D&D (2024) Uncommon items - actually common?

[Jfdlsjfd]

Wait ... we're allowed to actually discuss the topic of a thread? After we've gotten 10 pages in? I'm so confused.

Sometimes it happens to me, when I respond to the first post of the thread without noticing it's already 40 pages long...

Interestingly, and while I can't rationalize away the abundancy of magical items, I'd use the exact same categories and examples, except shifted by one (common->uncommon, legendary->artifact). If you have a legitimate unrestricted access to the LHC, you could as well be wielding Excalibur or possess the Hand of Vecna.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

I totally get that versimilitude is idiosyncratic, but I'm having a hard time with this one. You really think think that the difference between a rough, unfinished diamond and a cut, finished diamond is extraneous detail? To me that's like saying that the difference between lumber from the mill and hand-crafted furniture is extraneous detail. I have no problem handwaving the profit margins of gem brokers or art dealers or other commodity dealers, but I wouldn't do the same for gemcutters, carpenters, or (e.g.) blacksmiths. The added value of turning raw materials into finished products is a rather important part of an economy to handwave away!

I mean if we were playing Merchant & Miners, a game about making spreadsheets to maximise the profits it would matter, but thankfully we are not. These professional obviously have some sort of profit margins that allow them to function. How exactly that works is not something we really need to know in our game about monster slaying adventurers.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

This is a matter of taste. I'm definitely not part of whatever "we" you're saying doesn't care about this stuff, and I don't see it as extraneous detail. Saying that things obviously work out "somehow" is simply never going to be enough for me.

What do you actually do with this extra information? In what sort of situations would it come up, and how often these situations actually occur?

 

[Jfdlsjfd]

I mean if we were playing Merchant & Miners, a game about making spreadsheets to maximise the profits it would matter, but thankfully we are not. These professional obviously have some sort of profit margins that allow them to function. How exactly that works is not something we really need to know in our game about monster slaying adventurers.

Problem is, those pesky players will want to have an extra healing potion for their next monster slaying session. And they might very well ask the noble whom they saved from a dragon for a grove, and hire a 1sp a day lumberman.
Players: How much do we make?
GM: 10 gp a year
Players: ... Let's optimize that... I am pretty sure buying a +1 hacksaw will boost production. Let's review the entire process so we can at least have a healing potion per quarter...
GM (nervously google lumbering industry while trying to find something realistic enough...) YOU'RE ATTACKED BY ANGRY ELVES! Roll initiative.

I am not making this up. My players spent an entire, 4 hours session trying to optimize the building of a railway (it was supposed to be a adventure about sabotage by the competing building team, they had a blast overworking laborers and dealing with HR issues among the workforce).

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Problem is, those pesky players will want to have an extra healing potion for their next monster slaying session. And they might very well ask the noble whom they saved from a dragon for a grove, and hire a 1sp a day lumberman.
Players: How much do we make?
GM: 10 gp a year
Players: ... Let's optimize that... I am pretty sure buying a +1 hacksaw will boost production. Let's review the entire process so we can at least have a healing potion per quarter...

Yeah, that is not a thing that actually happens.

Though I would not oppose some sort of light rules for running business, but those should be way more abstracted than counting weights of individual items. I think the new bastion rules might actually have something vaguely like that.

 

[TwoSix]

Yeah, that is not a thing that actually happens.

Though I would not oppose some sort of light rules for running business, but those should be way more abstracted than counting weights of individual items. I think the new bastion rules might actually have something vaguely like that.

If you play with certain personality types, that is 100% a thing that actually happens.

The only time I abandoned a group (as a player) because of in-game reasons was because of players who did exactly that, and a DM who encouraged it.

 

[tetrasodium]

I mean if we were playing Merchant & Miners, a game about making spreadsheets to maximise the profits it would matter, but thankfully we are not. These professional obviously have some sort of profit margins that allow them to function. How exactly that works is not something we really need to know in our game about monster slaying adventurers.

It's not "merchants & miners" level economics depth, it's beneath kids with a front yard lemonaid stand level economics.

Even a five year old with a lemonaid stand understands that they need to get back more than they spent on lemonaid mix & cups in order for their lemonaid stand plan to make sense. Same with slightly older kids & the gasoline needed for mowing lawns

 

[Xetheral]

I mean if we were playing Merchant & Miners, a game about making spreadsheets to maximise the profits it would matter, but thankfully we are not. These professional obviously have some sort of profit margins that allow them to function. How exactly that works is not something we really need to know in our game about monster slaying adventurers.

Fair enough! The difference between raw materials and finished products comes up a lot in my games, both indirectly when people who want to hire adventurers have more goods available than cash, and directly when the PCs want to get into crafting. Just last session my PCs, noticing they were spending a fortune on incense for casting Legend Lore, inquired about which tool profiency would apply to making their own in order to save money.

 

[Crimson Longinus]

Fair enough! The difference between raw materials and finished products comes up a lot in my games, both indirectly when people who want to hire adventurers have more goods available than cash, and directly when the PCs want to get into crafting. Just last session my PCs, noticing they were spending a fortune on incense for casting Legend Lore, inquired about which tool profiency would apply to making their own in order to save money.

I think there should and could be some guidelines for crafting (aren't there?) but I don't think they need to be much more complex than just getting the stuff for half price or so if you just get the ingredients and spend the time of doing it yourself.

 

[Jefe Bergenstein]

I like how the 50GP of ruby dust apparently requires pages of minutia on gem grinding techniques and gem clarity grading,
but no second thought was given to how the value was determined on the 100gp pearl slurped down with a bowl of wine and owl feathers for the past 50 years.