D&D Shopkeeper Generator
Pick a shop. Get a name, a voice, a price, a haggle DC, and a secret your party might pry out of them. Ready for the table in one click.
You want craft or you want cheap? 450. Choose.
What the tool gives you
Everything a shop scene actually needs
A price is the easy part. The rest is what the party will remember.
Asking price & buyback offer
The shop's incentive shapes the number. A fence lowballs on buybacks. An auction house marks up on prestige. You see the right side of the counter for the scene you are actually running.
A quote to read aloud
Every archetype has its own cadence. Dwarven smiths are proud. Hedge witches barter in riddles. The quote comes prefilled with the item name and price, so you just read it.
A DC and an actual floor
Not a vague "make a Persuasion check." A Persuasion DC keyed to the archetype, and the exact gp the price lands on if the party succeeds. Auction house? No haggling. Hedge witch? Go wild.
A hook hidden behind a blur
Every shopkeeper has something the party can find out. Tap to reveal. Skip it if you do not need it. Drop it in if the table is ready for a side quest.
Why “what is the price” is the wrong first question.
The Dungeon Master’s Guide gives you a range. “501 to 5,000 gold” for a rare item is not a price. It is a spreadsheet waiting to happen, and nobody at your table wants to watch you do math for three minutes while the party stands in a shop.
The real problem in a shop scene is everything around the number. Who is behind the counter. How they talk. Whether they will take half now and half later. What they are hiding. Without that, a magic item shop is a vending machine with dice.
This generator leads with the shopkeeper, not the spreadsheet. The price is there, calculated from 5e rarity tiers and adjusted for the shop archetype. But the point is the shopkeeper. Give the party a name to remember and a reason to come back.
The six archetypes
- Dwarven Forge. Fair on weapons and armor. Marks up potions. High haggle DC because they are proud of the craft.
- Back-Alley Fence. Cheap buys, brutal buybacks. Does not ask where anything came from.
- Temple Vault. Fair prices, principled conversations. Will not traffic in cursed things.
- Hedge Witch’s Cart. Cheap potions. Will barter for stranger currency than gold.
- High Auction House. Prestige markup on rare and higher. Refuses to list common items. Does not haggle.
- Traveling Caravan. Moderate markup. Leaves at dawn. Willing to split payment over six months.
A note on the price math
The base prices use D&D 5e rarity tiers, adjusted by a world-economy modifier (low magic, standard, high magic). The shop archetype then shifts the price up or down based on what that shop actually wants to move. A hedge witch sells potions for thirty percent less than a dwarf does. An auction house charges forty percent more for prestige.
One last thing
If the first shopkeeper does not fit the town, click Roll new shopkeeper. The price stays. The name, voice, and secret change.
Use the Magic Item Price Calculator
If you do not need the shopkeeper flavor and just want a clean gold value for a 5e magic item, that tool is faster.
Open the price calculatorForget which NPC said what last session?
Saga20 captures every name, shop, and side hook your table generates, then builds a campaign wiki so nothing gets lost.
More free tools
Use next at your table
Magic Item Price Calculator
Your merchant needs numbers to haggle over. Price anything on the shelf by rarity and local magic level.
LootMagic Item Picker
Stock the shop with things the party will care about, filtered by class and tier rather than picked at random.
RecapsSession Recap Generator
That shopkeeper is going to come up again. Capture the session so nobody forgets their name by next week.