Thasmodious
First Post
DM_Blake said:
What's arbitrary? Merchants try to make a profit. That's the nature of business. They aren't going to buy a magic sword for 1000gp then turn around and hope they can sell it for 1100gp. Merchants have lots of overhead. Profit means the overhead gets paid and there is still money left for the pocket. No one is going to pay exactly what something is worth, especially when they know its relatively useless to the seller in its current form (hence why they wish to liquidate it). Wear and tear is not the only thing that affects resell value. A merchant wouldn't even trade a +1 axe evenly for a +1 sword. He'll want to see a profit.
Now, let's take your fantasy metropolis. Even in such a place, buyers for a particular item aren't going to number in the hundreds. Just because a local noble is wealthy doesn't mean he has a need for a magic staff nor wants to, or can afford to, spend the liquid assets on an item he doesn't really need. So, the number of people who have a need for the item AND have the means to pay for it AND can be found by the PCs is going to fairly small. The PCs aren't merchants with large social networks. And they're not going to go door to door knocking. They have to get the information to the right people and they likely haven't spent years building up a network of business contacts. The merchant has. The right merchant knows the right people and can broker such a deal, but he has lots of expenses and wants to profit, substantially. Now, if they just post fliers and hire criers all over town, the right people might hear about it. But so will every cutpurse, burglar and career thief in the city, along with the local government.
Which is another logical, non arbitrary stumbling block. If you were the ruler of a large city in such a world, what would be your reaction to learning that a group of adventurers had plumbed the depths of the ruined keep on the border of your lands, came back with the fabled Sword of AGHHH and a pile of gold, haven't paid any taxes on their haul, and are trying to sell the sword to your chief political rival for thousands of gold? Even without that drama, how many local rulers are going to let thousands of gold change hands without wanting a taste themselves? That's part of the overhead legitimate merchants deal with all the time.
So if there is an above the board, legitimate market for magic items, its going to move slow and have a lot of overhead. As we've already mentioned, those operating in a market do so to make profit, good profit with high risk items like magic items. Running a shop that carries magic items would have a lot of overhead - guild fees, taxes, licensing (local government wants it regulated and records kept of who's buying what powerful items), staff, security (likely a big expense considering the needs and caliber of thief such things would attract), and other such costs. So, even at 20% in/140% out, the merchant isn't making a tremendous profit.
More likely, such a market would not exist above board anyway, its too expensive, too risky, government interference would be too great (the duke may simply seize powerful items for himself or to keep them out circulation). Most likely, the market would be a black or gray one, and those have a great number of operational costs as well, of a different sort. And, of course, black and gray markets always have a high markup due to the high risk nature of the business. A government raid/arrest can decimate a shady merchant and it takes a good bit of money and know how to stay a step ahead.
Combine all of those factors and it suddenly doesn't look arbitrary at all, but quite reasonable.
This is all just rationalization for the system of course. The simply fact is that the game is balanced around a certain pattern of acquisition, leading to a certain level of item power enhancing character power so that the encounter by level system remains balanced. That's the game reason and each iteration of the game, and any RPG where item power is relative, needs such a system. That it can be easily, logically rationalized shows it isn't just an arbitrary out of game ruleset.
It's all a baseline anyway for the DM to keep the game in a comfortable level of balance. There is plenty of wiggle room. If the group has a number of items outside their skill sets (axes instead of swords, crossbows instead of longbows, etc.) perhaps they meet up with a friendly group of fellow adventurers and those two groups, with equal levels of interest (as in, one group is trying to profit from the other or one group isn't trying to use the other to liquidate illiquid assets), do some trading. So the group with the axe wielding dwarf trades their near useless greatsword to the other group with a human fighter for the superfluous axe they picked up in their last crawl. Or the PCs trade the item(s) for a nice GP value in some other form, like land, a building, a title, etc. When two groups are bargaining from areas of mutual interest (both seek an illiquid, hard to obtain, gain) or both from a desire to rid themselves of an asset that is of little use, the numbers come much closer together.
But, when you just want to dump useless items for cash, you got to pay the market and there are lots of hands in there taking a piece.
that's what I've been wondering. I don't see why people didn't just read the excerpt, nod their hands sagely, say "nicely done" and move on. Its not the people who think the new system works fine and both cures the problem of Ye Olde Magic Item Superstore AND doesn't arbitrarily restrict players options (they can still sell old items or disenchant them to use in crafting new items or do anything else with em) that are causing the uproar.
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