Magic Item Creation Costs & Availability

[Demiurge]

One of the things I hated in 3e was that the system seemed to require PCs to become magic item Christmas trees.

In 1e I can't remember ever buying a magic item unless it was from another PC. I don't think the concept of magic item shops even occurred to me until I played the old gold box D&D games on my Commodore 64.

I've decided with C&C I want to make a clean break with that mentality and severely limit magic item availability.

I'm going to allow some potions and scrolls to be purchased, but since M&T lists sale values that look to be the same as production value, I'm wondering how much they should be marked up.

With all other magic items I'm thinking of using the experience point drain approach. Since most NPCs aren't going to part with XP on the cheap I'll need to determine how much they should charge (at least as a baseline) for such a loss.

I also want to discourage PCs from making their own items of this type as much as possible so I'll increase the time by some factor as well.

What do you do in your campaigns?

[Kaiser_Kris]

I simply tell my players that magical items are rare and valuable things and they are not sold in stores, beyond basic scrolls, potions and perhaps +1 magical weapons without further attributes. You might gain a magical item as a reward from a powerful patron, you might see it in a treasure hoard in a dungeon, or you might take it off of a powerful enemy's corpse.

And that you're going to get ripped off trying to sell a magical weapon ... and that if you want to make one, well, good luck. You've spent your time as a warrior or a wizard, not an elite blacksmith or forger of magical items. I simply don't let them make magical items past the basics (potions of healing, backup scrolls of spells they have), and even the basic items take a fair amount of time and money to make. I'm not a fan of XP costs for anything.

As a rule of thumb, for a new adventure, I'd grant a 5th level adventurer their choice of mundane gear and a +1 magical weapon or item of similar value. A 10th level adventurer might have a +2 weapon with some sort of special trait, and a couple of other magical items, and so on, more or less appropriately.

[clavis123]

Some items are created by extraplaner creatures (typically Devils and Demons), and given to mortals to further their agendas

Some apparent enchanted items actually are extraplaner creatures in disguise.

Mortal-made enchanted items are created by ritual magic. Each item is created by a specific ritual, which can only be performed at a specific time, in a specific place, and by certain people. All such rituals require strange and bizarre items, which naturally can only be obtained with great difficulty. The performance of such a ritual is an event in the campaign, beginning with adventuring to find the correct ritual, dealing with the interference of the spirits (who will cause strange events to occur in the wizard's life), obtaining the needed components (necessitating another adventure), and finally performing the ritual itself.

Weak potions are sold in apothecaries. Other magic may be available for sale, either from Fairy Folk (who trade in such things as memories of love, or the ability to taste sweetness), or from a magical black market filled with occult gangsters so vile, that the PCs will be very sorry they ever wanted a Wand of Magic Missiles.
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[Omote]

In my campaigns, I play up the aspect that magic items are generally rare, and if you want something you have to quest to get it. That doesn't mean of the PC really wants a wand of fireballs or a Feathered Sword that I tell them that one exists in the far eastern reaches of some distant mountain chain. The PCs have to be creative to get certain stuff.

Also, for the most part magic items are not for sale in my campaign world. There is only few Ye Olde Magic Shoppes in my entire campaign world and those places never have high-level magic items, just some potions, a ring or two, maybe a few wands, some scrolls, and some low-level magic weapons at best. The rest of the magic in these shoppes specialize in spell components (sometimes rare), weird bobbles and oddities, books, etc.

I agree with the Christmas Tree aspect, and I hated every second of that in the 3.X and Pathfinder editions.

Magic should be treasured, unique, odd and/or exilerating to own!

~O
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[Treebore]

Scrolls and potions are pretty simple to make, so can be bought rather easily. +1 exceptional grade weapons and armor can be bought, so I don't make +1 magical items much harder to find. Beyond that they are usually found in the modules I run.

When it comes to making them, the players only have time to do so if I decide to give them enough down time, which I rarely do.

So basically I have as much or as little control over it as I wish. Combine that with them needing to be 9th level wizard/illusionists or 11th level Cleric/Druids, real powerful magic items tend to be pretty rare. Unless you run a module series like the Giant series, where they can end up with 3 rings of 3 wishes, and did. But they needed them, they wouldn't have beat Lolth without them.
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[serleran]

I assume several things:

1) some places are more advanced when it comes to magic

2) high level characters want to use their new found abilities

3) I can use magic item creation as an adventure hook

Therefore, I treat this as just another way to do whatever I want to make the game exciting. Magic can be easy come and it can be extremely rare... I find that, for my tastes, I like it to border on game show.
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