D&D 4E Poke holes in my 4e econ house rule, please.

[aurance]

The 20% constant sell value didn't sit right with me, so I came up with this potential house rule:

At any given level, you have a 20% chance to sell any of your magic items, for 100% of its value. If you fail the check, you must wait 1 experience level before trying again.

Residuum returns 40% of the value of the magic item, immediately.

Obviously this is a behind-the-scenes abstraction, and appropriate RP would be built around the rule.

Please critique.

(And please, no "4e econ rules are fine, it's an adventure game." If it's fine for you, great. But this is not the thread for you.)

 

[Henrix]

You evidently want your player's characters to have more money - the residuum increase certainly does that, and the other rule let's them sell, with or without delay depending on luck, their items for five times the standard.

You'd better have well stocked magic shops!

 

[aurance]

I tend to under-pay them anyway.

 

[JohnBiles]

I would personally recommend, instead of just setting a random 20% chance of selling for full that you set up some kind of skill check (diplomacy maybe), and let various DCs reflect different percentages of the purchase value for them to sell it at.

Either that, or maybe index the % chance to the size of the community and the cost of the item. So that way, you can easily sell a +1 sword for close to its full value or even its full value, in, say The City State of The Irredeemable Overlord (pop. 48,000) but it's a lot less likely in Podunk Hamlet (pop. 212)

 

[aurance]

Thanks for the suggestions, JohnBiles. I may set up a skill challenge / city modifier system.

 

[Blackbrrd]

I could never understand where the merchants were getting the money to buy the magical equipment from. In the campaign I will be running, there won't be any magic item merchants.

"So, I have been in the grain business for years, shipping grain up an down the shores of the land. I now have 5 sailing boats working for me. Last night some adventurer wondered if I could cough up the coins to buy a [+5] dwarven armor he found. It was really shiny and such.

I spent a couple of weeks and managed to sell my sailing boats for 50,000 gold. The adventurer said he wanted more for it, so I borrowed 15,000 more gold against my good name and so we had a deal, the adventurer and I.

The man I sold the boats to are moving them to another land, so I dunno who is going to ply the waters with grain, but that is not my problem I have got my dwarven armor that surely must be worth 325,000 gold!

Now I only need to find an IDIOT who would pay me 325000 gold for the armor and I am filthy rich."

If you look at the item prices you will see that at for instance the difference between a +5 tombforged armor and a +4 tombforged armor is 5x. So, if you want to make any +4 armor out of a +5 tombforged armor, go right ahead just make the +5 armor into residium and you can reforge it.

Personally the prices in the PHB for high level armor just reminds me a lot of when I played poker in Italy with 10,000 lire bills... It doesn't feel real.

So, since there isn't any way to buy/sell magical gear, I won't have to give the players ridiculously large amounts of money, which again means that money will actually have some value. You can maybe get enough to buy/build an inn, manor, castle, or something like that. Instead of being able to ... well... take over the world. Which feels silly. Now I have never liked epic play, or anything like it, but level 1-20 dnd 4th edition looks good.

 

[aurance]

I could never understand where the merchants were getting the money to buy the magical equipment from. In the campaign I will be running, there won't be any magic item merchants.

By and large, neither does mine. But the 20% per level chance simulates the character looking for / finding a buyer for that specific item, i.e. other adventurers or eccentric collectors who need it.

"Magic item super-mall" phenomenon is largely a non-issue though, as in 4e, the cost to buy it from a hypothetical merchant is exactly the same as the cost to make the item. In the latter case you're paying for components, again from other adventurers or eccentric collectors.

There certainly should be some DM involvement in adjudicating these costs, but it's nice to have a base-line.

 

[Blue]

The 20% constant sell value didn't sit right with me, so I came up with this potential house rule:

At any given level, you have a 20% chance to sell any of your magic items, for 100% of its value. If you fail the check, you must wait 1 experience level before trying again.

Residuum returns 40% of the value of the magic item, immediately.

Obviously this is a behind-the-scenes abstraction, and appropriate RP would be built around the rule.

I'm with you. Last campaign I ran one of the PCs was all into founding a new merchant house. Different venues of fun for different people.

I railed against the 1/5th rule when it was an excerpt, and just about every time since. However, basically I need to accept one of two things:

A. It will affect wealth balance, and I'll need to adjust that.

OR

B. I need to work it so it doesn't affect wealth balance.

You're going for A, which has a lot of ripples. I was going that way too. But I think I see a way to do B.

You have packages of treause to give out every level. DMG recommends spreading them as appropriate, so maybe the dragon is guarding three packets while the oozes have none.

So, make selling items at above 20% an "encounter". It's fairly nebulous, perhaps taking over several days not a single scene, but do skill challenges, and have higher prices be realized behind the scenes by giving a packet of treasure, basically the money or trade items the PCs find.

This allows others to get into the act. Streetwise to find connections, Insight to gauge buyers, Diplomacy to talk up the item in a bar hoping word gets out, etc.

And if there is a penalty for failure (getting fleeced, given bad items or stolen goods, attracting thieves who want the item), then the encounter should even be worth XP.

Cheers,
=Blue(23)

 

[Paul Strack]

Personally, I am OK with the current 20% rule. However, I don't think your house rule is unbalancing. The 4E magic item system limits magic items in multiple ways. The limitation on item slots and the fact that item values increase exponentially also balances things out.

Compared to the RAW, your PCs would (a) tend to have the exact items they want and (b) would likely have one or two extra equivalent-level items than a normal group due to better cash conversion. My calculations indicate that by the RAW, a group will have about 5 or so equivalent-level magic items normally, so I doubt that will break your game.

One caveat: if there are unbalanced magic items in the game, the PCs will likely figure it out and buy them, so you may need to tweak rules on individual items. That was my experience with similar rules in 3E. Magic items seem more balanced in 4E, though, so I wouldn't sweat it.

 

[evildmguy]

I have been thinking about talking about this for a while.

I think the attempt is for the emphasis to be on the action. I also think they are trying to get rid of characters carrying lots of things to sell later by making them worth so little. I don't know for sure what the designers wanted but that's what it seems to me.

I don't think that's bad. Instead of a DM having to list everything a group had in a fight, so they can carry them all (anyone else do this in the gold box games until you had money?), they get rid of that paperwork, potentially, by only having characters carry the stuff they are using and again not worrying about other stuff.

As I thought about it, in a medieval society (such as the maps in the DMG for the H series), it makes sense. A merchant wouldn't have use for something that he has no contacts to sell it and its bulky to carry and keep. So, it's not worth much to them because even then it was more of a bartar society and unless they have a buyer it's more things to carry and keep track of.

Having said that, this seems to imply that a larger town would have merchants who deal in magic and have better prices. It still might not be much better, though, because unless someone wants it, it won't sell and it takes up space. For magic swords or wands, they aren't as bad as armor, but they still have to be tracked. Also, what if it's stolen? They don't want to lose a lot of money.

So, maybe what can be done is to decide that there are a few places that do have magic shops, but it's probably not all they have for sale. Magic, being a bit more tricky to sell, is probably a side business not the main. If the characters make the trek, maybe they get a bit more for it.

As for the residuum, I am going to try it and see how it works before I do anything different. It does seem strange but maybe it works in game.

edg