High level 3e magic item purchasing... when does enough become too much?

[mmadsen]

Really, then explain how the Templars got so strong?

The Templars and their almost modern financial practices were quite unusual in their time. Anyway, here's a web site describing how they avoided charges of usury:

http://alandpeters.tripod.com/knightstemplarera1188to1312/id8.html

In the medieval era it was forbidden for Christians to charge interest on loans and therefore money lending as a profession had been traditionally restricted to the Jews. This did little to enhance the reputation of the Jews as a racial group, which was already jeopardised by the persistent allegation that they were 'Christ killers'. The Knights Templar found a way around this restriction which allowed them to lend considerable sums of money at interest without being subjected to the charge of usury. It was quite permissible to charge rent for the leasing of a house or land, so the Templars used this principle in their money lending and charged 'rent' rather than interest for their services rendered. The rent was payable at the time the loan was granted and was added to the capital sum borrowed. By this euphemism the Templars avoided being brought before the courts on the un-Christian charge of usury.

 

[herald]

Still doesn't change the fact that it existed.

 

[jasamcarl]

mmadsen...

Your view of history is as ever, simplistic; no, there was no formal market as we know it today, leading to the type of insecurity that resulted in policies like the ones you noted. But this very instability also rendered those policies......ineffective to say the least; usury was a crime, true, but it occured often, not contractually perhaps, but either informally or politically, often. The fellow who noted that the middle ages can be said to have been freer than todays market is not far off, as their was little authority, especially national, to restrict movement of goods, especially in Northwestern Europe. Regardless, this is not particulary relevant, given we are discussing a FANTASY context....


later......

 

[Sialia]

1. I commend the Defenders for their recent efforts to get organized before going on a mission. This is unusually good planning on their part, taught to them by their own hard learned experience. If you teach 'em a lesson, isn't it gratifying to see them using what you've taught 'em?

2. Uniquely created magic items made by party members are likely to be wonderful and inventive. You like wonderful and inventive.

Personally, while they're off hanging out with the Lord Crafter's folks, I'd stick in a bragging session with some NPCs who aren't much impressed by what they've come up with and make them feel like amateurs. Nothing more irritating than having a swell new feat and meeting soemone who's been doing that feat for years and knows what a freshman you are. Give 'em an idea or two of what they could have done if they'd been less jejune.

No matter how good you are at something, there's always someone around who's better at it.

3. They really ought to enjoy the first few combats in which they get to feel just how powerful and smart they've become. They've earned that. And while you're testing out their new abilities, you can let them feel overconfident about what's to come. Or, if you overgauge it and beat them within inches of their existence in the first combat, it'll ramp up the fear factor for how much further they've got to go with what's left.

There's no rule that says you can't hit 'em with everything you've got. You've got the entire Underdark in tasty Undead flavor down there. I wouldn't sweat a few puny magic items. Ok, so there's no SAN checks in D&D, but maybe there should be. What good do semi automatic weapons do the typical Cthulhu investigator?

4. The real question is, what is the next lesson you want them to learn? There are a great many things the Defenders are good at. But there must also be a great many things that they've never studied on the field of adventure.
The recent reminiscences about how you moved from puzzle type campaigns to political based campaigns is a good example. You changed the nature of the adventure. They had to learn something new to figure out how to be successful--and turned out to be more engaging for everybody.

I think a big change in your GMing style happened after you spent a while as a PC in Bandeeto's Denarii campaign. As I recall, you hadn't been a PC for a very long while at that point, and it was fresh and new to you to see a world through a PCs eyes again, and to discover that the most treacherous monsters in the Universe are ordinary Homo Sapiens, and not necessarily even powerful adventuring ones. Bandeeto had us terrified of insane beggers lying in the gutter raving, shopkeepers, money changers, tax collectors, and public transit drivers.

You took your experiences there and spun them back into your own unique world creation, and I think it was about at that point that your world really started getting political.
So now, you've done that. It was swell. What is the next Next Thing?
Prophecies? Done that. Intrigue? Done that. Redemption of the foe? Done that. Tests of Faith? Done that.
Strategic troop movement? Hmm. Have they done that, as well as it can be done? What else have they only done slightly, or hand wavingly, or eschewed altogether as "not our type of game"?

I'd recommend some time spent at the hands of a few other nasty sharp pointy Rat Bastard DMs --preferably some that you don't habitually work with-- to remind you of what is unusual and interesting.
Maybe even in some games that are different in genre or type, where different kinds of logic apply.
I know you already are well versed in every game under the sun, but the same game looks different from the other side of the screen.
There's no reason you can't take a Delta Green type conspiracy set up into your own world--you have a vastly complicated world with many civilizations living in it and we've never seen what's down in the Underdark. There could be tech down there for all we know. ( I know I know--you don't want them learning THAT lesson and bringing it back above ground).

The point is not that you need to limit their magic item acquisition especially, it's that you need to keep the game interesting.

Trying new things is interesting, and you have good students there. And they'll tell you if it's not working and you'll adjust and try something else. It's not like they're going to walk out after one or two bad sessions--players you've had for that long are going to stick around to see what happens next.

What the Defenders are telling you when they go shopping is that they are taking your world seriously and they are trying to be ready for the challenge. None of them fear that you will bore them or make it too easy. They aren't holding back because they know you won't. So don't.

4. Personaly I like the frisson of horror I get when a GM looks at me smugly and says, "you want that kind of magic item? Sure. It won't make much of a difference."

Much love,

Sialia

 

[mmadsen]

I do not actually disagree with any of your points, but I think that 3e takes this into account by imposing a 50% liquidity penalty on the sale of all items.

Absolutely. I was addressing the notion that magic items shouldn't depreciate because they don't wear out. It's not a matter of objective worth; it's a matter of finding one of the very few buyers for a rare and expensive item on short notice.

Ideally this 50% penalty would leave some wiggle room for Rogues (particularly if we borrow from Star Wars' Scoundrel class) to bargain.

If you want the real world, really big tickets items would be sold through a guilded merchant. He would arrange a sale by carefully spreading word through his more trusted colleagues, perhaps to far away cities. Negotiations would be handled by letter or word of mouth. The various middlemen would end up taking a 10-20% cut off the final purchase price as commission. You would not necessarily know what the negotiated purchase price was. "I think I have found a buyer for your suit of armor. You would get X gold. Interested?"

Nice illustration. I like it.

For the reasons that you stated, the merchants are not going to have thousands of coin handy. So they can't usually purchase an expensive item without a buyer already lined up.

The more I think about this, the more I think the DM should borrow from heist/caper movies. The PCs are carrying around a lot of wealth; what's to keep other adventurers from coming for it?

OTOH, if you care about realism, the PCs should be sitting around the taverns bored for 5 months of the year.

Fortunately, you don't have to play out those months in real time. Pendragon handles this quite nicely with adventures forming just one season in a knight's year of activities.