Bella Sara Charter Superscriber
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I'm running my first campaign under PFRPG and dusting off some old house rules (which are pretty light, I hate house rules). One of my longstanding house rules was to banish Appraise. I like the concept of trying to find/steal the most valuable item in a treasure trove, but the whole under/over-estimation of value always struck me as a terrible rule. I am a terrible bookkeeper, and when I give PCs treasure, I just want to be able to say "you find a statue worth 100gps". With the Appraise rules, I need to make a secret Appraise check and then record (a) the real value of the item and (b) what I told the characters it was worth.
Again, it's a neat little touch of realism, but then, when it comes time to sell stuff, the players need to have me double check the prices. Presumably, if they estimate low, they get ripped off, and if they estimate high, the buyer haggles them down to the real price (which is fixed at 1/2 list price (or at least it was in 3.5)). So, they adjust their numbers, sell their gear, and we arrive at how much loot they have, but only after cross referencing every piece of treasure I've ever given them.
Am I missing something? I hate these rules in practice, and would love to hear how (and if) others use them.
RPG Superstar 2008 Top 32, 2011 Top 16
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I pretty much do the same thing for the same reasons. I've never used appraise in any of the games I've run. I guess you could simply tell them the value that they appraise, if they're low, and real value if they're high, and let a high appraise score effectively let them work towards getting full value for their treasure. However, this still leads to lots of extra dice rolls (1 per treasure item), and if no one in the group has a good appraise score, then it effectively penalizes the PCs expected wealth levels.
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I've played in several groups that varied as to their approach on this. Some used your method totally, one was mixed - on small stuff the DM would just tell us outright values and on larger stuff we had to use the checks. My current gaming group uses the appraise method exclusively, but we have the advantage of having an accountant in the group who handles it well. I don't have a problem with any of the methods, really, but if I were running the game I'd probably run the mixed method. I, too, am horrible at bookkeeping, so, for me, it's easier to keep it simple.
I also found making the PC's use appraise on everything is a pain. So most of the time I just tell them the value of items they find. However i do let them use it to do things like judge how much cash a person has on them, if they want to try pickpocketing, or using it combined with spellcraft to ID magic items.
Just tell them what everything is worth, with the exception of an unusual piece or two. Set a DC and have those with appraise roll. If they hit the DC, then they find something that is worth more than it may have looked at first glance.
"That damaged statue, the one with the arms missing? Oddly enough it seems to be worth more than you might have thought."
Unless you really enjoy the booking, and so do your players, make it as easy as possible and get on with the good stuff.
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I have a spreadsheet that uses the RANDOM() function to roll the PCs checks and then a couple of formulas to figure out whether the result was high or low. I reproduce the important fields off to the side so that I can copy/paste them into a posting on our forum.
It's still a pain, though. I need to enter the equipment name, the caster level (for magic items) and the gp value (for non-magical items), along with a generic description. When I click the "DoIt!" button, the results are all figured out and if the check succeeds, they get the actual item name, if it fails they get the generic name. And if it fails by less than 5, the spreadsheet highlights that row so that I know to make up something juicy. ;)
I just which the data were easier to get into the spreadsheet. Maybe I can find the item info at d20pfsrd.org and copy/paste from there...?