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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Lurker37" data-source="post: 4221892" data-attributes="member: 9522">Let's see if i have this straight:1) The assumed POL setting assumes that travel from the villager to the local city is hazardous, let alone between major cities. 2) Unless there is a major improvement over the corresponding real-world period of history, voyages by sea can result in loss of cargo, crew and even entire ships often enough for it to be factored into the expected cost of the voyage. In fact, it could be argued that it's even more hazardous since the rumoured sea serpents etc are often real in most campaigns. Because of this, exotic and imported products would already have high levels or markup to compensate for lost stock, so the markup on magic items would not be unprecedented.3) There is no internet, telephone system or even telegraph network in the average gameworld. Messengers are commonly used. This greatly increases the time required to find prospective buyers, or for intermediaries to find items they know their clients are interested in. Because of this, deals that can be quickly struck in the modern world will take much, much longer in most campaigns.4) Adventurers will no longer walk out of conquered enemy strongholds with wheelbarrows of low-level items, implying that such items are not readily available in 4E, even if the group conquered clearly had the funds to afford such items at market prices.5) Items can get broken down to create the components required for more powerful items, so there is a sink to prevent the excess of low-level items that previously plagued some campaigns. This possibly explains 4 - that wheelbarrow of +1 swords was used to make a single +5 sword. 6) Judging by the prices given, Magic items are expensive enough that only the rich can afford to buy them, and even then not necessarily in large numbers, unless they're buying items inappropriate to their importance in the game. (The local lord may be interested in as +2 frost bow, but could not afford a hundred of them. On the other hand, such a bow would probably not even worth a mention in the City of Brass - it's just beneath the interest of the merchants and the clientèle there except possibly as something to disenchant.) 7) Merchants are willing to buy the items from PCs at 1/5th of market price, and sell them for seven times that. (We have no indication yet of exactly how much haggling can change those prices.) These merchants are not the buyers for the item - they are the people who make their living by finding buyers for such items. That's a significant difference that some posters seem to have overlooked. The only value the item has is for the merchant the potential for them to sell it for a profit. 8) There are no specialty magic shops, so anyone wanting to sell a magic item to someone other than a merchant needs to find an end user, or authorised representative thereof, directly.9) Since the setting is POL, potential customers with the liquid funds to purchase items are unlikely to be all clustered in one convenient location. Travel between points of light will be required.If these assumptions hold, then the only commodities market I can imagine is for the residue from disenchanting items, and even that would be limited. Anything else is a high-risk proposition. A merchant buying a magic item from a PC is taking a gamble that (s)he will ever be able to find a buyer, or be able to strike a bargain with an intermediary who makes a living brokering these sorts of deals. Closing the deal will likely require contacts that the merchant has either spent years building relations with, services exclusive to members of the Merchants guild in good standing, or months of discreet inquiries and negotiations. Furthermore, 4) implies to me that there may be a limited supply of residue to make new magical items - perhaps the secret of how the very first magic items were made was lost several empires ago, and now only the technique of making an item by cannibalising one or more others survives? Maybe some still know how to make 'new' residue, or make items without it, but the process is slow, taking multiple participants weeks if not months? Perhaps magic items can decay over time - so a magic sword of less than artifact status might rust like any other piece of metal, although perhaps more slowly? Any of these would keep the supply of magic items very low.I'm having a great deal of difficulty seeing this as a commodities market. The antiques comparison seems better to me.If the PCs wish to try their own luck, then it should either be an adventure as they turn their full efforts to the task, or else they find themselves still carrying the weapon, unsold, ten levels later.The DM might even hint at this by having the merchant they buy an item from mention  (after the deal is closed!) that (s)he just won a bet they made with another merchant ten years ago when they first bought the item.Anyway, that's what I infer from what we know so far. Based on that, the convenience of offloading the item for 1/5th value doesn't seem so bad for the party, and is not a guaranteed profit for the merchant - at least not in the short term.</blockquote>

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