Truisms of any magical item economy.

[souran]

[quote="hogarth]

On a side note, why do people like discussing the price of magic items (or lack thereof) so much? It's always the same thing -- moaning that magic item stores don't make sense. Well, duh.[/quote]

I agree Hogarth.

The issue here is not so much do magic shops make sense, but more about what magic is to your world.

Magic is at its core hand waving. It lets you do the impossible or the very expensive, or the very difficult with much less difficulty, or expense or without the infrastuructre and background to really make it work.

How does it do this? Its magic. It might have some set of laws and rules but honestly its not like physics. It has no internal logic to its cause and effect. There is nothing that requires magic not create energy from nothing or that it has to work in any particular way.

Nobody likes the magic shops because they obviously cheapen magic. Magic shops are ok if your world uses magic as a substitute for technology, but even then there is an expectation that the common magic is somehow different or less powerful than the godlike powers that high level spellcasters might achieve.

The pigments were a wonderful discussion of what could a magic world be like. However, it also was starting to sound like "the guns of the south" or paul anderson story. Applying 20th/21st century economic logic to these worlds of magic is in some ways futile. You will get answers that are not pleasing unless you want to make your story ABOUT the economics and lifestyle of the magic infrasture world.

The pigments are the sort of magic item that can tell an awesome story. Or in a characters hands give sinifcant power to adjust the direction of the story.

However, if you make the pigments a subsititue for industrialization and the assembly line you are telling a totally different story than one about a person who uses the pigments for simple personal gain. However, many people don't want the introduction of a few magic items to cuase there world to undergo a techno-magical-renasiance.

Magic is fundamentally cheating. This why I think people don't like the "magic item store" its too much like the Stephen King novel needful things.

[tzor]

I’ve always loved the notion of the “magic item store.” My problem is in deciding what a magic item store is and what it does in the greater community. Let’s face it, in any given fantasy community, there are simply not that many active adventurers to make a magic item store profitable. On the other hand, there are plenty of people who would be interested in potions, lotions and all sorts of magical notions. In general this would probably be run by some retired wizard who (in the older editions) would identify items and act as a magical pawn broker on occasion. He might even give lessons in the evenings. In short, he would be the equivalent of most owners of game/hobby shops.

In one sense we may be discussing the wrong problem. The biggest problem with magical items is that they are a permanent good. In most systems it is always easier to create a magic item than it is to be destroyed. This tends to be reflected in “magic shops” because they are a reflection of either the “easy item creation rules” or the repository of items that never break down and go away. Imagine, for a moment, if every musket used in the civil war was not only around, but fully functional and just as good as modern firearms.

In the end it really does come down to “supply and demand” where supply is in part based on rates of production and rates of decay. Like any other commodity, there will exists groups, organizations and guilds to attempt to control one element of this equation. Makers of magic items will form guilds to limit their creation so as to maximize their revenue. Opposers of magic (there always are these radical types) will seek to find ways to destroy magic items.

[MartinHarper]

It's always the same thing -- moaning that magic item stores don't make sense. Well, duh.

It's not just that they're senseless. They're also pointless. What exactly is the purpose in having magic item shops in a fantasy campaign? So far, the main reasons seems to be:

Players should have some control over what magic items their characters possess

This is better achieved by having the players write down what items they want their characters to find, and having the DM make that happen. Or even just hand over narrative control: "you find a level four magic item - what is it?".

A lack of magic item shops breaks player expectations

Other people have explained why a lack of magic item shops is entirely realistic in most fantasy settings. However, some players still have an expectation that they can buy and sell expensive magic stuff in every village they go to.

The better solution to this problem is to have a page on the issue in the player's handbook explaining that the game is not an MMO, and that there are no magic item shops in the world for a variety of social and economic reasons.

[Roy]

I’ve always loved the notion of the “magic item store.” My problem is in deciding what a magic item store is and what it does in the greater community. Let’s face it, in any given fantasy community, there are simply not that many active adventurers to make a magic item store profitable.

Full stop.

Most magic items are big ticket items. Which means they're like the people that make airplanes - they don't need a large customer base, as even a single sale gives them a vast sum of money. Take half a year off to make two tons of gold? That's a better deal than most get, and about the only reason they wouldn't bother is if they could do better (planar binding, wall of iron, etc).

The smaller ticket stuff has a broader appeal, meaning it gets sold more to offset the lesser profit per sale. Even a commoner can afford the occasional CLW potion for a broken leg, and the richer people are likely to make use of things like continual light/flame, remove disease, and other convenience magic even if they do not take part in the whole using your wealth to protect your wealth thing.

Hell, look at this:

http://coinmill.com/chart/USD_XAU.html

It puts a single ounce of gold at just under one thousand USD. 50 gold = 1 pound, which means even a CLW potion is 16k, and the aforementioned 200k gold item is close to 64 million dollars for something that took one guy about half a year to make.

Now converting fake currencies to real ones doesn't seem productive, but it does illustrate how fucking LUCRATIVE this work is.

Solo wizard crafters are the fucking megacorps of D&D land.

[Username17]

Free Markets do one thing really well: the distribution and exchange of rare goods. If there are valuable rare goods, there will be a market for them. Gold and Magic Items will be exchanged, because both are rare, valuable, and portable.

Expecting the creation of stores, bank accounts, stable prices, and other such staples of 21st century purchasing is completely absurd. But there will be a market with them. They will be traded.

-Username17

[Maj]

Magic shops are the result of attaching a monetary value to a magic item, but I don't think that magic shops were the goal. I think that giving magic items a fixed price was supposed to create [the illusion of] balance - each character has the same value of stuff - but by attaching an actual number to each magic item, the expectation of being able to buy it somewhere in the campaign world came about.

[spasheridan]

Magic item prices (3e & 4e) are an artifact of magic item creation rules. The reason you can buy them is because otherwise parties without magic crafters would be lame and parties with them would rule.

If you have a magic item economy then there must be magic item creation - economies don't exist for unique items.

If you have a magic item economy then there must be a reasonable market for magic items - economies don't exist for unique buyers.

SO - truisms for MI Economies:
There is a source of MI (Dwarven mines, wishing djinis, an unending supply of crypts to raid)

THere is a brisk trade in MI (In Greyhawk, in the City of Brass, or other places where there are a large number of MI buyers)

The people who trade (successfully) in large quantities of MI are very powerful, powerful enough that the large number of powerful buyers haven't simply stabbed the merchants in the face and taken all their nice stuff

Once you have those details down then the rest sort of flows... if MI are only crafted by dwarven runesmiths then the only places you would really purchase MI would be large cities in or with trade links to the dwarven empire. The natural sellers would be the dwarf clans that craft the MI, unless they've been enslaved by some third party. This clan, or their masters, would be extremely powerful - I'm thinking Ninja Dwarves here.

[Jacob_Orlove]

Does it make people feel bad if there is a lady in the caves of the Snowy Mountains, beyond the Endless Desert, who will weave you a magical flying carpet if you can bring her a skein of golden silk, the ink from a Great Sea Snail, and a flask of water from the Fountain of Youth? Probably not.

Does it make people feel bad if Blacksmith Bob's Big Buys sells magic swords by the cartload? Probably.

The real problem here is that "a +1 sword" is not a "magic" item in any but the most absurdly technical sense. Ditch the mundane magic items first, and only then worry about who is buying and selling what's left.

[K]

Magic item prices (3e & 4e) are an artifact of magic item creation rules. The reason you can buy them is because otherwise parties without magic crafters would be lame and parties with them would rule.

If you have a magic item economy then there must be magic item creation - economies don't exist for unique items.

If you have a magic item economy then there must be a reasonable market for magic items - economies don't exist for unique buyers.

SO - truisms for MI Economies:
There is a source of MI (Dwarven mines, wishing djinis, an unending supply of crypts to raid)

THere is a brisk trade in MI (In Greyhawk, in the City of Brass, or other places where there are a large number of MI buyers)

The people who trade (successfully) in large quantities of MI are very powerful, powerful enough that the large number of powerful buyers haven't simply stabbed the merchants in the face and taken all their nice stuff

Once you have those details down then the rest sort of flows...

Not really.

What happens is that level 5 Bob the Barbarian buys six healing potions and a greatax from from the super-powerful uber-dwarves and level 10 Macross the Red waits outside the Dwarven Citadel for Bob and kicks him in the jimmy and takes those potions and gives the ax to the commander of his desert fortress on the other side of the world.

This is called the "secondary market", and it bones any hope of a 21st century-style market. See the economies of places like Africa (I once was going to help an African friend send a shipping container of food to his family, but we had to scratch it because we'd have to send it by train and his response was "no... bandits.").

One solution is to make magic items common and thus pointless to steal, and that ruins the feel of them being special for people. This can work for expendable and small items like healing potions.

The other solution is to not have a market in magic items at all and use any number of models for that. That actually makes magic items feel super special and makes people happy.

I really don't get how people can still want magic items shops when the end result is always stupid.

[Lord Psychodin]

Magic item prices (3e & 4e) are an artifact of magic item creation rules. The reason you can buy them is because otherwise parties without magic crafters would be lame and parties with them would rule.

If you have a magic item economy then there must be magic item creation - economies don't exist for unique items.

If you have a magic item economy then there must be a reasonable market for magic items - economies don't exist for unique buyers.

SO - truisms for MI Economies:
There is a source of MI (Dwarven mines, wishing djinis, an unending supply of crypts to raid)

THere is a brisk trade in MI (In Greyhawk, in the City of Brass, or other places where there are a large number of MI buyers)

The people who trade (successfully) in large quantities of MI are very powerful, powerful enough that the large number of powerful buyers haven't simply stabbed the merchants in the face and taken all their nice stuff

Once you have those details down then the rest sort of flows...

Not really.

What happens is that level 5 Bob the Barbarian buys six healing potions and a greatax from from the super-powerful uber-dwarves and level 10 Macross the Red waits outside the Dwarven Citadel for Bob and kicks him in the jimmy and takes those potions and gives the ax to the commander of his desert fortress on the other side of the world.

This is called the "secondary market", and it bones any hope of a 21st century-style market. See the economies of places like Africa (I once was going to help an African friend send a shipping container of food to his family, but we had to scratch it because we'd have to send it by train and his response was "no... bandits.").

One solution is to make magic items common and thus pointless to steal, and that ruins the feel of them being special for people. This can work for expendable and small items like healing potions.

The other solution is to not have a market in magic items at all and use any number of models for that. That actually makes magic items feel super special and makes people happy.

I really don't get how people can still want magic items shops when the end result is always stupid.

I'd say magic item shops are fine because all they facilitate is the ease of spending gold that a character gets towards items they want directly, rather than the DM having to guess or wishlist everything, when what you want could change tomorrow, and you'd rather have ridiculous craftermages and Magic item stores.

(no, suspension of disbelief doesn't bother me one bit, and if we're arguing in terms of balance, I feel you need to fix the entirety of magic items, not just their availability.)

[violence in the media]

Does it make people feel bad if there is a lady in the caves of the Snowy Mountains, beyond the Endless Desert, who will weave you a magical flying carpet if you can bring her a skein of golden silk, the ink from a Great Sea Snail, and a flask of water from the Fountain of Youth? Probably not.

See, I could possibly get behind a system similar to MMO crafting. One where you need to specifically have the earth diamond, essence of starfire, and scalp of a virgin unicorn or you do not make the item in question. Though, if you need a specific person (like the Snowy Mountain lady) you need to consider what happens if the players wish to learn or acquire that technique.

Does it make people feel bad if Blacksmith Bob's Big Buys sells magic swords by the cartload? Probably.

The real problem here is that "a +1 sword" is not a "magic" item in any but the most absurdly technical sense. Ditch the mundane magic items first, and only then worry about who is buying and selling what's left.

I've often wished that +whatever weapons and armor were simply extensions of mundane masterworking and the highest levels were examples of superlative craftsmanship. However, I'd also want them to remain relatively inexpensive (compared to other magic items) so that players could easily maintain level appropriate accuracy and damage modifiers. In this scenario, being "magical" would not add straight numeric bonuses to those things. Magical weapons would do things like glow, be unbreakable, allow rerolls on hit or damage, detect orcs, burst into flame, grant extra attacks, or whatever.

[hogarth]

What happens is that level 5 Bob the Barbarian buys six healing potions and a greatax from from the super-powerful uber-dwarves and level 10 Macross the Red waits outside the Dwarven Citadel for Bob and kicks him in the jimmy and takes those potions and gives the ax to the commander of his desert fortress on the other side of the world.

If you have level 10 bandits running around (which seems incredibly stupid to me -- by level 10 you should have something better to do than being a glorified mugger -- but hey, it's your campaign world), then presumably you have caravans hiring level 10 caravan guards.

I really don't get how people can still want magic items shops when the end result is always stupid.

The idea of having a magic item shop (with shelves full of stock) is stupid for the same reason having a Rembrandt shop (with shelves full of stock) is stupid:
1) it's a waste having your capital tied up in ultra-high-end merchandise like that
2) the amount that you have to pay in security would be ridiculous

What isn't ridiculous is the idea that Macross the Red is busy running his own duchy and doesn't have the time to stakeout the dwarf fortress on the off-chance someone walks out with a magic weapon, so he gets a middleman to look for a someone who has an extra magic axe and is willing to trade. Or maybe he gets a middleman to commission one, if he can't find anyone who wants to trade. (Just like folks do in the real world if they're looking for a particular work of art.) And then the DM gets lazy, does some hand-waving and calls the middleman a "magic shop" (for want of a better term).

Again, all of this is pretty obvious, I thought.

[tzor]

Understanding that I come from the really old school where the purpose of a “magic shop” was less “do you have an item with the following magical properties” and more of a “can you identify this magic item for me” and “well, I can’t use this item, how much are you willing to give me for it,” I have never subscribed to the notion that a magic item shop would be “full of stock.” A magic shop might have the item you need, or it might have something that would sort of do the job; subject to the two great powers of the universe, chance (a roll of the dice) and necessity (the DM wanting to get the plot line moving in a positive direction).

What happens is that level 5 Bob the Barbarian buys six healing potions and a greatax from from the super-powerful uber-dwarves and level 10 Macross the Red waits outside the Dwarven Citadel for Bob and kicks him in the jimmy and takes those potions and gives the ax to the commander of his desert fortress on the other side of the world.

This is not a “magic” issue, this is a market issue. At all points of the transaction it is vital to remember that you cannot carry a value that you cannot defend. Macross the Red doesn’t have to wait; he can kick him in the jimmy any time he wants and take his money and buy the magic item himself. When Bob the Barbarian is walking with enough of anything valuable to be a target and cannot defend himself then he is a fool.

1) it's a waste having your capital tied up in ultra-high-end merchandise like that
2) the amount that you have to pay in security would be ridiculous

I think that sums up the problem precisely; in effect you have two types of people.

1) The collector: Delights in collecting useful stuff; can afford the security. The problem: He doesn’t disclose what he actually has and he isn’t going to sell it to you. (Welcome to Lankhmar; here you have most of the standard classic plot devices.)

2) The dealer: If the item was actually useful, he would have already sold it. So most of the items aren’t all that “useful” to begin with and thus the security needs are reduced significantly.

Note that the dealer could be a front for the collector; that gets very interesting.

Also note: The dealer might also be the fence.

[Quantumboost]

If you have level 10 bandits running around (which seems incredibly stupid to me -- by level 10 you should have something better to do than being a glorified mugger -- but hey, it's your campaign world), then presumably you have caravans hiring level 10 caravan guards.

...isn't what adventurers DO pretty much glorified Breaking & Entering and/or mugging?

[violence in the media]

Another aspect to this discussion is how much roleplaying/realism/bullshit we'd want involved in the acquisition of some item. A lot of the given suggestions are good, but may wind up being tedious for even the most dedicated groups. The adventure is stopping Duke Dastardly's Devious Demon Horde, not purchasing the Staff of Succubus Smiting that you need for the task.

Some of that is fun, provided it doesn't suck up so much game time you lose sight of what you were doing in the first place. I really wouldn't want to return to the days of having to figure out how to get your 10,000 gp value out of the crystal statue of Ming the Merciless you just dragged out of the Caves of Cruelty.

[Roy]

If you have level 10 bandits running around (which seems incredibly stupid to me -- by level 10 you should have something better to do than being a glorified mugger -- but hey, it's your campaign world), then presumably you have caravans hiring level 10 caravan guards.

...isn't what adventurers DO pretty much glorified Breaking & Entering and/or mugging?

While true, I think he meant the more conventional form of bandits, complete with 'Your GP or your HP!'

As for the value of magic items, as that is wealth that helps you defend wealth the richer you are in that area the better you can protect yourself, and the whole rich but cannot maintain power so they lose it thing is primarily limited to the types of wealth that do not boost combat effectiveness.

[sake]

A kind of related interesting thing about the new Assassin class, that WoTC just released, is that it has a class feature that allows them to enchant their soul as if it was a weapon or some bullshit and apply those bonus to any mundane weapon they're holding (and use any weapon they're proficient with as an implement).

I thought this was a pretty neat idea (for 4E anyway) it's just a shame it got used on a shitty subscriber only Basicly-Just-An-Avenger-But-For-Stupid Goth-Kids rather than a real class.

[Maj]

The idea of having a magic item shop (with shelves full of stock) is stupid for the same reason having a Rembrandt shop (with shelves full of stock) is stupid:
1) it's a waste having your capital tied up in ultra-high-end merchandise like that
2) the amount that you have to pay in security would be ridiculous

Welcome to the world of art auctions - where one company has massive repositories of art by world-renown artists and not only sells them to the highest bidder, but carries them around the world selling them to the highest bidder.

[hogarth]

The idea of having a magic item shop (with shelves full of stock) is stupid for the same reason having a Rembrandt shop (with shelves full of stock) is stupid:
1) it's a waste having your capital tied up in ultra-high-end merchandise like that
2) the amount that you have to pay in security would be ridiculous

Welcome to the world of art auctions - where one company has massive repositories of art by world-renown artists and not only sells them to the highest bidder, but carries them around the world selling them to the highest bidder.

I can't tell if you're agreeing or disagreeing with me. We both agree that they don't keep it in a big store, selling to folks walking in off the street, correct?

[NativeJovian]

It seems to me that the way to fix this problem is to fix magic item crafting. As it stands in 3e, magic item crafting takes a shit-ton of gold, 1/25th a shit-ton of XP, and a long-ass time. Set them all on fire, and out pops a magic item (oh, but only if you have the right feats, too).

This is retarded.

If you fix the system so that it's actually possible to craft level-appropriate magic items in a reasonable timeframe (ie, days, not weeks or months), then most of these problems go away. You don't have magic item shops were racks and racks of +3 swords and +5 chain shirts sit around waiting for adventurers to come along, you have a smith or a caster who takes commissions, produces the necessary items on the spot, and then hands it over to the customer. You don't have to worry about all the magic swag getting stolen, because each one is a custom job, so you never have a large concentration of magic awesome waiting around. It'd be possible to kidnap or blackmail the magic item maker, but if he's badass enough to make cool shit then he's also badass enough to defend himself. It'd also be possible to steal his vast sums of gold he's presumably charging for making stuff, but everyone who's rich has that problem.

Alternatively, just have the party caster make the shit himself rather than involving an NPC at all.

Even if the difference boils down to "let's take a few days off to make/commission some magic crap" rather than "let's visit the magic item shop and buy some magic crap", that does seem to answer most of the objection raised here.

[RandomCasualty2]

1. Rare items bring whatever price the market can bear. Look at fine art or collectibles. Anything rare has a value exactly equal to what people are willing to pay for it, and otherwise rarely has any intrinsic value at all. Van Gogh's painting barely put food on his table, and now his collected works could buy an island nation.

This means that a Potion of Cure Disease might be worthless to the Rock Men of the Broken Caves because they don't get diseases, and worth a dukedom in a Kingdom with no clerics.

Yeah. A game economy pretty much isn't going to get this detailed most of the time, quite simply because it's a total pain in the ass. Most people at the table just don't want to get into price fluctuations for everything, because really, selling shit takes too much game time as it is.

2. Sword and Sorcery Fantasy embraces cleptocracy. The basics of just about every hero myth have heroes stealing crap from their enemies and anyone else. This means that while the peasants can exchange coppers for beers and silvers for bags of oats, kings and heroes alike take what they want, meaning that there cannot be a high end economy.

There is a reason that places like Africa and Russia don't have the wealth of the West despite vast natural resources.... and that's because even armed guards are rarely an adequate protection for things of value.

A creation based economy gets around this. If you don't actually have the item on hand, but you can make it, then there's not actually much to steal initially. People don't even need to keep ritual components on hand as they could just get payment in advance and buy the components when they need them. As far as components themselves,they may be farmed by various farmers, and herbalists and what not, and not actually be centralized. So the arcane components you get may come from 30-40 different guys. In fact, they may have to send out guys to dozens of villages and cities to collect the components for an epic item.

The nice thing about creation economy is that nothing has to have huge amounts of stuff in warehouses. So theft isn't exactly a huge issue.

While it's true you could commission a wizard to create an item and rob him when it's done, that gives him some time to check you out. And in fact, in a creation economy being known as a magic item thief is likely to screw you over bad, since nobody will make items for you anymore.

[K]

The nice thing about creation economy is that nothing has to have huge amounts of stuff in warehouses. So theft isn't exactly a huge issue.

While it's true you could commission a wizard to create an item and rob him when it's done, that gives him some time to check you out. And in fact, in a creation economy being known as a magic item thief is likely to screw you over bad, since nobody will make items for you anymore.

No. You rob the guy that commissioned the magic item. The wizard gets paid, and it doesn't matter if wizards won't make items for you because as long as they make them for others you can always get them. Heck, you can still use the wizards to make stuff for you since you could just have someone else commission anything super-unique you needed.

Seriously. There is no magic item economy that works in anything approaching a fantasy setting you would play DnD in. In a world where adventurers kill manticores just on the hopes of a few potions in the thing's lair, knocking over the guy walking out of the alchemist's guild for those same potions so you can save the kingdom is not even a big deal.

Here are some magic item systems that work:

1. Vancian: Magic items are mostly flavor and plot devices and don't confer any real power. Accordingly, they get broken, lost, and just burned out all the time. Welcome to the world of the rust monster and not the world of the Wand of Fireballs.

2. Elric and the Sorcerer's Appentice: Magic items are super awesome and only special people can use them, and anyone else who tries gets hijinks. This is a world where heroes are buried with magic swords because its an easy way to keep those swords out of the hands of idiots who might try to use them without the proper mojo to control them. See just about any Monkey Paw story ever.

3. The No Magic Item Economy: Magic items are super rare and heroes are heroes because they have magic items and other people don't. This is the world of Excalibur and Lord of the Rings, and there are seriously only 13 magic rings in the whole world and there's a poem about them and everything. Leveling up is called "getting more magic items" or "my sword just learned a new power Inuyasha-style."

That being said, the Magic Items are Technology and We Can Have a 21st Century Economy in Them and Maintain a Medieval-ish Setting model does not work on first principles in anything but an MMO.

You also have to be careful when mixing the models or else you will pull a Gygax and make your son cry when you set his Cloak of Displacement on fire.

[Ganbare Gincun]

You also have to be careful when mixing the models or else you will pull a Gygax and make your son cry when you set his Cloak of Displacement on fire.

Wait, what? Did Gygax actually do that?

[K]

You also have to be careful when mixing the models or else you will pull a Gygax and make your son cry when you set his Cloak of Displacement on fire.

Wait, what? Did Gygax actually do that?

Yeh, true story. His 10 year old son played Melf from "Melf's Acid Arrow" fame in Gygax's old Greyhawk campaign.

Gygax, the patron saint of DnD douchbaggery, was using his "miss a saving throw and lose a magic item" tables and a chimera burned Melf's Cloak of Displacement. This caused his son to cry, and Gygax even incorporated this into his campaign as the Trail of Tears and Ash part of Castle Greyhawk.

True story. Real douche.

[RandomCasualty2]

No. You rob the guy that commissioned the magic item.

Well in that case, you're robbing someone rich and powerful enough to probably kick your ass. I mean you can do this stuff normally by just attacking whatever rich looking adventurers or knights stroll into town. I'm not really super worried about that, because generally if someone is buying the items, they're going to be level appropriate anyway.

Seriously. There is no magic item economy that works in anything approaching a fantasy setting you would play DnD in. In a world where adventurers kill manticores just on the hopes of a few potions in the thing's lair, knocking over the guy walking out of the alchemist's guild for those same potions so you can save the kingdom is not even a big deal.

That only works if the civilization is impotent and adventurers are gods who laugh at the law. If the town guard comes and beats your ass down for attacking a citizen in the middle of town, then this strategy clearly is more dangerous than fighting the manticore. The advantage to killing monsters is that nobody gives a fuck if you slay a hydra or manticore. Where as going around murdering people in broad daylight in a city puts a serious bounty on your head. And that's something that has to matter.

The key here is you just need a world where the PCs can't easily flaunt the law.

I mean you really don't care where they get the items, so long as the target's they're attacking have an appropriate amount of treasure for their difficulty. So you just want to prevent easy targets.