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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Thasmodious" data-source="post: 4332583" data-attributes="member: 63272">If there is enough of a trade to sustain a steady supply for years, then there are more than enough merchants.  Killing one with a good load of items to arm your evil minions or even to sell (at 20%) to fund your evil research lab is just the kind of move that has been used by motivated BBEGs for centuries.Agreed.  And if you deal in magic items often enough to where this is a concern, you will have substantial security, both physical and magical in place to protect your inventory of magic items.  This would take up a substantial portion of your income, supporting the idea that the 10:2 ratio is justified because of the high risk and expense of being a successful merchant in such a dangerous market.A. I don't think its bleak, I think its realistic (in the logical sense, not in the modeling the real world sense)B.  When is the last time you heard of the army having a machine gun sale?  It doesn't happen.  A state is not in the business of arming its citizens and rivals (except on the modern world stage, of course, but that is entirely a different topic).  Sir George would certainly oversee things, though, taxing the merchants, demanding full inventory accountability and sales records, possibly requiring state approval before a sale can take place...They also wouldn't be buying from adventurers at market value.  10:2 if they're very, very lucky.  Interesting to bring up the drug market, because I think it provides some insight.  The end user buys a few grams of a product at a price, much, much higher than cost of production.  There is plenty of supply and plenty of demand.  The thing that drives the market is risk.  There is a lot of risk on all sides in the drug trade and it drives up prices exponentially between production and end sales.  The magic item market is a similarly very high risk market.  The world's best thieves don't need to break into the palace and steal the crown when merchants are stockpiling items worth 10 times what that crown would be.  Merchants and adventurers would both be obvious targets.  Merchants will have their goods better protected, but adventurers can kill you and usually enjoy it.    Which is another reason why I think a campaign of merchant/adventurers would be a lot of fun.</blockquote>

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