Reply to thread

Message: <blockquote data-quote="Ridley's Cohort" data-source="post: 4270762" data-attributes="member: 545">If the market is so illiquid, there exists an incentive for even the Merchant to do the fire sale, because even a fire sale would be very profitable.  Now the Merchant may choose not to for other reasons or that may not happen often enough to help an Adventurer.  Nonetheless the incentive exists.What you are missing is that the fire sale price is immensely attractive to the Owner who wants to sell.Used books in most cases are disposable.  That is why the used prices are so low.You are the one making modern-centric assumptions, as you have mental habits adapted to a society where so much is considered disposable, regardless of the physical qualities of the item in question.  Cars are a better (albeit imperfect) comparison point.(As for computer games, I have personally sold used computer games for 40-50% of retail.  It was just a matter of being willing to go through the effort, which was not even large.)Actual history proves I am not arguing from a modern point of view.  Case closed on that one.But you are correct that the campaign assumptions matter.  Perhaps your interpretation of the PoL-style campaign setting is much more accurate than mine?  I could be convinced from that point of view.That brings me back to a previous point: 1/5 might be justifiable based on very strong assumptions on the campaign world -- but I have doubts that would easily be transferable to most campaign worlds. I am more than happy to explore what those strong assumptions would be.It is hardly an assumption about the game-world, it is a simple observation about human(oid) nature."Maybe there is an Adventurer" or "Maybe there is someone rich out there" is what the Owner is saying to himself before he accepts a lowball bid from the Merchant.  To suggest that only Merchants ever have appropriate amounts of cash is a strong assumption about the game-world on your part.My point is not that there is automatically a convenient magic flea market.  My point is that plain human(oid) greed plus a sufficiently high commonality of magic items imply that someone(s) will try.  Enough magic items in your big city and number of people who will try is non-trivial, as the incentive is so large.  I would also note that if the incentive is very large, the incentive for the existence of effective middle men is also very large.  As I already mentioned, middle men do not necessarily need to risk capital; they only have to see the potential rewards relative to the effort to be attractive.Maybe a PoL campaign can never have nearly enough magic items for us to expect such a thing to arise.  But what about some other campaigns?</blockquote>

Verification