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Message: <blockquote data-quote="delericho" data-source="post: 4568458" data-attributes="member: 22424">There is a subgroup of DMs that have a long-standing tradition of being awkward about such things. They bog the game down for weeks as the party have to traipse around looking first for a sage to identify their hard-won loot, perform some mini-quest to persuade the sage to help them, then get a maddeningly vague answer, so spend yet more time, until they finally ascertain that it is, in fact, a long sword +1. Then they get to go through a whole other set of mini-quests to find a likely buyer, then more quests to find the items they want to buy in turn, and on and on it goes...4e has therefore states and restates the "say yes" philosophy. Let the PCs identify the item quickly. Let them sell it, if they so choose. Let them buy the items they want instead, or take wish-lists and have them 'just happen' to find the perfect items down the line.So, no, I don't think the statement about the availability of merchants is connected to the 20% asking price. I think it's connected to the 'say yes' philosophy of 4e.If 4e provided a mechanism for haggling to get more than the 20% indicated then I'd agree with this suggestion, but it does not. The Skill Challenge solution suggested in this thread would be a perfect way to handle this, but it is not discussed in the rules.No, I prefer:Unless the DM has a good reason to be awkward about the disposal of loot, then a merchant 'just happens' to be on-hand to sell it to, so we can get back to actual adventuring. Whether we get to sell it at 20%, 50% or 100% of the list price, or have to engage in some form of haggling (whether role-play-based on roll-play based) is orthogonal to the discussion.And, yes, I consider the 'say yes' philosophy of 4e to be one of the better pieces of advice in the game, although I tend to read it as "say 'yes, but...' or 'yes, and...', or say 'yes', unless..." There is no value to the DM being awkward about things just for the sake of being awkward.</blockquote>

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