Excerpt: Economies [merged]

[Thasmodious]

I could also have their shop burn down, but the end result is they will feel cheated either way. If they are willing and able to pay 100% of the value of the item, it stands to reason (especially for heroic tier items) that other adventurers would be willing to do the same.

If they put effort and resources into attempting to market their devices to others like themselves, then how can you realistically just say that no one will purchase them. Bear in mind that my group plays in a traditional high-fantasy setting where there are other adventurers around with power comparable to the pcs up until the low teens in levels.

If that's the kind of game they want to play, go with it. Let em be magic item merchants. You could have a lot of fun with a campaign like that. They have to adventure to get magic items to sell. It takes a long time to sell an item. Even in a high fantasy game there aren't cities full of leveled heroes "in the market". So buyers would come from far and wide. The PCs have plenty of overhead in maintaining a shop in a large city, security, taxes, payroll, mortgage payments, other bills, etc. Perhaps an overzealous local bureaucrat or tax collector decides to make their lives difficult. They have the problem, especially if they are good characters, of having BBEGs be among their main clients. Do they care who they sell these powerful items to? Maybe, maybe not. If they don't, maybe an order of paladins does, and after they sell an item to a evil warlord who wipes out a village, the order decides to do something about it.

Adventures can come from research by the parties brainy types, who dig up information from libraries and sages and such on ancient tombs, trace histories of fabled items, follow leads and information to try and learn the final resting place of an item (and sometimes they are wrong and its not there). Then the group has to go get it, of course. Meanwhile, they have to trust their store to an underling, who is embezzling, and security, which can be beaten. They return to learn a local legend of a thief broke in and stole an item. Then they have to deal with that...

For a long term arc, you have a good source, as well. The PCs find, acquire, purchase an item that turns out to be a lot more than they bargained for. Pretty soon, about 5 buyers seem interested and willing to pay very high prices. Then there is a break in attempt, an extraplanar being gives them a cryptic message about keeping the item out of the wrong hands, someone attempts to murder them in their sleep... and events start to spiral from there and suddenly they are knee deep in a plot much bigger than themselves.

 

[Lacyon]

Wait, Lizard wrote this? Lizard? You're fired. We need a new person to be Lizard. You've spent countless pages expounding a D&D philosophy that has made it very clear that you'd rather stab yourself in the eye with a pen than accept a gameworld which changes based on the story needs of the player characters. You don't get to admit that you've been playing that way all along. Not if you don't want to give up your Lizard title to someone else.

This is the funniest thing I've read in weeks. Thanks, Cadfan

 

[Bandreus]

I don't know... I found these bits on the economy not really satisfying. And residium...bah, I fought against the "DnD is going to be WoW" till now, but I'm seriously starting to change my mind.

Anyway, what I do think is this. There's a whole lot of people out there who just don't want to bother about generating random treasures, dealing with palancing troubles from the amount of cash players earn/equipment level. This kind of people usually love the quick and easy way. Read what's on paper, don't bother about problems (and just hope rules are crafted to not break the game).

Looking at the excerpt from this direction, I think the sistem has serious chances to achieve its goal. Speeding up the game and giving less stuff for the DM to worry about (and taking him less time to Prep).

For all the others, I think 4E is going to be house-ruling-fest

 

[malraux]

Forget the espressos -- look at a pawn shop, where a 10 to 1 purchase to markup is not unheard of... And frankly, that's the idea of "magic item vendors" they're basically pawn brokers to powerful people. Don't have two weeks to make that wand of fiery doom, but the pawn broker can get it for you at a premium? Pony up the cash! (Or astral diamonds or what have you...)

Or a more common one, Gamestop. They pay virtually nothing for games, then resell them to other people for just below the new price. Pretty close to exactly what the magic item economy is like.

 

[MrMyth]

Agreed.

This is the first major problem I've had with the preview material. I don't know what I'm going to do when my players start becoming merchants.

I can see them stockpiling gear until they get to a metropolis. Then setting up a store to sell their magic items at 80% and undercutting local merchants. I can also see them sending messengers out to all towns in the vicinity letting other adventurers know about their goods.

They've done stuff like this before just to make 75% off items in 3.5 and I cannot realistically think of a way to keep it from working.

I see two real situations:

1) Characters want to sell items that are either outdated, or useless to the party. Outdated items are probably low level, and selling them for 80% instead of 20% value will likely be a drop in the bucket compared to the party's current wealth. Useless items would be high level equipment they recently acquired, but that no one in the party was suited to use. You could easily make a short quest out of finding the right buyer for it, and they end up walking away with a nice profit that they can spend on a weaker item more fitting for the party. Doing so ends up not shattering the wealth/level guidelines, since they still come out a little bit worse off than if they item they initially found was useful enough to keep.

2) Characters want to make a business out of it. Either there won't be time for it - the plot is too urgent to spend weeks or months setting up Ye Olde Item Shoppe, or it requires them to travel around the world, etc. Or, there is time for it - and you make a full-fledged story-arc out of it.

They have to deal with angry merchants blacklisting them, acquire licenses, deal with paperwork, find some way to have a regular supply of items, deal with the merchants tirring up public sentiment against them and sending assassins after them, or thieves breaking into their shop, etc. By the time you are complete, they'll have earned some solid experience and gotten a decent profit from the shop.

Henceforth, you can have the shop bring in a reasonable amount of money every week, and allow them to sell items more effectively - but at the cost of having trouble easily spending that money, since most merchants won't trade with them any longer. Sure, they can buy items off fellow adventurers who come through town, but getting the items they actually want will be much less reliable. All in all, it mostly balances.

 

[Voss]

I don't know... I found these bits on the economy not really satisfying. And residium...bah, I fought against the "DnD is going to be WoW" till now, but I'm seriously starting to change my mind.

Well, to be fair, disenchanting items into arbitrarium predates WoW by a decade or two.
Its just a little flavorless compared 'Blood of an immortal, heart of a troll, bound together under the light of a dark moon' style of thing.

 

[Mort_Q]

And residium...bah, I fought against the "DnD is going to be WoW" till now, but I'm seriously starting to change my mind.

3.5e already has residuum of a sort; the artificers Retain Essence ability. New name, new mechanics, same basic idea.

 

[keterys]

Governments could tax a nominal fee... say 50%... on the official sale of magic items. Merchants are eating that cost for the adventurers when it's at 20%. That's actually all pretty normal and reasonable and cuts a lot into the practice.

 

[Mustrum_Ridcully]

I agree with Derren in this case;

*shudder*

while what I've seen of the book editing has been quite good, I'm less impressed by error-checking from the web team. The web entires may need more eyes on them before they go live.

Still I'll have to agree. They have to do a better job. maybe they should hire Ms. Cook? That would create a beautiful symmetry between Pathfinder and 4E!

 

[Warbringer]

Tell that to anyone who wants to sell some uranium fuel rods today.

Yeah, they're having to dump them for a 1/5th of the value they buy them for ..

The issue is such mark up usually only exists for illict goods; so, why are magic items illegal in your world