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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Celebrim" data-source="post: 5368670" data-attributes="member: 4937">To begin with, my assumption is always that groups like the PC party are actually extremely rare.  In fact, there is an explicit assumption that any such group is actually in some way arranged by the gods (of some sort) and that there are probably not more than 1 or 2 such groups in any given area.   In fact, the usual assumption is that it's basicly the PC party and its evil counterpart.Secondly, the very concept of 'adventurer' is not one in common parlance in my setting.  The idea it would give, if someone were to hear the word, would be equivalent to the modern concept of a 'tourist' - someone who travels to far away places for the pleasure of it.  PC parties are generally labeled 'mercenaries' by observers, and are often assumed to likely be bandits or worse until they prove otherwise.  Eventually, if the PC party acquires a very good reputation, they might earn the appelation 'heroes' as 'mercenary' has much the same negative connotation as it does to our ears.  While mercenary companies are quite common, small elite companies made of a balanced selection of classes and specializing in the arcane, uncanny, and monsterous are very rare.   Most mercenary companies are geared toward facing mundane threats and lack your average PC parties investigative and dungeonering skills.  They'll do you for an invasion of hobgoblins and many are quite compotent on their own ground, but not so much for incorporeal undead or dragons.  As such, it may not occur to local magistrates to consider hiring anyone to deal with such threats, and the PC party is likely to strike them as novelty.   Even at quite low levels, in my campaign world seeing a group of mixed races and professions working together for some common end strikes most observers are remarkable.  A drawf and an orine traveling together with a cleric and a wizard is just something scarcely heard of except in songs and tales.   People will marvel and wonder what it means.This depends I think on your assumption of how PC parties will behave.  Prior to participating in online discussions, it never really occurred to me that anyone would actually sell magic items because the PC's themselves did not do so.  The assumption was that if you couldn't buy them back, then they were basically priceless resources and should be hoarded.   In all the games I participated in, players never sold magic items.  Even the mundane 'sword +1' was tossed into storage with its dozen or more mates and never sold.  The most common use I saw in games for 'sword +1' and other low level magic items that could be spared is that they were given to henchmen and retainers both to make them more effective and to garner the big loyalty bonus (under the rules) that resulted from giving a henchmen his own magic items.   The eventual result was something like a network of NPC's loyal to you and relatively compotent to face threats.   This was deemed far more valuable in the long run than whatever gold you'd get for the item.  If you could safely leave the mules/boat/castle behind with the henchmen and expect to find them when you came back, that was priceless.As such, it was easy to imagine why magic items weren't for sale.  Everyone who owned one made the same mental calculations that you did.  Far better that magic be primarily in the hands of those loyal to you, than put it out on the market where likely as not it would end up in the hands of your rivals.</blockquote>

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