Excerpt: Economies [merged]

[ForbidenMaster]

What? And at the same time, magic items are incredibly rare and hard to acquire?

I dont see your point. Just because something is rare and hard to acquire, doesnt mean that there is a large market for it. Magic items are specialty items. Very few people will actually buy magic items. Therefor if the PCs cant find another purchaser of magic items they have to go to the next highest bidder which is generally a merchant who will only pay 20% listed value. I dont see the problem with that.

 

[MindWanderer]

I wouldn't be surprised if Streetwise/Diplomacy can be used as a Skill Challenge to either increase the amount the fence will pay for a item or lower the price he will sale a item.

Streetwise = Know the actual cost of the item on the street

Diplomacy = Bartering

From the Skill Challenges excerpt:

Is This a Challenge?
It’s not a skill challenge every time you call for a skill check. When an obstacle takes only one roll to resolve, it’s not a challenge. One Diplomacy check to haggle with the merchant, one Athletics check to climb out of the pit trap, one Religion check to figure out whose sacred tome contains the parable—none of these constitutes a skill challenge.

 

[keterys]

I cannot realistically think of a way to keep it from working.

Nobody buys 'em seems like it would work.

Personally, I'm going to have no magic item shop of note (just the elixir place and a few possible items) and the merchant will buy items so they can be shipped halfway around the world to find someone to buy them, in a process that takes months. Ditto to buy anything of use.

 

[pawsplay]

There's no contradiction there. Think of a Rolls Royce. They're extremely expensive, and there's not much demand for them, partly because they're extremely expensive.

If something is so far outside Person X's price range that he couldn't even imagine paying for it, he has no measurable demand for it, no matter how much he might want it.

But rare, yet desired items tend to have a high resale value. Plus, most ancient swords probably don't wear out for whatever reason, meaning they should behave more like a commodity.

 

[small pumpkin man]

Ehhh.

Plus items are more integral than ever, actually. See: Monsters not getting full benefits of especially strong pluses, +6 wands, etc. It's calculated in, though, so you can remove plus items and just give out plus abilities to compensate.

I think the real difference will be that, since pluses are standard, the non-generic abilities will not have to compete with the pluses themselves.

Yes, yes, items have pluses, but I distincly remember someone saying that there wouldn't be amy items that only grant pluses, implying that a +2 magic sword isn't just a +2 sword, it's a +2 sword with the "magic" property.

But like I said, I ould be misremembering.

 

[AZRogue]

Treasure Parcels are given out whenever you know it's time to give out treasure. You have your list and when the PCs find the hidden room that has some treasure you mark a parcel off your sheet. If they don't find it you don't mark off a parcel and will mark it off later when it comes time to give out treasure.

In regards to PCs becoming merchants, more power to them I say. I would ask them that if they want to make a merchant campaign then that's fine, and then roleplay all the guys who want to try and haggle their prices down, don't have the money, ask for payment plans, try to steal the items, try to trade worthless items to them, etc. If that's how they want to get their kicks then I would let them but I wouldn't roll over and play dead by just fast forwarding past their merchant endeavors and giving them a blanket bonus to the resale value just because they want one. At the most they might find one actual buyer per session.

 

[FireLance]

Ah, but there, you're paying for the subservience of an employee and the use of an espresso machine.

And here you're paying for the services of the merchant as a deal broker, and the use of a cart (or other transportation device) to move the item from place to place until he can find a buyer.

Seriously, though, I think the reason for the drastic fall in selling price (and the rise in buying price) has more to do with gameplay and game balance than any attempt to define how the economy works. It's meant to encourage the PCs to use the items they find (or are given by the DM) instead of selling them and buying something else. Presumably, a similar trade-off will occur for disenchanting and making magic items.

 

[hong]

I cannot believe the concept of an illiquid market is so hard to accept.

 

[pawsplay]

And here you're paying for the services of the merchant as a deal broker, and the use of a cart (or other transportation device) to move the item from place to place until he can find a buyer.

Isn't that functionally the same as the services the PCs can offer to anyone with a magical item to sell? I just don't see how PCs can be anything other than the typical buyers and sellers of magic items.

 

[ForbidenMaster]

But rare, yet desired items tend to have a high resale value. Plus, most ancient swords probably don't wear out for whatever reason, meaning they should behave more like a commodity.

They do have a high resale value, hence the 10%-40% mark up. The problem is that you generally wont be able to find anyone who would be willing to pay that much. The highest you will generally be able to get is 20% from a merchant. The reason why he doesnt offer more is because he is taking a risk in that he may not be able to sell it again.