Rules for selling gems?

[Whimsical]

The thing is, you're supposed to buy things (magic items) with gems, not convert it to gold. Gems are currency. You give the seller a gem, and he gives you a magic item with some gold in change.

 

[Tenniel]

What I might do is require one skill challenge for their entire bulk of gems. I'll also try eriktheguy's idea and have different cultures favor different gems.

Skill challenge is a good way to go, as you can use an existing mechanic. Doing it for bulk lots is also good. Otherwise you have to keep track of every gem, with lots of communicating back and forth over "that carmine spinel as big as your fist". Also a skill challenge lets more than one player get involved.

You could run the challenge and the put the number of successes and failures into some simple formula, e.g.:

Sell price=actual (secret) value * (20 + number of sucesses)/(20+number of failures)

or have a table of number of success vs number of failures with a entry for each cell giving a factor to adjust sell price.

 

[Bumbles]

See, I don't want gems to be functionally identical to gold pieces.

Well, what do you want then? I'm a bit unclear on that.

The best I've got so far was giving each nation a different currency, so the players need to hold on to their gems (or melt down their gold pieces) when they travel to different countries. I would like to impose some sort of mechanical difference as well.

You may want to look up the history of money then to see what examples appeal to you. I would point out that your PCs wouldn't have to melt down their gold pieces, it might be much simpler to go to a money-changer instead.

Depending on how detailed you want to go with your mechanical differences, you can set the value of the coins in a number of ways. I recall seeing some method at one point, but I'm blanking on where. It involved setting one value as the base, then having the other currencies moving up and down around it.
Not sure of the mechanics used.

 

[Starfox]

I head Accountants & Attorneys the RPG has whole chapters devoted to this...

Seriously, I wouldn't bother. Gems are basically currency, and can be spent like money in places where you by things that are on their cost scale, like a big city. If you come to a poor little thorp, they would probably stare in awe at a gold piece, perhaps even a silver piece, and quite likely not understand what a gem was. But then again, you could bye the whole thorp and everything in it for the value of a gem, so there is nothing there yo trade it for anyway.

 

[Byronic]

I head Accountants & Attorneys the RPG has whole chapters devoted to this...

Seriously, I wouldn't bother. Gems are basically currency, and can be spent like money in places where you by things that are on their cost scale, like a big city. If you come to a poor little thorp, they would probably stare in awe at a gold piece, perhaps even a silver piece, and quite likely not understand what a gem was. But then again, you could bye the whole thorp and everything in it for the value of a gem, so there is nothing there yo trade it for anyway.

I don't think that's correct according to RAW (in DnD 4th edition) While the thought might be nice for immersion it doesn't fit with the current economy. A pitcher of ale or a common meal at an inn costs 2 silver pieces. Now, even assuming that a poor little thorp has 1/4 of the price (which RAW says nothing about, but lets assume) then I think that the innkeeper will see quite a few gold pieces. Even 20 customers in a week (I assume he'll get more then that, even in a tiny thorp) would give him several gold pieces a week. Minimum. That's not counting any travellers going through his inn and staying the night.

Hmm, that gives me a nice idea really. First we would have to adjust the economy. I don't mean the magic item economy, but the "Food Drink and Stay" economy. Divide all such prices by 10, gold becomes silver, silver becomes copper. Sure, your adventurers will never have to worry about paying for a meal again but... after the first goblin cave paying 2 silver or 2 copper for a meal doesn't make that much of a difference.

Your adventurers save the tiny village from destruction by goblinoids and spends their loot there. They go away and after 6 months or so they return by coincidence, and find a ruined village. Was it Orcs? no. Was it a Dragon? No. The adventurers simply broke the local economy. The innkeeper virtually owns the little village now, because he got the adventurers to pay RAW prices during their one week there. Some people got evicted. People started fights and riots because the economic balance of the town was destroyed. The innkeeper killed his wife (the nice one who made those cakes the adventurers liked) after a dispute about the money.

It would be a fascinating lesson in the long term consequences of what you do.

 

[Piratecat]

I love the idea of gems being unique and flavorful, but it's sort of a pain to track. Is it worth the trouble? I think that depends on the feel of your game.

I usually tell people what sort of gems they find, and I particularly do if I want it to be relevant soon. For instance, if I know I have a trap coming up which requires crushed rubies to disarm, I'll tell the PCs that they find a gold goblet with four rubies on it, instead of a cache of generic gems.

The whole "exchange rate" aspect of buy low-sell high (or vice versa in 4e!) doesn't appeal to me as part of the game, though. Too much bookkeeping for too little reward.

 

[Tuft]

If you want to give coin economy and haggling a prominent part of your campaign, I can only recommend one thing:

Get hold of the Anime series "Spice and Wolf" (Spice and Wolf - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia), using any means at your disposal!

It is a very good take on trade-as-adventure, high-stakes haggling, medieval economies, city tolls, city-to-city trade routes, and how things like varying coinage, trade agreements, and merchant house politics can be excellent plot-devices...

 

[Regicide]

Get hold of the Anime series "Spice and Wolf" (Spice and Wolf - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia), using any means at your disposal!

I'd trade an apple for her. BTW, she's naked for a lot of the first episode if that sort of thing turns you off.

See, I don't want gems to be functionally identical to gold pieces.

They weigh a lot less. Although players can't be buggered to properly track encumbrance anyway.

They're also much nicer to give to the barmaid as a "present" instead of a bunch of gold coins, that way she can pretend she isn't a whore.

 

[eriktheguy]

So to summarize this thread (from my point of view)
- gems work like currency by RAW, but are lighter,universal currency, better for gifts/bribes
- requiring skill checks to sell gems is a no-no
- optionally allowing skill checks to sell gems is tedious and could be abused
- specific, valuable gems might be worth a lot to particular NPCs, and can create encounters and adventure hooks

 

[N0Man]

So to summarize this thread (from my point of view)
- gems work like currency by RAW, but are lighter,universal currency, better for gifts/bribes
- requiring skill checks to sell gems is a no-no
- optionally allowing skill checks to sell gems is tedious and could be abused
- specific, valuable gems might be worth a lot to particular NPCs, and can create encounters and adventure hooks

I wouldn't say it's a no-no, just that it's not explicitly supported by RAW. They made a conscious decision to treat gems just like currency for the sake of convenience. A Haggling system can easily be turned into a variation of a trade skill, which 4E got rid of by default. Adventurers are professional adventurers, it's what they do for a living. However, as DM you can do what you want.

First of all, is this a kind of interaction your players want? I was disappointed every time I found a gem as a player because I knew it meant tedious searching for a buyer and haggling on a price. It wasn't fun to me, but it might be to someone else. Honestly, if the players don't like that kind of thing, I'd just skip it. As DM, you might feel that it's too gamist, but sometimes trying to make everything realistic can bog down a game and make simple things like shopping a real chore.

Make sure you find a solution that's fun for your group, whether it's following RAW or making up your own thing. Having fun is more important than RAW or realism.

And who nows, maybe every emerald in the world just happens to naturally occur at the same value. There's nothing to stop you from even changing up the values of the gems to the normal amount they would get in treasure, but I wouldn't really make them haggle to sell them or get them appraised. Looting and appraising are parts Adventurer's skill set.