There is a line of spells for INT casters called Focus X Spellcaster's Essence(crude, modest, runed, etc). The only purpose of these spells is to summon an item used in certain Spell Research recipes. There are 2 versions of each spell: one that summons a single item and one that summons 5 items. All of the spells in this line (both single and mass) are available via the merchants in PoK...except for the very last mass summoning spell: Focus Mass Runed Spellcaster's Essence. For some reason, this spell must be researched. I don't know if this is intentional or a mistake, but the resulting combine is No Trade. I was hoping that the devs would consider removing the No Trade tag on this spell because it doesn't really make sense that it's not tradeable, since all of the other spells that are made with the Research skill ARE tradeable, including things like the Enchanter abilities to enchant metals. Having this single spell in the line be research only AND having it be No Trade is a bit of a head scratcher. It seems completely out of line with other researched spells.
All the Spell: (Mass) Focus X are No Trade. I feel like the classic answer is a design holdover from "something" from before research had type restrictions removed, but I can't think of what that would be at the moment. Under the current guise of all classes can research everything, yeah. You can craft all the Focus spells in the whole line from research, but yes only the ones lower than Runed are on vendors. It looks like we may not have had those recipes until SoF TS revamp, so that may be part of it. Change it? Yeah does not make sense with current live rules. Reason? Yeah they probably also originally had a design reason.
Yeah, it just feels like an oversight rather than intentional since all of the other spells in the line are on vendors, including the single summon version of Runic. Honestly, I'd be happy if they put it on a vendor like the others as well. Having it be the only one available via research and No Trade just feels strange since there are other types of spells that can only be researched, yet aren't No Trade.
They stopped making recipes for all spells, thats one expansion. They stopped putting spells on vendors, thats a different expansion. So these spells just intersected that point in time.
