Anyone importing 4E’s’Used gear sells for 1/5th if at all’ to other RPG systems?

[Vyvyan Basterd]

Adventurers gain magic items by looting dead bodies or tombs.

Looting
Looting (Hindi lūṭ, akin to Sanskrit luṭhati, [he] steals; also Latin latro, latronis [Sp. ladrón], "thief"), to rob

Stolen goods are sold to a fence.

Fence
The fence is able to make a significant profit because he is able to pay thieves a very low price for stolen goods; thieves agree to this because their alternatives (such as directly soliciting passersby on a crowded street, or selling the goods on eBay or at a flea market) may present a greater risk of the thief being caught, and will take more time.

20% seems to qualify as a "very low price" whereas 50% does not. Also note that fences are used because selling the item on your own takes more time.

I see the thief -> fence comparison the most apt for D&D adventurers. Because even good-aligned adventurers must realize that the loot they have "found" must have belonged to someone. And a smart adventurer will realize that a prominent figure such as himself is too high profile and doesn't have the time to sell items for a higher profit.

That's not to say that an adventurer couldn't take the risk or the time. But such situations I think would make a great skill challenge at the least, possibly even a side "adventure." The 20% represents the easy way to sell items.

 

[malraux]

If you're a merchant and you've had a +3 axe sitting in your shop for a year, wouldn't you jump at the chance to swap it for a +3 sword?

Well, I'd probably just go for the ritual in AV that lets me move enchantments around.

 

[travathian]

There's another big reason to have the 20% rule.

It actually makes treasure, well, treasure.

Nope, sure doesn't.

In pre 3E, if a DM gives out a random magic item, without the ability to buy magic items, it made little sense to sell it since you wouldn't get what you want.

There was nothing in pre 3E that said players couldn't buy/sell magical items. Some DMs allowed it, some didn't.

Since 3e, with magic items being available for sale, any magic item that you find, there's a reason now to sell it. However, at a 50% rate, it means that the random treasure makes no sense.

There was/is nothing in the current rules that state you have to let players buy and sell magic items. Again, some DMs allow it, some don't. Rule #1 is that the DM always has final say. Claiming that WotC thinks that 20% is some magic fix to a problem that doesn't exist means nothing to a competent DM. If you felt that your players were abusing the system you could have done something about. Grow your own spine, don't rely on WotC to put something in print before you make changes to your game.

At 20%, you're more likely to get players to actually keep and use said random magic items.

20% is still better than carrying it around and never using it. Then again, good players tend to find uses for those obscure/oddball magic items.

I think it is a rule that, while gamist, actually understands what will happen in the actual game world unlike the 50% rule.

I think it doesn't make the slightest bit of difference. The problem was never with the rules, it was with the DM and the players game styles. Delta and pawsplay also nailed it.

Your mid level group gets ambushed by low level bandits wearing leather but carrying longswords. After wiping them out are you really going to leave a bunch of perfectly good longswords sitting by the roadside? Heck no! Bundle them up and toss them on the horse. When you get to the next town you can barter with the local blacksmith/armorsmith, donate them to the militia or constable, or try selling them to the wanna be adventurers in the tavern. Better yet, do all three. Trade a sword to a blacksmith to get new shoes for the horses and all the player's tools/weapons sharpened. Donate a couple swords to the constable and in return make an ally and new source of information. Sell a couple swords at a bargain price to lower level adventurers, and again, make a couple allies and possibly gain some much needed information.

Again, the failure of your players to be creative and of your DM to say NO, doesn't mean the rules are broken.

 

[malraux]

There was/is nothing in the current rules that state you have to let players buy and sell magic items.

The 3.5 dmg strongly suggested that magic shops were available based on town size, with any item available assuming you were within the item price limit.

 

[StreamOfTheSky]

Since 3e, with magic items being available for sale, any magic item that you find, there's a reason now to sell it. However, at a 50% rate, it means that the random treasure makes no sense.

At 20%, you're more likely to get players to actually keep and use said random magic items.

Ok, I'd like to de-construct this.

3e's rules do nothing to discourage players from picking up random, possibly useful items to hold on to. In fact, the rules end up encouraging it. Consider what it means to choose to take an item of loot. You're paying back into the party's gold what the sell-back value of the item is, in effect "buying" it at 50% price. As most items (and all magic items I can think of) do not degrade in value over time, you can ALWAYS choose to sell it off later on. This is the key thing to remember. This means that unless you're really strapped for money or can't take the item do to encumbrance, there is no reason at all to not just pick it up and hold on to it. If it proves useful a few encounters down the road, awesome! If it turns out you're not getting any use out of it and would like to liquidate it into cold hard cash to buy something else, it sells for the same exact value as when you first chose to keep it. You've lost no money! All you've done is hedged your bets against needing the item. Hence, by the rules, you are strongly encouraged to keep the odd side items.

Then you add in the prevalence of wands, scrolls, and potions. 4E doesn't have the first two (I think, could be wrong), and while t has potions, their use is limited by your personal daily resources (in this case, healing surges). So, the previous argument + the much higher prevalence of consumable items not in any way tied to your other resources means that in fact 3E rules are actually BETTER for a type of game where the DM wants "treasure to be treasure."

 

[Wycen]

It's a game about killing stuff and taking their treasure. Removing the looting part of the equation brings up instances of trudging through 4 encounter or more in Keep on the Shadowfell and being disappointed everytime you search for treasure and the DM says, "nothing of value".

So no. I would not import the 1/5th the value idea into another game.

 

[Morrus]

20% isn't realistic, especially for magic items.

Funniest thing I've heard all day!

 

[Lanefan]

This is one place where a hard-and-fast rule, while convenient, isn't realistic. Some mundane gear you find is half-wrecked. Some is quite serviceable. Some is masterwork, but doesn't look like it under all the dirt and grime. And so on.

For a low-level party just starting out, mundane gear can represent a significant portion of their first treasury or two. If they come back to town with a pile of mundane gear (and when I recently ran Keep on the Borderlands, they came back with *cartloads*!) I just roll randomly to see what general condition it's all in on average, then assign an overall value roughly based on that. But 20% is too low regardless, unless it all got melted in a firecube.

As for magic, sometimes they get good offers for what they are trying to sell, sometimes they don't; depends what it is, what the demand's like, and on random chance.

Lanefan

 

[Loonook]

I like some of the points here, and others which seem... a little off. I find the price points (either 20 or 50%) being ridiculous, but both function within a certain concept for certain reasons which the designers saw fit.

Again, as I see it, you need some sort of thought process based on your own campaign. I like a lot of economic data, changing currencies, etc. and so haggling over prices can be fun. In a couple of my games I took an idea from a previous game and started players as 'crow teams'. Crow teams serve as the looters of battlefields, turning all of the scraps of battle into some sweet coin. The players then started their own little salvage company and used similar crows as part of their hirelings to spread the wealth around.

When it comes to magic items I don't allow sales except for in very controlled circumstances and in very small amounts (finding a seller is a difficulty, though commissions can be possible). Players usually trade lesser magic items for goodwill in communities or use them to purchase hard assets from NPCs which serve them well. Of course I also have players who enjoy that sort of thing so ... to each his own.

Slainte,

-Loonook.

 

[delericho]

Yes, I will probably be adopting that rule for future 3e and WFRP games. This will be done primarily to slow down the rate of treasure inflation. It does also have a side benefit of encouraging PCs to hang on to the more 'oddball' magic items they find, as the economic hit of a sale is that bit harder to take.

How will I justify this?

1) We don't use the encumberance rules, but logic suggests that a party of 3-6 adventurers probably can't carry 20 suits of armour out of the dungeon at a time. Similarly, some or all of it is likely to be damaged in some manner. This assumes, therefore, that the PCs aren't obsessive in ensuring they get every last scrap of useable material, and spend the necessary time to bring it all up to saleable quality - some undefined portion simply goes to waste.

2) Similarly, we don't bother tracking minor expenses, such as food and lodging, mundane ammunition, and the like, even at 1st level (a little more in WFRP, but even there we don't bother beyond a certain point). There's also the convention that Conan would blow all his cash between adventures on carousing, which isn't reflected anywhere in the rules. This will go some way to reflecting these money sinks.

3) Taxes, or bribes to tax collectors to ignore them. And, failing that, there's the hit of selling these things on the black market.

4) And, as mentioned up-thread, there's the time and effort in finding a buyer for these things. Sure, if the PCs wanted to take the time they could get a better price, but neither I nor my players want to deal with that.

Ultimately, though, there's probably a hole in the rules: either most items should resale at list prices, with much higher prices be cited for buying genuinely new items, or it should be possible for PCs (and especially starting characters) to buy used items at the same lower price point.