Trading in magic items and bodyparts

[Harlot]

So.
I thought it would be quite fun to have the party meet a random travelling merchant stocking a handful of desireable magic items, app. value/item 5000 -10.000 gp.
I also thought it could be amusing if this trader did not want money, but bodyparts.
As in; "yes you can get the gloves of dexterity, but it costs you your left thumb."
I also consider stocking something really awesome and expensive (Ring of 3 wishes or the like) having it literally cost them an arm and/or a leg.

So a few problems arise:
a) Knowing my group, they might very well decide to kill the trader and loot his wagon. How do you keep this from happening in your games?
(I mostly avoid it by not having magic shops. Magic items are found and traded for other magic items, not bought directly.)

b) I don't want them to be able to regrow limbs through healing or any other tricks. Can I just houserule that it can't?

c) I want the loss of limbs to influence the game somewhat. I think that losing fingers would influence for instance climb checks, Slight of Hand or the like (maybe a -2 penalty?) and I think that casters casting spells with a somatic component should have a larger risk of failure, maybe 5% or such. Any ideas?

Its 6 players, level 10.
I consider asking them, before we start the campaign, what magic item they'd love to have but couldn't buy on the budget, so that obtaining those items would be more desireable.

As always, thanks for helping.

/Harlot

[Extra Anchovies]

a) Knowing my group, they might very well decide to kill the trader and loot his wagon. How do you keep this from happening in your games?

Well, he does own a lot of magic items. And customers would hardly know or care if some of them had been used once or twice. The PCs draw their weapons, the shop owner whips out a bag of tricks, tosses a rhino at them, and pushes a button on a magic box that makes him and his wagon go *poof* and reappear on the other end of the plane.

[strangebloke]

To stop them from looting him? Don't make him a mortal trader, make him a powerful lawful neutral outsider who just happens to want the limbs of a hero for some reason.

And of course, he doesn't want the flesh. He wants the chakra of the arm or something. They actually keep the physical limb, but it becomes paralyzed deadweight. Cutting it off and regrowing it changes nothing.

losing a finger is weird, because races that naturally have three fingers don't take any kind of penalty. I would just have it be a penalty to any dex check that "you make with your hands." Like dex-based attack rolls or sleight of hand checks, but not reflex saves or initiative rolls.

Don't give a ring of wishes away. First wish will be "I restore my limb to it's previous state." Which is pretty much 100% doable by RAW. Then, you have to either be the bad guy and make it fail, or you just gave them a ring of wishes for free.

[Extra Anchovies]

losing a finger is weird, because races that naturally have three fingers don't take any kind of penalty. I would just have it be a penalty to any dex check that "you make with your hands." Like dex-based attack rolls or sleight of hand checks, but not reflex saves or initiative rolls.

Possibly a variable penalty depending on which hand they use? For example, a -1 penalty on two-handed fine-motor tasks (e.g. performing surgery), a -3 penalty on one-handed fine-motor tasks where they are using only the injured hand, and no penalty on one-handed fine-motor tasks where they use their non-injured hand? Also possibly some other, more situational -1s here and there (e.g. on attack rolls with a bow unless they draw the bowstring with the non-injured hand).

[Bad Wolf]

I'd go with what I refer to as the Kecleon Merchant. Basically, everything's fine as long as they don't try and steal or attack the merchant. If they do, the find out he's a level 20 Wizard/Sorcerer/Artificer/Whatever and they, and everything around them in a 20 mile radius, gets annihilated and he eats their souls.

Not sure about the regrowing part, maybe some sort of metal plate that sticks to the stump, blocking any regrowth or grafts? You could have it magically dig further in every time they try and cut it out, so sooner or later its right next to their heart.

Yeah, missing limbs would definitely give penalties. A missing eye would probably give a huge penalty to spot checks, a leg to Move Silently and running.

[Harlot]

Thanks for helping.
I like Rhino+ poof solution, practical and entertaining.

I also very much like the chakra idea of the limb loosing functionality but still being there ( I guess I can just houserule that. )
I won't offer the ring of three wishes, but do want to tempt them with something equally powerfull/attractive. Any ideas?
I would still like inspiration for actual penalties for the lost limbs? Would that just be skillchecks, but casting too, or how would you do it? (knowing that ofcourse it depends on the limb in question)
Thanks
/Harlot

[Slipperychicken]

Magic items are worth a lot more than limbs are, especially if you can regenerate. Hell, even the humble +1 longsword comes in at 2,315 gold (2 grand for the magic, 300 for the masterwork, 15 for the base sword).

To illustrate: BoVD has a table of human body part prices. They trade at silvers and coppers. Human hand? 3 coppers. Human brain? 4 coppers. Human heart? 1 silver. If you take every body part a person has (not counting blood), it adds up to like 2.43 gold (that is, 2 gold, 4 silvers, and 3 coppers), and most of that is because every bone in the human body is worth a copper each. Since sales occur at half price, you could sell it for a whopping 1.2 gold.

To buy a mere +1 longsword, you'd have to trade in the body parts of 1,930 people. So no, you're not getting a significant magic item for anything less than a mountain of human bodies.

[Averis Vol]

To buy a mere +1 longsword, you'd have to trade in the body parts of 1,930 people. So no, you're not getting a significant magic item for anything less than a mountain of human bodies.

Never let the PC's know they can profit off the corpses of their enemies, that will only make them more blood thirsty :smalltongue:

[Slipperychicken]

Never let the PC's know they can profit off the corpses of their enemies, that will only make them more blood thirsty :smalltongue:

Your PCs don't already rifle through the pockets of the deceased for valuables?

[Leviting]

when it comes to the missing limbs, remember that by default, arcane spells require complex and exact hand motions, and that most people use their hands to write. Missing legs would have the resulting difficulty in walking. Missing an eye likely wouldn't make spot/search checks much harder, as you only really lose your depth perception. Ranged attack rolls would suffer, though. Missing feet might hurt balance checks and reflex saves, along with movement speed. In addition, you might want him to only accept really fresh living limbs, so that your PCs don't just come to the shop with a bag of holding full of dead bodies.

I was thinking you also could allow them to trade organs, as well. Perhaps trading your left lung (and half your lung capacity as a result) for a nice necklace, or giving up your digestive tract for a ring of sustenance that you really don't want to take off ever. Better have your ring finger to put it on, though.

Lastly, don't ever actually show what it does with the body parts. Just let the PCs wildly speculate and give them a bunch of conflicting implications.

[Lightlawbliss]

A missing leg would make a massive dip in their strength (the power of a blow almost always involves the legs and you can't lift nearly as much with a leg missing) and would likely make running impossible.

[Harlot]

Once again, thanks for the inspiration.

I had NO idea there's actually a pricelist for limbs already. I'll just ignore it, though. The merchant want THEIR fresh limbs, not any limbs, which ties in nicely with the chakra idea above. And the limb will remain useless forever, so on that basis I don't mind them getting something nice.
The trader want their limbs for his own obscure reasons, that will not be revealed :-)

And thanks for helping on the penalties, Seems like I'll just have to wing it, since I have no idea what bodyparts the PCs will be tempted to sell, so it'll be a lot of work to make accurate penalties in advance. Knowing them, I am pretty damn sure they'll sell something and then go RAW on me afterwards to get the limb back. Which I won't let them. I'll be all sorts of fun.

Thanks again
/Harlot

[Inevitability]

I'd go with what I refer to as the Kecleon Merchant. Basically, everything's fine as long as they don't try and steal or attack the merchant. If they do, the find out he's a level 20 Wizard/Sorcerer/Artificer/Whatever and they, and everything around them in a 20 mile radius, gets annihilated and he eats their souls.

Not sure about the regrowing part, maybe some sort of metal plate that sticks to the stump, blocking any regrowth or grafts? You could have it magically dig further in every time they try and cut it out, so sooner or later its right next to their heart.

Yeah, missing limbs would definitely give penalties. A missing eye would probably give a huge penalty to spot checks, a leg to Move Silently and running.

The problem with the 'Keclon Merchant' is that a 20th level caster is pretty much a god. Why would someone like him be sitting around doing nothing except selling ridiculously overpriced magic items to the occasional person who has the money to buy them?

[torrasque666]

The problem with the 'Keclon Merchant' is that a 20th level caster is pretty much a god. Why would someone like him be sitting around doing nothing except selling ridiculously overpriced magic items to the occasional person who has the money to buy them?

Because he wants to........? Altruism? The stuff they're dealing with is beneath the radar of the caster? Lots of reasons.

[Averis Vol]

Your PCs don't already rifle through the pockets of the deceased for valuables?

Well, yea, but that's not nearly as morbid a thought as them coming into town, and instead of dumping out out a pile of 42,687 copper, 19,572 silver and 2,014 gold to buy new armor, them dumping out a literal mountain of corpses and asking, "Does this cover it?" I mean, that's death metal as ****, but come on, that's a one way trip to the looney bin.

[Sith_Happens]

The problem with the 'Keclon Merchant' is that a 20th level caster is pretty much a god. Why would someone like him be sitting around doing nothing except selling ridiculously overpriced magic items to the occasional person who has the money to buy them?

Who says this is actually a "random traveling merchant?" After all, merchants usually want money. No, we're obviously talking about a wizard who ends up needing some very specific people's limbs for his research because reasons, gathers up some random junk laying around his lab to pay them with, and then appears before them in a convenient guise to make the transaction.

[Tvtyrant]

The problem with the 'Keclon Merchant' is that a 20th level caster is pretty much a god. Why would someone like him be sitting around doing nothing except selling ridiculously overpriced magic items to the occasional person who has the money to buy them?

This is why in my worlds almost all magical item delivery is done by Teleport, Planeshift or Spelljammer. Spelljammers are so hard to take out in combat that they do a tremendous amount (in money not volume) of interplanetary trade. All items above CL7 are only found in major cities where they are protected by extremely powerful magic item insurance companies. Stealing from ye olde magick shoppe is tantamount to selling your soul to devils; you are done.

[Harlot]

[...] we're obviously talking about a wizard who ends up needing some very specific people's limbs for his research because reasons, gathers up some random junk laying around his lab to pay them with, and then appears before them in a convenient guise to make the transaction.

THIS. Ties in beautifully with the plot. Hadn't even realised!


And thanks for discussing the problem of hindering assault on the trader - nice to see how other people deal with this. Spelljammer makes sense, I reckon.
I will stick to the rhino+poof solution, though, because of it's beautiful simplicity.
Also because the PC's will find it fun, as in our last campaign one character was pretty much built around throwing rhinos around :-)

/Harlot

[KingAtomsk]

Obviously this merchant must sell the Head of Vecna (http://www.blindpanic.com/humor/vecna.htm)

[Bad Wolf]

The problem with the 'Keclon Merchant' is that a 20th level caster is pretty much a god. Why would someone like him be sitting around doing nothing except selling ridiculously overpriced magic items to the occasional person who has the money to buy them?

Who knows? Maybe he's not interested in ultimate arcane power, and just likes owning a shop.

[dascarletm]

Perhaps the wizard has divined the future and has foreseen that certain people may eventually cross his path in a bad way. Perhaps he plans to use a certain spell (http://dndtools.eu/spells/frostburn--68/ice-assassin--1279/).

Or the merchant is part of an underground syndicate that collects body parts of up and coming adventurers in the hopes that they draw significant attention. Enough attention that someone will pay top dollar for their body parts.

That way you can let them grow it back, but there is still going to be consequences the next time they cross a powerful wizard/sorcerer.

I simply must use this myself.

[Harlot]

Head of Vecna is hysterical. I'll keep that in mind.
However, Ice asassin, I might actually use right away. I was contemplating running them through the equivalent of the Arctic. Just for Kicks and giggles. And it does explain the purpose of the trader :-)
Thanx!

[Inevitability]

I was more talking about Kecleon merchants in general. In this specific case, it fits.

[Lightlawbliss]

Head of Vecna is hysterical. I'll keep that in mind.
However, Ice asassin, I might actually use right away. I was contemplating running them through the equivalent of the Arctic. Just for Kicks and giggles. And it does explain the purpose of the trader :-)
Thanx!

He has to get his stock somehow :)