Excerpt: Economies [merged]

[malraux]

Some merchant has no better chance of seeing than the king than some wandering swordsman.... less, if the swordsman did a favor for the king!

Generic merchant #4, sure. Samual Walton, the trusted representative of the trade guild, able to acquire the rare spices, creatures and women, who's items have stood the test of time, he has a better chance of seeing the king than the smelly, bloody, heavily armed brigands banging on the king's door.

 

[Ximenes088]

If a DM wants to call a 20% resale on magic items, he can justify it easily. Taxes, a market that has no communication method more sophisticated than hand-carried messages plus maybe a little magic, and the fact that buyers with cash don't feel like getting fleeced on fake goods amply explain why a merchant demands that kind of margin. Players can't go to a big city and try to advertise because the political powers would shut them down as potential troublemakers and untaxed freeloaders. These reasons are plenty to justify the markup.

If a DM doesn't want to call a 20% resale value on magic items, he can change the rules of his gameworld to make it utterly implausible and then contribute to a 42-page thread pointing out that gameworlds that don't match his premises don't match his results. I can't say that it's terribly surprising that a DM who doesn't want to justify something for his game ends up finding it unjustifiable in his game.

 

[keterys]

... and a DM who doesn't care doesn't have to justify it at all, and can work on adventures and actual gameplay instead

 

[Kraydak]

One thing that amuses me is that the RL examples people give of things with huge markups are all "luxury" items (yes, even soda). For an adventurer, magic items are tools. Buying a top of the line sword isn't an extravagant, showy expenditure, it is an effort to stay alive. "Sane" adventurers, if such a thing existed, would be willing to spend a goodly time optimizing their gear, even if the theoretical gain/time ratio was worse than adventuring, because adventuring whilest undergeared results in death.

Adventurers are also relatively well set up for the magic item trade. Once they enter the paragon tier, they have *huge* mobility and long range communication: exactly what you need to efficiently engage in a trade with a diffuse population of clients/suppliers. It is hard to argue away the existence of an equivalent to EQ's pre-luclin EC/WoW's pre-linked bazaar IF/Org or any other "trade zone" in a MMORPG. And once you have a "trade zone" that feeds off of a continent's worth of adventurers, magic items become liquid. You won't get a brutal cartel either: repressing adventurers either results in them relocating, or them killing you.

Of course, before the paragon tier, you will need to hire teleports/do business with people with teleporting capacity. A less liquid MI trade, but still functional (which a 6-1 exchange ratio isn't).

 

[Imp]

You don't "have to" justify anything, but stuff that interferes with PC's cashflow tends to go right up to the top of the list.

I mean, you could ignore any & all requests from players to justify anything, but they'd be totally justified in just walking clean out of your game.

(I suppose, given a points-of-light setting, I would justify it by saying that the buyer just doesn't have that much cash and is paying as much as he can. While heroes awash with gold from ancient hoards are going to get taken for as much as possible by cash-strapped authorities desperate for a windfall.)

 

[theNater]

...once you have a "trade zone" that feeds off of a continent's worth of adventurers, magic items become liquid.

Doesn't that depend on how many adventurers a continent's worth is?

Which is, of course, entirely up to the DM.

 

[Thasmodious]

One thing that amuses me is that the RL examples people give of things with huge markups are all "luxury" items (yes, even soda). For an adventurer, magic items are tools. Buying a top of the line sword isn't an extravagant, showy expenditure, it is an effort to stay alive. "Sane" adventurers, if such a thing existed, would be willing to spend a goodly time optimizing their gear, even if the theoretical gain/time ratio was worse than adventuring, because adventuring whilest undergeared results in death.

Adventurers are also relatively well set up for the magic item trade. Once they enter the paragon tier, they have *huge* mobility and long range communication: exactly what you need to efficiently engage in a trade with a diffuse population of clients/suppliers. It is hard to argue away the existence of an equivalent to EQ's pre-luclin EC/WoW's pre-linked bazaar IF/Org or any other "trade zone" in a MMORPG. And once you have a "trade zone" that feeds off of a continent's worth of adventurers, magic items become liquid. You won't get a brutal cartel either: repressing adventurers either results in them relocating, or them killing you.

Of course, before the paragon tier, you will need to hire teleports/do business with people with teleporting capacity. A less liquid MI trade, but still functional (which a 6-1 exchange ratio isn't).

You're forgetting two simple things. The PCs have no bargaining power and no market social network. In a negotiation, many other factors besides the actual value of the item/commodity at hand are relevant. The PCs have a need, the merchant doesn't. They need the merchant or brokers contacts, knowledge and abilities to convert their useless items into a form that has value to them. The merchant has the gold, the PC has the item. The merchant can do many things with his gold. The PCs are holding a useless item that they can't do anything with except sell (or disenchant). That need creates a large advantage for the merchant. Need always does in a negotiation. I'm sure the system allows for some bartering, we've seen a pretty direct hint in the skill challenges excerpt. But 20% is a fair baseline considering the PCs hold none of the cards.

 

[Benimoto]

One thing that amuses me is that the RL examples people give of things with huge markups are all "luxury" items (yes, even soda). For an adventurer, magic items are tools. Buying a top of the line sword isn't an extravagant, showy expenditure, it is an effort to stay alive. "Sane" adventurers, if such a thing existed, would be willing to spend a goodly time optimizing their gear, even if the theoretical gain/time ratio was worse than adventuring, because adventuring whilest undergeared results in death.

If the adventurer didn't have a sword, buying one might be an effort to stay alive. If he has a +2 sword, getting a +3 one is not. Prices escalate rapidly. Items below your level are available and fairly cheap. Items above your level are unattainably expensive. Items at your level are priced appropriately to the amount of wealth you may have

The markup just represents the realities of the world, as defined by the game system. The adventurers can get level-appropriate magic items fairly easy through adventuring. They also have comparatively large amounts of money laying around. Knowing that, the merchants exploit them.

Look at it this way. You could either spend your time maximizing the amount of money you get from selling magic items, or you could spend that time adventuring. I would bet that even looking at it from a purely financial standpoint, adventuring is more lucrative. Not only that, but it also gets you experience, which sets you up to gain yet more lucrative, higher-level treasures.

 

[Kraydak]

You're forgetting two simple things. The PCs have no bargaining power and no market social network. In a negotiation, many other factors besides the actual value of the item/commodity at hand are relevant. The PCs have a need, the merchant doesn't. They need the merchant or brokers contacts, knowledge and abilities to convert their useless items into a form that has value to them. The merchant has the gold, the PC has the item. The merchant can do many things with his gold. The PCs are holding a useless item that they can't do anything with except sell (or disenchant). That need creates a large advantage for the merchant. Need always does in a negotiation. I'm sure the system allows for some bartering, we've seen a pretty direct hint in the skill challenges excerpt. But 20% is a fair baseline considering the PCs hold none of the cards.

Bull. The PCs, of course, have the ability to flip the merchant off. If you are in an illiquid market, a very low offer will result in no deals getting done. In a liquid market, someone else will come along and make a better deal because there is money to be made.

Further, in an illiquid market (which won't happen in a PoL setting, or a plane-hopping setting, but might in a peaceful one) "traditional" merchants are very bad at trading adventurer magic items. You want someone with massive mobility (to get to clients) and massive, magical communication abilities (to find potential clients). This means people with access to paragon-level rituals. Adventurer types, not renaissancian merchant princes.

 

[pawsplay]

Bull. The PCs, of course, have the ability to flip the merchant off. If you are in an illiquid market, a very low offer will result in no deals getting done. In a liquid market, someone else will come along and make a better deal because there is money to be made.

Further, in an illiquid market (which won't happen in a PoL setting, or a plane-hopping setting, but might in a peaceful one) "traditional" merchants are very bad at trading adventurer magic items. You want someone with massive mobility (to get to clients) and massive, magical communication abilities (to find potential clients). This means people with access to paragon-level rituals. Adventurer types, not renaissancian merchant princes.

Plus, PCs are more likely to be able to determine the origins and powers of any given item, control the supply of said items except for semi-competition from powerful wizards and clerics who can be arsed to make new ones, do not worry about day-to-day living expenses as they live the lives of medieval playboys, come into more contact with more buyers in more locales than all but the most adventurous merchants, generally have a good reputation with the local nobility for helping with problems rather than squeezing them for profits and interest, and can most easily travel to the ideal markets for any other products. They also fully understand the wants and needs of fellow advenuters, who will probably be 75% or more of their customers, the rest being kings, sages, long-lived intelligent monsters, and the like.

And all that's aside from the fact that the PCs could very well be merchants from respected merchant families who are members of the merchants guild who have decided to take up a life of adventuring.