Does WBL system cheapen the acts of selflessness?

[Vahnavoi]

There's an obvious synthesis of the two outlooks that boils down to fixing a fallacy hidden in this part:

If I donate a +3 sword at level 10, by the time I'm level 15 I will have the exact same (ok, approximate same) amount of total wealth (magic items, coins, possessions, etc) that I would have had if I hadn't donated that +3 sword, but instead traded it in for a ring of protection or something I want/need at the local magic mart. So the donation didn't actually cost me anything.

This is exactly equivalent to arguing hitpoint loss, ability score damage or negative levels don't matter and aren't actual penalties, because if a character lives long enough, they can recover and even improve from their prior baseline.

Nothing guarantees a character will live long enough. Even if the next loot cache will compensate for the loss of that +3 sword, the character will be at disadvantage until they actually get there. Preventing that disadvantage would require an even more rigorous rubber banding than the base d20 system actually has. Wealth-per-level smoothing over differences in the long term does not guarantee those differences are smoothed over in the short term.

This becomes increasingly obvious when you consider imbalances in how the system values things. Two items with the same worth in gold pieces can have radically different situational value, two encounters with the same challenge rating might be radically different in actual difficulty, two characters with the same effective level can be world apart in ability. During normal play, a character doesn't get a lump sum according to wealth-per-level to use exactly as they see fit, they get a bunch of randomized treasure that they have to either decide to keep or try to trade for money and other items they actually want. Put all of these together, and it becomes glaringly obvious the system does not compensate for poor uses of wealth, so why would you except it to compensate for cost of altruism?

[Satinavian]

Except that's exactly the assumption of WBL. That there is a direct translation between "total wealth" and "items you posess". There are literally charts of gp value of every single magic item in the game. The expectation is that the total magic items on the sheet plus actual coins should fall in a given range for any given level. That is precisely the point of the system.

It's not just about coins. It's about the gp equivalent value of all items the character posseses. And yes, in many games, there is an expectation that PCs can buy/trade items for other magic items of equal worth. So that +2 sword you don't need because everyone already has a +3 weapon gets sold in town for gp, which then gets spent (along with additional coin gained along the way, or from selling other loot) to buy items/scrolls/potions/whatever that the character actually needs/wants.

First, the basic assumption is that you can trade stuff you don't need for half worth, not equal worth.That loss is even explicitly mentioned in the WBL rules as one of the reasons WBL is average loot minus 15%, along with consumables. (Imho the percentage should be higher as in practice much more stuff is basically vendor trash, but whatever.)

Second, it is likely that the ridiculous inflation of wealth and loot value with rising level is also meant to compensate imbalances automatically with time.
Sure, being 2000 GP behind on 4th level is noticable. Being 2000 behind on 12th lv. is far less an issue, even if the GM did nothing to compensate whatsoever and you only got average loot.

[Aeson]

Says a number of rules quotes in this thread. All of which state that this is the amount of wealth a character "should possess/have" at a given level. It's not just how much they are handed at a level, but how much total they should "have" at any given level.

Provide the text. I see a rules quotation that says that the player characters are expected to have a given amount of wealth at a given level; I do not see any rules quotations that say that the players should be given additional loot or additional loot rolls or anything like that if they are for any reason short of WBL.

[King of Nowhere]

People confuse rules with guidelines. The dm handbook says much stuff, and a lot of them is optional. The wbl are "guidelines" and "recommended", not any kind of hard rules.

In the same line, there are tables for powerful npcs in a settlement, but i never heard anyone claiming "there MUST be a powerful wizard in this town, and if there isn't the dm is doing it wrong".
Expecting that the dm should compensate for donations by giving extra loot is as silly as expecting that if you kill the most powerful wizard in the city, a new one will move there next week, because the dmh says a city of that size MUST have a 16th level wizard.

[KorvinStarmast]

Indeed, I've never understood this fascination with charts and encounter tables. they never work anyway.

They work pretty good for procedural generation of things for the players to encounter. You can cobble together a "plot" after you have figured out what is in the local area, wilderness, dungeon, city, etc. I did this for years in AD&D. Works very well and it unburdens a DM from having to create stuff ex nihilo.

[CENTER]1) eyeball an encounter
2) throw the encounter at the party

This works fine as your systems mastery grows within a system.

None of this requires any knowledge of wealth by level, optimization level, encounter tables, or anything else.

Once you have some systems mastery, yes.

First, the basic assumption is that you can trade stuff you don't need for half worth, not equal worth. That loss is even explicitly mentioned in the WBL rules as one of the reasons WBL is average loot minus 15%, along with consumables. (Imho the percentage should be higher as in practice much more stuff is basically vendor trash, but whatever.)

I disagree with this premise. One man's trash is another man's treasure. There is some RP potential here for trading, and you can use a simple 2d6 system, or if you have a plot use a plot based reason, where the magic armor you are trading is worth more or less than that nominal "half value" ... whatever that means. The 2d6 system I use for stuff like this is simple. 7 means 'half value' (which interestingly enough in the D&D 5e system is what the usual "sell stuff back" rate is from the equipment list) and the boost an offer of cost plus, or an offer of nearly nothing (12 or 2) informs the offer and the player can choose to accept such an offer or not.

If one is treating this as a video game where you take all of that stuff form your stash and unload it on the vendor for X GP, I think that it's an opportunity missed.

In the same line, there are tables for powerful npcs in a settlement, but i never heard anyone claiming "there MUST be a powerful wizard in this town, and if there isn't the dm is doing it wrong".
Expecting that the dm should compensate for donations by giving extra loot is as silly as expecting that if you kill the most powerful wizard in the city, a new one will move there next week, because the dmh says a city of that size MUST have a 16th level wizard.

This post made me smile.

[Satinavian]

If one is treating this as a video game where you take all of that stuff form your stash and unload it on the vendor for X GP, I think that it's an opportunity missed.

Well, it is a roleplaying opportunity not taken, sure.

However most people i know don't really like playing out shopping trips or haggling. We all did it often enough when we were new at roleplaying but nowadays it feels roughly as much fun as real life shopping. Which for most means not fun at all, just another chore. It is even worse when selling stuff, for buying you might get some kind of excitement out of rare opportunities, but for selling even that is gone.

So, less an opportunity missed, more one deliberately skipped.

[Rynjin]

Yeah, setting aside the (incorrect) notion that WBL is a fixed number and you will always, automatically "rubberband" back to the appropriate number...the base premise doesn't make any sense anyway.

If I donate $1000 to charity, that's neat...does that mean I'm locked off from ever making money again? Is that the definition of "selfless" to you?

Just because I make that $1000 back at some point, or win it in a scratch off, or whatever doesn't negate the fact that it was given.

On a similar token, is donating part of my liver for a transplant not selfless just because it grows back? A single kidney because I really only need the one?

This is a very silly idea to me. Selflessness is entirely a function of intent, and future circumstances have zero bearing on that choice in the moment to retroactively make something "less selfless".

[KorvinStarmast]

Well, it is a roleplaying opportunity not taken, sure.

However most people i know don't really like playing out shopping trips or haggling. We all did it often enough when we were new at roleplaying but nowadays it feels roughly as much fun as real life shopping.

Then you are either "doing it wrong" or I didn't get my point across clearly (the far more likely case).

The 'one man's trash is another man's treasure' theme better fits into an RP situation (not a whole game session, to be sure) where you get leads, find someone in the not-widely-known 'magic item trade business' and there is a barter - I trade you this for that. What I use the 2d6 for nowadays is 'comparative value' ... unless the player explicitly wants to trade for cash or gems. (Which isn't usually what I've seen in this edition at all).
What I am referring to is most certainly not about going to a shop and it's not about going to a magic mart, as games like WoW, Diablo, et al have as standard fare. (And I am not a fan of WBL for a lot of reasons not worth wasting time on here).

Sorry if I was unclear about that.

[Quertus]

Add me to the chorus of, “that’s not how WBL works”.

“Should”? There’s lots of potentially interesting conversations around “should”, including things like, “if a PC spends their wealth poorly, should the GM compensate by giving them more treasure?” or “should PCs be allowed to affect the difficulty of the game with their spending choices?”.

But (if my reading comprehension hasn’t failed me yet again) the primary topic of the thread takes using this house rule of self-restoring / self-correcting wealth as a given, and asks, “how can we make generosity meaningful in this context?” And, um, I agree, that’s a tough ____ to ____.

Personally, I’d prefer to ditch regenerative wealth in such a situation. But if that isn’t on the table, the 2e method of making “cash” and items different pools (by removing magic item shops, by implementing “virtual items”, whatever), and allowing PCs to spend that wealth on castles, soldiers, bridges, beer, orphanages, statues of themselves, or whatever else they choose to spend it on.

[Satinavian]

Then you are either "doing it wrong" or I didn't get my point across clearly (the far more likely case).

The 'one man's trash is another man's treasure' theme better fits into an RP situation (not a whole game session, to be sure) where you get leads, find someone in the not-widely-known 'magic item trade business' and there is a barter - I trade you this for that. What I use the 2d6 for nowadays is 'comparative value' ... unless the player explicitly wants to trade for cash or gems. (Which isn't usually what I've seen in this edition at all).
What I am referring to is most certainly not about going to a shop and it's not about going to a magic mart, as games like WoW, Diablo, et al have as standard fare. (And I am not a fan of WBL for a lot of reasons not worth wasting time on here).

Sorry if I was unclear about that.

It is still a lot of time for stuff people might just find utterly boring busywork.
It is not about whether there are magic shops or not. It is about players actually have fun trying to track down potential buyers every single time they want to sell an item and then bartering.

As for whole sessions, well, yes, if 5 people each want to go shopping and you want to play it out including looking for clues about people who might have what they want or might want what you have, it will likely take a whole session. If you do standard magic mart instead, you are done in less than half an hour and then go back to stuff players actually care about.

[King of Nowhere]

I disagree with this premise. One man's trash is another man's treasure. There is some RP potential here for trading

If one is treating this as a video game where you take all of that stuff form your stash and unload it on the vendor for X GP, I think that it's an opportunity missed.

the first time we were selling a significant stash, we treated it as a roleplaying opportunity. the second and third time maybe, too. but it grows old. we gradually handwaved it more and more, and now we just sign the monetary value of items instead of the items themselves.
it's an opportunity we took, but it gets boring doing it every single time you return from a mission.

[KorvinStarmast]

If you do standard magic mart instead, you are done in less than half an hour and then go back to stuff players actually care about.

It's that attitude that I find tiresome and video gamey. I suppose that it's fairly wide spread, though, and a lot of players do come to TTRPGs after they have played CRPG/JRPG/ARPG/MMORPGs so that pattern may be well ingrained by that point.

[Satinavian]

It's that attitude that I find tiresome and video gamey. I suppose that it's fairly wide spread, though, and a lot of players do come to TTRPGs after they have played CRPG/JRPG/ARPG/MMORPGs so that pattern may be well ingrained by that point.

Nah, I and many of the players in my circle played long before MMOs were a thing or JRPGs common. We just got so bored with playing it out. I have even had players on occasion who just refused to ever update their gear just to avoid that tedious looking, shopping and bargaining.

It is not even necessarily a magic mart in fiction. Often it is just "What do you want to sell/buy" and then the rest is abstraction. Even if the PC run through the whole town trying to find potential trades and they bargain, it gets handwaved as something happening in the background.

[Stonehead]

Second, it is likely that the ridiculous inflation of wealth and loot value with rising level is also meant to compensate imbalances automatically with time.
Sure, being 2000 GP behind on 4th level is noticable. Being 2000 behind on 12th lv. is far less an issue, even if the GM did nothing to compensate whatsoever and you only got average loot.

From a certain point of view, this does cheapen charity a bit, just in a different way than OP was describing. Giving a healing potion to an npc could lower your chance of survival at level 2, but the ~50gp loss is unnoticeable at level 10.

"I don't care if I lose 50gp because the universe will reshape itself such that in a few weeks, I'll have the same amount of wealth either way" isn't exactly the same as "I don't care if I lose 50gp because in a few weeks I'll have so much wealth that I don't care either way", but they're fairly similar. IMO they're different enough though, that it becomes an ethical or economic question, and not a game question. "Does being crazy rich cheapen the acts of selflessness?" is an interesting question, but it's one I feel much less confident in answering than one about rpg systems.

[Rynjin]

It's that attitude that I find tiresome and video gamey. I suppose that it's fairly wide spread, though, and a lot of players do come to TTRPGs after they have played CRPG/JRPG/ARPG/MMORPGs so that pattern may be well ingrained by that point.

Or - and hear me out here - maybe some people just have different gaming preferences than you and not everything that is not done at your specific table is "video gamey".

You wanna talk about things that are "tiresome", it's that idea right there. The "No True Gamer" fallacy is easily the most pretentious thing this community regularly produces.

[icefractal]

I wouldn't even call it (abstracting shopping/bargaining) "video-gamey" when it fits the "source material" (to the extent there is any) better than extended shopping sequences.

Like, how many fantasy novels spend a chapter (or multiple) on the characters hunting for deals on upgraded gear?

[Vahnavoi]

"Does being crazy rich cheapen the acts of selflessness?" is an interesting question, but it's one I feel much less confident in answering than one about rpg systems.

It's not exactly an exotic position to take that giving little out of plenty is less remarkable than giving plenty out of little.

[MoiMagnus]

"Does being crazy rich cheapen the acts of selflessness?" is an interesting question, but it's one I feel much less confident in answering than one about rpg systems.

Usually, the exponential increase in wealth happens at the same time as an exponential increase of peoples you could help.
Higher level characters travel further, potentially interact with more NPCs, or have interactions with NPCs representing higher number of individuals, etc.

Giving a 50gp potion to a wounded person is costly at lower level.
Giving a stock of 50gp potions (logistic included) for an entire army is costly at higher level.

It's kind of a "with great power comes great responsibility". With great riches comes the expectation that if you are actually and honestly trying to do good, you will do more than helping a single person and do acts that fit the scale of your riches.

(Small note: while have crazy amount of money and being able to spend "10k per day", outside of time manipulation no ones has crazy amount of time and is able to use "10k hours per day", so the simple fact of dedicating your time to helping others is already a significant act of selflessness regardless of the money spent in the action)

[King of Nowhere]

It's that attitude that I find tiresome and video gamey. I suppose that it's fairly wide spread, though, and a lot of players do come to TTRPGs after they have played CRPG/JRPG/ARPG/MMORPGs so that pattern may be well ingrained by that point.

why would you insist that it's important to roleplay shopping and not, for example, going to the toilet? if you don't roleplay taking a dump, you are missing a roleplaying opportunity.
And if you do roleplay taking a dump, do you do it multiple times per adventure? you know, since most people pee a hlf dozen times per day?
you don't track your bladder level? that's such a tiresome and videogamey attitude.

Seriously, the first time you have to look around and find someone that will buy/trade/barter for a high cost magic item, it could be a fun adventure. but once you know a bunch of high-end traders around the world, and you have teleportation spells to visit them all in a day or two, what's the benefit of roleplaying "the twentieth time I go sell loot" rather than saying "ok, you spend a couple days and sell everything"?

[False God]

why would you insist that it's important to roleplay shopping and not, for example, going to the toilet? if you don't roleplay taking a dump, you are missing a roleplaying opportunity.
And if you do roleplay taking a dump, do you do it multiple times per adventure? you know, since most people pee a hlf dozen times per day?
you don't track your bladder level? that's such a tiresome and videogamey attitude.

Seriously, the first time you have to look around and find someone that will buy/trade/barter for a high cost magic item, it could be a fun adventure. but once you know a bunch of high-end traders around the world, and you have teleportation spells to visit them all in a day or two, what's the benefit of roleplaying "the twentieth time I go sell loot" rather than saying "ok, you spend a couple days and sell everything"?

Good gravy I've been in games with DMs and players who think the pretentious banter over bartering for items is the most fun thing they can possibly do. I don't think it's unreasonable to treat any random merchant like a car dealer, but you gotta haggle over something worth haggling over. You come in aiming to drop 10k GP, you can haggle for 9k. You come in aiming to drop 4 gp and you want to haggle for 3? Shove off.

And that's almost always what it ends up being. They want to haggle over discounts on a basic sword from the book. They want to haggle over the price of 10 rations. They want to engage in some grand roleplay with Bob the Grocer.

It's time consuming and tedious. You want to roleplay and haggle with Kevin the Magnificent Clothier of Legend, said to have crafted the Black Robes of the Lich, infamous for its destructive power? Sure great. That'll be fun and engaging. I wouldn't have bothered to make this character and add that information if I didn't want to draw players into looking deeper into them.

But the aggressive mundanity of striking up a conversation with Bill the Baker over his rather average lemon pastries and attempting to haggle him down from his 2 silver/per price? Get outta here with that.

[Quertus]

I wouldn't even call it (abstracting shopping/bargaining) "video-gamey" when it fits the "source material" (to the extent there is any) better than extended shopping sequences.

Like, how many fantasy novels spend a chapter (or multiple) on the characters hunting for deals on upgraded gear?

Of ones I've written? Two. And in one, the party was paranoid enough to stake out the place, do background research on the employees, etc, before risking actually approaching the store to engage in any high-value deals. (there's a reason you should claw your eyes out or seek out Cthulhu monsters rather than read anything I've written. )

As a rule, I hate that kind of thing, and prefer an end of session, "you earned X each; look up your purchases between sessions". It's only worth spending time on in a session if it helps say something about the character of the characters, or otherwise clearly adds to the experience more than anything else the characters could possibly be doing. Or just good 'ol 2e "no magic item shops" mentality, of course, with haggling over mundane goods left to the "not worth the time to discuss", just like meal prep, weapon maintenance, bathroom breaks, personal hygiene, laundry procedures, fasten then zip, the details of how the fire is built & how the food is seasoned and cooked, who ladles their food out of the communal soup bowl first, and most other minutia, most of the time. It's generally not worth the time unless a player brings it up as part of characterizing their PC (see also "spotlight sharing"). Don't put the spotlight on the dumb stuff, put it on the cool stuff, and the stuff that matters to / helps to characterize the PCs. Hint: haggling in movies is generally a few second scene if it's shown at all; anything more, and it's clearly meant to say something important about the character(s) or setting. In an RPG context, I've never seen it say anything important about the PCs (occasionally it says something about the players, and rarely anything flattering), and I have watched it eat inordinate amounts of time at numerous tables.

But this has little to do with the original topic afaict, besides the obvious "if WBL is a mandate of heaven, and your wealth will automatically be reset to expected values no matter what you do, there's no value to getting a good deal on something, so haggling is even more a waste of time than usual, and serves only to characterize the PCs. As such characterization is something I've never seen in the wild, it well and truly sets my expectations for the value of haggling in such session to be zero or less.".

[Mechalich]

Like, how many fantasy novels spend a chapter (or multiple) on the characters hunting for deals on upgraded gear?

It depends. Does the fantasy setting function like a game in that an item treadmill exists? If it does - and this is extremely common in 'dungeon hunter' manhwa or world-as-game isekai settings - then chapters dealing with negotiation for items, money, and rewards are extremely common (and the protagonists are usually incredibly money-grubbing).

The world in which we live is one in which, with apologies to MasterCard 'there are some things in life money can't buy,' but in item-laced fantasy worlds this isn't true, and money can buy anything, including healing from any illness, superpowers, and straight-up immortality. The problem is that attempting to model the social development of such a situation is very, very hard and also tends to be grimdark as f*** unless the total resource pool is expended to post-scarcity levels.

[Lilapop]

specifically because the GM is expected to increase your loot over time so that when you hit the next level, you will be back at "where you should be".

Do DMs actually do this? Maybe? Not sure. But if they are following the rules as written? yes.

No? No, that is not how it works. That's not how any of this works. The context of table 5-1 is about predicting the players' powerlevel while designing encounters and campaigns ahead of time, and it is referenced again when it comes to creating new characters. Old characters' wealth is controlled by the treasure budgets of encounters, not some gravitational pull the WBL numbers have in the calculations (they don't have any).

I always assumed WBL was a guideline of what PCs should get minus 15% for assumed lost consumables.

The other way around. Loot budgets are slightly higher than what you need to reach guideline wealth, to account for consumables, old stuff sold at half value, etc.

[Satinavian]

It depends. Does the fantasy setting function like a game in that an item treadmill exists? If it does - and this is extremely common in 'dungeon hunter' manhwa or world-as-game isekai settings - then chapters dealing with negotiation for items, money, and rewards are extremely common (and the protagonists are usually incredibly money-grubbing).

Even then it is usually either to showcase how the protagonists loot differs from regular dungeon loot or when it is about special, plot relevant items. Or to establish it once to then let it shift into background.

The other way around. Loot budgets are slightly higher than what you need to reach guideline wealth, to account for consumables, old stuff sold at half value, etc.

Well, that is exactly what i wrote : WBL = expected loot - 15% of expected loot.

[KorvinStarmast]

why would you insist that it's important to roleplay shopping

The fact that you call it shopping is a core part of the problem. It is the dismissiveness that encompasses the attitude that I don't care for. It becomes a social encounter when done well. As I said, there is no magic mart - and thus no shopping - in the approach we prefer.

But the aggressive mundanity of striking up a conversation with Bill the Baker over his rather average lemon pastries and attempting to haggle him down from his 2 silver/per price? Get outta here with that.

I concur with your point on "significant goals" (like the 10K diamond, which should be rarer than hen's teeth ...).
We have a DM and a couple of players who will sometimes go down that rabbit hole of the mundane in one of our groups. That's usually a cue for me to get up and take a bio break, get a beer, floss the cat.

To ensure that one understands the scope of my posts on this: it has to do with the trading of magic items with the aim of getting something (1) more useful, or (2) a better item, or (3) making an important alliance or contact with a significant NPC. That last bit was done recently with a drow priestess (NPC) by one of our players in a non- combat negotiation: one magic item traded for another and each side felt they got something as they left the negotiation.

[Tyndmyr]

That's one interpretation, which may certainly be valid. However, is it really _wealth_, if you cannot use it in any way? Maybe the correct term would be "resources acquired per level", or something like that?

Resources are wealth, so there is no distinction between those.

UPD: I looked at the Pathfinder rules (which is the system I play), and it says:

Note that it does not say "expected to get", but "expected to have".

Expected is not guaranteed. If the players decide to spend every copper they have, the rules do not guarantee that replacement wealth will be dropped by the next goblin they encounter.

WBL is mostly for things like "we're starting play at level five, how much gear should we have?"

[King of Nowhere]

The fact that you call it shopping is a core part of the problem. It is the dismissiveness that encompasses the attitude that I don't care for. It becomes a social encounter when done well. As I said, there is no magic mart - and thus no shopping - in the approach we prefer.

To ensure that one understands the scope of my posts on this: it has to do with the trading of magic items with the aim of getting something (1) more useful, or (2) a better item, or (3) making an important alliance or contact with a significant NPC.

I thought I already made that argument, but I didn't.
the thing is, it does not matter that there is no magic mart. i had one campaign where there was no magic mart, and that's exactly where I got the idea that it's not worth roleplaying those interactions.
so, the first time we got some magic item, we went around the city to look for a buyer. we could find some specialized shops that would take some. so now we knew there were some merchants that could deal in magic items. as we leveled up and we kept getting loot, we kept expanding our contacts. other adventuring teams, mage guilds, armies, nobles. as we got teleportation, it became a lot easier. We basically scoured the continent for anyone who could trade in magic items. all well and good.
we did roleplay those parts, and it was interesting.
however, once we had those contacts established, we gradually had less reason to keep roleplaying the selling of stuff. we already had a long list of contacts to trade. it was just a matter of spending a few days of downtime teleporting around. so the activity gradually went from "day 1, I use one teleport to go to city X, sell A B and C item to that rich collector, then use another teleport to go to city Y and sell D and E to the crafting guild, then I go to city Z to that wizard to collect the item that we commissioned last time. I keep one teleport in reserve in case one misfires. Day 2, [...]" to "we spend 2 days teleporting around and selling the stuff" to "we got loot for 50k gp".
So, I'm not saying there's never any point roleplaying the trading of stuff. I'm saying that there's rarely a point in doing it after the first few times where you establish contacts. And even then, if there are contacts to be found and the whole business can be reduced to "I spend some time and make some gather information checks", you may just want to skip it anyway.

P.S. when there is a magicmart, it does not mean there's no potential for roleplaying. A guild that controls magic item trade, and is clearly powerful enough to avoid being robbed - despite clearly having loot for millions, enough to attract the highest level robbers? A guild that has a near monopoly on a very important resource, needed for war among others? Seems to me there's plenty of plot hooks there.

[False God]

The fact that you call it shopping is a core part of the problem. It is the dismissiveness that encompasses the attitude that I don't care for. It becomes a social encounter when done well. As I said, there is no magic mart - and thus no shopping - in the approach we prefer.

An approach I also prefer. I don't tend to have the problem in my own games, though I certainly have people make attempts. There are NPCs and related shops where you can pick up mundane goods, the hunting outfitter, the local clothier, open the book, check the price, buy it or don't and then move on. That's my approach to "shopping". Then there are "merchants that matter"; the high end merchants, the strange shops that will only accept trades of other unique items.

I concur with your point on "significant goals" (like the 10K diamond, which should be rarer than hen's teeth ...).
We have a DM and a couple of players who will sometimes go down that rabbit hole of the mundane in one of our groups. That's usually a cue for me to get up and take a bio break, get a beer, floss the cat.

To ensure that one understands the scope of my posts on this: it has to do with the trading of magic items with the aim of getting something (1) more useful, or (2) a better item, or (3) making an important alliance or contact with a significant NPC. That last bit was done recently with a drow priestess (NPC) by one of our players in a non- combat negotiation: one magic item traded for another and each side felt they got something as they left the negotiation.

I agree with this approach as well. Trade, meaningful trade is important for both making the world feel real and as a problem to resolve situations. But it must be meaningful. A sack of beans for a stack of pancakes is not something I will tolerate players wasting table time on just because they don't want to pay for breakfast.

For as wealthy as PCs can get, players can be impressively miserly.

Fortunately, these are problems I tend to run into playing at other tables, rather than running my own.

[gbaji]

..., fasten then zip, ...

Ok. Let's talk socks...

[Quertus]

The fact that you call it shopping is a core part of the problem. It is the dismissiveness that encompasses the attitude that I don't care for. It becomes a social encounter when done well. As I said, there is no magic mart - and thus no shopping - in the approach we prefer.

I concur with your point on "significant goals" (like the 10K diamond, which should be rarer than hen's teeth ...).
We have a DM and a couple of players who will sometimes go down that rabbit hole of the mundane in one of our groups. That's usually a cue for me to get up and take a bio break, get a beer, floss the cat.

To ensure that one understands the scope of my posts on this: it has to do with the trading of magic items with the aim of getting something (1) more useful, or (2) a better item, or (3) making an important alliance or contact with a significant NPC. That last bit was done recently with a drow priestess (NPC) by one of our players in a non- combat negotiation: one magic item traded for another and each side felt they got something as they left the negotiation.

I thought I already made that argument, but I didn't.
the thing is, it does not matter that there is no magic mart. i had one campaign where there was no magic mart, and that's exactly where I got the idea that it's not worth roleplaying those interactions.
so, the first time we got some magic item, we went around the city to look for a buyer. we could find some specialized shops that would take some. so now we knew there were some merchants that could deal in magic items. as we leveled up and we kept getting loot, we kept expanding our contacts. other adventuring teams, mage guilds, armies, nobles. as we got teleportation, it became a lot easier. We basically scoured the continent for anyone who could trade in magic items. all well and good.
we did roleplay those parts, and it was interesting.
however, once we had those contacts established, we gradually had less reason to keep roleplaying the selling of stuff. we already had a long list of contacts to trade. it was just a matter of spending a few days of downtime teleporting around. so the activity gradually went from "day 1, I use one teleport to go to city X, sell A B and C item to that rich collector, then use another teleport to go to city Y and sell D and E to the crafting guild, then I go to city Z to that wizard to collect the item that we commissioned last time. I keep one teleport in reserve in case one misfires. Day 2, [...]" to "we spend 2 days teleporting around and selling the stuff" to "we got loot for 50k gp".
So, I'm not saying there's never any point roleplaying the trading of stuff. I'm saying that there's rarely a point in doing it after the first few times where you establish contacts. And even then, if there are contacts to be found and the whole business can be reduced to "I spend some time and make some gather information checks", you may just want to skip it anyway.

P.S. when there is a magicmart, it does not mean there's no potential for roleplaying. A guild that controls magic item trade, and is clearly powerful enough to avoid being robbed - despite clearly having loot for millions, enough to attract the highest level robbers? A guild that has a near monopoly on a very important resource, needed for war among others? Seems to me there's plenty of plot hooks there.

Ah. Hmmm...

Well, to generalize, the right GM, with the right group, could have fun with or find value in most things. Er, that is, for most things, there is a theoretical "right GM with the right group" that could have fun with and find value in it.

And, yes, "people with power" are certainly a game element potentially worth interacting with. Similarly, yes, "it's just a magic-mart" can still have people worth roleplaying out a discussion with.

Haggling over purchases? Nah, I've not seen value in taking up more than a few seconds of table time with that. Roleplaying with a powerless, not-connected-to-the-Plot street urchin? So long as Spotlight Sharing isn't being trampled, knock yourself out (if the whole party's into it, we can make it the entire session). Doing something of clear value (a category into which most interactions with powerful beings generally qualifies)? Again, a nod to Spotlight Sharing, but hard to argue against the worth of spending table time taking such actions.

The initial wording was easy to read as "spend lots of time roleplaying through shopping, for no net functional difference from just doing the math", where the "missed opportunity" could be read as "roleplaying through it", rather than changing the expected gameplay from (what to my mind is) a 3e style to a 2e style.

So, with this added clarification, yeah, I can see having fun with using items as an excuse to interact with beings of power. My tables tend to prefer to use things like favors or political leverage or contacts or mutually beneficial societal changes in such interactions, with items either a non-issue or almost an afterthought, but I can imagine it being fun with items taking primacy in such discussions, too.