or to establish a network of travelling traders so they can buy things near dungeons (more money means more items).
Tho' it may not fit the mood of your campaign, there could be a place that rents out magic items (100 gp per day inserted, perhaps, or the item disappears). Could be manned by an eccentric witch, extraplanar entrepreneur, or the items have their own motive for meeting as many people as possible.
Your not supposed to be able to buy them. If you want to make up prices for them
Magic Items are extremely rare in my game. They arn't normally for sale. But in your game if you want to sell them just make up prices that will drain your PC's coffers. That way they will have a magic item and you will have the satisfaction that they paid for it,
A great way to turn that wealth into more stories is for the PC's to use their wealth to buy the components needed to make the magic items they want. But, they have to take them someplace special to infuse the items with power, and each place can only be used once per person. These special places will always be in dangerous, hard-to-reach locations, the kind adventurers excel at finding.
Or, they find someone who can craft the basic item (armour, weapon, etc), but needs the PC's to retrieve the magical reagents needed to imbue the item with power. This way the PC's are truly motivated to adventure, because they need phoenix feathers, or dragon scales, or bulette hide, or hag's blood to create the items they want. It takes longer, but it's more worthwhile in the end, especially if the players get to determine what their prized item looks like. Never underestimate Cool Factor when creating magic items. 
While the default assumption is that magic items are not for sale, as others have mentioned, there's no reason at all that you have to obey that generality.
With regard to prices, while there aren't any prices given at the moment I expect the DMG might provide prices for DMs willing to allow the purchase and sale of magic items.
In the interim, I'd suggest the following considerations for helping you come up with market prices.
- How long, and at what level of lifestyle, would a smith be expected to support herself by crafting and selling a given item?
- How many regular items would be accepted as barter for the magic one? I could easily see a +1 sword selling for 10 to 100 times the price of a normal sword, or being traded for five to ten horses, depending on the rarity of magic in the setting.
Don't say no, make a story out of it.
Create a gang of NPC rogues who will steal magic items to order. The PCs have ot make contact, establish some trust, specify what they want and commission the rogues to steal it for them. The price is negotiable, along the lines of:
- How much do you want?
- How much have you got?
- About 20000gp.
- Nah, more than that.
When the deal is concluded, after a suitable delay, the thieves have the item. It may be partly worn out or damaged (or even fake and useless) and it can't be used too openly in case it it recognised. The rightful owner is likely to come looking for it and if the PCs are caught with it in their possession they may be accused of felony.
Magic items are a lot more on par with 2e than the following editions. So my advice would be to find some 2e modules or sourcebooks and model your prices off of them if you want buying and selling magic items to be a part of your game.
daviebo666 wrote:
I know I see a lot of people fiat with "magic items aren't for sale" but if you think about it - there's no reason why "wonderous items" shoudln't be. I recall reading in one of the suppliments, there is a wonderous item that just gives someone Darkvision in the form of Goggles.
If I had to guess, I'd say that those goggles were the product of a month or two's worth of work for a wizard or alcemist (again, we don't have the DMG, so I'm just guessing). An alchemist makes 5g a day, so that would make the base price of three months worth of work about $450. Given that the alchemist likely has a corner on the market, eh could EASILY charge double for them and find willing buyers, which would make it around 2000g.
Just my two copper.
austinmonster wrote:
I'm new to the whole DM thing, but here's a few thoughts.
Magic items are magical. That magic can be detected by magic. So let the characters find someone (an oracle, or diviner, whatever title you want) and convince them to find the item they want. The diviner may require a payment, or mayhaps the diviner wants a rare item instead, or a problem dealt with, whatever. Once the player(s) pay up, the diviner then spends however long is necessary magically scrying out the item's location.
Depending on the rarity of the item, you may say the diviner fails and the players need to try again from another location. Maybe the item found is buried in a crypt or dungeon or something and the players have to pay miners to dig out the forgotten place. Then they need to guard the miners, or else pay guards to do it for them. Maybe the crypt is located underneath a contested battleground with two opposing armies duking it out. Maybe it is in a desert and you need to pay caravans to constantly bring in water for the miners. You can take it as far as you want, possibly making the discovery a big deal- let the operation attract the attention of a local warlord, or an orc band, or a powerful sorcerer. Maybe it is underwater and they need special preperations to go deep-sea diving and recover it (which could make for a very unique and fun underwater campaign).
AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
Can't edit for some reason so is I'll just add here:
If the players have enough disposable cash to buy a small village, then they have definitely joined the elite 1% in my mind.
Keendk wrote:
Keendk wrote:
It entirely depends upon your campaign, setting, players, etc. Magical items have a tendancy to dominate the campaign and artificially inflate the power of player characters. Game balance can become an issue when magic can be used to dominate encounters. Players may also start to think of the characters in term of collecting. Magic (and wealth) once allowed to get too much, tends to be extremely hard to reign-in later. In general, 5E looks as if it is designed to limit the amount of magic in the game and DMs need to consider how access to magical items can affect balance, game play, furture challenges, and future rewards.
This said... I find it unbelievable that there are no magical items available for sale. Magic maybe insanely rare, but that doesn't mean you can't necessarily buy it. What insanely rare things means is that you might not be able to buy what you want. For example, houses are common today... given money, you can buy one. They are commodities. However, if you want a specific house -- beach front, certain size, specific beach, etc. it isn't just a matter of money. It's a matter of who owns that house, whether they want to sell it, whether they want what you have, and whether you can find each other. Same thing for magical items -- except no MLS, internet, or newspapers.
Most magical items would be owned by wealthy people or organizations. Nobility, churches, wizard's guilds, mercanary guilds, or a few top adventurers. Most don't specifically need coins or gold. They already have enough. Most would generally have items which are useful to them. So, if you find someone with a +1 longsword... it is probably useful to them -- they can use it, they make their living with it, its a family treasure, etc. If someone found a magical item not specifically useful to them... they would likely already have sold/traded it for an item, gold, land, etc. which was useful to them. Most items which people hold, they aren't necessarily willing to trade for it. So... those willing to sell items for coin are limited to an extremely small number of folks who have something they don't need/want and want coins instead.
1. Availability. As a rule of thumb, I assume there is about one magical item available for trade for every 5,000 or so people in a community. You can play with the ratio, based on how rare and the type of campaign. I'll reset items available in a city every year or so.
2. Items. These items are generally "random" and generally not useful or easy to dispose of. Something uncommon to that area, not usable by the person owning it, and something they would like to get rid of.
3. Finding them. I then assume that these people are not easy to get hold or nor are they necessarily advertising to the public that they have or are willing to sell such items. Players need to spend a week searching guilds, armorers, wizard's towers, churches, etc. Or they can hire a broker 50gp/week (plus 5%) find you items. Each week they have say a 50% of discovering one. When they discover an item, I'll determine its type, who owns it, and why they don't want it.
4. Price. At this point, I'll come up with what the NPC wants for the item. This is rarely just coin. Churches may have rules on selling to specific people/alignments, lords might want to make sure such items aren't going to be used against their kindom, etc. Almost all NPCs/groups would probably want something else for the item rather than coins, but assuming they'll listen. They may also have their own agents... and may want checks on where that money came from.
Players can then negotiate the price, and often they had better to their own checking for why the group wants to sell the item ... it could be stolen, cursed, non-magical/scam, etc.
So... assume a group of PCs arrive in a city of 25,000 and one spends a week looking for any magical item. They spend gold on talking with armorers, merchant guilds, churches, etc. After a week, maybe two 'sellers' come forward -- say a church which found a +1 dagger who wants 2,500gp to help pay for a pilgramage and a +1 shield being sold by a mercenary guild. Unfortunately the shield has a symbol of an rather nasty country on it and needs to be covered up. They would rather have some type of other magical item, but will settle for 5,000gp. If the player doesn't buy either... then they have to keep searching. In a few weeks... a few more items may turn up for sale.
However, there is no way that the PCs can realistically look for specific items... they are just so rare that they could send a half-dozen agents to every large city and still likely never come up with one. Certainly, they could find folks with a specific magical item... who simply don't wish to sell it.
BW0222 wrote:
Timborama wrote:
Seraphex wrote:
Humble 30 years of experiance talking...
1. Never EVER, under any circumstance sell magic items
2. If you are going to break rule 1, it should be in a major metropolis, a single shop with a fairly limited selection.
3. Never EVER, under any circumstance sell magic items.
If there is one sure fire way to throw a game off the rails its to equivilate wealth to power in the game. Wealth is earned, power is earned seperatly. Let them buy houses, invest in taverns, build castles, establish kingdoms, form religions or any number of mundane things, but don't ever sell it to them.
One exception is potions and scrolls, generally I don't consider these magic items but magic supplies.
I'm also a stickler about magic item creation, I hated the feats in 3rd edition as it through the whole system under the bus so I outlawed the feats in most of my adventures, the ones I didn't went off the rails as expected. Which is the exact reason magic item creation feats don't really exist in 5e.
Magic items can be bought but there aren't any for sale. They were all collected centuries ago by princes who only trade them with each other in exchange for countries and daughters. Are you a bona fide prince with a country or a daughter to barter? Go ahead and trade.
All the above statements hinge on ONE factor: The rarety of magical items.
How rare are magic items in YOUR setting? If you play any of the official supplements from earlier editions (or from what we've seen in 5e so far) they are a dime a dozen usually.
If you plan to play in any of the above posters homemade games they are really really rare, and their points have validity. If that's not your setting they are useless dribble that you can safely ignore, if you fancy....or you can use it for inspiration to match your setting to theirs. For them to impose "this is how rare magic items SHOULD be in your game" is of course nonsense.
Keendk wrote:
I generally don't allow the buying of magic items. I think some advice has been given if you want that in your game. I do not want gold equating to character power because that sucks all the rest of the roleplaying out of the game. I want my players interacting with the world and if all they do is walk around like superhero avatars killing bad guys it kind of gets boring. I want them using their wealth to build castles, temples, criminal organizations, and so forth. I want them engaging the world. Being able to buy magic items is a hindrance to achieving this immersion. Now having said that, at any given time you as the DM even in my style of world could just have someone approach the group wanting to sell something. It's just not guaranteed or commonplace. I don't see magic items being easy to make either.
I alwyas include magic shops in my games. With specificed setting-appropriate items on the menu. There are often quests associated with the shops so the player characters can get discounts and such. Sometimes you can get a quest specifically to find a magic item merchant that has above-average (or just interesting) magic items on his menu.
I do this so I can give my players gold and gems as their primary reward and leave it do them to convert this treasure into magic arms and armor. They seem to view this as an enjoyable aspect of their character development.
I always slash the prices on magic items (where such prices are specified) by a significant margin. That way the player characters dont need oxen wagons to pull the cart full of gold that is required to by a +3 sword. Instead they can barter that sword for a dusk ruby and a pouch full of ancient gold pieces. And at the same time they can pick up a rumor from the shop keep that the previous owner of this sword got himself killed up by the runied temple north of town. Apparently something strange happens there every autumn solistice. Which happens to be tomorrow....
Seraphex wrote:
AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
Taejang wrote:
Seraphex... good point on regulations. Guilds, lords, kings, etc. would likely have some control over trading of certain magical items... even in settings other than Oberon.
Xguild wrote:
My suggestion is to create a Univeristy or Collage that has several magic items in it's collection. In exchange for a generous donation to the Univeristy, most of the money, they can each pick a +2 item or two +1 items. I would let the players choose the items.
Then you have an organization the characters can work with on their adventures. Like Indiana Jones
AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
It could be that not all adventures have to be created equal. I don't think that there SHOULD be a standard number of magic items that should be given out per adventure. I think thats one of the things I disliked so much about 4th in general, the adherence to a strict mathematical quota on nearly everything it seemed (items, stats, dpr, etc)
It could be that not all adventures have to be created equal. I don't think that there SHOULD be a standard number of magic items that should be given out per adventure. I think thats one of the things I disliked so much about 4th in general, the adherence to a strict mathematical quota on nearly everything it seemed (items, stats, dpr, etc)
Uthrac wrote:
Uthrac wrote:
Best campaign I was ever in, "fortune" was fleeting.
The campaign, as told by our copper and gold, was a rollercoaster ride. Sometimes we were up, others down. And that moment of finacial strength, of... "Hey... we're doing well!", was also the moment in which we were most severely humbled. Gear stripped. Gold lost. And in contrast, our motivations were at their highest. Vengence. Justice. Proving one's self... all came to a point in these moments of being stripped to rags and rusted short swords.
When your PC's are getting just a little flush with cash... that's the perfect time to strip it all away... and give them the perfect reason to persue (the carrot...)... they'll hate and love it at the same time.
5e doesn't assume wealth/level and magic items are your purview, as DM. If you want to be on the safe side, you probably shouldn't hand out magic items at all. You certainly shouldn't let players make/buy/custom-order them, because that's just begging for the most game-wrecking item combos (like you even need combos, one item could do it).
Indeed, character wealth shouldn't translate to anything that directly enhances character power. Your challenge, then is to get the players interested in something beyond beefing up their characters' abilities. Get them invested in the fate of a village, region, or kingdom or a person, organization, family, tribe or church. Or, if they're less altruistic, a business, syndicate, or fiefdom of their own. Should be ample opportunities for money pits in any of those.
They don't buy the item.
They buy information on a long lost dungeon which has the item.
This drains them of money and puts them on an adventure.
Noon wrote:
Honestly, I would like this edition to support games with many magic items, not just telling them “but magic items are all precious and valuable” (possibly saying that your playstyle is wrong) or “but because of balance we cannot afford then like this because magic items are very powerful”. Cannot tell which is worse. So please, WotC, remember this playstyle.
cassi_brazuca wrote:
cassi_brazuca wrote:
The rarity, uniqueness, and pricelessness of magic items suggested by official materials and posters in this thread supposes the art of creating them is lost or highly inaccessible. If that's not the case in your setting, they should be available for sale.
Besides, I'd rather have the players at my table spend 10k gold on a shiny +1 longsword than raising a peasant army or hiring a mercenary company.
Nevvur wrote:
I think it also depends on the type of setting you want. If you want a more middle-earth setting where magic items are very rare then you definitely don't want magic item shops everywhere.
As repeated, don't price magic items. You're falling back into the trap of 3rd edition (and Pathfinder) reliance on the "magic mart" to light up characters with a magic item in every available "slot," like a computer game. Some challenge should be created with working around the magic you randomly find, like older editions. It's a reminder the world doesn't revolve around any particular character, and just because they "build" the ultimate "greatsword" character doesn't mean the game world is now obligated to cough up a magical greatsword to be wielded.
With that said, I'm using Pathfinder's Ultimate Campaign for building prices, which seem to convert nicely to the D&D economy, for anyone who has extra money beyond that needed for gear, research, training, etc. Money and treasure is ok to hand out in larger amounts when you know players cannot purchase magical items, leading to other uses that lead to extra roleplay opportunities outside hacking things to death. Helping fund the orphanage for the kids of Neverwinter displaced by the orc invasion will probably lead to a richer game than "I head to Akmed's Magic Item Emporium and buy a Belt +6 of something."
While I've somewhat dodged your question, the minute you "sell" a magic item or "buy" one, you've minimized the awesome feature magic items are supposed to have. The other facet to this is mentioned in another post regarding descriptive magic items. If you're sticking with "sword +1" as your magic item, it's not awesome and will lead to an instinctive need to buy/sell to increase a stat bonus to a particular attribute (aka "max out my plusses"). The game leaves it open for you to develop a reasoning behind this, whether it's distrust of magic (I don't want to buy your magic beans in exchange for my cow) or the like.
AaronOfBarbaria wrote:
cassi_brazuca wrote:
Noon wrote:
I think it's fine to sell some low-level or highly-niche magic items for exorbitant prices. A good practice too is to make sure to slip in some fakes and/or cursed items along with the legit purchases. Just like in the real world with diamonds and paintings, counterfeits are a bit market. Also, visit your local occult store (if you live in a place that has something like that). Pick 10 items in the store; those are magic, three of them come with a nasty curse attached. The rest are fakes of various qualities.
Also, I like to really play with PC wealth. A barter and trade are a big part of a medieval world, after all, currency is only useful if there's a market for it. You can't eat coins.
I like to reward my players with illiquid assests like artwork, historical artifacts, and I think my next adventure might find the PCs in possession of a large herd of sheep or cattle.
Once you give players a lot of wealth, it posses all kinds of logistical problems as well. Coins are heavy (IIRC the in-game weight is something like 10gp = 1 pound) and bulky. How are the character transporting their wealth? Are they stashing it somewhere? Is that place trustworthy and safe?
Having players becoming the boss that other try to raid is a pretty neat adventure hook.