At-cost magic items, does anyone else do it?

[inuyasha]

So, in the PHB, it is mentioned that holy water is often sold for the same price as how much it takes to make some, with the church making no profit. This gave me an idea for a church like the Church of the Silver Flame from Eberron who have a special type of oil that will dye anything silver for an hour, or cause a fire to burn silver for a similar amount of time. This is really made as an oil of prestidigitation, with a 25gp market price, and 12.5gp creation cost. 25 seems like quite a bit, but 12 seems appropriate for what amounts to a neat (and scary, if used right) party trick.

So my question is, does anyone else have a material, specific potion, or even something more advanced that is sold for no profit?

[LoyalPaladin]

I was once a member of a table where we did some serious questing for a merchant who ended up giving us all our purchases (even magical/wondrous items) for cost. It was pretty crazy, but the GM was competent enough to still challenge us. Any other table and I think the game would have fallen apart.

[Mr Adventurer]

Holy Water is made with the Bless Water spell, the material component for which is 25gp of silver dust. It's not a magic item.

Selling magic items for their creation cost would be incredibly rare, because that "extra" is actually the creators' recompense for the XP they used.

On the other hand, what you're describing sounds like an alchemical item, not a magic item. Just say it works and costs like you want.

[Ualaa]

We had a prior DM who would let you buy and sell items, at their listed purchase value.

So you could sell a +1 whatever and buy another +1 whatever.
The default system is that you get 50% of the buy value, when you sell.

That doesn't really make a lot of sense, necessarily.
But that is the system.

The first time I used the default rules (instead of the sell for 100% value.. old houserule), my players got a wagon and hauled everything they found, until they could find a merchant who was not a cheap ass.
They never found one, since 50% of buy price is what you get for selling.

Every campaign we run, if there isn't a starting city where every item possible is immediately available, then the campaign has stupid loot/buy rules.
I guess every non-house ruled campaign is that way...

[Cirtona Pox]

Most of our campaigns that have been run use a more fluid system.

Default sale price for anything is 1/2 book price but if there is a member of the party with a particular knowledge of an item then they can attempt a charisma check to increase the sale value by 10% for each modifier point. A rogue with appraisal selling a gem and a 14 charisma could pass a check (DC determined by city size and general attitude of merchants) a pass would yield 70% a book value sale.

It goes to a max of 100%, meaning that they bypassed the merchants entirely and just managed to find a fellow adventurer and sell it to them. Merchants tend to get mad at this so it is a nice hook for campaign flavor.

If a character owns an outfitter shop (most of our campaigns center around a power base that the PC's have built) they can sell the items at 70% value and buy them for half (30% overhead runs the shop) and not even have to remain in town as long as they trust their manager.

The only issue that has reared its ugly head when messing with the basics is that the non-magic item cost comparison becomes blurred. Masterwork weapons tend not to matter when +1 weapons are that cheap.

[inuyasha]

Holy Water is made with the Bless Water spell, the material component for which is 25gp of silver dust. It's not a magic item.

Selling magic items for their creation cost would be incredibly rare, because that "extra" is actually the creators' recompense for the XP they used.

On the other hand, what you're describing sounds like an alchemical item, not a magic item. Just say it works and costs like you want.

Well, I wouldn't exactly call it entirely mundane either, Holy Water is magically produced.

As for the second thing, I forgot to mention that I play Pathfinder, and even when I played 3.X we always houseruled away the XP requirements.

@LoyalPaladin

I'm a bit of a Monty Haul DM myself, and my players seem to enjoy it, haha! That sounds pretty fun.

@Ualaa
50% isn't too bad, that's still 1,000 GP for every crappy +1 weapon you find.

@Cirtona
Is it bad that I often forget the appraisal skill even exists?

[Kelb_Panthera]

I -don't- throw out the XP costs so the cheapest any of my typical item crafters would sell an item for is 60% of the base price; equivalent to the cost of the materials required plus 5gp per XP spent. Under special circumstances, a merchant might go lower or a quartermaster of some sort might even hand off a freebee but most of the time it'll be between full price and 60%.