How do I make Mort's Rent an Item?

Stalker0

Legend
I was thinking instead of a magic buying shop, a magic renting shop might be much more likely. Many kinds of items are very niche, and while great for lending is not something a character is going to buy.

AT the same time, I want to ensure that the items get returned to Mort when the time limit is up...whether the weilder is alive or dead. What are my options using standard spells and items?
 

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Lesser Geas (or Geas) the borrower, at their own cost, to return the item in 7 days? Boy, that would sure cut back on overdues at the library.

I have some questions about the basic concept, though. Why would anyone keep doing this? If they have a stock of valuable items, why NOT sell them all and be done with it, if there is a market? What is their motive for having such expensive stock, and taking in a small income instead of selling and retiring? How did they afford such stock in the first place, and why did they sink all that money (and somebody’s XP) into a business, instead of simply, again, living off of such fantastic wealth?
It seems like something that adventurous types might wish existed, but I can’t see a strong motive on the other side for someone to provide it. I tend to feel that way a bit about the whole magic item store idea, mind you, so I am not saying this is way worse than that, only that maybe it requires a little extra background explanation. Like perhaps a very well-meaning group of wizards provides this service if they approve of the intended use of the items. Maybe it is even more interesting if it is a not well-meaning group that rents out magic items.
 

The mindset is the same as any type of renting establishment.

Let's take a formal wear place for example....why not just sell tuxes instead of renting them?

1) There's little overhead... I don't have to buy new tuxes very often...just clean up the ones I have have.

2) You attract a larger market. A lot of high school kids for instance, aren't going to have teh money to buy a tux for prom...but they could rent one.

THe same applies to a magic shop.

1) Why continue to make items (which cost valuable xp) when I just continue to make money on the same item

2) How many "adventurers" could afford a +1 bane (giant) sword? Okay a certain number. How many would be willing to buy it? A great deal less, especially if giants aren't that common. However, how many might be willing and able to rent one for a giant heavy area of a dungeon or something? A great deal more, giving you a bigger customer base.

What I'm trying to do within the basic rules is create steps to make it worthwhile. Obviously if all your rented equipment doesn't get returned noone would do it.
 

Lesser Geas is a good idea (as suggested). Mark of Justice is always nice, too, for that "wrath of the gods" feel. Plus it's permanent and hard to dispel.

Edit: By the way, I really like this idea. I think your logic is great. Someone presumably created that Giant Bane sword because they really needed it. But once the giant problem is solved, its value really doesn't match its GP cost.

This could even work for charged items. If you charge by the charge (sorry) you could make a fortune. Say you create a wand whose cost to create works out to 50 GP per charge. You rent it out and collect 150 GP per charge the borrower uses. If he only uses a few charges, it's way less money than buying the wand. But you make far more overall than if you sold it.
 

Instant summons is about the closest thing, but it has some serious limitations. Most importantly, it does not function when the item is in the possession of another creature. This means it would only be useful if the renter got killed by something that did not loot his body.

Also, for every single casting you need a 1000 gp sapphire, which must be replaced if you trigger the summons. That's a lot of gems to have lying around in your warehouse.

I don't think there's anything in the core rules that will actually do what you want. You probably need to create some custom spells.
 

JimAde said:
This could even work for charged items. If you charge by the charge (sorry) you could make a fortune. Say you create a wand whose cost to create works out to 50 GP per charge. You rent it out and collect 150 GP per charge the borrower uses. If he only uses a few charges, it's way less money than buying the wand. But you make far more overall than if you sold it.
You can't charge that much, or the client will just buy scrolls instead. A wand charge is more than half the price of an equivalent scroll.

If the wand costs 45 gp per charge, an equivalent scroll costs 75 gp. I guess renting might be an advantage if the client doesn't know how many castings he will need, but he could always buy the extra scrolls and then sell the extras back to the shop. He'd lose some money on the resales, but maybe less than he'd be paying for use of your wand.
 

AuraSeer said:
You can't charge that much, or the client will just buy scrolls instead. A wand charge is more than half the price of an equivalent scroll.

If the wand costs 45 gp per charge, an equivalent scroll costs 75 gp. I guess renting might be an advantage if the client doesn't know how many castings he will need, but he could always buy the extra scrolls and then sell the extras back to the shop. He'd lose some money on the resales, but maybe less than he'd be paying for use of your wand.
You could consider all those extra charges insurance. :)

Also, wands are a bit easier to use (just have to have the spell on your list, not necessarily be able to cast it) and the UMD check is a little lower if you're winging it.

And I think there's wiggle room unless I'm doing bad math. Here's normal base price (cost to create is half)

Wand of magic missile (3rd level caster): 375 x 3 x 1 = 1125 / 50 = 22.5 GP per charge
Scroll of magic missile (3rd level caster): 12.5 x 3 x 1 = 37.5 GP per scroll

So you could charge up to 35 GP per charge and still be a bargain. But each of those charges only cost you about 12 GP to create. If the guy ends up using 10 of them, you get 350 GP for your 120 GP investment (230 GP profit) while selling him 10 scrolls would get you 375 GP for a 187 GP investment (188 GP profit).

Of course you have the additional risk cost, but I could see it happening in a high-magic world where magic items are treated as commodities.
 

Stalker0 said:
I was thinking instead of a magic buying shop, a magic renting shop might be much more likely. Many kinds of items are very niche, and while great for lending is not something a character is going to buy.

AT the same time, I want to ensure that the items get returned to Mort when the time limit is up...whether the weilder is alive or dead. What are my options using standard spells and items?

Spells aside, I smell adventure hook. ;) Mort could save the Instant summons for items worth having a 1,000 gp Saphire commited to it. If the item is still in the possesion of someone, then Mort is going to try Divine the location and possessor. He'll know the item very well, so he's got better than average chances to.

He would then commission a brave band of adventurers to sally forth for the item. Payment would effectively be whatever else the adventurer can extract from the delinquent, though exact wording would vary. The upside for the adventurer would be they are likely to be acting within local property laws, or at least as close as a privateer would.

The inherent per item overhead would suggest that Mort would deal in more expensive items (you can rent tux's but can you rent T-shirts?) though someone that is willing to risk the wrath of a collection agent for a wand of Cure Light Wounds is likely someone that could be delt with by common thugs that will work for beer money.
 

sullivan said:
The inherent per item overhead would suggest that Mort would deal in more expensive items (you can rent tux's but can you rent T-shirts?) though someone that is willing to risk the wrath of a collection agent for a wand of Cure Light Wounds is likely someone that could be delt with by common thugs that will work for beer money.

You can't rent T-shirts, but you can rent video games. At a retail price of $50 or so, I think a console game is comparatively cheaper than even a wand of CLW. And MUCH cheaper than a gray bag of tricks (the cheapest "unlimited use" wondrous item I could find quickly).

And I agree: someone who would steal a video game (or wand of Cure Light Wounds) is not somebody you should have trouble collecting from if you own a magic shop. :)

For more on this (believe it or not :) ) I refer you to the Acts of Gord:

http://www.actsofgord.com/
 

There's also the option of Collateral. If I need to borrow the Giant-Bane sword, maybe I have to leave some of my own items of equivalent total value with Mort. In this case, I borrow a sword worth 18,000gp, leave 18,000gp worth of my own (or the party's) stuff as collateral, plus pay merely 10% of the cost of the item I'm borrowing for up to a month's time (that's usurious by modern banking standards, but probably pretty reasonable for these circumstances and given the high risk of making loans to unknown adventurers). If I don't come back, Mort's got the other stuff (so no real risk to him) as well as his profit.

Downside to this is some characters might try to turn it into a magic-item-swap place, with no intention of ever returning the item they "borrowed." So Mort should probably have a Zone of Truth under which borrowers have to agree they plan to return the item, plus the contract should probably indicate that if the borrower doesn't return the item on time, he forfeits the collateral and still owes the borrowed item back (allowing Mort to use some of the collateral to pay his collection agents). Payment in items worth thousands of gold pieces should be enough to hire some pretty competent collection agents. The signed contract would also be useful in casting Divination spells to find people and items, if necessary and if the value was high enough.
 

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