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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Deadstop" data-source="post: 4220221" data-attributes="member: 61557">This is one of the first things about 4e I've found largely disappointing, though as often happens the complaints so far in the thread have been extreme enough to lead me to develop some sympathy for WotC's system.As others have mentioned, the treasure parcel system (while it is no doubt convenient for play) seems awfully static and predictable.The awfully convenient merchants also brought a wince, though unlike Derren I can easily imagine that they are far more than magic item speculators (perhaps bringing goods from the nearest big city out to the villages, and taking farm produce and local craftwork back). The buyer/seller markup on magic items is pretty extreme, though I don't find it necessarily unrealistic unless the assumption is that the PCs will never manage to be on the "high markup" end of the deal.I'm not too fond of either regular buying and selling of magic items or regular "disenchanting to enchant something else," as both seem to make magic items too mundane. In some settings that take "D&D logic" to its conclusion, like Eberron, that probably does make sense, but in "default POL" it would seem more likely that magic items are antiquities brought up from ancient ruins and either kept and passed down, given away, or sold to the *very* wealthy. (Admittedly, there could still be a merchant who frequently visits a town or village he knows to be near a ruin and takes found "trinkets" off the townspeople's hands at lowballed prices to sell to discerning collectors elsewhere.)Like many, I'm kind of disappointed that 4e isn't giving us rare and wondrous magic items as the default, but then again it at least seems possible to make the change with less headache than in 3e, and they do have to cater to a wide variety of playstyles.Lizard has a point about the "normal" economy and the typical wealth of ordinary folks playing an important role in these matters, even if the players at the table don't care directly how Farmer Bob keeps his family fed. How easy it is to liquidate items and buy new ones depends on just how much disposable wealth different people are likely to have. Likewise, how much of the economy is cash-based? Throwing around gold coins will probably get you goods and services in most places, but only if those coins are in turn valuable to the other person in the exchange -- meaning they in turn can exchange them for other stuff. A "deep" PoL setting, with many people struggling merely to survive, may see precious metal having very little value, since it's not directly useful in living another day. Many magic items, likewise, may be interesting curiosities but of little worth to the typical person. Others (a decanter of endless water, perhaps) might be literally priceless to a village constantly on the edge of dying out -- but then it's unlikely the villagers could actually pay even the "book value" of the item in gold, and likely not even if the adventurers are willing to take farm produce, livestock, and/or crafted goods instead.The 4e default setting seems a bit schizophrenic on these matters -- or maybe it's just "better lit" than many of us were assuming. Gold and silver seem to be useful forms of wealth everywhere, and trade in magical items is lucrative enough that a merchant passing through any given village will pay gold (though far less than he hopes to earn) for them. The amount of gold PCs are "expected" to have is far less than in 3e, which is both good and bad. On the one hand, the regular availability of magic items for sale may be less important if the PCs have less gold to burn and get their most powerful gear from looting anyway. On the other, the traditional vast hoard of gold and gems in treasure seems highly discouraged. (Of course, unless your adventurers are of the Bilbo Baggins "one adventure and retire" type, you likely haven't been handing out fairy-tale treasure hoards anyway.)As I said earlier, for PoL I like the idea that magic items are effectively antiquities or archaeological finds, with the added bonus of having practical effects in the here and now. Sure, the merchant passing through will take them off your hands, just as he does with the Nerathi Imperial potsherds the villagers occasionally turn up in the fields, but he won't pay anywhere close to what he expects to make from his buyer. If savvy adventurers aren't willing to sell for such a price, then they might be able to bargain him up, or they might choose to look for "real" buyers themselves. (As others have said, to make that a fun part of the game rather than a cash-producing exploit, it would be best to treat that as an adventure/quest of its own, with the greater money gained from the sale as the treasure.) The 4e guidelines for buying and selling magic items make some sense, if magic items are rare and the trade in them is a specialty market or effectively a black market. If +1 swords are easy to make and sold in every sizeable city, then the markup makes a lot less sense, and you're definitely looking at Magic-Mart for at least the low-end stuff.With luck, such world-building discussion will be part of the full economy-and-reward section of the DMG. It's fine that there's a default -- though right now I'm not quite sure what the default commonality of magic items is supposed to be, nor how that interacts with the default quasi-setting -- but with PoL and Eberron using the same rules system, some kind of guidelines for changing the default and tracking the consequences would be expected.Deadstop</blockquote>

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