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

[bardolph]

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.)

If you want to tie it to a roll, use Streetwise. The DC can be based on the DMG skill check charts, using the level of the item (or "level equivalent" for non-magical items).

Perhaps the following scale:

Failure Easy Moderate Hard

20%     40%    60%    100%

Alternatively, if the PCs have a lot of stuff, you can make this into a Skill Challenge using Streetwise, Bluff, and Diplomacy.

 

[bardolph]

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 think the intention is to make it not worth their while to haul mundane crap out of a dungeon, and instead to focus on shiny stuff and magic items.

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.

This is a reasonable assumption. I think the 20% rule is mostly about "erring on the side of caution." DMs who want to RP the marketplace are going to make up their own houserules anyway, and the PHB intentionally sets the "standard resale" value at the lowest possible level, so that DMs get to mod their generosity UP instead of having to mod it DOWN.

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.

Makes sense. Without RP, I would still assume 20% for a quick & dirty sale. If the PCs want to RP selling their stuff, then skill checks (or a skill challenge) is called for, in which case I have no problem letting them make a nice profit from an evening of good roleplaying. After all, a session full of combat yields loot and XP, why shouldn't an evening of RP yield profits as well?

 

[aurance]

First, thank you all for some very useful ideas.

Blue:
Yes, I may tweak "per level" to "per encounter" or some other time frame. But I'm not sure if I understand how the way you describe it is more "B" than "A"? Either my system or yours, they both seem to fall under "A."

Paul:
"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." I completely agree, but isn't this a base 4e concern regardless of my modification? Since essentially gold + ritual = magic item?

evildmguy:
Sure, the emphasis is on the action, and by and large I like that. But I'd like to model a little better, say, a PC looking for another adventurer who specifically wants an item, hence the random (possibly very lengthy) delay in the sale and higher cash return.

 

[aurance]

After I've thought about it a little, and reading the replies here, I'm convinced slightly more in favor of the default "20% sell rate and special exceptions for RPing out sales" model.

As a reasonable majority of adventuring parties will have access to rituals, they can always create items at 100% cost. So selling items to NPC adventurers should net somewhat less, otherwise they'd just make it themselves. Say, 80-90%. Then factor in the time and expense of trying to find said buyers, I could see it going down to the 20%, although it *is* a very conservative figure as bardolph pointed out.

 

[darkrose50]

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.

That’s you choice, however:
1. I would like to think that the price for magical items is high because there is a damand for them.
2. In a medieval European feudalistic society the demand would come from the gentry (knights), nobles, monarchs, guilds, churches, and wealthy 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!

Okay ways this would be possible:
1. The merchant wanted to consolidate his heaps of gold pieces into one portable suit of armor.
2. He has an important customer who wants such a suit, and does not care if he makes a profit on it, as he will earn brownie points with that important customer.
3. Its crafted value is 325,000 gold, and he can move it for 110-140% that, and not have to wait for the crafting time.

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

1. The world of full of idiots.
2. Idiots have money.
3. Something is worth 325,000 gold because someone is willing to pay 325,000 gold (the demand part of supply and demand).

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.

This was the design they had in mind. However with the rules as written one cannot trade the same level item no matter what ones charisma or diplomacy happen to be. I think this is stupid.

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.

Yeah the prices can be a bit out of whack.

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.

The amount of trade units a bit of currency has on it has no bearing on how useful the currency is . . . unless it is heavy as all get out. I however convert gold values into silver, and then make gold worth twenty times that of silver. On top of that I make 240 coins in one pound. That way you do not need a weal barrow of coins to buy something.

 

[Tony Vargas]

One thing you could do, if you wanted to stick with the rules is this:

When a player decides to try to 'find a buyer willing to pay a decent price' for an item, create a skill challenge. Calculate the exp and the apropriate monetary reward (or maybe just the latter) for the skill challenge. If the PCs complete it, they manage to find a buyer willing to pay that much more for the item. If they fail it the item might get swindled away from them, or stolen (since the word gets around that they have it) or be viewed with suspicion by more readily available buyers, causing them to pay less for it.

 

[kanvil]

The base prices for items are the cost to craft the item, based on the materials the ritual requires.

The market for magic items is pretty risky because there aren't a lot of adventurers around who want to buy them. The odds of finding a buyer with the available cash are low enough that buying random magic items from players is speculative, at best. The 20% sell price comes from the value of the residuum you get from disenchanting the item. If a merchant can't unload it for a profit, he can at least get it disenchanted and break even.

But he won't want to just disenchant items. Breaking even doesn't pay for his miscellaneous costs, nor does it offset the opportunity cost of having all that money sitting around doing nothing while he searches for a buyer. He'd much rather find an adventurer with deep pockets and make 5x his money back. But that's a chancy business, and he'll typically have to hold onto the item for a long time (possibly years) to have a chance at it.

Personally, if my players wanted to unload magic items and didn't want to take the cut-rate prices most people are willing to offer (or just have them disenchanted), I'd make an adventure out of it. They might have to travel to a large city or a dangerous frontier to find rich adventurers interested in the items. They would certainly have encounters along the way, and I'd offset most of the extra cash they'd get by giving them less cash loot from encounters they'd have along the way.