Appraising Gems - Any Suggestions?

[MeMeMeMe]

So, you needed Appraise only for a subset of the items. But you got tons of them. Imagine nobody appraised the item. The DM would have to write down the worth of each item on a list hidden from the players.
And then, you'd have eventually to roll for each individual item.
And what happens if you go to a buyer - how do you arrive at the price if both you and the buyer could fail to appraise the item, or have different opinions. What if the players demand to use Sense Motive to see if the buyer is ripping them off instead of relying on Appraise?

In the end, Appraise is a lot of hassle that earns you little benefit.

Yep, this is my experience too. I've used appraise/evaluate-style skills in other games successfully, but in those games, you don't get treasure in every encounter. It's just too much of a hassle in DnD where you might need several rolls for every single lot of treasure gained.

 

[Celebrim]

Yep, this is my experience too. I've used appraise/evaluate-style skills in other games successfully, but in those games, you don't get treasure in every encounter. It's just too much of a hassle in DnD where you might need several rolls for every single lot of treasure gained.

It worked alot better in 1st edition D&D where acquisition of treasure was in many ways the central challenge. For example, it's what you got XP for.

I'm old school. In 1st edition, you didn't assume you'd get treasure. You assumed that you'd have to work for it, and killing the BBEG was just part of that work. In addition to killing the treasures guardian, the treasure was probably hidden, often trapped, generally disguised, often heavy, and sometimes fake. An appraise skill would have been very handy. Figuring out where the treasure was sometimes fun, sometimes frustrating, but generally accepted as part of what made the whole thing challenging. That sort of thing has been deprecated in later editions.

I propose that, for single items, appraise/haggle is worth it. If the player/character doesn't think its worth it, he'll just handwave it and not try to maximize the value he realizes on the exchange. I'd rather have a player inform me by his play what he did or did not consider important than have the rules tell me what is or should be important. For a handwaved encounter, I'd abstract that to take 'taking 10', give the player some standard percentage of value (say 60%) and likely everyone would be happy with it.

A large trove of appraisable items is less worth it because its more of a chore, but again its easily handled by assuming he 'took 10' on the trove because on the average it will work out close to that. This tends to work for me because by the time the players are getting large troves, they've managed to build a working relationship with an honest broker (or a dishonest one that's scared of them) who isn't ripping them off and who is probably better at appraising/selling things than they are. They can RP with 'Hashem', 'Honest Dibbler', 'Master Hammersmit' or whoever to the extent that they enjoy doing so. Yes, that's normally, 'Let's take this all to Hashem and see what he'll give us for it.', but that isn't so bad. By that point, I've managed to make a memorable NPC.

If DM's don't like that style of play, even where the rules are provided for it, there is a simple solution.

Give all your treasure in coin. Easy.

 

[Gort]

I just used streetwise. I figured knowing the situation with merchants and the like fitted streetwise best.

 

[Saitou]

Price of a gem is a misnomer, really. Since gems are not hard cash, their price can fluctuate. I'd have no problem telling my PCs the base worth of a gem, but adding the word "about". About 100gp. About 4500gp. About 60pp.
Oh, you wanna sell em? Skill challenge to haggle price, +/-30% variation.

 

[Celebrim]

Since gems are not hard cash, their price can fluctuate.

I basically agree, but I just feel like pointing out that the price 'hard cash' can flutuate as well.

For example, do some research here.

Money doesn't have a fixed value either and fixing it to a commodity standard doesn't change that.

 

[Wolfwood2]

During our ongoing KotS game last week, I had included a gemstone rather than some GP's in a NPC's selection of treasure, just for a bit of different flavour. However, when it was discovered, the PC naturally wanted to try to appraise it. And of course, the appraise skill is now gone.

I just suggested a general intelligence check at the time, but I was wondering if anyone could suggest a better alternative?

I'll echo everyone else and say that you should only roll the dice if you think the results of success/failure would be interesting. If you have the PCs do some sort of Appraise roll and they blow the roll, what does that mean? If it doesn't mean anything other than, "The gem merchant corrects them on their overestimate of the price or decides not to cheat the heavily armed killers and corrects them on their underestimate," then why roll?

 

[DM_Blake]

I think what we need is a skill challenge.

Use Streetwise to know the street value of the gem.
Use Dungeoneering to know which mine it came from.
Use History to know previous owners of the gem and what they paid for it.
Use Insigt to know whether the mearchant is eager or deperate.
Use Thievery to know what a fence would pay if it were a stolen gem.
Use Perception to determine clarity and to spot flaws or inclusions.

I'd say 6 successes before 4 failures should poroperly appraise the gem.

That outta do the trick.

 

[mvincent]

I think that the 4e method would be just tell them what the gemstone is worth.

Yup. From what I see in the DMG (p. 124) the values on gems (and art objects even) are fairly standardized and simplified.

But for fun, I plan to let the players appraise objects for themselves (using their own DMG's) based on the description.

 

[Boregar]

Thanks for the suggestions and comments, people.

I agree with the idea that I could just have given them the answer, and as we get a bit more into 4th Ed, that's probably what will happen. But as this was only the second session we had had, and the player specifically asked about checking for the value, and as this was something that he was always happy doing in our 3.5 campaign, I didn't want to just wave it away. We are all still getting used to some of the new methods of dealing with things, and I thought that this would be something a little more familiar and 'comfortable' for the player, without having any major effect.

I am thinking, in fact, that when they make up their own characters, I'm going to allow each of them to pick a 'background' skill which we'll add to their skill list, to cover their 'pre-adventuring' knowledge, and Appraise seems a good fit of that.

Thanks again for the input, all.

 

[Celebrim]

I agree with the idea that I could just have given them the answer, and as we get a bit more into 4th Ed, that's probably what will happen. But as this was only the second session we had had, and the player specifically asked about checking for the value, and as this was something that he was always happy doing in our 3.5 campaign, I didn't want to just wave it away. We are all still getting used to some of the new methods of dealing with things, and I thought that this would be something a little more familiar and 'comfortable' for the player, without having any major effect.

I'm sympathetic to the crowd of players that want to avoid bookkeeping, but speaking as an 'old school' player or DM I want to tell you what I think you give up by adopting the 3e and now 4e perspective on treasure.

For me, you give up on being excited to find treasure. That, 'Woot! Woot! Loot!' feeling sems to go away. The problem with the 3rd edition approach is that treasure becomes something you expect to find, and not something you hope to find. The distinction I mean by this is subtle, and I don't know that I can get at it exactly, because obviously there is in any edition a rational expectation of finding lots of gold and some magic items. But in earlier editions the impression given was that treasure was something that had to be claimed through effort, where as in default 3e on, the impression I had as a player is that treasure was something which I had to recieve because the assumptions of the game expected me to get it. So in 1e, you might kill the monster and then say to yourself, "Did we get any treasure? Is it hidden? Where can we find it?" In 3e, you kill the monster and then expect that the treasure will be forked over without fuss because its something of a disaster if you don't get it.