OMG Shops - Weapons

These items rule. THESE ITEMS SUCK. These items rule. THESE ITEMS SUCK.

Welcome to Part 3 of the OMG Shops series, I suggest you check out the first one all about Magic Items. For naming a shop and aesthetic, you can check out part 1 as I went over all of it there. I go into alot about building in the engaging elements for a shop at the start of that post. Also check out part 2 for specifics on armor shops as a partner for our talks all about weapons. Everyone in the group needs them even if the wizard will only ever use it if he is out of spells and about to die.

Selling weapons means several things in the world. It means working as a weapons dealer, a go between for creators and buyers. This is more likely if the items being sold are rare or extremely deadly and being bought by those who really should have access to them. Like the inventions of a mad mage being sold to a thieves' guild. It could mean just running a shop that is a legal reseller of weapons, maybe because of a deal with a blacksmith or purely buying and reselling adventurer's weapons. Or it could mean directly from the creator with full control over what they make and how. Don't be afraid to have multiple versions in the world, combine some of them, and heck add some ones not mentioned!

In honesty it also is determined by the feel that you want the location in general to have. You can really drive home aspects of the town or city your players are in using your shops. The biggest example is with armor and weapons. A small close knit community out in the country wouldn't have a shop facade to go with the blacksmith, it would be a very obvious direct transaction with the person who will be making the thing you want. But a city divided into sections where some have more money and power then others may have the blacksmithery itself in the poorer part of town because of the heat, smoke and noise it produces while having a very fancy shop in the swanky part of town. If the city goes further and caters in an extreme to the wealthy and powerful then the shop might be the only way to by new weapons. This could mean that if players made a direct play for a discount via checking out the blacksmith that they might land quite the discount.

So we see how closely the world effects the shop but how does the shop effect the world? A place that regularly deals in weapons to me says that if the city isn't dangerous the area around the location most likely is. If not then there is a high presence of a few types - mercenaries, soldiers, or adventurers. Each of those types flooding a city can mean different things for how it would be set up and function, it would also change the types of weapons that you can easily find there. If perhaps weapon shops aren't all over the place then maybe the shop itself takes on the responsibility of providing training and safety instructions. Should it be an area that many people leave from to go adventuring they might even be the main financial source allowing the citizens to do so.

One quick note for shop aesthetics before we move on. The shop says just as much about the owner as it does about the weapons it will hold. It is often a reflection of the owner and can be used as context clues for the player on the best way to endear themselves to the owner for perhaps a discount. A high brow weapons dealer isn't going to take kindly to heavy handed techniques, but a brisk grumpy blacksmith might appreciate it like a breath of fresh air. Also DON'T FORGET MAGIC EXIST! You can do so many crazy things with how the shop looks like.

I also talked in length about Shopkeepers in Part 1 of this series so really go check that out. But for this one I'm going to do a quick pre-gen of a few options for you so you can see just how wildly diverse you can still get with something so specific.

Natza Mantra, Tiefling - Reclusive and intense about their work Natza lives off the side of a volcano, using the heat and properties of the area to make weapons that wouldn't not be possible elsewhere. Their stockpile of weapons is large since not many making the journey up much less have the kind of gold she requires to part with one of her masterworks. Tall with guns for days if it weren't for the pale purple skin, shaved fushia hair, horns and tail she might be mistaken for a Goliath.

Dazil Borrerbin, Satyr - A happy go lucky cheery lad he has modeled his shop like a lovely flower filled meadow full of sunlight despite the roof. It would seem the last place to find a weapon much less a weapon of quality. But this shop is filled with nothing but magic weapons that have either been collected or commissioned by Dazil at his own fancy. Anything he dreams up he gathers here to show off mostly but he is willing to part with a weapon or two if the person, and the price, is right.

Siannu Kardlom, Tortle - Small for a tortle she nimbly moves about the shop adjusting her wares and chatting with customers. Most of her items are the standard fare but in the back she has a small forge and workshop for custom items. In fact she has a reputation for her custom items and her ability to make just about anything a reality when it comes to a weapon. Guarding her shop at night are a pair of sentient living swords that roam the space, animated armor assist with handling weapons for customers, and several mechanical flying objects float around serving tea.

To stock your gear I could just send you to Part 1 again, and will suggest it but I thought I'd bring that part over since its only a quick paragraph. Just replace the words magic item with weapon.

Okay so we have our Tiers of Play laid out, we've sorted the magic items by these tiers (you'll see that an item can be on more than one list and that's perfectly fine). I then create 3 random lists for each tier of play with magic items I feel best fit the campaign, the world, or things I tailor for the players. Normally you don't have to worry about a list larger than 20 but go as ham as you'd like. When making the store pick a list from the tier of play that currently applies to the players, roll 1d6 (min of 2) times on the list to stock the store. This method comes with the bonus that if you're players revisit a store at a higher tier you don't have to scrap everything, just roll on the new lists. You can also switch up the stock ever so often to show the life of the shop while the players are away. This might lead to some fun side quests and bargaining to get the shopkeeper to make an item that a player had their eye on but that was sold while they were away.

Not to be repetitive but in Part 1 I do go over reskinning, tweaking and homebrewing items. So to reinforce that and to show how doing it for a weapon might be a little different I'm going to provide examples below. When working with weapons there are a few things to keep an eye on - reach, damage type, damage die, limiting factors. Mostly the limiting factors come into play when a weapon has an ability or spell associated with it. For a DM creating weapons for their player it is important to keep in mind the player's power curve against what it should be for their Tier of Play.

Let's first look at an example of a reskinned weapon, lets start with a Trident. A more expensive version for the type of damage it does, which is similar to a spear. What the trident really has going for it is its unique visual. Its a very striking image and is typically linked to the more water linked races like a Triton. But another creature we typically associate with a trident is the symbol of a pitchfork carried by the devil. This can be done with losing the tips for a more straight point on the ends, as well as coloring and motifs of the weapon. Adding more reds, blacks, or sinister glowing would all be great clue to how the weapon is differing.

But why don't we take the above reskinned Trident even more in the direction we wanted to go with. It currently does 1d6 piercing damage, here we will either add 1d4 fire damage OR completely replace it with a 1d8 fire damage (no piercing). This adds the aesthetics of the reskinning with some actual mechanically differences that reinforce the theme. If we didn't want to mess with the damage at all we might say something like the weapon does extra damage to those of good alignment, say double proficiency added. We've transformed the simple trident into the Devil's Pitchfork.

The final evolution of our Devil's Pitchfork needs a little something extra. Lets add in a few uses of detect good and evil, protection from good and evil BUT only allow protection from good while allowing a monster type to still be selected. For this one I'm going to pull the limiting factor of proficiency bonus for the number of slots it can use between the two spells that refresh at dawn. Playing up the theme we will give it the ability to return to the player even if thrown when attuned to the weapon it always returns as if blinking out of exist and back in. For pure funsies I'm going to add the ability to forgo damage on a successful hit in order to set the target on fire.

Look I obviously have fun making up items, monsters, NPCs, and all sorts of things for TTRPGs. It is honestly very freeing creatively so I always encourage DMs of any experience level to try. The only way you will get better at it is by doing it over and over again. If you ever have any questions on it or want to chat about my process just hop over to the Contacts page and drop me a line or hit me up on Twitter @JustThinkingKay!

With that little rambling over with, I’m JustKay your regular DM Dalliance on the web and I’ll see you next post.