Excerpt: Economies [merged]

[UngeheuerLich]

obviously you were not playing correctly, please turn in any left over materials and notes from that time to your nearest simulationist re-programming center. And don't eat the green stuff, its gamists.

I don´t have my book ready at hand, but if you search the forum, i have already quoted that in ADnD 2nd edition it was explicitely stated that no magic item stores exist... (DMG IIRC)

Thrywin has put it right, i can´t say it better...

but i have one last thing to add:

Epic destiny: magical item vendor

after you have found much more items you could ever use, you think its time to make it into money... just for the sake of making more money. You will always be remembered as one of the richest persons in the world...

 

[Wolfwood2]

Still another way to handle it would be to have a gentleman's agreement with the players that they're free to make all the money they want, but they promise not to pour it all back into magical items. If the PCs are using the extra 80% of cash to build castles, buy titles, bribe mercenary bands, and such, then that's good for the game. That sort of thing is interesting and it's good that they have 'extra' wealth to spend it on. Too often in 3E I saw PCs who were carrying a fortune in magical equipment, but never spent cash on anything else other than a superior grade of inn. I recall a DM once pointing out that we were basically homeless bums (who happened to be rich beyond measure).

 

[Clawhound]

I see the low selling price as being part of the character balancing act.

Players are smart. They will sell a less useful item to get an item that synergizes well with their character. A well synergized character can easily perform well above level. Therefore, you must charge an appropriate cost for that synergy. A character must give up (gp, equipment, abilities) equal to his gained ability.

So cashing in a 10th level item is worth it for your character as he gets to make a 6th level item that he gets far more bang from.

 

[UngeheuerLich]

Really, what an adventuring group ought to do is to make ties with several other adventuring groups, one of significantly higher level and several of lower level. Then magic items could get passed down the chain, eliminating the 20% markdown.

actually a good idea... but then you need to know such groups... but usually it breaks down, when one group reaches Level cap...

Either that or just kill the guaranteed wandering merchant in each village and take his stuff.

Why do you think magic is so expensive, its because of protection against piracy... expect merchants having secured their goods with rituals much higher then the best stuff they sell to adventurers, and expect him to be a elite monster way above your level (+an elite guard captain and some minions...)

 

[keterys]

I predict +1 bonus increments for items every 3 levels. You should have +10 items by level 30.

... except the chart I made clearly shows price jumps every 5 levels (at 6th, 11th, etc), and someone with KotS confirmed that you do get the level 2 item at 6th, hence my +6 by 30 theory.

Of course, then someone else who saw the player's handbook confirmed it at 1-5,6-10,11-15, with +6 at 26-30... which puts the discussion to bed, I guess. I still like _guessing_ the way things work over being told

 

[keterys]

That's a fantastic idea... you can sell magic items for 20% usable cash and 30-60% 'community cash' that can only go into businesses, contacts, parties, etc.

Of course, it breaks down at high level where you can probably purchase kingdoms, but really, I guess you're purchasing demiplanes and such at that point anyways.

 

[Deadstop]

This is one of the first things about 4e I've found largely disappointing, though as often happens the complaints so far in the thread have been extreme enough to lead me to develop some sympathy for WotC's system.

As others have mentioned, the treasure parcel system (while it is no doubt convenient for play) seems awfully static and predictable.

The awfully convenient merchants also brought a wince, though unlike Derren I can easily imagine that they are far more than magic item speculators (perhaps bringing goods from the nearest big city out to the villages, and taking farm produce and local craftwork back). The buyer/seller markup on magic items is pretty extreme, though I don't find it necessarily unrealistic unless the assumption is that the PCs will never manage to be on the "high markup" end of the deal.

I'm not too fond of either regular buying and selling of magic items or regular "disenchanting to enchant something else," as both seem to make magic items too mundane. In some settings that take "D&D logic" to its conclusion, like Eberron, that probably does make sense, but in "default POL" it would seem more likely that magic items are antiquities brought up from ancient ruins and either kept and passed down, given away, or sold to the *very* wealthy. (Admittedly, there could still be a merchant who frequently visits a town or village he knows to be near a ruin and takes found "trinkets" off the townspeople's hands at lowballed prices to sell to discerning collectors elsewhere.)

Like many, I'm kind of disappointed that 4e isn't giving us rare and wondrous magic items as the default, but then again it at least seems possible to make the change with less headache than in 3e, and they do have to cater to a wide variety of playstyles.

Lizard has a point about the "normal" economy and the typical wealth of ordinary folks playing an important role in these matters, even if the players at the table don't care directly how Farmer Bob keeps his family fed. How easy it is to liquidate items and buy new ones depends on just how much disposable wealth different people are likely to have. Likewise, how much of the economy is cash-based? Throwing around gold coins will probably get you goods and services in most places, but only if those coins are in turn valuable to the other person in the exchange -- meaning they in turn can exchange them for other stuff. A "deep" PoL setting, with many people struggling merely to survive, may see precious metal having very little value, since it's not directly useful in living another day. Many magic items, likewise, may be interesting curiosities but of little worth to the typical person. Others (a decanter of endless water, perhaps) might be literally priceless to a village constantly on the edge of dying out -- but then it's unlikely the villagers could actually pay even the "book value" of the item in gold, and likely not even if the adventurers are willing to take farm produce, livestock, and/or crafted goods instead.

The 4e default setting seems a bit schizophrenic on these matters -- or maybe it's just "better lit" than many of us were assuming. Gold and silver seem to be useful forms of wealth everywhere, and trade in magical items is lucrative enough that a merchant passing through any given village will pay gold (though far less than he hopes to earn) for them. The amount of gold PCs are "expected" to have is far less than in 3e, which is both good and bad. On the one hand, the regular availability of magic items for sale may be less important if the PCs have less gold to burn and get their most powerful gear from looting anyway. On the other, the traditional vast hoard of gold and gems in treasure seems highly discouraged. (Of course, unless your adventurers are of the Bilbo Baggins "one adventure and retire" type, you likely haven't been handing out fairy-tale treasure hoards anyway.)

As I said earlier, for PoL I like the idea that magic items are effectively antiquities or archaeological finds, with the added bonus of having practical effects in the here and now. Sure, the merchant passing through will take them off your hands, just as he does with the Nerathi Imperial potsherds the villagers occasionally turn up in the fields, but he won't pay anywhere close to what he expects to make from his buyer. If savvy adventurers aren't willing to sell for such a price, then they might be able to bargain him up, or they might choose to look for "real" buyers themselves. (As others have said, to make that a fun part of the game rather than a cash-producing exploit, it would be best to treat that as an adventure/quest of its own, with the greater money gained from the sale as the treasure.) The 4e guidelines for buying and selling magic items make some sense, if magic items are rare and the trade in them is a specialty market or effectively a black market. If +1 swords are easy to make and sold in every sizeable city, then the markup makes a lot less sense, and you're definitely looking at Magic-Mart for at least the low-end stuff.

With luck, such world-building discussion will be part of the full economy-and-reward section of the DMG. It's fine that there's a default -- though right now I'm not quite sure what the default commonality of magic items is supposed to be, nor how that interacts with the default quasi-setting -- but with PoL and Eberron using the same rules system, some kind of guidelines for changing the default and tracking the consequences would be expected.


Deadstop

 

[Derren]

The awfully convenient merchants also brought a wince, though unlike Derren I can easily imagine that they are far more than magic item speculators (perhaps bringing goods from the nearest big city out to the villages, and taking farm produce and local craftwork back).

Maybe you should read my posts again. I am against magic items speculators as they don't make much sense. Instead magic items are a great opportunity for regular merchants. The problem with that is thatit doesn't really meshes with the Points of Light setup as in such a setting there wouldn't be that much merchant travel as there is according to the economy article.
Personally I never liked the PoL setting anyway and see this article as proof that it isn't really supported anyway.

 

[Wolv0rine]

Okay, by page 13 I think I'm going to skip to posting a reply. It's too early, and I'm sick.

Anyway, the whole notion of magic item shops and what do adventurers do with items they don't want to use anymore (*puppyeyes**whimper*) always seemed... daft to me.

What you do is you take your hard-earned bludgeld, and you buy yourself a decent little house for your party/crew. You have the wizard lay down as many non-detection , protection, and non-entrance spells/rituals as the guy knows. You have the rogue trap all the entrances and set up "someone's been here" cues (a la the old hair spit-glues to the door trick and whatnot). with your as-protected-as-you-can-currently-make-it home you then start stashing all the magic gear you don't want to use anymore. When you have a respectable collection, you hire on a hireling. You treat him nice, you equip him with some minor magic equipment. You go on an adventure, maybe two. You pay him well (not so well you get boned out of your comfy Inn rooms, good meals, ale and whores, of course, but well). Then you hit a town, preferably the one you hired him in. And you tell him something along the lines of "We'll be resting up here for a a couple days, live it up".
Hireling #1 does what any young buck who's just been treated like a prize squire does.. he runs to his friends and relatives, showing off his magic gear and telling tales of the "Bold, daring, and generous adventurers" who have employed him, and flashes some gold.

All the while you continue to stash your unwanted magic items in your home, as unnoticed as you can manage.

When hireling #2 comes along (and this, logically, should not occur too long after hireling #1's first night of glorious show-offery at home), you equip him too, and pay him well. You bust your arse to keep these guys alive. These are NOT expendable NPCs.

And this, my friends, is how you build an army. A LOYAL army. Which is the first step toward winning a kingdom by your own hand. And honestly, if you can't think of a major role for every character to play in a "We rule a kingdom", then you're not trying hard enough. Worried about "Who gets to be The King?" Go the Narnia route and have all the warrior-types be the kings (a royal counsel, not unheard of, in stories if not in history), the religious types run the church(es) (which hold as much power as the king), the shady rogue types (depending on what kind of rogue they are) run the Thieves Guild, or whatever kind of thing they specialize in. The arcane types, obvious, become the much-feared Kingdom Wizard.

As for "Now we can't go on adventures, we have a kingdom to rule", that's what a seneschal is for. Arthur and his crew managed to find time to go out to war, go out on quests, go out on diplomatic missions, and all kinds of crazy crap. Your advisers (if you have any) may not like the risks to your life and limb you expose yourself to, but who's in friggin' charge here? Too bad for them!

Anyway, just my own thoughts on what to do in lieu of a "magic item shop economy", which I've always hated.

 

[Lizard]

No, i think you rolled a natural 1...
3.x broke together rather fast without magic shops... it was sad, but true... (or you had to give out exactly those items which were needed to survive at higher levels) Also there was no way to get rid of the magic items your NPCs needed to survive and you needed an explanation where they got all their magic items...

Oddly, I've been running it for eight years with no magic item shops.

YES, players DO find what they need -- that's why I'm a DM, not a computer. If they want other items, they can take crafting feats, or engage in a short scenario to find one for sale, which involves roleplaying interaction with NPCs, from snooty guild mages to sleazy merchants. And if I don't want them to have something...it's not currently for sale. So it goes. The DMG is not the Sears&Roebuck catalog!

Where do NPCs get their items? From looting monsters or from making them, just like PCs. I don't think any player of mine has ever asked why a 10th level evil fighter has level-appropriate gear. He GOT to be 10th level by slaughtering things and taking thier stuff. This happened "off screen", but if one begins with the idea one is playing in a full world, instead of stepping onto a shabby set, it makes perfect sense that Lord Eevyl The Foul was busy killing good-aligned creatures off over yonder hill while the PCs were leveling up somewhere else, and now they meet at last!