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<blockquote data-quote="On Puget Sound" data-source="post: 4299014" data-attributes="member: 68988">One of the main sources of magical goodies is loot taken from the baddies who were using it on you.&nbsp; This works fine for weapons, armor, body slot items...they are pretty much interchangeable.&nbsp; Even halflings can resize the armor they find.But holy symbols?&nbsp; Not so much.&nbsp; Your cleric of Pelor is going to get no use from that +3 symbol of Vecna, after defeating the high priest.&nbsp; In fact, she's probably going to want to destroy such a thing immediately, since even selling it would only mean eventually it would be used for evil.So, while other party members get level-appropriate gear they can use, the cleric is getting 20% of that in residuum.Granted, you can find holy symbols in treasure chests, assuming the bad guys for some reason didn't have the same visceral reaction of &quot;ewww, disenchant that quickly, we don't want it around&quot;.&nbsp; But there are 11 good and unaligned faiths, and each requires its very own Holy Symbol.&nbsp; It stretches credibility that every long-abandoned symbol found in a dungeon will happen to be of your cleric's faith. My solution?Good (and unaligned-leaning good) temples want evil holy symbols.&nbsp; They want them so much that they will pay full market value, or swap you for the proper symbol of equivalent power.&nbsp; Why?&nbsp; They have (or believe they have... it doesn't really matter whether it actually works or not) a special ritual that uses the connection forged between symbol and deity, to weaken the enemy god.&nbsp; They hope that, over thousands of such rituals, they can reduce the influence of Evil.The temples also realize that having their own symbols out loose in the world risks having enemy faiths do the same to them, so they eagerly buy back their own symbols to keep them safe, until the proper cleric comes along to buy or trade for one.&nbsp; Allied temples even trade symbols back and forth to get them into the right hands, sort of like an interlibrary loan agreement.Since I'm still a bit unclear on the 20% trade-in and its effect on the game economy, I'd appreciate input on whether this is likely to be broken in sime way, or on how other DMs have solved the holy symbol problem.</blockquote>

[QUOTE="On Puget Sound, post: 4299014, member: 68988"] One of the main sources of magical goodies is loot taken from the baddies who were using it on you. This works fine for weapons, armor, body slot items...they are pretty much interchangeable. Even halflings can resize the armor they find. But holy symbols? Not so much. Your cleric of Pelor is going to get no use from that +3 symbol of Vecna, after defeating the high priest. In fact, she's probably going to want to destroy such a thing immediately, since even selling it would only mean eventually it would be used for evil. So, while other party members get level-appropriate gear they can use, the cleric is getting 20% of that in residuum. Granted, you can find holy symbols in treasure chests, assuming the bad guys for some reason didn't have the same visceral reaction of "ewww, disenchant that quickly, we don't want it around". But there are 11 good and unaligned faiths, and each requires its very own Holy Symbol. It stretches credibility that every long-abandoned symbol found in a dungeon will happen to be of your cleric's faith. My solution? Good (and unaligned-leaning good) temples want evil holy symbols. They want them so much that they will pay full market value, or swap you for the proper symbol of equivalent power. Why? They have (or believe they have... it doesn't really matter whether it actually works or not) a special ritual that uses the connection forged between symbol and deity, to weaken the enemy god. They hope that, over thousands of such rituals, they can reduce the influence of Evil. The temples also realize that having their own symbols out loose in the world risks having enemy faiths do the same to them, so they eagerly buy back their own symbols to keep them safe, until the proper cleric comes along to buy or trade for one. Allied temples even trade symbols back and forth to get them into the right hands, sort of like an interlibrary loan agreement. Since I'm still a bit unclear on the 20% trade-in and its effect on the game economy, I'd appreciate input on whether this is likely to be broken in sime way, or on how other DMs have solved the holy symbol problem. [/QUOTE]

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