Selling items : illogical rule ?

[Goumindong]

I am going to revise my previous statements. Those of you asking for "economic rules" might as well be asking for detailed instructions for what monsters do on each of their turns, when they are bloodied, how they move, whether or not they will attack a fighter who marked them or they run or they attack the wizard. All stuff that your DM ought to be doing.

 

[Grabuto138]

I would also argue that pages 70 -76 of the DMG include all the rules a DM needs if the party wants to get full value for their magic items.

20% of the final sale price is entirely reasonable for a transaction that is halfway between pawning old junk that only one in a thousand people might actually want, and offloading military-grade weaponry on the black market. All of this, mind you, in a points-of-light setting where no one has ever heard of eBay.

If the PCs want to undertake a quest to get full value for their magic items, that's between them and their DM. D&D cannot be all things to all players, nor should it try. We don't have rules for playing a farmer (use your Crop Rotation power to slide a crop into an adjacent field), a miner (Cascade of Picks is totally broken), or an apothecary (watch out you don't fail the skill challenge when you're making poison). Why should we have rules for playing a magic item merchant?

 

[Dausuul]

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

By extension, this quickly leads to demanding that the ruleset encompass absolutely everything in the game world.

The ruleset cannot be all-encompassing. At some point one must say, "Enough; this is as far as the rules need to go in this direction. If you want to go beyond this point, you're on your own." Otherwise the core rulebooks become the core encyclopedia, and even then they'll be incomplete.

 

[Thasmodious]

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.

It's this assumption that if the ruleset doesn't include rules to fit your niche hierarchy of importance (how can we play a fantasy RPG without a complex, working economic system?) that the rules have failed that vexes many of us. Practically everyone has their own set of things that help their suspension of disbelief or their verisimilitude. One DM I play with thinks its very important that clothing become damaged in combat. If you engage in a couple encounters and return to town in the same clothes you were wearing, you have a hard time dealing with people because you look terrible in tattered clothes covered in gore. Changes of clothes and mending cantrips are necessary in his game. Should he be on here complaining that 4e is a failure because it doesn't include rules for damaging clothing? If not, why do you think your personal priority represents a failure on the part of the designers?

Which takes us back to the validity of pointing out that the 4e books do a great job of helping you adjudicate any situation and reminding you that its your game to do with and houserule as you see fit.

No two groups play the game exactly the same way, what is needed for one group is useless fluff for another. Include one set of niche rules and:

1 group will be upset that these useless rules were included but xxxxx was left out

1 group will be upset that the niche rules don't go far enough

1 group will get about the business of abusing the niche rules and their interaction with the main ruleset to find ways to break the game

and so on.

All games of D&D, regardless of the various ins and outs and preferences and desires of the gaming groups involved, need rules for character creation and conflict resolution. That is a shared need and represents the core gameplay of the system. Everything else is niche and will vary from group to group. Creative gamers and third party publishers will happily fill in whatever needs they feel they have. There may very well be a third party product focused on a full fledged fantasy economy, if it seems there is enough of a market for it. I doubt my friend will see a book on clothing attrition, but who knows.

 

[darkrose50]

Please, right now, go outside and try to sell your car for it's full new price, or heck, how about your watch instead. You have 8 hours (typical sell time in DnD), and you can't use any mass media means or a telephone, you're on foot and you can yell loudly, thats it.

Good luck with that.

1) Some people know how to sell stuff. My cousin can sell anything, it’s amazing. People want to buy crap, some people know this, some people understand this, and some people can read peoples reactions. Saying that an adventurer with a high intelligence, wisdom, and / or charisma can not figure this out is posteriors.
2) There is the real value of something, and than the value someone tries to sell it for. They are not the same things. Initial public offerings of stock are like this. Some items you buy at the store are like this, like most cars. Some items have a demand that drives the price people are willing to pay for something close to the price companies sell things for. Take the Toyota Carola for example. You can buy a new one for $14,000 or buy a used one for $13,000. That just rocks. The company prices it close to the demand, and the demand is close to the price the company sells them for.
2b) Put mostly anything up on eBay, and you will get the real value for the item. This is almost always less than the price you can buy the same item for in the store. There are exceptions, and there are folks out there too stupid, lazy, or carefree to use Google and find the same item cheaper on another webpage, or brick and mortar store.
3) Supply and demand. It goes two ways. If something is worth a whole lot of gold, then people with a whole lot of gold want it. A demand for something means selling that something for what that demand is . . . is possible.
4) Spotting people who make up the demand side of the equation in a feudalistic economy is not voodoo. They are the guilds, churches, merchants, gentry, nobles, and royalty.
4b) Adventurers are they rise in power should meet these powerful folks who belong to the demand part of the magical economy (guilds, churches, merchants, gentry, nobles, and royalty). One would think they would talk about common interests like magical items (if it was not all ready obvious to the adventurers).

 

[FadedC]

1) Some people know how to sell stuff. My cousin can sell anything, it’s amazing. People want to buy crap, some people know this, some people understand this, and some people can read peoples reactions. Saying that an adventurer with a high intelligence, wisdom, and / or charisma can not figure this out is posteriors.
2) There is the real value of something, and than the value someone tries to sell it for. They are not the same things. Initial public offerings of stock are like this. Some items you buy at the store are like this, like most cars. Some items have a demand that drives the price people are willing to pay for something close to the price companies sell things for. Take the Toyota Carola for example. You can buy a new one for $14,000 or buy a used one for $13,000. That just rocks. The company prices it close to the demand, and the demand is close to the price the company sells them for.
2b) Put mostly anything up on eBay, and you will get the real value for the item. This is almost always less than the price you can buy the same item for in the store. There are exceptions, and there are folks out there too stupid, lazy, or carefree to use Google and find the same item cheaper on another webpage, or brick and mortar store.
3) Supply and demand. It goes two ways. If something is worth a whole lot of gold, then people with a whole lot of gold want it. A demand for something means selling that something for what that demand is . . . is possible.
4) Spotting people who make up the demand side of the equation in a feudalistic economy is not voodoo. They are the guilds, churches, merchants, gentry, nobles, and royalty.
4b) Adventurers are they rise in power should meet these powerful folks who belong to the demand part of the magical economy (guilds, churches, merchants, gentry, nobles, and royalty). One would think they would talk about common interests like magical items (if it was not all ready obvious to the adventurers).

None of these statements are necesarily unreasonable (well maybe the ebay one because it has no bearing on fantasy), but it's also important to note that expensive and specialized items, while they may have buyers, often take a long time to sell.

I live in New York City. There is a huge demand for real estate here, which makes it really expensive. But the odds that any one person wants the exact piece of real estate your selling and has the money to pay for it is very low. As a result it often takes years to sell something for the "real" value.

PCs are like real estate sellers with no internet or phones. They might eventually be able to get a reasonable price for something if they hold on to it, but they will probably be waiting a long time.

Now if your playing a campaign that takes place over 100 years, then yeah your going to have to modify the rules a bit to adjust and maybe allow players to find better buyers for their items. As the DMG says, there is no way for the rules to cover all campaign styles, and DMs will have to come up with their own rules if they run an unusual campaign.

 

[ExploderWizard]

See, I can't easily accept this.

In my real life, I'm thinking all the time.

In my career, I think about software and ways to make it do more and do it more efficiently.

I look at my yard, and I think about ways to make it look better. I think about my home, and I think of ways to make my surroundsound system sound better, ways to make my living room more comfortable, ways to keep my pantry stocked with food I like at reasonable prices, etc.

I think about my retirement, and my investments toward that retirement, and how to maximize my returns on those investments to leverage my surplus income into a brighter future.

I think about my children, and how I can help educate them, and raise them, to be intelligent responsible adults that contribute to society and are able to live happy and fruitful lives.

I'm always looking for deals, looking for new ideas, and trying to think about ways to make my life more pleasant, and the lives of people I work with and live with and associate with more pleasant.

I can't abide by a "Don't think about it" mentality.

Even the best game on the planet has room for improvement. Not thinking about ways to improve your life, even if we're only talking about a hobby you do for entertainment, is stagnation.

I prefer evolution to stagnation.

I wasn't suggesting that you switch off your brain My observation was more about choosing the right tool for the job. If you want a campaign world with a feeling of consistency and common sense then use a different system. 4E was designed to try and provide the most balanced combat encounters possible at each level and everything else was hammered and bent to fit that design. Use the system that gets you what is important to you and your players for a given game.

For me 4E is perfect, play anytime game that works well for an evening of light entertainment. The rules are restrictive but this is a desirable trait in a pick-up game system that can be easily shared with folks you may not know very well.

For campaign play with a regular group, in a world with depth thats (at least) marginally believable by the characters I will use another system.

 

[Brian Gibbons]

Here's a contrary viewpoint: 4e magic item resale rules are in spirit the same as the 3e rules, only with better math behind them.

The point of having PCs able to sell found magic items is to allow them to choose between a GM-selected magic item that might not be exactly what they want and a lesser-powered item that meshes better with their character concept.

Take a look at the 3e magic armor costs (the magic weapon costs are simply double):
+1 - 1000 gp
+2 - 4000 gp (sell for 2000 gp)
+3 - 9000 gp (sell for 4500 gp)
+4 - 16000 gp (sell for 8000 gp)
+5 - 25000 gp (sell for 12500 gp)

Your GM gives you a magical heavy shield and you'd rather have a magical light shield. No problem. A +2 armor can roughly be sold for the cost of two +1 armors; a +3 armor can be sold for slightly more than the cost of a +2 armor; a +4 armor can be sold for slightly less than the cost of a +3 armor; a +5 armor can be sold for a little more than 3/4 the cost of +4 armor.

Now, let's look at the 4e magic item costs, using a flaming weapon for simplicity:
+1 - 1000 gp
+2 - 5000 gp (sell for 1000 gp)
+3 - 25000 gp (sell for 5000 gp)
+4 - 125000 gp (sell for 25000 gp)
+5 - 625000 gp (sell for 125000 gp)
+6 - 3125000 gp (sell for 625000 gp)

The 4e costs for magic items are related to the resale values in the same way as 3e items, just more precisely. If you sell a +X item, you receive exactly enough to purchase a similar +(X-1) item, allowing you to turn that +2 flaming longsword into a +1 flaming rapier, or +3 deathcut hide into +2 deathcut plate.

The lesser gold for resale also allows GMs to increase the number of magic items given out as treasure, without as much concern that PCs selling off old items and buying new ones will destabilize their power balance.

 

[darkInertia]

There is no actual economy in 4e, and this was intended. When you purchase a suit of armor for 50g from the armorer, he does not in turn use that money to purchase bread for his family - the gold simple disappears. Money is a reward system for PCs and it was a design decision to make it easier (i.e. cheaper) to find items than purchase/make them.

DnD has always been at its core, since the original, about being adventurers going on adventures. The core book reflects this, and many of the game mechanics in 4e have been simplified and written from a non-simulationist viewpoint in order to make the core of the game balance, streamlined, and simplier than previous editions.

It is fine if player's in a campaign want things that aren't explicit in the rules - crafting, profession, castle building, gaining followers, becoming merchants, etc. It's even better if those are related to role-playing and not just trying to break the sysytem/be a pain in the DM's butt. But whether or not you agree with the decisions or not to include or exclude particulars in 4e rules, it's not particularly productive to have an argument over whether or not it should have been included in the first place. They're not going to rewrite the rules just to fill your desires. A better use of your time would be to work together with like-minded individuals to add the level of complexity or simulation into the game. Or to find a different system that fits better with how you want to play your game.

 

[Kraydak]

20% of the final sale price is entirely reasonable for a transaction that is halfway between pawning old junk that only one in a thousand people might actually want, and offloading military-grade weaponry on the black market. All of this, mind you, in a points-of-light setting where no one has ever heard of eBay.

FWIW, the default 4e setting (which includes the silly 20% thing) has *extremely* easy/fast long-range travel and information transport. The component cost for Linked Portal falls between 50 and 135 gold. Sending stones are somewhat expensive, but it won't take too many magic items sales for them to pay for themselves.

This means one very important thing:
the magic item market is big (and liquid) because it spans the *entire* world (and all adventuring parties).

Thinking of 4e as having an EBay isn't a bad way of looking at it at all: a central network of part-time mages w/Sending stones simulate the EBay servers, while the permanent portals and Linked Portal rituals those mages have/know represent UPS.

As it happens, Linked Portal is cheap enough that even bulk trade in the default 4e world should generally be done by portal, making looooong distance trade frequently cheaper than short distance trade (see: modern oceanic transport vs. roads). This could lead to *strong* PoLs, linked safely with portals, drawing on relatively small local regions for production. Caravans would be unheard of. By the time you are paying for that level of transport and security, you should just portal over.

Obviously, 4e is designed from a gamist PoV, but I object strongly to any system that asks me to meta-game wildly to avoid abusing setting inconsistencies. The meta-gaming levels required by 4e (and for what gain?) are simply brutal.