Excerpt: Economies [merged]

[Hussar]

Kraydak - sorry, but, a magical weapon IS a luxury item. It's not necessary for the overwhelming majority of the population.

Or, look at it another way. Magical item trade is akin to illegal arms dealing. Pretty similar markets actually. It would be interesting to see what kind of mark-ups we could find in that market.

 

[Family]

Magical item trade is akin to illegal arms dealing. It would be interesting to see what kind of mark-ups we could find in that market.

273.2% on average...but it varries during conflict start-ups...however I can always do bulk orders at a discount. Oh and the premimum stock is about double during initial release.

 

[pawsplay]

Kraydak - sorry, but, a magical weapon IS a luxury item. It's not necessary for the overwhelming majority of the population.

That's not what a luxury item is. By that definition, a heart pacemaker is a luxury item.

 

[Ahglock]

Really the whether its a good economic model or realistic is kind of irrelevant to me since magic item economics in a fantasy POL world is kind of hard to really say how it should work, it really comes down to will these rules enhance my game or detract from my game.

These rules knowing my players, would detract from my game. Under these rules they would never sell anything to a merchant there would really be only one option sell it your selves. They wont take any large joy in becoming merchant princes, but if they feel they are getting hosed they will become one to avoid the problem. And then I would have to deal with all the lame cons and bad fast talk from one of my players over the sale of items. So for me this will fall into the big never used rule system, I'll have used weapon to armor type table in the 1e PH more than i will use this.

 

[pawsplay]

I'll have used weapon to armor type table in the 1e PH more than i will use this.

Oh, burn!

 

[Orius]

Except when you have the one person in the party who doesn't want to do any of those things.

That's a reason why it's good for players to discuss what they're doing with their characters outside the game, so there aren't as many conflicts. D&D is supposed to be a cooperative game, and it's seldom good for the campaign when every player pursues goals for their PCs that aren't compatible. However, there's always going to be the occasional player that just wants to do his own thing, and damn everyone else's fun.

 

[Andor]

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.

Are those the same smelly, bloody, heavily armed brigands that just killed the dragon, stopped the Orc invasion, rescued the King's daughter, and toppled the corrupt High Priest who was engaged in a power struggle with the King?

 

[Ahglock]

Are those the same smelly, bloody, heavily armed brigands that just killed the dragon, stopped the Orc invasion, rescued the King's daughter, and toppled the corrupt High Priest who was engaged in a power struggle with the King?

And if there my players they were smelly and bloody in town or like 5 minutes before they got cleaned up in the nearest inn.(and that is assuming they did not clean up on the way back to town) And then usually they did not look like heavily armed brigands, sure they were armed but so is every noble or person of wealth.

 

[Orius]

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.

That's it in a nutshell. It all goes back to the early days of the game when XP was earned from treasure found and magic items used. In those days a +1 was more potent in the game than it is now, so a lot of DMs tried to cut back on magic acquisition. Dragon in the old days had frequent articles on cutting back on magic in the campaign, and there was similar advice in the DMG as well. That's why magic item stores didn't exist, it was to keep the PCs from getting too powerful, and PCs couldn't sell items for that sort of thing to stay logical. For an extreme view of this, one only has to read a few strips of KotD where it becomes something like an arms race between the players and DM. But then these were also the same older editions that had modules that were loaded down with gold and lots and lots of maigc items.

I don't mind that 3e tried to change this paradigm. It might not have worked as well as it was supposed to, what with the silly Christmas tree approach, but at least it assumed the PCs would have some magical might at their disposal and tried to divorce D&D from the pseudo-medival settings into which DMs tried to shoehorn their campaigns.

Oh and who's to say PCs don't have the social contacts and networks to deal in maigc items? Every campaign does not have to be about slogging through moldy dungeons. There's nothing from stopping the PCs from becoming well-known and trusted, or from invovling themselves in the upper social circles of their campaign base. In fact, some people would say it makes more sense for that paragon character to be considered a hero by the people and have useful friends in high places than for him to be some anonymous grime-crusted tough who's going ruin-hopping. This is one of the issues thhat should depend on the campaign and how the DM and playeres want to run things.

I think it's actually interesting that so many people are extrapolating modern standards of living backwards to a D&D world. It's always been argued that D&D worlds tend to be a freewheeling mish-mash of medieval, renaissance, and modern concepts, and NOW I get it.

It seems to me that WotC is actually attempting to craft a default setting (and game) that more closely parallels history, while still being totally different from it. It's interesting that some of their conceits which, it seems to me, should be self-evident are being met with such resistance.

I guess people really do have trouble imagining living conditions other than the ones they're under. Now I know why the "Points of Light" conceit met with such resistance from some quarters.

As I've said in the past, D&D isn't like real world history, it's more like a Renaissance Fair on crack with magic and stuff like dragons. I mentioned this a few days ago, that I think WotC is intentionally moving away from the old medieval Europe baseline. I think part of it is to create a sort of world that can be more culturally and racially diverse, and I think part of it is because trying to model a D&D world on the real world doesn't work very well. It's better IMO to make a world in which the rules actually make more sense.

 

[AZRogue]

You know, for those DMs who want to ignore the 20% resale value of magical items, there are a few ways around it that still preserve game balance.

1. As was suggested much earlier, you can decrease the amount of treasure in the future so that the increase in gold gained is factored into the PCs' treasure. I like this fix the best (though I would just tell my players "no" if they tried to sell for more anyway) though some people haven't.

2. The other option would be to give XP when a player manages to sell an item for more than 20%. This would keep their XP/Level somewhat in step. Just factor in the added XP to some other encounter since the PCs don't know what they should be getting anyway. Both methods preserve balance. Both are done in the background away from the PCs' eyes and without their knowledge. And both allow a DM to allow players to sell items for more gold if they want.