Discussion: Selling Stuff to PCs

[elecgraystone]

Those aren't the same things though renau1g and JoeNotCharles. Let me use the brute smash JoeNotCharles talked about. It's be like being able to use brute smash on an adventure but not in town. Things should be consistent in the living world without different rules depending on where you are.

The examples you two gave do show things that may be unrealistic but they are consistent. I don't make a profit making a magic item on an adventure and can't use dailies every round in town. Being able to trade items in an adventure but not outside one isn't consistent.

 

[On Puget Sound]

Indeed, many things in the Transitive Isles do not make sense. That is the nature of this place.


THE CRUNCH: When you outgrow an item you can get 1/5 its value back from it. If you want to buy an item you pay full price for it. Anything else will eventually create a L4E auction house, which will lead to BuyEnWorldGold.com ads in the margin of this page.

Allowing PCs to exchange items at 100% value only if the PCs are the same level might not be broken; allowing a level 5 to hand-me-down stuff to a level 1 will not work. The Wish List system should be ensuring that the items you get are at least items you can use, anyway.

THE FLUFF: Magic items in use develop a strong attachment to their user. Breaking that attachment is an expensive ritual, costing so much that it eats up most of the trade value of the item. Items long out of use, such as those found as treasure, have no attachment and within a few days will attach themselves to whomever uses them. Potions and other consumables have no attachment.

Items found in use (by an enemy NPC, for instance) just happen to be found alongside just enough residuum to de-attach them (OR) the death of the previous owner breaks the attachment.

 

[ryryguy]

THE FLUFF: Magic items in use develop a strong attachment to their user. Breaking that attachment is an expensive ritual, costing so much that it eats up most of the trade value of the item. Items long out of use, such as those found as treasure, have no attachment and within a few days will attach themselves to whomever uses them. Potions and other consumables have no attachment.

Items found in use (by an enemy NPC, for instance) just happen to be found alongside just enough residuum to de-attach them (OR) the death of the previous owner breaks the attachment.

In other words, loot has No-Drop, No-Trade flags.

Actually, I think you do a pretty good job with your fluff here. It's just interesting that it essentially describes a common MMO solution. It makes sense though, because in this economic aspect L4W actually is a lot like an MMO.

*Edit*: Does this come up in Living Forgotten Realms? How do they handle it?

 

[elecgraystone]

To be clear, I was talking about trading/barter without money being exchanged. So the only way that 5th level to first level hand me down works is if the 1st level has something worthwhile to trade.

Also your fluff On Puget Sound doesn't take into account people just coming off an adventure and wanting to get rid of their treasure. Ts'iri was on her adventure moments before showing up in town. No time really passed for an attachment. 5 min maybe?

Also wish lists are fine but not everyone has one and you may have GM's that only give out something 'close' or your wish list runs out during an adventure and you get something after that. My warlock has several items she wouldn't mind parting with to get something closer to what wants.

EDIT: there are also times when the player changes direction with a character. What was a great item at start may be less of one when new features/feats ect are used.

 

[renau1g]

LFR follows the PHB rules. It chooses consistency. The fact that you can't trade to other PC's in order to maintain the power level/game balance is the consistency. Again, like I mentioned before not the most realistic, but we need to balance that against the consistency/fairness for all players. It leads to favourtism, unequal PCs, overpowered PCs, etc...

Again, as a judge/reviewer it is a ton of work to review sheets, we get about 1-2/day, which may not seem like a lot, but that's about 1/2 hour per day at least on top of our own games. For ex. on the 19th of Jan, I got 7 PC review requests and an adventure request. If now there's another layer of review on top of just math checking I can be certain the delay will be even longer for reviews.

Wish Lists are the best mechanism for letting your DM know what you want. If you can't be bothered to update one then it's saying "hey DM, I don't really care what I get so surprise me" and teh DM will likely not give the barbarian PC a +1 dagger that he can't use.

 

[On Puget Sound]

Also your fluff On Puget Sound doesn't take into account people just coming off an adventure and wanting to get rid of their treasure. Ts'iri was on her adventure moments before showing up in town. No time really passed for an attachment. 5 min maybe?

Ah, but the attachment an item forms is not immediately obvious; sometimes it does not reveal itself for days, or until a moment of stress when the item suddenly malfunctions. To protect their reputations, merchants always assume any item is attached, and go through (and charge for) the cleansing ritual even if you protest "honest, I never even drew the blade!"

*I can fluff anything! Maybe I should become a professional fluffer...it means WHAT? err, never mind

 

[elecgraystone]

Ah... Where in the PHB does it say I can't trade items with another player? The only thing I see is selling to a vendor...

Second how does keeping the same wealth level lead to unbalance? If anything I'd think a dramatic drop in wealth (by 1/5) would do that. Somehow I'm missing how trading a fire sword for an electric sword throws everything off.

I can tell you why Ts'iri doesn't have a wish list. At first, I didn't know what I wanted for her. Afterwards I was trying to finish up 2 new characters here and had a long period of illness. I just never thought about it really with everything else I was trying to do. Even then I'd talk with the GM's about what items I'd like. I got some interesting items but most aren't what I'd have picked.

As far as more work, I don't really understand that. All rewards have a link added to them. Why would a 'trade' link be any different? A click takes you to the post 'x traded for y'. Seems pretty simple. It wouldn't be any more difficult that someone just buying an item. Actually it might be simpler since no math was invovled in the trade.

To On Puget Sound, I never even put the item on, only putting it in a pack. It was the last things gotten in the fight. And since you said there would be just enough residuum to de-attach them, I just give that to the merchant.

This also leads to party members not being able to use others items in an adventure. I find that more troubling that any selling issues...

 

[On Puget Sound]

I still think allowing PC to PC trading will open up possibilities that will hurt the game. Perhaps a few times per year one or more of the judges can instead run a "Bazaar" adventure, with unlimited number of participants, to allow supervised trading under guidelines to be discussed. This might allow minor changes (I just learned to use a mordenkrad, so I trade my +2 flaming warhammer for a +2 flaming mordenkrad) (the GM dropped a magical staff for me, but I'm an orb wizard; I trade it for an orb of the same power level) even without another player to trade with, but with a GM available to veto anything seen as abusive. Alternately, we can just leave things as they are and trust that if you sell off the stuff you don't find very useful (at 1/5) and post the desired replacements in your wish list for the next adventure, that something close to your desires will turn up.

 

[JoeNotCharles]

The examples you two gave do show things that may be unrealistic but they are consistent. I don't make a profit making a magic item on an adventure and can't use dailies every round in town. Being able to trade items in an adventure but not outside one isn't consistent.

I think it's perfectly consistent. In fact, you can't use your dailies in town (or if you do, it's only for fluff) - anything that changes the character mechanically has to happen under DM supervision, except for levelling up and buying/selling items at market. So you can't do anything that makes you or another player lose hit points, you can't attack NPC's for XP, none of that. The rules for what happens on an adventure have never been the same as the rules in town, because things that happen in town are effectively unsupervised.

And adventures have a definite endpoint where things have to get synced up. In one of my adventures I granted a character a free power swap, because she wasn't happy with one of her at-wills and it would have sucked to force her to wait until she levelled up to retrain it. But it had the rider "this only applies for this adventure" - that's pretty common. A DM can do pretty much whatever they want inside their adventure (take a look at Turtledome!), as long as it doesn't affect anything outside (which includes giving away extra XP or permanent items). But giving out temporary items is fine, and letting your PC's trade items is fine - as long as it doesn't last past the end of the adventure.

 

[OnlytheStrong]

While that makes perfect out of game sense, it's kind of wonky in game OnlytheStrong. "I'd love to trade you this frost sword for your lightning sword but I can't. We both have to go over to the vendor and get 1/5 the cost. Hey wait! Now neither one of us has a sword and not enough money to buy another. That didn't work out right..."

The fact that you can swap items all you want out of town but the instant you go to town you can't would be a big inconsistency.

I wasn't refering to "trading" items. I was refering to selling them to anothe PC. I know some are talking about trading, I was still on the "Selling items to PC's" topic.

I still do not see a flaw with my suggestion. A level 2 fighter wants a +1 Frost sword... a level 4 fighter has a +1 Frost sword...

The level 4 fighter sells it and gets the suggested 1/5th the original price. The level 2 fighter buys a +1 Frost sword... and flavors it to of came from the other warrior.

It doesn't effect the level 2 fighter at all... We all have to buy our equipment (unless we loot/find it).

So... yes what you said is correct... but you weren't talking about the same thing as I.

And how does selling it back for 1/5th the price make a drop in wealth? You had to spend the money in the first place. That's like buying a truck and getting pissed that you didin't get all your money back for it.