20% item resale value: impossible!

mmu1 said:
most parties are selling them legitimately.

"See you've got a magical axe for sale."

"Yup."

"How'd you come across that?"

"Slaughtered a bunch of cultists that live a couple blocks over yonder, found it in the master bedroom."

"...ummm ... ok. How about that Ring of Invisibility there?"

"Stole it from a Demon Prince -- it was the pride of his collection, you know?."

"I see. The Bag of Holding?"

"Got a wizard friend who made that himself -- you can see his maker's mark right there in the corner. Gruzby the Grim."

"Isn't he the wizard who burned down the Temple of Palathir?"

"Yup. A real prestige item that one. Everybody knows Gruzby and just what he stands for. Did you know that the price on his head is up to twelve million gps?"

"Really? Well, I wish you the best. Just remembered I left the oven burning..."
 

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Storminator said:
By "legitimately" you mean "killed the previous owner and took his stuff and am now unloading the goods without paying guild dues or taxes" right? :D

PS
Yes, I think that's legitimately, for certain values of legitimacy. ;)
 

The way the 4E universe is structured 20% actually seems very generous. PC's are unique meaning there is no one else like them in the world. Where is the market for high dollar combat magical gear?
I enjoy collecting swords but I wouldn't consider spending several years salary or more just to get a really cool one.

On a related note, if the PC's are so special with regards to needing these items who is making them and why?
 

DMReckless

First Post
SweeneyTodd said:
You should do the quest where you find someone on the street who wants your book, convince them they should buy it from you rather than a store, and profit. I found out the hard way Intimidate is an auto-fail on those skill challenges, though.
Not if you're selling used guns. And pointing them at the person. ;)

(Edit: Of couse, once the transaction is complete, your "buyer" is holding the gun.)
 

Dausuul

Legend
mmu1 said:
Yeah. Cause it's just great when your "hero" trying to unload a magic blade found in a dragon's hoard gets a deal only a little better than if he was a crackhead at a pawn shop.

The multiplier doesn't really matter in the long run, but it's silly to argue it's "realistic" because of the prices random old books that aren't particularly in demand sell for.

I agree. It's much more reasonable to compare it to the price you'd get for going on the black market and selling military-grade weaponry of, shall we say, dubious provenance.

Sure, it came from a dragon's hoard. That's what they all say. If every shifty-eyed rogue who claimed to be a dragonslayer actually was, the damn things'd be extinct.

DMReckless said:
Not if you're selling used guns. And pointing them at the person. ;)

(Edit: Of couse, once the transaction is complete, your "buyer" is holding the gun.)

Rule #1: Never sell the ammo.
 
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rushlight

Roll for Initiative!
It seems many people gloss over a major factor when considering the sales price of an item - *the buyer*.

To give a real world example, let's say I've got a rare piece of furnature - something very old, and antique. If I decide to sell it, who I sell it to is most important. If I go to the corner antique store, I'll only get a small percentage of it's value, since I'm selling it to a reseller who expects to make a profit on the risk he's taking by buying my antique.

But if I take out ads in the paper, put it on Ebay, or market it some other way directly to the final buyer, I can make very near it's full value.

So when it comes to D&D, the 20% value is what you get when you cash the item in with a *reseller* - who'll then mark it up. If you wanted to spend days or weeks shopping the item around to final buyers, perhaps you could make more. Unfortunatly, there's no Ebay equivilant in a D&D setting by default. Of course, you could set up a storefront, do some advertising, and really push your magic items on the end-user from a retail point of view. But then, you're roleplaying "Crazy Bob's Used Magic Emporium" instead of an action-adventure game...

It's basically assumed that the PCs don't have the time to bother with maximizing profit off a single item, when that time could be better spend aquiring more items. If it took on average a week to find a buyer and get full value for an item, and a week to find another 5 items PLUS more stuff, AND get to kill lots of things - which would *you* do?
 

malraux

First Post
Upon reflection, I think the best approximation of this sort of economy would be some place like Angola or Liberia with items like blood diamonds and guns. Of course, I have no real knowledge of what such things sold for in those situations relative to the market price, but I could see such things going for 1/5 of market value.
 

KKDragonLord

First Post
Selling weapons and armor are kinda hard indeed especially since most people dont have the kinda money to buy a "magic sword" and settle for a normal sword instead.

Since adventurers are supposed to be rare, at least in my world they are, i'd say that about 0.1% of the population become "partially successful" adventurers each generation, counting out 50% that are either too young or too old, thats about 1 person for the few small villages of my world, and 25 people from the capital. Finding those 25 in a city with 50.000 people can be rough. Either way the important part is that there aren't enough adventurers to make magic item commerce available.

Elves and Dwarves are a different matter, all Elves and Eladrin have player classes, though most of them don't have many levels and their entire population are of only a few hundreds. Dwarves have very powerful kingdoms and many warriors with magic items, but their kingdoms are mostly isolated and they are constantly fighting hordes of orcs or giants, and other threats, thats because when mankind expanded a big part of the monster races were expelled to the less hospitable environments, especially mountains. Dwarves do sell good quality equipment, mostly non magical though, and they trade mainly with human nobles and churches. There are a few rock gnome merchants powerful enough to travel and sell equipment on their own, but they are generally adventurer agents on information gathering assignments (aka spies).

Obviously there are other groups of people who have the resources and the means to own magic items. Those are all the militaristic groups of the world. Churches, Nobles, Cults, Armies, Organized Crime, powerful Mercenaries. The wizards of the world are all divided into doctrines, a few powerful wizards who have their set of pupils and tend to work closely with other groups toward mutual goals. They are all part of a guild and monitor the production of magic items very closely to make sure that to those who get them don't end up conflicting with their interests.

In a sense, since magic items are the equivalent of power, if there is a magic item available, it will be put to good use, a king will want his most skilled and trusted commander to have it.

That could be seen as a very high demand for magic items indeed, but the fact is that people who have items don't want to part with them. The group could sell their equipment for full value if they are diplomatic enough, or even a little higher if they bluff well enough (not too much).

But then they wouldn't easily find a way to buy anything better. Opportunities will come eventually, if they work for a church or for a wizard maybe. But those are the exceptions.

Most of the time, their best bet to get better equipment is either adventuring, or making their own. I have a house rule that will allow them to make better items with some risk involved, they must collect enough energy to try to make a better item and roll high, if they don't roll high enough, the excess of energy is wasted.

Basically, to me and my world, magic items are very rare, and very valuable, they are magical after all, they are supposed to be special.

The best part about 4e is that the NPCs don't necessarily need to have magic equipment to be powerful, all they need is a few special abilities that come from themselves and the rest comes from their inherent Baddassness. Such as the boss fight my group will face next, an Elite Orc Shaman with 22AC and a measly leather armor :]
 
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SweeneyTodd

First Post
Serious answer: 20% is the amount you get if you want to "just sell it", glossing over the transaction.

Here's another way it could go:
DM: You can get 1000 gold for it.
Player: No way, I'm going to find a buyer who knows what this is worth.
DM: Okay, sounds like you just made a quest for yourself. The reward is however much gold you can get for the item.

There's no such thing as a free lunch. You can get more money for selling an item than the default the same way you make "free money" -- quest for it. Considering that other quests are both more monetarily rewarding and (for most people, anyway) more fun to play than yet another Find a Buyer quest, that seems reasonable to me.

Alternately, cut to the chase... "Yeah, the Baron would probably give you a great price for that piece... if you did him a favor."

A third option is to allow higher resale prices but reduce the amount of treasure rewarded. It all works out the same economically (magic items you don't want turn into X value of gold per treasure parcel), but it reduces the players' options of items to choose from.

This is yet another situation where things work mechanically a certain way, and if that doesn't match your personal "in-fiction" explanation for how they should "really" work, you have to come up with a different explanation. And it doesn't matter what it is as long as it (a) fits the mechanics and (b) everybody at the table is OK with it.
 
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Pbartender

First Post
SweeneyTodd said:
Serious answer: 20% is the amount you get if you want to "just sell it", glossing over the transaction.

Here's another way it could go:
DM: You can get 1000 gold for it.
Player: No way, I'm going to find a buyer who knows what this is worth.
DM: Okay, sounds like you just made a quest for yourself. The reward is however much gold you can get for the item.

And since no one else seems to have mentioned it yet, you could also arrange a skill challenge...

The base DC of the check is based on the magic item's level (see the Difficulty Class and Damage by Level chart in the DMG). The player determines the complexity they wish to use. Each check takes one day. Every successful skill check increases the final resale value by 5%. Every failed check decreases the final resale value by 5%. Success means the players has found a buyer willing to purchase the item for the final resale value. Failure indicates that no buyers are currently interested in the item.

Primary skill is Streetwise. After a successful Streetwise check is made, Bluff, Diplomacy, or Insight could be used.

The base DC could also be modified the size of the town (village = hard, town = moderate, city = easy). The player's skill check could be modified for working faster or slower (for example, a -5 penalty for one check per hour, or a +5 bonus for one check per week).
 

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