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Message: <blockquote data-quote="gizmo33" data-source="post: 4220952" data-attributes="member: 30001">You're equating that to 400% profit?  Seems to me like there are other "costs of doing business" that aren't being considered.I think a fair back-of-the-envelope calculation for a magic item merchant would be to settle on his standard of living, say 200 gp/month or whatever.  Then factor in bodyguard (assume an EL 5 posse for carrying a typical EL 5 treasure), some taxes/tolls, and get a rough idea of how many items are bought/sold each month.Assume that the standard of living matches up with the start-up capital required - and that such is balanced with all other career options available to persons of similar means.  Yes, there could be great variations in the experiences of an individual merchant, but if there are 100s of such characters operating in the world, then I would think that the average experience would be at equilibrium.  Otherwise, more people would sign up for the wealth and prestige of being a magic item merchant.I seriously doubt that any such reasoning went into the buying/selling rules though.  I have never seen any justification from WotC regarding a 4E rule that had to do with anything other than "it works in an MMORPG and is fun/epic/like-you'd-see-in-a-movie" or something to that effect.  Since it's very rare to observe the actual numbers in a buying/selling transaction in a movie, I would expect the 4E design methodology would be inadequate for resolving this issue.</blockquote>

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