The Dreamers' Bazaar

[Toilet Cobra]

My players have been messing around with a well of many worlds and I've been having fun making up odd planar locales for them to stumble onto. I want to design a marketplace on the Plane of Dreams where powerful outsiders come to trade in things like beauty, youth, and knowledge. They steal or trade for these things from mortals, and then bring them to the bazaar to convert into gold, souls, or secrets. Of course, mortals who come here find that they are welcome to trade with their own "currency" for things they might like to change about themselves.

I'd like the playground's help setting up exchange rates. This is a PF/3.5 mix game, and the marketplace has a few rules and odd exceptions, but basically you show up, a money changer exchanges your unwanted attributes, skills, hit points, or feats for units of the local currency (need a name for that, too). You can also sell your soul, age category, and certain class features if desired. You then take that currency to one of the many vendors and get them to give you the attribute or whatever you desire.

So I'd like your help with setting the prices. Any ideas for other things to sell would be awesome. I have a few rules in mind already to prevent ridiculousness, but any advice on preventing abuse is welcome too. Keep in mind this is for a casual, low optimization game. And if this whole thing has been done before, anyone who can point me to those resources will get one point of Charisma, on the house.

Conversion Rate
Item to be Traded --- Units of Bazaar Currency
Skill Point --- 1
Hit Point --- 1
Attribute Point --- ??
Feat --- ??
Age Category --- ??
Trait --- ??
Soul --- ??
??? Gold --- 1

[Cruiser1]

In Fiendish Codex II, one can enter a Faustian Pact with devils and gain many of the attributes you propose, for a certain reward rating. The FC II values for these items are:

Skill Point --- 1
Attribute Point --- 5
Feat --- 4
Soul --- 7

Based on the relative value of the above, for the other items we could estimate the following:

Hit Point --- 1 (a single hp is pretty minor)
Age Category --- 4 (I could see a feat that improves your age category or makes you age slower)
Trait --- 2 (a trait is like a weak feat)
Gold --- 0.0001 (that 10K gp per point, which roughly fits in that a +1 inherent status bonus is 25K, so an untyped status bonus that stacks with everything is 50K)

[LarwisTheElf]

This sounds like an interesting idea with a lot of potential. I'd be interested to see the fluff side of this personally, but that's another topic for another time.

As for currency, you could call it omnicoins, or even just something simple as units. The real question is what to make it out of...

While I don't have it on me, I believe the BoVD has rules on souls and using them in place of xp costs. I'd look there to start getting an idea of exchange rates. For example, one age category could be worth 1/4 of a soul (assuming adulthood for mortal races that make it there, they can only trade 4 age categories before they die from old age).

That's all that I can think of at the moment, but one of my roommates is an econ student, so I'll try asking him for some input.

[Toilet Cobra]

In Fiendish Codex II, one can enter a Faustian Pact with devils and gain many of the attributes you propose, for a certain reward rating. The FC II values for these items are:

Skill Point --- 1
Attribute Point --- 5
Feat --- 4
Soul --- 7

Based on the relative value of the above, for the other items we could estimate the following:

Hit Point --- 1 (a single hp is pretty minor)
Age Category --- 4 (I could see a feat that improves your age category or makes you age slower)
Trait --- 2 (a trait is like a weak feat)
Gold --- 0.0001 (that 10K gp per point, which roughly fits in that a +1 inherent status bonus is 25K, so an untyped status bonus that stacks with everything is 50K)

That's awesome. I'll definitely look up the FCII as well, but the rates you laid out make a lot of sense to me. I predict a lot of players selling their souls for a quick buck and then regretting it about two levels later.