4th ed Merchant Help

[HMS Invincible]

My party just got back to the big city and they decided that instead of selling their loot to merchants for 1/5 the price. They go out to look for other adventurers and try to get closer to the base price.

Should I do something about this? Like the merchants get mad over competition or sic the city guards on them for selling without a license? Or am I overreacting to something trivial? Is it worth the trouble to deny them extra gold? Should I delete treasure from their treasure parcels to compensate?

[Pink]

Personally I've never really agreed with 4e's pricing system. The devaluation of perfectly good magical items seems ludicrous. While I certainly won't say to let them sell it at full value, certainly let them resell it for more than what the core book says. What's more even merchant's should be willing to purchase them for at least half their value. I mean, a 100% profit margin on an item, even for something hard to sell I'm pretty sure if there's a semi-active market and a merchant has the gold they'd go for that.

If the players try selling it purely on their own they should have difficulty though. Maybe from the other merchant's (Depends on how wealthy they are and how protective they are of their trade), however more so from potential customers. A dude in armor comes up to you trying to sell a weapon. He says it's magic, yeah, but do you really trust him?

Use your own judgement in what you think is appropriate, and if you need to lower what they get in the future to balance out, so be it, but I'd certainly say throw them a bone and ignore that silly reselling price that's printed in the book.

[Saph]

I'd let them do it. The 4e rule that you can only sell an item for an absolute maximum of 20% of its cost - even if you have the contacts and social skills of a literal demigod - is one of the silliest things about the edition. If they're willing to do the legwork, they should be able to get 50% without too much trouble.

I don't think the extra money gained will be a big deal because WBL in 4e increases geometrically - about x5 every 5 levels. So no matter how much profit you make, the inflation effect from gaining levels will trivialise it fairly quickly.

- Saph

[MickJay]

Maybe let them leave the items with some merchant so that he would sell the items on the behalf of your players, keeping 40 or 50% of the items' value. It would take at least a few days or weeks for the items to be sold, by that time the players will level up a little and the extra gold won't make that much of a difference.

[-Cor-]

Maybe let them leave the items with some merchant so that he would sell the items on the behalf of your players, keeping 40 or 50% of the items' value. It would take at least a few days or weeks for the items to be sold, by that time the players will level up a little and the extra gold won't make that much of a difference.

That's... a really good suggestion.

Seriously, I wouldn't have thought of that. Effectively, you can either have 20% now or 60-70% in a couple weeks.

As an alternative suggestion, perhaps you could make selling to particular merchant a social skill challenge? Not too complex, but hard difficulty. A success would grant a better selling price, a partial success would enable them to sell at the normal 20%, and a failure would mean the merchant wouldn't want their goods at all (believed them fake... whathaveyou) and they'd have to find someone else to sell to.

[mrmaxmrmax]

As a manager of a comic book store, I have to buy things from customers from time to time. I would like to tell you why the 20% makes perfect sense to me (and I believe a lot of this is mentioned in the rules, as well, but I don't have time for citations, as well).

If someone wants to sell me a Spawn #1 (which is listed as high as $10.00), I obviously can't offer $10 for it. I would have a profit of nothing once I resold it for that price.

If we go with the 50% number, I am taking in a book for $5.00 to sell for $10. The problem here is that I sell one copy per year of that book (on average). I am looking at doubling my investment over a year's time, but in the mean time. I am sitting with a loss on my budget sheet.

(As a side note, Spawn #1 is very easy to find, so I would say no to it based on the other eight copies we have in the store.)

Now, to 20%: If an item a customer is trying to sell me is something I won't be able to turn around in 30 days, I am not interested in going over 20% for a book. I imagine the merchants of D&D are similar. When you stop by a small Dwarven town and try to pawn off a +2 holy symbol of Bahamut, you are dealing with an item with no practical use for that merchant. In a bazaar, things may be different, but if I were buying, I would immediately convert that thing down into residuum.

I feel I've rambled. Sorry for the trouble. I recommend you either more carefully pick the items your players receive in dungeons or have merchants interested in equal trades (level 5 item for a level 5 item).

Maxwell.

[Pink]

As a manager of a comic book store, I have to buy things from customers from time to time. I would like to tell you why the 20% makes perfect sense to me (and I believe a lot of this is mentioned in the rules, as well, but I don't have time for citations, as well).

If someone wants to sell me a Spawn #1 (which is listed as high as $10.00), I obviously can't offer $10 for it. I would have a profit of nothing once I resold it for that price.

If we go with the 50% number, I am taking in a book for $5.00 to sell for $10. The problem here is that I sell one copy per year of that book (on average). I am looking at doubling my investment over a year's time, but in the mean time. I am sitting with a loss on my budget sheet.

(As a side note, Spawn #1 is very easy to find, so I would say no to it based on the other eight copies we have in the store.)

Now, to 20%: If an item a customer is trying to sell me is something I won't be able to turn around in 30 days, I am not interested in going over 20% for a book. I imagine the merchants of D&D are similar. When you stop by a small Dwarven town and try to pawn off a +2 holy symbol of Bahamut, you are dealing with an item with no practical use for that merchant. In a bazaar, things may be different, but if I were buying, I would immediately convert that thing down into residuum.

I feel I've rambled. Sorry for the trouble. I recommend you either more carefully pick the items your players receive in dungeons or have merchants interested in equal trades (level 5 item for a level 5 item).

Maxwell.

Well, to be fair you're dealing with quite a small amount of money there, and comic books really are not magic items at all. No matter how you look at it magic items should be relatively rare enough that there is always some market for them (Even if the item is eventually sold to those who will use it against the PC), and on a vastly more expensive scale than comic books.

Say someone offered to sell you a comic that was very rare indeed, selling around $1,000 (I have no idea about comics alright?), and you happen to have $500 around that you can use without harming your financial situation. Knowing that you can get a 100% return and you will eventually sell it to someone (Possibly in less than a year), I think you'll find the situation changes greatly from your $5 a year thing. Of course, this does depend on the merchant's capability and the market, which are really up to the DM. If the PC's are in a decently sized city though and there are other adventurer's or Lord's and aristocrats rich enough to equip proper guards, I don't see why there'd be a problem with this.
Magic Items are not like common comic books and should be compared on a different basis. They should be considered rare, signed, sealed in mint and whatever else can add value and make it readily sellable at a better price.

[kieza]

I just recalculated the costs of magic items, both in terms of gold and reagents to make.

Level 1: 240g
2: 280g
3: 320g
4: 360g
5: 400g
6+: 2x the cost of an item 5 levels lower.

It may help to make a spreadsheet in Excel. Also, change the Disenchant Item ritual to return half the cost, not 1/5. If there are other mechanics that depend on 1/5 an item's value, change them to 1/2 as well.

[Yakk]

Cheat.

Turn it into an adventure.

So they are trying to sell magic items worth X$? Finding the correct adventureres (and remember, you don't have to make 'adventurer' a common profession in your game world -- I always found that to be silly) can take effort.

Work the increased sale value of the magic items into the treasure parcels of the adventures involved in finding a buyer for the magic item.

Heck, you can even make the deal better. Say they are a level 5 party trying to find a better buyer for a level 6 magic item. You build a 10 encounter adventure around selling that item to the perfect buyer (who they get hints about).

At the end of the adventure, there is an adventurer who is willing to swap the level 6 magic item for the level 8 magic item they have, plus the GP value of a level 5 magic item.

This leaves a level 9, 7, 6 and the GP value of a level 5, plus 1/5th the GP value of a level 6 magic item, in other treasure parcels to find along the adventure.

You could, of course, cut the adventure down. A 3 encounter adventure should end up with about 1/3 of the treasure parcel for their level coming out of it. :)

Note that much lower level magic items -- like 5 levels under the character -- can be treated as closer to cash treasure (ie, can be easily sold for 50% of purchase price) without causing a problem.

The problem is when you take a +4 level magic item, sell it for book or near book value, and buy another +X level magic item. The PCs are supposed to find their most treasured magic items _as part of the adventure_, not in an auction house.

Because auctions houses are boring. And players should be rewarded for doing exciting things.

If the PCs want to play auction house simulator, pull out the accounting text books and tax exams. Whichever PC wants to play the auction house can do that while the rest of the PCs go adventure. ;-)

[Thajocoth]

I used the 20% base, but allow the PCs to use diplomacy (or intimidate) to increase it. If my PCs tried what yours are trying, I'd give them a bonus based on their streetwise roll to find such a party, as that's an awesome idea on their part.

I also let them use diplomacy (or intimidate) to reduce prices. Haggling makes the buying and selling more interactive, and more fun for the players, imo. On average, Enchant Magic Item is still slightly better than buying, and Disenchant Magic Item is not as good as selling...

The DC is a single assistable roll DC 20 to reduce/raise the price by 10%, with each 5 above that reducing/raising the price by another 10%. (Adding 5 to the DC per tier.) So selling a an item, with a diplomacy roll of 26, Would sell it for 40% of it's value instead of 20%. Or, buying ... Let's say I roll a 3 on the markup, and they roll a 28 on their diplomacy, Would sell for 110%.

In your scenario, I'd add an assist to their diplomacy based on their Streetwise check to find these adventurers. 1 assist = DC 20. 1 additional assist per 5 above that. (-5 per tier.)

If the party wanted to toss in Bluff checks anywhere, I might allow that too and come up with some quick insights for the characters they're haggling with. The more creative the party gets, the more chances they get to get assists to raise/reduce the cost of selling/buying items, rewarding their creativity and good RP.

[tcrudisi]

As a manager of a comic book store, I have to buy things from customers from time to time. I would like to tell you why the 20% makes perfect sense to me (and I believe a lot of this is mentioned in the rules, as well, but I don't have time for citations, as well).

If someone wants to sell me a Spawn #1 (which is listed as high as $10.00), I obviously can't offer $10 for it. I would have a profit of nothing once I resold it for that price.

If we go with the 50% number, I am taking in a book for $5.00 to sell for $10. The problem here is that I sell one copy per year of that book (on average). I am looking at doubling my investment over a year's time, but in the mean time. I am sitting with a loss on my budget sheet.

Now, to 20%: If an item a customer is trying to sell me is something I won't be able to turn around in 30 days, I am not interested in going over 20% for a book. I imagine the merchants of D&D are similar. When you stop by a small Dwarven town and try to pawn off a +2 holy symbol of Bahamut, you are dealing with an item with no practical use for that merchant. In a bazaar, things may be different, but if I were buying, I would immediately convert that thing down into residuum.

QFT. Even a level 1 magic item sells for 360gp. That's a lot of gold. How many people can actually afford to pay that? I am going to guess less than 1% of the population (since peasants tend to be poor). And that is just a level 1 magic item.

So a merchant looks at that magic item and goes, "Gee, that is a nice sword. But how many people will want it AND be able to purchase it? Well, casters likely will not want it. Only the fighter types. So maybe 25% of adventurers will be able to use it. But most of them will already have their weapon of choice or be interested in something else. Our 25% is now down to probably 5%. However, most rich people won't be interested in buying it just to own it. So even though 5% of adventurers will likely be interested, perhaps 10% of people who can afford it are actually adventurers. So now I'm at 10% of 5% of 1% of the population. That ends up being .00005 of the total population. Yeah, it's going to take me a long time to sell this. While I'm trying to sell this very high priced item, I could have sold many smaller and cheaper items instead. So the opportunity cost of this item is high. So I'm afraid I can only offer you 20% of it's total value."

Yeah, 20% sounds about right to me. Heck, 20% might even be a bit too high when you are talking about epic level items. I figure a level 1 magic item might take at least a year to sell ... a level 30 magic item? You could hold onto that for decades before finally managing to sell it.

[tcrudisi]

I used the 20% base, but allow the PCs to use diplomacy (or intimidate) to increase it. If my PCs tried what yours are trying, I'd give them a bonus based on their streetwise roll to find such a party, as that's an awesome idea on their part.

I also let them use diplomacy (or intimidate) to reduce prices. Haggling makes the buying and selling more interactive, and more fun for the players, imo. On average, Enchant Magic Item is still slightly better than buying, and Disenchant Magic Item is not as good as selling...

I like the idea and where you are going with this, but I personally would never use it. I figure 4e's main selling point is balance. I trust WotC spent the time balancing out the WBL chart as well as the loot per encounter chart. Until someone proves to me that the loot per encounter chart is horribly off, I'd rather just stick with it and ensure my game stays balanced, rather than allowing a Bard to be able to sell items for 30%+ more than he otherwise could by the rules. That might quickly turn the game into a much more magic-intense world than the one outlined in the loot per encounter chart where the players get 4 magic items a level. I feel that the more house rules I introduce, the less likely the game is to stay balanced.

[Oracle_Hunter]

Cheat.

Turn it into an adventure.
This is the best advice. You see, the points made above about costing are all absolutely true - we're used to selling for half because that's what you do in every computer RPG even if it makes no sense. A generic merchant without a buyer on tap is not going to want to tie a lot of his capital on an item which is very expensive and has a limited consumer base.

But, finding a merchant who wants that particular item or tracking down the adventurers themselves - well, of course you can get a lot more money for it, but you'll have to work for it.

Some hooks:
- the PCs hear about a powerful arms dealer who, because of his clientele, is willing to pay more for magic items. Unfortunately, he's currently holed up in his home "for some reason" (fending off dissatisfied customers, or rival BBEGs who don't want him supplying their foes).

- a party of adventurers had just been in town looking for magic items for some military campaign they were going to run. They were looking for items on the cheap, even though they had plenty of gold. Track them down, and you can make decent gold - provided they aren't actually Evil and they try to jump you after the sale, or that they're not captured by someone Evil.

- did the PCs know that the sale of magical items is tightly regulated in The City? Well, after a visit from a "representative" of the local Legitimate Businessman Guild (LBG), they are... but they had just found a great customer! Unfortunately, the customer can't really get out of town - the LBG wants him dead for selling magical items to a rival organization, and they have eyes everywhere. Can the PCs conduct the sale without getting one of them (or their customer) killed?

[Totally Guy]

If the merchant has to hold on to the weapon for a longer period of time he also has a degree of risk in doing so.

The item could be stolen or damaged and that would leave the merchant with nothing. A merchant with such a reputation for quality arms and armour would probably need a way to protect his aquisitions which could be pricey in itself.

Unless the merchant used "Leomund's Bargain Insurance Policy":smalltongue:

[Saph]

This is the best advice. You see, the points made above about costing are all absolutely true - we're used to selling for half because that's what you do in every computer RPG even if it makes no sense.

Oh, come on. The 4e 20% figure makes FAR less sense than the 50% one. Why do you think every other RPG uses 50%? It's not because the 4e designers are so much more perceptive than everyone else. It's because they wanted to discourage players for trying to sell items they don't want and buy items they do.

Sure, if you just walk into a shop, then you'll probably only get 20%. But at high levels, PCs have among the highest social ability in the entire world. It's ridiculous that a hero who kills dragons, hobnobs with kings, and teleports and plane shifts around the multiverse is still so financially clueless that he can't figure out how to sell gear at a decent price.


Cheat.

Turn it into an adventure.

I don't know if this is good advice. Sure, an adventure to sell a useless mid-level weapon might be fun - the first time. But if the DM insists that the players have to go off on a quest every time they want to get a decent price for something, the players are going to get justifiably annoyed after a while.

I know I'd get pretty frustrated if every time I tried to go shopping the DM gave me a choice between being ripped off and spending 2 hours on something I wasn't really interested in doing.

- Saph

[Oracle_Hunter]

Oh, come on. The 4e 20% figure makes FAR less sense than the 50% one. Why do you think every other RPG uses 50%? It's not because the 4e designers are so much more perceptive than everyone else. It's because they wanted to discourage players for trying to sell items they don't want and buy items they do.

Sure, if you just walk into a shop, then you'll probably only get 20%. But at high levels, PCs have among the highest social ability in the entire world. It's ridiculous that a hero who kills dragons, hobnobs with kings, and teleports and plane shifts around the multiverse is still so financially clueless that he can't figure out how to sell gear at a decent price.
50% is silly because merchants already get regular merchandise from their suppliers - they're not exactly hurting for wares to sell. It is used in Computer RPGs because it is a really easy number to calculate - particularly for players.

Think about it

Mundane store buying a Magic item
You're running a weapon store. Once per month a caravan laden with weapons comes to town, and you buy up some amount of his cargo. Although you can sell daggers and axes pretty easily, swords and polearms are really only bought up by mercenaries - so you usually buy a lot of daggers and only the occasional polearm. Now some adventurer comes up to you and offers to sell you a Longsword +1 (3.5 list price of 2315 gold). You look at the entire value of your current inventory and realize that even 1000 gold is probably more than its list price; if you spent that amount on that one sword, could you afford to buy enough daggers at the end of the month? And more importantly, who is going to have 2315 gold to buy this sword? Common mercenaries rarely have that much gold lying around - Mercenary Leaders make 6 sp per day, so he could afford it after working 3,859 days, or about 10 1/2 years.

Now, 463 gold - that's a bit more than an equivalent Masterwork weapon (315 gold) and, while he doesn't deal in those regularly, he might buy one from time-to-time if he got a good deal. Sure, he might only have one guy per year who could afford that Longsword +1, but if he's feeling lucky, he might take that gamble. Or not, depending on his financial situation.

Magic Mart
Your high-level wizard retires, and sets up a shop to sell off his old gear. He settles down in a big city which has lots of people moving through it, but even so he probably doesn't get more than a handful of potential customers per month. That's fine, he has plenty of gold. An adventurer walks in and wants to sell a Longsword +1. Well, the wizard can afford it, but why buy it? He could spend 315 gold to get a Masterwork Longsword and 1000 gold for the material components to make one himself. Sure, it's 157.5 gold more, but he'll be making profit either way - plus, he won't have to shell out 2315 gold up front for a sword he might never sell.

463 gold? That's golden - he'd buy that on the spot. Chump change for a high level wizard and hey, why not give back to the community a bit?
It's not that adventurers don't sell gear "for a decent price" - it's that no sane merchant would pay so much for a magic item unless he regularly visits the City of Brass - and maybe not even then!

I suppose a Diplomancer could convince merchants to pay full price for a magic item, but all that'd do is bankrupt a string of merchants sitting on magic items they can't sell, even to just break even.

EDIT:

Of course, 4E magic item costs are hard-coded into the system - you can only Disenchant any magic item for 1/5th its value in Residuum. Bad comes to worst, any merchant can convert his Longsword +1 into a more liquid asset (ba dum tsch) - and no sane merchant would pay more than that value, for a good he may never have a buyer for.

Naturally, alter the Disenchant Magic Item ritual and you'll alter this logic. For example, a 100% efficient Disenchant Ritual would produce magic marts that buy for 75-90% of value (depending on the density of Ritualists in a given area) - an adventurer may be willing to buy that Longsword +5 at list cost rather than try and find a Ritualist before the Elder Red Dragon can track him down :smalltongue:

[Saph]

I'm not buying it, Oracle.

Have a look at actual RPG economies like World of Warcraft, where there's an exchange rate between dollars and in-game currency, and thus people are effectively paying real money (and so it's about the closest you can get to a simulation.) You can get a LOT more than 20% of an item's value.

- Saph

[Pink]

It's not that adventurers don't sell gear "for a decent price" - it's that no sane merchant would pay so much for a magic item unless he regularly visits the City of Brass - and maybe not even then!

Honestly I think we're getting slightly away from the original topic, which is the balance of selling gear for more than 20%. It seems that from the increase of costs alone by level, selling for a higher price is quite feasible, especially if there's some effort put into it by players to find top dollar, wherever that exists in the setting, and not something to worry about too much.

However as far as how realistic it is to sell it, honestly that is very campaign dependent. A high magic setting, low magic setting, city or country side, the population of adventurers and rich nobility and royalty, all of these things vary from campaign to campaign and all of them can effect the price of what something can be sold for. It's true, if it's just a weapon merchant in a small city, they probably don't have that much cash on hand. But what if they're selling to the leader of the Merchant guild in the capital city? What if there is a known noble who has had some shady deals and is looking for ways to better equip his guards? So many different things could change, so saying 20% or 50% is more realistic is a somewhat moot point because it can vary so much by the setting and a particular spot in a setting. Obviously trying to sell a magic item in a farm town will not get you much gold at all.
Also, do keep in mind, with the wizard example, this is 4e. A wizard pays just as much to craft a weapon as to buy it, the only difference is they don't have to find it. Another rule I don't agree with, but if you're arguing for RAW, that should be considered on the wizard crafting arguement.

[Oracle_Hunter]

I'm not buying it, Oracle.

Have a look at actual RPG economies like World of Warcraft, where there's an exchange rate between dollars and in-game currency, and thus people are effectively paying real money (and so it's about the closest you can get to a simulation.) You can get a LOT more than 20% of an item's value.
Again, those are false economies. You merely have to spend time gathering resources (provided at a steady rate by the program), and then some more time to make them - everything in WoW is time = money, whether it is gold or dollars. There is little uncertainty in how much effort is worth how much cash - and you can easily locate sellers and set prices by a zero transaction cost auctioning system.

IRL, manufacturing and selling goods is far riskier and far more complicated. Raw materials come in irregularly and can be affected by anything from rainfall to raiders; the people who convert materials to goods need to spend time and money (for food, shelter, clothing) to do that - not to mention that their manufacturing rate can be altered by sickness, aging, or theft. Finally, the caravans need to transport the goods to markets - and those merchants never know exactly what the demand in the next town will be, whether he will lose some of his merchandise to misfortune or banditry, and whether the shopkeepers in the next town will pay him enough to pay his employees (particularly the guards!), feed and clothe himself and still have enough left over to buy the next shipment - which could be any size or any price.

Prices are set by Supply and Demand - in D&D both of those are handwaved, but if you care about verisimilitude it's worth thinking about what those values really should be.

EDIT:

Also, do keep in mind, with the wizard example, this is 4e. A wizard pays just as much to craft a weapon as to buy it, the only difference is they don't have to find it. Another rule I don't agree with, but if you're arguing for RAW, that should be considered on the wizard crafting arguement.
This is very important, as I noted in my earlier post. And, I'm sure you can see the problems with selling Magic Items for 50% without changing the conversion rate for Disenchantment - at the very least, your players will never Disenchant anything; they'll spend all their time looking for someone who will buy it for twice as much as it is "worth."

But, raising both of those will do little aside from flooding you campaign with 2 1/2 times as much money as the system assumes you're using.

[Saph]

Again, those are false economies. You merely have to spend time gathering resources (provided at a steady rate by the program), and then some more time to make them - everything in WoW is time = money, whether it is gold or dollars. There is little uncertainty in how much effort is worth how much cash - and you can easily locate sellers and set prices by a zero transaction cost auctioning system.

Most of that applies to 4e. Items have a set price and a set time required to make. Creating them is also straightforward.

That means that the only big issue is finding a seller. And given the astronomical amounts of money that magical items require to make, people ARE going to go to some effort to find one. Would you sell the most valuable possession you own for a joke price?

Look, there's a reason most RPGs use the 50% figure. It's a compromise between a really good deal and a really bad one. The 4e 20% figure is an artificially low one created to discourage players from selling things. WotC didn't do it because they did exhaustive research or because they had some kind of special insight into medieval economics, they did it because they wanted to provide a disincentive for players to sell magic items.

- Saph

[Oracle_Hunter]

Most of that applies to 4e. Items have a set price and a set time required to make. Creating them is also straightforward.

That means that the only big issue is finding a seller. And given the astronomical amounts of money that magical items require to make, people ARE going to go to some effort to find one. Would you sell the most valuable possession you own for a joke price?
But in 4E, the 20% value is hard-coded into the Disenchant Ritual; residuum is much more useful than any given magic item. A Magic Longsword +1 is going to only be useful to people who use longswords regularly; 20% of that in residuum can be used for anything from making a more relevant magic item to teleporting across the continent.

Likewise, buying enough ore to make a Longsword is only useful if you need a longsword. Even 20% of that cost can buy you a nice meal or shoe your horse.

I think you are focusing too much on the seller part - what use does any potential buyer have for a Longsword +1? If the only answer is "to resell" then you are making a huge assumption about the demand for Longsword +1 - basically that they are commonly bought and sold items. Even assuming that adventurers are the primary engines of the economy (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AnEconomyIsYou), merchants only have a fixed amount of capital on hand at any given time. Most magical items are worth far more than other common items - a Bag of Holding is 1000 gp, a really good meal is 1 gp - which means anyone buying magical items has bottomless pockets (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WeBuyAnything) or can resell those items quickly enough to always have enough cash on hand to survive until tomorrow, let alone buy more.

[Saph]

I think you are focusing too much on the seller part - what use does any potential buyer have for a Longsword +1?

To fight with. 4e's world is crammed with deadly monsters. In a world like that, combat items are extremely valuable, probably the most valuable things around.


Most magical items are worth far more than other common items - a Bag of Holding is 1000 gp, a really good meal is 1 gp - which means anyone buying magical items has bottomless pockets (http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/WeBuyAnything) or can resell those items quickly enough to always have enough cash on hand to survive until tomorrow, let alone buy more.

You're missing the fact that magic items in 4e scale exponentially with value. A level 10 item is 5x the value of a level 5 item, and so on. This means that by definition anyone who can afford to buy and sell Paragon-level items can treat Heroic-level items as minor purchases.

So, unless a city is universally low-level, you should be able to sell lower-level items for a good price.

- Saph

[Pink]

I think you are focusing too much on the seller part - what use does any potential buyer have for a Longsword +1?

Perhaps you're focusing too much on the buyer that does not have a use or ability to purchase/resell the sword and less on the buyer who does. Part of the hinge pin of this topic is finding the proper seller. While it is a setting dependent point there should be some large center, or some merchant who specialises in buying and reselling magical items, or somebody rich enough out there who would have the capability to purchase it for more than 50%. The rarity of this person may vary from campaign to campaign, but they should still probably exist. It's silly to think that weapons will always be rebought at something close to 20% of what their purchase price is. That kind of devaluation for something that never loses value is crazy.

Alternatively there could also be another use for magical items that would make a much better economic value. What about magic items as a sort've currency in and of themselves? This of course still depends on the relative market and economy of the area, but honestly it wouldn't be impossible to have magic items be passed amongst merchants as part of a way to pay for orders and trade. Worse comes to worse it's liquidated to pay for debts, but until then it has the potential value to be sold for something more. That potential value should allow it to travel much easier at better prices no?

Hmmm...maybe I'm crazy with that last theory.

[Oracle_Hunter]

Perhaps you're focusing too much on the buyer that does not have a use or ability to purchase/resell the sword and less on the buyer who does. Part of the hinge pin of this topic is finding the proper seller. While it is a setting dependent point there should be some large center, or some merchant who specialises in buying and reselling magical items, or somebody rich enough out there who would have the capability to purchase it for more than 50%. The rarity of this person may vary from campaign to campaign, but they should still probably exist. It's silly to think that weapons will always be rebought at something close to 20% of what their purchase price is. That kind of devaluation for something that never loses value is crazy.
One of the problems with this, is that you have to assume that buying and selling magic items is a major part of the economy.
As it is, magical items (particularly high level ones) are just too expensive for anyone aside from kings and adventurers to buy - and the king can't afford to waste 2315 gold on a Longsword +1 when he could train and arm a platoon of heavy infantry for the same amount. Unless your campaign setting is literally crawling with adventurers of all levels (like WoW) there just isn't going to be enough slack in the feudal economy to afford spending the equivalent of a year's production of grain from a nation on a weapon that does 1 more point of damage than a weapon 2000 gold cheaper.

This is still true in 4E - Ritualists can either spend 1000 gold to make a Bag of Holding or cast Linked Portal 8 times; unless they have infinite resources, they will have to make that decision, and so will the people bankrolling them.
Now, I want to be clear - there is no empirical reason why 20% should be the right discount rate, or 50% or 70%. In real life, prices are set by supply and demand - people only buy things that they think are useful, and people only sell things when someone wants to buy them. However, this can be awkward to figure out on the fly, so D&D abstracts it by giving us a fixed discount rate. As I pointed out in my first post, unless the buyer expects to re-sell the item within a short period of time (or if he has a bottomless wallet) he literally cannot afford to just buy magical items willy-nilly. He might buy universally useful ones (like a Bag of Holding) but if it's something your party doesn't want, it's probably not going to be too popular anyone else - few people will want to shell out 2.6K for a Resounding Flail when they could just make a Resounding Maul for the same price.

The reason why I believe 20% is a more realistic discount rate than 50% is simple:
(1) Most of the economy does not trade in magic items (demand is low)
(2) Magic Items are extremely expensive in relation to other goods (cost is high)
(3) The few people who do want magic items have no way to know what shop in the world has the item they desire (transaction costs are high)

This means that the volume of magical items being sold must be very low; shopkeepers who buy magic items will be transforming liquid assets (coins) into illiquid ones (magical items). Provided that people require the continual expenditure of money to survive, any shopkeeper that aggressively buys magical items is going to quickly run out of money to keep himself alive. At best, magical items would be a side-business and he can rely on a more stable job to keep himself alive; at worst he will have to trade away his valuable items for less than he paid for them, just to survive.

In such a world, magical items are a risky investment - a wise merchant would invest most of his money in more stable areas and occasionally speculate in Longswords +1; furthermore, he should expect a far better margin on magical items than he would on his more reliable goods (to compensate for the added risk). Hence, the will spend less effort to find magical items, and are going to want a very good deal before buying one.
No merchant has to buy anything at any price. If the adventurers do not like his price, they are free to find someone else who will give them better for it - but in the low-volume world of magical item sales, those people are few and far between. So yes, finding the "right" buyer does tend to solve most of these problems - since the "right" buyer will pay the asking price for any good; there just aren't many of them around, because speculating heavily in illiquid goods tends to leave you broke.

The Magic Item Merchant (tangent)
Ideally, your Magic Item Merchant is someone who purchases items for his own use - like an adventurer. For him, the item is not an investment, but something valuable for its usefulness; a particularly useful item will fetch a higher price than one which he cannot use. In 4E, the ability to disenchant magical items places a floor on these prices - no less than 20% of list price will be offered. That said, 20% plus 25 gold is probably going to be the most common offer - if you cannot use a thing, why buy it?

Kings make poor merchants because much of their wealth is tied up in keeping the kingdom running - paying for armies, upkeep on fortresses, and the like - while most other wealthy mortal merchants will be more interested in the monthly trade in wool than in sinking money into a dangerous venture (magic items tend to attract adventurers... who want to steal your treasure!). Ritualists would likely buy any magical item for 20% + 25 gp since residuum is always helpful to them.

If I had to make a permanent magic item merchant who would buy at 50% or higher, he'd be an extradimensional being that otherwise has little use for gold. He'd be more likely to barter other magic goods than offer gold - but as he's found that the mortals seem to like the stuff, he probably keeps some around. Ideally he would have a magic doorway in every major city that connects to his main shop - and have wards that will guarantee his safety - so that it is easy for customers to find him; his name would be legendary, so that everyone knows his business.

[cdrcjsn]

Concentrating on how the economy works in the fantasy world is falling into a trap. The considerations of that fantasy merchant are of concern in a simulationist game. 4e, is first and foremost, a gamist rules system.

It doesn't matter why items sell for 20%. It sells for 20% because that is what the designers wanted and the game was balanced around that.

You can fiddle with the rules to force 4e into a simulationist model of the world, but you do so at the risk of throwing off some of those basic gamist assumptions.

For one thing, your PCs will be richer than normal unless you follow some of the examples above (I like taking out the difference in future treasure bundle). Richer PCs = more items = stronger PCs = headache for the DM.

[Oracle_Hunter]

Concentrating on how the economy works in the fantasy world is falling into a trap.
Yeah, this is the real truth.

To be honest, I tried varying my pricing models in-game and all it does it slow things up; even though haggling would have been the norm in medieval times, it's really not all that important in a game about going in dungeons and killing dragons.

I will admit that the 20% rule solved the "take everything" problem. There is no reason why adventurers should pick up every rusted shortsword and stinking hide armor they find with the hopes of re-selling it in the capital, let alone Ye Olde Hamlet - yet that is exactly what my Rogue in the Ptolus game did. Fortunately, the DM made pretty much everything masterwork after a point - including a pair of clubs :smalltongue:

[Saph]

To be honest, I tried varying my pricing models in-game and all it does it slow things up; even though haggling would have been the norm in medieval times, it's really not all that important in a game about going in dungeons and killing dragons.

Setting the prices at 20% leads to more haggling and comparison shopping, not less. If I offer a player 50% they're probably going to take it. If I offer them 20% the natural reaction is to find a merchant who isn't ripping them off.

Seriously, EVERY player I've introduced to 4e has had the exact same reaction to the selling rules. "Twenty percent? Like hell! Why can't I find someone who'll give me a decent deal? The book says what? Okay, what if I go find someone who'll use the thing himself?"

End result is either:

1. after enough shopping, the DM gives up and lets the players get a decent price,
2. the players give up and leave for the next mission, feeling like they just got cheated.

Neither one's a great solution. It's one of those features of 4e where you can see why they did it, but they really should have known not to.

- Saph

[HMS Invincible]

Wow, this got pretty off topic from a question concerning responses to a player trying to squeeze some extra gold out of his DM.

P.S. pg 155 of the DMG on the Magic Item Economy:

Most of the time, characters find magic items on their
adventures that are above their level. These are exciting
items, and the characters have a strong incentive
to keep these items and use them. As characters attain
higher levels, the items they find might replace items
they already have—the fighter finds a +3 flaming sword
and no longer wants his +2 magic sword.
When this happens, the characters ordinarily sell
those items—it’s slightly more beneficial to do that than
to use the Disenchant Magic Item ritual, because the
characters don’t have to pay the component cost. A
merchant, agent, or fence buys items from the character
at one-fifth the items’ value, in the hope of selling
them at significant profit (usually, above the items’
value). Buyers are hard to find, but the profit to be
made makes it worth the merchant’s risk.
Characters can use the monetary treasure they
find, as well as the gold from selling items, to acquire
new magic items. They can’t make items above their
level, and can’t often afford items more than a few
levels above theirs. It’s to their benefit to use the
Enchant Magic Item ritual for items of their level
or lower, rather than buying these items from merchants,
agents, or fences, because of the 10–40 percent
markup over items’ value that these sellers charge.

When they want items above their levels, they have to
go to merchants.
The game still works if you decide that magic items
can’t be bought and sold in your world. Characters
can rely entirely on rituals to duplicate the economy
of buying and selling without money changing hands.
The residuum they collect from disenchanting items
provides the expensive ritual components they need
for the enchanting ritual. If you want characters to rely
entirely on these rituals, remove the cost to perform
the Disenchant Magic Item ritual, making it just as
efficient as selling.
On the flip side, you can drive the characters to
markets instead of rituals by altering the prices they
pay for magic items. You can remove the random
markup, or even alter it to allow the possibility of finding
items for sale below normal price. For example,
roll 1d6 as usual, but a 1 means the item is available
for 10 percent below the base price, a 2 means it’s
available for the base price, and 3–6 means a 10 percent
to 40 percent markup. Items are readily available,
and sometimes characters can get a good deal.

Summary: Magic items are cost 10-40 percent more than the values listed. The enchant magic item ritual saves you that 10-40% markup. In addition to this, disenchant is not as efficient as selling to merchants because of the component cost is takes to disenchant an item. Therefore, you get these results:
1. It is cheaper to make your own items unless you want a higher level item.
2. Disenchant is less efficient than selling to a merchant.


As for the player in question, I'll try to move to the markup market and try to push him into accepting that items sell for 20% value unless you look really hard.

[Oracle_Hunter]

Setting the prices at 20% leads to more haggling and comparison shopping, not less. If I offer a player 50% they're probably going to take it. If I offer them 20% the natural reaction is to find a merchant who isn't ripping them off.

Seriously, EVERY player I've introduced to 4e has had the exact same reaction to the selling rules. "Twenty percent? Like hell! Why can't I find someone who'll give me a decent deal? The book says what? Okay, what if I go find someone who'll use the thing himself?"
My players reacted differently - but I may have treated the situation differently:
The PCs were in a moderately sized forestry community. There were a few other adventurers in town to deal with a goblin problem, but usually the only travelers the town saw were merchants and their guards. There were three places to buy/sell weapons:
(1) The Blacksmith
He didn't make weapons, really, but since his shop is right off the main square, he had gotten into the habit of buying old weapons from caravan guards who wanted a little extra beer money. He kept them in the corner of his shop, maybe do a little repair on them from time to time, and if anyone wanted to buy one, he let them. It was a side business

(2) The Armorer
A fine weaponsmith, he had been brought in by the Reeve to provide fancy equipment for his personal guard. He runs a sizable forge, with several apprentices, but most of his work is ornamental weapons and armor for wealthy people. He does not buy common weapons, but if he likes you, he might buy some for their scrap metal.

(3) The Green River Trading Company
Big deal caravan company, has pretty much everything you'd need. Of course, demand isn't so high so they just keep things in their warehouse once they're here. They already have plenty of inventory, but they have a standard practice of buying gear for cheap - they're jerks in other ways too :smalltongue:
I suppose, if they wanted, they could have found a merchant guard who wanted a halberd or somesuch - and if they haggled well, maybe they could get 50-75%. But when they went to these three stores and heard their deals and their reasons, they shrugged and got on with adventuring.
I think part of this is the expectation of 50% return, built up from various Fantasy RPGs over the years. If you firmly establish that, hey, most store owners have plenty of inventory already, your players should stop assuming they can make a killing off of captured gear. You only feel "ripped off" if you are offered a price that is not what you expected - but why should any adventurer expect a weaponsmith to pay good money for something he makes himself?

That said, there's no reason to not include stores or people who are actively looking for something. If the PCs come into a town that can't outfit its militia, I'm sure they'll be able to get very good prices on captured gear; ditto if they run into Siegfried Flamehand who would just love to have that Flaming Sword +1.

[Sstoopidtallkid]

I think part of this is the expectation of 50% return, built up from various Fantasy RPGs over the years. If you firmly establish that, hey, most store owners have plenty of inventory already, your players should stop assuming they can make a killing off of captured gear. You only feel "ripped off" if you are offered a price that is not what you expected - but why should any adventurer expect a weaponsmith to pay good money for something he makes himself?It's not just the years of fantasy RPGs that are making players expect 50%. Under the 4.x rules, merchants make 450%-550% profit on magic items. That comes across as obscene to most people. Yeah, they're taking a risk, but if they buy 4 magic items from you and only sell one before they die twenty years later, they've made a profit. That seems unfair. Heck, just boosting the merchants to buying at 25% and selling at 100 would make it more reasonable. As is, players feel cheated, which is never good. Aside from making unhappy players, now you've got adventurers angry at someone with lots of shinies. And what's the adventurer's standard response to someone annoying them?

Yeah. It's better for the game all around if merchants aren't jackboops to the players.

[Nightson]

In 4th editon I have to imagine that almost every single magic item business is going to work on commission given that it takes a whole hour to make a new magic item.

Magic items are a high risk item, a low demand item and amazingly expensive. So put me in the, 'doesn't think it's unreasonable at all' camp.

[Oracle_Hunter]

It's not just the years of fantasy RPGs that are making players expect 50%. Under the 4.x rules, merchants make 450%-550% profit on magic items. That comes across as obscene to most people. Yeah, they're taking a risk, but if they buy 4 magic items from you and only sell one before they die twenty years later, they've made a profit.
You're forgetting the sheer amount of capital it takes to purchase 4 magical items - particularly if they're supposed to be powerful enough so that you can retire on the proceeds. Merchants still need to eat, pay taxes, and buy new merchandise - they can't just sink all their money into some item that won't pay off for 20 years.

Plus there's the risk of attracting unwanted attention:
"Good day citizen! The King is requesting you hand over your magical items for the Good of the Kingdom. To ensure their safe passage to the capital, we have brought along a company of our most elite soldiers."

or

"Hey, nice dagger. Say, do you think you can hit AC 30? No? Then I guess I'll just take that - thanks."

or

"Sure, here's 500K for all your magical items. Huh, pretty powerful stuff - say, would you say your life is worth 500k?"

[Gralamin]

Setting the prices at 20% leads to more haggling and comparison shopping, not less. If I offer a player 50% they're probably going to take it. If I offer them 20% the natural reaction is to find a merchant who isn't ripping them off.

Seriously, EVERY player I've introduced to 4e has had the exact same reaction to the selling rules. "Twenty percent? Like hell! Why can't I find someone who'll give me a decent deal? The book says what? Okay, what if I go find someone who'll use the thing himself?"

End result is either:

1. after enough shopping, the DM gives up and lets the players get a decent price,
2. the players give up and leave for the next mission, feeling like they just got cheated.

Neither one's a great solution. It's one of those features of 4e where you can see why they did it, but they really should have known not to.

- Saph

Except your forgetting the game balance is based around either 20% or 50% selling price. If the balance of the games economic systems are equal (Ie: They are both equally balanced around this number) This means that your getting an equivalent deal. What does that mean? Well it means demanding 50% for an item in 4e is demanding 250% of the usual price. Translated to 3.5, this would be the same as asking for 125% of the price of the item.

Now assume they are not equal, then we have a factor of difference. Say 3.5 system balance was slightly off, and going up to say 60% wouldn't unbalance the game. We now have error bars of 25%, meaning selling it for 50% in 4e is the same as selling it for somewhere between 100% - 150% (Probably leaning towards 100%) of the value.

Now, I'm ignoring the different growth rates and focusing on one point, but you could extrapolate the results. The point is the percentage doesn't matter, as long as the system is balanced towards it.

If a player is feeling cheated by this amount, then they probably aren't thinking about the longterm effects. Feeling cheated is bad, but why should you feel cheated? If your getting the same or above how much the game is expecting you to get, then your not being (Fixed a typo here) cheated.

As for whats more realistic... Why does it matter? In 3.5 you can produce items for a lot less then 50% of the cost. In 4e, you produce items for the cost they are, and can liquidate them down to 20% of their cost. The solutions that come about make sense in the game world they come from.

Then, I'd like to focus on this statement:

1. after enough shopping, the DM gives up and lets the players get a decent price,
2. the players give up and leave for the next mission, feeling like they just got cheated.
What we have here ladies and gentleman is a logical fallacy we call a False Dilemma (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/False_dichotomy). Since there are other alternatives, like the players figuring out they haven't been cheated, this is obviously not a true dilemma. Because these other options exist, arguing that the players feel cheated if they don't get "a decent price" is going to be a logical fallacy. As an immediate counter-example, In the games I run the players do not complain about selling for 20% of the price. Since there is at least one counter example, we can confirm that this statement is logically wrong.

[FoE]

Let me get this straight: you kill some poor monster minding his own business, fish a free magic item off his corpse and then complain about said item's re-sale value?

Oh wait, I forgot that the PCs don't get any other income beyond what they can get from the sale of their old crap at pawn shops. I mean, if they were finding heaping piles of gold and gems in the dungeons they explore, maybe it would balance out.

[Saph]

Aside from making unhappy players, now you've got adventurers angry at someone with lots of shinies. And what's the adventurer's standard response to someone annoying them?

This, too.

I know I'm not the only player who's done some mental math upon seeing the 4e economy model and given serious consideration towards switching targets from monsters to merchants. :P

- Saph

[Colmarr]

I just don't see what all the fuss is.

I highly doubt that real world pawn shops pay 50% value for used goods. And I bet they have a much higher turnover of stock than a hypothetical magic mart (and each purchase represents much less of their annual/lifetime expenditure).

As for the original question, I don't see a problem with the PCs shopping around to find a buyer direct and therefore getting a better price. But if one of the justifications for low dealer prices is that it's hard to find a buyer, the DM should make sure that that applies to the PCs too.

From that point, it's simply a question of whether you want simulation [in which case laissez faire] or balance [in which case you should alter later treasure parcels].

[JaxGaret]

I just don't see what all the fuss is.

I highly doubt that real world pawn shops pay 50% value for used goods. And I bet they have a much higher turnover of stock than a hypothetical magic mart (and each purchase represents much less of their annual/lifetime expenditure).

Agreed with this and with Oracle's points.

A few things that have been left out of the discussion: merchants don't just buy and sell items. They also protect those items from theft. How do they do this? Since they're not powerful adventurers, they do it by spending gold on protection. They also own or rent a store, which has its own costs. They probably also pay taxes on their sales to the local tax thugs/nobles/whatever. These additional costs need to be figured into the equation as well - all of a sudden that item that the merchant bought for 50% of the market price doesn't look like it's such a good deal when they're spending a lot of the "profit" on costs such as those - and they're risking their neck sitting on a pile of expensive objects that are particularly of interest to dangerous and often unstable/murderous/thieving individuals.

[Totally Guy]

It's really not that big a deal. While I agree with the selling cost of superseded items that the party no longer needs I think that there are alternatives to the current system for transactions.

Assuming that the item is level appropriate (The characters level + 0~4) it was probably aquired by the DMs use of Treasure parcel. The players looked at the item and realised that the item was inapproprtiate for any of the characters. The PCs instead want a different treasure, the DMG even suggests a wishlist. So all this extra work just puts the PCs into losing gold to maintain a wealth by level suggestion.

As an alternative to selling the item it might be better to allow the merchant to trade your current item for an item of lower level. Then all the time related risks are reduced and he gets to make an instant deal that leaves him better off.

Too many items is not bad from a balance perspective as the increased number of items is only useful for versatility, with there being a set number of times you can use a weapon daily power.

For a low magic campaign it's suggested that balance is maintained by giving a level appropriate boost to hit and defences to compensate for the magic items that would be received at the level using the parcels rule.

[Hal]

My general strategy when DMing is to make the loot very gold heavy. This way they can buy whatever magic item they want and I don't have to worry about such matters.

[Yakk]

WoW has a modern e-commerce auction system, and an economy that is completely and utterly built around adventurers.

A D&D world has a seriously pre e-commerce economy in which magic items are mainly useful for adventurers. And by the 4e exceptionalism standard, adventurers are rare.

A closer market than ebay or WoW auction houses is the used video game market. You don't get anywhere close to face value on used video games.

In general, there shouldn't be a "magic item shop" -- there should be unique people who are willing to take the magic item off your hands. For 20%. At which point they go and spend a huge amount of time finding a buyer willing to pay 100% for it.

If there is a magic item shop, they should be spending 100% of "book value" of their magic items sold per period of time in security. Pay 20% for the goods, spend 100% on security, sell for 110% to 140% of price, get a -10% to +20% profit on each good.

Make that security obvious. In a "heroic tier" magic item shop (located in the largest mortal cities), have heavily armored magic-looking guards and protective wards and circles and the like all over the place, in a building made out of granite.

In a paragon tier magic item shop, you are maybe negotiating with someone who buys and sells magic items for the Sigil academy research division.

At epic levels, you are making deals with djinns, elder astral and elemental beings, and intermediaries of the gods or arch devils.

[Hatu]

I think part of this is the expectation of 50% return, built up from various Fantasy RPGs over the years. If you firmly establish that, hey, most store owners have plenty of inventory already, your players should stop assuming they can make a killing off of captured gear. You only feel "ripped off" if you are offered a price that is not what you expected - but why should any adventurer expect a weaponsmith to pay good money for something he makes himself?


I find the 20% price rather absurd, since it's exactly the same as the value of residuum you'd get by smelting the item down yourself. It's the bare minimum price any merchant could offer, but it's also mandated as the most an adventurer can get (short of DM intervention). That's like trying to sell a Liberty Quarter to a coin collector and being told it's only worth 25 cents. I wouldn't expect to get full book value, but I'd also expect to get more than if I just stuck in a vending machine.

I find this setup leads to a very boring gameplay. Since I'll get pretty much the same tiny amount whenever I sell something, I see no reason to sell it at all. If I ever really needed the cash I could just sell the item then (or smelt it down via the party wizard). Items worth buying are exorbitantly expensive, so I try to use whatever we find and upgrade it when we find something better. Meanwhile, having the fully functional item can only be better than having the 20% MSRP in gold. By the rules, there's never an opportunity cost to keeping the item.

-H

[Oracle_Hunter]

I find this setup leads to a very boring gameplay. Since I'll get pretty much the same tiny amount whenever I sell something, I see no reason to sell it at all. If I ever really needed the cash I could just sell the item then (or smelt it down via the party wizard). Items worth buying are exorbitantly expensive, so I try to use whatever we find and upgrade it when we find something better. Meanwhile, having the fully functional item can only be better than having the 20% MSRP in gold. By the rules, there's never an opportunity cost to keeping the item.


:confused:

Selling magic items was the most exciting part of your game?

[Wulfram]

I'd assume that the sale price given reflects what you can get if you want the money now.

If they're willing to forgo getting the money immediately, they should be able to have a merchant act as an agent sell the items on their behalf. The agent could take a commision of say 20%, which would in theory leave the adventurers a lot better off, but the adventurers have to take the risk that they won't sell before the adventure is over or they level up high enough that the money's no longer particularly useful.

[Thajocoth]

I like the idea and where you are going with this, but I personally would never use it. I figure 4e's main selling point is balance. I trust WotC spent the time balancing out the WBL chart as well as the loot per encounter chart. Until someone proves to me that the loot per encounter chart is horribly off, I'd rather just stick with it and ensure my game stays balanced, rather than allowing a Bard to be able to sell items for 30%+ more than he otherwise could by the rules. That might quickly turn the game into a much more magic-intense world than the one outlined in the loot per encounter chart where the players get 4 magic items a level. I feel that the more house rules I introduce, the less likely the game is to stay balanced.

A skill challenge counts as an encounter normally. Encounters have rewards (of items and/or money). Here, the players are choosing to turn buying & selling into a skill challenge. No, I don't give them xp for it... But I think it makes it fair. Also, I'd adjust for player's slight monetary the shift by leaning more towards magic items as loot and less towards gp as loot if not for the fact the party gains levels on average every 7.5 encounters rather than 10.* On average, they roll high enough to raise/reduce an item's price 10%. The highest they've done is 20%. It remains balanced imo.

*They barely reached level 3 after 11 fights and 4 skill challenges. That's what I'm basing that number on. Encounters are normally 1-2 levels above them. They're level 3 with 1 magic item each (that they each bought after defeating a Young Green Dragon and taking it's small hoard) and a magic flask. That's 6 magic items for 5 people. Should be 8. I lean towards more difficult encounters, but have been keeping the reward parcels the same. I'm working on fixing their loot situation now.

[FoE]

Selling magic items was the most exciting part of your game?

He must be in one of those 'yard sale' D&D groups. Instead of going on quests, they only go into dungeons during spring-cleaning in search of the best bargains. Think mind flayers are scary? Wait until you have to haggle with one over the price of a collection of Eagles records.

[Hatu]

:confused:

Selling magic items was the most exciting part of your game?

Hardly, but that's no excuse for treating it as an auto-checkout, either. The interaction with the world that selling loot generates is pleasing to me. The less the value of an item depends on circumstances rather than game world fiat, the less interesting that interaction becomes. Why try to figure out where best to sell a Magical Robe of Examples if every prospective market is the same?

That leads to a less enjoyable gameplay, at least for me.

-H

[Oracle_Hunter]

The interaction with the world that selling loot generates is pleasing to me. The less the value of an item depends on circumstances rather than game world fiat, the less interesting that interaction becomes. Why try to figure out where best to sell a Magical Robe of Examples if every prospective market is the same?

Then... wouldn't a similarly "fixed" 50% sale rate annoy you just as much?

[Hatu]

Then... wouldn't a similarly "fixed" 50% sale rate annoy you just as much?

Probably. I think they should have provided guidelines and left the actual implementation up to each DM.

But I also think having merchants offer no more for a functional item than you get for smelting it down makes their decision even worse. If it were impossible to smelt items, 20% would at least be better than nothing. As is, it's the same as nothing which means there's little reason to bother. I'd think that would automatically improve my bargaining position, but somehow it does not.

-H

[sleepy]

I'm not buying it, Oracle.

Have a look at actual RPG economies like World of Warcraft, where there's an exchange rate between dollars and in-game currency, and thus people are effectively paying real money (and so it's about the closest you can get to a simulation.) You can get a LOT more than 20% of an item's value.

- Saph

It's worth noting that all of these economies suffer an inflation rate which would have horrific consequences on the population of any real nation, despite contrived and artificial anti-inflation measures (repair costs, respawn cost, etc). It is worth noting further that many of these economies also use contrived and artificial means to prevent players from buying gear with money (soulbinding, etc).

[Sebastian]

If the players try selling it purely on their own they should have difficulty though. Maybe from the other merchant's (Depends on how wealthy they are and how protective they are of their trade), however more so from potential customers. A dude in armor comes up to you trying to sell a weapon. He says it's magic, yeah, but do you really trust him?


That is not a problem. By 4e rules if you handle a magic item for 5 minutes you know all its powers and bonuses.

[Sebastian]

Of course, 4E magic item costs are hard-coded into the system - you can only Disenchant any magic item for 1/5th its value in Residuum. Bad comes to worst, any merchant can convert his Longsword +1 into a more liquid asset (ba dum tsch) - and no sane merchant would pay more than that value, for a good he may never have a buyer for.


Well, actually any sane merchant pay more than that value because they buy a i.e. 1000GP item for 200 gp and then pay 25(?) gp to convert it in 200 gp worth of residuum for a total loss of 25 gp. Another example of how the 4e economy is f***ed up.

[mrmaxmrmax]

Well, to be fair you're dealing with quite a small amount of money there, and comic books really are not magic items at all. No matter how you look at it magic items should be relatively rare enough that there is always some market for them (Even if the item is eventually sold to those who will use it against the PC), and on a vastly more expensive scale than comic books.

Let's go from there. $10 is a small amount of money. PHB 222 says that a common meal is 2 sp, but if you figure service and the profit the restaurant needs to make, your actual cost (what you'd need to do at home) would be about 25%. We'll call it 5 CP. This is where we enter into conjecture, but variables would work just as well.

In a 365 day year, a single person would have to eat at least two meals a day for a total of 365 SP. That is one-tenth of a magic item and a significant part of that person's living expenses for the year (assuming a commoner).

This argument is full of flaws that I am not picking up, I think, so let me take another tack.

Whether in demand or not, a ten dollar comic is in the price range of most people that come into my store. We'll call this the common meal; anyone is ready and able to partake in this. A $250 comic is viable to a much smaller portion of people that come in. At 25 times more expensive, we'll call this one the feast meal per PHB 222.

Never mind; this arguement is not working out well either. Time to quote a little more of your post.



Say someone offered to sell you a comic that was very rare indeed, selling around $1,000 (I have no idea about comics alright?), and you happen to have $500 around that you can use without harming your financial situation. Knowing that you can get a 100% return and you will eventually sell it to someone (Possibly in less than a year), I think you'll find the situation changes greatly from your $5 a year thing.

I knew I wrote that stuff above for a reason! This is it!

If someone comes in and offers us a $1000 comic, it is almost out of every single collector's price range. If we got in a copy of Detective Comics #80 (a book from the 1940's, I believe), if the covers are intact and no pages are missing, that is around a $1000 comic (in this example). The major problem is that customers do not come into the store with that sort of money. I have only seen one person in my retail history spend that much money at one time and he was a statue buyer (those add up faster than comics in general).

There may be a lot of adventures in 4e's points of light setting, but most of them are going to be below first level. Heck, let's be generous and say that they are level one. That would mean that they have at most 100 gp to sling around; not enough for a level 1 magic item. It is a merchant's business to know what the market can bear; any vendor in 4e is not looking to buy magic items in general because their chance for profit is is limited.

To jump back to comics in a way that is detrimental to the flow of my arguement, I know that in general, I can't sell a $1000 comic. The most I've been able to do was a $600 copy of Giant Size X-Men #1 (All-New, All-Different, you know). That book had been something I pointed out to customers for over a year before it sold and I think it may have been around a year before I started the job.



Say someone offered to sell you a comic that was very rare indeed, selling around $1,000 (I have no idea about comics alright?), and you happen to have $500 around that you can use without harming your financial situation. Knowing that you can get a 100% return and you will eventually sell it to someone (Possibly in less than a year), I think you'll find the situation changes greatly from your $5 a year thing.

I'm requoting to get back on track: this is all about opportunity costs. I could buy his super rare comic for that five hundred we are talking about and sit and hope. I could also put that five hundred dollars into merchandise which sells more frequently: new Marvel comics, new DC comics, new trade paperbacks. The D&D merchant faces the same dilemma: big score vs consistent sales.

That's the place to stop: 20% is about opportunity cost, but I'd love to hear what the designers were thinking when they put this number in. I know that the 20% works in the system as a way to encourage players to battle (the best items are the ones you find while adventuring).

Could all of the D&D designers who lurk in the playground chime in?

Maxwell.

[Yakk]

And remember: we need to make sure that 'robbing merchants' isn't a better way to get gold than adventuring.

Hence the "between buying a magic item, and selling it, you spend 100% of its book value on security" possibility.

Add in the 20% you spend on the buyer, and the 1d4*10% markup, and you end up with a not-amazing ROI. Naturally the faster you sell it, the better. And the bigger a merchant you are, the more security you have (and the bigger of a target you are).

[JaxGaret]

What Yakk just said.

Look at it this way: all of the merchants who did decide to pay 50% for items are out of business, because they lost all their money. Same goes for all of the merchants who paid more than 20% for items. You might get lucky and find one who pays 30% for items, but his shop is ragtag and he looks like may not be the smartest tool in the shed, or completely on the up and up. You probably should be more worried about why such a person is willing to pay more for items, when it's a losing proposition; maybe he's marking adventurers for another group to rob.

Enjoy your "extra gold" when you get robbed right after you leave the store.

That's how the merchant economy works.

[HMS Invincible]

Ok, we know the merchant economy is ****ed up but plausible and the DMG says that's how it works.
The designers intended the game to sell items to players with a markup.
The merchants will buy items for a rip off price, but the players should accept it.

The only question left is trading and selling to nonmerchants. Should the DM not allow players easy access to higher level item via trading?
I can see how if they don't like one item, I could allow them to "find" an equal or lower level item and trade it in. What I'm not sure about is how often they can do this.
I'll also cannot let players get anything more than 20% rate for selling items, regardless of who they sell it to.

Will the game become unbalanced if the players can cherry pick and trade items all day until they have EXACTLY what they want?

For now, I guess I'll allow limited trading, with more leeway if the PCs trade down. They technically get a worse deal, but they get the item that they want.

[Oracle_Hunter]

The only question left is trading and selling to nonmerchants. Should the DM not allow players easy access to higher level item via trading?
Of course you can let them trade up, but keep this in mind:
- Magic Items are ridiculously expensive
- Nobody intentionally trades to end up worse off than before the trade
- Even in a very large city, there is a finite number of potential traders - and tracking them down can be very hard.

You can certainly allow PCs to get "good deals" on occasion, but it should be something they had to work for. Maybe a Streetwise Skill Challenge - with a failure meaning they find a trader, but he's actually a thief. Or they can do an exceptional job of RP selling an item to someone with very deep pockets.

The rules in the DMG are for the most common scenario - if you want to depart from it on occasion, make those significant occasions :smallbiggrin:

[Yakk]

Now, 4e wealth by level is exponential.

Every 5 levels you have 5 times as much wealth.

The reason why merchants buy goods for 5 times under their value is because the game wants players to get their best magic items not by buying them out of a shop, but by going on adventures.

This also gives the DM some (default) control over what items there are (which items the players find) that are the most powerful, and the players more control over lower end items (which they can buy with cash).

If you allowed 100% resale of magic items in 4e, the effect would be that magic items become fungible: it doesn't matter what the DM provides from treasure, all it matters it the gp value of the item. And your best items will be gotten by selling what you get as treasure, and buying an item that is custom-made for you.

On top of that, the ability to sell one level+4 item to buy 5 level-1 items could open some things up for abuse. The "level value" of items in 4e isn't perfect -- the 20% resale means that an overpriced item isn't as often sold for underpriced items are close to the same nominal value (ie level).

On top of that, the players end up being a tad richer. If you sell, at 100%, every magic item from level 1 to level X, you end up with enough gold to buy a magic item at level X+4 roughly (if X is sufficiently large).

4e will work with arbitrary resale percentages. But your best items won't come from adventuring, but rather from reading over magic item tables, grabbing as much magic item value as you can and selling it off, and buying the most efficient items. You'll never loot an item that is as good or as customised to you as you could get by pooling your cash: the WoW problem, where trade-enabled items are obsoleted by the bazaar.

[Yahzi]

If you allowed 100% resale of magic items in 4e, the effect would be that magic items become fungible: it doesn't matter what the DM provides from treasure, all it matters it the gp value of the item.
In 1st Edition, wizards needed to collect spells for their books, but the DMG specifically stated that if you had a hireling or a cohort, they would only trade you spells if you traded them an equal level and then some.

Mind you, these are people who work for you. Who fight terrible monsters on your behalf, and expect you to save them from the worst of them.

It didn't make any sense then, and it doesn't make any sense now. To the extent that D&D has to enforce idiotic rules to balance gameplay, it is a badly designed game.

Any Temple of Good clerics is going to maintain a collection of magic items cast off from higher-level characters. that they lend or trade to low level heroes of their own faith. Just like any collection of Good wizards will create a lending library for other Good wizards. Heck, this is such a good idea even some Evil societies (particularly Lawful ones) will implement it.

Rather than cheese off your players with stupid prices, just accept it. When they show up with 27 +1 swords, have their local adventurer's guild thank them warmly and let them have whatever they want out of their stores in exchange. If you don't want the players to have a specific item, you can just say, "You know what? We don't have any of those. A lot of people have been asking for them - can you find some for us?"

Pretty soon your players will be seeking out low level loot, just so they can donate more to the local guild than their arch-rival, Bob and His NPC Party of Coolness. Especially if you draw up a big placard with a thermometer on it, where the top is "+5 swords for all the guardsmen!" As people donate stuff to make the town safer, they get more prestige, and your players are always trying to outdo the NPCs. How does that not spell adventure hook?

Oh, and if you don't want every 1st level guardsman to be wielding +2 Scimitars of Awesomeness and wearing +3 Elven Chain, then... don't use the WBL rules.

[Oracle_Hunter]

Any Temple of Good clerics is going to maintain a collection of magic items cast off from higher-level characters. that they lend or trade to low level heroes of their own faith. Just like any collection of Good wizards will create a lending library for other Good wizards. Heck, this is such a good idea even some Evil societies (particularly Lawful ones) will implement it.
This strikes me as an exceptionally bad idea.

First of all, why the hell would any Wizard organization lend out its incredibly valuable spellbooks, when all a Wizard would need to do is to sit down and copy the spells they wanted while in the Library. Letting any random Lowe B. Magicuser walk away with a book that is expensive to create (and time intensive to copy!) is just going to leave the Library empty, after most of these fellows get robbed on their way home from the Library, and the thieves fence the books for a lot of money.

Secondly, shouldn't these temples be spending money on maintaining their buildings, funding missionary programs, or establishing new churches? Unless you're talking about a strictly barter-based system, the churches (and guilds!) are going to be paying out a huge chunk of gold at some point to acquire their initial supply of magic loot, and later, to increase it. Unless, of course, high level adventurers (aside from your PCs, of course :smalltongue:) are in the habit of giving away all of the magic items that they no longer need.

Finally - what kind of Evil society lends out anything? They may issue equipment to elite units for specific circumstances, but I seriously doubt they'll just say "oh, Mr. Initiate, how nice that you found a stack of +1 Swords. Please, take this +3 Sword in exchange." Instead, I imagine they'll give him a pat on the back, maybe a promotion, and then send him out to get more; maybe with a +3 Sword if he knows exactly where to get more +1 Swords and he can convince his superiors that he will need one to succeed.

Seriously.

Gold does not grow on trees, and it is good for things aside from buying magic items. And nobody gives away valuable goods for free unless the need is great - aside from 2E Paladins, who donate pretty much everything to their Church.