Selling items : illogical rule ?

[darkrose50]

I hope they make economic rules in the future that rock! Let me share a rant I made last week.

1. The assumption that every adventurer is economically imbecilic, does not care about economics, or is too incompetent to engage is economics is preposterous. There is no such portion of any population of sufficient wealth that is excluded from economics. If one has wealth, than one has it in ones best interests to engage in economic activity and use ones resources efficiently. This is human social nature.
2. The assumption that goods and services are some sort of mystical voodoo only understood by full time professional merchants is preposterous. People know how to talk to people, and make deals. People know how to interact with people. Merchants are people. A setting based on our medieval feudalistic society would not have chain stores with set prices as the norm. Such a default setting would have a large portion of individual merchants who own there own inventory. Bartering and haggling would be possible. Bartering and haggling would be the norm.
3. The assumption that only adventurers would buy magical items in a feudalistic society is preposterous. Magical arms and armor would be in demand by knights, and lords (the military). Magical healing, health fortifying, and life extending magical items would be in demand by anyone who had the wealth to afford them.
4. The assumption that adventuring is the only method to become fantastically wealthy is preposterous. The gentry, nobles, merchants, kings, queens, churches and guilds would control vast wealth.
5. The assumption that magical items are too expensive to be sold is preposterous. There is supply, and there is demand. Supply and demand sets prices. It is unrealistic to assume that there is a universal distain for used magical items, especially with the resizing ritual, to the point that five used magical items are worth one new magical item is preposterous.
6. The assumption that the cost to have magical items created is higher than the actual trade value of magical items is preposterous. Magical item creation theory is not lost in the base setting. Players can create magical items. Players can buy magical items for full trade value. Players cannot buy used magical items for 20% of there trade value.
7. The assumption that the military (knights and nobles), organized crime, wizardly guilds, wealthy merchants and other organizations would not buy magical items is preposterous. These would clearly be the target audience, and they would be easy to identify. They would be a large portion of the demand.
8. The assumption that a player character would need to set up shop in a bazaar in order to locate a buyer for a magical item is preposterous. High value goods are in demand. Items in demand have people seeking them out. There would be auction houses, agents, standing orders, and people wanting to buy them.
9. The assumption that an adventurer would not waste his time with economic maters is preposterous. Not all adventurers are busy adventuring all year long. If they are, then people with wealth hire people to do the things they do not have the time or inclination to do: cook, clean, account, appraise items, or look for magical item buyers. Intelligent adventurers would hire experts to handle such matters. Intelligent adventurers, especially treasure hunters, would know or learn the inner workings of the magical item economy.
10. The economic model of craft mundane items for 100% of there trade value, and sell for 20% of there trade value . . . well . . . that’s just stupid any way you cut it.

 

[Goumindong]

Antiquities and art aren't tools, they're luxuries. Magic items aren't just the tools by which adventurers earn their bread, they are the tools by which they avoid death.

Irrelevant. the only thing that needs to be compared are the quantity supplied and the transaction costs.

Which are comparable.

 

[darkrose50]

I don't know. If I could hire and equip 10 extra trained troops for the cost of the magic sword, I think I'm better off with the 10 extra trained troops. At least in the short run, and when it comes to winning battles the short run looms awfully large.

10 extra trained troops or one 15th level well equiped knight?

I would think a noble would want to have a balance. It is like saying why would the military spend millions on a tank when we could train extra infantry? Sometimes you need a tank, and 10 infantry (while cool and all) are not a tank.

 

[darkrose50]

Oh, man, I am way way way tired of this defense.

Not all DMs are experienced.

And, even among experienced DMs, different experienced DMs might make entirely differrent adjustments. Different DMs, after applying all the myriad adjustments needed just to play this silly version, might be playing entirely different games with more houserules than rules, more dissimiliarities than similarities.

This is not a valid defense.

A game system that requires an experienced DM to adjust things as needed over and over just to fix the glaring flaws in the system is not a game system at all. Certainly not a good system.

Yet, thread after thread on these boards raises concerns over some rule, and invariably someone, or many someones, post a response similar to the one I quoted here, as if chanting this mantra makes all the defects of the system miraculously vanish.

What's worse... I get the impression that many people chanting this mantra really believe that all you need to handle a defective game system is an experienced DM to adjust things as needed.

I continue to remain flabbergasted at this evident belief.

Bravo!

I am ever so hopeful they will release a well thought out crafting and economics book. The economic rules as they stand now make me cry.

Exactly.

Furthermore, economy is a two-way street. If nobody in the world can afford to pay more than a few hundred gold for a magic sword, then a few hundred gold is the value of that sword. PCs should expect to pay that much to buy one, and receive that much to sell one.

I love you.

 

[robertliguori]

The part I can't wrap my mind around is why you think the magic item selling rules is incompatible with this. There are plenty of good justifications for why this would be the default, and while you can pick at them, you will never find a RPG where people won't be able to pick at a game rule regardless if it's built around gaming or "realism". What is realistic to one is silly to another. The rules don't in any way forbid your players from trying to find better deals, it's just up to the DM to decide if they are succesful at this.

The short version is that things that effect the bits of the world represented by rules should themselves have rules wrapped around them.

The even shorter version is that this is the Air Bud defense; the rule explicitly state that the sale price of an item is 20% market value, whether it's a merchant buying the +3 thundering bardiche on the off-chance a sonic-themed polearm user of approriate level will be around or whether you're selling a Carpet of Flying to nobles in a magical cloud kingdom. The rules also explicitly say that while the flavor text of the various rules can and should be shuffled around at will, the actual effects are to be preserved; describe it however you like, but your high-level defender can expect to knock the Tarrasque prone on a successful hit just as easily as he can a level 30 dormouse.

A DM can say that "Wow, that rule is utterly stupid. Given this situation, the actual sale price for this item is..." and insert a reasonable price here. A really clever DM might go "You know what, guys? We've got an expected amount of magic item value per character. Just assume you have that, and that you can't buy magic items. That way, you can be 10th level penniless adventurers taking mercenary contracts, and also later on be 10th level adventures buying and selling notable merchants without having to spend gold on magic gear."

But by the time you've done that, you've probably gone whole hog and started wildly converting D&D material into True20. Which brings me back to the original point; this is a complaint about a ruleset, not about a DM. I can ignore the rules and do what I want. I know this. This has always been true. But when what I want and what the rules allow diverge wildly, the rules do not serve me, so I bitch about them on the Internet.

 

[hamishspence]

economics and weapons

Big question is, is the difference a magic item makes to the combat power of a soldier worth what you pay for?

if it for the cost of a division of troops, you upgrade the hitting power of an existing division by 5%, thats not a good buy.

Equally, if division hits twice as hard but its just as easily killed, again, not much of a good buy. Expensive, hard hiting troops need protection, or they become an arrow magnet.

Basically, magic weapons and armour are very pricy as it stands. They have always been so. Would a D&D military always consider the items worth it? Probably not.

 

[Goumindong]

Good lord, you don't even know what economics is let alone what "economic rules" they would implement. They gave you some quick rules for the likely buy price and sell price that you will be able to find for your goods. Not all markets reach equilibrium or have small margins, especially small markets with low volume of high cost goods with little competition.

Oh look, we're dealing with a small market of low volume high cost goods. The buy prices and sell prices they gave you are reasonable.

That right there is WOTC telling you what the economy is like.

If you want a real world example of this look at antiques or video game turn ins. If you want a "game" example of this go look at the majority of the products in Eve Online and watch these types of examples develop in real time.

 

[AllisterH]

Um, to those that want a more realistic economic system, can I ask one thing?

How do I actually make finding magical items worth anything if the players can get 50% and more from it?

How do I not have the players scavenge the gold teeth from the bloody bandits because they can make more magical items?

I mean, I've read LotR and I don't remember any time peple scavenging stuff from the orcs and selling it or the hobbits hocking items.

 

[BASHMAN]

Its a good bet that on the street in front of the store where you would buy a magic +1 sword for full price, there is an npc fighters who will sell it to you for 3/5ths price. Or if you want to sell your sword, you can stand in front of the item shop and sell it for 3/5ths cost to an NPC figher going into the store to buy one...

 

[FadedC]

The even shorter version is that this is the Air Bud defense; the rule explicitly state that the sale price of an item is 20% market value, whether it's a merchant buying the +3 thundering bardiche on the off-chance a sonic-themed polearm user of approriate level will be around or whether you're selling a Carpet of Flying to nobles in a magical cloud kingdom.

And yet in third edition the same rule was in place.....by the book you got the same percentage value for a magic item regardless if you sold a +3 halfling size greatsword in an elven city or if you sold a decanter of endless water to a desert city with a water shortage.

Can I assume then that you complained equally about that, and would consider it to be equally against the rules if the DM decided to adjust prices based on what he thought was reasonable on a case by case basis?