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Message: <blockquote data-quote="DM_Blake" data-source="post: 4332919" data-attributes="member: 57267">That's two things <img src="https://cdn.jsdelivr.net/joypixels/assets/8.0/png/unicode/64/1f642.png" class="smilie smilie--emoji" loading="lazy" width="64" height="64" alt=":)" title="Smile    :)"  data-smilie="1"data-shortname=":)" />Finding magical items is always worth it. If I am halberd specced, and find a +1 halberd, then I rejoice. But if I find a +1 bardiche, then I start looking to trade that bardiche for a halberd of equal value.Unfortunately, it's the 4e rule system that says I can't do this. Now I need 5 +1 bardiches at 20% each to get my halberd.So now I'm totally dependent on my DM making sure there is a +1 halberd for me somewhere in this dungeon. And a +2 halberd in the next dungeon. And a +3 halberd in another dungeon. Etc. Further, it begins to be strange when our group, after years of playing, looks back and reflects that we've found 15 different magical halberds, frost, flame, thundering, vorpal, varying plusses, etc., but we have never found a magical bardiche, or a magical longsword. Fate sure has been kind to us. That kind of catering to the players breaks down any reasonable sense of verisimilitude if you do it all the time, or even most of the time. But without being able to reasonably exchange magic items, that level of catering to the players is almost required by the game system.As for scavenging gold teeth from the bandits, that makes perfect sense to me. Why wouldn't an adventurer want to have the best equipment money can buy? There are not many reasonable answers to my question:1. Money cannot buy any equipment. Ever. 2. Money can buy equipment, but players can't do this. Ever. Only NPCs can.3. Money can buy equipment, but the DM won't let players have money.4. Money can buy equipment, but there's never any of the equipment you want for sale.5. Money can buy equipment, so go buy what you want.None of those are good answers.Maybe this one might work better:6. Money can buy equipment, sometimes you can find some equipment for sale, sometimes you have some money, so sometimes you will find something you can use for sale and that you will be able to purchase.Reasonably, anyone who chooses to constantly put themselves neck-deep into life-threatening danger, over and over, will probably want to be armed to the teeth with every possible tool he can find that will help him survive all that danger.Spending coin to purchase those tools makes more sense than hoping you happen to stumble onto a troll's cave containing several rare and ancient magical blades.Which takes us back to Tolkein.True, nobody in LotR was scavenging loot off of dead orcs and hocking it to hobbits. But they had a few things going both for and against them.Going for them was Tolkein himself. He gave them what they needed and made sure that stuff like Sting, Orcrist, and a mithril chain shirt all came into the story when they were needed. Which is great for a hero in a storybook, but not so practical for a real hero living a real life (which is what we role-play, after all - nobody was role-playing Frodo).Going against them was a terribly impractical world that had two kingdoms containing exactly two cities, both ravaged by war, with a few scattered settlements such as Hobbiton or Bree or Rivervale, none of which had any evident outside trade with other settlements. Hence no economy to speak of. Given that perspective, Middle Earth has less of a viable economy than Star Trek.Now, if you want to set up a campaign in that kind of world, then your players won't be very surprised to find out there is no economy and no market for the booty they haul out of a dungeon. But that kind of setting belongs in a campaign guide, not a core rulebook.The vanilla PoL setting seems to assume more cities, more towns, more economy, more trade, more goods changing hands. Quite a bit more. Which means the default PoL setting has an economy of some kind. But apparently, according to the core books, this economy is wholly whimsical and entirely nonsensical.</blockquote>

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