Buying And Selling Magic Items

Rationale

In 5e, the concept of buying and selling magic items is treated as an optional rule, with the default assumption that items are so rare as to be treated as rare works of art are in the modern world. This doesn’t work on a few levels.

Magic items are not as rare as some of the text indicates. The Dungeon Master’s Guide suggests that a typical campaign will see 45 treasure hoards rolled (DMG pg 133), most of which will generate multiple magic items. While this is no means a limitless bounty, it will generate quite a bit of both mundane and magical treasure. The party isn't the only ones finding this treasure though; there are thousands of adventuring bands out there scouring monster-haunted ruins for loot. Given this, the concept that magic items are rare in the broad sense just doesn't seem reasonable. Yes, some or even most of these hapless adventurers will end up as monster food (that is where all the bones come from), but plenty more will not. Additionally, the DMG suggests that treasure hoards - even multiple treasure hoards in a single encounter, like for dragons - are not only found, but gifted as rewards for successful adventure, which necessitates that these reward-givers have themselves acquired magic items from some place. So, while the world is not awash in magic items, there is a pretty strong indication that magic items will be available.

Once there is a supply of items, it doesn’t take much to make a market for them. All that is needed is the desire to sell, the need to buy and a medium of exchange. Fortunately for adventurers, all three exist. The medium of exchange is gold, and lots of it. Gold is a completely fungible resource. Nobles have a ready supply on hand and adventures find a great deal of it. Sure, the parties to a sale have to agree on terms and price, but gold removes the need to barter one item for another and establishes an understandable market in which anyone with the coin (or gems or art) can participate. On the supply side, magic items are the jackpot, the winning lottery ticket. A peasant doesn't have much to look forward to in life, but even an uncommon item (list price 500gp or 5000 silver) will set them up for almost 7 years on 2sp a day, the going rate for unskilled labor. Not having to work for 7 years or living it up for a solid year or more is pretty alluring, much more so than the utility gained by (gasp) drinking that Potion of Growth. This siren song is what draws all those clueless dirt farmers to their doom; most never make it home from their first desperate foray into some creature's lair but those that do hit it big. If you are poor with no prospects but a life of backbreaking labor, monster hunting until you hit that jackpot just might be the ticket out.

Lucky turnip eaters aren't the only source of magic, however. Adventurers wanting to retire and children inheriting their parent’s items but having no desire to do anything but live a life of luxury will also supply items to this market. Lastly, and most importantly, professional adventurers, the group to which the party likely belongs, are always interested in turning a not-as-needed item into a more-needed item - for the right price. A magic warhammer will not, by itself, help Grond the Fighter reclaim his throne in a far off land, but it will buy him a mercenary army that will help him accomplish this goal. Meanwhile, Grond’s friend, the rogue Mungo the Blade, will gladly exchange the set of 12 richly gemmed goblets and the sackful of coins he “found” for a magic broom that allows him to fly across the rooftops to escape the situations he seems to find himself in with the city guard. Who would be willing to sell such an item? A local wizard that can already fly using spells when needed and would rather sell the broom for gold so he can finish construction on his research tower.

Connecting Buyers and Sellers

Despite the market need for magic items, actually buying and selling is a tricky business. Sellers want to be very sure that potential buyers aren’t going to simply kill them for their items or defraud them using magical tricks or cleverly forged coin. Buyers also need to beware, for supposed sellers could ambush them for the gold they are bringing to the sale or sell an item that is not what was advertized. Both buyer and seller need to be sure that the sale is handled discreetly to avoid taxes, prevent the knowledge of their gold or item assets from falling into the wrong hands where they might have their property stolen at some future date or to prevent a third party from ambushing the sale and taking both the gold and the item and killing everyone present. Given these complications, buying or selling an item isn’t as easy as walking into a “magic item shop” and making an offer. Such places do not exist, and if they did, they would be the target of every thief in a thousand mile radius. Instead, buyer and seller need to learn about one another discreetly, exchange items for gold and do so in a way that both can be reasonably sure they will not end up defrauded or worse, dead.

So, how does this work? Put simply, the buyer and seller need to establish mutual trust, and they do that by looking at the reputation they each have in the community in which they live and operate. Buyers will meet sellers to do business when both have more to lose by defrauding one another than they do by conducting the sale as planned. Don’t forget that most professional adventurers are little more than bandits - they wander into the wild and come back with coin or items and don’t say much about how they got their rewards. Thieves and charlatans abound and the reputations of most adventurers are not at all good. They are viewed as sellswords and dangerous, untrustworthy folks until they prove where their loyalties lie. It would be a foolish person indeed to bring substantial money or a valuable item to a clandestine meeting with a group of heavily armed strangers - the risk is high and the attendee has no way of ensuring that the sale will go as planned. Even if the meeting was done in public, in a guardhouse, there will be those that will kill first and fight it out later for they are completely unscrupulous and have more to gain by betrayal and theft than they do by risking a fight with the law. Also, magic offers a great means of theft and escape, and it is certainly possible for even a mage of middle power to steal an item during a sale and teleport away even in a crowded and well-guarded castle.

Buying Magic Items

Buying a magic item depends on a few independent factors: magic items must be available for purchase, the buyer needs to have sufficient coin to buy the item, and the seller must be certain that the buyer is a reputable type that can be trusted to conduct the sale fairly.

Use the procedure below to determine what magic items are available for purchase.

1. The DM determines the size of settlement the buyer is searching for items that may be for sale based on the Magic Items per Settlement table below.
2. The DM determines a Trust Score for the buyer in that settlement. The base Trust Score for a buyer is their Charisma modifier, but the DM must adjust this value based on extenuating circumstances like fame within the town, treatment of locals and nobles, demonstrated regard for the law, organizations the character is known to belong to or frequent, standard of living (lifestyle) the character maintains in the community, race, sex, deity, homeland who the character associates with and how those individuals are perceived and any other relevant information. Simply not being known in the town should impose so significant a modifier (at least -5) that this number is effectively 0 when a character first enters a settlement. In short, until a character builds some kind of reputation in a town, he has no chance of buying magic from those that may be secretly holding onto an item they wish to exchange for gold. It is far more likely that the newcomer is some kind of drifter, a charlatan or other thief, or maybe a front man for a gang of thieves, to even let the character know that a magic item is available for sale. This negative stigma can be overcome with diligent effort on the part of the character wishing to buy items by earning the trust of the people of the settlement. A modifier of more than 4 is treated as a four and a modifier of 0 is treated as zero. If the character has a modifier of 0 at this point, stop. No magic items will be offered to that character.
3. The player determines the investment in terms of downtime and money they are willing to commit to learn about magic items that may be for sale in the settlement by using the Magic Item Limits table below. The less time and money (for bribes, paying “brokers” and the like) a character is willing to spend, the fewer the items found over all and the lower the overall quality of items. Finding that one seller willing to part with a rare item is not an easy task or something done in an afternoon. If a player invests time and money to find items of greater rarity, they also find the other less-rare items listed in the table without spending additional time and money.
4. The DM uses the Magic Items per Settlement table below to determine the Treasure Hoard table or tables to be rolled on to develop an item list.
5. The DM secretly rolls on these treasure tables and secretly notes the resultant items and their rarity. Note that these tables could generate a result where no magic items are found. If this occurs, no magic items are available for sale in the settlement this attempt.
6. The DM trims these results by using the Magic Item Limits table below. He only tells the potential buyer about the magic items that the buyer’s Trust Score and time and gold investment would allow per the Magic Item LImits table below.
7. The buyer has the option to buy any or all the items offered for the list price of each item as described on the Magic Item Limits table. All sales are non-negotiable and final.

Magic Items per Settlement

Magic Item Limits

Buying Magic Items - Extended Example

Mungo the Knife (Cha 14) limps into a middle-class inn in the town of Gionne (pop 5200) clutching his saddlebags and favoring a wounded leg. The innkeeper tried to turn him away at the door, but Mungo flashed a stack of gold and demanded a room, so he got one. Once he recovered, he decided to see if the people of Gionne would part with a few heirlooms they had tucked away. He had several fine gems he was sure would net at least 6000gp.

At this point, the DM notes that Gionne qualifies as a Town based on its population and that Mungo’s base Trust Score is 2. This is modified downward by 5 (or more) since he is unknown in the town and his odd arrival raised quite a few eyebrows and marked him as a potentially dangerous person. Thus, despite Mungo’s best efforts, no one in town will talk to him about magic items for sale. For all they know, he is a thief hoping to break into the owner’s house and vanish to the next town. They may even report him to the local guard as a suspicious person.Note that this result is certain regardless of whether or not Mungo decides to spend time and money to determine what magic items are for sale. If he does this, he only learns that no one has anything for sale; his time and gold are wasted.

Over the next few weeks, however, Mungo spends a fair amount of coin at the inn, buying drinks and telling others of his adventurers. He also aids a city patrol against a troupe of bugbears and their sorcerous leader in the woods outside of town. During this raid, he saved the life of the son a local businessman and was invited to stay in the business man’s mansion as the man’s guest. While there, he conducted himself well and properly. Once again, Mungo brings up the topic of magic items and this time receives a warmer reception. The DM determines that Mungo’s many good actions and good manners indicate he can be trusted to some degree, and sets his new Trust Level at 2 (his base Cha modifier). It hasn't been long enough for the townsfolk to truly trust Mungo and he still has his skeptics, but the people are warming to him. It helps that he is easy to get along with and generally likeable as well, as reflected by his good charisma modifier.

Mungo decides to invest 6 days and 25 gp to find magic items in the town, implying he is interested in learning about Uncommon (and Common) items that may be for sale. The DM secretly rolls once on the 0-4 Hoard Table and once on the 5-10 Hoard table as indicated in the Magic Items per Settlement table, since Gionne’s population classifies it as a Town. He obtains results of 78 and 23 respectively. A roll of 23 on the 5-10 table indicates no magic items are available, but a roll of 78 on the 0-4 table indicates 1d4 items from Table C should be generated. The DM rolls 2, and thus secretly rolls twice on Table C, getting a 50 (Potion of Stone Giant Strength, rare) and a 44 (Potion of Frost Giant Strength, rare). These items are available, but Mongo never hears of them; he just wasn’t trusted enough for sellers of these 5000gp items (his Trust Score is a 2, but he needs a 3 to learn about rare items) and he didn’t spend the time and coin to find these sellers and demonstrate his earnestness anyway (he needed to invest 9 days and 250gp to learn about rare items). Had these rolls generated common or uncommon items, Mungo’s time, effort and reputation would together have been enough to prompt the sellers to step forward and arrange the sale because his time, gold and Trust Level is enough to reveal this rarity of items in town per the Magic Item Limits table above.

If Mongo continues to aid the people in the town, buy property, associate with decent folk, maintain a reasonable standard of living and the like, he will soon raise his Trust Score higher. Should he once again spend the necessary time and money, he can attempt to buy magic items again. The DM may keep the previously two generated items, generate new items entirely or do a mix of these things to represent Gionne’s magic item market when Mungo next investigates it.

Selling Magic Items

Selling a magic item is a comparatively straightforward process. Since items are always assumed to be in demand (for whatever reason), the seller merely needs to comply with the Selling Magic Items table below. Basically, the seller needs to be in a town sufficiently large to ensure that a buyer for the item is available. Assuming that this criteria is met, the seller can meet the buyer and exchange the item for gold.

Selling Magic Items