"Ten for That? You Must be Mad!"

[Jhaelen]

Haggling? I don't want any. In fact, I don't even want any on camera shopping. I'd rather say "OK, that's it for this session guys. We're in town and you have a chance to sell loot and buy things, so make sure to make those decisions and have your character ready to play for the next game."

That's the way I as the DM initially tried to do this as well. However, my players seem to be quite fond of haggling and roleplaying it to the hilt, so what's a DM to do?

 

[Gort]

As others have said, once you start getting into haggling it can screw with the assumed amount of equipment the players have. Man, if I started having interaction in magic item shopping, players would start thinking, "Hey, why don't I just steal it, and everything else in the shop? Bugger adventuring, looting shops is way more profitable!" and then I have to start statting shopkeepers. And if the shopkeepers can fight my PCs, that kinda lowers the value of the PCs - professional soldiers, mighty heroes, same power level as a shopkeeper.

I think I'll keep it abstract, lest I have to deal with these headaches. Magic item shops make little sense, but the game seems to need them and as long as everyone treats them as holes that you put gold in and get magic swords out of, it keeps the game balanced.

 

[Hella_Tellah]

As others have said, once you start getting into haggling it can screw with the assumed amount of equipment the players have. Man, if I started having interaction in magic item shopping, players would start thinking, "Hey, why don't I just steal it, and everything else in the shop? Bugger adventuring, looting shops is way more profitable!" and then I have to start statting shopkeepers. And if the shopkeepers can fight my PCs, that kinda lowers the value of the PCs - professional soldiers, mighty heroes, same power level as a shopkeeper.

I think I'll keep it abstract, lest I have to deal with these headaches. Magic item shops make little sense, but the game seems to need them and as long as everyone treats them as holes that you put gold in and get magic swords out of, it keeps the game balanced.

Yeah, if the PCs are all some flavor of non-good chaotic, it's definitely possible they'll want to go into theivery. To me, though, the palyers' actions tell me what kind of game they want to play, so I adapt to it, and the act of theivery spawns an encounter (or series of encounters) that warrants that reward. If they stole 17,000 gp, then I'll start cutting back the treasure rewards in the next adventure, or I'll send a level 14 encounter at them if they can handle it.

I don't see haggling as an unbalancing factor, because there are all kinds of things I can do with future rewards, behind the scenes, to rebalance things.

 

[Ourph]

But what about hack-and-slash games, where most of that stuff should be automated? Even for roleplay-heavy games, sometimes the players just want to buy a grappling hook and get on with the adventure. In faster-paced games, I boil it down to "roll Diplomacy, maybe you'll get a discount." That's just a house rule, though.

In a hack-and-slash game where the players "just want to buy a grappling hook and get on with the adventure", why wouldn't you just have the players pay book price for everything? That's why the prices are there, right? For people who just want to buy the grappling hook and move on?

 

[3catcircus]

Three Words...

...Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe or MMS: Silk Road.

Either of those two products has the best economic simulator for d20. Period.

 

[Hella_Tellah]

...Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe or MMS: Silk Road.

Either of those two products has the best economic simulator for d20. Period.

DO WANT.

Thanks for the tip.

 

[Felon]

You've never had players try to haggle and wonder what rules were applicable?

Not really. In campaigns that I've run, players spend way too much time shopping rather than adventuring. And my experience is that if a player's allowed to haggle once, he'll want to do it every chance he gets, and will encourage others to do the same. It can wind up sinking a lot of game time into something which doesn't amount to much gain.

 

[Geoff Watson]

Not really. In campaigns that I've run, players spend way too much time shopping rather than adventuring. And my experience is that if a player's allowed to haggle once, he'll want to do it every chance he gets, and will encourage others to do the same. It can wind up sinking a lot of game time into something which doesn't amount to much gain.

I agree. Assume that the haggling averages out to the standard prices (some higher, some lower) and get on with the interesting stuff.

Geoff.

 

[HeavenShallBurn]

...Magical Medieval Society: Western Europe or MMS: Silk Road.

Either of those two products has the best economic simulator for d20. Period.

Best 3e purchase I ever made, found use for them in every session for one aspect or another.

 

[Li Shenron]

We used different options in different campaigns: Charisma opposite checks, Diplomacy skill, and some Appraise house rules.

One problem we've always found is that as soon as you have a rule for haggling, the players will use it every single time they want to buy something. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but at least it should be kept in mind, particularly if your group goes shopping very often, and it has suggested to us that the benefits should be hard-limited (e.g. 10% max discount ever is a good limit). Also, it may be better to roll once for the entire "shopping encounter" and not for each item.