Goumindong
First Post
Skill challenges and roleplaying seem adequate rules enough to sell things. Everything else is just how long it takes you and is all DM digression regarding what you are able to do.
Adventurers making money with profession
- Thread starter Byronic
- Start date
Zinovia
Explorer
If you want to have a game centered around crafting and selling things, then you will need to either house rule it or find another system. Some of the skill challenges, or suggestions of quests to obtain rare materials, discover who is sabotaging their trade caravans, or playing games of intrigue with city politics and guilds are all interesting and good ideas. They could make a fun campaign out of the notion of running a specialty shop in a large city.
The lack of specific rules covering this in the core D&D 4E books does not make D&D a bad game. There is the assumption that you mostly want to be heroic adventurers, not merchants. That is a reasonable assumption. If any of the many hundreds of RPG game systems written covered every style of play for every group then we'd only need one. Guess what? That's not the case and it never will be.
The economy in D&D has *never* made sense. Ever. We routinely divided all prices in D&D 3.5 by 20 to get rid of the "gold standard". Even then, we didn't look too closely at prices. Our characters had been stuck in hostile territory, unable to really spend much of our wealth for many levels. We finally found a good sized city and unloaded enough cash to totally unbalance most national economies. Is that realistic? No. Even most large cities would not have had the exact kinds of items we wanted. It was fun finally getting to buy some stuff though.
Selling magical items will certainly garner only a fraction of their true value unless you seek out the right buyer. I think 20% is really low. I'd have guessed it would be more like 50% myself. As for selling them, you need more than a 10% markup if you're going to have to hold it long enough for some unknown buyer to come along. If it costs the book value to *make* the item, then I would expect it to cost on the order of double that to buy it from a merchant. There is time and craftsmanship involved in making that (yeah, I know - it's just a ritual, but more on that later). So the idea of magic items selling for less than book value, and selling for more is reasonable. It's just the actual discount and markup that is in question.
If you want a merchanting campaign, where the heroes still do heroic things in the course of running a shop, go for it. Because it's not a standard campaign idea, you'll need rules from other sources, or need to make them yourself. Use whatever rules fit best with your group and your game concept, and good luck.
The lack of specific rules covering this in the core D&D 4E books does not make D&D a bad game. There is the assumption that you mostly want to be heroic adventurers, not merchants. That is a reasonable assumption. If any of the many hundreds of RPG game systems written covered every style of play for every group then we'd only need one. Guess what? That's not the case and it never will be.
The economy in D&D has *never* made sense. Ever. We routinely divided all prices in D&D 3.5 by 20 to get rid of the "gold standard". Even then, we didn't look too closely at prices. Our characters had been stuck in hostile territory, unable to really spend much of our wealth for many levels. We finally found a good sized city and unloaded enough cash to totally unbalance most national economies. Is that realistic? No. Even most large cities would not have had the exact kinds of items we wanted. It was fun finally getting to buy some stuff though.
Selling magical items will certainly garner only a fraction of their true value unless you seek out the right buyer. I think 20% is really low. I'd have guessed it would be more like 50% myself. As for selling them, you need more than a 10% markup if you're going to have to hold it long enough for some unknown buyer to come along. If it costs the book value to *make* the item, then I would expect it to cost on the order of double that to buy it from a merchant. There is time and craftsmanship involved in making that (yeah, I know - it's just a ritual, but more on that later). So the idea of magic items selling for less than book value, and selling for more is reasonable. It's just the actual discount and markup that is in question.
If you want a merchanting campaign, where the heroes still do heroic things in the course of running a shop, go for it. Because it's not a standard campaign idea, you'll need rules from other sources, or need to make them yourself. Use whatever rules fit best with your group and your game concept, and good luck.
Byronic
First Post
Mirtek said:
Hehe, I like that.
Verys Arkon said:If you have access to the 3.5 DMG II, there are some good rules for running a business (page 180-188) that you could probably adapt without much trouble. Just because you are using 4e doesn't mean all your 3.5 material is completely uselessAlternatively, if you prefer a more abstract approach, framing the character's business as an 'affiliation' from PHB II could work too.
Excellent suggestions. If the campaign ever goes that direction I'll certainly use them
Byrons_Ghost said:
The irony of this thread is that he now wants to be a ex-weapon merchant and.. a collector of weapons. I think I'll just let him sleep on it for a week or so. I'm sure he'll stop changing what he wants to be -_-
Wormwood said:
I read every single letter in every single post in every thread I start.
Having said that I've liked the ideas in this thread. Quite nice
Although with all the posts trying to fix the magical item economy, I think there's one mistake in this reasoning if we use RAW.
Why would anyone, no matter how rich buy a +2 Frost Weapon from an adventurer merchant if he can have a new magical sword made from scratch for the same money, tailored to his exact requirements?
I think that magic items sell for 20% of the price because half of the time the merchant will simply disenchant it and carry the residuum around until he gets a request from a potential buyer for a weapon.
Not a problem in a setting like mine where you have to go through quests and kill dangerous beasts to get the items required for making a a magical item. But that might be an explanation for RAW
Dave Turner
First Post
What exactly do you mean by "tailored for his exact requirements"? If the character's requirements are a +2 Frost Weapon, then doesn't the merchant's weapon match the requirements? If the costs are equal, then it really doesn't matter what the source is.Byronic said:
Do you mean that the character is in the market for a magic weapon, but +2 Frost isn't his ideal choice? He doesn't have access (presumably through adventuring) to his ideal choice, the +3 Thundering Weapon, so he's going to somehow settle for the +2 Frost available from the merchant?
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Byronic
First Post
Dave Turner said:
Almost correct. I think that if a king wants a specific item (+3 Sword of Wack) he'll either buy some residuum from the Merchant and have it made by a Cleric/Priest/Wizard or whatever or ask the Merchant to craft the item for him (I assume that Enchant Item would be a popular ritual amongst merchants specialising in magical weapons).
It explains why they only buy magical weapons for 20% of the market price. That's exactly how much residuum they can get out of it to make an item for someone else.
Profits from commercial ventures should generally play out as Quest Rewards and dangle as Plot Hooks and Quests. This way you can mix your adventuring with your commerce and have a rational reconciliation between your characters progression of XP and Wealth.
The earlier post about finding out what your player's expectations are about such a profession can not be stressed enough. If you want to run an adventure game and keep the play balance with minimal effort then you have to weed out player get-rich-quick schemes to gain disproportionate wealth and magic items vs. their level. "I'll be a merchant so I can afford Level 10 Magic equipment on my Level 2 character and then power-level," is something that comes up from time to time in gaming groups.
They may crop up under the guise of "logical world simulations" and "the D&D Economy is stupid," arguments but they are still present the same basic problem: "I want to be an exception to game balance."
Players decorating their backgrounds and adventures with world-building and immersion is awesome. Players trying to get one over on the rest of the table in the name of "good simulation" isn't so awesome.
- Marty Lund
The earlier post about finding out what your player's expectations are about such a profession can not be stressed enough. If you want to run an adventure game and keep the play balance with minimal effort then you have to weed out player get-rich-quick schemes to gain disproportionate wealth and magic items vs. their level. "I'll be a merchant so I can afford Level 10 Magic equipment on my Level 2 character and then power-level," is something that comes up from time to time in gaming groups.
They may crop up under the guise of "logical world simulations" and "the D&D Economy is stupid," arguments but they are still present the same basic problem: "I want to be an exception to game balance."
Players decorating their backgrounds and adventures with world-building and immersion is awesome. Players trying to get one over on the rest of the table in the name of "good simulation" isn't so awesome.
- Marty Lund
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The Little Raven
First Post
DLichen said:
I do. That way, I know that no other dude will steal it.
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