Selling items : illogical rule ?

[Lurker37]

The problem most people are having with the rules for selling magical items is that they are imagining a high demand, high volume market.

In such circumstances 20% makes no sense.

However, the default 4E setting is clearly not a high demand, high volume market, as can be simply deduced from reading the DMG.

It mentions that any merchant buying a magic item is taking a risk. The item may not sell. i.e. Low Demand.

It mentions that it is very rare for a specific magical item to be available for sale (notable exception : The City of Brass). i.e. Low Volume.

It also makes it clear that the PCs are expected to be selling to a middleman, rather than going looking for a buyer themselves. If there are high chances of no such buyer existing in the first place, and even full-time career merchants can fail to find a buyer, then selling to a middleman rather than wasting months on a gamble actually makes sense. Keep in mind that in the absence of direct-market methods like classified advertisements, websites and ebay, selling privately is far less viable than in our society. (It seems to me that the cost of using a ritual for transport or communication would be , for the average commoner, exhorbitant, so they really don't invite comparison to the internet.)

So selling to a middleman who cannot be certain they can sell the item is a very different proposition to what most posters here are complaining about trying to model. That's not a flaw in the system. It's a difference between the assumed economic conditions. For what 4E assumes, the model is quite realistic.

The problem is that if you want a setting where magic items are high volume and/or high demand, then we don't have rules for that. By all means feel free to complain about the DMG lacking those, but then again there is a very clear implied setting in 4E. It would appear that, at this stage, rules for deviating from this setting are beyond the scope of the core rules.

Incidentally, there's something else most posters seem to be overlooking - the changes in the rules for finding magical items as treasure.

A standard party of five finds four magical items for each level they go up. That means that they would be almost about to hit fifth level before every party member had a magical armour, neck and weapon/implement, with room for one single wonderous item (in the party, not each, and that's assuming you don't have a ranger who needs an off-hand weapon, a defender who needs a shield, a paladin who needs an implement and a weapon, or, heaven help you, more than one from this list) before they hit level 5, and the scramble begins to upgrade to +2.

This is probably why the DMG warns the DM repeatedly to make sure that every single magical item is something desired by the party, to the point of even suggesting a wish list, and replacing the treasure in modules with equal-level items more suited to the party. There simply isn't any fat in the treasure budget to allow for vendor trash magic items.

So the item being sold is also likely to have been used for five levels or so and is now outgrown, rather than being traded in in hopes of a one-for-one swap.

 

[Ahglock]

The problem most people are having with the rules for selling magical items is that they are imagining a high demand, high volume market.

In such circumstances 20% makes no sense.

No, the problem is they did not add a single sentence.

current rule,. you sell magical and mundane items at 20% value a merchant sells the items at 100-120% value.

When they could have said. The players can sell mundane and magical items at 20% value when they are trying to quickly unload there inventory, a merchant will sell items at 100%-120% its value. If the players want to spend the time they can sell the items for more.

Now if they wanted to be really snazzy they could add some rules for this. Something like each difficulty level of a skill challenge can increase the sell price by 10%. So after a successful easy skill challenge you can sell an item at 30% of its value. A failed skill challenge will result in selling it at X much less than there intended target. (personally I'd think something like if they tried a hard challenge and failed but would of succeeded at a medium challenge, I'd have them get money as if they succeeded at the next difficulty down from where they would of succeeded or easy in this case.)

IOW its the absolute nature of the 20% as phrased in the rules that is driving people batty.

 

[Mal Malenkirk]

Oh, man, I am way way way tired of this defense.

Not all DMs are experienced.

Which is precisely the point of the 1/5th rule. That way, unexperienced DM don't make their PCs too wealthy accidently.

Experienced DM will depart from the rules as they see fit with a better idea of what it will do to the balance of their campaign.

 

[Danceofmasks]

Besides, buy/sell isn't the only way to make money.
If you're a paragon enchanter, for instance ... walk up to a prominent merchant and strike a deal.
Merchant gets order for something they don't have, you make it. Merchant charges 120%, and hands you 10%.

 

[Regicide]

It's quite laughable for people to think they could sell something at 100% or even near 100% of it's value. Taxes alone would cut sell price down to at least 80% (unless you're upping buy price) and thats before the shop keeper could eat, pay for the shop, pay for security, raise children, and pay off the obvious huge loans he'll need in order to buy the PC's garbage in the first place, probably another 20%. Even a 50% sales price is borderline Monty Hallism.

When I've seen rules spelled out they tend to be a 20-30% sell rule for exotics, jewelry etc. with 90-95% for commodities (gems, precious metals.) That is of course if you can even find a buyer. Looting a dungeon then going to the nearest town and expecting the dirtmerchant to be able to fork over a few million gold is again, utterly laughable. As a DM I might hand-wave away a month long trip to another town looking for a buyer... IF the PCs aren't on a time line, which is rare.

 

[FadedC]

No, the problem is they did not add a single sentence.

current rule,. you sell magical and mundane items at 20% value a merchant sells the items at 100-120% value.

When they could have said. The players can sell mundane and magical items at 20% value when they are trying to quickly unload there inventory, a merchant will sell items at 100%-120% its value. If the players want to spend the time they can sell the items for more.

Now if they wanted to be really snazzy they could add some rules for this. Something like each difficulty level of a skill challenge can increase the sell price by 10%. So after a successful easy skill challenge you can sell an item at 30% of its value. A failed skill challenge will result in selling it at X much less than there intended target. (personally I'd think something like if they tried a hard challenge and failed but would of succeeded at a medium challenge, I'd have them get money as if they succeeded at the next difficulty down from where they would of succeeded or easy in this case.)

IOW its the absolute nature of the 20% as phrased in the rules that is driving people batty.

The rule is given as an absolute value because it’s in the players handbook. The players handbook does not contain optional rules or different ways of doing things. All that stuff is contained in the DMG. Plus if there is one thing we should have learned about 4e by now, it’s that there are no absolute rules anymore. Every rule can be overwritten by something more specific such as a specific person who is willing to pay more for a certain item.

Granted the DMG does not actually contain any discussion on magic item selling, and it might be nice if it did. But even if there was a discussion on why this rule was in effect, and how the DM might sometimes allow players to sell for extra, it would not change the way the rule was worded in the PHB

 

[Zogmo]

The rules does not allow a DM to change the rules. That's the difference here.

So, house-rules to change anything is not allowed?

 

[IanArgent]

Yes, exactly.

For those of us that thought a role-playing game was intrisicly tied to world simulation, making 4e into a game which is a world simulation is too much effort to be worth it.

I didn't see "world sim" on the tin; I saw "game that tries to be fun for all participants".Sorry for the snark, but I don't want a world sim; I want a fun game. I don't have TIME for a world sim any more.

 

[Grantor]

Don't follow the rules!

If the rules are "broken", then don't follow them.

Your game is different than my game and there is no need to convince me that the 20% rules is right or wrong. If you are a DM that chooses to allow greater value (with any conditions you choose to add to the process) than the book value, I'm sure your players will love you.

If you choose to play RAW, certainly the player's have no rule-basis for arguing against your decision.

Either way, go about your game in the way that makes sense and please report back in two months with a playtest result.


My feeling is that 90% of the discussion in this thread is from players that did not play in a playtest and are not far along in their campaigns. In fact, I could hazard a guess that the majority of people (like me) that have posted in this thread have not even played or DM'd through a level increase.

 

[Grantor]

The designer's job

In examing rules for magic items, my reverse engineering suggests that these were the goals of the designers:

• Make something easy to run. [Game is eventually going to be targeted at new players.]
• Prevent players from selling all of their gear and buying one Über item. [Über items break the carefully planned mathmatics of the rules.]
• Create a system that allows regular rewards of treasure, without having the players buying full kingdoms at 12th level. [Logrithmic price charts should be controlled.]
• Make rules that are fast to adjudicate and fast for the players to follow. [Sitting and waiting for another player to leaf his way through the item lists is not a good use of playing time for the rest of the party.]
• Make somthing that DM's can add rules onto, if that is their desire.

What they did not seem to be trying to do is the following:

• Make rules that are realistic. [Powers are not terribly realistic, but are cinematic.]
• Form an overall economy of item creation, selling and buying that fits into real world goods. [MMORPGs have been failing at this for more than a decade now; would it really be "fun" to have a crafting game built into a cinematic game?]
• Create a single value for magic items, making them as liquid as cash.
• Add rules to the system that are not used in encounter design or every play session [Combat, skills and updating/equipping your character are all that core rules focus on.]

From what I am reading, there are many people on this forum that feel that one or more of these design goals should have been incorporated. Others are arguing that including any of these would have made it impossible to succeed at the top five goals that were achieved by the 20% rule.