Treasure Division - Book value or Sale Value?

cthulhu_duck · Nov 19, 2005

During treasure divisions, in determining equal shares of the total share - do you use the book value of magic items (etc) or the sale value (typically half in D&D)?

Corsair · Nov 19, 2005

sale value when trading within the party (70% for magical items in our game, 50% for mundane)

Voadam · Nov 19, 2005

Sale value.

technophile · Nov 19, 2005

The group that I DM for uses sale value, and the group that I play in also uses sale value. I think it's pretty standard.

Wasteland Knight · Nov 19, 2005

I'd reccomend sale value. Not only does it makes sense economically, it tends to encourage people to hang on to magic items for a rainy day. Since you can essentially exchange it for the sale value in gold at any point, I've seen many times players get a miscellaneous type magic item as part of their share, and if they don't need the gold right away they'll hang on to it for a while. Never no when something odd might come in very handy...

wingsandsword · Nov 19, 2005

Book value, never heard anybody try to claim sale value. It was always treated that the book value is what it's really worth, and the sale value is what merchants cheat you and rip you off for.

Tharian · Nov 19, 2005

Our group has pretty much stuck to the sale value as well. My only concern is when we might encounter something that one of the members decides to keep. I am not sure how we'll decide the value of something that has not been sold.

JustKim · Nov 19, 2005

Book value, never heard anybody try to claim sale value. It was always treated that the book value is what it's really worth, and the sale value is what merchants cheat you and rip you off for.

So instead of a merchant ripping you off, the rest of the party is ripping you off. Selling a periapt of wisdom +2, split four ways, each share is worth 500 gp. That's the most you could hope to get for it. But if one person keeps it, each share jumps up to 1,000 gp. The player who likes to hoard magic items is a cash cow for everyone else.

Sanackranib · Nov 19, 2005

depends on the items and the number of pc's who want said item(s) usually book value but bidding wars can happen

wingsandsword · Nov 19, 2005

JustKim said:
So instead of a merchant ripping you off, the rest of the party is ripping you off.

In 5 years of 3rd Edition, none of the groups I've played with have seen it as being unfair, it's just the way things are, that's the price in the book, that's what it's worth. That's what it would cost to replace it, so that's what it's really worth.

It really doesn't come up that often even, since most groups I play with are pretty open about item trading and division, there usually is no bidding or buying from the party just "who can use this?" and handing it to the person it's best for, with their older gear getting handed down to cohorts, and book value is used as a rough yardstick of relative value of items.

We always just winked and nodded at the insane devaluation of magic items when selling them, acknowledging it was a video-gameism imported in.