Excerpt: Economies [merged]

[Andor]

So you'd be just as happy with a hairgel of permanence as with a holy avenger? If not, then no magic items are not like sugar.

I believe he's suggesting that if you took a used +1 flaming longsword to Ye Olde Killamajig Shoppe and tried to trade it in for a used +1 flaming battle axe you might get offended by the suggestion that the axe is worth 7 times the value of the sword. And when your buddy took that same axe in the next day and tried to swap it back for his sword that you borrowed he would not be pleased to learn that the sword is now worth 7 times what the axe is worth.

 

[drjones]

Experience tells me that a middle school football game concession stand can get the same buck fifty for a Coke that McDonald's gets.

But can you get the same price for your Kandinsky that Sothebys can? No. If in your world magic items are as rare as Coke then there is no reason to have to hunt for a buyer/seller but in a more 'standard' dnd world where magic items are rare and valuable you need access to a clientel with a lot of money but not enough money/power to kill you and take your loot for free.

This isn't buying soybean futures, or even beanie babies on ebay. It's buying antiques in a world before antiques roadshow.

 

[malraux]

I believe he's suggesting that if you took a used +1 flaming longsword to Ye Olde Killamajig Shoppe and tried to trade it in for a used +1 flaming battle axe you might get offended by the suggestion that the axe is worth 7 times the value of the sword. And when your buddy took that same axe in the next day and tried to swap it back for his sword that you borrowed he would not be pleased to learn that the sword is now worth 7 times what the axe is worth.

Agreed, but you'll have much the same experience at a used car lot or pawn shop.

 

[Destil]

Well, 4E still has at it's heart the biggest 3E design problem. The dual power axis. On one axis you have level, and on the other you have gold. Both increase power, they interact in strange ways.

If only they had come to their senses and simply given every item a + to your effective level. So you know a party at level 4 with +3 items is about equal to a party at level 5 with +1 9making these numbers up as I go, of course). No more base wealth by level. No more issues of running a module for a no/high magic world, you know what equivalent you're at.

Because that's the whole problem. 'Expected' vs 'equivalent' is a world of difference.

(Some items need more than a level equivalent, of course. Stuff like boots of flying also needs a 'threshold' value, since before a certain level you just can't fly, and adding them can change the dynamics of the game a lot.)

Ah, well. The simplified rules of 3E's main + items should make this easy enough to reverse engineer out, and I'll happily be attempting such a system here on the boards after June.

...I suppose in retrospect there's a 3rd axis, party size... though that really should be on its own and not part of level.

(I can't claim credit for this idea, a guy I used to play with in a 3E game brought it up. Absoultly brilliant).

 

[Cadfan]

Ah, right. The "zero profit margin" theory of retail sales. I do believe I've heard of that from Magic players in my region, trying to trade in their $15 rare for $15 store credit.

Maybe the merchant can make up the difference in volume.

 

[keterys]

True, but he'll need to offer a better deal to invite more profit. Perhaps, say, $18 store credit.

That ought to work. (There's a good OotS for that)

 

[Majoru Oakheart]

Experience tells me that a middle school football game concession stand can get the same buck fifty for a Coke that McDonald's gets.

True, but we aren't talking about low cost, easy to acquire items.

Imagine if you had a Ferrari. That's something a decent number of people would love to have, but it was really expensive to make and it has a lot of value.

Now, imagine you had no phone and no internet and wanted to sell it. Some people might know someone who has the money to afford one, but it is unlikely. So how do you find a buyer? The only thing I could think of is trying to drive around until I found a dealership who was willing to buy it off me since they had the connections to find a buyer. They likely have a list of former clients with their addresses and those people might have friends who want to buy one as well.

The same thing applies to magic items in a D&D game. You might find a merchant who has ties to the King of Kingdom A which is a good month travel west from your location. The merchant is allowed entry to the castle due to an agreement that was passed down from the King's father because the merchant's father helped him out one time. The King trusts that his good are what he says they are since they've had dealings in the past. Plus, he knows wealthy nobles in town B, city C, and kingdom D just in case that King doesn't want it.

The merchant is willing to buy the items, but for a lot less than he'd sell them for as he has to hire guards for a trip that long through the wilderness and they cost money. Plus the cost to feed them and the danger involved.

So, you have the choice of either:
a) Traveling the world for as long as it takes to find someone rich enough to buy them, find one who has an interest in it, convince them that you are trustworthy enough to hand over a large amount of cash to, then sell the item for full price.
b) Sell the item for 1/5th the value to the traveling merchant who is in town immediately with no hassle.

 

[FireLance]

I believe he's suggesting that if you took a used +1 flaming longsword to Ye Olde Killamajig Shoppe and tried to trade it in for a used +1 flaming battle axe you might get offended by the suggestion that the axe is worth 7 times the value of the sword. And when your buddy took that same axe in the next day and tried to swap it back for his sword that you borrowed he would not be pleased to learn that the sword is now worth 7 times what the axe is worth.

Of course, pre-4e, the standard widely-accepted PC selling price was 50% of the PC buying price, so you'd get the same situation but with smaller numbers: the flaming battle axe would be worth 2 flaming longswords, and the next day, a flaming longsword would be worth 2 flaming battle axes. So it seems to me that the issue is more of scale and perceived fairness than of logic or principle.

 

[Spatula]

The problem with this new system is that it's difficult to play around with the parcel system. Let's say I want to give each of the PCs a +1 silver dagger in preparation for a Werewolf fight; how do I get that to match up with the 6th/7th/8th/9th array?

I would probably have to convert the worth of everything involved to gold and go from there. The obvious question then is, why can't I just get the values in gold in the first place? The 3e system had its flaws, but there are some clear advantages to gold-based treasure.

This problem would be mainly solved if they also included a table of the total gold value (including the worth of the four magic items) that goes to the party at each level. Whether they actually did that... we'll just have to wait and see. Regardless, it's definitely something I could see jotting down on a DM screen.

Any magic item of Level N costs X gp. So they are giving you the total gold value, indirectly.

The problem with just a lump sum of wealth is that there's no guarantees what it's spent on. You could get the "big six" items, or it could all be invested on an apparatus of kwalish. I wonder if the actual guidelines in the DMG aren't more strict than what's shown in the excerpt, telling DMs what kinds of items to use. After all, another necklace when everyone in the party has that slot filled, but is lacking, say, some weapons, is not so useful. Especially given the low resale value, and since PCs are assumed to have access to magic weapons when it comes to encounter balance.

 

[hong]

I believe he's suggesting that if you took a used +1 flaming longsword to Ye Olde Killamajig Shoppe and tried to trade it in for a used +1 flaming battle axe you might get offended by the suggestion that the axe is worth 7 times the value of the sword.

This is why there are no Ye Olde Killamajig Shoppes in 4E.