D&D 3E/3.5 D&D3.5 - How to calculate the price of a fully unlocked legacy weapon?

[sirgarberto]

I need to calculate the total sell value of fully unlocked legacy weapons; for example, a Faithful Avenger with all legacy rituals completed. Its non-legacy price is 4330gp, and the cost of the rituals are 1500, 13,000 and 39,000 gp, but it's not worth just 57830 gp, or is it?
I'd like some guidelines that I can follow to calculate the value of any of these.

I know that it will lose its legacy abilities if it changes hands so it can't actually be sold like that, but that's not why I want it:

I'm DMing a campaign in 3.5, and after they tackled the main objective, they set their next objective themselves. The thing about it is that it was impossible to do that in their current level (they want to destroy the Wall of the Faithless, if you need to know), so I agreed on taking them to epic levels.

Since there was a lot of disparity in levels and treasure between the party (because of some of them showing up every time and the rest only now and then and stuff like that), I took this as an opportunity to make them all start in the same page, so I set them all to level up their characters to the same level and choose equipment so that the value of everything they own, including what they already had, is worth the same amount of money; so I need to calculate how much the stuff they have is worth so each of them can know how much they can spend.

Thanks for any help!

 

[PureGoldx58]

It costs how much it costs. To make their wealth equal you have to account for every penny they have and have spent on permanent items, or if you want to be more accurate, every penny they have spent since creation and have now.

Just because you think something should cost more and even if it SHOULD cost more, how much money he/she/it has put into it is how much money they have spent and shouldn't be penalized because you didn't think about it until that moment.

Edit: But that is just me, I like to be overly fair to my players. I even sometimes lean towards their favor on disputes.

 

[sirgarberto]

It's not really a penalty, just a way to even out the differences in wealth before they turn abysmal. At the same time, even when some of the characters were around level 16 and others at around level 12, I'm making them all level 24 now, so it makes sense that if I even the playing field in one place I do that too in the other, right?

 

[PureGoldx58]

My DM for my epic campaign is attempting to do something similar right now for pre-existing characters, he is using the Wealth By Level chart and just subtracting what we SHOULD have according to that chart and giving us the difference.

Consequently, I end up getting the short end of that stick but also was the team moneybags.

Edit: Also I don't mean to say penalizing as a bad thing, but taking money he hasn't spent or the weapon isn't worth is still a penalty. It is potentially removing an upgrade he/she/it otherwise could have used, I would just keep it as what it was worth using the cost, or the +bonus chart whichever makes more sense to you.

 

[sirgarberto]

If I substract the amount they SHOULD have instead of what they have, they are still uneven and I would be giving an unfair bonus to the players that had more wealth, even through by consensus with them this should feel as a fresh start.

 

[PureGoldx58]

If I substract the amount they SHOULD have instead of what they have, they are still uneven and I would be giving an unfair bonus to the players that had more wealth, even through by consensus with them this should feel as a fresh start.

It just worked out for us that it equaled a fresh start, but it can certainly be unbalancing as I can attest.

 

[sirgarberto]

Ok, I think I figured out how to do this: Let's forget for a second monetary value and focus on intrinsic value instead. The full value of the weapon would be equal to the base non-legacy weapon + the full gp spent on the rituals + the 3 legacy feats - the personal cost.
Converting the first two to a gp cost is easy, I did exactly that in the original post. For the Faithful Avenger, this partial cost is 57,830 gp.

Then we got the 3 feats. This is a little harder. I used this list as a guide, and I figure that the approximate cost of a feat that's active only when wielding a particular weapon is more or less 5,000 gp. The cost is now 72,830 gp.

Now for the hardest part. I have to somehow calculate the gp value of the personal cost. Continuing with the example of the FA, this would be -2 Attack, -4 Fort and -12 HP. I kinda gave up here and decided to just cancel the feat cost with this... it will make calculating the rest of them a lot easier too.