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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Damon Griffin" data-source="post: 994608" data-attributes="member: 3568">The fact that they've never seen me before or that my accent is different means nothing whatsoever.Let me flip to television for a moment:  Kwai Chang Caine ("Kung Fu"), Dr. David Banner ("The Incredible Hulk"), and Dr. Richard Kimble ("The Fugitive") could all be described as PCs.  Those characters were each the stars of their own TV series; they certainly were not background or supporting characters.On a more or less weekly basis, they moved from town to town or city to city encountering NPCs.  These NPCs did not make a habit of saying "Aha! Here's a rich stranger that I can make a lot of money off of!"  Anyone who'd tried that would have been disappointed, because Caine, Banner and Kimble never had any significant amount of money.  All three itinerants lived below the poverty level most of the time, taking temorpary postitions and doing odd jobs in order to get just enough money for food, lodging and transportation to the next locale.None of them had a business he could afford to be absent from; none of them owned enough land elsewhere to be separate from it; none of them had enough money to support himself in a very comfortable fashion independent of the land.Lest you be put off by the fact that all three are modern (even Caine, compared to anything remotely Medieval), consider the ordinary tinker or wandering minstrel (a simple entertainer, as distinct from the Bard class).  Tinkers are generally expected to live not far above the subsistence level.  Why then would the residents of every town they enter suppose them to be rich? "Oh, aye, it's one o' them rich tinkers come to call.  Best raise the price of the stew, mother, and send our Kate to fetch a couple of eggs.  Should be worth a couple of gold pieces, easy, wi' a gent like this."This much I agree with.  The practice of haggling and the absence of enforced price regulation will mean that you and I may not pay the same price for a given item, even if we buy identical goods from the same merchant on the same day.  The PHB price list should merely indicate an average or typical price for the goods and services listed, but there is a reasonable limit to how much those prices can vary, and on what factors the variance can be based on.  An itinerant minstrel (NPC Commoner or Expert) may look much like a low-level PC Bard to any casual observer.  That observer has no visual basis for charging the minstrel 2cp for grain and charging the Bard 2sp for the same grain.  Yes, the minstrel may get a better skill roll when bargaining for the grain, or the Bard may happen to come by during a season when grain is in very short supply and the price has been driven up. It is even true that if the Bard is foolish enough to go to the market in his finest clothes, jiggling a heavy bag of coins as he shops, the shopkeeper has very little incentive to let the Bard haggle his way down to a decent price.  But even this is based on how much money the Bard is revealing himself to have, not simply on his status as a PC or the shopkeeper's mistaken assumption that all strangers have loads of cash.Regarding vegetables that cost 10 at Market A and 12 at Market B, no problem.  The thing I've been going on about all day is the vegetables that cost 12 at Market B if you're a local NPC, and 125 at Market B if you're a visiting PC, no matter how you are dressed, what equipment you have on you, how much cash you actually have on hand, what level you are or how well you haggle.Yeah, transportation costs can be shocking.  This is from memory, but didn't MMS:WE give the cost of stone as doubling for every 12 miles it was hauled?  All the more reason not to charge the PC vastly more than the NPC would have to pay for the same material.  If he had to pay merely double the NPC's cost for goods and services (that is, twice the base price for the stone, and quadrupling the price every 12 miles instead of merely doubling it), and the PC and NPC both hauled their stone 60 miles, the NPC would pay 32x (where 'x' is the base cost of the stone) and the PC would pay 2048x!The concept of government regulated profit is modern.  Modern economics includes analysis and modeling of some very old practices, and 'reasonable profit' may be one of them.  I don't base my purchases solely on whether or not I can afford to pay for an item, I also base them on whether or not I think a fair price is being charged by the seller, and this has nothing to do with government regulations, modern economic theory or anything of the sort.  It's the purely subjective determination any potential buyer might make.Do I have enough money to buy this thing?  Yes, but it seems high anyway.Can I buy it elsewhere for less money?  Possibly, but right now there is no way to be sure; walk away now and you may not have another chance.Decision: No, it just costs too much money, I'm going to have to pass unless he brings the price down.Modern day example: Ebay seller offering a DVD with the unaired pilot for Buffy the Vampire Slayer, plus two of the aired episodes, for $25 plus shipping.  Can I pay for it?  Sure, I spend that much on game books all the time.Can I buy it elsewhere for less?  Maybe, but all the ones I've seen on Ebay are either from this seller, or at least are going for the same price.  The prices may not be dropping any time soon.Decision: It's obvious this guy is mass producing these things in his basement, and it can't be costing him much to do that.  I really think $15 would be a more reasonable price for the effort he's probably putting into this product.  Until the price comes down to $15, I'll pass.  (But meantime, a few clueless bidders offer $30, $40, even $50 to get a copy.)Yup, it does.  It does not, however, vary based on  "PC or NPC", character class, level, alignment, hit points, saving throws or any other game mechanic that should be invisible, transparent or otherwise meaningless to characters within the game.In the musical "1776", there's a bit of dialogue between Rutledge of South Carolina and Jefferson of Virginia, where Rutledge claims their black slaves are not people, they are property; Jefferson responds "No, sir, they are people who are being TREATED as property."I think I could make the argument that NPCs are characters who are being treated as window dressing, or as game mechanics.  Within the game, there should be no way of telling a PC from an NPC.  Rules should not be devised to take advantage of a distinction that neither group should be aware of.  If nothing else, your "automatic inflation for PCs" notion should require the inclusion of two separate price lists (or a single list that notes 'multiply all costs by a factor of 10 for the PCs' or some such thing.)  I'm not ready to accept all of your arguments on price inflation for PCs, mainly because I am unwilling, as yet, to grant that your NPCs will always have a sufficiently good justification for charging my PCs the listed prices.  But even if I did accept that, it remains true that the listed prices cannot apply to everyone, and it will sometimes be useful to know what prices apply to everyone else.  If you want to apply a double standard, at least show both ends of that standard.Hey, I don't think your NPC knows enough about me to make that characterization.  Do I have 'nerdy' stamped on my forehead?  Do I... oh, uh, never mind.  <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" /></blockquote>

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