AD&D 1st ed: Why on earth did anyone play an illusionist?

[Jay R]

On choosing to play a nonhuman in OD&D and 1e:

1. Depending on the DM, infravision and detecting secret doors can be anywhere from useless to essential. (If lots of treasure, or ambushes, are behind secret doors in the dark, somebody in the party better have theses.)

2. Most games didn't go that high. An elf is sacrificing levels he'll never see anyway to get advantages from day one.

3. When the game went that high, the DM was very likely to remove the limitation so the character could keep up.

4. The biggest reason to play an elf, dwarf or hobbit wasn't rules-oriented. It was to play an elf, dwarf, or hobbit. We came into this hobby from reading fantasy.

[kaomera]

Well if you want a 1e "what is cool" I still have that problem. I think fighters are cool. As are mages (ahem magic users), clerics, rangers, thieves (though typically only if playing 2e since being able to pick where your skills go is nice), monks, and bards (though I prefer 2e bards since they are not so insane to create and play). For me it is easier to say what is not cool rather than trying to decide what is cool since I find that part way too easy. Nowadays I tend to play what seems interesting to play mechanically and then pick the "cool" part after since nifty concepts are things I find easily.

Well, the point I was trying to make was this (and an attempt to relate this back to the OP):

A player would choose to play an Illusionist ''because they're cool''. However, if that's as far as the player has thought this through, there could well be problems. You need not only to have a better understanding of what, specifically, you find cool about your character, but also be able to communicate it in an effective manner - and then you need to get the rest of the group (and especially the DM) onboard. In a sense I kind of feel like you should be ''pitching'' your PC the same way a DM would pitch a campaign concept.

This relates especially to the Illusionist, because much of the classes abilities rely on ''what the DM will let you get away with''. And, additionally, the class has the potential to either work really well with the rest of the party (and be a lot of fun) or else step on a lot of toes (and be a bore). A lot of this can be handled by simply having a consensus of expectations among the group, but with players with differing backgrounds in 1e I think that could be tough. (More recent editions have done a lot to try and cement that consensus - provide a consistent experience...)

The big problem for me is players who pick a mechanical concept, without any real idea of what makes the character cool. This has resulted at times in a situation where some or all of the PCs are just flat-out boring to me, they have no real connection to the world or the fiction and are just a pile of stats and mechanical advantages. For some people it's enough (and I'd like it to be enough for me - I feel like I should be able to run a game for a variety of different player wants / needs), but for me it just seems to make it very hard to justify spending the time and energy on DMing.

On choosing to play a nonhuman in OD&D and 1e:

1. Depending on the DM, infravision and detecting secret doors can be anywhere from useless to essential. (If lots of treasure, or ambushes, are behind secret doors in the dark, somebody in the party better have theses.)

2. Most games didn't go that high. An elf is sacrificing levels he'll never see anyway to get advantages from day one.

3. When the game went that high, the DM was very likely to remove the limitation so the character could keep up.

4. The biggest reason to play an elf, dwarf or hobbit wasn't rules-oriented. It was to play an elf, dwarf, or hobbit. We came into this hobby from reading fantasy.

1 I agree with (but especially the ''depending on the DM'' part. 2 I would have tended to agree with based on my own personal experiences, but having talked to a lot of different players over the years I think it would be more accurate to say that some games didn't go that high (I've encountered at least a few players who never actually played 1e at lower than 9th level...) 3 & 4 I definitely agree with. I think that 3 follows very much from 4 (at least to my view of DMing 1e) in that it's part of the DM's responsibility to help the players embrace and express what they found cool about their characters and the game. If you want to play a Gnome Illusionist because that's what your excited about, then I think that it's only natural and reasonable for the DM to adjust the local rules so that they help and not hinder your ability to make that character cool.

[nyarlathotep]

3 & 4 I definitely agree with. I think that 3 follows very much from 4 (at least to my view of DMing 1e) in that it's part of the DM's responsibility to help the players embrace and express what they found cool about their characters and the game. If you want to play a Gnome Illusionist because that's what your excited about, then I think that it's only natural and reasonable for the DM to adjust the local rules so that they help and not hinder your ability to make that character cool.

While that is true it doesn't excuse bad game design. For instance in 3rd edition I tend to give pounce to melee character for free and in all editions of D&D I use a modified armor as damage reduction rule. Does that mean that my house rules determine how well the D&D system is designed? No of course not.

[kaomera]

While that is true it doesn't excuse bad game design.

What bad game design? It's certainly imperfect, but bad I'd have to disagree with.

For instance in 3rd edition I tend to give pounce to melee character for free and in all editions of D&D I use a modified armor as damage reduction rule. Does that mean that my house rules determine how well the D&D system is designed? No of course not.

This sounds to me more like ''doesn't work the way I'd like'' than ''doesn't work''.

[Jay R]

4. The biggest reason to play an elf, dwarf or hobbit wasn't rules-oriented. It was to play an elf, dwarf, or hobbit. We came into this hobby from reading fantasy.

3 & 4 I definitely agree with. I think that 3 follows very much from 4 (at least to my view of DMing 1e) in that it's part of the DM's responsibility to help the players embrace and express what they found cool about their characters and the game. If you want to play a Gnome Illusionist because that's what your excited about, then I think that it's only natural and reasonable for the DM to adjust the local rules so that they help and not hinder your ability to make that character cool.

We are mostly in agreement, but there's a distinction I want to draw. We wanted to play elves, dwarves and hobbits, because we loved the books they were in. We wanted to be like Legolas, or Thorin, or Bilbo. D&D was valued because it could take us back someplace we already loved. Nobody ever came to D&D with a desire to be a gnome Illusionist, because that's a D&D creation. Gnomes existed in many forms, but the D&D version was its own type*, and Illusionists were invented in an article in The Strategic Review for D&D. You might want to be a gnome illusionist because you liked the D&D rules for it, but we wanted to be elves, dwarves or hobbits before we read the rules.

*As far as I knew. Gygax may have taken them from some fantasy novel, but if so, neither I nor anybody I played with recognized it, and they didn't exist in OD&D as Player Characters anyway.

[JackShandy]

The limit was obvious, and players knew what they where getting into when they rolled their character. It wasn't like you got to 7th level or whatever and suddenly found out you couldn't advance any further...

Yeah -- that was Basic D&D where you bought the Expert rules and suddenly discovered level limits.

[Premier]

Let's be fair, the BECMI series only really had level limits in name. Sure, you didn't gain any more HP after a while, nor improve your saving throws - but if you were a demihuman, the latter were pretty damn good by the time you hit the level cap, anyway. You also continued to improve your ability to hit targets and even got special "half damage vs. spells / dragon breath" bonuses. Only these things weren't called new levels, big deal.

[kaomera]

Illusionists were a fairly orrigional take on the general theme of the trickster-magician. There were various fictional characters with similar abilities, although the shadow-infused / quasi-real aspect is, AFAIK, specifically a D&D thing. Gnomes I had always assumed to be a combination of a synonym for the mythological Dwarf and the book by Wil Huygen.

But, yes, I think that far, far more players came to D&D wanting to play the characters from Lord of the Rings than an Illusionist and / or Gnome.

One thing about racial level limits: I think it's an example of unfocused, pre-theory design (and I don't think that's automatically a bad thing). 1e was, as far as I have heard, largely compiled on the basis that Gygax thought that someone wanted to see any given element, but the elements of the rules were possibly not significantly considered as a whole, and I think that they were certainly not judged at the time by standards that would not even be invented for another 20 years. Anyway, if I can get my thoughts together on this I'll make a post over in the Roleplaying Games section, since I think this is getting a bit beyond just older D&D.

[bloodtide]

As someone who played 2nd ed being an illusionist was a pretty okay option. You got extra spells per day (which helped you survive level one) and gnome illusionist could level up pretty high. So it seemed to be worth the slower level ups and smaller spell list. In 1st ed AD&D doesn't seem to have much appeal. You don't get extra spells per day and gnomes can only get to level 7.

For Fun.

1E was not all about 'wow' powers and abilities like 3E/4E. You did not play a class to 'get' things....you were just having fun.

And in 1E illusions...with no real rules...could do anything. You could make an illusion of a person catching on fire...and if they failed there save they would think they were on fire and die for real by thinking themselfs to death.

[LibraryOgre]

1E was not all about 'wow' powers and abilities like 3E/4E. You did not play a class to 'get' things....you were just having fun.

It's also worth pointing out that the difference between a "powerful" and "weak" class was a lot smaller in 1e and 2e... it's not like you're playing tier 6 in a tier 1 game when you're an illusionist.

[TheGreyArcher]

Well, I know for example that Thief/Illusionist combos were VERY powerful.

Illusionists required a 16 Dex and 15 Int. To Receive a +10% bonus to XP, Thieves needed a 16 or higher.

A Thief being able to cast Phantom Armor, Invisibility, Wraithform, Blur, Spectral Image.... pretty dang powerful.

Splitting experience points between two classes did hurt, but the +10% XP bonus to thief and their ability to level so fast compared to other classes made this split-classing an obvious choice.

I once ran a villain who was a level 12 Thief / Level 7 Illusionist.... they worked out great against the party!!!

[Ravens_cry]

It's also worth pointing out that the difference between a "powerful" and "weak" class was a lot smaller in 1e and 2e... it's not like you're playing tier 6 in a tier 1 game when you're an illusionist.

It's also worth pointing out that items and gold gave you XP back then.
So players had even more reason to be the loot hungry "Steal everything that isn't nailed down and then steal the nails" mentality.
"Tomb of Horrors" was changed to having magical doors that only acted like adamantine in the confines of the tomb when the first players realized that doors of solid adamantine were worth more than any reward from that meat grinder of death trap of a character destroying hell that was "Tomb of Horrors."

[kaomera]

1e Tomb of Horrors was a great module. Of course, the only way to get players to actually try to get very far inside was to run it as a tournament module (or else concoct some reason why Acererak actually needed to be put down). If the players actually get far enough inside to grab the adamantite or mithril doors and then figure out a way to get them back to civilization, good for them! There were often art objects, etc. lying around that could be of great value, if only you could get them to someone who could pay for them (and who wanted them, of course), but that in and of itself would surely prove a challenge. The doors don't have any specific value attached to them, but IMO if the players figure out that they could be worth something and can retrieve them, they ought to be rewarded for it.

The game was about defeating evil and amassing treasure, preferably in the most efficient manner possible (and efficient usually means not dying). The idea that you had to kill every damn thing in the dungeon really didn't work out that well.

[Ravens_cry]

It was a different style of play all right. Rather more confrontational DM vs. Players than I like personally.

[Randomatic]

It was a different style of play all right. Rather more confrontational DM vs. Players than I like personally.

That's more a relic of it's wargaming roots. The original DMs and Players had years to decades of experience playing against each other. The vs. mentality was only natural.

[Ravens_cry]

That's more a relic of it's wargaming roots. The original DMs and Players had years to decades of experience playing against each other. The vs. mentality was only natural.

Oh, I am not saying it is not understandable. THAC0 was also a product of gaming roots, working to reduce the charts and die rolls to just a die roll.
I still don't have to like it.

[kaomera]

It was a different style of play all right. Rather more confrontational DM vs. Players than I like personally.

That's an interesting perspective - personally I've found a bit of the opposite. When I was playing 1e the ''nuclear option'' always seemed to be close at hand. If the players could only get away with what the DM allowed them to, then the DM could also only get away with what the players where willing to stand for. The DM's authority wasn't likely to stand if even two or three players found common cause to stand against him. Players where more willing to deal with a character dying (occasionally), but only if they where enjoying the game otherwise.

In the last few years I've left several games because they just were not fun for me, and the reaction has ranged from head-scratching to outrage. And a fair amount of that is because I just don't get much enjoyment out of trying to out-rules the ''other side'', either as a player or as a DM; at least not enough sometimes to justify the extra work.

[Ravens_cry]

Admittedly, I have not played so much as read through the first edition AD&D books, of which everything I would need to play and DM.
Of especial note, are the rules for players creating magic items and spells as well as many magic items, especially cursed ones.
Maybe I am reading too much into it, but they seem to be worded towards screwing with the players, especially how cursed items can not be detected by any means aside from putting them on and often have very deadly or suck making effects and even certain non cursed items can be brutal if you are, but not limited to, the wrong alignment.

[Winter_Wolf]

Ah, the good ol' days! Heehee. *wipes a tear of nostalgia away.* I've never DMed a 1e/2e game, but some wild rides as a player.

Cursed magic items were brutal. But you also got a lot of really creative ways of turning them into situational beneficial things. Like a mini-game inside of the game. In some groups it would be a contest of "well okay, now let's see how you guys can make this horrible cursed thing into a reward". It's very much on a per-group basis though. Although old issues of Dragon Magazine were filled with amusing anecdotes about turning cursed/evil items to advantage, leading me to believe it happened a lot.

Introducing artifacts into a game was a sure sign that you hated your players and wanted the game to destruct though. I'm looking at you, Deck of Many Things.

[hamlet]

Admittedly, I have not played so much as read through the first edition AD&D books, of which everything I would need to play and DM.
Of especial note, are the rules for players creating magic items and spells as well as many magic items, especially cursed ones.
Maybe I am reading too much into it, but they seem to be worded towards screwing with the players, especially how cursed items can not be detected by any means aside from putting them on and often have very deadly or suck making effects and even certain non cursed items can be brutal if you are, but not limited to, the wrong alignment.

The rules were not designed to "screw over the players" so much as to impart the lesson that adventurers were supposed to go out adventuring rather than stay at home making magic items. Really. Gary said so himself over on Dragonsfoot many moons ago.

Also: Don't judge the game if you haven't played it. Reading it and playing it are two quite different experiences.

[Ravens_cry]

In my opinion, something you make yourself, that you have a connection to, is more special than something you pulled from some hoard.
And it is not like is not like there isn't precedent in fantasy literature, like Conan forging his sword and Wizards are commonly making some bauble or wand.
And while I respect your position, an RPG is not your mom's Brussels Sprouts Tuna Surprise, it is rather more a commitment to sit down and play, to "try it."
I do indeed hope to give it a run, either as player or DM, some time though.

[Randomatic]

The rules were not designed to "screw over the players" so much as to impart the lesson that adventurers were supposed to go out adventuring rather than stay at home making magic items. Really. Gary said so himself over on Dragonsfoot many moons ago.

Also: Don't judge the game if you haven't played it. Reading it and playing it are two quite different experiences.

That's actually one of the problems that I see with 1E, so much of it is what Gary thought was appropriate for the game. No magic marts, not for balance, but because Gary thought players shopping was a waste of game time, and that treasures needed to be "earned" by finding it in a dusty dungeon, etc.

Also, I think for people that didn't play 1E previously that the ship has already sailed. I don't think modern players would end up with anything near the same experience now that the hobby has been colored by 30 years of differing ideas. Though even back in the day the experience that you had was going to be more colored by your gaming group than modern rulesets are.

I suspect the people that fell in love with 1E and don't feel satisfaction with the direction the hobby has gone had DM's and groups that were much better suited to that style of play. While people like myself had horrid DM's and couldn't wait to move on to a different system. Less colored by the actual gaming system, and more by their early experiences with them.

I know I can't even think of playing GURPS to this day without reflexively gagging. Not that I have much of a problem with the system, but because I was introduced to the system by a socially Mal-adjusted freak.

[kaomera]

Also, I think for people that didn't play 1E previously that the ship has already sailed. I don't think modern players would end up with anything near the same experience now that the hobby has been colored by 30 years of differing ideas. Though even back in the day the experience that you had was going to be more colored by your gaming group than modern rulesets are.

This is, I think, a key issue. Gygax was actually pretty adamant that DMs and players take what he had written and make it their own. I think that some of the haphazard design of 1e was actually deliberate (more or less). The Advanced books in particular were just a collection of possible rules, ones that either Gary thought were good or else that players had asked for (iirc I've read somewhere that some things like the extended weapons tables were not something that Gary would have included on his own). This includes both house-rules and just a general understanding between the group of what the fictional reality they were playing in was and what was happening.

More modern games also typically are intended to be ''owned'' by the players and DM, there's specific statements to that effect in most of them. But despite this I find that they tend to end up lacking in that department, as played. There are advantages to this - it's much easier to fit into a new group in 3.x or 4e, fewer issues to worry about when finding your place. However I do find this unfortunate, for me, in terms of making the game fun, and I don't think there's a really good reason for it.

[Dimers]

Cursed magic items were brutal. But you also got a lot of really creative ways of turning them into situational beneficial things. Like a mini-game inside of the game. In some groups it would be a contest of "well okay, now let's see how you guys can make this horrible cursed thing into a reward".

First in a series of three (badly drawn but smart) comics about a playing group with such a mindset:

Clicky!

TL;DR -- I'll put on a magic strangling necklace so that I can't breathe poisonous fumes. No worries, it's all in the plan.

[Ravens_cry]

First in a series of three (badly drawn but smart) comics about a playing group with such a mindset:

Clicky!

TL;DR -- I'll put on a magic strangling necklace so that I can't breathe poisonous fumes. No worries, it's all in the plan.

Heh, I love that comic. I think my favourite arc was The Matrix expy/pastiche because their munchkinny ways actually made sense in-character as their characters were basically playing a video game but with deadly consequences if they "lost" so scrambling for every possible advantage made sense and the fact that the world was artificial in-in-universe excuses the existence of bugs in the game for them to latch on to.
I also like the Eberron campaign.
In my view an excellent example of how good writing and characterisation can save even so visual a work as a webcomic.

[hamlet]

That's actually one of the problems that I see with 1E, so much of it is what Gary thought was appropriate for the game. No magic marts, not for balance, but because Gary thought players shopping was a waste of game time, and that treasures needed to be "earned" by finding it in a dusty dungeon, etc.

And Gary's first response to this was "If you don't like it, change it." Really, the AD&D books would have been better titled "D&D How I like to Play it by Gary Gygax." He was extremely explicit about this, actually. If you don't like the magic creation rules, which many did not, then change them. It's not inherently bad design because you disagree with the goal or effect of the design choice.

Also keep in mind that the inspirations and antecedents of AD&D were very different than the antecedents and inspirations of modern fantasy gaming. Almost completely so.

[Premier]

That's actually one of the problems that I see with 1E, so much of it is what Gary thought was appropriate for the game. No magic marts, not for balance, but because Gary thought players shopping was a waste of game time, and that treasures needed to be "earned" by finding it in a dusty dungeon, etc.

So in other words, you're complaining that the game's designer made some decisions about what the game should be like, what elements it should and shouldn't have. Well, that's called game design.


I suspect your real problem, though you likely haven't phrased it this way even to yourself, is that 1st edition AD&D does not take the exact same game design decisions as 3E / 4E / your game of preference. But I think that's a rather close-minded approach, taking something to task for not being exactly the same as something else that you've already decided to be the best thing since sliced bread.


Another issue at hand is the matter of genre emulation, something that old-school RPG designers took for granted, and which modern-day ones (or at least WotC, specifically) seem to be largely ignorant of. It is the concept that you design an RPG with the intention of giving it the same feel, style, vibe and elements as a certain literary (or movie, etc.) genre - or possibly a certain distinct mixture of genres.

This concept is evident in old-school games. If you're familiar with the reading list of Appendix N in 1st ed. AD&D, you can see how Gary has deliberately formed the rules of the game so that gameplay will feel like a mixture of Tolkien, R.E. Howard, Jack Vance, and others. The race and class system is set up so as to encourage a varied party like the Fellowship of the Ring. The combat system lets you fight like Conan, tearing through hordes of foes and strange monsters with seemingly limitless energy, without getting exhausted and pulled down into the mud by some peasants. Magic is designed to emulate Vance's Dying Earth series, with capricious wizards treating their magic as a precious but ultimately predictable commodity. And this is why the rules discourage making your own magic items or having Magic Mart in town. Because the game was designed to play and feel like LotR and Conan, and LotR and Conan don't have Magic Mart.


These are all conscious design decisions. The same can be seen in other old-school games: the rules and elements of Star Frontiers are set up to play like Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers; Cyberpunk (and Shadowrun partially) reflect the sensibilities of the cyberpunk genre (duh). Even the totally not old-school first version of World of Darkness is consciously riffing on the feel of Anne Rice vampire novels.

WotC's D&D? Not so, or at least I can't see it to be the case. Reading the rules, I just don't see evidence that the designers were familiar with fantasy literature or that they had made some conscious decisions to make their game "play like these stories, but not like those." They only concern themselves with the rules, saying "we want to make this work this way, not that"; but it's a simple, shall we say, "algorithmic" involvement with the rules with no real concern on how the game will feel like in actual play. They just never stopped for a moment, thought about it, and went "Okay, we want the game to feel like a mixture of Bernard Cornwell's medieval historical novels mixed with Lovecraft-style eldritch abominations and existential dread." (Or whatever.) Play WotC D&D, and it feels nothing so much as a mish-mash of various elements from MMORPG's and anime cobbled onto the basic rules framework of D&D.

Of course, I might be wrong and WotC well might have made a very conscious design decision along the lines of "We want this game to feel like and MMORPG mixed with commercial (not serious/artsy) anime." In which case I'm just as entitled to reject these choices on grounds of personal preference as you are to reject Gary's choices on grounds of yours.

[rexreg]

A long time ago, in a 1st ed. AD&D campaign far, far away, I played an Illusionist.
Our party was mid-level.
Our employers crossed us, refusing to pay us, so we decided to whup on them. Their response was to hole themselves up in a mill. We broke down the door (Fighter's job). As the door was smashed to flinders, I created the Illusion of a Red Dragon bursting through the door. At the same time, our Magic User cast a Fireball, making it appear as if it were bursting from the mouth of the dragon.
Panic ensued inside the mill.
Thusly did the battle conclude.

That, my friends, is what an Illusionist is for.

[kaomera]

Another issue at hand is the matter of genre emulation, something that old-school RPG designers took for granted, and which modern-day ones (or at least WotC, specifically) seem to be largely ignorant of. It is the concept that you design an RPG with the intention of giving it the same feel, style, vibe and elements as a certain literary (or movie, etc.) genre - or possibly a certain distinct mixture of genres.

Actually the genre emulation in 1e fell pretty flat for a lot of players, both because it was (largely) taken for granted, and because of Gygax's insistence on letting the players and DM decide for themselves what they wanted to do with the game. Not that I would see it done any other way, personally; but a lot of players actually wanted to be told (or: given direction) how to play D&D.

Skip forward to 3e and then 3.5, 4e, etc. (passing 2e along the way, with it's more genre-specific settings) and I think that WotC was, in fact, aiming for genre emulation - they just saw D&D as having developed into it's own genre. I agree to a certain extent, but while with 3e they where aiming to recreate what they felt where the best and/or most popular tropes of D&D, they where designing it based on 2e play by 2e players, and I think that 3e changed people's playstyle even as it tried to emulate older styles of play... Same thing with succeeding editions. Even 3.5 and Pathfinder, which have a much smaller jump to deal with, have this issue to some extent, IMO.

It's really hard to deliberately make a game D&D while still innovating or catering to newer desires and expectations, because what D&D is has never been and never will be a static thing. Even ''Appendix N'' constantly changes as new books and other media are released. Movies, video games, the internet - all of these change the playing field, and at a faster and faster pace as time goes on. I think that, going forward, the best course of action would be to pick a specific, limited set of elements that say ''D&D'' to the designers, and then just design the best damn game possible, without including the baggage of trying to ''be D&D'' beyond those elements.

ETA:

That, my friends, is what an Illusionist is for.

Also, this.

[olthar]

Lots of reasons.

1: min/maxing wasn't done to the same extent probably because DMs had more control over the game.

2: The rules were more open to interpretation. In fact, they didn't even pretend that the rules were hard and fast (unlike 3.5 where the dmg almost literally says "don't memorize all of the rules, memorize most and hope your players know the ones you forget"). DMs were very free to make whatever and who cares if it fit the system.

This made illusionists the ultimate character in some ways. If you can imagine it, then you can make it with an illusion. Which means the power of an illusionist scaled with the player's imagination. Since D&D players tend to have that skill in spades, illusionists can be pretty powerful.

3: The same reason that some people specialize in evocation and ban conjuration and transmutation in 3.5, fun. If you agree with the premise that it is a weak class, then it can be fun to be weak.

That's actually one of the problems that I see with 1E, so much of it is what Gary thought was appropriate for the game. No magic marts, not for balance, but because Gary thought players shopping was a waste of game time, and that treasures needed to be "earned" by finding it in a dusty dungeon, etc.

I'd say this was one of the best parts of 1e. Magic marts don't balance the game, they increase the power disparity astronomically. Simply, without a magic mart there is no ability for the wizard to have every spell in the game unless the DM wants that to occur.

Besides the whole concept of a magic mart makes no economic sense. Peasants make at most a silver a day yet any town with a few hundred people has thousands of gold worth of magical items just sitting there for someone to walk in and steal it? Any intelligent adventurer would spend his or her entire life planning the perfect heist for the magic mart since it has more predictable and probably better treasure than any dusty dungeon would have. In turn the magic marts would have the most insane security that the highest paying job in the world would be security guard.

Add to that the fact that scribing scroll and enchanting items and such drains xps. So even the most minor of magic marts would have taken hundreds of mages of xps to make to sell the items as such a low price. Wizards are smart people and should know that an item is much more valuable when it is rare so why make 20 when you can make 1 and sell it for 20x the price?

The only type of setting that a magic mart makes sense in is one like Eberron where they actually thought about the consequences of having that much magic available to anyone. In a more traditional setting the magic mart makes no sense at all.