Proposal: Let Players Sell Stuff to Other Players

elecgraystone · Mar 3, 2010

Velmont said:
I recieved a Ligthning Sword and a Genasi Soul Armor from Mal. Do I complain...not at all, because he gave me items very useful to me.

LOL And that's fine if you don't mind. However, I'd have sold off that second sword as soon as I hit a market. The armor? iffy. It'd depend if selling it got me enough to buy something I wanted.

Case in point, my warlock. I had a lot of interesting items, but not ones that really worked well for me. I sold off 3 or 4 just before my last adventure started. Now I'm little light in wealth but I'm actually more effective because I'm actually going to use every item. Better than keeping some around for a corner case when they might come in useful IMO.

elecgraystone said:
I just gotta say that in 15 years I have NEVER seen a PC buy an item by 1/36th increments! It always came after one, two or three at the most big windfall.

Well I do it and it makes sense in 4E. That +1 club makes your character look 288gps wealthier than he is and you're more likely to have a use for 72gp over a +1 club when you already have a magic weapon. I just sold one item more than I needed to buy the items I needed. Why? Because I may get a replacement that I can use this adventure and since I wasn't going to use it, why not start my 'buy a new item' fund?

Velmont · Mar 3, 2010

elecgraystone said:
LOL And that's fine if you don't mind. However, I'd have sold off that second sword as soon as I hit a market. The armor? iffy. It'd depend if selling it got me enough to buy something I wanted.

Case in point, my warlock. I had a lot of interesting items, but not ones that really worked well for me. I sold off 3 or 4 just before my last adventure started. Now I'm little light in wealth but I'm actually more effective because I'm actually going to use every item. Better than keeping some around for a corner case when they might come in useful IMO.

I didn't sold my pinning longsword yet because I don't have the resources for the item I want, even if I sell it.

evilbob · Mar 3, 2010

I have also been skimming this thread, although I haven't read much of the parts about how DMs should distribute loot. Personally, I think that is immaterial to the proposal, altho a very interesting discussion.

The way I see it, the OP's suggestion would work in one of three ways:

- Seller sells item for 100% value. Advantage the seller. Buyer gets item just like normal. Seller effectively quintuples value of sold item, BUT it is extremely situational for most items.

- Seller sells item for 20% value. Advantage the buyer. Seller gets normal money, but buyer gets item for 1/5 value. Still, only extremely situational for most items.

- Seller sells item for between 100% and 20% value. Advantage both. Ideally, you could set a hard number, say 60%. At 60%, the buyer gets a very good deal but doesn't make their money go 2x as far. The seller gets 3 times the value of the sale, but again they don't get even close to the full cost. And once again: this is all situational. A wizard doesn't care what the fighter is selling: he doesn't want it.

I'd say setting a specific sale price that must be followed (and of course not allowing intra-character trade for players) seems pretty reasonable. I think if these were all real parties meeting weekly then people would certainly trade things among each other.

Either way, there's some potential clarification on the OP's request.

covaithe · Mar 3, 2010

Counterexample: neck slot items. Those are pretty universal, and someone selling a good low-level neck item could potentially find a lot of interested buyers.

renau1g · Mar 3, 2010

Light armors are another one. While most defenders (except SM & Warden) use heavy armor, most strikers & controllers and 1/2 leaders use light (not clerics & non-Tactical warlords) so it seems like a very likely one also.

Kalidrev · Mar 3, 2010

Not to mention the simple fact is that people are always going to try to "buy up". If I'm a 2nd level character with 200gp and someone were selling their level 5 item at 1/5th value... well look at that, it's 200gp. I normally should not have been able to buy said 1000gp item, but now, by buying from another player, I have a 5th level item over anyone who did not also get that same deal. This is completely unfair in my opinion. 200gp normally would not even give buying power for a level 1 magic item (360gp cost).

Now, even with the 60% rule that was mentioned, this will still allow a slight amount of abuse and people will end up more powerful for their level than they should be.

If I haven't already, then I vote NO to this proposal. I personally think we should switch over to the LEB parcel method (though not going that rout has other advantages that I see...), but I'm not going to be the one to make a proposal for it (as of yet anyway).

evilbob · Mar 3, 2010

Re: light armor and neck slot items - Perfectly true. While I still don't think a wizard would generally be interested in a neck slot item a fighter used, those are both examples of items that would be easier to sell. I still believe generally it's a fairly situational thing. Also worth noting is the higher the player count, the more likely these situations would come up.

Kalidrev: Your worry seems to be that of a player getting an item too powerful for their level. This, too, is easy to control: you cannot purchase an item of greater than your level +1 from another player (for example). There: now the level 1 guy will never be able to buy the level 3 item, even if he had the money.

I honestly don't think it would be hard to restrict player sales to the point where folks wouldn't have a problem with them and they wouldn't be abused. To me, it seems more like the real question is, "are a bunch of rules codifying this worth the trouble". So far, I think it would take at least 2.

Kalidrev · Mar 3, 2010

Well, another thing, that I think has been mentioned is the addition of work that character checkers and judges will have. If we have to double-check where each item someone has came from, then this will slow down the character approval/level up process.

ryryguy · Mar 3, 2010

evilbob: as you yourself said in your earlier post, player-to-player transactions would be attractive to players because they provide an "advantage" over the regular wealth system with its 20% sell / 100% buy.

In other words, p2p trading allows the players to beat or break the regular wealth system.

We can add level caps and taxes and so forth to try to contain the damage. But why allow something that does such damage in the first place? Where the very thing that makes it attractive is the fact that it does damage?

What problem is this intended to address? I think we should look for a different solution to that problem that works within the wealth system, not breaks it.

evilbob · Mar 3, 2010

ryryguy said:
We can add level caps and taxes and so forth to try to contain the damage. But why allow something that does such damage in the first place? Where the very thing that makes it attractive is the fact that it does damage?

Excellent points all around.