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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Tukka" data-source="post: 5920850" data-attributes="member: 6668048">If the players who do not put a lot of energy into shopping are having fun, feel like they're carrying their weight, and don't feel too underpowered, then the intraparty imbalance issue really isn't an issue (unless maybe the DM thinks the only reason those party members are satisfied is because he is putting a lot of effort designing encounters catering to their limited strengths).If the players do feel it is a problem, it might be better addressed through other measures, such as having the players who do shop around help those who don't pick more suitable items. Either way, it just comes down to someone else picking your items. I'd rather have another player pick their items with the power to veto their choices than have to accept whatever the DM gives to me.If the DM feels that the party is having difficulty rising to meet what he feels are "appropriate challenges" because some players aren't taking the time to research equipment, well, he's made your point for you. Taking away the ability to pick and choose gear from the players who are pulling their weight is just going to make the party as a whole less effective, and less able to meet the challenges he expects them to.While this makes some sense, you can still rationalize a character's in-world knowledge of optimal gear to a large extent, because the character would actually be a lot more invested in making good gear choices than the player is.For the character, picking good equipment is literally a life and death matter, not to mention his livelihood. An adventurer's gear represents the tools of his professional trade, and a heroic+ adventurer is essentially an expert in his trade. He should have a pretty good idea what the good stuff is.The player has the benefit of nicely indexed and organized universal lists of gear that the character probably wouldn't have, but I would still expect somewhat similar indexes to exist in-world, in tomes compiled by guilds and in the minds of sages. The info the character has is less exact and complete than the player, but the character would also spend a lot more time researching these matters than the player does.In addition, much of the gear the character acquires, though picked by the player, is not necessarily directly sought out by the character. It just "happens" to be in the dragon's horde, on the warlord's body, or in the shopkeeper's window. Maybe it requires a slight suspension of disbelief to believe that an adventurer could be so consistently fortunate in finding the perfect magic items and equipment to suit his fighting style ... but even then, you can justify it by claiming the reverse -- the character ends up molding his fighting style to realize the full potential of the item he acquires. I believe this has some precedent in genre literature and cinema.Inherent bonuses are a system in which characters get inherent enhancement bonuses to attacks and defenses which don't stack with the enhancement bonuses from magical equipment, but receive less loot. It's described in the DMG2 and Dark Sun Campaign Guide. Basically, it makes it so +X weapons, implements, armor and neck items are no longer necessary for characters to remain viable.Yes, and you DM is taking this idea to such an extreme that you're not able to sell items (even at the usual punishing 20% rate) or buy items (if only from a restricted list), your DM is cutting off his nose to spite his face. Setting continuity is probably not going to be enhanced by having a world in which nobody is interested in buying or selling magic items, unless it's a world where such items are highly taboo or subject to draconian laws (which might be fun, but if you've already been playing this campaign a while, to have this come out of left field would be a bit much).Likewise, if he's having to contort the plot/setting or railroad you away from towns and cities so he can enforce his ban on magic item sales, that of course is not a very good thing either.Good luck.</blockquote>

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