Post/Author/DateTime	Post
#1 ccelizic Dec 24, 2014 18:49:34	I rather like how magic items have been pulled of the shelves of common shops.  I always thought it cheapened the experience of magic items if you could just save up and buy it without fail.   However, something I rarely saw in a D&D game was an experience of finding some rare nick nack that turned out to be something quiet useful.  I once played under a GM who loved to fluff up his shops with colorful merchants and colorful wares.   To that ends I've rigged up some quick and dirty rules for populating a shop that might possibly sell magic items.  The general purpose of these rules is to not give the players precisely what they want necessarily.  They pop in see the wares and are confronted with the option of striking now, while something interesting is on deck, or perhaps waiting until something better materializes a month or so later.   Here's how it works!   Step 1: Decide on your shops.  Each little shop of sundry wares that might possibly be of use to an adventurer should at the very least have a CR tier.  These tiers match up with the hoard tiers on DMG page 136 and 137.   A smaller town may have at tops a 0-4 tier shop.  Larger towns may have one 5-10 with possibly a few of the 0-4 tier.  11-16 should be reserved for major population centers with a tier 17+ shop only appearing in truly serious hubs of trade.  The higher tier shops may be dealing only with real wealthy customers with serious money to throw around and might require a letter of introduction from someone in good standing among the shops clientelle just to get inside the door or whatever floats your boat best as a GM for your setting.  Give your shops names NPC clerks a atmosphere and whatnot to your preferred level of flavor.   Step 2: Roll up inventory   Roll up a hoard for each shop equal to its tier.  Any coins are what the shop has on hand should the party decide to try to negociate for the sales of items on their hand.  Coins and art objects produced on the hoard roll are present in the shop and for sale.  Magic items that come up on the roll are in the inventory too.  If no magic items are rolled then that shop doesn't have any on hand currently.  Tough luck.    Be careful if any Legendary stuff crops up.  It may be there but sealed in a vault pending some examination from someone from the crown.  Might be there only on display, it should be something serious when one of these things is sold.   Step 3:  Figure out Prices   Starting point for magic item prices is the table on DMG page 135.  Half that for consumeables.  Alternatively if you want to roll stuff up randomly, I'd take the highest price of each tier and charge 60+(2d4)X10 percent of that price, giving a range of 80 to 140 percent of the highest tier price (If you want more noise and a broader spread try a quad of d20's instead).  It gives a quick and dirty amount of price wiggle using a pair of dice I'd likely have on hand.  Of course you'll likely need a calculator once you start dealing with larger numbers and percentile adjustments, so take that into consideration.   The main reason I do that is so not every item has the same price tag for the same tier, adds some noise to the value.   For each magic item that isn't very blatently obviously magic for sale, roll a d20.  On a result of 1 the magic item wasn't identified as magic and got shuffled into the assorted nicknacks and other mundane items.  A character with enough intuition or the right tools/spells might notice it for what it really is.  Should that happen it may require some checks to keep their poker face as they try to buy it , depends on how the PCs roll with it.   Step 4: Lay out the Scene  Get a good description for the various items worked out, enough to make a shop visit interesting, even if they find nothing of use.  Let them enter the shop, lay out the scene and the venue, as they browse describe the wares.  Since shops like this can potentially have a lot of money flying around you can expect a fair amount of staff asking if they can help the visitors and potentially describing the wares.    Step 5: Potential Rerolls  Bear in mind high priced items, like magic items, don't move quickly.  I wouldn't do a reroll on the shop's wares unless a week elapsed since the last check, possibly even more time, like a month.   And that's more or less the hoard-for-sale method of stocking shops using the tables in the DMG in an unconventional fashion.   Course knowing my luck, having posted this, someone is going to point out something in one of the books that does something like this in a far neater cleaner fashion.
#2 BRJN Dec 24, 2014 20:40:40	Combine this idea with the Guild Master / Merchant's mule-and-cart for mobile fun: you must chase down the item you are looking for, without advertising to the world why you want to talk to that particular peddler...
#3 sadnewt Dec 24, 2014 21:19:56	I like this a lot, but in step 3, you say that rolling 20 d20' s will create a range of 80 (60-140) when it would only create a range of 40, (60-100)
(Reply to #3) ccelizic	sadnewt wrote:
#5 DM_HEEGZ Dec 25, 2014 10:35:56	Thanks for this idea. I also thought of rolling on the hoard treasure tables and populating a shop with the randomized results.
#6 draegn Dec 25, 2014 12:12:37	Have you considered limiting what may be rolled up by the local economy? In our game world every city has people to provide basic needs and services. Baker, Butcher, Candle stick maker, etc.... However specific cities have an over abundant amount of people geared towards a specific activity. The city where the players are basing their camp has a silver mine, needless to say there are lots of silversmiths and jewelers in this city. On the other hand, the "pirate" city has a preponderance of craftspeople geared to shipbuilding, ship repairs, and supplying ships for voyages.
#7 pukunui Dec 25, 2014 14:09:17	I love it!   This would perfectly suit my idea for a wandering peddler inspired by the Choose Goose from Adventure Time.
(Reply to #6) ccelizic	draegn wrote: