ooc: Ironwolf's got a sword valued at about 30k, which RA states can't be sold in Orussus at all. I'd rather have the cash, but I think I might be stuck with it.
ooc: Ironwolf's got a sword valued at about 30k, which RA states can't be sold in Orussus at all. I'd rather have the cash, but I think I might be stuck with it.
(OOC: That is correct. As I've hemmed and hawed a few times (and mentioned that I would never have allowed it if I was a judge at the time), Rinaldo's ability to sell for the same price as buying is strong for a normal game and beyond incredibly powerful in a living world, but it doesn't allow Rinaldo to beat the sell limit of Orussus on very expensive items. I was actually counting on this for TCotM (that he would have to seek out individual actual people to buy the items and not just get 90% for them with a generic sell) because otherwise Rinaldo is going to quickly have, quite literally, millions of GP of profit from buying and reselling items from various high-level adventures.)
__________________ "That's so far over the line between genius and madness, it passed all the way through Cthulhuville and normalcy and all the way back to brilliance!"--MoogleEmpMog
(OOC: By the way, when I say 'no breaking the sale limit', that is just for selling to faceless automatic sources, of course. If Rinaldo were to actually buy one of these items and leave it in his store hoping a PC would pick it up, that is 100% allowable, no matter the power of the item)
OOC: That was the plan, while Rinaldo would be looking for a buyer in his next adventure (a side quest that might or might not be successfull, all depend of the master... and it might be usefull to fight a lich too.) the weapon would remain at Orussus, in acse someone would like to buy it for a better price then the one I have bought it (all I want is profit, so instead of selling it at 80%, I could easily sell it at 40% if I have bought it at 20 or 30% of the price).
__________________ Living ENWorld di Senzio's Magical Shop, the best place to buy and sell magical items in Orussus
(OOC: It's not bludgeoning, so probably not super-useful to fight a lich. Fortunately (or perhaps unfortunately? ) the lich isn't the mega adventure )
__________________ "That's so far over the line between genius and madness, it passed all the way through Cthulhuville and normalcy and all the way back to brilliance!"--MoogleEmpMog
Given all of that, I sure hope Rinaldo starts piling up the cash!
I've never played with sell limits on items, only buy limits. Sell limits are a pain!
They keep everything sane, though. They are particularly important because of Rinaldo.
Just to give a quick example (this is with no sell limit):
17th-level party finishes adventure (they started this adventure at 14th say). They want to sell 500,000 GP (sell price) worth of gear (let's say 6 PCs, so that's very reasonable for a group of that size--they might even have more to sell!). Rinaldo is a nice guy, so he gives them 600,000 GP instead. Then he sells it using his class ability for 900,000 GP. Bang--he just gained 300,000 GP (enough to buy a +10 equivalent weapon and a +10 equivalent armour both!) instantly with no in-character work for it.
But RA, you might say, what if Rinaldo doesn't have 600,000 GP to buy it all?
Well, he doesn't need that much. Assume that these are, let's say, 10 items worth 60,000 each. He buys them and sells them one at a time. It takes no in-character time to do so, so it works out.
ooc: Perhaps sell prices are required due to the merchant class abilities... unless we were to design a more elegant fix. :shrug: Part of what makes LEW interesting is seeing how other people play the game. I'm not opposed to trying new things, even if I grumble a bit about the extra paperwork.
(OOC: I'd love to propose a fix for Merchant, but I'd feel it incredibly cruel to pull the rug out from under Rinaldo after he spent so much time and effort maxing out the PrC, so even though I feel that the approval of the class by the original judges was an incredibly foolish mistake, I don't feel it fair to ex-post-facto take it away. I consider it a totally inappropriate way to behave as a Judge after the player puts so much effort into making the living world a richer place (as a side note, just this seems to be happening in Living Supers now that they have mostly new judges, and it is just as egregious there, but that's not really a discussion for LEW) We'll all just have to live with what comes next
On a personal note--in my home games, I always make it pretty easy for the PCs to find a unique high-level NPC to bypass the sell limit of their city within reason, but my game has a lot of high-level NPCs. Since LEW is defined to not be so, it shouldn't be so easy (though it still may very well happen). And even in my home game, there were limits--case in point, the PCs at level ~20 found an item estimated at over 1 million GP. They didn't want it, but they couldn't find anyone to buy it except the incredibly well-funded bad guys they were fighting, so one of the PCs met with an emissary of the enemies at neutral ground to make the transaction! (it was quite exciting ))
(OOC: I'd love to propose a fix for Merchant, but I'd feel it incredibly cruel to pull the rug out from under Rinaldo after he spent so much time and effort maxing out the PrC, so even though I feel that the approval of the class by the original judges was an incredibly foolish mistake, I don't feel it fair to ex-post-facto take it away. I consider it a totally inappropriate way to behave as a Judge after the player puts so much effort into making the living world a richer place (as a side note, just this seems to be happening in Living Supers now that they have mostly new judges, and it is just as egregious there, but that's not really a discussion for LEW) We'll all just have to live with what comes next
On a personal note--in my home games, I always make it pretty easy for the PCs to find a unique high-level NPC to bypass the sell limit of their city within reason, but my game has a lot of high-level NPCs. Since LEW is defined to not be so, it shouldn't be so easy (though it still may very well happen). And even in my home game, there were limits--case in point, the PCs at level ~20 found an item estimated at over 1 million GP. They didn't want it, but they couldn't find anyone to buy it except the incredibly well-funded bad guys they were fighting, so one of the PCs met with an emissary of the enemies at neutral ground to make the transaction! (it was quite exciting ))
All praise King Rinaldo Seriously I hope Rinaldo does become wealthy albeit within reason. He has pioneered the merchant shop owner in LEW and has enhanced the living
aspect of LEW. He is bigger than Walmart! I see opportunities for short adventures to some distant place for a group of adventurers to sell items for Rinaldo. Judges and Rinaldo could determine profit limits ahead of time and allow someone else to DM and others participate in the adventure. Rinaldo would not have to join the adventure even allowing NPC's to establish $ details. Just a thought.
I think it is clear that Rinaldo is meant to become rich. So I won't hide it. Also, the Trader PrC is not an adventuring PrC. It is weaker then any other, but his Haggling and Bargain ability allow to offset that weakness by having more equipment (but walking naked in some caves really show that weakness ).
I really expect to see Rinaldo to have a better equipment then his level, but I don't see a porblem to prevent some abuse (like having an amount of gp limits for buyers) as long as it doesn't prevent to sell an item at all. Having to search for one could be interesting, and I love the idea of BigB as having Rinaldo (or Valeria) hiring a group of NPC to find a buyer or carry the goods. That might mean that Rinaldo will have to do almost nothing to sell the item, except to have his gold frozen on that item until the adventure is finish.
__________________ Living ENWorld di Senzio's Magical Shop, the best place to buy and sell magical items in Orussus
I think it is clear that Rinaldo is meant to become rich. So I won't hide it. Also, the Trader PrC is not an adventuring PrC. It is weaker then any other, but his Haggling and Bargain ability allow to offset that weakness by having more equipment (but walking naked in some caves really show that weakness ).
I really expect to see Rinaldo to have a better equipment then his level, but I don't see a porblem to prevent some abuse (like having an amount of gp limits for buyers) as long as it doesn't prevent to sell an item at all. Having to search for one could be interesting, and I love the idea of BigB as having Rinaldo (or Valeria) hiring a group of NPC to find a buyer or carry the goods. That might mean that Rinaldo will have to do almost nothing to sell the item, except to have his gold frozen on that item until the adventure is finish.
The great thing is that the GP limit for sales is right there in the RAW, so we aren't even adding in anything extra. Of course, Rinaldo gets a better deal on sales, so he can actually get more despite the GP limit than others, which is cool (to wit, most people can sell for at most 10k in Orussus, since they sell 50% of 20k, but since Rinaldo can sell 90% of 20k, he can get 18k in Orussus).
__________________ "That's so far over the line between genius and madness, it passed all the way through Cthulhuville and normalcy and all the way back to brilliance!"--MoogleEmpMog
The great thing is that the GP limit for sales is right there in the RAW, so we aren't even adding in anything extra.
Unless you have a better source than I found, you have to extrapolate from the RAW to get such a limit. I see support for "you can only buy items up to x gp" but nothing indicating "you can only sell items up to 1/2 x gp." Do you have a rules quote, link, or page cite to the contrary?
Unless you have a better source than I found, you have to extrapolate from the RAW to get such a limit. I see support for "you can only buy items up to x gp" but nothing indicating "you can only sell items up to 1/2 x gp." Do you have a rules quote, link, or page cite to the contrary?
You can only sell items up to x gp, just like all the other people in the city (but you receive 1/2 x for them)--the rules apply to the PCs too unless it says they are different
__________________ "That's so far over the line between genius and madness, it passed all the way through Cthulhuville and normalcy and all the way back to brilliance!"--MoogleEmpMog
You can only sell items up to x gp, just like all the other people in the city (but you receive 1/2 x for them)--the rules apply to the PCs too unless it says they are different
The rule is, in my understanding, items up to x price are available for sale in a given city. A PC in posession of an item valued at x+y who chooses to sell it can still do so, and get full value for it under the interpretation that I've always used. Is there really a place where it clearly says otherwise?
The rule is, in my understanding, items up to x price are available for sale in a given city. A PC in posession of an item valued at x+y who chooses to sell it can still do so, and get full value for it under the interpretation that I've always used. Is there really a place where it clearly says otherwise?
It doesn't say that you can, so by strict RAW (which of course is sometimes ridiculous to follow and I readily admit I often digress from strict RAW, like when they broke Spring Attack by accident) you would have to follow the rules for the buying limit. Of course, in this case, the strict RAW also makes excellent sense (merchants won't buy it from you after a point because they cannot sell it back again in that city because it is beyond the buy limit, and the 50% price assumes selling to resellers and merchants--in other words, if you sold it and the NPC put it in their shop, it violates the buy limit), and taking the "that isn't a limit" approach might work for a while but will eventually (though the eventually may be at a far far later point) lead any sane GM to eyeball a houseruled limit (as mentioned above, you might think it wouldn't come up, but I honestly and truly did have the event where the party wanted to sell the 2 million GP True Resurrection necklace they found and I wouldn't let them do it unless they found a specific buyer. Would you?)
__________________ "That's so far over the line between genius and madness, it passed all the way through Cthulhuville and normalcy and all the way back to brilliance!"--MoogleEmpMog
ooc: I'm fine with LEW work in the manner you describe, but in my home games I'm perfectly happy to let adventurers sell whatever they want. The realism gain in such limits isn't worth the extra paperwork to me. Buying and selling magic items isn't fun except under the limited circumstances you describe (when the sale *is* the adventure) and stuff that isn't fun should be kept as short as possible. In fact, in our at home group one player is assigned the task of writing down the loot we find, distributing what we want to keep, and selling off the rest. We usually get an e-mail saying something like "last session we got 11,000 gp each." This way, we can get straight into the adventure.
(OOC: It's a fine methodology. I've played with GMs who do that and had fun games. But all of them who just consider treasure to be a collection of GP also allow the buying limit to be ignored too, since at that point you might as well (in fact, I think the sell limit prevents much more abuse than the buy limit). If you run your home games as you describe but still keep the buy limit, you'd be the first (and that's not a bad way to do it either, just seems inconsistent to me--if you've cracked verisimilitude for convenience, might as well go all the way and make the treasure run super-smooth). )
__________________ "That's so far over the line between genius and madness, it passed all the way through Cthulhuville and normalcy and all the way back to brilliance!"--MoogleEmpMog
We do use a buy limit, but we use a home rule system that one of the group came up with based on pc level rather than town size. Exceptions can happen, occasionally. For example, for a 10% surcharge you can hire an agent to find the item you want to buy. He'll generally be able to locate it in a few weeks or months.