Selling Used Items


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Campaigns I'm in, if the DM is being stingy with the loot but loves to throw well-equipped baddies at us, I feel no shame in filling up bags of holding with their masterwork equipment. Hey, it adds up when you kill a dozen fighter-types, all of them equipped w/masterwork armor & weapons.
 


Ogrork the Mighty said:
That's exactly what I'm talking about. Funny thing is, DMs are almost always perceived as being "stingy", except for the Monty Haul campaigns.

Except, of course, that it doesn't make any sense* that the PCs can't find a minor magic weapon to save their lives, but the enemy is always equipped with the latest in magical and masterwork doodads.

* -- Excepting, of course, corner cases like Midnight ...
 

Ogrork the Mighty said:
One of my pet-peeves is the computer game mentality of "pick up everything and sell it to make loads of cash" (I've even seen it taken to the extreme of removing oak dungeon doors for resale). You didn't see Conan stopping to gather up the arms and armour of the people he killed. Selling expensive stuff I don't have a problem with. But when the PCs become battlefield scavengers it gets tiresome.


Hey, D&D invented that mentality when a “computer game” was Pong! :-) Which is not an argument for liking it, more one for blaming D&D for such computer games. As part of an RPG, though, I think the scavenging has a certain amusing charm. If a DM doesn’t want that, of course, they have the choice of not having valuables lying about or on people if they want. In most campaigns, though, I would describe the PCs as often being little more than scavengers and tomb robbers...
 

I hear plenty of complaints on this board saying:
"3e makes it way too easy to sell a bunch of a loot and buy powerful magic items."
"3e rips the PCs off with such a heavy markdown for selling."

I am satisfied that the guidelines under the RAW are a very reasonable compromise on these two issues.

I would put in the caveats:

(1) By the book prices are too high for weird composite themed magic items, and that following the guidelines to the letter discourages a fairminded DM from putting in quirky & fun treasure.

(2a) The DM should be careful about making access to very powerful magic a trivial matter of a cash transaction.
(2b) Allowing Ye Olde Magick Shoppe is usually only a campaign flavor issue because the PCs are selling a lot of perfectly good magic items at a 50% discount to raise the necessary funds.
 

Ogrork the Mighty said:
One of my pet-peeves is the computer game mentality of "pick up everything and sell it to make loads of cash" (I've even seen it taken to the extreme of removing oak dungeon doors for resale). You didn't see Conan stopping to gather up the arms and armour of the people he killed. Selling expensive stuff I don't have a problem with. But when the PCs become battlefield scavengers it gets tiresome.

Tell me about it! Players in my current campaign are collecting the leather armor
off all the goblins they kill and plan on selling it back to town.

Too bad there aren't simple rules for supply&demand....the first 10 sets of armor are
50% but the next 50 sets are 10%.
 

I had a player point out to me the new rules for the Diplomacy skill in Complete Adventurer.

This is a bit of paraphrase by me:
Haggling. If character can get the merchant to friendly status, he will sell his wares to the character at a 10% discount. The DC for the characters diplomacy check is the DC to bring the merchant to friendly (most merchants start out as indifferent), plus the Merchant's total modifier to Diplomacy (ranks + att + misc).

I have made the alteration of having the DC be bumped by the merchant's Diplomacy, Bluff, or Sense Motive, whichever seems most appropriate to the situation and the merchant's tactics.

This doesn't help with the situation of selling loot, but if a character instead trades an item to the merchant (at the 50% sale price), I do give that character a +2 to +5 circumstance bonus to the Diplomacy check for haggling. This seems to work reasonably well so far.
 
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For many of us (me, at least!) selling/buying loot is boring! I just don't want to waste the gaming time.

Still, as a player I want a good price, and as a DM I want a fair price. So, I don't see much of a problem with "magic shops" (or there equivalent), and I don't see a problem with 75% selling price for PC's used or found magic items.
 

Nail said:
For many of us (me, at least!) selling/buying loot is boring! I just don't want to waste the gaming time.

agreed, we take care of it in between sessions. If it can't be done then it doesn't get done
 

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