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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fusangite" data-source="post: 1898756" data-attributes="member: 7240">Alright... you have been warned. I'll continue, to the best of my ability.I think, based on the mechanics of the appraise skill, the mechanic for valuing masterwork items and the mechanics of magic item creation, that once again, by pure coincidence not design, D&D is Aristotelian. In other words, all items have a real objectively true value regardless of what anyone wants to pay for them. And because this value is measurably real, most people, and, I would argue, virtually all lawful people will seek to pay an item's true value. In our culture, if you raise the price of something during a shortage, this is a morally neutral act. I'm proposing that in D&D, if you raise a price during a shortage (or demand a discount during a glut), you are behaving an in inherently dishonest and non-lawful way because that price is intrinsic to the item, not to the purchaser and vendor. Now this doesn't stop merchants charging you for transportation costs or storage costs (most D&D items are commissioned not in inventory). It might not even stop people charging interest on loans depending on how the loan was understood but what it should do is make prices less elastic than any neo-classical economic model would. I would therefore recommend that you leave all prices at the value fixed in the books in which they are first described and instead have merchants charge additional fees. These fees still might be rolled into the item's total price and not broken down unless requested by the buyer. And I think that these fees going up during shortages should probably be looked upon as potential criminal acts requiring public justification. I also think that merchants who sell for less than an item's objective value when the market is glutted and business is slow should do so secretively for fear of prosecution by the local merchants' guild.</blockquote>

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