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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Elder-Basilisk" data-source="post: 1822558" data-attributes="member: 3146">I've always found the "you can never buy or sell magic items...ever" attitude to be particularly lame. I remember the days of 1e and 2e where my DMs hated magic shops. We would end up with multiple magic weapons and other items that we couldn't use and they just sat around in a corner of our backpacks gathering dust.I remember the reverse in the early gold box computer games. We'd fight Zhentarim or some other group and end up with their magic swords and armor after we killed them. So, we'd go down to the weapon shop and sell them. When we did so, they didn't show up in the stores' inventories because "you can't buy magic items." I remember having two thoughts about this. The first was: This is stupid. Back when all my characters were first or second level, we'd gather tons of gold and silver from the orcs' lairs but when we wanted a magic sword, where were the people like my high level party? Nowhere to be found. We sell the magic items we don't have any use for but it doesn't do us any good. The second thought was, if this was a real pen and paper game rather than a computer game, what would I do with all these +1 swords? I could buy a castle with the gold from some of them and outfit an army with the rest of the +1 and +2 swords that I've taken from my dead foes. Now, since the "can't sell magic items" crowd probably does not think that PCs should be forced to leave their unused loot in the corner to gather dust, I imagine giving it to followers would be seen as fairly reasonable. But if magic items can be given away for loyalty, it seems pretty reasonable to suppose they could also be given away for money--after all, everything else, from loyalty on down is regularly bought and sold. If I can give my followers +1 swords to help them defend my castle, they can have gambling problems and put up the sword as collateral for a loan shark. If I can give my flunkies old wands of magic missiles, then surely some young noble wannabe can shower them with gold until they give it up. While everyone may not have a price, most people do. And so should most items.So, what do I do with treasure division? It depends. As a player, I found something like the default method to be the most enjoyable way. Calculate what we would get for selling everything, divide it evenly, and then let PCs buy any items they want for "sale price." What would we do with 25 masterwork longswords anyway? And it's not as if the +1 kobold sized shortbow would be any use to the all-human, elf, and half-orc party. If there is something that PCs would find useful but can't afford to buy out, we generally let the PC claim that item as his entire share and just left it at that. If there's something that would be useful for the whole party to have around--like that half-charged wand of cure light wounds or the potion of invisibility--we just called it party treasure. If any magic items get sold this way, it's generally because they were items that nobody in the party wanted. And if nobody wanted them, then it's for the best that they were sold. After all, the archer with a +1 mighty [+4] composite longbow, probably wouldn't be carrying around the +2 composite longbow the party found because "it's magic and you never sell magic even if there's not much of a conceivable reason you'd keep it." Another thing I like about that method is that you don't end up with greedy characters (or players) simply gunning for items because they're magic, whether or not they're useful. In one game I remember the wizard carting around a variety of weapons including several magic weapons because she planned to trade them [to other PCs, of course] for something later.</blockquote>

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